ONE MORE RANTY POST before I go back to Halloween and bugs tomorro!

Have I ever even mentioned I’m an Atheist? Well, I am, if it wasn’t obvious enough, but right now I’m feeling kind of ashamed of some of them, and it isn’t even for an issue that should logically have anything to do with lacking belief in the supernatural.

I refer the absolutely flabbergasting, nauseating, cartoonishly over-the-top yet entirely unfunny epidemic of irrationally violent misogyny within the online community of atheist, skeptic and scientist bloggers.

Cute, nice, completely harmless science geek Jennifer McCreight, once known for starting Boobquake, recently gave in to the constant rape threats, death threats, stalking and harassment to essentially quit her long-running blog.

The somewhat famous Rebecca Watson, meanwhile, keeps plugging along, but puts up with a constant deluge of comments like this one:

Even my friend Bug Girl, (not to be confused with another awesome Bug Girl I know, ) has also had to put up with this type of thing, for no apparent reason other than being an openly atheist female blogger, and the list could go on.

This isn’t abuse hurled by angry fundamentalists, creationists, psychics and tea partiers. They get that too, sure, at the usual rate one can expect from an honest science blog, but the bulk of the rape and murder threats are internal, from other atheist bloggers and their supporters. These ladies aren’t calling for some sort of feminist takeover or making any unreasonable, outrageous or extremist statements. Watson gets labeled a “feminazi” just for criticizing how hundreds of atheists sexually harassed a fifteen year old girl on their reddit board.

I was always indifferent to the popular podcaster The Amazing Atheist, but he seemed okay enough, until he responded to some pretty light criticisms with rape threats, and responded to the ensuing backlash against said rape threats with this, among other comments:

It makes me angry that this is a person who shares a ton of other perspectives in common with my own.

By Emmy

Even Richard Dawkins, practically held up by some people as the King of All Atheists, has made fun of and diminished feminism as something supposedly unnecessary and trivial in the modern world, which it pretty obviously isn’t.

Most mainstream religious faiths have painted women as submissive, inferior human property for thousands of years. Are you telling me that now they can’t even turn to communities of self-proclaimed scientific rationalists for normal, respectful, human treatment?