If you are less than Thirty years of age then you must accept that you are generally unable to contribute to a discussion or debate because your young age means you do not have the necessary life experience that would make such a contribution worthwhile.
Dismissing people and their contribution to a topic or debate will certainly have a positive influence on the next generation whom so many older skeptics agree are those that educational outreach must focus on to pass on the importance of critical thinking. By simply dismissing young people when they try to voice their opinions is a sure way to encourage them to openly question things for the rest of their lives.
If you also happen to be female then you must show an interest in the male skeptics around you or people shall start to suspect that there is something terribly wrong with you – like that you might like ladies instead. If you are not publicly interested in the array of men around you then you are a gay, a ‘frigid bitch’, or a ‘cock tease’. If you do not feel comfortable, or show an interest in discussing crude sex things around people that you hardly know then you are obviously a gay or frigid bitch and people have every right to discuss this about you. This is just how it is. You must accept this.
If you should ever receive abuse from other people and a male comes to your defense in the conversation it is because he wants to get nuddy with you and make hay. It is not possible that he is a friend who is coming to your defense, for he is a man and you are a woman and therefor he wants to do the dirty with you. There are no two ways about it.
When you share your critical thoughts with others, when you voice your opinion and speak your mind do not be under the assumption that it is okay to do this because this is attention seeking behavior and others will see through your wicked attempt at gaining an ego boost for yourself. By even contemplating writing your thoughts on your blog you are clearly attempting to make a name for yourself and make subjects all about you. Any negative reaction you receive as a result of sharing your thoughts is only deserved and you only have yourself to blame for being young, female and daring to be vocal.
The first important lesson you can learn about being a young, female, vocal skeptic (as outlined above) is that you must simply accept from the start that you are an attention seeker whose input cannot be valued because of the few years you have been alive, and any attention you receive as a result of all that you do is your own doing and simply a result of the other person having a penis.
The second important lesson for you to learn is that you must never listen to anybody who tells you these things because they’re lying and what they’re telling you is offensive and cruel and not worth the time it takes to read the words involved.
Blog if you are young, old or middle aged. Be vocal no matter what gender you are, and learn to accept that sometimes your work gets attention because people value your opinion – not because they want to fuck you. I used to fall for these lies and felt that I had to just accept such treatment. Never again.If these few words I have written can help another person avoid falling into that trap of self-doubt, then I’ll die happy.
Way to go Hayley! I remember at my first job being told I had to “dress old” and never tell anyone my true age. I was ok with it, but now that I am truly “old” (more than middle age, indeed I would be horrified if I lived as many more years as I have already lived… who wants to be THAT old?) I feel like I was cheated out of some of those fun young years by denying them so I could be taken “seriously”.
Also, I do find that while older I still get “and you have your degree from where?” issue comes up. Hello, no I have not an advanced degree from somewhere important. The point is that I really respect people that have taken the time and effort to get an advanced degree. But, I really wish people would at least listen to those of us without the “paper” that says we are “smart”.
Damn right, Hayley.
Without wishing to disagree in any way with the ‘female’ part, I would remark that many people of years think that most young people are full of crap because they remember all too clearly when they were young and full of crap, and so was everyone they knew. When I was involved in student politics, I was full of crap, and when I look at student politics today, I see much of the same crap. I also see things that I think even we wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try, but that may just be wishful thinking.
The difficulty a young person who is not full of crap, as doubtless you aren’t, will encounter is at least partly attributable to the fact that s/he is an exception to a fairly strong rule. So argue hard, but alas you are swimming against the tide.
Evidence?
Well, all the things I have written about are things that have been said about me by a number of people, and said about others by other people too.
Or are you really that naive and ignorant about, you know, the real world?
Sometimes, just sometimes, when someone finds that other people disagree with them, it isn’t actually because of their gender or their age. It’s because people disagree with them on some point or other. I find that whenever I express an opinion, some people will disagree with it – that’s just part of the deal when you have an opinion and express it publicly.
I find it terribly sad that this post gives the impression that females under the age of 30 are particularly targeted. By exactly the same logic I could write a post saying that all the times people have disagreed with me it is because I am a man over the age of 30. The truth is just that people often disagree with my opinions. Of course I’d rather that they didn’t disagree with me and sure it does hurt a bit, but it’s not a symptom of some greater problem.
Come on Hayley, this is Skepticism 101. Claims require evidence, what is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence, burden of proof etc. If you’ve got evidence of yourself being dismissed because of your age/gender, then obviously that’s a problem that needs to be dealt with. However, you haven’t presented any thus far. Perhaps you should consider the possibility that you, just like everyone else, are sometimes wrong?
Thank you for explaining skepticism to me. I did not know how it worked.
Good, so you know how skepticism works. Are you going to provide some evidence to back up your argument or are you going to continue to be dismissive?
