On Abortion, Atheism and Feminism, a reply to Tristan Vick‏

Tristin Vick is touching upon some interesting subject matter over at Advocatus Atheist involving feminism, atheism and abortion. You can read the article in it's entirety here and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to chime in on some of his assertions, so here we go! First off...

"The thing is, people are often extremely opinionated about things related to gender and identity. The reason I tend not to talk about such subjects here is not that I am disinterested but that people usually like to pull out the ad hominems and attack you when your opinion differs with theirs. Nobody seems able to simply agree to disagree. Instead of taking the time to write out a well reasoned criticism, like a civil person, they would rather call you sexist, racist, and so on. Usually, I find this juvenile behavior aggravating as it ends the conversation before it ever has a chance to begin."

I whole-heartedly agree that when someone actually has the wherewithal to actually poke their head up out of their foxhole to discuss any topics considered taboo ranging from feminism, sexism, racism and religion, one is then exposed to the barbs of others. Current discourse seems to be that an unfounded accusations such as sexism, racism, or bigotry are immediately hurled at one who is not like-minded. It seems quite unimportant to the Free-Speech Bigot whether or not they can actually back up such an accusation. The most important thing in the mind of such a lunatic who unthinkingly hurls such unfounded accusations is to simply to make the accusation. Thats all. By simply making the accusation, the Free-Speech Bigot (who btw, is usually quite convinced that they are on the side of the angels) has then changed the course of the discussion from the topic at hand to the motives of the person who initially stuck their head up and stated their opinion on an emotionally-charged subject. Yes, such juvenile behavior is aggravating and best left to the infantile minds that occupy the play area of the pre-school romper room on any given day. Next up from Vick...

"A good example of this is when I recently wrote about the lack of female atheist authors. I theorized that the long tradition of male ownership of publishing companies along with the masculine biological trait to tend to be domineering, all contributes to part of the reason why men want to dominate the philosophical discourse (maybe even the religious discourse overall)."

I think the reason that there is a "lack of female atheist authors" is quite simple, it's because of the fact that atheists tend to be men.

In support of my hypothesis I would cite atheist PZ Myers himself in his blog entry titled The Woman Problem.

It's an odd way to put it, I know, but it gets your attention. I could have called this the Atheist and Skeptic Problem, which is more accurate, but leads people to start listing all of our problems, starting with how annoying we are, and just for once I'd rather not go down that road. So here's the Woman Problem, and it's not a problem with women: it's a problem with atheist and skeptic groups looking awfully testosteroney. And you all know it's true, every time I post a photo of some sampling of the audience at an atheist meeting, it is guaranteed that someone will count the contribution of each sex and it will be consistently skewed Y-ward."

That, and when The New York Times describes a 2010 atheist convention as being "largely white and male" and much like "a Star Trek convention, but older" then it becomes increasingly clear that it's probably not a case of female atheists staying home, but rather that their numbers are few when compared to the overall number of male atheists.

Lastly, I was most intrigued by this statement from TV...

The fact of the matter is, when it comes to abortion, a medical procedure that directly impacts the woman's body, that's the woman's personal and private business and none of mine, or anyone else's, bees wax. Unless the woman is my partner specifically, or the one I am involved with, only then would I feel I had the right to chime in with my opinion with regard to the pros and cons of abortion."

I have a couple of questions here. Exactly who is the 'woman' being referred to here and whose rights trump the other's? Modern science has now made it possible to determine the sex of a fetus after just 7 weeks. Not long ago, one had to wait until the 10th week to determine if the fetus was a male or female. Given that science is usually advancing, isn't it highly believable that the current 7 week time can be improved upon and that someday we can find out the sex much closer to conception?

Why do the wants of the mother who wishes to abort the growing girl inside her ( or 'host' as I will refer to her) have the rights to kill another female? Doesn't the other female in this equation have a right NOT to want an abortion, which is a medical procedure that directly impacts the (very young) woman's body? Who gets to decide the winners and losers in the scenarios and, most importantly, why?

Being that men have the potential to be fathers in life, even at an advanced age, I do think that men can reasonably have a voice in these debates. I have a few ideas as to potential arguments as to which females get to dominate the other females, but I'll let Tristan respond and take it from there.