Alex Gabriel

Jaymi Hensley's coming out, fame, and the closet

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:39:33 -0500

Jaymi Hensley's coming out, fame, and the closet:

Among the queer politics crowd, reality TV is frequently bashed; moving more in those circles than between the cocktail-serving clubs of Soho and Shoreditch, and being unabashedly a regular viewer, this is an awkward fact for me. The ‘bread and circuses’ argument – that light entertainment culture on Saturday nights acts as a political narcotic – has its merits, but I’d argue that if you want to find out how societies work, their circuses are the best place to look.

Atheist Christmas gifts for a God-loving family

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:38:48 -0500

Atheist Christmas gifts for a God-loving family:

Christmas presents, like many aspects of Christmas, have often disappointed me. From time to time, I’ve had excellent ones – skincare sets, Sennheiser earphones and David Almond’s Skellig all stand out – but the tea towel of 2008 remains an all time low. In general, I like giving gifts more than getting them, and given I don’t enthuse over many parts of Christmas, I thought I’d write a post about this year’s choices. (I’m writing it here because, as a queer atheist in a traditional Christian family, my presents always have an agenda.)

How I learned to celebrate Hallowe'en

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:38:12 -0500

How I learned to celebrate Hallowe'en:

This time two years ago, I wished someone at university a happy Hallowe’en. Then I realised I’d never done that before.

Alom Shaha, an ex-Muslim, writes in his memoir The Young Atheist’s Handbook about not being allowed to celebrate Christmas as a child. For me, the forbidden festival was October 31st. ‘As Christians’, a woman named Doreen told us in school, who also ran the Operation Christmas Child collections, ‘we don’t celebrate Hallowe’en.’

More misogynist quotes from the family shelf

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:37:14 -0500

More misogynist quotes from the family shelf:

Remember Leadership is Male, the book I posted about at the start of June? As Christmas Eve approaches, another gem has revealed itself on my relatives’ bookshelf.

What’s the Difference? Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible is a similar volume by John Piper, and like Leadership is Male has a foreword by Elisabeth Elliot. (Because, of course, nothing endorsed by a woman is misogynous.) Once again, I read the book covered to cover – and, so that you don’t have to, thought I’d share some highlights.

Elected police commissioners should terrify us all

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:36:25 -0500

Elected police commissioners should terrify us all:

Of the few encouraging signs about today’s PCC elections, one is the total unenthusiasm on display: I know only one person planning to vote, and friends are organising collective ballot-spoils. This couldn’t contrast more with Barack Obama’s reelection, the run-up to which included all the usual choruses of You must vote! and Don’t forget!

By most of the self-declared progressives I know, the choice to abstain was treated almost as a kind of treason; one acquaintance in Australia wishes voting were compulsory around the world, as it is there, and I’ve heard the same suggested closer to home.

Assuming that when our new police commissioners are chosen, turnout is as miserable as now seems likely, the case for staying at home on national election days is worth contemplating.

Ex-Muslims at LSE: the student group responds

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:34:05 -0500

Ex-Muslims at LSE: the student group responds:

Pleasingly, Friday’s post about the (further) goings on at LSE got lots of attention – it seems like we’ve now got a climate where if British student unions do things like this, word goes out. Whatever else happens, that’s encouraging.

Also encouraging is the ASH society’s response to the union, which went public this morning. Some people seemed worried the ‘Request denied’ message would be the end of this, but they’re fighting it. (And everyone knows I love a good fight.)

At LSE, you can't call yourself an ex-Muslim group

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:33:23 -0500

At LSE, you can't call yourself an ex-Muslim group:

Sundas Hoorain, who’s at the London School of Economics and a member of its atheist group, just posted about them requesting an official name change. Rather than just ‘atheist, secularist and humanist’, its members voted to call themselves the Atheist, Secularist, Humanist and Ex-Muslim Society. (It’s overinflated, agreed, but it does spell ‘ASHES’.)