As we all know, if a white man didn’t see any racism or skepticism, then there wasn’t any racism or sexism. That’s just science.
Tom, you don’t remember this? Even though you commented on it? No? No. Didn’t think so. ‘cos obviously YOU don’t think it’s sexist or accuses me of being an attention seeker, so therefor it doesn’t. AMIRITE?
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/smwu8/vote_is_hayley_stevens_a_stupid_british_cunt_id/
*Ageist remarks: http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/1.jpg
*Sexist remarks: covered in the Reddit link
*Sycophant claims:
1 – http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/2.jpg
2 – http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/3.jpg
3 – http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/4.jpg
*Attention Seeking remarks: example in the Reddit argument.
These are just examples of recent crap I’ve had to deal with of the nature I wrote about in this blog post. I have more than I often write about and demonstrate on my personal blog.
So, what were you saying?
Tom Williamson – go do some research.
http://tokenskeptic.org/2011/11/22/episode-eighty-eight-on-codes-of-conduct-part-ii-sexism-skepticism-and-civility-online/
http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/
http://morewomeninskepticism.wordpress.com/
Hayley, as has already been pointed out to you, that post from Reddit was from a troll, looking to get a reaction from you. You fed them. They won. As we speak, they are most probably rubbing their hands with glee as they look for their next target.
Yes, what they did was horrible, but they weren’t looking for debate. They are not interested in rational discussion. It’s completely separate from the issues here.
I’ll say again, if there is evidence that young (and I’m younger than 30 BTW) female skeptics are being dismissed for ageist and sexist reasons, then I’d be the first to say that there is a serious problem that needs to be dealt with. But until that evidence is presented, I can’t help but treat this like I’d treat any other baseless claims. I’m not trying to wind anyone up, I’m not trying to be a contrarian, I’m simply asking for evidence.
Hey Tom, you wanted an example, how’s this:
I happen to live in a city with a strong and diverse skeptic organization (50% women!!) but I was asked to speak at a skeptic organization in a different city. I was giving a talk on behavioral economics, something I happen to know a lot about since that was a big part of my masters program. I’d given this talk for 80 of my fellow skeptics in my home town and it had gone well. I figured it would be easy to give the same talk to a new skeptic group.
When I first walked in the room, it was all older white men, though one or two of them had brought their wives along. What was suppose to be a 20min talk ended up going over an hour. I could barely get through my talk due to all the heckling. Every word I said was questioned and audience members made it clear they just didn’t believe anything I said. It doesn’t matter that I’m an expert in the topic and have studied it extensively at an academic level and that none of the audience members had any expertise in this area. I’m a young female and they’re older men so they clearly know better. Also, nothing in my talk is controversial by experts in the field. But, if I don’t look like the stereotypical economist, then clearly I couldn’t know anything about the field.
After the talk I had many people use words like “cute” or “adorable” to describe my talk…on behavioral economics research. Uh, thanks?
This is just one example. It also happens every time I go to a skeptic conference. Now I almost exclusively only hang out with people I already know at conferences to avoid having my opinions completely dismissed or men getting angry at me for not sleeping with them after they listened to my opinions all weekend (something that has happened with multiple men over the 3 TAM’s I’ve attended).
My female skeptic friends and I are always exchanging stories. You’d be hard pressed to find young, female skeptics in the community who haven’t had situations of being dismissed solely based on their age and gender. This example is just one of the most obvious cases of this happening.
I agree with Tom; some concrete examples of the kind of thing you’re talking about would be welcome. In my (anecdotal) experience, I’m seeing young women accepted into the “new skeptic” fold by default because they’re opinionated, feminist, and atheist, which often passes for or is assumed to be skepticism. In exactly which skeptical circles are young, qualified, educated women being dismissed?
Thank you Jamie! That sounds terrible, you give the impression that you were trying to talk to a very rude and arrogant bunch of people. It doesn’t matter who gives the talk or what the subject is, you should be able to get through it without interruptions.
Have you told whoever heads that group what happened? If the person who runs it doesn’t want to address the problems they have, then there is something wrong with them.
http://skepchick.org/2012/01/beyond-jokes-and-pick-up-lines/
http://skepchick.org/2011/12/a-call-for-submissions-sexism
I think we need some sort of survey. Who is a survey monkey genius?
Tom, the way that evidence works is that you determine ahead of time what counts and what does not count as evidence. What exactly are you looking for that you would consider valid evidence (as opposed to dismissing is as trolling, because, you know, if a “troll” does it, it didn’t actually happen within the community)? What parameters would you accept to show that something happened *because of* age or gender?
Is it simply correlational? In that case, the fact that a “troll” went after Hayley as “trolls” have gone after several other female skeptics should be perfectly sufficient until you demonstrate that the same thing happens with the same regularity to male skeptics.
