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Secular Woman Press Releases

Moving Our Community Forward

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, please contact: 

Kim Rippere, Secular Woman President: 404.669.6727 E-mail

Elsa Roberts, Secular Woman Vice President: 906.281.0384 E-mail – See more at: http://www.secularwoman.org/Statement_of_Objection#sthash.YyE3QrNS.dpuf

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, please contact:

Kim Rippere, Secular Woman President: 404.669.6727 E-mail

Elsa Roberts, Secular Woman Vice President: 906.281.0384 E-mail

After CEO Ron Lindsay’s remarks at Women In Secularism II, Secular Woman released an open letter detailing our objections to much of Dr. Lindsay’s speech, which we also communicated to the board of CFI. We were not alone; many of our membership and readership, as well as several prominent feminist and atheist leaders and writers echoed our sentiments. After several weeks of waiting, the CFI board of directors issued a non-committal response which we were far from satisfied with as it failed to address the concerns detailed by so many. Our response was to wait and see if further action resulted, as we saw how our entire community was fracturing and didn’t want it to become further divided.

So, we were pleased when we saw that Dr. Lindsay had chosen to issue his own apology for his remarks during his opening speech at Women in Secularism II. Apologies, in particular, public apologies are both imperfect and a challenging thing to engage in, but they are vital to healing hurt communities. Dr. Lindsay chose to be authentic in his apology, showing an understanding of the hurt caused and a willingness to listen to us and others who wrote to him with our concerns. We thank Dr. Lindsay for beginning to address our concerns and are hopeful of continued dialogue and understanding.

To further those objectives, we have some practical suggestions for moving forward as individuals and a community. We suggest that Dr. Lindsay and CFI continue to engage social justice on multiple levels, in particular focusing on core issues such as the concepts of privilege and intersectionality in a workshop or seminar; announce and commit to a WIS 3, a conference that women and feminists in the secular community highly value; and join Secular Woman in creating a joint task force focused on inclusion in the secular community.

We’re eager to see CFI grow into a leader in areas around intersectionality and inclusion within our community; developing the Women in Secularism conference was an exciting first step but there is so much more work to be done and so much yet to learn. This is an exciting and momentous time for our movement and CFI, so let’s build on the successes we are just now starting to make as a secular community and as feminists and social justice advocates within our movement.

Show others the path, help them take the first step, and help draw our online and in-real-life community together.

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Secular Woman is an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. For more information about Secular Woman visit: www.SecularWoman.org.

Elsa Roberts Member Articles

All This Talk of Speeches Has Gotten Me Thinking

By M. A. Melby, read her blog at Sinmantyx

During the last few weeks many of us have been talking about speeches. From Ron Lindsay's Speech at the Women in Secularism 2 Convention to the young man who tore up his approved speech and recited the Lord's Prayer counter to the rules of his school, the concept of standing up and being a representative and a leader is on our minds.

I joke that my high school administration would have changed my grade to avoid the awkward situation of allowing me to give a commencement speech. Let's just say, in high school I was a bit of a character. I certainly spoke my mind and wasn't always adequately respectful of authority. High school was not a pleasant place for me, and I wasn't always pleasant back at it. Among so many other things, such as asking the English teacher if he wanted me to start writing in crayon, complaining to the next English teacher that perhaps we should be covering dangling participles instead of going over "nouns" for the fourth year in a row, quitting Art because I didn't appreciate us being used as cheap labor, writing an essay *against* the flag-burning amendment, refusing to go to Baccalaureate because we were taken out of class to plan it, and exiting Choir in diva-like fashion because I hated the music that was being picked out for me (Bach or NOTHING! Romantic period sucks!), I had gained a bit of a reputation.

The principle had artfully avoided the possibility of me singing, "Planned Obsolescence" by 10,000 Maniacs at the talent show, so they dodged that bullet. I sincerely don't know if there would have been a little creative bookkeeping.

In retrospect, I'm glad it wasn't me. I have no idea how I would have handled the responsibility because, like a lot of people that age, I was painfully self-absorbed. The commencement was for everyone. It was no place to air my grievances. However much I would have been tempted to stick an epic, "Remember when you replaced the theater's dressing room with a weight room for the football team over the summer and threw all our stuff in a closet over there? Yeah, that one, right there, with the sewer pipe running through it!" speech, it would have been extremely inappropriate.

When you have an audience that you are there to serve and you are acting as a representative, it's not about you. It's not about what divides, but what unites.

Perhaps I don't give myself enough credit. Perhaps I could have written something that would have brought us together. We had grown up together. We meant a lot to each other when it really came down to it. Maybe I would have cobbled together something that everyone found meaningful. Maybe I would have been humble enough to listen to my classmates and think about our larger experience together instead of providing a speech only from my limited perspective.

That was a long time ago. More-and-more as I gain authority and position in my career, I find myself in situations where my primary function is to facilitate the growth and expression of others. It may be tempting to think that the person who is standing in front of the audience or the class is the center of attention, but that is far from the truth.

