All is Not Well in Viagraland: Misogyny, Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Atheist Community

by Jacqueline S. Homan, author of Classism For Dimwits, Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie, and Eyes of a Monster

I wandered over to the Freethought Blog forum when a “little birdie” told me that I needed to do some feministing in support of my fellow atheist/skeptic “sisters” who were being blamed for TAM registration declines and who were accused by MRA/PUA drama queens of launching a “witch hunt” — to which I posted a scolding response on Jason Thibeault’s blog which he put up as a stand-alone blog piece. TAM is an annual conference that costs several hundred dollars per ticket and is connected with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). Apparently, atheism and skepticism is dominated by Big Money (read: patriarchy) — like religion.

Of course, it was over the next 48 hours after my scathing post on Jason’s Freethought blog that the Great Penis Debate (posted by Stephanie Zvan on her Almost Diamonds blog) was broadcast live via Google podcast where these guys showed their asses for the whole world to see them as they really are: vile, rape apologist, mansplaining, misogynistic alpha dipshits and they just kept digging their own holes deeper on the FtB posts thereafter.

And I thought the Vatican had problems washing its dirty underwear in public, but these guys (Emery Emery, Wendell Henry, BJ Kramer, Travis Roy, and Mallorie Nasrallah and Sara Mayhew) in the Great Penis Debate really take the cake. I am really glad that Jason Thibeault, who blogs under the name Lousy Canuck on Freethought, constructed the sexual harassment timeline of the events, which seems to keep building as more and more outrageous faux pas are committed — by the very same men (and a couple of their Stepford groupies) claiming the “superior” position of being “rational.”

From what I have seen, the only thing they’re superior at is alienating a sizable chunk of the atheist/skeptics movement at the most inopportune time when the godless community had the greatest chance of a victory against religious tyranny, given the fight women are waging in the trenches in defense against of the stripping of our human rights with the War on Women launched by the Teahadists, the Christian Right, the Vatican and the USCCB. Could these actors in the atheist/skeptics movement be agent provocateurs trying to help the Religious Wrong out by wrecking the freedom from religion movement? (Seriously. Nobody could fuck things up this bad!)

So after yet another woman has been targeted for threats and harassing emails (Ophelia Benson) and decided to bow out of TAM, I decided to put my unembedded/freelance investigative journalism hat on and call DJ Grothe myself to ask him point blank what the hell is going on with him, JREF, TAM and these accusations against the women that had been JREF’s and TAM’s biggest cheerleaders (until the shit hit the fan with this fiasco). I got his answering machine and within 10 minutes he called me from his cell phone and promised to call me back when he returned to his office within 15 minutes. He never called me back. Instead, I got this email on Facebook from Carrie Poppy:

Hi Jacqueline,

My name is Carrie and I am the Communications Director for the JREF. I understand you called our president to request an interview today. I apologize that you didn’t hear back from us sooner. Unfortunately, DJ has been tied up with urgent TAM meetings and preparations, and isn’t able to call you back today. If you have any specific questions, would you email them to us? I will make sure you get a response quickly. My email address isCarrie@randi.org, and DJ’s is djgrothe@randi.org.

Thanks so much, Jacqueline, and sorry again for the delayed response.

Best,
Carrie

So here are those tough “specific” questions I planned on asking DJ on the phone:

1. Women are saying they’ve suffered retaliation for speaking out about sexual harassment and/or for making harassment reports to TAM staff. Is this true?
   
2. Did you accuse feminists of trying to destroy JREF and/or TAM because they spoke out about harassment and retaliation and a “sweep it under the rug” approach to the handling of harassment complaints? (i.e. the accusations of ‘witch hunts’ and demanding criminal evidence as in the case of “Dr. Buzzo” (aka Monopod Man, who was stalking female TAM attendees and taking up-skirt photos and who was/is well-known by TAM staff as a harasser of women because he has been doing this for several years in a row at TAM conferences)
   
3. Why would Emery Emery of the Ardent Atheist show claim that Rebecca Watson is trying to destroy TAM after she had been a solid endorser and supporter of JREF and TAM and is that YOUR position as well?
   
4. What is your position on the copy of a threat/harassing email received by Ophelia Benson, the scheduled TAM 2012 speaker who has now decided to bow out, which she says she sent you on June 19^th 2012 and will you answer her email to you about it?
   
5. Why did you blame your falling numbers of women TAM registrants on the very same women (Skepchicks’ Rebecca Watson in particular) who praised TAM while raising funds for more women attend TAM?
   
6. Did you or anyone else in JREF give Emery Emery the authority to speak for you and for JREF?TAM regarding what he said during the Great Penis Debate podcast?
   
7. Did you make accusatory complaints/comments/statements — including press releases — saying that women who complain about harassment are making women afraid to come to TAM conferences?
   
