Rebecca Watson aka Skepchick

The “skepticism movement” originated with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, featuring guys such as Martin Gardner, Carl Sagan, and the Amazing Randi, to promote scientific inquiry into crazy ideas. It focused on dreary but necessary expert debunking of popular nonsense such as homeopathy or the concept of aliens crossing interstellar space’s vastness to anally probe fat waitresses in Peoria. While the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry still does its thing, the movement it hatched appears to have degenerated into a social club where groups of people drink beer and kvetch about creationists. It’s like a church social for atheists.

Despite their self-proclaimed skepticism, they don’t seem to be skeptical about much of anything. If it wasn’t obvious already, this incident demonstrates that they are not hardheaded skeptics bringing the light of reason to the ignorant masses. They’re merely another identity movement for propping up the upper-middle-class booboisie’s self-esteem. They’re such easy marks, they have meetings where they are hectored by saucy-photograph-publishing blockheads about sexual objectification and sexism in the skepticism movement—with zero skeptical comments.

Anyone who sits through any feminist lecture—unless required by employment contract or law to acquiesce to this indignity—without asking a few hard questions hasn’t a skeptical bone in their entire meatsack. Anyone who sits through a lecture on the evil, nasty sexualization of women given by a creep who publishes saucy pin-up photographs of herself is a drooling retard who would swallow anything. Such persons are at least as credulous as yokels who listen uncomplainingly to cosmology seminars given at the Creation Museum. But unlike feminists, creationists don’t have the majesty of the law and upper-middle-class social opprobrium forcing people to listen to them, making the “skeptical movement” both uncritical and cowardly.

Worthy of skeptical attention is the Skepchick idea that there are fewer lady skeptics than man skeptics because man skeptics are too sexist. Rather than enduring critical analysis, such ideas are embraced with gaping credulity. The fact that such lectures are considered serious fodder for a “skepticism convention” demonstrates they are not very sexist as a group. It also implies there is some secret reserve of women interested in skepticism movements who hold off on joining because of sexism. I don’t believe this any more than I believe sexism is what keeps women from becoming inventors. Am I supposed to believe that of all God’s creatures, there is no such thing as sexual dimorphism in human beings? Maybe most women aren’t interested in a bunch of nerds kvetching about credulous religious people because they’re too busy checking their horoscopes. Maybe most women don’t like being around atheist geeks with poor social skills. And even though men and women are exactly the same, women have special concerns you absolutely must respect and obey, or you’re an evil, nasty, sexist rapebot.

The idea that Miz Skepchick doesn’t want to be “sexualized” is laughably insane. She sells semi-nude calendars featuring herself and the other Skepchicks. If she doesn’t enjoy male attention in her shabby subculture, why does she do this? Obviously, she enjoys the immense sexual power she has over this tribe of sexually deprived nerdlings. Her main complaint seems to be that her girlie powers of “sexualization” have unpleasant consequences, one of which is the fact that men whom she does not find attractive might awkwardly hit on her in an elevator.

Welcome to my world, Miz Skepchick. I’m not even subculturally famous, but girls I do not find attractive hit on me all the time. Yes, it is often disagreeable, but I don’t deny the ego trip. I also don’t think human biology should be reformed to mitigate the mild dismay I experience when some humanoid wildebeest makes cow eyes and sits too close to me in the coffee shop. I don’t think women need to be hectored into making sure I feel 100% comfortable at all times merely because women occasionally ruin men’s lives with false rape claims, stalking behaviors, legal theft of a man’s assets, and occasional murders. Skepchick is trying to ruin Dawkins’s life right now…for what?

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be skeptical of such claims. You do, however, need to be a vertebrate and actually skeptical. As far as I can tell, everyone in the current “skeptical movement” is a gullible jellyfish.