It’s a Women in Secularism anniversary!

One more day!

Tomorrow morning, Ginny and I will be getting in the car and driving down to Washington DC to attend the Women in Secularism conference.  And on Sunday, Ginny and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary!  In fact, the reason we didn’t make it to the first Women in Secularism conference was because our wedding was the same weekend last year.  And while I considered skipping out on my own wedding for a conference, ultimately I decided it would not be a good decision.  Plus, our wedding rocked.

I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends, meeting some new ones, and generally having a great weekend.  I may be blogging, or at least tweeting, from the conference (@polyskeptic), but if I don’t I will certainly have something to say after I get back.

I do hope to avoid any and all potential absurdity from some certain persons who will be attending, and broadcasting, from the conference while there.  I will reiterate that I am really not interested in interacting, socially or for the sake of argument discussion, with people who perpetually fail to comprehend the intersectionality of social issues as they relate to the drive that pushes atheists to be active.  The same motivations I have to be active in this community lead me to care, and act, about other issues.  And since (with atheism and feminism, for example) there are overlapping concepts and goals, having a space for people who contain the multitudes of social justice concerns makes sense.  Again, nobody is claiming any necessary logical relationship between atheism and gender equality as envisioned by feminists such as myself.  The point is that the desire to be an activist for one set of concerns—such as the separation of church and state, education and theocracy, and atheist civil right protection—is related to the desire to see other issues dealt with in society.  And since these different issues have some overlapping concepts (like privilege), experiences (like discrimination and misunderstanding), and similar goals (general human rights) it makes sense that some people talk, write, and act on their intersectionality.  The whole point of intersectionality is that various cultural concerns have overlapping affects and experiences, and some of us care about how atheism, skepticism, gender issues, racism, ableism, etc intersect.

The problem, for many critics of this view, is that they don’t agree with or care about the kind of feminism that we espouse.  That’s fine.  They have the legal protection of believing whatever they want, and they can still do pure skepticism/atheism, if they want (I think that’s getting old and boring, personally).  On the other hand, this critical view has nothing to do with the fact that we we plussers and other atheist advocates for third wave feminism comprehend, care about, and argue for the active intersection of these issues.  Nobody is forcing anyone else to contribute or cooperate, and nobody is redefining atheism or trying to enforce community standards.

Why the fuck can’t some people comprehend that?

*sigh*

/rant

In any case, I will be there and I expect it to be a great weekend.

Will you be there? If you are reading this and plan on being there, feel free to come say hello to either of us.  I will likely be wearing the blog shirt or something equally offensive to mainstream sensibilities.