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Sept. 30, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
36:10
Steve Shives and the Reformation of YouTube Atheism
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Hey.
Hi, Steve.
What crazy bullshit do you have for us today?
Given the fact that both atheists and advocates for the rights of women have historically been oppressed by organized religion.
Reike, let's be honest with ourselves, Steve.
When you say organized religion, you mean the Catholic Church.
Because women certainly weren't oppressed by the Eleusinian mysteries or anything like that.
And also given the fact that modern atheism has largely rejected other regressive attitudes traditionally promoted by religious fundamentalism, like hostility to science and modern medicine or overt prejudice against LGBT people.
Steve, that's not a consequence of any kind of modern atheism.
That's not the atheist community doing something unusual and rare and saying, you know what, maybe we shouldn't be dicks to LGBT people.
You might think that atheism and feminism would be the strongest of allies.
No, I would think they would be complete polar opposites, actually, Steve.
And that's one thing that really confuses me about people like you.
Many people become atheists because of dogmatic ideological religions.
They are tired of being told what to do and how to do it by people whose moral authority comes only through a potentially non-existent being.
Feminism is much the same way.
It is a dogmatic ideology.
It has its own evil god, and it has its own tenets.
I mean, I even think feminism provides spiritual comfort to many women who practice it.
I really do, Steve.
It baffles me why anyone who is actually a skeptical and rational thinker enough to be able to reject one religion would adopt another.
And in the minds of many atheists, and many feminists, they are.
Yeah, but that's because those people are unwilling to actually let go of religion, or they're contemptuous of women.
The thing is, you get loads of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic feminists anyway.
It's not something that's exclusive to any of them.
It's the sort of nonsense that can be bolted onto any existing ideological construct.
Anything that already is a thing could become a feminist version of that thing.
All you have to do is accept feminist dogma.
And personally, I would have thought that rejecting dogma would be lesson one in the how to be an atheist handbook.
Thanks to the internet, I have a fairly large circle of friends and acquaintances who, like me, identify as both atheist and feminist, and find that the two fit together quite neatly.
Yeah, but one isn't contingent on the other.
They don't deal with the same things.
There's no particular reason you should need to be an atheist and a feminist, or an atheist and not a feminist, or a feminist and an atheist.
They're just not anything to do with each other.
They're not even the same kind of things.
Atheism is a lack of belief.
For the record, feminism, by definition, is the belief.
And that's where it loses me, Steve.
Because I am an atheist.
My friends and I aren't alone.
Voices supportive of feminism are everywhere in the atheist community.
Unfortunately, there is also a faction within atheism that is aggressively hostile toward women in general and outspoken feminists in particular.
This faction is most active here on YouTube.
Within it are several of the most subscribed to atheist channels.
These regularly feature videos attacking feminists, spreading misinformation about feminism, and attempting to undermine efforts to address problems of importance to feminists, such as sexual assault or the wage gap.
Steve, are you calling me out?
Because it sounds very much like you're calling me out.
And it amuses me very much that you have the this week in stupid that was done by Shoe on Head, a woman, Steve, right after you have lumped me in to a category of people who you claim hate women.
They just hate women.
Since you argued from popularity saying, oh, there are so many atheist YouTubers who support feminism, why do you think the most subscribed channels who are atheists, as you say, aren't feminists?
Because this is the problem, Steve.
It's nothing to do with women in general.
Women in general don't really have a lot to do with feminism because women in general are not feminists.
I've already made this point, but I'll make it again, Steve.
Feminism requires belief.
I do not have the belief feminism requires.
Frankly, Steve, I think you should do some self-reflecting as to why you have made a video proselytizing an ideology.
Because it conflicts with many people's worldviews, Steve.
It is distinctly illiberal.
And I am a liberal, therefore, I can't be a feminist, Steve.
I can't willingly agree to the censorship and oppression of other people.
Practically ever, but especially not on the back of collectivism.
Beyond that, their supporters eagerly join the effort, inundating comment sections with insults, pedantic demands for evidence of even mundane and uncontroversial claims, and childish declarations that they have been pwned or wrecked.
And again, this is why I couldn't be a feminist, Steve.
