This page has been set up for CFI members and others in the humanist/secularist/skeptic/atheist community to have a respectful discussion and dialog about sexual harassment of women in general, the #metoo movement, and the recent allegations against physicist Lawrence Krauss.
Some questions that have been posed:
- How should CFIC (and other groups) handle relationships with a person named as a perpetrator of sexual harassment?
- Recognizing that sexual misconduct is a known and serious issue, how do we set our standards of evidence?
- What exactly is sexual harassment? Does it need to be illegal to be unacceptable? How do we rewrite society’s rules about appropriate sexual relationships and conduct?
- Are the rules different for men and women?
Comments will be moderated. Please avoid
- offensive language
- personal attacks
- naming individual perpetrators or victims
We reserve the right to delete comments.
Some background:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/lawrence-krauss-sexual-harassment-allegations
https://www.buzzfeed.com/peteraldhous/center-inquiry-skeptics-lawrence-krauss
https://americanhumanist.org/press-releases/aha-cuts-ties-with-lawrence-krauss/
For more information, click to read CFIC’s March 2018 Critical Links article: “Me Too”
I’ve just heard of this recently and have not yet opted to even check into this until this notice. I will be doing so but beforehand want to note that WITHOUT
(a) a formal accusation or charge against the person addressed to the person being accused BY their accuser,
(b) the accused to have a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and
(c) a trial of his/her peers, and
(d) a recognition after possible judgements one way or the other, that the logic should be placed BEFORE the political interpretations and emotions involved,
…that Lawrence or any accused in today’s climate of ubiquitous accusations in media be addressed without prejudice.
This is NOT the case today and I take issue with those of our movement who places priorities to one sex or the other or to the many ‘identity’ politics of other related issues in the #metoo or any other movement where these are being done under a guise of ‘protecting’ potential victims up front against those rights above.
I do NOT agree that any patriarchy exist without a matriarchy in sync with this in any origins. I have dropped my own prior stance as “feminist” because it presupposes a FAITH in women’s accusations over and above males when no one appropriately fits in with such categories now EXCEPT by those wanting to maintain powers based upon their genetic predisposition. I’ll leave it at this until I can read into the links above. But I will NOT be bullied into any ‘etiquette’ with priority by snowflakes in our movement who actually COME from privileges they falsely presume belongs to all others of some of their own apologetic position of fortunes.
I also would like to see this NON-moderated as ANY form of this is itself questionable regarding “power” relations. If we are discussing assumptions of the differences of power, any power to moderate only undermines the sincerity of this discussion. If you feel it should be done, I see this itself as proof of part of the problem. It ISOLATES those with views one doesn’t like and, with regards to abuse psychology, is precisely THE first most effective means to control the abused, not help them!
Scott Mayers. Saskatoon, SK.
That’s a breath of fresh air. I thought I would check out the messages before disassociating myself from CFI. Expressly as a result of the email that sent me here.
Maybe I’ll stick around for a bit.
I essentially agree with Scott Mayers. There is a very dangerous trend going on. Merely being accused of something is apparently enough to halt or even break someone’s career and life, often for “he-says-I-say” things that are impossible to prove, as long as a vaguely sexual link is made.
This makes me think of the relatively recent case of a Victoria chiropractor mentioned by the CBC (source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/chiropractor-with-history-of-sexually-assaulting-patients-suspended-from-practice-again-1.4563068). Apparently, risking people’s lives (stroke) with a practice that has no known benefits is acceptable, while breast-fondling by the same person is not.
This, to me, demonstrates a completely distorted view of reality. For completeness: I am NOT saying that breast-fondling is acceptable, I AM saying that I think there are good reasons to assume that neck manipulation as practiced by chiropractors is quite likely to be far more dangerous than breast-fondling.
*sigh* This “innocent until proven guilty by criminal court standards” fallacy really needs to be squelched. The state wields immense power over its citizens, and therefore that power is quite properly fenced in by basic legal rights, among which are due legal process and presumption of innocence in criminal accusations. The Krauss affair, however, is not a criminal issue (and I’ve seen no one suggest it ought to be). We, as ordinary people, can and do make judgments about others’ actions and character, and therefore whether we want to associate with them, all the time, without appealing to legal standards of proof. Further, movements and organizations of social reform (such as the secular/skeptical movement) are, in virtue of that, ethical agents, and can and should make similar judgments about whose names they want on the marquee and at their events.
That being said, I agree one should be cautious and conservative in making such judgments — gossip is a thing. But in the current case, we have multiple independent reports covering a range of time, geography and institutional affiliation. We also have more than one institution having taken formal action (i.e. before the Buzzfeed story broke). Given that, it requires a conspiracy-theory level of denial to dismiss the whole thing.
> Given that, it requires a conspiracy-theory level of denial to dismiss the whole thing.
Hi Steve.
How many non-criminal accusations do you think should be levelled before we are justified in taking power and the law into our own hands and fomenting a lynch mob? Certainly cases where innocents have had their lives ruined are not rare. Do you think it is a justifiable sacrifice to ruin a life and ignore lies if the end game is to… What is the end game?
Since no one has proposed “taking the law into their own hands” (what does that even mean?), your question is irrelevant.
I see. So you are not levelling the wrath of the court of public opinion when you advocate disassociating people without legal standards of proof. I.e. it’s OK to ruin someone’s life, but don’t come at me telling me I said to use the law to do it.
