AS212: On Dawkins, the NECSS, and Bernie Bros

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Atheistically Speaking. This is episode 212, and I am your host, Thomas Smith. Well, we're fresh off the heels of Matt Dillahunty and Blake Giunta. That was really enjoyable, of course, and have gotten a lot of comments, and there's a lot of chatter going on on Facebook, and Justin Schieber posted a video relating to the recording, so lots of stuff going on there. I want to do, next episode, I want to do a breakdown of what I thought went on, especially because I was able to interact so little with Matt and Blake. I didn't want to take away from their air time, because you guys always hear me, but that was the first time we've ever gotten to hear Matt Dillahunty on Atheistically Speaking, so I didn't wanna take away too much from that. I said a few things here and there, but for the most part, I let him go at it.

0:01:17 Thomas: But I would like to do a full analysis of that, which I think I'll do next episode. And the reason is, today I want to address some topical stuff that you no doubt have heard about going on in atheism and actually politics as well. I've got some topical commentary for you to apply to yourselves there. And I figured I'd rather get that going while it's possibly still fresh and give us a day off of the divine hiddenness argument, And then we'll come back later and then, of course, move on. So let's hear that commentary song.

0:02:02 Thomas: Sometimes I feel like I'm a prisoner of my own conclusions that I've reached, and I'd say this is one of those times. I'm going to talk about Richard Dawkins and the whole NECSS controversy and his Twitter, hopefully won't spend too much time on it, but I think I ought to at least break it down for anyone who's not familiar, Richard Dawkins tweeted a link to a video that was on the YouTube channel Sargon of Akkad, or however you pronounce that, it wasn't actually his video turns out, it was somebody else who did a video for him, but he endorsed it, et cetera. And the video, in my opinion, is pretty awful. I would not waste my time watching it. But the message is something that maybe is worth thinking about.

0:02:48 Thomas: The message is that certain feminists are endorsing in some ways and shielding Islamists, and if it were just about talking about that, that would be one thing, but for me, the video is absolutely terrible, it's just not well done, it is not interesting, it isn't something I would ever even replay on this podcast because I can't listen to it. It's not good. I'll put it to you that way. It is not to my taste. Now, maybe to some of your likings, and that's okay, I don't, that's fine, I just, it's like if I had to play a song, well, it is exactly like if I have to play song I really hated, I just don't want to do it. But however, if we took the lyrics to that song and, or not really, but the meaning behind it, that is something that is up for debate and it is something I have even talked about before.

0:03:40 Thomas: When I talked about the Goldsmiths controversy, some of you may recall, feel free to go back, I think it's in the episode title some episodes ago. That was something that I was pretty, I would say, I guess, outraged about. I don't get too outraged, but that was something that I pretty upset about. And the ultimate sort of dagger in that one was when the feminist society of goldsmiths stood by the Islamic society. And I think that may be the very thing that prompted this video. I can't, I don't know for sure, but I could imagine. It would be highly coincidental. That was what really bugged me, of course. Well, I'm not going to summarize that. We're going to get too far into the inception if I have to summarize that incident in order to summarize this incident.

0:04:27 Thomas: But let it suffice to say that the Islamic society tried to block Maryam Namazi and did horrible things during her talk and harassed her, etc. And the feminist society supported the Islamist society. Actually, that's not what they're called, but it was a Freudian slip, I suppose, the Islamic Society, And they stood by them under the, I guess, excuse of the safe space policy. So that was really disappointing. And so I, all this is to say, I'm just going to come right out and say it, especially for any new listeners. When it comes to the, what do you even call it? The MRA versus feminists? No, that's not very good because I consider myself a feminist, the social justice versus the other anti-social justice.

0:05:16 Thomas: That doesn't really work. I don't know that we have a good name for this dichotomy of the atheist movement, but there definitely is one now. And you can see it whenever someone uses the phrase regressive left, you can see they're on one side of that. And the people they accuse of being on the regressive left are on the other side.

But let's just say people who are on the extreme, well, not even extreme, the far progressive social justice side and those who are on the side of calling those people regressive leftists. That's sort of the breakdown. And let me just say that I find myself a bit in the middle. I'm just saying this so that, because people have such violent reactions to this debate, not literally violent, but such sort of visceral reactions, emotional reactions, the minute you say one thing or the other on this topic, trust me, as a podcaster, as someone who has a few listeners, you get immediately just tons of responses, some not so nice on either side. And I want to say that just to head that off, I'm not on either side.