I'm an atheist.
I'm a skeptic.
I'm a rationalist.
I'm an empiricist.
There is no such thing as a pedantic demand for evidence.
Even mundane claims need to be proven.
Because if you claim something enough, it becomes mundane, Steve.
But that doesn't make it true.
Such as the patriarchy.
It's nonsense.
It's absolutely nonsense, but it's so mundane for feminists.
It is a prerequisite for feminists.
You can't be a feminist without believing in some all-seeing, all-powerful, overarching fucking patriarchy that is controlling everything all the time.
So this video, again, is about patriarchy, but a little more in-depth, I guess, of my views about it.
It's kind of a response to the idea that feminists blame everything on patriarchy, and that people think that that's false and that they can't blame everything on patriarchy and that's just their fallback, that they just go to that and you can't ever argue with them because it's always about patriarchy.
can't argue that so I'm gonna try to actually defend these feminists and say that basically yeah everything kind of does everything kind of can be blamed on the patriarchy Commenters of this sort also like to challenge feminists to debates on behalf of their favorite anti-feminists.
Occasionally, especially if the target is a woman, they'll even resort to doxing or threats of physical violence.
Feminists will also dox and threaten people, Steve.
I have been doxed and threatened.
I have seen other feminists, prominent feminists, dox and threaten Zoe Tur, Randy Harper, Zoe Quinn.
Sorry, no, Zoe Quinn was just spreading around Margaret Pless's dox of Mike Sandovich.
But this is the thing, Steve.
You've made up a narrative in which feminism can't be wrong.
Feminists can't be wrong.
And they so evidently aren't.
What is going on with your eyes?
Also, I love the way you dismiss the idea of debate.
Again, this is not the position of a rational, skeptical thinker.
This is the position of someone who has constructed a little mental prison or fortress for themselves and doesn't want to have it knocked down.
The high-profile anti-feminist YouTubers don't directly instigate these actions of their followers.
And that's all you need to say, isn't it, Steve?
Because if we're not directly instigating, which we're not, and anyone listening, don't contact these people.
They're idiots.
They're not going to listen.
They're too stupid to listen.
Better to just sit back and mock, I guess.
Especially as, according to Steve, we're way more popular than they are.
But like all people with rigid, inflexible ideologies, they stand to gain nothing from debate.
There is nothing they need to learn from you.
They know everything.
They know the truth and they're just trying to proselytize it to you.
They only stand to lose from debate, which is why they don't do it.
And deep down, they know.
Steve Shives, you know you are misrepresenting reality.
You know you are misrepresenting me.
You are misrepresenting other YouTubers.
You are misrepresenting the situation.
What you're doing is called propaganda.
But they don't seem all that concerned with them either, despite these sorts of things being done in their names.
Nothing is being done in my name, Steve.
No one can do anything in my name, because they don't represent me.
They represent themselves.
Because this is the giant difference between individualist, egalitarian, rationalists and collectivist, unsceptical feminists.
You think other people represent me and they don't, Steve.
Which is why I'm not going to hold you accountable for, say, JJ talks saying something like, oh, I don't know.
I often see some social justice light people get a little bit nervous when I talk about biological sex being a social construct because they're like, eh, you're pushing it, you're sad and crazy, but just hear me out.
Despite your spirited defense of her when she was being harassed by a male feminist in the social justice atheist community, I'm not holding you responsible for that nonsense, Steve.
I don't think you think biological sex is a social construct until you come out and say it.
There are two major results of this.
First, feminists, especially women, either stop participating in the YouTube atheist community or decide not to start.
And second, the atheist community as a whole is perceived by those outside of it as being a place where sexism and misogyny are not merely tolerated, but rewarded.
The only people who think those things are feminists, Steve.
The sorts of people who look around for spaces that they can infect with their ideology.
And they have decided that, hmm, maybe rational thinking YouTubers in the atheist community aren't a good place to start because they're skeptics.
They have a hard time doing what feminists are asking of them.
So I leave you with one simple thought.
One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they tell you about their experiences.
Steve, do you see this propaganda poster that she is speaking in front of while asking me to abandon skeptical thought and inquiry?
