• Pentagon to open SEALS, Army Rangers to women – “Navy officials will open up the service’s Riverine Forces to eligible female candidates, beginning next month.”
• If you know someone who doesn’t believe in sexism, show them this – From nowoo.
• Can the gamification of female masturbation remove its social stigma? – NSFW if a cartoon genitals are NSFW. Via The Mary Sue.
• In the Ivory Tower, men only – Women in academia pay a heavy toll for having children.

The schedule for CONvergence is up, and the SkepchickCon track is loaded with science and skepticism panels, hands-on workshops, and more, including Prometheus Debunked, a panel about that gawdawful movie with Rebecca and PZ and Bill Corbett (aka Crow T Robot) and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax fame.

This panel and others, as well as hands-on workshops, science demonstrations, and nightly themed parties is happening in less than 3 weeks! Find out more about the Skepchick track here, our panelists here, and CONvergence as a whole here.

We are still trying to raise money to cover our costs for hosting our guest experts, materials for the workshops and demos, and supplies for the Skepchick Sideshow, where you can stop by every night for elixirs and conversations with the Skepchicks, Freethought Bloggers, and our special guests. We’ll also provide information on science and skepticism for all CONvergence attendees. Even if you can’t make the con, this year we’ll be posting videos of as much of it as possible, so please consider helping us out if you are able.

Paypal donations to Skepchick [at] skepchick.org or click on the handy widget below.

And please help us spread the word! To make that easier, Mad Art Lab to the rescue: Ms. Information (Donna Mugavero) has designed the badass flyer below for you to download and share, featuring wicked cool photos by GiGi Chickee. (Contact me at skepchickevents [at] gmail.com for larger sizes or a pdf version.)

Quick recap for those who haven’t been following this: Ron Lindsay, CEO of Center for Inquiry, opened the Women in Secularism conference by lecturing the women on the dangers of silencing men by talking about “privilege.” When he was criticized on Twitter and various blogs by many of the people there, he responded by othering me as a person from an alternate universe who is a liar akin to the leadership of North Korea. Obviously, this was a big hit with the male supremacists who continue to harass me, encouraging them to redouble their efforts. I’ve been laying low since then, waiting for the bile to die down a bit and for my energy to return enough to deal with it all. Lindsay “apologized” while restating that he thinks I’m a liar because I disagree with him on what qualifies as the “crux” of his talk.

For a longer recap of much of what was wrong with Lindsay’s clueless talk and response, check out Greta’s two excellent posts.

Dozens of letters (including one signed by the majority of Women in Secularism speakers) were sent to the Center for Inquiry’s Board of Directors, begging them to do something to restore CFI’s reputation as a humanist organization that cares about women and their ongoing harassment. CFI Tweeted that the Board was meeting in a few weeks, and that the issue would be considered then:

The CFI Board of Directors and CEO Ron Lindsay are aware that his recent talk and blog posts have generated much debate and discussion (1/3)

— Center for Inquiry (@center4inquiry) May 22, 2013

CFI & Board are in ongoing discussions over this matter, which will be also be considered at Board's regularly scheduled June meeting (2/3)

— Center for Inquiry (@center4inquiry) May 22, 2013

Further comments on this issue will be made once the Board has had an opportunity to discuss and consider it in full. (3/3)

— Center for Inquiry (@center4inquiry) May 22, 2013

A lot of people held their collective breath, waiting to find out if the board would issue an official apology, force Lindsay to issue a real apology, censure Lindsay in some other way, or take any strong action to show that CFI was going to recommit itself to addressing women’s concerns in concrete ways while marginalizing those who are harassing us.

Well, the Board met late last week, and today the official statement has been released! Set aside at least the next 10 seconds of your life in order to fully read through and contemplate this:

Center for Inquiry Board of Directors Statement on the CEO and the Women in Secularism 2 Conference

The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.

If you’ve read that a few times, wondering what it says, allow me to clarify: it says nothing. It makes vague statements about equality and respect without mentioning anything about the harassment of women in this community and how Ron Lindsay has enabled it. It expresses unhappiness without mentioning what exactly they’re unhappy about: Lindsay’s talk? Uppity women complaining about his talk? Men’s Rights Advocates (MRAs) now supporting CFI while continuing to hate women? No idea. It also suggests that the “controversy” is about the conference, and not about 10 minutes of the opening talk of the conference, delivered by Ron Lindsay.

In other words, they’re doing absolutely nothing and hoping you don’t care enough to do anything about it. By not rejecting it, they’re accepting the support of their new biggest fans: the MRAs, the “Slymepit,” and the people continuing to harass me, now using Ron Lindsay’s words:

.@RichardReed84 Becky lives in an alternate universe, or so I'm told. @ElevatorGATE @rebeccawatson

— Poolia Pooson (@ElAtheism) June 15, 2013

In a way, I’m glad they made it so very obvious that they don’t care. Had they written something complex and layered, doing nothing but promising something (anything), it would be much harder for me to say this: I’m finished supporting Center for Inquiry.

