Why Are Women Fleeing From the Skeptic Community?

Sara Wooford says she no longer feels comfortable calling herself an Atheist or skeptic, despite being "firmly non-religious". Among other reasons she cites the "alarming trend I’ve noticed among skeptic/militant atheist bloggers is that they only care about sexism when they can use it to justify their Islamophobia and/or racism..." Militant Atheists, she says, often use the image of oppressed Islamic women to perpetuate "smaller-scale sexism".

She laments that women who become famous for their Atheism are treated so much worse by male Atheists than in art, athletics, or organic chemistry. Would famous women artists or organic chemists who began promoting feminist consciousness in their fields be attacked as much? She doesn't speculate. I image that as long as a famous woman in any male dominated/male defined field shut up and acted like a good girl according to the rules of misogyny she wouldn't be subjected torrents of gruesome verbal violence, just kept in her place under the glass ceiling.

This reminds me of Tim Tyler's comment in Memetics that it took a hundred years from Darwin for the field of genetics to adopt the gene's eye view. Globally we've been trapped in the penis eye view for a few thousand years. Feminists lead the way breaking out of those blinkers, but many militant male Atheists are kicking and screaming. Male brain plasticity seems more limited in Atheism than in genetics.

Atheist dudes love logic, and that’s great, just as long as they don’t forget that they need to learn about an issue before they try to start arguments over it.

One of the largest sources of hostility toward women in the skeptic community is the vitriol received by any female atheist who is in the public eye to any degree (let’s not forget how difficult that alone is to achieve for women in this community), be that because they have a blog, a YouTube channel, or have written a topical book. This is what happens when women rise in the atheist community .... I don’t know why women who become famous for their atheism are treated so much worse by fellow atheists than women who become famous through art or organic chemistry or athletics.

When men become famous in the atheist community, they do not always create a sexism-free environment.