While at Convergence/SkepchickCon 2012 this past weekend, I did a lot of things, but one of the most fruitful and important was to attend the “Don’t Feed the Trolls” panel on the second day of the Con. The panel consisted of a number of prominent female skeptics (Rebecca Watson , Cristina Rad , Stephanie Zvan , and Heina Dadabhoy ) along with a couple of male colleagues (Greg Laden and Jason Thibeault ) discussing the issues of gender attitudes, sexism, and misogyny in the skeptical movement. I think having these discussions in an open, public format is important, because there are a number of trolls out there who are not interested in reasoned, calm discussion on these issues; instead they are interested in intimidating those with whom they disagree and are attempting to silence them.

I think by now you’d have to have been living in a rather deep, dark hole to not have heard at least something about the sad case of Trayvon Martin’s death at the hands of George Zimmerman. Rather than rehash a lot of what has been hashed out and speculated upon ad nauseam regarding the case, I would like to speak to what I see as some broader questions.

Like many within the skeptical community, I have been reading with interest the recent discussion which has been waged (or, should I say, raged?) on the topic of diversity within the skeptical movement. Apparently, it all goes back to this article – Why White Men Should Refuse to be on Panels of All White Men – which led to this blog post over at Skepchick. It also seems that there is a bit of a “storm” of controversy swirling as a result of the discussion generated by these articles. I think Amy Roth, the author of the aforementioned Skepchick article, articulated it well with the following commentary:

[NOTE: This was originally published in July 2011.]

First, some background It seems the whole thing got started when Rebecca Watson of Skepchick wrote about an encounter she had with a man in an elevator in Dublin. Long story short: the guy propositioned her, and she said no; she also felt somewhat cornered seeing as how she was stuck, alone, in a metal cage with the guy. Apparently, there were a number of people who thought she handled the situation poorly (especially by blogging about it and noting the inappropriate behavior on the part of the man in question).