We’re still working on building our list of secular/skeptical/science events with harassment policies . It’s grown some since we started, but we need your help. Even if you don’t know about the policy, please comment here with the name of an event you attend or organize and, ideally, a link to their webpage. I’ll do the work of tracking down a policy they may have that we can’t find.

I think this is a non-controversial but important step. The more it becomes the norm for our events to articulate their willingness and desire to make everyone welcome the better things will be for everyone who attends. (After we have a good frip on harassment policies I hope to start a similar resource for disability accommodations.)

I’m a big fan of the Secular Student Alliance . For more than a decade they have been helping secular students organize for mutual support and activism. They provide resources to students, educators, and alumni to make schools safer and more welcoming for secularists. They are a true grass roots organization that is training and empowering the next generation of secular leaders and thinkers. They are also more diverse than most secular groups with older memberships. All this is awesome stuff and I’m a moral as well as financial supporter.

(More Than Men has addressed “the friendzone ” before. Here’s a poem on a related topic by the Slam Master of Mill City Slam in Lowell, MA. – Sasha) I know that if anyone saves me in my hour of need it will be one of my ex-girlfriends.

One ex-girlfriend got me a job when I was destitute.

My ex Michele who is a nurse treated the cut on my arm when I didn’t have health insurance it would have gone septic she said if I’d waited any longer.

As I wrote on Wednesday , I don’t see how there is anything controversial about events having or enforcing policies about harassment. We’ve even started building a list of existing harassment policies at conferences as a resource for event organizers, attendees, and speakers. Unfortunately it does seem like a lot of people do think these policies are a bad idea for our events.

One reason I’ve seen given in opposition to harassment policies is that they are prudish and they inhibit the ability for adults to express their sexuality. Basically they say that these policies have a “chilling”& effect on skeptics and atheists meeting and having sex at conferences. Others argue that not having and enforcing these policies have a “chilling” effect on women attending in large numbers.

When asked what to do to make skeptic and atheist events feel more safe for women attendees and speakers, Stephanie Zvan blogged about a pretty simple thing to do: institute, publicize, and enforce anti-harassment policies . This is such an obvious step that I’m surprised every event doesn’t have a clear policy in place. While there are some wild-eyed contrarians (and possible assholes) who think that harassment policies are oppressive and horrible , most people seem to agree that they’re a good idea and Stephanie’s post is making some real progress .

[caption id=“attachment_978” align=“alignleft” width=“253” caption=“Avoiding messes makes you adorable.”]

In real life, I can be hot-headed. I can speak before thinking, and sometimes this involves a notable lack of decorum. That sometimes bleeds through onto my internet dealings, but I do make an effort to keep that to a minimum.

I am also very intolerant of intolerance and bigotry — I really hope that fact bleeds through, because it’s pretty much at the core of my character. I’ve dressed down co-workers and acquaintances for ridiculous bits of bigotry in the past, even at potential personal cost. Two specific incidents spring to mind immediately: “that’s so gay!” used to refer to something the woman didn’t like, and “what does WIFE stand for? Washing, ironing, fucking, et cetera!” from a friend’s newly-introduced male fiancee. In both cases, I tried to register disapproval in such a way that it was both about their words being unacceptable generally, and because I was personally offended. In the latter case, my friend — let’s call her Laura, which is neither her name nor initial — and others were present, and she did not chime in, so the encounter ended effectively immediately after I registered my disapproval. The conversation moved on from there.

In Wednesday’s post I implied that a lot of people think that combating sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and ableism are too political and are not really something that skeptics should be worried about. Obviously I disagree but there are well known skeptic speakers who definitely think that those are not a part of “scientific skepticism” and we should instead only talk about ghost lights, psychics, and how stupid Catholics are. The idea seems to be that there was a “skeptical canon” established some time in the mid-20th century and that if we apply skepticism outside that we’re doing skepticism wrong or are “being political” and not rational. On the other hand, lots of skeptics I know think that, for example, cryptozoology is kind of silly and is a waste of time.

[caption id=“attachment_961” align=“alignleft” width=“150” caption=“This is what misogynists think of men who support women. (Source: What Men Are Saying About Women)”]

About a month ago, I was asked by an anti-feminist MRA on Twitter why I “believe in feminism”. I glibly replied that I am a feminist because I’m not a horrible person. The thing is, he’s not the only man who seems surprised by men who label themselves as a feminist and who work passionately toward equality for women. Perhaps I ought to explain where I am coming from and why this is important to me. Perhaps that will help other men understand why it should be important to them.

[This article was first published on November 23, 2011 ]

My partner, Kaylia, has many friends who are part of the transgender community. These are people who don’t fit the traditional gender roles in that they are living as members of the opposite sex, are undergoing medical procedures to change sex, don’t find themselves fitting into either male or female sex roles, or are biologically not clearly male or female to begin with. The tendency in society in general (and here in Fresno in particular) is to treat these people with confusion, fear, and/or skepticism as to their gender or lack thereof. Natalie of the Skepchick blog argues , with a good deal of success, that this is due to a discomfort that people have with having their notions of gender challenged.& While I agree, I think that it also comes from a basic miscomprehension of what, exactly, gender is to begin with. Gender and sex are not the same thing, and this seems to be at the root of much of the problem.

Wednesday’s post only got one comment here on the site, but I’ve looked at the discussion elsewhere on the web. Some people have said that when I see warning signs for misogyny I’m really just being mean and hateful to people with old fashioned values. I would argue that in many cases “old fashioned values” are misogynist, racist, and homophobic, but apparently some disagree.

What are some old fashioned values that are used to perpetuate and reinforce bigotry? What are some old fashioned values that are worth keeping?