I would say, if you want to know what side I am on, I'm on the side of being as nice as we can be, as considerate as we can be and not ever harassing anyone. I'm not on the side of no harassment.

I don't even think harassment of people who probably deserve some level of harassment, I don't even support that because we live in an age where Twitter and just other social media amplifies this to an extreme degree and harassment just gets out of control and turns very personal,

0:06:58 Thomas: Very, it just, it's something that I don't believe anyone really deserves unless we were able to harass literal Hitler or someone who is actually killing people. I just don't think anyone deserves it for expressing an idea of any kind. So no matter how wrong I think someone might be, the thing I'm most against are the horrible people who harass and dox and just do that kind of behavior, threaten violence. I'm against those people most of all. Now, it's my opinion and my experience that those people are mostly on the anti-social justice side. So make of that what you will. Feel free to cite me any studies or numbers you have. That's been my experience.

0:07:45 Thomas: And so I consider myself slightly on the pro-social justice side. So just to give you guys, I'm gonna come right out and be honest with where I stand on that. But I also see some problems with that side. And the biggest problem I see with the social justice side of things is an inability to have a discussion about it. Well, that's really both sides. But the reason I don't consider myself fully on one side or the other is because I just don't think we're having a conversation. What we're doing is we're exchanging outrage. That's all we're doing. I say we, but I don't really, I'll be honest, I consider myself a little bit above it arrogantly as though as it may be. But I would be happy to have anyone of either side on this or to have two people rather.

0:08:33 Thomas: I don't feel I can represent one side or the other, so it's hard for me to engage. But if I were to get someone on the men's right side and someone on the feminist side, I would be happy to just hear a discussion. Or I won't even say men's rights because that's a term that people think means, well, maybe does mean things that are really not good. So, it's hard to... If anyone has good terminology for me on this, can you let me know? Because I don't know what to call it. I really don't. I don'T think we've got an official. What we have is we have insulting names that both sides call each other, so I could say men's rights and regressive left, and that would be sort of an insulting thing to say on either side, but we don't really have a pro, like a positive name for both sides, which would be something maybe for either of these groups, something for you guys to figure out.

0:09:30 Thomas: So anyway, here I am minding my own business, being sort of on the social justice side, but with some caveats and problems with censorship and not really censorship, but just declining to engage and instead blocking and that sort of thing. I'm against that on both sides. So here I am, and I see this Richard Dawkins thing. So what he did was, as I started to say, he tweeted a video that was just, I don't know, I hated it, but whatever. It essentially alleges that some feminists, he even said, some feminists sadly are shielding Islamists. That's what he said. He tweeted that. Now, certain feminists went off on him. Now it should go without saying that anytime Dawkins tweets, he pretty much gets It's a shitstorm from tons of people just because of his reputation. But on this particular one, we had a prominent feminist tweeting him some things. I'll find them here. Her name is Lindy West, and she was the one, the main person I saw tweeting back and forth.

I think the first- I don't know if I should read all of them, but I need to give you guys an idea of the exchange. She tweeted, The complete ideological horror show aside, that is a caricature of an actual real woman and you are feeding her harassment. Richard Dawkins says, I didn't know that. Who is the real woman?

0:10:53 Thomas: She linked, it would serve you well to research the people and movements whose support you accept and whose propaganda you disseminate. One might even argue that it's a basic responsibility concomitant with wielding such a large and powerful platform. And then the person who might have been the red head tweeted, oh good, he's promoting a guy who built a career off of stalking and harassing me and my family, or maybe it's just somebody else. I'm not sure. She tweeted some more things, and then, basically, long story short, Dawkins has the attitude that, oh, I didn't know this red-headed woman in the video is actually somebody real. I I don't endorse her harassment, threats of violence, but I, Richard Dawkins said several times, I think she deserves ridicule, ridicule.

0:11:42 Thomas: So, there's, there are so many problems with this. There are a ton of problems with this. I think that the, the, biggest problem is maybe just the nature of social media, because Dawkins tweeted a video. I honestly don't think it's his fault that it turned out to be A, portraying someone real, and B, portraying someone real that people had already been harassing and threatening with violence? Is that his fault? I mean, it could have just as easily have been that she wasn't being harassed with violence. There's no way for him to know that from the video. I don't see any, I mean it's easy to say, oh you should know all this, but he's not, not, I had no idea.