8. Why did you deny that a specific harassment incident occurred involving a conference attendee (Ashley Miller) after you, according to several witnesses, removed the offending jerk yourself?
   

I will share the answers I get, if any at all, with my readership here, on Facebook and with the rest of Freethought Blog forum’s readership because I think the public deserves to know the truth, not just a polite kiss-off answer but the truth. I can already guess what the response will be — if I get any response at all.

When Religion, False Morality, and Medicine Collide — EC and “Conscience Clauses”

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Classism For Dimwits", "Nothing You Can Possess", "Eyes of a Monster," and "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie"

Most hospitals across the US have emergency rooms. Emergency rooms deal with the full gamut of medical emergencies ranging from accident victims to emergency childbirths involving women who may be poor and uninsured without any other access to medical care. Emergency rooms essentially triage care in order of medical emergency priority.

And one of those medical emergencies that ER staff commonly see are victims of rape. According to the US Bureau of Crime Statistics, one woman in every five has been raped.

Because rape involves multiple types of physical and emotional trauma, and because rape is a crime involving the need for forensics, most ER’s have at least one member on staff who is specially trained as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) — a specialty forensics nurse.

Becoming a SANE requires at least 40 hours of didactic training in addition to other intense training in order to qualify to sit for the SANE-A exam. Additional training is required to sit for the SANE-P exam. SANE-A refers to a SANE who is Adult/Adolescent certified and SANE-P refers to a SANE who is Pediatric certified. Both are highly specialized health care and forensics fields. The training and credentialing standards are very tough.

Being board certified as a SANE is a statement that a nurse has accepted the challenge of preparing for and passing difficult and demanding examinations demonstrating a mastery of refined knowledge and critical thinking skills in clinical practice.

One cannot become either a SANE-A or a SANE-P (or both) without successful completion of extremely rigorous education. This specialty certification is increasingly becoming an essential nursing credential.

SANE candidates are taught about the trauma and PTSD suffered by rape victims because rape is traumatic. Female rape victims must not only deal with the fear of developing or contracting an incurable STD as a result of the rape, they must also worry about getting pregnant as a result of the rape.

Since pregnancy and childbirth are non-benign medical conditions even under the best of terms where the sex AND the pregnancy were consensual and desired, the last thing society should be doing is forcing women and girls to endure a pregnancy and childbirth that resulted from a rape.

Yet, 47 states have enacted “conscience clause” laws that allow health care practitioners and pharmacists the right to impose their objecting religious beliefs on women by denying them access to contraceptives, and, if need be, abortions. [It would be almost a valid argument if their "moral" objections involved anything besides making sure women are made as miserable and socially devalued as possible.]

These widespread “conscience clause” laws that are now in effect in all except three states (Alabama, New Hampshire, and Vermont) came in on the heels of the US Supreme Court Webster ruling. Disenfranchising women has become an accepted and approved political tool by Congressional candidates such as the newly elected Massachusettes Republican Senator, Scott Brown.

Lawmakers win votes by draping themselves in this “pro-life” mantle which is not about valuing life or about morality — rather it is about oppressing women by forcing them to get pregnant and remain pregnant, even at peril to their own health, well-being, and lives at the expense of their liberty, their happiness, and their freedom. It’s about compulsory maternity against their will.

"Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", by Jacqueline S. Homan

The Center for Reproductive Health Rights states that almost immediately after the Webster ruling, over 500 various fetal personhood laws and “conscience clause” laws have popped up and were enacted. Unprecedented numbers of health care professionals and pharmacists have increasingly denied women across the country access to birth control. Many drug stores in rural areas have even refused to stock condoms, diaphragms, and contraceptive sponges and Nonoxinol-9 spermicide jellies and foam — none of which require a prescription. This has left countless women and girls unable to defend themselves from unwanted, high risk, and medically dangerous pregnancies.

The answer of telling these women to “just go someplace else” is not a realistic or minimally feasible solution because in many areas, there may not be a “someplace else” they can go. In the Bible Belt and in rural Rust Belt communities, it is not uncommon for every medical facility and pharmacy to refuse to stock and dispense contraceptives — leaving women as hostages with NO choice at all.

And these moves which are causing deliberate harm and inflicting intentional cruelty on women are promoted by politicians — most whom are rich white males who don’t give a fuck about women. At all. Men like Scott Brown who recently won the Senate Congressional seat in the state of Massachusetts. Men who will never have to endure the risks, the permanent bodily damage, the excruciating pain, and possibly death from pregnancy and giving birth.

To give their misogynist pro-childbirth chattel slavery agenda legitimacy, they also trot out and support rich women like Ann Coulter and Alaska’s former governor and US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin who are no more of a friend to women than Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh.