Reasonable stuff, one might have thought. Yet LSE’s student union have just denied the group’s request for this new name.

The Reading pineapple results in an official warning

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:31:23 -0500

The Reading pineapple results in an official warning:

Remember the Pineapple named Mohammed, that made headlines at Reading university before the recent ex-Muslim spat at LSE? In case you don’t, their atheist society was kicked out of its freshers’ fair for displaying something so offensive.

InterView: how atheists and believers can do interfaith better

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:28:02 -0500

InterView: how atheists and believers can do interfaith better:

I am an atheist, and an angry one. An anti-theist, if you like. A firebrand. Not only do I doubt a god exists, I think belief in one, and religion in general, is bad for our planet – inherently. In my writing and my day-to-day life, I’m actively engaged in trying to talk people out of it.

I like to call myself bad without God, and I’m happy to be labelled a reverse evangelist. If you want to say I’m strident, intolerant or shrill, I don’t really mind. I’ve no interest in respecting believers’ views – I hate religion, and want it gone. As such, I have a dark and terrible secret. In my spare time, I am an interfaith worker.

On the pathologising of queer desire

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:25:37 -0500

On the pathologising of queer desire:

There’s nothing new in using psychiatric structures to queerphobic ends: let’s not forget that it was only in 1990, the year before my birth, when the World Health Organisation stopped calling homosexuality a mental health disorder. The word itself was coined in Psychopathia Sexualis, Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Victorian volume on so called perversions, in which cross-dressing and BDSM are similarly pathologised. What’s interesting about Anglican Mainstream’s work, apart from their misuse of ‘post-gay’ and expectation Oxford Street would be a hotbed of homoerotic repression, is their insistence that ‘there is [no] indisputable scientific evidence that people are “born gay”, and…have no choice but to affirm their homosexual feelings’.

Atheism and the need for confrontation

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:23:28 -0500

Atheism and the need for confrontation:

A few days ago Alom Shaha, who wrote The Young Atheist’s Handbook, teaches physics and is currently all over the place, did a talk on science and religion. I count myself more as a firebrand than anything else, and was surprised how emphatic a diplomat Alom was in his talk – PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins in particular came in for criticism. He also struck me, as I said in the Q&A, as advocating accommodationism; I’m fine with not everyone being firebrands, but I’m still pro-confrontation.

Jesus, Satan and Alain de Botton: why romantic religion is dangerous too

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:20:33 -0500

Jesus, Satan and Alain de Botton: why romantic religion is dangerous too:

In recent posts here, I’ve been setting out where I am in the freethought community, or more precisely where I’m not – specifically, why I don’t call myself ‘A+’ or ‘humanist’, and why I don’t focus on secularism. I’m going to discuss romantic religion here – or, as it’s sometimes been called, atheist religion.

Secularism is important, but for me it's not enough.

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:19:21 -0500

Secularism is important, but for me it's not enough.:

Sunday’s post on humanism has gained lots of attention, including the National Secular Society’s, who shared it on their homepage.

One issue I mentioned half way through that post, and that I’ve brought up a lot elsewhere recently, is that I want to focus my activities on skepticism – and in particular, atheism – not just on separating church and state. I differ in this sense from many humanists, but also from the NSS, which works ‘exclusively’ toward a secular state.

Don’t read this post as a criticism of the NSS – I share their aims, support their work and am fine with that being their focus. This post is just about why, personally, mine is different.

'Problems with the humanist brand', and why I'm not one

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 12:16:17 -0500

'Problems with the humanist brand', and why I'm not one:

There’s recently been much discussion over A+/atheism plus, and whether or not it’s just humanism. (This was something discussed in the hangout I just did.) Here’s something James Croft, of the Harvard Humanists, said about it:

Many seem to be responding to the “Atheism+” language more readily to the language of “Humanism” … And that speaks to some problem with the “Humanist” brand which people like me should think about carefully.

