Aggh!!
We’re often told that you have to respect people’s opinions.
Your culture is not my culture; your ways are not my ways, but I can see why you have adopted them and I respect your right to chose to behave in x or y manner – so the mantra goes. And it’s a good one – in fact, respect and tolerance are probably two of the most important features of any functional society. So I, as a fairly ardent atheist, will try my best to respect the faith of my peers. Not because I believe in god, nor because I have much time or sympathy for many of the social institutions that have sprung out of faith in god, but because nine times out of ten a belief in god causes no harm to others and much good to those who have it and so really, why the hell should I kick up a fuss based on my own belief set? If some women chose to wear a veil, that is their choice; if others regard the condom as evil well then okay, fine, you’re entitled to that belief so long as you don’t go around telling me that condom use has no effect on the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases. I will tolerate pretty much anything, so long as it does no harm and has been freely chosen by those who practice the belief.
Then sometimes something comes along like this…
… and I’m afraid my best efforts at respect and toleration suddenly break down. Founded as a conservative response to wikipedia, that well-known den of athiests, liberals, agnostics and slander-mongerers, most of whom are, it hastens to add, unemployed youths in a manner which does somewhat remind me of large swathes of the graduate population of the UK at the moment – conservapedia brands itself as ‘an encyclopedia you can trust’ and in its own, quiet and well-footnoted ways, sets out an agenda that horrifies me. I was introduced to it by a gentleman who we’ll call Gandalf, who was himself rather surprised to discover that he is a proponent of the homosexual agenda, which seeks to reduce the freedom of speech of its opposition, distort Biblical teaching and oppose hate crimes, which are themselves merely a ‘liberal invention’. Astonishment was my main reaction, until I finally read a conservapedia article on feminism and was myself amazed to discover that I, as a casual feminist in the sense that I still don’t think we’ve quite nailed equality entirely but we’re really getting there, manifest the following qualities (sourced from http://conservapedia.com/Feminism):
- never wanted gender equality; they want power for the female left[4]
- in movies, falsely portray the men as inherently evil, dumb or incompetent, and the women as inherently good, smart or competent (note that this conflicts with gender equality)
- pretend that there are no meaningful differences between men and women when that advances liberal causes (e.g., women and men equally in military combat, to weaken the U.S. military), but reject equality when that results in more money to women (e.g., VAWA funding of women’s groups)
- oppose chivalry and even feign insult at harmless displays of it (see battle between the sexes)
- view traditional marriage as unacceptably patriarchal
- belittle and mock other women who desire to have children or raise a family[5][6]
- shirk traditional gender activities, like baking[7]
- support affirmative action for women
- prefer that women wear pants rather than dresses, presumably because men do[8][9]
- seek women in combat in the military just like men, and coed submarines
- refuse to take her husband’s last name when marrying[10]
- believe marriage implies female servitude when it is in fact a mutual bond
- distort historical focus onto female figures, often overshadowing important events (Eg: Henry VIII’s wives take precedence in common knowledge to his actual reign.)
- object to being addressed as “ma’am,” or feminine nicknames such as “sweetheart” or “honey”;[11] object to other female-only names, such as “temptress”
- take offense at grammatical rules of the English language, like using the pronoun “he” when referring to a hypothetical/anonymous person, or phrases like ‘fireman’ and ‘stewardess.’
- support of the homosexual agenda
Forgive my insertion of the entire list here, but as each point is so astonishing to me I really couldn’t find any material to trim. Tolerate the beliefs of other, I say to myself, tolerate and understand, but then this… this is not merely nonsense, it is harmful nonsense. Worse, it is nonsense to which there is no arguing. Reason and rationality seem to have no place here; polite discourse is overwhelmed by words that have no particular meaning – feminist, liberal, socialist, agenda – as if these twisted concepts are enough to reject learning, debate, discourse and study. It genuinely distresses me to think, not so much that there are people out there who believe in the value of baking over equality between the sexes, but that there is no room for disagreement. That an ideology can be so solidly set that there is no hope for reply. I will strive to tolerate the beliefs of others, and open my mind to the possibility that my own beliefs may be flawed, but how can I accept the views of those who seem to have rejected toleration themselves? How do you argue without reason, how can you prove a point when your evidence will be dismissed as biased and there an end? Another example – arguably less harmful but oddly more extreme – came when accidentally stumbling on the flat earth society. I’d heard of this organisation, but never actually thought it existed and yet here it is…
http://theflatearthsociety.org/cms/
… and not only is it real, but it makes well-thought through arguments against which there is no reply. And why is there no reply? Because the evidence that people like myself use to argue against there being a flat earth are the product a conspiracy, run in the main by NASA. I have been brainwashed. I am, myself, unfit to debate the point because I do not appreciate how far my knowledge, mind and thoughts have been corrupted by the liberal society in which I have been raised. Thus not only are my arguments dismissed, but I myself am dismissed as a worthwhile individual to have a conversation with, and so the madness continues. Thus, a question in the flat earth forum…
Q: “NASA and other world space agencies have pictures of the Earth from space, and in those pictures the Earth is clearly a globe; in this day and age, hasn’t it been proven beyond any doubt that the Earth is round?”
… receives the following answer:
A: NASA and the rest of the world’s space agencies who claim to have been to space are involved in a Conspiracy to keep the shape of the Earth hidden. The pictures are faked using simple imaging software.
Beneath it a footnote points out that…
PLEASE NOTE: This means that pictures confirming the roundness or flatness of the Earth DO NOT CONSTITUTE VALID PROOF.
And thus the argument is ended before it began. Science is rejected; Conspiracies with capital ‘c’s are embraced. Those who disagree are categorised as part of this or that agenda, or slaves to this or that incorrect ideology. Debate is sabotage; dissent is conflict. And worse than all of this – not merely is the information being put through unfounded, flawed, mis-represented or just plain wrong – but the manner of its delivery teachers its readers to close their minds down, and accept only one ultimate truth, rejecting not merely the arguments of the world around them, but also the people who disagree. And this I do not, nor cannot condone, understand or forgive.
