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Statement of Objection to Center for Inquiry CEO Ron Lindsay’s Actions Regarding Feminism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information, please contact:

Kim Rippere, Secular Woman President: 404.669.6727 E-mail

Elsa Roberts, Secular Woman Vice President: 906.281.0384 E-mail

The Secular Woman Board of Directors, in consultation with our most active members and supporters, regrets having to express our organization’s deep concern over recent public statements from Dr. Ron Lindsay, Center for Inquiry (CFI) CEO, during and following that organization’s Women in Secularism (WiS) conference this past weekend.

Secular Woman promoted the WiS event heavily with our membership for months. During this period we raised $2190 that enabled seven women, relatively new to the secular movement, to experience an event they would not otherwise have had the means to attend. Based on member feedback, we estimate that another 25 of the reported 300 WiS attendees were at the conference because of Secular Woman’s encouragement.  Additionally, 57% of our Board of Directors was present.

Through Secular Woman’s @AbortTheocracy campaign, thousands of our fans, followers and members have been made aware of CFI’s efforts in the area of reproductive rights. In fact, CFI is the only organization to have taken advantage of this service announced to secular leaders on an internal list-serv for leaders in the secular movement.

Given our support and the aims of WiS, we find it stunningly unacceptable that Dr. Lindsay chose to greet our members, our Board, and other attendees with his personal, ill-formed criticisms of feminism rather than welcoming us all to the conference we had promoted and paid to attend. Worse, he instead chose to personally welcome a man who has harassed and antagonized many of the speakers scheduled for the weekend, and who now has an interview about the conference on the front page of the website of A Voice for Men, which is monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center for their misogynistic content.

We are incredulous that in a conference about women in the secular movement Dr. Lindsay was completely silent about the threats, harassment, and stalking that many atheist women have experienced at the hands of other atheists. Additionally, we are truly appalled by the tone and content of his blog post, “Watson’s World and Two Models of Communication,” in which he bizarrely compares Rebecca Watson’s writings to missives from North Korea, misuses a Secular Woman statement to his own purposes, and claims that those who are active feminists cannot be real reason-and-evidence based secularists.

Not having seen an apology, retraction, or other followup to these official communications, we are forced to arrive at several conclusions:

  • that Dr. Lindsay’s actions are endorsed by the CFI Board of Directors as consistent with its mission and expectations of leadership

  • that CFI supports ad hominem attacks on individuals who disagree with CFI staff

  • that CFI is content with its limited diversity and doesn’t value the support of Secular Woman or our thousands of members and supporters

  • that Dr. Lindsay’s, and by extension CFI’s, endorsement of the Open Letter, which Dr. Lindsay’s blog violates in every way it could, was a sham

As a result of Dr. Lindsay’s actions, the past year’s conflicts have been further enflamed, continuing to alienate the demographic showing most growth potential within the secular community – women – not just from CFI, but from the secular movement. Secular Woman is hopeful that Dr. Lindsay and/or the CFI Board of Directors will offer a formal, complete, and deserved apology and retraction to Secular Woman and secular women and feminists* regarding his “welcome” statement and later blog comments. We trust that Dr. Lindsay and the CFI Board will now, and in the future, actively demonstrate their intolerance of all who harass, threaten, bully, and work to silence women and feminists. Finally, Secular Woman seeks open and honest in-person dialogue regarding women, feminism, and the secular community with the CFI Board of Directors.

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Secular Woman is an educational non-profit organization whose mission is to amplify the voice, presence, and influence of non-religious women. For more information about Secular Woman visit: www.SecularWoman.org.

*Note: statement has been edited to remove “all” in reference to secular women and feminists deserving an apology. All women do not want an apology. The statement was intended to reference secular women and feminists in a general sense, not to imply that literally all women were in agreement on this issue. 

A Response to “An Open Letter to the Secular Community”

4/13/2013: UPDATED***

Today, the leaders of several prominent secular organizations published a document titled “An Open Letter to the Secular Community.” Our name is not attached, and our members may be wondering why Secular Woman declined to endorse this document. As a secular organization, our mission is to amplify the voice, presence and influence of non-religious women. We recognize that part of our mission takes place in online communities. Although promoting better online communication is a worthy goal, we reject the current statement’s conception of civil discourse because we feel that it gives equal voice to the sexist ideas and beliefs that have been perpetuated as differing “interpretations” of feminism.