I’d like to give a personal slant on that, and talk about what puts me off saying I’m a humanist. Specifically, I want to talk about differences I’ve experienced with humanists – some of which are differences over emphasis or personal goals, which is perfectly fine, and some of which involve them doing things I wish they wouldn’t.

I warn you now: this will be a long post.

Kaftans and camp eunuchs: pop culture's neutering of visibly queer men

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 12:45:00 -0400

This post appeared previously at So So Gay.

‘This’, Stanley Tucci says of fashion in The Devil Wears Prada, ’is a shining beacon of hope for – oh, I don’t know… let’s say a young boy growing up in Rhode Island with six brothers, pretending to go to soccer practice when he was really going to sewing class.’

A cursory lunchtime viewing of Project Runway will more than confirm it’s an industry of gay men – and more than that, the natural home of unreconstructed queens. On the catwalk, if not currently on Grindr, extravagance is a virtue, and it’s no doubt helped the careers of many designers that their mannerisms are as vibrantly theatrical as their work. This is a field where camp is not a problem.

Perhaps because of this, many influential gay men in popular fiction have been fashionistas. Tucci’s aforementioned character, Nigel, Glee’s Kurt Hummel, Marc St. James and Justin Suarez from Ugly Betty, mincing Alexander from the British Queer as Folk – no series now seems complete without such a figure. Alexander, in particular, owns one of TV’s best ever throwaway lines: ‘So, I’m stood in Battersea Power Station in nothing but me Tommy Hilfiger pants, when he comes back in…’. Unlike some, I’ve nothing against camp men being visible, but I do want to point something out.

Where they appear, these characters are often shown as objects and not subjects, reactive and not proactive, done-to and not doers. They’re depicted as victims, or as lacking sexual agency – especially compared with their ‘straight-acting’ peers.

Justin doesn’t kiss straight-acting Austin, but is kissed by him…

…just as Kurt doesn’t kiss the ‘manlier’ Blaine, but is kissed by him…

…and when Kurt is bullied, Blaine is the one who comes to his aid.

Alexander, similarly, is passive when his family disown him; Stuart, mistaken for straight at times,confronts his mother and destroys her car.

In The Devil Wears Prada, it’s Nigel who is ultimately victimised; in United States of Tara, pouting Lionel dies a violent offscreen death, outlived by his less flouncy boyfriend, Marshall; in Torchwood, sensitive Ianto’s relatives confront him over who he dates, before he dies in lantern-jawed Jack Harkness’ arms. Justin, unlike self-assured Austin, agonises over coming out.

The trope is inescapable. So how should we interpret it?

When gay male characters who are camp always seem to suffer more, it’s tempting to cry overt bigotry. Queeny, gender-atypical fashionistas are often those most accused of ‘flaunting it’: as long as Neil Patrick Harris or Anderson Cooper don’t get flirty or make penis jokes, homophobes don’t have to acknowledge they’re gay, whereas in Chris Colfer’s presence or Louie Spence’s, there’s no dodging the issue. Camp men in fiction are most visibly queer, so it makes sense their storylines would be hardest hit by prejudice – then again, many of those mentioned were created by gay writers.

The alternative is still more troubling. Are we to conclude from these characters’ misfortunes that a harder life is to be expected if we don’t perform our gender conventionally? That Justin, Kurt et al. might have avoided pain by simply ‘butching up’? If so, queer liberation’s still a distant goal.

Certainly, their desexualisation speaks volumes. On Glee, the closest Kurt gets to making a romantic pass is a tribute in song to a dead canary; it’s Blaine who initiates their first kiss, who first instigates sex and who is led astray by the similarly ‘straight-acting’ Sebastian; he, Nigel and the gay men of Ugly Bettyare shown centrally as eunuch-esque GBFs, whose main role is to entertain and to make things – especially women – pretty, not to be players. Their sexual identity is worn proudly, a must-have accessory, but rarely played out.