Ditto for the “attention seeker” remarks. Can you find the same phenomenon happening to male skeptics with the regularity it happens to female skeptics?
Or do you require some other, as yet unspecified sort of documentation for you to consider that you have evidence in front of you?
The sort of evidence that Hayley presented in her blog.
http://hayleyisaghost.co.uk/horrid-hayley/
If that had preceded this article, I wouldn’t have had cause to ask for evidence.
It’s fair to ask for evidence, but it seems at least a little disingenuous to act like what Hayley has said is controversial or surprising. If somebody doesn’t see a pattern of women being marginalized within the movement, then he hasn’t been paying much attention. It’s rarely easy to recognize when you’re in a position of privilege, but that doesn’t mean you’re not benefiting from it.
Whinging about how there’s no evidence for a blog-post on SHETHOUGHT, a site devoted to demonstrating the need to acknowledge the contributions of women to freethought, featuring pages and pages of posts? This is why people start posting ‘troll’.
There’s been article after article, conference after conference, online battle and real life conflicts that you could simply type in skepticism and sexism to find – rather than portraying the very WORST that a skeptic could be: nitpicking, privileged and dismissive of a minority that is struggling to contribute to the greater cause that you should be supporting.
Thankfully, there’s enough people out there – and not all of them are women – who have looked about. I’d post my own account but I’ve done more than enough links as it is.
Let’s just raise our hands.
“Tom, you don’t remember this? Even though you commented on it? No? No. Didn’t think so. ‘cos obviously YOU don’t think it’s sexist or accuses me of being an attention seeker, so therefor it doesn’t. AMIRITE?
http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/smwu8/vote_is_hayley_stevens_a_stupid_british_cunt_id/”
Caught out, Tom.
Dave, while there are people who are full of crap when they’re young, there are many who are not. I’ve known youth living on the street who could tell you more about society than an anthropologist. I have known “responsible adults” who were incapable of mature and appropriate courtship behavior. Sure, a ten year old isn’t going to have the same life perspective as a 50 year old, but that doesn’t mean that a 20 year old doesn’t have something important to contribute to the World. Ageism is a problem both ways.
Tom, perhaps your comments could have been less effective if they had been less abraisive. There are problems with ageism in the skeptic community, as well as a problem with sexism and other biases. In fact, because those problems exist in any social group, I would think it would be considered absurd to assume that the skeptic community somehow managed to eliminate them within itself. With ageist, sexist and racist biases being so common in most other social contexts, I would challenge a person to show evidence that the skeptic community somehow managed to eliminate it.
Joey, I’m just wondering what a “qualified” woman would be in skepticism?
I also want to note that I would like the conversation to remain as civil as possible. Dismissing people’s experiences, especially if they’ve been harassed, is not cool, here. Thanks!
Sorry if I come across as abrasive, but I consider this to be a very important topic. I don’t ask for evidence because I’m trying to dismiss the issue, I ask for evidence because I care. You could have the most benevolent will in the world, but if you don’t present evidence to back up your case other people are going to shoot you down for it. If I can make a science analogy, Hayley’s OP is like a scientific paper that missed out on the results and goes straight to the discussion. Just a few links would have made the OP so much better.
My beliefs have certainly been changed since I became a skeptic, and they still are being challenged all the time.
Well, this is embarrassing. I’ve just noticed something that makes me look like an insensitive, dismissive idiot. I was responding to comment 11, in what became comment 14. I didn’t see comments 12 and 13 until now. I apologise unreservedly for that, hopefully everyone else can see what I mean.
I don’t think anyone’s saying Hayley is a horrid person, or that she hasn’t had bad experiences.
I think some people are just tired of being labelled strongly emotive words like ‘abominable’, ‘misogynist’, ‘ageist’ for simply questioning the point of view of someone else. The discussion then usually descends into further personal attacks.
Although I’m part of the problem too, perhaps we can all agree that we can still work together, and try to re-build some bridges for the good of tackling the right targets: Religion/quacks/frauds?
How the hell does an item calling Hayley a stupid cunt not qualify as dismissing her on sexist grounds? How does it not qualify as evidence of dismissing her on sexist grounds?
I can tell you, when people call me a cunt, I consider that sexism and evidence of sexism. When people call Jessica Ahlquist a cunt, same deal. Same deal with Hayley.
The Reddit post wasn’t dismissive, it was just plain nasty and insulting.
Wut? Are you saying that a nasty insulting post is not dismissive? That makes no sense.
I’m probably splitting hairs. The important point on the Reddit post remains, don’t feed the trolls.
Wait, since I’m 31 now my opinion counts and people will take me seriously? SWEEET. Oh wait… *looks at lack of credentials, lack of career and kitty-ear hat*…crap.
So true. But it’s still hard not to fall for them sometimes, if you are tired and someone is trying to shut you off…