Gems and Rocks
Gems
I gleaned some really sweet quotes from Women in Secularism last weekend. Here are four that I particularly loved. One came very early on, in the very first session:
The reality is not that [women] speak too much. It's that we're expected to speak less.
-Soraya Chemaly
This one was part of a panel on multiculturalism:
I love everyones culture, until they are harmful.
-Taslima Nasreen
Note that this next one is likely paraphrased a bit. Everyone quoting it online has it a little different.
The extent to which religion is not dangerous to women is the degree to which it has been forced to adopt secular ideas.
-Susan Jacoby
This last one comes from the closing comments and wraps things up appropriately:
A person's life is not an argument to disprove.
-Lauren Becker
There were, of course, many other great things said.
Rocks
There will always be those who don't like a conference and will voice their opinion, as is their right. This year, the #wiscfi tag wasn't trolled as hard as last year. I think that's partially because CFI CEO Ron Lindsey actually welcomed attendees instead of, literally, scolding them for not listening to white men often enough. This new-found civility led to a lack of outrage all around. Still, there was some naysaying.
Complaints about the conference, and about many of those presenting, are generally some form of:
I have differing opinions, and those with whom I disagree aren't giving me a forum in which to voice them!
Let's look at a few and laugh at them!
So, this one seems to think folks are saying that insisting on harassment policies at conferences means that we think harassment policies will solve all our problems! That's some simplistic thinking there! It's a common refrain that if something doesn't solve all the problems, then that something is, in fact useless. I see this in Libertarians a lot, in which law X doesn't totally eliminate behavior Y, so law X is bad. (I'm not fond of Libertarians. I suspect the overlap between Libertarians and sexist assholes is quite large.)
A nice touch is the implication that disagreement is outlawed.
What they mean by this is that they were banned from some forum at some point. Again, they're insisting that those with whom they disagree are duty-bound to provide them with a soapbox for their disagreement.
I'm amazed at atheists who rightfully claim that they're under no obligation to debate with every Christian who comes along, then turn right around and insist that feminists who don't debate them are censoring cowards.
Moving on...
I don't have a good handle on actual numbers of attendees. The room was much larger than last year, spreading folks out, which made for a nicer experience for the myriad introverts. Offhand, I'd say there was a similar number to last year, perhaps more.
I love the bit about fat middle-aged men, as one of those fat middle-aged men. In addition to being pointlessly ageist and sizeist, it's just mind-boggling that gaining allies in a fight is somehow a bad thing.
Everything
paid for by the Patriarchy? Really? My wife's registration fee was paid for by the Patriarchy? All the donations to CFI that helped fund the conference came from the Patriarchy?
Let us close with this beauty, in which a white man shakes his head sadly that others won't be able to partake of his tweets.
I love the assumption that he deserves an audience. It's so sad that others are deprived of it.
And it's pathetic that others would avail themselves of means of not being his deserved audience. Because that's what's really missing, the perspective of a random white guy.
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