Think what this says about gender roles. Sex, the constant subtext tells us, is the domain of manly men and womanly women: if you’re not the former, you don’t get to be a sexual being, and you’ll have to wait patiently until one chooses you.

It’s enormously disempowering, because camp male sexuality is radical. The mere sight of Julian Clary makes straight men in my family squirm, or sometimes change channels – the notion of being subject to a man’s sexual advances, as women are to theirs, genuinely disturbs them. Clary’s famous single-entendreabout Norman Lamont was powerful and shocking, I’d suggest, largely because of his effete demeanour: the audience had no doubt he was really capable of penetrating the then-Tory chancellor. At Stonewall, too, it’s said the first bricks were thrown at police by drag queens.

Camp gay men are an essential part of our community, and fears of stereotype threat are misguided – if pop culture doesn’t show the full queer spectrum of gender expression, why infiltrate it? But these characters can be more than passive victims. Let’s give them the power their transgressive, real-world counterparts wield so well.

@AlexGabriel

P.E. lessons ruined how I felt about myself

Sat, 03 Nov 2012 12:37:00 -0400

This post appeared previously at So So Gay.

Recently, John Prescott and I disagreed.

The Olympics were nearing a close, and a tweet from Gaby Hinsliff about compulsory PE in schools set us off. His stance was that ‘we need competitive sport’ since ‘learninghow to lose gracefully is just as important as winning’. I was unconvinced, as I was four days previously, when David Cameron demanded, ‘a revival of competitive sport in primary schools’ saying ‘we need to end the “all must have prizes” culture’.

I told John Prescott that my experience of competitive sport in P.E. lessons was more about humiliation – gracefully, mind – but I want to say more here than I can on Twitter. I came out aged twelve in the summer of Year 8, and particularly after that, P.E. lessons slowly ruined how I felt about myself.

Like the so called War on Christmas and laws against cross-wearing, Cameron’s ‘all must have prizes’ culture seems little more than an invention of the right wing press. Certainly, I never encountered it. At primary school I dreaded sports day: uncoordinated, hay fever-afflicted and unable to breathe through my nose, I was universally incompetent. Because participation was mandatory, I usually opted for the hundred-metre sprint – my rationale for this, aged seven or eight, was that it would be over quickly. While this was true, choosing the shortest race also meant unmitigated defeat by the quickest runners, before the entire school and their parents.

It might seem absurd today, but that hurt. I ended up in tears twice, and later faked illness to avoid it – presumably teachers knew I was lying, but took pity on me. Where I excelled at art projects and English, the kids who struggled at that weren’t made to enter contests where large crowds cheered for me and they finished last. I enjoy watching certain competitions now, even ruthlessly dog-eat-dog ones – RuPaul’s Drag Race springs to mind – but I know everyone involved is present by choice. Making anyone, particularly children, compete publicly and against their will in something for which they’ve no skill or enthusiasm seems deeply cruel. (Yes, I have issues, but when I tweeted about this it struck a chord, so perhaps many do.)

My secondary school was a comprehensive, but with its maroon and bottle green uniform, ridiculous Latin motto and expansive playing fields, it would never have admitted it. I got to know and hate those playing fields over several years, each of which involved a games curriculum of traditional team sports doubtless approved of by David Cameron: rugby in the autumn term, football in the spring and either tennis or cricket in the summer. (These were the boys’ sports. Activities were split by gender, with girls getting a mostly different and equally traditional schedule – hockey, rounders and so on.)

During lessons, especially once out, I faced just about all the unpleasantness you could imagine: coming last or next to last, depending on the group, I got called a colourful range of names including literally dozens – I once made a list – of homophobic slurs, from ‘freak’ to ‘faggot’. In the winter, when rain had muddied the ground, I got pelted with dirt, and it wasn’t unusual for people to spit on me. I still remember how that felt. Then the physical bullying: kickings, in particular, or being hit with sporting implements; the hard edge of a tennis racquet once gave me a black eye. This was a rare occasion when teachers intervened.