The first lesson is to know your audience and to find out what they need from you and how you can provide it. You need to meet them where they are at, not somewhere else entirely. Ron Lindsay's speech, for example, was akin to describing how to cross the street to a group of women and men who run marathons, and implying that they may not be putting one foot in front of the other correctly.

It is selfless work to lead. More is expected of you. It's stressful. People are less forgiving. The necessity to be diplomatic and professional can be infuriating when your filters are on maximum expletive deletion. I absolutely empathize with anyone in leadership who has put their foot squarely into their mouth. When people are depending on you and have entrusted you with responsibility though, living up to those responsibilities is the primary concern, not what's going on in your own head. I am confident that Ron Lindsay understands this.

It's easy to think of people in authority as little gods, and not real people with their own challenges. The "perfect person" for the job is fantasy. Leaders are not born, but develop in time. A good leader learns as much as they can from both success and failure. They take criticism, even if it upsets them, as information useful in making future decisions and being better at what they do.

There is a time to fight your fights; to have unpleasant discussions; to stand up for yourself; to fall flat on your face and learn from it; and even to tell someone you think they are full of *it. When acting as a representative, is not one of those times. In front of an audience who yearns for solidarity and a voice, is not one of those places.
That is the lesson that may still need to be learned.

 

M. A. Melby is a physics instructor, blogger, and sometimes poet, artist, and musician.  Her work appears in Atheist Voices of Minnesota: An anthology of personal stories as well as her blog “Sinmantyx”.

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Secular Woman Press Releases

Statement of Objection to Center for Inquiry CEO Ron Lindsay’s Actions Regarding Feminism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, please contact:

Kim Rippere, Secular Woman President: 404.669.6727 E-mail

Elsa Roberts, Secular Woman Vice President: 906.281.0384 E-mail

The Secular Woman Board of Directors, in consultation with our most active members and supporters, regrets having to express our organization’s deep concern over recent public statements from Dr. Ron Lindsay, Center for Inquiry (CFI) CEO, during and following that organization’s Women in Secularism (WiS) conference this past weekend.

Secular Woman promoted the WiS event heavily with our membership for months. During this period we raised $2190 that enabled seven women, relatively new to the secular movement, to experience an event they would not otherwise have had the means to attend. Based on member feedback, we estimate that another 25 of the reported 300 WiS attendees were at the conference because of Secular Woman’s encouragement.  Additionally, 57% of our Board of Directors was present.

Through Secular Woman’s @AbortTheocracy campaign, thousands of our fans, followers and members have been made aware of CFI’s efforts in the area of reproductive rights. In fact, CFI is the only organization to have taken advantage of this service announced to secular leaders on an internal list-serv for leaders in the secular movement.

Given our support and the aims of WiS, we find it stunningly unacceptable that Dr. Lindsay chose to greet our members, our Board, and other attendees with his personal, ill-formed criticisms of feminism rather than welcoming us all to the conference we had promoted and paid to attend. Worse, he instead chose to personally welcome a man who has harassed and antagonized many of the speakers scheduled for the weekend, and who now has an interview about the conference on the front page of the website of A Voice for Men, which is monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their misogynistic content.

We are incredulous that in a conference about women in the secular movement Dr. Lindsay was completely silent about the threats, harassment, and stalking that many atheist women have experienced at the hands of other atheists. Additionally, we are truly appalled by the tone and content of his blog post, “Watson’s World and Two Models of Communication,” in which he bizarrely compares Rebecca Watson’s writings to missives from North Korea, misuses a Secular Woman statement to his own purposes, and claims that those who are active feminists cannot be real reason-and-evidence based secularists.

Not having seen an apology, retraction, or other followup to these official communications, we are forced to arrive at several conclusions:

  • that Dr. Lindsay’s actions are endorsed by the CFI Board of Directors as consistent with its mission and expectations of leadership

  • that CFI supports ad hominem attacks on individuals who disagree with CFI staff

  • that CFI is content with its limited diversity and doesn’t value the support of Secular Woman or our thousands of members and supporters

  • that Dr. Lindsay’s, and by extension CFI’s, endorsement of the Open Letter, which Dr. Lindsay’s blog violates in every way it could, was a sham

As a result of Dr. Lindsay’s actions, the past year’s conflicts have been further enflamed, continuing to alienate the demographic showing most growth potential within the secular community – women – not just from CFI, but from the secular movement. Secular Woman is hopeful that Dr. Lindsay and/or the CFI Board of Directors will offer a formal, complete, and deserved apology and retraction to Secular Woman and secular women and feminists* regarding his “welcome” statement and later blog comments. We trust that Dr. Lindsay and the CFI Board will now, and in the future, actively demonstrate their intolerance of all who harass, threaten, bully, and work to silence women and feminists. Finally, Secular Woman seeks open and honest in-person dialogue regarding women, feminism, and the secular community with the CFI Board of Directors.