Listen and believe is the mantra of religion, Steve.
You should find this offensive as a skeptic.
And if this doesn't offend your sensibilities, then maybe, Steve, you are not a skeptic.
Much in the same way that progressives are not liberals.
People who listen and believe are not skeptics.
Many atheists are quick to speak out against the religious oppression of women today, whether it's found here in the West or in other parts of the world.
But if we're going to cite the mistreatment of women as a point against religion, shouldn't we be vigilant about identifying and confronting the mistreatment of women in our own communities?
The thing is, Steve, very few people agree with the feminist definition of oppression.
Very few people agree that every woman is actually secretly oppressed by an invisible patriarchy she can't really discern, and that they need to be educated into this oppression, otherwise, they simply don't notice it.
Now, I'm not trying to make this any kind of character slight against you, though I understand that there was recently an issue within the social justice community that you dealt with.
Hi, everybody.
So, yesterday, my friend JJ Talks posted a video on her channel talking about sexual harassment on YouTube or in social media in general, and specifically as it occurs within the social justice community or the feminist community in these kinds of circles.
And to say what happened to them, even if they don't name names.
Because in a way, I think maybe naming names only makes it only turns it into drama.
I actually like the fact that in JJ's video, she doesn't name names.
Because then it becomes drama.
Then it becomes people taking sides, choosing teams.
Oh, I don't believe that so-and-so would do this.
I want evidence.
I want proof.
And it's bigger than that.
It's not just about someone sexually harassing one woman on YouTube or Facebook or whatever.
It's about the fact that this happens all the time to people that I know, that you know, and to people that are watching this.
And that it is perpetrated by people that I know and you know and who are watching this.
That's the problem.
And whatever I can do to stop it, I'm going to do.
I cannot permit this.
I cannot stand by.
I cannot stand by while my friends suffer, while my friends are harassed and bullied.
And whatever little thing I can do to stop it, to fight it, I will do.
You see, I don't doubt your sincerity, but do you ever wonder that maybe if you're surrounded by people who you know who are being harassed by other people that you know, you may have decided to associate with people of low moral character?
Because as far as I know, none of the people I associate with harass women online.
I mean, I'm not saying they don't, I'm just saying, as far as I know, it might turn out that almost all of them do.
But I don't see any evidence of it.
And that's the interesting part of this video, in fact, where you have repeatedly just hand-waved any need for evidence or proof to back up the claims that are being made.
And frankly, Steve, I can't do that because I am a skeptic.
It will never ever happen.
Religious oppression of women can be easy to spot.
Churches have rules banning women from certain roles, imposing rigid standards of dress and conduct, establishing gender-segregated worship services, and so on.
Oppression of women in the YouTube atheist community is not nearly so formal.
Nowhere is it codified that women should not be allowed to speak freely.
And there is no one who can stop women from being able to speak freely.
And no one even tries.
Because now you go on to say.
But the hostility toward feminism.
As if this is synonymous with women.
It's not, Steve.
You are a feminist, but you're not a woman.
So when I criticize you trying to convert me to feminism, I'm not criticizing women, am I, Steve?
I'm criticizing you as an individual.
I am criticizing feminism as an ideology.
And I will not let you hide behind the skirt tails of collectivism, Steve.
The petulant complaining in response to attempts to address sexism and the outright withering abuse that greets women in this community all add up to send an unmistakable message.
You and your point of view are not welcome here.
Steve, you have repeatedly dismissed the idea of evidence.
You have told me that you are part of a vile community of harassers who sexually harass people.
And you can't even name those people, so you're willing to protect the individuals who are doing it.
You have told me that you want to abandon skepticism when it comes to dealing with feminism.
Steve, everything that you are trying to do violates my principles.
As an individualist, atheist, skeptical, rational, empiricist.
You are against all of these things.
You are directly arguing that I take things on faith.
You are saying that women's ideas cannot be judged on their merits, and they have to be given special treatment.
This is anti-egalitarian.
Many atheists also identify as humanists, or at least share many key humanist values.
But it seems to me that no humanist worthy of the label would tolerate women being mistreated in their community.
Steve, you haven't proven any mistreatment in their communities.
