Talking Over Women

In 1990, this book got people talking
about male and female conversation styles.

In social gatherings, it’s common to see men talking over women. I don’t think the Y-chromosome has a gene for interrupting women, but there’s no mistaking that males interrupt and talk over females more often than the reverse. In the geek population, it seems to be worse than average, and it’s probably also worse among people don’t know each other well, such as at a convention. The gamer and atheist communities can be uninviting or even hostile to women, and when women get talked over that doesn’t help. Geek conventions have taken to adopting explicit anti-harassment policies to help women be safer, and that’s great. I’d like to go further and implement an anti-interrupting policy. Women commonly have their voices silenced metaphorically, such as when their opinions are dismissed as hysterics. When a man talks over a woman in person, her voice is being silenced literally. How do we get that to stop?

In an open conversation with lots of people and no ground rules, a few people tend to dominate. They’re typically men, and I’ve often been one of them. To make the conversation more even, it helps to have some structure. The Burning Man discussions I lead are “walk and talks,” where everyone in the discussion answers yes/no questions by walking one direction or another. We also discuss the questions, and a few people tend to dominate the verbal discussion, but everyone gets to “speak up” by walking either left or right. When I’m moderating a panel at a game convention, during Q&A I give each member of the audience an opportunity to ask one question. We start at the front of the audience and work our way back one row at a time. Quiet fans get their chances to ask questions before we open the floor. Once the floor is open, a few people dominate the rest of the Q&A. The formats for Burning Man discussions and panel Q&As are gender neutral, but they have the net effect of reducing men’s dominance of the conversations. When I’m out with a group somewhere, I often notice women being talked over. There’s no moderator in these discussions, but sometimes I break in to ask the woman what she was going to say. 

It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that geeks, gamers, atheists, and similar populations see more talking over than average. First, the populations are skewed in the male direction, so a woman’s odds of getting talked over go up. Second, these populations include a lot of educated, analytical people who don’t always have the best social instincts. In tabletop roleplaying, several people are gathered around the table and only one talks at a time. That setup invites more aggressive talkers to shut out the less aggressive ones.  

An explicit rule against talking over people should be phrased as gender-neutral, the way anti-harassment policies are. Loud people talking over quiet people is bad regardless of the genders involved. But making people aware of previously unconscious conversation habits is a teaching opportunity. The beauty of having a norm about men not talking over women is that anyone who doubts the feminist perspective can simply observe people talking and see for themselves what happens. You don’t have to hate men to say that they interrupt too much. You just have to watch us. And it’s hard to argue with the idea that people should be allowed to participate in a conversation. That’s why I bring up the gender issue, because men are the ones who need the most practice checking their privilege. A rule against talking over people would not only make our conversations more equitable, it would give men a good opportunity to see unthinking sexism in action. Maybe even in their own actions.

Presuming that anyone agrees with me on this point, how do we spread the norm of not talking over people? It’s a tricky question with different answers for different groups. In any event, it probably starts with some discussions on the Internet. Let’s see if that leads anywhere.


Walk-and-Talk Discussions: A post on this structure for “free-range” conversations.

Why Atheists Are Jerks: A closer look at certain interpersonal styles that are common among us atheists.

Land of Nice Atheists

Society without God
by Phil Zuckerman

Here in the States, people willing to call themselves “atheists” are a rare breed. When we gather for a convention or other social function, we find that we have certain traits in common, much like gamers do. Even more than gamers, atheists are brought closer together by the general population’s distaste for us. The same would not be true in Denmark. There, atheism is so common that there’s little to distinguish atheists from the general population. They are the general population. We atheists like to point at Nordic countries as models of modern society. There, we say, atheism is normal and life is good. Why can’t it be like that everywhere? Phil Zuckerman’s book Society Without God takes a close look at Denmark, with an eye toward what atheism, belief, and Christianity are all about there. The Danish atheists, it turns out, are not New Atheists reproduced on a national scale. Surprisingly, these atheists say they’re Christian. They support “Christian” values, pay taxes to support the state church, and even have their atheist kids baptized and confirmed. Can you imagine American atheists happily watching their adolescent children affirm a Christian creed during confirmation ceremonies? Here in the US we take our religion too seriously for that, and our atheism too.   

Christianity is different in the US because we have never had an official church to suppress demagogues and to force religion to stay boring. The Founding Fathers supposed that people would use their freedom from state control to reasonably throw off the superstitions of the priests. Jefferson predicted that the nation would turn Unitarian. Instead, Americans used their freedom from state control to make religion more thrilling. Given free rein in the US, religious visionaries and hucksters have delighted the masses with apocalyptic visions, Doomsday predictions, faith healing, speaking in tongues, new revelations, and the “prosperity gospel,” according to which giving money to a televangelist will make the giver rich. In Europe, by contrast, the official churches kept religion reasonable, respectable and dull. The official church was your religion by default, so all it had to do to retain members was not drive anyone away. The resulting religion is so innocuous that atheists don’t bother to quit. If Danes don’t feel much need to go to church, neither do they see much need to leave it.  

