‘A+’ as a label: my reservations
Jen McCreight just called for ‘a new wave of atheism’, led by feminist skeptics and those of us concerned in general with social justice in our movement. The post has gained a great deal of attention, including a lot of praise, and led to the idea’s supporters adopting this symbol.
One commenter Jen went on to quote, dcortesi, said this about what it represents. (Expect more quotes/screencaps/links as this post goes on.)
We are…
Atheists plus we care about social justice,
Atheists plus we support women’s rights,
Atheists plus we protest racism,
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.
Predictably, a lot of comparisons were made with humanism (I refuse to capitalise it), about which Jen said ‘people can use whatever label they want. Humanist, atheist, atheist+, whatever. I just want change.’ Amen to that – but while I’m totally onboard with her aims, I want to say why I don’t personally like ‘A+’: why I don’t think it describes me personally, and why I feel it’s a risky brand for us to use.
Here’s something Rebecca Watson said, in the post I linked above:
I’ve long seen secular humanism as the natural path for those atheists who are ready to move beyond the conclusion that there’s no such thing as a god.
And here’s a quick exchange we had, when a friend shared it. (Click for magnification.)
I sometimes experience tension with humanists, and especially when they say our activism must be ‘positive’. To me, what’s most important is fighting false beliefs or irrational ones – that’s why I call myself a skeptic before all else – and this often means setting myself against certain things. If you’re interested in hymns about Charles Darwin, or discussing ‘the good life’ with secular bibles, I’ve nothing against that, but it’s not for me. My aim is for fewer people to believe things they shouldn’t believe.
This isn’t to be dismissed. In her ‘I’m not an A+’ post, Kylie Sturgess provides an extended list of ‘links as to why practices like dowsing and homeopathy are still highly relevant for us to investigate’; Jen’s original post complains of people ‘patting themselves on the back for debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists’, but homeopathy-belief still gets people killed, and creationism still threatens education. Christians in Nigeria kill children because of their beliefs, and psychics still exploit the vulnerable. These arguments are worth having.
Jen’s point was, I think, that we should target a broader range of truth claims, and pick which ones based on how they impact social justice. I’m down with that, but we have to present it carefully. A rhetoric of ‘we are atheists, plus anti-racists’ or ‘we’re skeptics, plus we help the poor’ might produce a school of activists for social change, who only happen to be godless – whose actual skepticism is, like certain humanists’, purely incidental to their work. Let me stress again that the rhetoric of ‘plus’, and not the actual change in our movement Jen demands, is what I think might lead to that; we don’t need ‘plus’. We need ‘therefore’.
Atheist groups generally – not sans exception, but generally – are absent of homophobia, because we don’t believe in a homophobic god. When writers on Skepchick, FreethoughtBlogs and associated sites have been accused of not doing ‘what the movement is actually supposed to be about’, the standard response has been ‘We’re skeptics, therefore we challenge gender myths, not just religion’. In both cases, our philosophy leads directly to us seeking social change: Boobquake, for example, was never just feminism by atheists. It was feminist-skepticism. This isn’t a ‘plus’, it’s a ‘therefore’.
I do appreciate, though, that there are ways we want to make our community inclusive which don’t immediately result from skepticism. So I want to approach this from another angle.
Intersectionality is valid, and often important, even if the movements involved aren’t naturally related. Suppose we don’t construe feminism as a gender-related form of skepticism; suppose we understand it plainly as a movement to make life better for women on planet Earth. It’s still wrong, in that case, to say ‘Keep out feminism out of skepticism – they’re different things’, because what this tells skeptics who are feminists is ‘Make the world better, but don’t start with the community you’re in.’ It’s the equivalent of saying ‘Pedagogy and feminism are separate, so stop trying to get more women into schools’, or ‘anti-racism and queer rights are separate, so of course the gay community can be white-only’.