The Open Letter contains a textbook definition of feminism.

The principle that women and men should have equal rights flows from our core values as a movement . . . We seek not only civil equality for everyone, regardless of sex, but an end to discriminatory social structures and conventions – again often the legacy of our religious heritage—that limit opportunities for both women and men.

It is confusing, therefore, that this same letter suggests that a significant problem with online communication is centered on the “debate” about the “appropriate way to interpret feminism.” At Secular Woman, the principle that “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression” (Hooks, 2000, p. viii) is taken as a given, and not a topic for debate.

As a secular feminist organization committed to understanding and exposing societal constructs that contribute to the inequality of women and other oppressed groups, we have no desire to listen to, respect, or continuously debunk overtly sexist viewpoints. Just as most scientists are not interested in debating the beliefs of creationists, we are not interested in debating gender-biased, racist, homophobic, or trans*phobic beliefs. Although the document contains reasonable recommendations for increasing effective communication, some of these techniques have been used to silence women (and other oppressed groups). When people express opinions that challenge sexism ingrained in social structures and conventions they receive a significant amount of pushback and harassment. Those of us working to challenge systemic sexism should be under no obligation to listen to or be more charitable to our opponents.

Sincerely,

The Board of Secular Woman

Kim Rippere, President

Elsa Roberts, Vice President

Corinne Zimmerman, Secretary

Brandon Chaddock

Nicole Harris

Charlotte Klasson

Monette Richards

 

UPDATE (4/15/13):

1. The idea that “feminism is a social movement to end sexism” is a textbook definition. We are not interested in participating in diversionary conversations about ‘gender feminism’ or ‘equity feminism’ or whether the SCUM Manifesto represents our definition of feminism. It does not.

Feminism – defined simply as being against sexism – is one of our values. As such, it informs the way we approach the mission, vision, and strategic goals of our volunteer organization.

Proving that feminism is a valid worldview is something Secular Woman is not interested in pursuing. What we are interested in pursuing is the strategic goals that we have set for our organization.

2. Because of our Response  to the Open Letter, we have been criticized for not wanting to “listen to” or “be more charitable” to our opponents. This criticism suggests that we have shut down the dialog before even listening to the “opposing” side. The dialog concerning feminism and its role in atheism/secularism has been going on for some time now and we are aware of the great number of related conversations that have taken place in countless online forums, at secular conferences, and other venues. The formation of Secular Woman was a response to the ongoing “debate” about whether feminism has a place in the secular movement and community. We assert that it does. Because of this core value, we work from a viewpoint that takes the defining principles of feminism to be “self evident” (meaning we are not going to debate feminism’s validity; but are very open to discussions within a feminist framework).

Since conversations about the nuances of feminism are happening elsewhere, Secular Woman chooses to focus on its mission: promoting the voice and presence of non-religious women. We also choose to take the advice of Ron Lindsay (CFI President and CEO):  "Or, if one thinks enough effort has been spent on rebuttal, simply ignoring them."  

Women’s History Month Recap

Over the course of Women’s History Month, Secular Woman was pleased to run a series of articles written by women in the secular community on women’s history that was of interest to them. Below is a roundup of all the articles we published.

 

Women’s Contributions to Science Fiction Literature

Just imagine: the twenty-first century, a time in which all people across the Terran globe enjoy lives of equality, peace, and freedom. A time in which discrimination based on gender, race, and culture is a thing of a dark and distant past. A time in which secular humanism guides all people to treat each other fairly on the home planet and on colonies on distant worlds. And, if you can, just imagine a time in which the achievements and interests of men and women are held in equal esteem and made available to all…

 

Herstory of U.S. Women’s Right to Vote

The struggle for enfranchisement in the United States, a woman’s right to vote, actually began in 1848 at the Seneca Falls Convention, led by Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony (Judy Pehrson NY Times 2001). The Declaration of Sentiments adopted at the convention demanded the right to vote, as well as equal rights in education, industry, the professions, political office, marriage, personal freedom, control of property, guardianship of children, making of contracts, the church and in the leadership of all moral and public movements…

 

Marie Souvestre, Freethinker

It took around seventy years of relentless organizing, struggle, and solidarity for women in America to win the right to vote in 1920…

 