Atheist Danes don’t just go to Christmas services; they get their kids baptized and confirmed, too. Unlike weddings and funerals, baptisms and confirmations are about religious identity and faith. Baptism makes an infant part of the Church, and in confirmation a young person declares faith in Christianity’s tenets. So why do atheist Danes baptize their kids and get them confirmed? When Zuckerman would ask them, they often said that it’s just what they do. A big part of religion has always been “what we do,” the customs and traditions of a people. Practically speaking, getting confirmed means a party and presents, so a youngster has little incentive to bow out. I went through confirmation in the Lutheran church I grew up in. Yes, there was a party, but there was also a year of preparatory education so we could know what beliefs we were confirming. The minister’s wife made clear that, if one didn’t believe the doctrines, one was supposed to back out of the process. Family pressure kept me in the program, and I went through the confirmation rite, but it was onerous to be pressured into publicly avowing things I didn’t believe. Atheist kids in Denmark don’t face any such inner conflict when they go through confirmation. The kids aren’t actually devoting their souls to the service of Christ. Confirmation is just what they do.

In the States, atheists complain about how much tax money is being lost by our not taxing churches. Many would like to take away religion’s special tax status, and many would like to see religion torn down altogether. Personally, I’m more concerned that we enforce the laws we already have against political campaigning from the pulpit and against inordinate salaries for clergy. But atheists in Denmark don’t begrudge a special status to the official Lutheran church. In fact, most of them pay a regular tax whose revenue supports the church. This arrangement, where the government collects revenue on behalf of official churches, is common in Europe but strikes Americans as bizarre. Most Danish atheists are happy to support the Lutheran Church as part of their cultural heritage. 

While most Danes are atheists, they often think of themselves as Christians who support Christian values. What do they mean by Christian values? Opposing gay marriage and abortion? Far from it. They mean being a decent person, helping the poor, caring for the sick, and the general welfare-state apparatus. As Zuckerman observes, the Nordic welfare state is the best realization yet of Jesus’ message that we are to care most for the people who have the least. US atheists are likely to claim that such concerns are merely natural elements of human morality, but this drive to help people who can’t help us in return only feels natural in a culture that’s been steeped in Christian idealism, as ours has. Nietzsche hated Christianity for the way it promoted concern for the lowly and equal rights for all. He saw and despised unspoken Christian ideals motivating the supposedly logical schemes of the utilitarians. Will atheists in the US ever speak admirably of these “Christian” values that they uphold and honor? Not any time soon, I’d reckon.

The atheistic Christianity of Denmark makes neither side in the US happy. Believers don’t want faith to be stripped from their sacred rites, reducing them to mere cultural traditions. Atheists don’t want to pay taxes to support churches, and we don’t want to send our kids to be baptized and confirmed in a church. Both sides take religion too seriously for going through the motions. But if Denmark’s example is too accommodating on both sides to work in the States, can we still learn something from it? If nothing else, Denmark shows us that the bitter animosity in the States between atheists and believers is not the only way.    

The Atheist Alliance of America Convention

Me and Steven Pinker

Last August I attended the annual conference of the Atheist Alliance of America, which conveniently took place just south of Seattle. It was my first exposure to the atheist community, and it was an eye opener. When I say that I wish atheists would dial back the negativity and dial up the empathy, my experiences at this conference contribute to that opinion. I’ve been to dozens of gamer and science fiction conventions, but this was different. It was an annual convention, like most are, but it moves from city to city. That means the people at the AAA running the convention were not familiar with the local secular community, and the locals had never been to the convention before, or to any atheist convention for most of us. The locals demonstrated a desire to be part of something, but the AAA offered programming that leaned toward being against something. For a few hours on Saturday, I staffed the welcome table in the hotel, with a big “Atheist Alliance of America” banner high on the wall behind me. Most of the people walking by were not with the convention, and I’m sure some believers looked at me and figured that we atheists were gathered there to make fun of them. It was a little embarrassing to sit at that table because to some degree they were right. The negativity was bad enough to even turn off some of the atheists. Opponents of friendly atheism accuse me of wanting to accommodate believers better. Beliebers? How about we accommodate our fellow atheists better?

