Women And Skepticism – The Aftermath

The following probably isn’t news at all for many of you – essentially, Pharyngula (PZ Myers) in his post The Woman Problem reflected upon another post Where are all the female skeptics at? by SkeptiFem.

This led to PZ urging comments with links to sites – there were even a few very pertinent comments that echo what I have felt and written about in the past. Such as this one, by ‘Bastion of Sass’:

I have no idea how many women have been involved in planning past atheist/skeptic conferences, or are currently involved in planning future ones, but I think that this thread has shown how vital that is. And not just a token woman or two on the planning committee(s), but a large, diverse (women of color; hetero and lesbians; women with disabilities; women from differing socio-economic backgrounds; women with expertise or interests in areas other than science–social sciences, law, the arts; SAHMs; teens through seniors, etc) group of women.

The involvement of the women must be full and from the very beginning: Picking a date, location, participation rules, floor set-up, speakers, events and activities. Having a bunch of older, well-educated, middle class white men, perhaps with a token woman or two, plan a convention, and then when the planning is significantly on its way to completion, decide–maybe–that “the conference probably needs more diversity, so let’s add a woman speaker, and maybe a women’s panel to discuss ‘women and atheism’”, just isn’t going to be sufficient.

I’ve previously written about inclusivity, panels and presentations at conventions/conferences a few times – so if you’d like to read more in that regard, I’d suggest looking at Why Dragon*Con?, On Skeptic Conferences (which is in parts one – two - three) and even Female Representation At Paranormal Research Conferences.

As someone who has presented now and then (I even had a pathetic troll-attack for daring to mention that I hoped to present with a colleague at TAM Australia!) – I know how tough it is to strike the balance between wanting to contribute and risk being slapped down for putting yourself forward, and whether it’s a problem for women in particular. When I’m at events, whether they be atheist conventions, philosophy symposiums and skeptic/science conventions, I always like to see new faces and ideas being promoted as much as possible. I’ve seen the enthusiasm and community-building that happens with SkeptiCamp events, the outreach of educational camps like Camp Inquiry and one of the best ways to improve people’s skills as presenters is to give them the chance to educate themselves and get helpful, productive feedback.

Eventually, I planned to collate the links to the various sites from the comments that PZ’s blogpost got, and I was pleased to see how many of the sites I already knew. There’s a few ‘well-knowns’ that PZ linked to – sites like Dr Karen Stollznow’s Skepbitch, Greta and Ophelia and so on.

Some I thought would have been a little more widely known – such as the site of Ladies who do Skepticism (Janis was interviewed on the Skeptic Zone) and Heidi Anderson’s sites (She Thought and The Fat One In The Middle); the sites of Barbara Drescher (both ICBS Everywhere and the regularly-student-contributed site Woo Fighters) and the great Musings and Rants – The Goddess of the Gaps blog, by Daphne.

Liz is a great friend and is the writer of Skeptopia (if you haven’t, read her blogposts ‘All the skeptic ladies, now put your hands up!‘ and the highly-relevant for those wondering about what can turn women OFF from skeptic conferences and online communities: ‘Why I’ll never return to JREF Forum or The Amaz!ng Meeting’) I’ve also been a keen reader of Hoyden About Town for quite some time and it was due to them that I occasionally contribute to the Down Under Feminist Carnival.

Sara Mayhew‘s site was one of the first I discovered when I first created this website and she’s since appeared on Skepticality (Ep #127); Joey Haban of the blog Newly Nerfed features in an interview on TS podcast (transcript forthcoming!) and more recently I’ve been reading Violetta Crisis. I was particularly interested by her blog post ‘Personal Skeptical Mission Statement‘:

One of the best things about the movement is that there is no prescriptive set of rules, or a PR push to present a united front on all issues. Debate and diversity of opinion are what drive us on, and if you’ll allow me to rip off Groucho Marx slightly: I don’t care to belong to a club that only accepts people exactly like me as members.

This also, I guess, brings up the question regarding ‘well, how do you know if they’re a female skeptic if they don’t always focus on skepticism?’ and even if they necessarily need to anyway! One of the commentators (Mostraum) on PZ’s post wrote, “like several other women skeptics I know I don’t blog mainly about skepticism/atheism, I blog about whatever I’m interested in at that particular moment.” I can see this shown in a few other sites I enjoy which cross over into philosophy, science, atheism and ethics and so forth – blogs/columns like Leslie Canold’s and the new atheist site Gladly My Cross-Eyed Bear. Star Stryder‘s astronomy and education blog has even recently inspired a Token Skeptic podcast episode, for example.

There’s a variety of sites which have female contributors (of course, SheThought and Woo Fighters fit into that category); groups like the New York Skeptics/ Gotham Blog, Skeptic North and Sceptic’s Book (both Dr Rachie and Amanda of the Skeptic Zone), Skeptic Lawyer – the devoted- to-podcast-reviews and interviews site SkepReview has the reviewer Lady Whitehall.

In regards to conventions or conferences – naturally people can run side-events as well. A group of at TAM8, for example (Skeptically Speaking host Desiree Schell, psychologist and ICBS Everywhere blogger Barb Drescher, Skepticality’s Robynn “Swoopy” McCarthy and Heidi Anderson of Podcast Beyond Belief are hosting a group of tables at the Friday lunch for women to get together, talk, and network with other female skeptics – the Facebook group is featured here: ‘Ladies Who Do Skepticism And Lunch At TAM8‘. They are also running the Skepticality Speaking Beyond BS podcast live show following the JREF/CSI/Skeptic Society reception (starting around 9pm on the Thursday night, which includes the (Unofficial) AMAZING (Live) Podcast Edition of Virtual Drinking Skeptically. This will be broadcast live through Ustream from a suite at the South Point and will be connected via Tokbox to the party downstairs, if all goes well.

Upon creating this blogpost as a future reference, I soon discovered that Lindsay of the Struck By Enlightening blog had the same idea and just beat me to it!

Here’s a link to her list and what follows below are sites which I am not familiar with or have not visited frequently – head to the post at Struck By Enlightening for the full version and feel free to add yours to it.

• 4.5 Billion Years of Wonder
• Ancestor’s Trail
• Angie the Anti-Theist (YouTube Channel)
• Ashley F. Miller
• Bastion of Sass
• Deficio Mens
• Design. Build. Play.
• Doubtful Daughter
• Finding My Feminism
• Football, Philosophy, and the Natural World
• Glasgow Aspie
• Heaving Dead Cats
• Jadehawk
• Joanne Loves Science
• The Journal of the Innkeeper
• Just a Whisper in the Wind
• Just Lisa
• Kajed Heat
• Miss Infidel
• The Monster’s Ink
• Multicollinearity
• Noisy Astronomer
• Petticoat Infidel (YouTube)
• Puzzled Ponderer
• Rational Moms
• Secular Cafe (Forum)
• Singularly Bizarre
• Stinkin’ Thinkin’
• Teenage Atheist
• This Good Life Goes On

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