For the past two years I’ve worked my ass off to make their annual CSICon a success, by hosting their parties, getting the SGU and other popular speakers involved, helping them create a gender-equal schedule, coordinating a blood drive through Maria Walters, facilitating scholarships through Surly Amy, and just promoting the hell out of it. This year they have yet to issue me an invite. With this statement, it couldn’t be clearer: my participation is not wanted, in the exact same way that after six years of supporting JREF’s Amaz!ng Meeting, DJ Grothe made it clear they didn’t want me, either.

My haters like to pretend I organized some kind of boycott against Richard Dawkins after he attacked me, a lie that became so pernicious I edited in a statement saying I have not (facts, as usual, had no impact on the behavior of my haters). The boycott accusation was confusing on a number of levels but these two particularly: 1. Dawkins, not me, is the one who has made demands to organizers that I not share a stage with him (it’ll be interesting if he shows up on CSICon’s bill this year) and 2. there is nothing morally wrong with people calling for a boycott of something they disagree with or, in this case, something that actively causes them harm.

With that last point in mind, fuck it: I’m boycotting and I hope you do, too. I’m not giving any more of my time or money to Center for Inquiry, just as I’ll no longer give any time or money to the JREF and Richard Dawkins. But in addition to this personal decision I’ve made, I’m actually asking you to do the same.

Do not support an organization that does not have the courage to stand up for women. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you are a speaker at a paid event for these organizations, cancel your appearance. If you regularly donate money to them, stop. If you work for them, look for a new job. I have a lot of friends and loved ones who currently do one, some, or all of those things, and I trust we’ll continue to be friends regardless of what happens. But I do think that continued support of CFI will send a message that it’s okay for a supposedly humanist organization to never take a stand to help the women in its community.

I hesitate to suggest where you should redirect your energies, because the last time I did that, I convinced many people to start supporting CFI, and we can see how well that went (sorry about that). There’s always Equality Now or Planned Parenthood or the SPCA I guess. They may not be directly about skepticism or secularism or humanism, but at the very least you can be fairly certain you’re helping make the world better.

I grew up in the girl power 90s; my motto was “Anything you can do, I can do better.” I thought the need for feminism was over.

Of my nearly two dozen first cousins, the boys were closest to me in age. As the girls were teenagers too cool to willingly deal with a grubby-fingered tomboy, I spent most of my childhood playtime with three of my boy cousins. They taught me about soccer, the Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers, and Nintendo. Later, we spent our joint time collaborating on creating Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style QBasic programs and 3D Movie Maker films as well as on perfecting our Force-moving and lightsaber dueling skills. Though it meant that many of the delicate young ladies at school refused to accept me, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

So I was more than fine with the Internet being a male-dominated space. It didn’t bother me. I was one of the boys, right? It would be fine. I didn’t need special treatment like those other women, whether they were prisses or feminists.

Then, the Nice Guys came along, both online and as friends of my teenage self. At first, all I learned from them was that I wasn’t woman enough. I lacked all the hallmarks of the basic level of attractiveness as per their comments: small, pink, upturned nipples; a small mons with tiny bubblegum-hued labia (as they called it, “tight pussy”); hairlessness; large and “natural” (i.e. non-surgically-enhanced) yet very pert breasts; and overall thinness, perhaps with some ass (hips were acceptable only to the more adventurous and kinky men). Fair enough, I thought. I was a chubby, grubby-fingered tomboy, not exactly some kind of desirable woman.

Google search results for “pretty”

Who would want to be a desirable woman, anyway? I knew what those women were like.  The Nice Guys told me all about their wives and their girlfriends and their female “friends” (as in women they secretly wanted to have sex with, which, they strongly implied, meant that they weren’t actually friends). Women, as per them, are obnoxious creatures only worth putting up with for the sex. They take too long to orgasm, annoy men with their requests for cunnilingus and cuddling, friend-zone nice guys while dating and sexing up jerks, waste men’s time by never giving an straightforward “no,” can get sex whenever and with whomever they want, stop giving blowjobs and get fat after marriage, demand free meals and drinks but still won’t have sex, and are fussy and high-maintenance.

The Nice Guys were wrong on both counts.

There were men out there who found me to be desirable — not as an attainable consolation prize or a symbol of “settling,” but actually desirable. And, because they saw me the way that the Nice Guys saw those more conventionally-attractive women, i.e. as an object of sexual desire, I was subjected to the same judgments and accusations. More importantly, I learned, in short, that there’s a reason the women at whom I scoffed act the way that they did. There’s always another way to look at it.

Taking too long to orgasm? The mainstream heterosexual script for intercourse often de-prioritizes pleasurable activities associated with cis female pleasure — like non-genital touch and cunnilingus.

Friend-zoning? Some straight men seem to believe that they are entitled to love and/or sex, sometimes without ever having even asked for it.

Not giving a straightforward no? Being a woman means that responding to certain men overtures at all is an invitation for rebuttals, while ignoring them doesn’t give them the opportunity to engage further. In addition, there’s the issue of female socialization where women know that they will be seen as rude or mean for issuing outright refusals.