How negative was the convention? Not all that negative. There were talks about secular volunteer work, news about a first-responder organization that’s in the works, a reading of quotes by and about the famous agnostic orator Robert Ingersoll, and some comedy aimed at atheists. But the anti-Christian and anti-religion slant was evident. One headline event was a documentary about how terrible the black church is. The film presumes that churchgoers are dupes, getting nothing from the church experience. We got Steven Pinker to speak to us. What luck, Steven Pinker! As atheists, we know our minds come from our evolved brains instead of from our souls. Did Pinker explain to us how the evolved brain works? No, his lecture was about how religion has no evolutionary value. As if we atheists hold religion in too high esteem, and we need to have its down side spelled out to us. A debate over whether Jesus existed got big billing, too. Richard Carrier was there promoting the idea that Jesus never existed. This fringe idea is naturally popular among atheists. Carrier wisely chose not to debate against someone holding the mainstream, Encyclopedia Britannica answer to the historical question of Jesus. Instead, he found a Bible-thumping Christian. Compared to the Christian view, the Jesus-myth idea looks pretty good. Presumably that’s why the consensus view was excluded from the debate and they didn’t invite me to take on Carrier. In addition to Carrier, there were two other Jesus-myth authors in attendance, and none of the three offer a plausible explanation for where the stories in the New Testament came from. Like creationism, the idea that Jesus is a myth has gone nowhere in mainstream scholarship but survives among die-hard fans. We atheists like to style ourselves as evidence-driven skeptics, but we’re human and we’re prone to tribal biases just like anyone else.

Could this negativity have been what people wanted? Yes, there must have been plenty of people there who ate up all the anti-religious rhetoric. Politicians and talk radio hosts know that us-versus-them talk is golden. We’re born ready to adopt tribalism as our way of life, and talking about the enemy gets our attention. I’d like to think that the Pacific Northwest is home to soft, nice atheists, but that’s a suspiciously self-serving opinion. Still, judging from the people I talked to there was more interest in community than you would infer based on the official programming. At first, I didn’t talk about being a Unitarian Sunday school teacher because I didn’t want to draw a hostile reaction. When I did talk about it, one con-goer accused me of indoctrinating children, but then I met two other Unitarians, including one who also loves teaching Sunday school. Maybe I should do a panel about Unitarians at my next atheist convention. In atheist community-building, the latest news worldwide is the Sunday Assembly. Several locals expressed a real interest in the project, but there was no official mention of it anywhere at the con. The guy who was running AV for the con is a secular humanist celebrant, and he recently gave an historic humanist invocation at a local city council meeting, but there was no information about the celebrant program. Nor was I the only atheist to be put off by the negativity. One attendee told me she walked out of some of the talks. Another said it was her first atheist event ever, and she wanted to know why there was so much attention being paid to Christianity. Her young son was along, and the event was billed as family friendly, but there were hardly any kids and not much for them to do. 

Sam Harris says that the critical posture that’s prevalent in atheism is driving away women. He’s half right. It’s driving away people who are more interested in connecting with each other as people than in tearing down outsiders. It’s not gender per se that’s at issue, but the net effect is to drive away more women than men. As a professional game designer, I know about communities that are full of brainy guys, and it can be a weird place, especially on the Internet. Let’s grow beyond that. Let’s get working on a secular community that’s more about what we can do together and less about identity politics, something that’s welcoming to a broader range of people. The AAA convention tells me that there are secular people looking for something. Let’s build something.

Atheist Alliance of America: This national organization is distinct from the one that erects confrontational billboards at Christmas, the American Atheists. 

Atheists Mostly Aren't Jerks

Grief Without Belief, part of a
warmer, friendlier atheism.

Last Sunday, I angered some of my fellow atheists with my provocative title (“Why Atheists Are Jerks”) and my unflattering portrayal of the atheist population (too critical). Today’s post is for the people I offended. I know that it’s nearly impossible to use reason to convince someone of something they don’t want to believe, but these atheists raised a lot of points, and it’s only fair that I address them. First, though, let me rephrase the two elements of my core statement from last Sunday.

1. People in the atheist community are more argumentative than average. 

2. Let’s make the atheist community less argumentative overall. 

Now here are a couple common responses, which are opportunities for me to clarify my position.

“I’m an atheist but not in the atheist community”

My post is primarily about the atheist community in the US, which basically means people here who interact with each other and with others as atheists. There are plenty of atheists who aren’t in the community, and plenty of people who don’t believe in God but who don’t identify as atheists. My concern is with the community because it’s my community and because the people in this community give others the impression of what atheists are like. 

“Believers just think we’re jerks because their beliefs don’t hold up to our logic” 

It’s not just believers who think atheists act jerky too often. Famous atheists cause controversies with their hurtful or tone-deaf blog posts and Tweets. The people who are provoked by these atheists mostly aren’t believers. Often it’s fans of these atheists who wish that they would keep quiet. On atheist message boards, atheists go after each other in ALL CAPS over hot-button issues, such as race or Islamophobia. This year’s Atheist Alliance of America convention had such negative, anti-Christian programming that it put off some of the attendees. This negativity is real; it’s not in the imaginations of the believers. 