0:12:27 Thomas: I mean, I wouldn't have known. I had absolutely no clue. And I don't know that it's pretty easy to say that. I means, it's easy to just say, you need to know everything that I want you to know. I don t really see that as entirely valid when he's just, especially since it's not critical to the video. I there's nothing in that video that tells you for sure this is a real person. There's nothing in the nature of that video that would tell you that. And here's a perfect example. Is that Muslim somebody? Is the Muslim in the video a real person? How do you know?

0:13:03 Thomas: How do You know from the video? How do you know from the video that the Muslim isn't and she is? I've heard nothing about the Muslim in the video portrayed. I have no idea. It could be a real person. It could have been based on someone. I really don't know. There's no way to know. So the idea that he's supposed to just know this, I find not convincing. But of course, in the handling of all this, there are a ton of criticisms to be leveled at Dawkins that are completely fair. There's one point here where he said, perhaps she's mentally ill to be charitable. Anyway, it's disgraceful that she's apparently received violent threats. So from the video, actually, I guess I haven't talked about, there's a video that the reason that the redhead is an actual person portrayed in the video is because there's another video from, I think, three years ago where she is yelling and using the F word a lot to silence some MRAs.

0:13:59 Thomas: And it doesn't look good for her, obviously. We don't know the background. We don't know the conversation, of course. I don't want to make a judgment on that either way. I think that's obviously not how I would handle it. I don't yell at people to shut the fuck up all the time when I'm trying to talk. That's just not how I do things. However, I'm not a woman who's in that position. And, and I don't know, I can say that I don't think it's a good tactic, I don think it helps anybody regardless of the history, but it's hard for me to say. Anyway, on the basis of that video where she's yelling and cursing and all that, Dawkins is, he's being incredibly, incredibly, Condescending by just saying, well, maybe she's mentally ill. That is quite condescending. That is very dismissive of any potential grievance, legitimate grievance that she might have had in that situation.

0:14:46 Thomas: So I don't, I'm not a fan of that at all. However, you have to at least say that Richard Dawkins tweeted, I don't condone violence in any way, stop threatening people with violence, and he deleted the link to the video because apparently he got the message that this woman had received enough harassment already. So you have to give him some credit for that, at least. All this culminated in the disinvitation by the NECSS of Which is the Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism, uh, Steve Novella is on the board there, he was one involved in the decision to disinvite Richard Dawkins, they disin-vited him pretty darn quickly, now it turns out that Novella gave a pretty detailed rundown of what happened, and I credit him for that, because before I saw my criticism was in some way still is that, look, there's wrong on all sides here.

0:15:41 Thomas: The first thing is, this is not a free speech issue. The free speech part cancels itself out. This is something I want to make clear because I get these comments from time to time about free speech, free speech you have to let Dawkins speak, no, that's not true. Dawkins can say whatever he wants on his Twitter and any CSS can use their free speech to disinvite or invite whoever they want. That cancels out. There's nothing they can do to threaten Richard Dawkins' free speech.

He's not guaranteed a platform at a private, you know, conference that they pay him for. He is not guaranteed that. However, now to go through it again, that doesn't mean you can't criticize the NECSS for their decision. So there's a lot, I know it's hard for some people to handle, condescendingly it's for some to handle because I get these emails from either time, so I think it's perfectly valid to question the decision making, so why did they disinvite him, why did the invite him in the first place? This was not new, and part of Steve Novella's explanation, he talked about about Dawkins' troubled history with Twitter and all this showing that they knew all that the first time. So why did you invite him? And then when there's another tweet that honestly, where does this rank in Dawkins Twitter explosions? I don't know that it's in the top 10. Okay, maybe it's in the Top 5, maybe.

But this really doesn't give you new information. So that's a criticism that that one could level at the NECSS and at Novella and the board that made that decision. They also didn't talk to Dawkins. They didn't reach out. They just abruptly disinvited him, and that was that.