Lucy Parsons, Revolutionary

Lucy (Lucía) Eldine González Parsons was a woman of Hispanic, Native American, and African American heritage, married to a white Southerner who would later become one of the Haymarket Martyrs; a woman who fought against specific oppressions of women and people of color, but who also believed that class oppression was the cause of all other oppressions; a woman who, over the course of her life, would be a socialist, an anarchist, and lastly, a communist…

 

Choosing my Future

Life without choices is simple. As a young woman, when faced with what seemed to me to be an overwhelming question: What am I going to do with my life? — although I knew that the possibilities were practically unlimited, I made the choice to narrow my options by devoting my life to Jesus as an evangelical Christian…

 

The Strong Atheist Women who Led History

Women have played a vital role in the historic forward movement of the Atheism. The impression is often given in society that atheists have always been men, and they have led the charge, but the reality when uncovered is something completely different. It was women who pushed back religion first…

 

Women in STEM

The history of women in STEM fields–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is a history of women overcoming gender discrimination. A number of recent studies have highlighted the gender disparity in these career fields. The US National Science Foundation’s 2013 “Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering” report notes that while women have studied STEM subjects in greater numbers since the early 1990s, and more women graduate from college than men, women still earn far fewer STEM degrees than men…

 

If Clara Schumann Had Only Been a Man!

Although Clara Wieck Schumann was a world-renowned concert pianist whose career spanned over 60 years and whose influence is still felt today in concert repertoire, the piano keyboard which forms the bottom border of the doodle almost seems like an afterthought. The focal point of the doodle is a woman so thoroughly surrounded by her children that they are literally hanging off her body and hampering her freedom of movement. Even a woman like Clara Schumann, who had managed to carve out a bit of personal fame in a thoroughly masculine world, was ultimately depicted primarily in the role which her patriarchal culture insisted was the only legitimate one for women…

 

Susan Epperson

One of the biology teachers who was going to be required to teach the EVILUTION chapter was a classy young lady by the name of Susan Epperson. The AEA asked her to be the plaintiff in the case they were going to bring against the state law…

Response to The Petition “The Leaders of Atheist, Skeptical and Secular Groups: Support Feminism and Diversity in the Secular Community”

When Secular Woman’s President, Kim Rippere, and Vice President, Elsa Roberts, attended HEADS, they were made aware of a petition to leaders in the secular movement, urging them to stand up against sexism and other discriminatory behavior and embrace a message of social justice. Secular Woman wishes to formally respond to this request by stating that we categorically support the main points laid out in the petition:

We support making the atheist movement more diverse and inclusive.

We support strong, sensible anti-harassment policies at our gatherings.

We support the people in our community who have been the target of bullying, harassment and threats.

As an organization we strive, and will continue to strive, to remain aware and responsive to issues of power and privilege and how those issues affect the secular community as well as broader society. We will speak out against injustice and for equality and inclusion of minorities and other oppressed groups. Secular Woman believes that moving forward as a movement means confronting the issues of systemic racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. To that end we embrace the values of feminism and humanism, using them to guide our vision and goals for the future.

A White Woman’s Privilege

"Privilege". It wasn't a term that I’d heard until 2011, when I began working with SlutWalk, a global movement focused on ending rape and rape culture. SlutWalk was ignited by a Toronto police officer telling campus group that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.”

What does privilege mean in relation to gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and so forth? When people say “white privilege” or “male privilege” or “x privilege,” what are they attempting to communicate?

This was not readily apparent to me, and many times the word “privilege” was used as a weapon, a way to push someone away, as an accusation, a way to shut down conversation, and to silence. It is not always used or received as a term that invites mutual exploration and understanding.

While my first experiences were off-putting, I have explored this idea over the last year. I don’t recall the circumstances under which I first encountered this word, but I do clearly recall being baffled, hurt, and confused about this word being virtually spat at me. Slutwalk was not universally appreciated (what an understatement) and some organizers and participants did not come onto the feminist and sexual assault scene with years of experience in the cultures of sexual abuse prevention and/or feminism. So, sometimes, the language (meaning as indicative of privilege, the approach to ending rape, and more) that SlutWalk planners was not preferred. SlutWalk organizers received quite a bit of feedback on their education privilege, race privilege, and socio-economic privilege, among other categories of privilege.

Personally, at some points it seemed to be a bloodbath. Here were 20-something women grabbing the mantle of feminism (and more), struggling to put on marches, and learning the ropes. All the while being metaphorically pummeled for never having grappled with the notion of privilege. Who was doing the pummelling? Feminists, sexual assault advocacy groups, “men’s rights activists,” a variety of anonymous internet people, groups devoted to racial equality, mainstream media, and more.