You've just asserted it and hand-waived the need for proof.
I don't think there are women in this particular community who are being abused.
I'm sure if there were, they would do something about it.
The only place I know of in a, quote, skeptical community where women are being abused is a feminist community.
Women being human, last I checked.
Humanism and feminism don't stand in opposition to each other, and anyone who thinks they do has misunderstood at least one and probably both of those things.
Steve, you seem to be unable to understand exactly what you're doing that people are objecting to.
You are not representing any of this accurately.
What about the role YouTube atheism's pronounced streak of misogyny plays in how atheism is perceived by non-atheists?
Though the anti-feminist YouTubers aren't representative of the broader community, theirs are often among the first voices encountered by people who are curious about atheism.
Of course they are, Steve.
Your tiny channels and the little manginosphere that is harassing women are the ones who are actually not representative of atheism on YouTube.
Do you understand that?
Like most minority groups, atheists are often misrepresented.
We need to make sure that the stereotype of an atheist as an angry, condescending male chauvinist is just that.
A straw man that doesn't represent the general character of our community.
Mission accomplished, Steve.
What you're describing is an old Republican Christian.
The traditional conservative type, which is not characteristic of YouTube atheists.
And we don't do that by rounding up the anti-feminists and running them out of town on a rail, as I have occasionally been accused of advocating.
You know what's weird is that that's really what it looks like you're trying to do right now as well.
We do that by speaking up for ourselves, by making our voices louder and more numerous than theirs.
We need to make it clear to them, to ourselves, and to those outside of our community with whom we hope to coexist in freedom and peace and equality that the anti-feminists, the sexists, the misogynists do not speak for us.
Yeah, this is coming from a man whose community has a real problem with sexual harassment of women.
To some of you, this may sound like I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.
Women aren't being forced to undergo genital mutilation or marry into indentured servitude on YouTube.
But no, they're not.
They're not doing any of these things.
They're not even being prevented from speaking their mind on YouTube.
If the amount of anti-feminist rhetoric, not to mention the exuberant applause that often greets that rhetoric, is keeping atheist women from having a stronger voice in our community, and it is.
I'll ask you for proof of that, Steve, but we've already established you don't care about proof, especially when it comes to feminism.
You will simply dismiss the idea of proving and citing one's statements.
Isn't that a problem?
No, I can't stop a woman from having a quote strong voice in a community.
You can't help them have a strong voice in the community.
The only thing that will give them a strong voice in the community is their ability to speak, to construct arguments, and to make persuasive videos.
If they are incapable of doing this, no amount of feminist stacking of the deck is going to help.
Because nobody's going to subscribe and watch their videos regardless.
And I just want it on record to say that, Steve, I don't think women need your help.
I don't think they need my help.
I don't think they need to have men pulling them up.
Because I think women are capable human beings, Steve.
And if that rhetoric consists not merely of honest, informed disagreement, but strawmanning and demonizing of feminism of the sort that we would never tolerate were it directed at atheism, and it does.
Not in this video, Steve.
But you won't address this because you are a coward.
You know you are in the wrong.
You know what you're saying is fictional.
And you are happy to stick to it because it makes you feel good.
Shouldn't we be standing against it?
Steve, you can stand against anything you want.
You can stand against reason.
You can stand against facts.
You can stand against evidence.
You can stand against skepticism.
And you do when it comes to feminism.
This isn't the first time I've talked about this.
I've spoken out strongly in support of feminism numerous times, and it's always incensed a certain portion of those who watched those videos.
Some even try to deflect the charge of being anti-feminist by claiming that it's only third-wave feminism that they really have a problem with.
In my experience, most people who make such comments demonstrate an understanding of third-wave feminism roughly equivalent to the average young earth creationist's understanding of the second law of thermodynamics.
I've also lost count of how many times I've received indignant comments declaring that though I call myself an atheist, feminism is my true religion.
Okay, so why do you think people keep making this observation?
Do you think that it's that A, you keep abandoning skepticism when it comes to feminism?
You keep abandoning the need for evidence.
You think empiricism is irrelevant.
You think listening and believing is a good quality when it comes to feminism.