I’m not sure if they otherwise didn’t know what was happening, or if fear of acknowledging the gay thingmeant they didn’t step in. It certainly stopped me from saying anything. Not all my P.E. teachers were conventionally nasty, but some made things more difficult than they already were. My twelve-year-old self once lost control of his breathing and fell to ground, unable to stop panting, after being made to run 1.5km. The teacher who set the task responded to expressions of concern with, ‘Oh, Alex is just being silly.’ She later said, ‘More effort, next time’.

Though I couldn’t then articulate it, P.E. lessons made me feel that my body belonged to someone else. From mandatory activities I was bad at and which hurt, to the physical punishments some teachers used – forgetting shin pads meant lapping both football fields five times – to having to undress in front of people who hated me, exposing a body I’d learnt to hate. Then the fascistic ‘bleep test’. I wondered, and still do, why authorities needed to know how much I could run before being exhausted. After one test, a boy in the class said I should kill myself. Several times, I tried.

P.E. apologists often echo the severe Mr. Hume, who once told us, ‘There are too many unfit kids today.’ But who put him in charge of my body, and what gave the Government the right to deem it inadequate? If P.E. really created fitter kids, wouldn’t decades of increasingly strict requirements have evolved children into Adonises by now? Between my first and last P.E. lessons, no-one’s fitness level seemed to change.

I don’t believe this is really the motivation. If it were, why object, as Cameron does, to ‘Indian dance, or whatever’? Students who excel at sport should clearly have facilities at school, and primary schools need P.E. to identify them. But why not stress dance, Pilates, or martial arts as much as the public school sports he grew up around? I don’t know how common my experience of P.E. lessons is, but the syllabus did make it harder for me as a gay-identifying teenager: to fail at things so traditionally masculine as playing rugby or throwing heavy objects, especially in single gender classes, is often to encounter explicit homophobia.

For many, including me, this subject is emotive, and those who defend compulsory P.E. – especially post-primary school, and in the shape of traditional competitive sports – often do it powerfully. But to me it never seems to do much good, and can sometimes do unspeakable harm.

@AlexGabriel

In or near Leeds on September 15th? Come see me speak

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 13:02:05 -0400

This time next week I’ll be in Leeds, giving a talk to their Skeptics in the Pub group.

The subject is my visit to Soul Survivor from this July, and what it’s taught me - I’m going to talk about my experience there, but also where I consequently see myself in the freethought movement, and the kind of activism it’s made me think we need.

Come, if you’re in the area - it’ll be cool. The Facebook event is here.

'Atheist', 'humanist' or 'A+'? My hangout with Ophelia Benson, Debbie Goddard, Jason Thibeault and Stephanie Zvan

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:55:41 -0400

In the light of the recent discussions about these labels in the blogosphere, I did a Google+ hangout last night with various other secular writers. It was a great discussion - thanks to all involved.

'A+' as a label: my reservations

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:50:00 -0400

This post appeared previously at The Heresy Club.

Jen McCreight just called for ‘a new wave of atheism’, led by feminist skeptics and those of us concerned in general with social justice in our movement. The post has gained a great deal of attention, including a lot of praise, and led to the idea’s supporters adopting this symbol.

One commenter Jen went on to quote, dcortesi, said this about what it represents. (Expect more quotes/screencaps/links as this post goes on.)

We are… Atheists plus we care about social justice, Atheists plus we support women’s rights, Atheists plus we protest racism, Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia, Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

Predictably, a lot of comparisons were made with humanism (I refuse to capitalise it), about which Jen said ‘people can use whatever label they want. Humanist, atheist, atheist+, whatever. I just want change.’ Amen to that – but while I’m totally onboard with her aims, I want to say why I don’t personally like ‘A+’: why I don’t think it describes me personally, and why I feel it’s a risky brand for us to use.

