This comment by Stevarious on a previous post is perfect, so I am lifting it up and publishing it here. And honestly, if you don’t get that this is 100% correct, then you are nothing but a delusional selfish fuckebagge:

As yet, no one has even tried to explain how combining atheism (unpopular) with social justice (also unpopular) will help either atheism or social justice achieve their goal.

The reason you don’t understand is because you don’t know what it’s like to try to join an atheist group/meetup/movement/whatever and be unwelcome (whether subtly or overtly) because you’re not a cis white male.

Have you ever tried to join some group, something that you believed in, and been unwelcome because you’re an atheist? Yeah, it’s like that. It’s almost exactly like that. Except we now have atheism hindered – crippled, even – by it’s own refusal to accept and welcome women and minorities as equal members. How does this hurt atheism? Well, you may not have noticed, but cis white males only make up about 25% of the population of the United States. Is atheist activism in the US helped or hindered, in your humble opinion, by making 75% of potential members feel unwelcome and encouraged to join some other movement?

I’m not saying that all – or even most – of the cis white males are guilty of this behavior, or that this behavior is exclusive to cis white males. But it’s enough of them for it to be a real, genuine problem. And what’s worse, is that a much larger portion of the people who are NOT actively joining in, are standing back and ignoring it, or worse, defending the rights of asshole atheists to use words like ‘cunts’ and ‘trannies’ and ‘sluts’ and ‘tits or GTFO’ and otherwise treat others in a generally shitty manner.

So the women and the minorities and the people who support women and minorities are done trying to change atheism from within and are going away (as they have been told to do, over and over by the haters) to form their own movement. Except the haters just can’t let us go – now that we ARE going away and leaving them alone, the haters have become even nastier. They won’t even LET us take the GTFO option!

Is Atheism+ a split from the atheist movement? Yes, IMHO. But it’s not the A+’ers who are causing the split. And I for one welcome a split that leaves the crowd shouting ‘Tits or GTFO!’ out in the cold.

That is, I think about specific goals and about TACTICS. The tactic of explicitly combining atheism and (so far) third wave feminism makes as much sense as advocating (say) repeal of the incest laws along with repeal of tax exemptions for churches. One can perhaps make a strong case for each individually, but combining the two under one banner would make each far, far harder to sell.

I believe you’re wrong about this – Equal rights for atheists are a matter of social justice. So is feminism. The two are much closer linked than you imply.

But even if they weren’t, it’s become clear that a large number of atheists are not going to be able to fight for the rights of atheists under the banner of Atheism because they just aren’t welcome under that banner.

Surely, as a program manager, you understand that nothing is going to get done if everyone doesn’t work as a team, don’t you? Well, some members of the team have been telling other parts of the team to “shut up, get back to the kitchen, and make sandwiches” for far too long. And instead of telling the doodz yelling for sandwiches to shut up, you’re essentially telling the rest of us to shut up for saying ‘No, make your own damn sandwiches. There’s REAL work to do.’ And part of that work appears to be finding a new banner to fight under.