0:17:27 Thomas: And that's another criticism you could level at them. I think that what they really ought to have done is talk to him first and foremost. I think you should at least talk to someone before you disinvate them. Should you not? I mean, should you not at least give them the chance to respond or to apologize or do something? Give them a way out. And then, or you can just ignore that altogether, since your conference is about science, by the way. The conference is about science. Dawkins is a scientist. You could simply issue a statement saying, we don't endorse, in fact, we disagree. Go further than that. We disagree with these tweets that Dawkins has been making. We still look forward to having him speak on on science, on biology, but we have a real problem with these.

0:18:14 Thomas: Or work with Dawkins to get him to apologize or to make some statement about the account. Because I understand one of the concerns of the conference was that they have an image. They want an image of being friendly to feminists and being understanding of social justice. And I get that. I think that's fine. Fine, that's their prerogative. That's their free speech. So there's a little criticism all around, I think. I just don't, I don't think that this was new information about Dawkins. So, and in Steve Novella, as I said, later I read this response he had where he elaborated a bit, and he did say that these were valid criticisms and that ultimately that was their judgment call. So fair enough. I mean, that is their judgment called.

0:18:59 Thomas: All in all, I do not think there is too much of a big deal to be made out of this. Other than to say the reason I feel like I'm a prisoner to my own conclusion sometimes is that is that I'm not able to have the kind of reaction that I think some people are having to Dawkins. When he, when he tweets a video, I don't hold him responsible for knowing all the history and, and, uh, the likeness of a character and who that is, and the history of that person, I, really, I mean, I just, that's, that why I said that to start off, because, what is his real crime in that? That. I mean, he tweeted a video. He holds an opinion, by the way, an opinion which I would be curious to see how many people hold. I talked about it in the Goldsmith thing. An opinion that certain feminists, not all, certain feminists are shielding Islamism.

0:19:51 Thomas: Is that so offensive of an opinion? Is it? I mean you may even think it's wrong. That's fine. There are a lot of things. We We don't agree with each other in every single thing that we talk about and think about and express. So is that an opinion like, I don't know, outright racism or something that is so offensive that you can't even bear to have him be at the same conference that you're at? So that's the part that I have a problem with. But as I said, I also, I mean, I see the problem with Dawkins. I see he's not considerate. He's very callous toward feminists. I get it. I mean, I think that's a big problem too. So it's hard. All in all, if I were to try to put a button on this, I think we need to just take less stock in what these leaders are tweeting. All around, for good or for ill.

0:20:47 Thomas: Because we've made Dawkins, even for people who don't like him, they've given him this huge power. Because a lot of the criticism I saw was that, look, you have all this influence. You have all these followers and you tweet. Sure, maybe you didn't mean to do this, but you got to realize what all your followers are going to do. And my thought to that is, well, what are these followers? What are Dawkins' followers? Do we really think that they are just mindless, you know, robots that are going to just repeat anything he says? Is there anyone who sees a Richard Dawkins tweet about feminism and reacts as though it's a completely new thing? Like, oh, I don't know what to think about this. I'd better just think exactly what Dawkins is saying. I mean, look, I don't have scientific numbers, but no one I've ever talked to is like that.

0:21:37 Thomas: I mean people have their opinions. They might be one way or the other. When I see Richard Dawkins tweet something like that, I follow Richard Dawkins on Twitter. What I think is, oh, he's wrong about that and I don't like that stupid video he tweeted. That's what I think. We're giving him way too much power. We're also assuming he has all that power. How many of his followers are sort of just drones that are going to do, maybe there's a certain amount, I don't know, but we ought to really think about what it means to follow Richard Dawkins on Twitter. I don't think it means that much. I mean, how many people are following him just because they don't like him? There's this weird dynamic that goes on of saying, well, look, it's not that you can't hold that opinion, because I even have asked some people, can he not hold the opinion that certain feminists are shielding Islamists?

0:22:32 Thomas: Is he not allowed, as a leader for some reason, is he not allowed to hold that opinion? The answer is, well no, but he has to be careful what he tweets because, well I don't know about all that. I mean You can say all you want. He ought to be on my side, you know, hypothetically. He, he ought to be on the side of feminism. That's what he ought do. But granted, given that he isn't, is his Twitter behavior really that egregious? Or is he just another person who, perhaps in your view, perhaps not, doesn't treat feminists properly, doesn't treat feminism seriously? In my opinion, I'll just say personally, he needs to realize that it doesn't quite work to just say, well, Muslim women have it harder in some countries, so all the feminists in this country need to shut up.

