Al Stefanelli wrote:In case you missed last night's show:
"The Petulant Goddess: Feminism, Humanism and Atheism"
We had as our guests Becky Garrison, EllenBeth Wachs, Matt Facciani & Jen August (along with lengthily call ins with Joe Zamecki, Paul Loebe and Robert Robinson), the link to the podcast is below.
This was a very intense show, as several of the guests and callers were victims of brutally violent rape, and offer their point of view of what is so wrong with places like Atheism+, the FC(n), the Block Bot, preventative measures with regard to personal safety, victim blaming, the PZ Myers/Shermer fiasco, etc.
Listen Here
Great podcast Al. I’ll definitely check out future ones.
However, in passing, I think you might want to consider addressing a question Joe Zamecki raised about the abandoning of the requirement for evidence in evaluating “feminist†claims. But, as we briefly discussed in the chat page – is that archived? – I think that also applies to many of the other topics and issues he mentioned – birth control, taxation, death penalty, etc., etc. Which I think goes to the heart of some of the issues that your neuroscientist guest [Facciani] touched on briefly, and which I think bears some serious looking into – i.e., just exactly how it is that we think, how the gears and wheels mesh in the hardware.
And while many of us seem to be familiar with the various problematic aspects of that – confirmation bias for example, I think many aren’t really aware of how prone we are to generalizing and stereotyping: seeing four white swans and leaping to the conclusion that all swans are white – the
problem of induction, of connecting a few dots and then dogmatically insisting that that cloud formation doesn’t just
look like a weasel, but that it
is a weasel.
For instance, I think EllenBeth Wachs gave something of an example of that, something I had wanted to question her about but ran out of time to do so. While I certainly think she has more than a little reason to be bent out of shape over her savaging by the pharyngulanas, I also think she was “guilty†of some of that generalization. And while I don’t remember the specifics of her phrasing, it was, I think, analogous to someone noting that some members of group G – say g1, g3, and g7 – are saying X, and noting that other members of Group G - say g2, g4, and g8 – are saying “not X†[¬X], and then turning around and insisting that all of Group G are hypocritical and inconsistent for saying X and “not Xâ€. A very common behaviour which tends to derail conversations, I think, and rather quickly.