And you're quite happy to discriminate in favor of people based on their gender, which is something religions have done since the dawn of time.
A religion, as any self-professing atheist worth a damn ought to know, is typically defined as a belief system based on divine revelations and dogmatic principles handed down from unquestionable authorities.
Steve, you meant to be an atheist.
You mean claims of divine revelation.
Obviously, they weren't actually divine revelations, you monkey.
But the point, Steve, is that if you remove this divine revelation aspect from what you've just said, you have described feminism.
You just want the divine revelation to come from women's lived experiences, to be unquestionable, unchallengeable, and supremely subjective.
I'm afraid I can't agree to that, Steve.
Anyone who believes that something like a divine revelation is necessary to recognize the ongoing oppression of women, or that feminists are mindless followers of authority, needs to take his head out of his ass.
Right, so you're not going to refute the claim then?
You're not going to give me examples of free-thinking feminists who go against the grain and are celebrated for doing so.
Such a worldview is only possible if the perception of the person holding it is clouded by ignorance or warped by unconscious bias.
Prove it, Steve.
Two conditions that we who fancy ourselves skeptics strive to correct, do we not?
Steve, you think skepticism applies only to religion.
And bravo for being skeptical of religion.
But it doesn't.
It applies to everything that happens.
It applies to conspiracy theories.
It applies to ideologies.
It applies to events and it applies to claims people make.
If you want to be sure that you are accurately modelling reality, you have to be skeptical of everything.
I've even suggested that the atheist movement would be better off if it adopted an approach more like that of intersectional feminism, which seeks to understand how different forms of discrimination overlap and amplify each other.
How exactly is that going to work, Steve?
Being an atheist isn't about being oppressed.
It's about not believing in deities.
What good is an atheist movement that primarily concerns itself with the most privileged members of the atheist community and treats women, people of colour, and LGBT folk as afterthoughts?
That's a good point, actually, Steve, now you mention it.
Why are you running your channel?
Why are you a privileged, cisgendered, heteronormative male, running your YouTube channel with 54,000 subscribers?
Don't you think you should abdicate your YouTube channel in favour of a more marginalized person, such as JJ Talks, or I can't think of a non-white person in the feminist atheist community?
But shouldn't you be giving them your platform?
Because you are, of course, a white male, and you get to speak in every space, don't you?
I mean, you know, you've got privileges, Steve.
Don't you think you should give up some of those privileges to the less privileged to do your part, as it were?
The answer I get most often from people who don't like this suggestion, and to be clear, there are plenty of my fellow atheists who agree with me and are, in fact, way ahead of me on this, is that I'm trying to make atheism into an exclusive club, where only atheists who also agree with me on other stuff that isn't directly related to atheism are welcome.
Honestly, that's the least of my concerns, but at least you understand how divisive and secluding this ideology is going to be.
This objection misses the point of intersectionality, which encourages diversity by highlighting issues of concern to people who are already in our community, but are often overlooked.
And this response shows that you don't understand the issue.
The issue is not diversity of person.
The issue is diversity of thought, Steve.
The diversity of ideas and opinions.
What you are arguing for is an ideology that demands conformity.
And again, it's one of these things that is an anathema to my liberal, free-thinking, open-minded personality.
I can't deal.
I can't be having it, Steve.
I'm sorry.
You're going to find this funny, but I find it oppressive to not be able to think freely and voice my own opinions without censure.
An intersectional atheist would necessarily be someone who wants the movement to be even broader and more inclusive than it already is, valuing the contributions of a wide variety of people with a wide variety of ideas.
Do you know what doublethink is, Steve?
No one believes you.
This is the problem.
We've seen feminism divide people into those people who want to think independently and those people who must follow feminist dogma.
But what about the charge that feminism and atheism just don't belong together?
Perhaps to appropriate a phrase from a famous atheist who was not afraid to call out sexism when he saw it, they are simply non-overlapping magisteria.
Okay, so if they're not overlapping, what's the point in trying to make them overlap?
Why not simply treat them as the discrete entities that you have defined them as?
I wish that more of the people who complained about what they see as an unwelcome injection of feminism into atheism felt the same way about the infusion of misogyny into it.