0:23:21 Thomas: That doesn't work. That just is not good thinking. I think he's very wrong about that. But, I mean, he's just a person who has an opinion that's wrong. I think we need, we're doing even more deifying of Richard Dawkins when we talk about him like, well, but he has this huge following. Well, I don't know. Everyone has their opinions. I've never, seriously, there's no leader that I've talked about, Hitchens, Harris, all that, who I don't get tons of emails from people saying, oh, I don't agree with that. I don't like him at all. I don't like that. I mean, these people are leaders, but they're not, they're NOT religiously, they're not, we don't follow them blindly. We don't hang on to their every word and listen to it. We can pick and choose. We can pick and choose the things we believe in.

0:24:07 Thomas: And ultimately, hopefully, what we ought to encourage is skepticism and treating every claim to its merits. I mean, looking at the evidence for a claim. So if Dawkins uses faulty reasoning, don't listen to him on that claim. Don't take his word for something on authority. Challenge it yourself. Self. And if you happen to agree, then you happen to agree. So that's my overall message on that.

0:24:44 Thomas: Well, I said earlier how I consider myself in the middle, except more toward the social justice side of things. Well, here's something that, honestly, I didn't plan these to coincide, but here's something that a feminist, Amanda Marcotte, is writing about that is really putting me off the side of feminists, to be honest. Sometimes, there's little things here or there, but I don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but this is one thing that is is really causing concern with me because this is the myth of the Bernie bro, this is my problem. And look, if you are a young person like me, and I say young loosely, if you're something around 30 or younger, I think that's the demographic, it may even go up as high as 35, the odds are, and you're a Democrat, the odds are overwhelmingly that you support Bernie Sanders, based on the stats that I've seen.

0:25:39 Thomas: I'm going to take those as being fairly accurate. Bernie has an enormous advantage with young people. He really does. And it's this weird tactic that's popped up. I even have personal friends on my personal Facebook who are posting, feminists who are posting that this Bernie bros thing is the thing that Bernie supporters are men who are mad at women and that's why they don't support Hillary Clinton. I mean, I'm not really strawmanning by representing their strawman. That is kind of what what they're saying.

Marcotte represented Bernie supporters as a bunch of angry men on the internet because of there's some memes that I've actually found kind of funny that describe each candidate's views and one of them was Radiohead and and of course Bernie has like an in-depth view on well this, you know, Okay Computer was a great album but, etc, etc, and then under Hillary it just says, I really like the song "Creep", and I get, I find it so funny, but people, there's some feminists who are labeling this as misogyny. And I just have to say, I don't get it. I really just don't think that's it. It's way too easy in politics. It is way too easily to come up with some horrible motivation behind your opponents not liking it. Look, let's face it. Politics is the most divisive thing I think we even have. Every single political candidate gets countless criticism all the time. And somehow, when we criticize Ben Carson, it's not racism.

0:27:16 Thomas: But when Republicans criticized Barack Obama throughout his term, it is racism. I think that's a little bit questionable. And anyhow, when I criticize Hillary Clinton, that's misogyny. But when everyone pretty much criticizes Carly Fiorina, that is not misogyny. Which is it? I mean, I just don't think it's helpful to look at things through this sort of identity politics thing. I mean there may be some misogyny happening. I'm sure there is, but you can't write off all of Bernie's enormous support. And if you just look at the polls, he's gotten so many donations too. His fundraising is incredible.

And one of the reasons, I've told you guys before, I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter because I think he's a great guy and that's it. It. I'm so cynical. I hate every politician, pretty much, that this is the first time I found a politician that I think is just genuinely a good guy. I don't think either Bernie or Hillary will get anything done because the Republicans have ruined Congress and have ruined our political system and nothing can happen. That's my personal view. So, since nothing can really happen, I don't have a problem with putting Bernie in there.

Just briefly, another criticism I keep hearing is that, well, Hillary's going to be able to reach across the aisle and Bernie, he's too much of a dreamer. He won't get this stuff done. I think that's the tactic that Hillary has had to take. And my response to that is just, do you really think Republicans are going to work with Hillary Clinton? They hate her. Talk about misogyny.