My role in the SlutWalk movement was amorphous; early on, I could not find my place. When I finally did, it was so behind the scenes that less than 250 people realized I was involved. I started a Facebook group, which was the first and continues to be the only place that SlutWalk planners are able to gather and talk about their experiences, to learn, to grow, to openly and yet not publicly talk about their realities.

Within this group I was called privileged and read hundreds of postings on the internet with people throwing this term around. In some ways, I was lucky. Because I wasn’t a front line person trying to navigate this landscape I had the opportunity to learn in my own way in my own time. But still, I was confused, angry, and mystified by the use of this term.

Ultimately, I pondered on the meaning of privilege. I decided to figure out how this word was part of my life and reached out in my confusion. This was the turning point.  My desire to actually understand and learn was the beginning. Isn’t it always? Like many others I think I am open-minded and work for diversity, equality, and more. To accept that there was learning in this arena was huge; in retrospect it changed my life. At the time, I was simply trying to understand.

I posted online about my experience with the word. This was a helpful response to my query:

Having certain privileges isn't an indictment of your character, and it doesn't mean you've never suffered. And no one privilege universally outweighs another. You and I have certain privileges because we are white (or at least will be taken for white by most people — obviously I do not know your ethnic background), and certain disadvantages because we are bi (well, I use "queer," but I mean something similar.) This means when a person of color is speaking about what it's like to be a person of color, their insights about POC should likely have more weight than ours. And when we're talking about queer issues, straight people should probably lend us an ear. But the most oppressed person (and I'm not even sure how we'd determine who that is in any given situation) doesn't get a "Most XYZ!" award or automatically win the argument. Ideally, talking privilege doesn't have to result in an argument — I have had some amazingly productive discussions since I've been able to recognize my privilege and listen more. It helps with figuring out how to ask the right questions when it's time to speak.

I finally came to the conclusion that what privilege really means is differences in personal identity and background, differences that confer unearned social power and advantages upon those who possess privilege, and that arbitrarily and unjustly disempower and disadvantage those who lack privilege. We all have different experiences in life, those experiences need to be understood when communicating, and our points of view are different because of our histories. When I hear privilege with this meaning, it makes sense.

Part of my struggle to understand this word is inherent due to the amount of privilege I have experienced in my own life!

Here is a short list of my privileges:
 

  • Upper-middle class growing up.
  • Graduate degree.
  • Successful business career.
  • Never sexually abused.
  • White.
  • You can stop laughing now!

Looking back, one clear example of privilege at work occurred when I was volunteering at a local women's group and we were working on ending Childhood Sexual Exploitation. As a volunteer on this committee, we worked directly with survivors to create Public Service Announcements and increase awareness in the business community. The PSAs featured girls and young women and were intended for the victims of child sexual exploitation to identify with, so that they would call a hotline.

We had multiple revisions of the PSAs, primarily because of our failure to understand how they would be perceived. We were trying to put together PSAs to help girls understand that they were, in fact, being abused. This wasn't how they saw themselves. The images that were being chosen were based on how middle/upper class adult white women saw teenage girls that had been prostituted: homeless, dirty, and standing on railroad tracks. Survivors were clear that that was not an accurate depiction of these girls’ lives or their self-perception. In spite of the exploitation that was an unavoidable aspect of their lives, they saw young glamourous well-taken care of women at the salon, the nightclubs, and in nice cars.

In another project, we were hosting a breakfast for community business leaders to increase awareness of this issue. Much of the exploitation occurred in business areas. The hope was that, with awareness, the incidents of exploitation would decrease. We targeted businessmen for this campaign even though the survivors of childhood sex trafficking explained to us several times that businessmen were their primary exploiters. This meant our awareness campaign targets were the problem. Not the solution. We were raising awareness of sexual exploitation to the very perpetrators of it!

But we didn’t listen to the survivors; instead, we forged ahead with our own vision of how to make a difference.

Anyone see the problem? Privilege. Of course, I only understand this in hindsight.

Fast forward to now in the secular community and all our discussions regarding gender and harassment. While I do not comment often, I read blogs and their comments. Many times I agree; sometimes I do not. One thing I do see is comments that strike me as odd. I cannot put my finger on what the problem is . . . then it comes to me: male privilege.