I dropped my support of your organization years ago because of the way you’ve handled sexual harassers. The first important thing you can do to stop promoting sexual harassers and sending them on speaking tours under your banner. In no way should that behaviour should be rewarded. There are other non terrible people that we could be hearing from instead. As a organization you have a responsibility to keep your employees, and volunteers safe. The rules may be different for non-profits but this is liability.
Sexual harassment isn’t an extraordinarily claim so the evidence threshold is going to be low.. unless you’re spying on everyone what you are going to get is personal testimony. Mostly that’s all any HR department will get yet they will still act.
You cannot rewrite society expectations all you can do is make your corner of the world safer. If enough of do it then bit by bit society will change. That actions must only be legal to be acceptable is an extremely low bar to set for human behaviour. There are many legal ways to act that will you get rightfully banned for life from many establishments.
There are many templates for anti-harassment policies that you can use to build yours. They use gender neutral language for a reason. Whether you are non-binary, male or female you have the right to have your boundaries respected. No organization should be neglect to provide a safe experience.
I had to search for a new link for this because the original one from our email notice was relinked!
IF anyone new can find this, to respond to the above, I KNOW that CFIC is given a “non-profit” status and that our Canadian laws assert this membership is not allowed to speak politically. YET, the real meaning of this organization IS ‘political’ regardless.
I’m not sure why this group organized as an official non-profit here when our laws here are Pro-religious and WHY our organization is not allowed to speak politically. This presents an automatic bias against anyone with a formal membership and the first major reason I opted NOT to get one officially. I believe the government’s purpose in such laws are a literal means to CONTROL how certain groups run from above. But I think this should be challenged IF THE ORGANIZERS aren’t a function to data collection on us “Satanic Unbelievers” from actual non-atheists. I’ve heard some leader mention that atheism IS a ‘religion’ and this struck me odd. Given the law here, IF it is not possible for us to act FREELY as the “free thinkers” many of us are believed this organization is meant to support, then this group is basically not legitimate and NO ONE should sign up for simple legal reasons.
That is, if you sign up and have to be accountable to things like our “human rights commission”, this POWER alone acts as a means to manipulate our freedom of speech.
I disagree with you Carmen on ousting associations of those merely accused of supposed inappropriateness. The LOGIC of those speakers, like Lawrence Krauss, does not become NULL and VOID simply for one’s personal social behavior. Many skeptics in our group originally BECOME skeptics for being treated by society as outsiders and what initiates their skepticism for doubting how the world falsely paints us all as capable of anything. Its why you DON’T see many women in this group except for more of the unusual types, for instance, something I notice that differs extremely to other MeetUp groups I’ve seen.
For the men in this group, there will be a more likely tendency to be those of the ‘effeminate’ (ie. traditional emotional-types) that also HAVE had less sociable experience by contrast to many of the others. There is an obvious but unspoken truism that the ‘nerdy’ scientist for the men makes them highly less desirable by contrast to the general public. [I had to laugh at myself on one meet where ALL other males in the meet were BALD except for me. ???]
If you think I’m being harsh, ask yourself this: if it turned out that we discover Darwin had been a child molester (or strong ‘hearsay’ of Testimonials to this view) would this require an immediate dismissal of evolutionary selection theories. I know I’ve heard of how he supposedly recanted his theory and embraced religion at his last day alive. I thought even that was stupid in a similar way. What if he did? Why does it matter to attempt to disprove to those religious testimonials about his behaviors?
Censoring the intellectual skeptics for personal behavior is irrelevant to the goals of free rational thinking. If we are required to do this, then we are doomed from the start. As I noted above, the links to this were altered and this acts as a form of censoring….just as ‘moderation’ does. If we are to survive by SINCERE means, I think we have to remove this group from official non-profit status. I’m not sure WHY this is even essential given we can still ACT the way we do without such need. I don’t believe the Catholic church here is accountable to the same treatment given our political Constitution was designed with their protection in mind.
So I propose disbanding the formal status of this group because it prevents us from legally being ALLOWED to the ‘free thinking’ here. In fact, all this does is aid our religious-favoring politicians to KNOW everything about us. And given the STRONGER religious interests today believe IN any means to their ends, if we are not already being realistically a function of non-skeptics/non-atheists outsiders utilizing this group as a “Honey Pot” (a means to entrap specific people by false forums and/or to utilize it as a control mechanism for those they draw in), this WILL be the case eventually.
I already had to step out of the Meetup groups precisely because of this kind of censuring and how we are being begged to speak ONLY THROUGH that organizations means to zero privacy. I had material deleted that pointed out how a comparison of the identity politics of the same people demanding Confederate statues be taken away are also FOR reconstructing alternate ones elsewhere with simply different ‘heroes by special racially identifying groups as hypocritical.
As to the language, as a point in hypocrisy, some here are getting us to ‘support’ restricting words, like “retard” from any and all media (yet “fuck” is still allowed). Ask yourself if it is appropriate to hold this view yet simultaneously stand to conserve those speaking isolated languages. Does this mean that if you speak a non-English language, they have a special privilege to use the same words in their vocabulary? How would we know?
These and other things here are both hypocritical and…..by fortune of an intolerant governing Constitution and establishment, only the select ‘minority’ of women here, even IF in actual minority, get the full power here to dictate there OWN “free thinking” as well as conforming males. This is NOT “free” and I’m hoping others here will take notice.
Thank you.
At CFI Canada we focus on three strategic priority areas:
1. Human Rights
2. Science
3. Education
except feminism trumps all