A Skeptic, a Feminist and a Professor walk into a bar (Part 2)

Note: I consider myself an a skeptic, a rational thinker, a feminist and an agnostic. The first two parts are regarding where I am today, and how I got here. The last is about an issue that is important to me that regards both. This post will contain some language that some may find offensive.

Part 2: Feminism

My parents separated when I was fairly young. During that time, my parents did a lot to make sure I was aware that it wasn't anything I did or didn't do, and it wasn't that they didn't love me or any of the stuff that people seem to think kids go through. Sure, I was upset and I do remember being worried and sad some of the time, but I was intrinsically aware that I was safe and okay. They were civil to each other after the divorce and eventually became fairly good friends.

My daily life went through the same motions after the divorce as before the divorce, for the most part. Wake up at parent A's house, go to school and learn, go home to my father's grandparents house, do schoolwork/play with neighbors, wait for a parent to pick me up, have dinner with that parent, got to sleep at Parent's B.

My father lived in the same apartment as we did with my mother for the next few years. My mother moved about 5-6 miles away, and we had the bottom half of a house converted into two apartments and had a few neighbors. The upstairs neighbors were almost always pleasant and were usually youngish couples. For the most part we had a quiet life there. We got a cat, I read a lot, and it was nice. However we I was around 10 years old I got a rude awakening that not all relationships were like my parents. 

Our yard was fairly large, and we mowed and raked with each season. The yard was large, and had a number of large over grown trees, a couple bushes against the road, and a nice set of large hedges separating our yard from the house next door. I didn't really make friends with any of the neighborhood kids, I kept alone when I was at my mother's place. Typically I read or spent time with her or watched TV. Most of the neighbors were older, and nice; some were younger with kids a little older than myself and were pleasant to my mother and I. But I was a shy awkward thing with kids my own age. I could easily talk with adults years older than me, but I'd clam up with the kids next door.

But one neighbor of ours I was kind of scared of. The house right across from our hedges in the side of the yeard. I don't remember the man's name, barely remember what he looked like, and I sort of remember his girlfriend... but I do remember the hearing the yelling matches in my own room which was on the far side from their house, the doors slamming and things breaking. And their young sandy haired little boy playing outside, trying to ignore it all.

I remember how it just started one day. A little louder than normal, enough to hear with an open window. The a week or two later, it was punctuated with slamming doors and louder voices. A day later, shouting for hours. Then nothing for a week. Then it was worse than before, loud arguments and slams you could hear through a closed window. Then tires peeling away and a man bellowing after a car. Then an quiet for a month, no shouting, no angry voices, no slamming of things against walls or glass breaking. The eruption all over again, escalation to a cacophony of noise and then just loud talking and finally, silence. Somehow, the silence was worse.

I remember the female neighbor coming over after one of the nights it started loud and then got quiet. She was having coffee or tea one weekend while he was at work, and my mother talked with her in worried tones at the kitchen table.

Her dark hair usually fell down and framed her young face and green eyes. Her hair was a mess, like it hadn't seen a shower and was wind whipped around. Her eyes we swollen from tears, but were currently dry. Her mouth was puffy and had a slightly stained look on her lips, like she drank too much cherry KoolAid. Her voice wavered as if about to crack. And there were bruises on her tan arms. Her hands shook slightly, and some of her nails were broken or chewed on. 

I half watched Saturday morning cartoons, concerned about my mom's friend. She didn't come over to our apartment often, she had her own child to worry about, but she was always smiling and pleasant to me when she saw me outside. But hearing how much yelling was happening right next door, I was a little timid about saying the wrong things to her, worried that her boyfriend would come and yell at me.

It's odd what you remember as a child. I can recall her appearance at that very point; but I can't recall her name. I can remember how beautiful she looked under the horror she must have endured. I can remember how worried my mother was and what little snippets of conversation remain to me are so short that only have a few short syllables, fragments of words. Words, at that point, I didn't understand. Not really.

I didn't understand at the age of 9 or 10 what that woman endured. I now wonder how it came to pass... what was the trigger? What escalated from what must have been small short verbal spats to full blown pissed off arguments, progressing into threats and assault, to more and more verbal abuse, of her feeling trapped and finally... she wound up at the kitchen table in the apartment.

They spoke quietly, but didn't actively hide what they were talking about to me. It was too important to my mother and to this woman to talk and convince...

"did you look in a mirror today?"
"can you move your fingers?"
"...could be your son..."
"....him raised like this?"
"...you can't excuse this type of...."
"....it's not about sex, it's never about sex...."
"....power, control, degradation ..."
"... please consider..."
"...can you at least...."
"...please go now, call your parents... take your son..."

My mother sat me down and told me that I couldn't tell anyone she was over her today. That I didn't see her at all today, that we didn't see her last night. I didn't know why my mother was so panicky. I hugged my mother and I promised.

I know soon after that day, I didn't see the sandy haired boy any more, and I didn't see the neighbor any more. I did see more people go over the the gray house. Bringing stuff in, but mostly taking stuff out.

And I never told anyone. Not until now. Because this is too important. Because this happens more often than we'd like to admit. But rape, assault and battery are only symptoms of larger problems. 