I don't use this term to distance us from one another. Instead, I am asking that men with privilege listen (or read) more, comment less, try to understand another’s perspective, try to understand how another might see your words and deeds in a different light, and to understand that words and deeds might not be taken as you intend them. Mostly I use this term so that we may start talking openly about it – together.

Yes, I am privileged; almost everyone is in some way! When you look at specific facets of another life, they will not entirely match your own. When they do not match and someone else's experiences are more relevant in illuminating how systemic oppression works in people’s daily lives. . . you are privileged in that you do NOT have those experiences.
 

  • When talking with my sister about raising her children . . . She has parenting privilege.
  • When talking with my mother about careers . . . I have education privilege.
  • When talking with my male partner about sexual harassment in the workplace . . . he has male privilege.
  • When talking about living in the south with African-American friends . . . . I have white privilege.
  • When talking about sexism in the secular community . . . some have white male privilege.

Do I have ideas about parenting? Yes. Does anyone who has been or is responsible for raising a child dismiss my thoughts out of hand? Usually. Do they have the right? Yes. They have been there, done that. They have experience and expertise that I cannot hope to match. Do I find being dismissed so easily annoying? DEFINITELY! Does privilege weigh into my annoyance? Probably.

Really, privilege means that we are different, and that our society rewards some of these differences while disadvantaging others. Let's celebrate those differences while coming together to reduce the way privilege warps social power dynamics in our society. How do we come together? We must learn to listen, ask questions to understand, be open to how our own perspective colors our understanding of the world, and know that your life experiences make up the very essence of who you are and what you say and do.

This article will make sense to some and to others it will be gibberish. Hopefully I have intrigued you enough to want to know more! Here are two articles by Peggy McIntosh and Barry Meutsch that are both explanatory and readable.

______________________________________________________________________

I kept learning while writing this article! I had listed being the first born girl as a privilege. An editor asked me to explain what I meant as she had never heard of this privilege. Here is my explanation:

Imagine a family that on one side has no boys born into it in fifty years and the other side having no boys born into it in sixty years! I am the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter in a family of strong women. My sister is six years younger than me; I’m almost an only child. I have no brothers. Within the family, I never saw boys and girls treated differently. I never competed with a male sibling. My intimate family experience is that men and women are treated equally, women are just as capable as men, women are just as smart as men, etc. No, I wasn’t taught that women are better than men; it would have been easy to do that though. My experience of being a woman is privileged. (And now, I would say it was different, but not necessarily privileged.)

What I learned is that because there is no societal power afforded this that it is not a privilege, it is simply part of my life experience. I hope including this will help illuminate the difference.

On Rape Jokes

1 in every 6 women in America has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape.  This means that if your joke has an audience of more than a dozen people, there’s a good chance that one of them has been the victim of a sexual assault. You need to keep this mind when crafting your joke.

Rape jokes have been a hot subject, especially since the Internet eruption that occurred after Daniel Tosh’s ill-conceived attempt to make a rape joke at the expense of a female audience member.  Much of the resistance that was given in defense of Tosh seemed to be based on false assumptions.  It’s not a First Amendment issue: the First Amendment protects criticism of a joke every bit as much as it defends the joke itself.  Feminists do not have some secret list of subjects that they want to see banned from all comedy, nor do they want to ruin everybody’s good time. They’re not against a comedian firing back against a heckler.  I really hate it when people talk in the movie theater, and I wouldn’t blame the audience in a comedy club for feeling the same way.  If you’re in the audience, you aren’t the person that everyone else paid money to hear speak.  If someone is being seriously disruptive (and I wouldn’t refer to a single call of, “rape jokes are never funny,” seriously disruptive) then a comedian is well within rights to respond to that person.

The issue is that rape is a real and present threat.  It’s something that shapes the lives of women.  We are constantly told where not to go, when not to walk alone, what not to wear, and what not to do if we want to avoid being raped.  Nobody disputes that a dead baby is a horrible thing, or that a cancer diagnosis is bad news.  When women are raped, they face serious difficulty in getting people to take their attacks seriously. The first question asked when a woman reports a rape should be, “Are you okay?” or “How can I help?” but often it is, “What were you wearing?” or “Were you drinking?”  Rape victims are frequently blamed for their own victimization in ways that other victims of crime never have to face.  If you want women to be able to laugh at a rape joke, you can’t rest on shock value because there’s nothing shocking about a woman being raped.  It’s an everyday occurrence.  You have to be much cleverer and much more thoughtful than that. There are a couple of writing adages that I think would help Tosh, or any comedian, who wants to tackle a dark subject like rape.