0:28:49 Thomas: Maybe there is some misogyny over there. I mean, I don't know. I'm just saying they really, really don't like her. However, I don't think there is misogyny. I don't think you can write that off as misogyny because they really, really don't like every Democrat who tries to get stuff done. We're just incredibly partisan. And I just don't think Hillary is going to be able to get anything done or Bernie. So for me, I don't Like Hillary's connections to big business. I don't like the speaking fees she's gotten while simultaneously trying to claim that she, you know, represents the downtrodden and yet her net worth is incredible. It's incredibly high. Bernie Sanders net worth 700k. I've gone through all this before. Sorry, I just get hooked on why I like Bernie Sanders.

0:29:35 Thomas: But anyway, to label me as some sort of misogynist because I'm a Bernie Sanders fan and I'm not a Hillary fan, it just doesn't fly. And I think it's incredibly questionable. Here's the strange thing. Here is the strange position I find myself in. I am allied with Glenn Greenwald on this. Glenn Greenwald, he is one of the people who is saying that this Bernie bro thing is an absolute myth. And isn't that weird? And that just goes to show that as much as I disagree with people sometimes, I disagree with Greenwald quite a bit. You know, I'm willing to listen. I'll listen to anyone and pick out the things I agree with them on and discard what I disagree with them. And right now, Greenwald's got this one right, so there you go. But here's why this bothers me so much.

0:30:21 Thomas: Amanda Marcotte is literally the same person, one of these people, these feminists, who I think rightly talk about gender myths. So I had Richard Carrier on the other week, and he talked about a lot of gender myths and things that the science isn't good on, and frankly, I'm pretty persuaded by that. That. I think that a lot of the gender differences are not due to evolution, but likely due to culture, which is fine, whatever. That's a separate discussion. But here's what bugs me.

0:30:55 Thomas: These feminists, who I think rightly, again, go after these generalizations and say, look, you're just looking at a tiny little, you're looking at an number here and you're using your feelings about men and women to say men do this, women do that. This same feminist, Amanda Marcotte, is simply taking her feeling about Hillary supporters, even though there are good numbers, there are Good Poll numbers to suggest that Bernie Sanders supporters are not all male. There are a ton of young people supporting Bernie Sanders. Like I said, the overwhelming majority of his support is with young people of either gender. The polls just do not bear this image, this false narrative that women are all supporting Hillary and then men are all supporting Bernie.

0:31:44 Thomas: There's a slight difference. I'll read you the poll numbers. For the question, if you had to choose one, which one of these individuals would you want to be the Democratic nominee, 48% said Hillary Clinton, 23% said Bernie Sanders at the time of this poll, it's in October, it is a little older, so Hillary had a huge lead. However, when you break that down by gender, for Hillary, 47% of males said yes, and 50% of females said yes. Thank you For Bernie Sanders, it was 24% male, 22% of females said yes, so, So, the difference by gender is pretty small, and you would expect a certain amount just by the fact that Hillary is the first, to my memory, first major female candidate with a chance of being president, I mean, the best chance, probably, she has a really good chance of becoming president.

0:32:36 Thomas: So, you would think that she would skew a little female, just for the reason of identifying, believing in the first female president, so you expect a bit of a gap, but the weird thing is the gap is so small, I mean, the amount of each gender there in this poll, it's really not very big. And I attest that to, there are some legitimate grievances that a lot of Democrats have with Hillary Clinton. You know, I mean she'll probably end up winning the NOM still. I personally am rooting for Bernie, but no big deal if he doesn't win. So I think what bothers me most about this is that, like I said, this feminist Amanda Marcotte, is the very same person who would not want to generalize when it comes to gender and want to say, well, we can't just, you know, take our feelings about who has which qualities, you know, that men are more workers and women are more nurturing.