Here’s something Rebecca Watson said, in the post I linked above:

I’ve long seen secular humanism as the natural path for those atheists who are ready to move beyond the conclusion that there’s no such thing as a god.

And here’s a quick exchange we had, when a friend shared it. (Click for magnification.)

I sometimes experience tension with humanists, and especially when they say our activism must be ‘positive’. To me, what’s most important is fighting false beliefs or irrational ones – that’s why I call myself a skeptic before all else – and this often means setting myself against certain things. If you’re interested in hymns about Charles Darwin, or discussing ‘the good life’ with secular bibles, I’ve nothing against that, but it’s not for me. My aim is for fewer people to believe things they shouldn’t believe.

This isn’t to be dismissed. In her ‘I’m not an A+’ post, Kylie Sturgess provides an extended list of ‘links as to why practices like dowsing and homeopathy are still highly relevant for us to investigate’; Jen’s original post complains of people ‘patting themselves on the back for debunking homeopathy for the 983258th time or thinking up yet another great zinger to use against Young Earth Creationists’, but homeopathy-belief still gets people killed, and creationism still threatens education. Christians in Nigeria kill children because of their beliefs, and psychics still exploit the vulnerable. These arguments are worth having.

Jen’s point was, I think, that we should target a broader range of truth claims, and pick which ones based on how they impact social justice. I’m down with that, but we have to present it carefully. A rhetoric of ‘we are atheists, plus anti-racists’ or ‘we’re skeptics, plus we help the poor’ might produce a school of activists for social change, who only happen to be godless – whose actual skepticism is, like certain humanists’, purely incidental to their work. Let me stress again that the rhetoric of ‘plus’, and not the actual change in our movement Jen demands, is what I think might lead to that; we don’t need ‘plus’. We need ‘therefore’.

Atheist groups generally – not sans exception, but generally – are absent of homophobia, because we don’t believe in a homophobic god. When writers on Skepchick, FreethoughtBlogs and associated sites have been accused of not doing ‘what the movement is actually supposed to be about’, the standard response has been ‘We’re skeptics, therefore we challenge gender myths, not just religion’. In both cases, our philosophy leads directly to us seeking social change: Boobquake, for example, was never just feminism by atheists. It was feminist-skepticism. This isn’t a ‘plus’, it’s a ‘therefore’.

I do appreciate, though, that there are ways we want to make our community inclusive which don’t immediately result from skepticism. So I want to approach this from another angle.

Intersectionality is valid, and often important, even if the movements involved aren’t naturally related. Suppose we don’t construe feminism as a gender-related form of skepticism; suppose we understand it plainly as a movement to make life better for women on planet Earth. It’s still wrong, in that case, to say ‘Keep out feminism out of skepticism – they’re different things’, because what this tells skeptics who are feminists is ‘Make the world better, but don’t start with the community you’re in.’ It’s the equivalent of saying ‘Pedagogy and feminism are separate, so stop trying to get more women into schools’, or ‘anti-racism and queer rights are separate, so of course the gay community can be white-only’.

On Greta Christina’s blog, there’s a post I’ve always loved and identified with, which reads ‘I feel more at home - more welcomed, more valued, more truly understood - as a queer in the atheist community than I do as an atheist in the queer community’. Almost everyone in atheism belongs to another group, and we all want those groups to be atheist-friendly. It’s only fair we make atheism friendly to other groups too – including when doing so isn’t required by godlessness alone.

In actual fact, almost every social movement has values and principles conceptually distinct from its core definition. Yes, that includes ours – because ‘atheism’ the intellectual position is different from ‘the atheist movement’ as a group of bodies. The scarlet letteris a symbol of the latter, and when we see it, we think of all our community’s other principles.

We think of science education, for example.
We think of secularism, i.e. separating church and state.
We think of being against religion, and of not practicing nontheistic religions either.
We think of skepticism in general, e.g. of alt-med.