Sex on demand? Only if they’re willing to lower our standards (and men could probably have sex as frequently as women if they did so as well).

Fat and frigid? Men are, on average, fatter (not that it should even matter), and women’s sex drives aren’t exactly as frigid as they are rumored to be.

Demanding of free stuff? All those free drinks don’t exactly rectify the wage gap. When it comes to fat women, we both earn even less than our thinner counterparts and aren’t exactly bombarded with free drinks at Ladies Night (if we’re even allowed in). Plus, women generally have to put much more in the way of time and resources into our appearances in order to be seen as even baseline presentable. And then, of course, we’re berated for being high-maintenance for maintaining the accepted standard for female appearance.

It was through all those realizations that I began to question exactly why women are so widely reviled and wonder if it wasn’t that there is something especially wrong with women but that women are held to impossible standards. I fell down the questioning-the-status-quo rabbithole and ended up a feminist.

So thank you, Nice Guys. You turned one of you into one of them with your bile. May your thinly-veiled misogyny lead legions of other women to freedom from internalized self-hatred.

Hello again! You can delay your responsibilities for just a little bit so you can catch up on Skepchick Network posts, right? I’m pretty sure that’s what Mondays are for.

Teen Skepchick

Weddings: I Have to Do What?
Katie did some research on marriage traditions. She did not like what she found.

Ken Ham: Children are Belongings
Despite what a certain young-Earth creationist would have you believe, children don’t belong to anybody.

Navigating Sexuality in Young Adulthood
Olivia gives some advice on how teens can explore their burgeoning sexuality.

Mad Art Lab

Justice
Amy shares her social justice inspired art.

Feeling Alive via Skydive!
Gigi’s husband went skydiving. Why would anyone want to do such a thing?

Creative Dissonance Episode 8 – Didgeridoodling
Ryan explains why he thinks this video series is important. Also, he blows into a big tube.

Skepchick SE

The Psychotherapeutical Religion (på svenska)
Technicolor (Skepchick.se’s resident psychologist) writes about the unwillingness of Swedish psychologists to adopt evidence-based methods.

No One’s Tip-Toeing Around (på svenska)
Felicia attempts to explain how not being rude can make the world a better place, by, for instance, not further marginalizing already marginalized groups.

Escéptica

The Girls With the Girls (en español)
It seems like lady-legos are now from a different species than regular legos.

Queereka

AI: Soundtracks
What sort of personal soundtracks do you have?

Skepchick Norge

Voting for 100 Years! (på norsk)
Veronica celebrates a century of women’s suffrage in Norway.

School of Doubt

Sensational: It’s the Secular Student Alliance
For the secular-minded teacher and student, Tori recommends getting involved with SSA.

Girl-Type Graduates! Congratulations! Now Go Make Babies Like Proper Lady People!
A high school commencement speaker encourages conservative Christian gender norms. DrShell doesn’t like it.

The Atheist Academic II: I Which I Am Thrown into Professional Development Hell
Tori thought she signed up for a professional development seminar. It was actually a two day theology lesson.

Featured image credit: wales_gibbons

When last October rolled around, I’m sure a lot of you were really sad that you didn’t hear anything about our annual star party camping trip Skeptics Under the Stars. You probably assumed we just weren’t doing it anymore and put your tent back in storage. Well, I’m here to tell you that we did not forget or cancel it! We just moved it to July because I’m from Southern California and there was no way I was going to go camping in Wisconsin at the end of October again.

Skeptics Under the Stars is back! It will have all the great parts from past years, except this time you won’t feel like you’re slowly freezing to death and we’re not going to accidently explode things very close to your face.

Skeptics Under the Stars is organized by Women Thinking, Inc, the non-profit spin-off of Skepchick (and the organization behind the Hug Me! I’m Vaccinated campaign). This year’s trip will be July 26-28 at McIntyre Resort in Delavan Wisconsin. Our resident Skepchick astronomer Nicole Gugliucci will be joining us to tell us about all the wonders of the Universe. We’ll also be taking a tour of Yerkes Observatory where Nicole might ride their giant 40-in refracting telescope again. There will be fun science demonstrations throughout the weekend, possibly an attempt at some star photography, probably some boating as we’ll be staying on our own private lake with boats, and lots and lots of food and drinks.

You can find out more about attending Skeptics Under the Stars and register on our event website. Also, if you are planning on coming, make sure you RSVP on our facebook page.

Skeptics Under the Stars is run at cost. The ticket prices reflect the per person cost of holding the event. However, we also don’t want anyone to not come merely because you can’t afford it. That’s why we’ve set up a fund to raise money to pay the ticket price for those of you who really want to come but can’t afford to otherwise.

If you want to help someone go to Skeptics Under the Stars, please donate. Even my mom put in a few dollars (thanks mom!).

If you want to come to Skeptics Under the Stars and are able to get to Wisconsin, but the ticket price is the only thing holding you back, send me an email at jamie@womenthinking.org and we’ll see if we can find a way to get you there.

Skeptics Under the Stars logo is by Mad Art Lab’s Katie Hovany