As a society we tend to ignore smaller instances of sexism and intolerance and just focus on things such as female genital mutilation*, Sharira (fundamentalist Islamic law), rape as a war crime, prosecution for the rapes in Darfur, and yet we ignore problems here. Some of it is simply people being 'okay' with things the way they are. Some are people actively trying put women as unequal to men and having less say over what they can say and do. Some of these people are men, and some are women.

Feminism is not the same as wanting to have a female dominated class structure. Women are just entitled to the same rights, privileges and responsibilities as men are.


*Which i'm glad most people don't use the euphemistic term 'female circumcision'. Because in my opinion, removing the labia, cutting off the clitoral hood or the clitoris itself, and/or sewing/fusing parts of the vagina to the labia is quite a bit different than cutting, burning or otherwise removing the foreskin off of a penis. Neither, in my opinion, should be done for anything other than a valid logical medical reason [which I can think of none for female genitals and only one or two for males]. Tradition and cosmetics be dammed. If you're concerned about legitimate medical problems due to not being circumcised (male) or vulva problems, I understand. Do some research and listen to doctors. But don't worry about circumcision or labial appearances. If they want to have it done later in life, they can have it done then.

A Skeptic, a Feminist and a Professor walk into a bar (Part 1)

Note: I consider myself an a skeptic, a rational thinker, a feminist and an agnostic. The first two parts are regarding where I am today, and how I got here. The last is about an issue that is important to me that regards both.

Part 1. Skepticism.

Some of you knew me in High School, and if we've ever talked about my past, I walked all sorts of 'spiritual' paths: Roman Catholicism, Non-denominational Evangelical Christianity, psudo-westernized Buddhism, psudo-wiccan-ism, Taoism... and a myriad of others. After I walked and believed with all of my heart in each and every path that I walked, that it would lead to better life, that it would lead me to happiness, that I wouldn't be depressed and none of it came to fruition, I examined my life and became a very bitter angry cynical atheist.

I embodied the stereotype that makes atheism unpopular. I wore shirts that were all black and said ignorant phrases about religion, and openly was blasphemous towards just about anyone who would listen except my grandmother. Jesus/Yahweh were frequent targets as was L. Ron Hubbard, and to a lesser extend Mohammed, Joseph Smith, any anyone with a notion of spirituality. I believed we were born, lived whatever life we wanted to (and it didn't matter), died and nothing else. That everything we did was futile, that anything you tried to accomplish or love or create was ultimately futile, because wouldn't last, or would die or would never make a lasting impact.

I was extremely intense, I was very confrontational, I got in your face and I made it clear that I was incredibly angry. I offered no quarter to religion, spirituality or people who believed in any of it. I was an arrogant human, knowing that there was absolutely no god, that there is no soul and there was no afterlife. And anyone who couldn't see this was a moron and deserved nothing but derision, scorn and contempt.

This was a viewpoint I held for a very long time. I read as much as I could on Christianity, Judaism and Islam (mostly because they are the ones most common in my westernized culture), and picked it apart with relish. I couldn't get enough of "edgy" people like Frederich Neitzsche, Ayn Rand, Bill Hicks, Marilyn Manson, George Carlin, and Bill Maher. I think you can now see where my cynicism came from.

After a while, this life style wasn't satisfying either. It provided me no comfort, no kind of solace in knowing that this life is short, brutal and incredibly unfair for every living thing on this planet, and no real hope. I viewed my life as something that wasn't really unique and it wasn't anything special.

I thought I was being rational and being passionate; rather than what I was: a bitter curmudgeon who read books and thought himself educated. Who listened to passionate rhetoric and thought it to be logical, and then parroting beliefs. A man who fell into every logical fallacy while arguing, and thought that even though he never persuaded anyone, he 'won' the argument.

I started by examining myself, and what I really though and believed. I read and really digested what some of these writings by Rand, Maher, Dawkins and others saw why I felt so cynical and a bit depressed. They were cynical. They were making us vs. them distinctions. They were being 'passionate' of their beliefs, then turning around and not tolerating that some people see their 'passion' as 'shoving it down your throat'. The same thing they accused believers of doing. These hypocrisies and the attitude of I am right, you are wrong was really getting to me. I didn't want that. I didn't like what I was becoming. I wasn't being critical or logical- I was a person who's was living an uncritical, unexamined life.

Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins and most of the "new atheists" were arguing from emotion and not logic. They were drawing their conclusions before they critically examined their evidence. They were falling into the same traps that I thought Fundamentalist Christians, Orthodox Jews, and New Age practitioners fell into: they were arguing from the assumption that their viewpoint is right will always be right and has always been right. There was no direct evidence stating absolutely that there is no god or gods/goddesses.

There is evidence for evolution by natural selection, evidence for general relativity, and for gravity, and evidence for the big bang. All of theories (scientific theories, testable, falsifiable and the best logical explanation we currently have) are being tested every day and if proven false can be rewritten and falsified. As written, most deities are untestable scientifically. We can look at claims written in holy books and point out things that science has proven is not true, and back it up with testable evidence, but one cannot dismiss something is true or not true if you cannot examine evidence that does not exist. It is simply not testable.

Now, I live my life in an agnostic fashion. I see no evidence for a deity, so I live as there is no deity. But I can be wrong.

This to me, is the beauty of science... that life is complex, and that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And this subtle complex and intricate system is one of the things that makes me happy to be alive.

The wonderful scientist and skeptic Carl Sagan once said -
There is no other species on the Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.

Part 2 will continue with Feminism.