Write What You Know:   My first thought when I heard about the Tosh brouhaha was, “A rape joke told by Tosh has about the same chance of being funny as an unemployment joke told by Paris Hilton,”  which is to say that it’s hard to write well about an experience you’ve never had to live.  This doesn’t mean that every piece of writing needs to be a thinly veiled autobiography.  If we insisted on only writing permutations of experiences we’ve actually lived through, we’d eliminate entire genres of fiction.  At heart, what this adage means is that if you want to try to write about another person’s experience, you should first attempt to really empathize with that person.  Has Paris Hilton ever struggled to pay a bill?  Has Tosh ever been told that if he walks alone at night, he’ll be to blame for anything bad that happens to him?  If not, then they’re probably going to suck at writing jokes about those experiences.  Anyone who wants to joke about rape is going to fail unless that person really thinks about what it would be like to rape victim.  Here are some facts to help with that, courtesy of RAINN.

1.       Every two minutes, someone in the US is sexually assaulted.  There are around 207,754 sexual assaults each year.

2.       54% of sexual assaults are not reported to the police.  97% of rapists never spend a day in jail.

3.       1 out of every 6 American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime.

4.       9 out of every 10 rape victims were female in 2003.

5.       Victims of sexual assault are 3 times more likely to suffer from depression, 6 times more likely to suffer from PTSD, and 4 times more likely to consider suicide.

This is a dark cloud to have to live under.  In theory, jokes about rape could help a person cope with the stress (one theory of humor is that it’s a psychological mechanism to release tension), but all too often rape jokes only serve to reinforce the rape culture that makes the above statistics a reality.  Wouldn’t it be funny if Tosh’s heckler had been raped right then and there?  Well, no.  And not only that, but she’s not being unreasonable to feel genuinely threatened by that remark.  There’s a good chance that a woman raped after a comedy show would be told that she’d asked for it because people drink at comedy clubs and the shows happen at night: both circumstances that are used to dismiss women when they report their rapes.

To write about other people’s experiences, you not only need to really try to see things from their perspective, you need to listen without defensiveness when they tell you that you got it wrong.  You need to accept that even a joke intended to condemn rape and rape culture can still be a trauma trigger, and then really listen to your critics.  Intent is not magic.  If your joke hurts someone, be brave enough to admit that you made a mistake.

Know Your Audience:  In the above statistics, I mentioned that 1 in every 6 women in America has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape.  This means that if your joke has an audience of more than a dozen people, there’s a good chance that one of them has been the victim of a sexual assault. You need to keep this mind when crafting your joke.

Maybe you have a friend who is a rape survivor, and she thinks your joke is hilarious.  That’s great, but you need to remember that the audiences of the world are not going to be clones of your friend.  Every rape has its own set of circumstances.  There’s no one right way to deal with rape, and different people heal at different paces.  You can’t extrapolate the approval of one person onto the experiences of everyone else.  That one victim can find your joke funny is a good sign, but it’s not an unmitigated green light.

Imagine you just wrote a joke about cancer that you think is hilarious.  There are many places you could try that joke out, but hopefully you wouldn’t list “hospital waiting room” as one of them.  Unfortunately, the pervasiveness of rape culture means that society at large is like that waiting room.  Any time you are in front of a large group of people, it’s a safe assumption that you have at least one rape survivor in the audience, and you should act accordingly. 

If this limitation makes you mad, it should.  Just make sure you get mad at the right people.  If you want to blame someone for making it difficult to joke about rape, don’t blame the rape victims who don’t think your joke is funny.  Don’t blame the feminists who criticized your joke. Blaming feminists and rape victims is just shooting the messenger.  They didn’t create rape culture; they’re just the ones to tell you about it. If you want to get mad at somebody, get mad at the rapists and rape apologists.  They are the ones ruining everyone’s good time.  They are the ones making it so difficult to joke about rape, and they are the reason you have to tread so carefully.  Part of the issue with rape culture is that victims get the blame, and the same thing happens when rape jokes are criticized.  Don’t be part of that problem.