Privileged and powerful lawmakers, governors and judges have done everything they could (and are still doing all they can) to disempower, abuse, endanger, and enslave women.

From Sarah Palin denying funds to reimburse Alaska hospitals for rape kits to the majority of Republican Congressmen who voted on laws that served to deny rape victims their day in court (as well as deny them access to pregnancy prevention) — the Republican (and sell-out Democrat) platform of being “tough on crime” holds that rape victims deserve some rights; so long as those rights do not conflict with those of ruthless corporations, tea-baggers, “patriots”, or super devout Christians — all who want government off their backs but in between your legs.

Scott Brown falls into the last category (at minimum). In 2005, Brown sponsored legislation to allow doctors and nurses to turn away rape victims from Massachusetts emergency rooms if they objected to providing rape victims with emergency contraception (Plan B). Brown stated that a rape victim “could be referred to another facility at no additional cost.” He also said “It’s not about the victim.” Rather, it is about the SANE and the hospital’s “right” to deny contraceptives or abortificants to patients if they’re morally opposed to doing so.

Now, SANE training is supposedly “patient-centered, promoting the health and well-being of rape victims. Why would anyone choose to become a SANE if imposing their “moral” views on traumatized rape victims is more important than that patient’s well-being? A rape victim has already had control over her own body, her bodily integrity, forcibly taken from her against her will by the rapist. How “healing” or “patient-centered” is it to deny rape victims emergency contraception after a rape? And Brown claims this is “not about the victim?”

Really? Okay, so who is it about if it’s not about the victim?

It’s not about the hospital administrators, or the ER staff — the doctor, nurse, or SANE — because they do not have to take emergency contraception themselves if they don’t want to and they are professionals in what is supposedly the humanitarian field of providing “patient-centered” care and healing. So if it’s not about the patient — the rape victim — then who is it about?

Pro-lifers want everyone to believe that it’s all about life, that it’s about “the baby.” But in the case of rape, it is the woman rape victim — not a zygote, a blastocyst, or even a non-viable fetus — who is the patient, brought to the hospital’s ER by police for “patient-centered” care and healing. It’s not about “the baby” unless we’re talking about an infant rape victim. And it’s not about “the baby” because we’re talking about contraception — preventing pregnancy. So again, who is this about?

There is only one logical conclusion here. Denying rape victims emergency contraception is about the rapist.

It’s about giving the rapist’s (or rapists’) sperm (that was implanted without consent) more rights than the woman in whom it was forcibly injected. Denying rape victims in the ER access to emergency contraception isn’t about anybody’s rights except the rapist’s “rights.”

So let’s call it for what it is: denying emergency contraception to rape victims (or any woman for that matter) is a Rapists’ Rights movement.

As for health care providers including pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control, including emergency contraception, because of their “religious beliefs” or “moral objections”; they are in the wrong field and they don’t deserve their jobs.

With emergency contraception such as Plan B, there is a narrow time window involved (72 hours) for it to be effective in preventing pregnancy. Rape victims cannot be taxied from hospital to hospital before someone is finally willing to give them Plan B as part of the rape kit that also takes time to complete.

Becoming a SANE is a choice. Becoming a rape victim is not.

If one chooses to become an ER doctor, nurse, or SANE, expensive and exhaustive training is involved. Any SANE, ER doctor or nurse with such strong objections to providing legal medical services and care should exercise their right to choose a different profession — not enter the medical field just so they can impose control and degrading abuse on patients who are female rape victims.

The rights of a hospital, pharmacy, and health care professional should never be allowed to supersede the rights of patients — especially women rape victims. It isn’t the well-being, health, or future life of that health care worker that is at stake. It is the woman rape victim’s.

And every pregnancy is a potential threat to a woman’s health, well-being, and life — including her economic well-being. Anyone from a nurse to a doctor to a pharmacist to a lawmaker or a judge who deprives a woman of the choice to prevent a pregnancy, to end a pregnancy — especially as the result of a rape — should be forced to contribute to the support of every unwillingly pregnant woman and to both mother and child after that fetus becomes a post-born child.

Rape victims who are ER patients should not be made victims again by hospital staff and religious organizations — especially religious hospitals that qualify for tax-exempt 501(3)(c) status for whom the public at large must pick up the shifted tax burden tab.

There is nothing decent, caring, or moral about forcing a physically and emotionally traumatized woman to risk pregnancy or track down an emergency contraception provider. There is nothing moral about stopping a rape victim (or any other woman) from preventing a pregnancy she does not want, or cannot endure.

Rapists do not have a Constitutional right to force a woman to breed for them and ER staff, hospitals, et al, have no Constitutional right to force rape victims to bear their rapist’s progeny.

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