I disappeared from blogosphere rather shortly, say during 2 or 3 years. I stopped blogging and almost lurking altogether. That’s the way life is. When I left (with intent to come back later), the sciencey and sceptical blogosphere was rather easily mapped out. You would know a few places to get a fix of science, culture, and its intersection with cultural wars (even if these wars are not really yours). When I came back, I knew things had changed, communities had organised differently, and I should take the time for a new map. Not necessarily with ease.
There’s one thing that for sure boggled my mind, and I had a really hard time understanding what it was, because I had missed opportunities to learn about the huge mess. And this had to be huge, because it clearly changed spheres of interactions. It was really tangible that what was once a somewhat friendly place was on fire. I eventually came to understand whats & abouts.
This was because of what turned out to be known as “the Elevatorgate“. I even missed that usefull farm link documenting things. I won’t go into details but use of the greatest shortcuts to say that, in fine, is all about modern inclusivity, and the result of pushing feminism/antisexism into scepticism and atheism “circles” and spheres (though the same may have happened with pushing diversity/antiracism or other modern societal agendas). As incredible as it is (and believe me it is), acceptance of feminism in western scepticism and secular movements is far from trivial since it resulted into this whole thing.
As a result, there’s a strong tendency in my prefered readosphere to deal with matters of sexism more frequently, something at least good to me because it forces me back from the moon and have my feet back into the ground reality of things. I don’t usually deal with these, not that it doesn’t matter to me, rather that people speak more eloquently about these subjects than I possibly could (here or here or at some many other sweet places you can reach from there).
If you don’t understand why all of this matters, probably reading these few posts won’t convince you neither. I mean, there isn’t anything that difficult to understand, and you may even disagree at some point, but how possibily could you go so wrong about it is precisely why it does really matter and we really need to have all these discussions.
You know all of this already probably, or if you don’t, here is not the best place to get informed, please follow the links instead. I do this because I wanted to do it, much before so, but hadn’t many things to add compared to what was already posted. Except that I do care a lot about these issues. Not only because I want a safer world for my daughter, though I’d do what I can to have her live in a better world. Not only because all of this is part of my world, despite I’m a guy. It’s part of my world and frankly I’d really prefer not. But I can’t simply pretend it doesn’t exist.
But then, today (well yesterday or a little bit earlier more precisely), I found something interesting…
Once upon a time not so long ago, a group of people in the USA, who were most probably freethinkers –that is, some ancient equivalent of sceptics, used some paper media (a journal with the sweet name of Lucifer) to report and discuss about many things among which woman issues. It was even one of their main point, as to quote them:
… help woman to break the chains that for ages have bound her to the rack of man-made law, spiritual, economic, industrial, social and especially sexual, believing that until woman is roused to a sense of her own responsibility on all lines of human endeavor, and especially on lines of her special field, that of reproduction of the race, there will be little if any real advancement toward a higher and truer civilization.
The journal ended up its run because of course all of this was obscene to the greatest. So it produced in a chain reaction or joined in a bigger scheme some cock storm act.
Guess what? This was just about a mere century ago. You wondered why I got a title for this post so closely related to a recent one? I would say it’s because history tends to repeat itself. So be aware of it. Last time, it was on paper and got notice only in minority circles. These days, the media is different. I hope we’ll be more successful into settling and fixing the issue once and for all. Don’t be that guy, and that’s all.
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