0:33:34 Thomas: Like, she's the very same person Who would say, we shouldn't listen to that. But when it comes to Hillary, she goes based on her gut and says, now look at all these female supporters I I see. Therefore, Bernie supporters are all angry men on the internet. It's just not true. And And I think in both cases, we need to look at the facts, and we need to stick to the facts and not use our feelings to come to conclusions, so, this is just one of those things, you know, I mean, this why I have problems with all sides, this is why I find myself on the middle of everything, because I guess there's just so much to criticize on either side, but, there you have it. It. Now, in the interest of fairness, I will say there is a criticism that I think is very valid, and it's in, it's an article you may have seen, it is on pajiba.com, I'm not totally sure what that is, but the article is, in all caps, explosion of feelings regarding the liberal backlash against Hillary Clinton, this was something I saw a personal friend of mine share,

0:34:31 Thomas: Who is a feminist and thinks that Bernie supporters are Bernie bros, and I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's very long, but there is one thing that I think is very valid here because it says here, the day my husband told me he liked Bernie, he said, I mean, how great is it to have a president who just doesn't even care how his hair looks? And I exploded, do you think there exists a world where a woman could even consider that? And, I think that's accurate. I think that is one case that we are just nowhere near even on. It is totally true that women are are way more judged on their appearance, women in politics, women in the media, women everywhere. Just a quick example that comes to mind, there was an, I think an Australian newscaster, male and female team where the male decided to wear the same exact thing every day for a year, and no one noticed.

0:35:24 Thomas: They criticize the woman on her looks all the time. That's just an example that comes to mind. That completely rings true for me. We we do criticize women far more on their looks, and I think that is a problem. I mean, Hillary could not look frumpy. She could not go up there and have her hair be weird. You know, she just could not. That's absolutely true. So I do see that as a legitimate criticism of our society. I think that that's something we have to work against. I don't know how that will change. I suppose maybe women will have to keep fighting to look shabby. I don't know. I really don't. I mean, I honestly am at a loss for how to change that. I think we should all do our best to fight those. I think one easy way that we can all do that is just try to stop critiquing women on their looks when they're not important, when their looks are not a factor in anything they're doing, when they are just a politician.

0:36:20 Thomas: I don't know. That's one way we can try off the top of my head. But that is a legitimate criticism. So, I'll tack that point for the feminists because I agree with that message. That's really rough. Hillary would not have the option to just look shabby to a debate like Bernie kind of does. She just would not be able to survive that. So, there you have it, I, I think, some points and criticisms on all sides there, as usual, I hope, I've, at least, have been fair in my criticism, but feel free to let me know what you think, feel free, too, as you inevitably will, yell at me for one reason or another about my opinions on this stuff, because, because it's a very, what, there's so much anger in these issues, there really is, and that's something that we should fight.

0:37:06 Thomas: Let's fight, let's fight that anger, listeners, let us, if you have a comment for me, fine, feel feel free to share it. Feel free to say, I strongly disagree with this and I will read it. Point me to your links. I'll read them. I want to be wrong for as little as possible, for as little time as possible. But let's try to tamp down the hatred a little bit. Let's try to tamp the anger a little on both sides. I really think we should all be trying to make peace with each other on this and just try to discuss it. I know it's impossible, I'm a dreamer. Some say I'm a dreamers but maybe hopefully I'm not the only one. All right. Thanks for listening to Atheistically Speaking. As always you can support the show at patreon.com/atheist.

0:37:52 Thomas: Patreon.com/atheist. If you do you get access to bonus content. You get access to shows early. You got the Matt Dillahunty episodes earlier than everyone so please show your support of that show. If you want to support the longer form conversation, the more level-headed conversation. If you want to support that movement in general, just support the show and I will keep it going. I will Keep finding guests who are willing to engage in long-form conversation, level- headed conversation, and we'll see where we go from there. patreon.com/atheist. Thank you so much to all my current supporters. I have some new ones to thank. Jonathan Lui, Brandon King, Angry Black Rant. Oh, of course, I got to thank Angry Black Rant, Ishmael. He was on...

0:38:37 Thomas: Ishmael's the one, I think I inspired him to start podcasting. I hope we're going to do something soon, Ishmael. I'd love to come on the show and to have you back. So let's find a topic that's worthy of our discussion. And BornAgainAtheist, thank you guys. I appreciate your pledges so much. I can't tell you how much it means. And of course, I'm contractually obligated to thank my all-time greats. That's Kaile Riser, Zimu Zinu, Adrian Borschoff, Jonathan Moyet, Jay Aldenwalt, Bangs Naughty Bits, Christian Jaeh, Peter Skelton, Brian Garefort, Dale, Matt Garrett, and Born Again Atheist, and Samantha with the honorable mentions there. Thank you, thank you, I strongly, strongly appreciate it, and I love you you guys. All right. So thank you for joining me this week. I will see you on Monday.