On Greta Christina’s blog, there’s a post I’ve always loved and identified with, which reads ‘I feel more at home – more welcomed, more valued, more truly understood – as a queer in the atheist community than I do as an atheist in the queer community’. Almost everyone in atheism belongs to another group, and we all want those groups to be atheist-friendly. It’s only fair we make atheism friendly to other groups too – including when doing so isn’t required by godlessness alone.
In actual fact, almost every social movement has values and principles conceptually distinct from its core definition. Yes, that includes ours – because ‘atheism’ the intellectual position is different from ‘the atheist movement’ as a group of bodies. The scarlet letter is a symbol of the latter, and when we see it, we think of all our community’s other principles.
- We think of science education, for example.
- We think of secularism, i.e. separating church and state.
- We think of being against religion, and of not practicing nontheistic religions either.
- We think of skepticism in general, e.g. of alt-med.
In dictionary terms, none of these is required of atheists, but they’re central to our movement because we see them as connected to our broader aims. There are probably lots more ideas other than ‘no god belief’ which we could list here, and are fundamental parts of our community. I think ‘dirty issues like feminism and diversity and social justice’ should be in there too, because without them we’re a poorer, more isolated, less effective movement. Some examples:
- We want to reach all parts of our societies, so when Sikivu Hutchinson talks about communities of colour, economics and Christianity, we should listen to what she says.
- We want to reach all parts of our societies, so we should listen to trans atheists – and when we see other atheists using offensive language, we should at least discuss it with them.
- We want everyone to come to our conferences and meet-ups, so we should listen to atheists who use wheelchairs or have hearing difficulties, and make events as accessible as they can be.
- We want to stop religious child abuse (including sexual abuse), so we should listen to survivors and learn what not to say, and when to provide which trigger warnings.
With some exceptions, many of these social justice issues are things which churches and religious bodies are already far worse at than our movement is – and by organising with them in mind, we can be a community which gets issues they don’t, which other groups see as an ally. I agree with Jen McCreight, and the associated people in the blogosphere, that they should be essential, not optional, for effective activism as skeptics or atheists. For this reason, I don’t like using ‘+’ to represent them.
The atheist ‘A’, as an emblem of our (sub)culture, already stands for more than godlessness – it stands implicitly for secularism, science and the other things named above. We need to add diversity and social awareness to its implications; symbolising those with ‘+’ implies they’re something extra, and that atheist activism without them is legitimate. It shouldn’t be.
If ever there were a time to claim the mainstream, non-specified atheist brand for inclusivity, that time is now, because as Jen says we’re winning: ‘although the response from the haters is getting louder and viler, they’re now vastly outnumbered by supportive comments (which wasn’t always true). This surge of hate is nothing more than the last gasp of a faction that has reached its end.’
I want an endgame where the bigots in our midst, not us, need their own unique name and symbol – where describing someone simply as ‘an atheist activist’ implies on its own that they care about justice and equality, and those who don’t feel they have to use another label. To quote another of the commenters,
That will probably not happen if we use some kind of [adjective] atheism.
They’ll always be able to say “I’m just an atheist. I’m not an [adjective] atheist. I don’t need anything else.”
And that kind of “purist” self-identification is very attractive to naive people (here naive is not intended as a pejorative; there are always people who are new to atheism and who may, in the beginning, feel overwhelmed by the Deep Rifts; we want to appeal to the new and naive people).
If we brand ourselves as a subtype then we’ll always remain a subtype. We want to be the ones who, if you’re a misogynist and you don’t want to be confused for us, you’ll have to apply an adjective to yourself. We don’t want to be a subtype. We want to be the type.
[Tl;dr - I already think the atheist movement and specifically the scarlet 'A' contain more ideas than 'just not thinking there's a god', and I want one of those ideas to be social justice. I'm absolutely pro-the A+ project, but I think representing equality with a '+' makes it seem too extraneous to 'atheist activism'.]