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Secular Woman is an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. For more information about Secular Woman visit: www.SecularWoman.org.

*Note: statement has been edited to remove “all” in reference to secular women and feminists deserving an apology. All women do not want an apology. The statement was intended to reference secular women and feminists in a general sense, not to imply that literally all women were in agreement on this issue. 

Secular Woman Article

Implications of Gender Disparities in Secular Leadership

By Elsa Roberts

Earlier this year, Secular Woman compiled the number of women and men working for 15 secular organizations in a staff or board capacity. We found that staff were comprised of 46% women and 54% men while the boards were 31% women and 69% men. The leaders of these organizations were 29% women and 71% men. In every capacity men outnumber women, particularly when it comes to positions of power and leadership (i.e. boards and heads of organizations). This disparity in sex has far reaching implications. Policy, strategy, and goals for organizations in the secular community are affected when the voices of those with more privilege are represented at a rate higher than the voices of those with less privilege. For example, does a secular organization make the target of their separation of church and state about nativity scenes or about religious exemptions to providing women with birth control and abortion as part of their health plan?

When oppressed groups are the minority voice their perspective is often overshadowed by those with more privilege and more social capital. This means that critical issues are not addressed and that the focus of an organization can become myopic – because they are only considering a subset of issues defined as “secular”. Expanding our movement to ensure that women, people of color, working class people, etc. have a voice means allowing our movement’s goals to expand and shift. It means thinking about what constitutes a secular issue in new ways, and it means expanding our notions of what an issue that “everybody” cares about and what everybody is affected by is

This is an exciting time in the secular movement. Like many important social movements before us we are experiencing growing pains as we recognize that our movement must change and expand to include the interests of new members, to become an equitable movement that values social justice and understands the effects of systemic oppression. As atheists we are in a unique position to link instances of systemic oppression with religious influence.

This year Secular Woman is making women’s maintaining bodily autonomy a priority, connecting the ways that religious influence in government is hollowing out women’s liberty and impeding equal access to medical care. Women’s issues are our issues. It’s time we stopped categorizing the issues that directly affect half the population as “special interests” and secular organizations can lead the way by incorporating issues that affect women into our platforms. Let us embrace the women in our midst and promote a culture of equality and insightfulness and take this movement to the next level!

Secular Woman Press Releases

Secular Woman Welcomes Atheist Students With Free Memberships

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, please contact:

Mary Ellen Sikes, Secular Woman VP of Operations: 404.669.6727 E-mail
Kim Rippere, Secular Woman President: 404.669.6727 E-mail
Jesse Galef, Secular Student Alliance Communications Director: 614.441.9588
[E-mail: jesse AT secularstudents DOT org]

Secular Woman Welcomes Atheist Students With Free Memberships

Atlanta, Georgia – October 1, 2012.  For two weeks beginning today, student members of the Secular Student Alliance (SSA) and its campus affiliates are eligible for complimentary Secular Woman (SW) memberships. Open to all genders, the memberships entitle students who identify as women to benefits like conference travel grants and participation in the SW speakers bureau. Campus activists will receive the private membership link starting today in a series of e-mail updates from the SSA campus organizing team.

"Secular Woman is very excited about this new strategic partnership with the SSA," said SW President Kim Rippere. "We are eager to tap into the energy and passion of these secular students as we build programs to increase diversity in the secular movement. We're also hopeful that cooperation between Secular Woman and the SSA will help campus groups to attract and retain more women members."

Secular identity organizations, both on- and off-campus, have struggled to expand women's involvement. The 2009 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life found women to be more religious than men in an analysis of responses about god-belief, church attendance, and prayer. The American Secular Census, an independent demographic and viewpoint survey of Secular Americans, reports that 41% of its registrants identify as women and that their involvement in secular identity organizations is more limited than men's.

Secular Woman addresses this imbalance by providing resources and community to women seeking a higher level of engagement in secular activism. Since its launch on June 28th, the group has grown from a four-member board of directors to an organization of more than 650 supporters in nine countries. SW elected to reach out to students in this first membership drive because of SSA's culture of opportunity for women and other minorities. Women's participation in the SSA's 373 campus affiliate groups has risen with the number of women serving as student leaders, according to SSA Director of Campus Organizing Lyz Liddell. Rippere says this finding adds conviction to SW's vision of women "participat[ing] openly and confidently as respected voices of leadership in the secular community."

SSA Executive Director August Brunsman agreed. "Students are shaping the future of the secular movement, and they're shaping it toward gender parity. Can you picture a social movement succeeding without gender parity?  Because I can't. Secular Woman is an organization whose time has very much come."

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Secular Woman is an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. For more information about Secular Woman visit: www.SecularWoman.org.

The Secular Student Alliance is an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to organize, unite, educate, and serve students and student communities that promote the ideals of scientific and critical inquiry, democracy, secularism, and human-based ethics. For more information about the Secular Student Alliance visit: www.SecularStudents.org.