In dictionary terms, none of these is required of atheists, but they’re central to our movement because we see them as connected to our broader aims. There are probably lots more ideas other than ‘no god belief’ which we could list here, and are fundamental parts of our community. I think ‘dirty issues like feminism and diversity and social justice’ should be in there too, because without them we’re a poorer, more isolated, less effective movement. Some examples:

We want to reach all parts of our societies, so when Sikivu Hutchinson talks about communities of colour, economics and Christianity, we should listen to what she says.
We want to reach all parts of our societies, so we should listen to trans atheists – and when we see other atheists using offensive language, we should at least discuss it with them.
We want everyone to come to our conferences and meet-ups, so we should listen to atheists who use wheelchairs or have hearing difficulties, and make events as accessible as they can be.
We want to stop religious child abuse (including sexual abuse), so we should listen to survivors and learn what not to say, and when to provide which trigger warnings.

With some exceptions, many of these social justice issues are things which churches and religious bodies are already far worse at than our movement is – and by organising with them in mind, we can be a community which gets issues they don’t, which other groups see as an ally. I agree with Jen McCreight, and the associated people in the blogosphere, that they should be essential, not optional, for effective activism as skeptics or atheists. For this reason, I don’t like using ‘+’ to represent them.

The atheist ‘A’, as an emblem of our (sub)culture, already stands for more than godlessness – it stands implicitly for secularism, science and the other things named above. We need to add diversity and social awareness to its implications; symbolising those with ‘+’ implies they’re something extra, and that atheist activism without them is legitimate. It shouldn’t be.

If ever there were a time to claim the mainstream, non-specified atheist brand for inclusivity, that time is now, because as Jen says we’re winning: ‘although the response from the haters is getting louder and viler, they’re now vastly outnumbered by supportive comments (which wasn’t always true). This surge of hate is nothing more than the last gasp of a faction that has reached its end.’

I want an endgame where the bigots in our midst, not us, need their own unique name and symbol – where describing someone simply as ‘an atheist activist’ implies on its own that they care about justice and equality, and those who don’t feel they have to use another label. To quote another of the commenters,

That will probably not happen if we use some kind of [adjective] atheism. They’ll always be able to say “I’m just an atheist. I’m not an [adjective] atheist. I don’t need anything else.” And that kind of “purist” self-identification is very attractive to naive people (here naive is not intended as a pejorative; there are always people who are new to atheism and who may, in the beginning, feel overwhelmed by the Deep Rifts; we want to appeal to the new and naive people). If we brand ourselves as a subtype then we’ll always remain a subtype. We want to be the ones who, if you’re a misogynist and you don’t want to be confused for us, you’ll have to apply an adjective to yourself. We don’t want to be a subtype. We want to be the type.

[Tl;dr - I already think the atheist movement and specifically the scarlet ‘A’ contain more ideas than ‘just not thinking there’s a god’, and I want one of those ideas to be social justice. I’m absolutely pro-the A+ project, but I think representing equality with a ‘+’ makes it seem too extraneous to ‘atheist activism’.]

Born what way? Why Gaga's hit is a bad anthem

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 03:35:00 -0400

This post appeared previously at So So Gay.

I’m beautiful in my way

‘Cause God makes no mistakes

I’m on the right track, baby

I was born this way.

Catchy, isn’t it? As a song and an expression of self-love, ‘Born This Way’ is great, but I’d argue those four lines show the gay community’s worst faults today.

Their line of thought is liberal in religious and political terms: being homosexual is who we are, a part of our nature, and a god responsible for that surely wouldn’t mind, even though America’s Christian right often say he does. This all sounds rather harmless, and could be labelled inoffensive to a fault, but I think it raises problems.

For a start, I don’t believe in God. (Yes, I’m angry about it. No, I don’t eat babies.) That might sound glib, but there are lots of ‘natural’ things for which a god would have to answer: Ugandan babies with HIV, for instance, or South Asian tsunamis claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. If we take on homophobia with the idea God never allows anything bad, we have to apply the same logic to catastrophes like those. If he isn’t making mistakes when they take place, I’m not sure we should listen to him at all.