So… skeptic / atheist communities are largely absent homophobia “because you don’t believe in a homophobic god”. Perhaps. But such communities have consistently demonstrated themselves to NOT be absent of misogyny, racism, transphobia, classism, ableism and a vast number of other highly bigoted, discriminatory attitudes that deeply clash with the supposedly rational, non-biased nature of their discourse. I can’t help but suppose that the reason homophobia is noticeably absent is ONLY because homosexuality serves as such a strong and obvious wedge issue in terms of the culture clash with the religious right in North America. Atheists learn not to be homophobes only because it’s convenient to their cause of battling the religious right, but because they have no particular reason to think about or investigate other bigotries, they don’t. There are many, many reasons someone might be misogynistic, homophobic, racist, transphobic, whatever other than having a God that supports it. For instance: having pseudo-science that supports it. Or just being a selfish git. So the general implication you’re making that skeptic/atheist communities already are somehow lacking in the problems of bigotry and bias just isn’t substantiated, and certainly isn’t substantiated by the ONE example of a RELATIVE lack of homophobia. And even that isn’t certain. It generally seems to be the “we’re okay with queer people because they can’t help it” mentality, not anything more advanced or genuinely sympathetic than that.
A very interesting analysis. I hadn’t thought of it like this before. Thanks for the new insight.
‘Such communities have consistently demonstrated themselves to NOT be absent of misogyny, racism, transphobia, classism, ableism and a vast number of other highly bigoted, discriminatory attitudes’. I agree. I didn’t say otherwise. At the same time, it seems to me that while the bigots might be louder and more aggressive than five years ago, there’s also significantly more awareness of these issues in our community than there was then, and more desire to tackle them, as evidenced by the response Jen’s had.
Can liberal anti-homophobia be a stick used opportunistically by atheists to bash the religious right? Yes, definitely, and I certainly agree the ‘they can’t help being born that way’ narrative is highly unhelpful. At the same time, I think explicit homophobia is transmitted more exclusively in religious terms than many other bigotries, and especially the ones we’ve failed to fight, so are there certain limited contexts where deconversion alone can lead to better attitudes? Yes, and you can at times stop someone being a homophobe by making them an atheist. (I don’t think I agree that ‘atheists learn not to be homophobes only because it’s convenient to their cause of battling the religious right’ – lots seem to have learnt that before they even engaged with the religious right.) Certainly, a lot of social justice work is informed by skeptical thinking and the questioning of popular/widespread narratives of persecution, which I think is what Jen means when she says we need ‘a wave that… applies skepticism to everything‘.
Now: I use the word ‘homophobia’, and not something more inclusive, because I’m very very aware this has often been limited to gay and comparatively normative sexual/gender minorities’ issues, and I absolutely don’t think Greta’s experience or mine represents all LGBTQ+ people’s in our movement. I imagine this has something to do with the fact transphobia (for example) is much easier to find outside religion than traditionally dominant bigotries like ‘Sodomy is sin’, from which secular society has tended to move on; there’s no guarantee leaving religion will make you question lots of other prejudices, whereas it often will make you question that.
‘There are many, many reasons someone might be misogynistic, homophobic, racist, transphobic, whatever other than having a God that supports it. For instance: having pseudo-science that supports it. Or just being a selfish git.’ Yes, I entirely recognise ‘skepticism leads to social justice’ applies in limited terms to some issues and not to others. I mention it because I think it’s true significantly often, but I’m definitely not saying our non-belief on its own makes all of us less bigoted all the time. Hence ‘I do appreciate, though, that there are ways we want to make our community inclusive which don’t immediately result from skepticism’, and the second half of this post.
P.S. While Greta felt more welcomed as a queer person in the atheist community than vice versa, I certainly did NOT. Her experiences are by no means universal, and I’ve always somewhat resented how she seemed to extrapolate from her particular experiences as a bisexual woman in a particular context to somehow be representative of how all LGBTQ people experience the atheist community, and what the nature of that community actually is in terms of acceptance of othered backgrounds.
P.P.S. (I should specify: her experiences as a bisexual, cisgender, white woman in an affluent, queer-friendly majour American city)
Nice article Alex. Well reasoned. I’m in a strange place with this. If I had a red A badge to start with do I now need a second? Do I need to follow two twitter hash tags? Set some more google auto searches?
