Friday, March 14, 2014

A calm reasonable debate

"Yes. By all means. Let’s have a calm, reasonable debate about abortion. Let’s have a calm, reasonable discussion about my basic humanity, and my basic human right to physical autonomy. Let’s have a calm, reasonable discussion about whether I should be forced, by law, and at significant risk to my own health and safety and life, to donate my organs for nine months to an embryo/ fetus. Let’s have that discussion again. And again. And again and again and again and again and again. And again. 

"And then, perhaps, we can have another panel at another atheist conference about why there aren’t more women in the atheist movement.
" - Greta Christina on FB.

All the yeses.

I used to hang out at some atheist message-boards, and it was mostly filled with white middle class guys in the US bemoaning how oppressed they were by the word God on the dollar. They were winning at the oppression olympics and would throw me under the bus, no problem, if violence against women, consent or reproductive rights came up. That was something to play devil's advocate about, that was something to intellectually wank over. Yeah, fuck you guys.

This is why I no longer hang out in those places, because nothing mattered beyond masturbating over how smart they were to be able to pull apart the Bible or piss on homeopathy. I'll do that too, but I want more than that: I'm an idealist (and a cynic), I want a better world. For women, for LGBT people, for people of colour. I don't want the same shit, run by the same section of society, just sans religion.

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