It’s possible the God who’s namechecked in the song is just a figurative one, personifying natural forces as in Einstein’s ‘God does not play with dice’ or Stephen Hawking’s ‘we would know the mind of God’. Even so, I don’t think we should argue our case on any church’s terms. When I look around the current LGBT mainstream, I’m often puzzled by its need to cosy up with ‘tolerant’ believers. At my university’s society, for example, I once witnessed officers discuss how members might be actively discouraged from leaving their religions, rather than left to their own decisions, when the fact is that however permissive your own church happens to be, wider faith communities are almost always hard places to be queer, and anyone uncomfortable there shouldn’t be pressured against leaving.

For much of history, religious groups held undue influence in schools, courts and parliament, wielding civil power against sexual minorities, and even today Christianity holds privileged status in our public life. I’m a secularist not because I doubt there’s a god, but because I don’t think anyone’s beliefs – however cuddly and reconstructed – should mean they hold automatic sway over the lives of others.

There’s another problem, though, with calling sexuality the way that nature (or indeed God) made us, joyously declaring we were ‘born this way’. In my view, it’s wrong.

I’m obviously not denying there’s strong evidence genetic and antenatal factors play a part, as they do in much of our lives – but I imagine that, as with most other things, how much someone’s sexual self was pre-determined at birth varies between individuals. A lot of people like to eat broccoli, including me, and I expect that for many, this has most to do with their nervous system’s predetermined makeup giving broccoli a pleasant taste; for many others, though, it will be down to economic factors, social context or positive memories associated with it.

There are likewise a hundred reasons someone might perform a queer sex act, and not all of them genetic. Show me the fabled ‘gay gene’, and I’ll show you a straight man who has it, before getting with a guy who doesn’t. There is no state of being a broccoli-eater; that’s something we understand as an action or a preference, and certainly not as ‘who you are’. In the same way, I don’t think gay is something people are, at least not in a single, invariable sense. ‘Baby, I was born this way, pride marchers sing to Gaga’s tune. Frankly my dears, born what way?

Queer theorists joke that gay people were invented in 1886, the year Richard von Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia Sexualis. Before this, reference had rarely been made to ‘the homosexual’ as a kind of person, but to people who did things they weren’t meant to do. (For this reason, it’s problematic asking things like ‘Was Shakespeare gay?’ – the idea of someone being gay is thoroughly modern.) It’s unfortunate that today, this essentialist view of sexuality is most audibly challenged by so-called therapists, who offer unethically to ‘cure’ healthy desires, but I think it’s reductive to gloss queer identity as ‘just the way we are’.

I’m worried by how often I hear liberals and self-declared straight allies fight homophobia with ‘It’s not a choice!’ I’ll admit I like making bigots uncomfortable, but I’m ultimately somewhat indifferent to the gender of any partner I choose, so I doubt that if I absolutely had to, I’d be incapable of living a straight life. A special ill will is sometimes kept for bisexuals, who could be exclusively heterosexual but choose not to be. Where are they left by ‘Born This Way’, and the idea we should all stop bashing gays since they just can’t help it, rather than since no harm is being done? I’ve read, too, in the transgender blogosphere, that well-meaning cissexists now send comments like ‘You were born female, so why transition? Accept yourself!’

Ideas of sexuality as inborn erase those of us, like me, whose orientation isn’t simple, and it’s ultimately otherising to see queer people as different by nature from their straight counterparts, so I’m struck that the philosophy of ‘I was born this way’ is as counterproductive as the song’s ideas about God. In general, Gaga’s lyrics are well meaning, but they implicitly suggest the wrong alliances – and, worse than that, they strip us of agency.

(Disclaimer: the ideas expressed in this article are mine, but discussions on the subject with Simon Pratt have prompted some of them.)