It sounds like I support both atheism and atheism plus. Therefore why are there two, when the connective tissue is the atheism part?
Thanks for the article
Andy
Thanks for the shout-out! I appreciate your clarity in terms of your personal goals as an activist.
I understand your reservations, but I think on balance supporting Jen and her likeminded cohort is a net good. My reasons are:
1. As we continue to carve out a larger and larger space in which it is OK to be openly atheist, sub-specialties (if you will) are simply going to evolve. Principally because there will be enough people to man them. I believe we are seeing something like that here. In some ways its like what happens in academics as a subject becomes a department with several subjects, which becomes a school or institute with many departments, which often end up more dissimilar than similar. This is a good thing. The only problem would be the lack of enough faculty and students to fill them. I don’t think we have this problem here. And Jen and the kids seem motivated!
2. Even in the best of family households it eventually becomes obvious that certain people need to move out and get their own place if everyone is to thrive. This happens regularly with young adults all the time. Sometimes it happens easily. Sometimes its triggered by rocky interactions and lots of strain and shouting where one or both parties realizes that “This can’t go on.” Frankly, I think Jen and the people rallying around her have had something like the latter experience. Now they think they want to move out, and no, they don’t want to just inherit the “family business”, they want to do something a little different. This is fine. They want to keep most of the atheist family name while distinguishing themselves a little. I think the family can handle it. Some people might have difficulty adjusting, and will express worry and resentment, and there will be costs, but that’s normal. (Splitting a computing curriculum into separate Computer Science and Computer Engineering departments knocks both back a bit at first, but eventually it works out better for all, if they know what they’re about. They may have to compete with each other for talent, but that’s just life. Conversely things can merge together. God knows what the hell the real difference is between chemistry and biology as subjects is anymore.)
3. It’s natural to worry about the opportunity cost of losing some of the A+ crowds efforts in the fight against traditional woo and other forms of simple irrationality. While that battle is far from won (if it ever will be), its not like they’re leaving the lines unmanned altogether. JREF, CSI, et al will still be there, and I don’t see the A+ crowd jumping to the other side.
4. For a long time, even when an activist’s position on social issues had strong roots in atheism (See Elizabeth Cady Stanton), that element was suppressed out of fear of the negative effect the atheism would have on “The Brand” of the social issue. Maybe in the 19th century this was warranted, but denying the role of atheism was still a lie told to protect the other brand. I think that for Jen (and for myself) we think its time to stop telling that lie. I can’t guarantee that we’re correct. Right wing social conservative Christians continue to accuse progressive social views as “rooted in godlessness”, but we live in an era where multiple freethought and atheist jeremiads have made the best-seller list. It seems like a decent time for those of us for which this is in fact the case to gather and stand up to them and say, Yes. It is. So?
I do support Jen and those people. I am on that team. I just don’t wish to label myself this way, and I’m totally sure how helpful it is for other people to, though I do respect people’s right to call themselves what they choose.
As I’ve said a couple of places already, I’m realising that much of the A+ thing is about not feeling supported by the mainstream atheist community – sure, a lot of people are coming out now and saying ‘we’re atheists and we hate bigotry and misogyny just as much as you do’, but over the last year or so it’s been the haters who’ve been the most vocal, leading people to believe that inclusivity and atheism aren’t as intersectional as they might have thought.
If what the A+ers believe in is what most atheists believe in then it’s time to make that known. I would hope that finding out making a point of differentiating between the two is unnecessary won’t come as a disappointment.
Excellent article, Alex. Summed up my thoughts on the matter of A+ and gave several new reasons to skip the extra character.
“My aim is for fewer people to believe things they shouldn’t believe.”
- WORD.
“…describing someone simply as ‘an atheist activist’ implies on its own that they care about justice and equality…”
- PRECISELY.
I don’t think it does at present, to be clear, but I think it hypothetically could and should.
Maybe you could label bigoted atheists as A minus?