“There is jerky behavior in every population” 

It’s true that there’s jerky behavior in every group, but some groups have more jerky behavior than others. Consider our opposites in the New Age movement. If atheists are people who don’t intuit a mind behind the universe, then our opposites are the New Age types, who infer meaning and cosmic intentionality in every coincidence. New Age leaders aren’t known for saying inflammatory things about rape or sexual harassment on the Internet. I’m on a forum for people who get all mystical about evolution and the history of the universe, and these people fall all over each other saying nice things about each others’ work. On atheist forums, I come across as comparatively civil, but on these New Age-y forums I’m a rebel and an iconoclast. It’s true that stereotypes are false. Not every atheist acts jerky all the time. But generalizations can still be true, and on a per-capita basis the atheist community generates a lot of jerkiness. Enough jerkiness, for example, to make the community less appealing to women, on average, than to men.

“It’s important to be angry”

I can agree with that sentiment this far, that it sure feels right to be angry. It feels right down to the very bones. If you stopped being angry, that would feel like backing down or giving in. That’s what anger is for. Anger evolved to help us get up the gumption to go hurt someone, or at least to help us stare enemies down because they can see that we’re really willing to hurt them. Anger did not evolve to help us think clearly, and certainly not to help us think clearly about our enemies. People, it turns out, make their moral, political and religious decisions emotionally and then justify them rationally. So if you’re angry, the anger is influencing your perspective, a perspective whose “factory settings” already bias it in one’s own favor. Martin Luther King got a lot done. Was he angry? If you want to define him as angry, then so be it. Be angry like King was. Would King have indulged in sharing derogatory memes on the Internet? We each have a built-in bias, distorting everything we notice and remember in our own favor. In particular, we tend to exaggerate the virtues of our own “tribe” and to denigrate the virtues of other “tribes.” You’re never getting past that bias while you’re angry. You’ll never be able to objectively assess the impact of religion on world history or the historicity of Jesus if you’re driven by faith or by anger.

Anger is unpleasant. People who are less empathic presumably don’t mind anger that much, but even so none of the people locked in online forum debates are really having fun. These text-based duels are more like a compulsion than a joy. “Someone is wrong on the Internet!” Look at the angry exchanges with believers over evolution or religion, and you’ll see that nothing productive is being generated from these virtual fights. Perhaps less empathic people get stuck in online debates because they don’t mind the arguing enough to drive them completely away. You may claim a right to be angry, and you have that right, but you’re exercising that right at the expense of other atheists.

Anger also moves product. People with books to sell love to stir up the base with messages that get people angry. Talk radio knows how to do that. Politicians know how to do that. Atheist leaders are making money by churning up more anger among atheists. What if people were making money by helping us achieve focus or tranquility instead of trying to raise our bile? Here Sam Harris’s new book, Waking Up, is an interesting case, where he’s selling insight and equanimity. Can we please see more of that sort of thing?

Friendlier Atheism?

One commenter asked how to express one’s atheism without being confrontational. For general guidelines, I recommend using conversation to build connections with people rather than to one-up them. From a young age, girls learn to use conversation to create connections, and boys learn to use language to compete. We should take a page from the girls’ playbook. For example, how do you respond when someone says “God bless you”? If I said to someone “Good luck,” and their reply was to sharply inform me that they don’t believe in luck because the universe is unfolding as it should (or something), that rejoinder would not endear me to the other person. When someone says “good luck” or “God bless you,” they’re just trying to be nice, and it’s best to respond in kind. Here’s a hypothetical exchange with four different atheist responses. My advice is to use the response that will make little old ladies think that we atheists are sweet and funny.

Nice old lady: “God bless you, young man!”

Atheist: [mad face, angry voice] “How dare you assume that I subscribe to your ancient, genocidal myth?!”

Atheist: [mock solemn] “And may the Force be with you.”

Atheist: [sincere] “I don’t actually believe that invoking God will do me any good, but thanks anyway.”

Atheist: [smile] “Thanks. I’m an atheist, but I need all the help I can get!”

How do we develop a friendlier atheist community? We can try to reduce the negativity by calling out the worst behavior. Vitriol is taken for granted, and by questioning vitriol maybe we can get people to reflect on it and see it for what it is. Tribalism is bad juju for a community that sees itself as enlightened. And we can increase the positivity, finding ways to improve connections among us, both online and face-to-face. Efforts such as the Sunday Assembly (http://sundayassembly.com/) and Grief Without Belief (http://www.griefbeyondbelief.org/) are good examples of recent developments along these lines. In general we might not be the warmest, most empathic population on the planet, but we can sure do better than we’ve been doing.