Laura Brady, Outreach Committee Member

 

 

Secular Woman Signs 30% Coalition’s Corporate Board Representation Letter

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Institutional Investors, Leading Women’s Organizations Urge S & P 500 Companies to Add Women to Their Boards

“Thirty Percent Coalition” Wants Women to Hold 30% of Corporate Board Seats By 2015

Boston, MA – June 29, 2012 – A large number of institutional investors with approximately $1.2 trillion in assets under management, along with representatives of some of the nation’s leading women’s organizations, yesterday sent a letter to the 41 companies within the S & P 500 Index that do not have any women on their boards of directors, urging them to embrace gender diversity by adding women to their boards. The Thirty Percent Coalition, a coalition that includes senior business executives, statewide elected officials, national women's organizations, institutional investors, labor unions, corporate governance experts, board members and others, which was formed in late 2011 to address the lack of gender diversity in corporate boardrooms, organized the initiative and letter.

The Coalition has set a goal of women holding 30% of board seats across public companies by the end of 2015. According to reports by Catalyst, ION and Governance Metrics International, women only hold roughly 12 – 16% of corporate board seats today. “We must do better,” say the signatories in their letter, which asks companies to work with them to bring the number of women on corporate boards from where it is today – with women holding somewhere from 12 to 16 percent of board seats – to a point where women will hold 30 percent of board seats by the end of 2015.

The letter was sent to the 41 companies within the S & P 500 that do not have any women on their boards (see attached list), a group that includes such nationally-known companies as Chesapeake Energy, Urban Outfitters, Expedia, Teradyne and Federated Investors. In the letter, the signatories cite studies demonstrating a correlation between greater gender diversity among corporate boards and management, good corporate governance and long-term financial performance. According to the Thirty Percent Coalition, this is the first time that large institutional investors and national women’s groups have joined forces to press companies to improve their governance by adding gender diversity to their boards.

“Women’s groups across the nation have long fought for gender equality, and institutional investors have long been interested in good corporate governance and long-term investment returns,” says Thirty Percent Coalition Project Leader Charlotte Laurent-Ottomane. “What’s new today is that substantial research underscores the correlation between gender diversity, good governance and positive long-term corporate performance. We are urging the business community to embrace this elemental truth.”

The letter references quotas being adopted in numerous countries around the world to increase the number of women on corporate boards but proposes instead that companies in the U.S. voluntarily embrace more ambitious diversity goals because it makes business sense. ”We are not advocating for quotas,” says Joe Keefe, President and CEO of Pax World Mutual Funds and Chair of the Coalition’s Institutional Investor Committee. “We are simply urging companies in general, and these 41 companies in particular, to do better when it comes to inclusiveness and board diversity. Three years from now, we would like to see 30% of corporate board seats held by women. This is a modest, reasonable goal when women comprise over half of the workforce, a majority of college graduates and grad students, own 40% of American businesses and are the breadwinners or co-breadwinners in two thirds of American households.”

Signatories to the letter include several statewide elected officials on behalf of public retirement and pension funds in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, mutual funds and other asset managers, the AFL-CIO, non-profit foundations, religious institutions and many of the nation’s leading women’s organizations, including the National Council for Research on Women, the National Council of Women’s Organizations, the American Association of University Women and Feminist Majority. The Thirty Percent Coalition promises not to stop with this letter. “We intend to follow up and engage with each of these 41 companies, asking them to join the rest of the S & P 500 in welcoming women to their boards,” says Anne Sheehan, Director of Corporate Governance at the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), one of the signatories to the letter. “Whether it’s in dialogue with management, through shareholder resolutions, or related strategies, we intend to press for change. And then we’ll move beyond the S & P 500 to other companies as well. Our goal is to continue engaging companies until women hold at least 30% of corporate board seats across the United States.”


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About the Thirty Percent Coalition The Thirty Percent Coalition is a group of industry leaders, including senior business executives, statewide elected officials, national women's organizations, institutional investors, corporate governance experts and board members who believe in the power of collaborative effort to achieve gender diversity in public company boardrooms, and in the necessity of attaining at least 30% multicultural female representation across public companies by the end of 2015. For more information visit www.30percentcoalition.org

Contacts: Charlotte Laurent-Ottomane Thirty Percent Coalition [email protected] (561) 395 4581

Steven Grossman Treasurer and Receiver General Chairman of the Pension Reserves Investment Management (PRIM) Board Commonwealth of Massachusetts (617) 620-9980

Justin Ordman Solomon McCown [email protected] (617) 933-5281