Because the truth is, I wouldn't be so keen to talk about feminism in the context of the atheist community if the atheist community, particularly here on YouTube, were not so tolerant of the awful, backwards attitudes toward women displayed by some of its most prominent members.
Steve, misogyny is not an ideology.
It is a feminist boogeyman that they see everywhere that isn't already feminist.
You are complaining primarily about the egalitarian treatment of women.
Treating women the same way you treat men.
Which is what most women want.
Because they are just people, they don't want special treatment, they just want to be treated as equals.
And part of treating them as equals is treating them as you would treat a man.
Why are misogyny and anti-feminism regarded as things we just have to accept as an unavoidable part of an ideologically diverse community, but feminism is regarded as unwarranted and intrusive?
Because freedom of thought demands that you tolerate opinions and viewpoints that are not your own.
Whereas feminists go out of their way to actively silence viewpoints that disagree with feminism, which is what you're trying to do right now.
You can't accurately represent the people you're talking about.
All you can do is demonize them, Steve.
Oh, the misogynists.
They're this, they're that, they're the other.
They're just people who disagree.
Angry, hateful, ignorant, reactionary, anti-feminist rhetoric.
Well, you might not agree with it, but we wouldn't want those who do agree with it to feel unwelcome in our community.
And as for the women who have fled our community or never came within a mile of it in the first place because of those who spew and praise such rhetoric, well, you know what?
To hell with them.
I guess they're just not as good at tolerating disagreement as the rest of us are.
Steve, people are angry because you keep labeling them in an attempt to dismiss their arguments, while failing to understand that that doesn't dismiss or refute their arguments at all.
And you can't speak to this mythical group of women who may have seen something they don't like and decided they're not going to participate.
Well, maybe.
Prove it.
Oh, you can't because you don't care about proof.
Evidence is a thing that's just hand-waved away with you.
But okay, Steve, so you want to end any toleration of disagreement with feminism.
You want everyone to have to agree with feminism to be part of the atheist community.
Now shut the fuck up, SJW, is, I believe, how the rest of that goes.
Now shut the fuck up, misogynist, is how you have already acted, Steve.
You fucking hypocrite.
Women are not the only demographic to be marginalized and mistreated in our community, and particularly here on YouTube.
People of color and LGBT folk, among others, struggle for equal time in atheist circles, just as they do in other communities and in society in general.
What does that even mean, Steve?
Everyone is capable of making videos for as much as they like, videos as long as they like, as often as they like.
There is no restriction on it.
The people who listen go to people they like to listen to.
There is no overarching authority commanding and guiding this.
I've chosen to focus on the mistreatment of women because, in my opinion, that problem is the most obvious and the most tacitly condoned.
But that certainly doesn't mean there aren't other rooms in this house long overdue for a cleaning.
But don't tell me, defending black guys doesn't make you feel quite like the white knight that you feel like when you defend the honor of a woman.
Problems like the one I've spent this video discussing are not unique to YouTube atheism or to atheism as a social movement.
All major human rights movements have struggled with them, including feminism, which has a long and well-documented history of centering itself on white women and neglecting women of color.
Yeah, that's not selling feminism.
The question we now face as atheists is: will we learn from the mistakes of the great social movements like feminism that came before us?
Will we strive to empower the marginalized members of our community?
Or will we continue to stand by and silently consent while ignorant reactionary bullies push them further and further into the margins?
Look, you can go and be atheism plus.
You can go and be atheism plus social justice plus feminism plus intersectionality plus all of these things that is going to ensure that your group becomes smaller and smaller and smaller and more insular and less inclined to deal with the outside world.
Because that is exactly what you do, Steve.
Listen, I want to talk to you about this.
Live, face to face in a Google Hangout.
We can both show our faces.
We can both be polite and cordial.
We can deal with- And if you genuinely honestly wanted what you say you wanted, you'd come and do it.
You would be begging for the opportunity to come and explain your point of view to people who don't currently agree with it.
I already know that you are thinking of countless rationalizations why you can get out of doing this.
But you're missing the point.
You wouldn't be doing this for me.
You wouldn't be doing this for you.
You'd be doing this to reach people who don't currently agree with you, to change their minds.
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