Researching for a post on something else, I came across an interview of some Nada Peratovic by the European Humanist Federation.
In the interview, Peratovic insisted that there is misogyny in the atheist community —a claim that not only went unchallenged but became the title of the interview (!)— and that secular humanism’s path forward is to embrace the post-modern doctrines that have already hijacked the atheist community and turned it into a hotbed of low expectations bigotry:
As humanists, we should embrace critical feminist theory because it can help us question and better perceive structural injustice and reject it. We shouldn’t fall in the trap of cultural relativism.
Do you think there is a stereotype attached to humanist people that define themselves as feminists?
There is a tremendous need to dispel prejudices that prevail against feminists in the active humanist movement. I am surprised by the pronounced anti-feminist, mostly misogynistic attitudes that pop up every now and then on social networks among active irreligious persons. It is difficult for me to understand that a movement as feminism that has done so much and continues to do so much for all of us, for the world, can be so misunderstood and undervalued among people who call themselves reasonable.
What cracks me up is that elsewhere in the interview, Peratovic claims humanism has to do with making decisions based on science, reason, critical thinking, yet fails so miserably to dismiss a demonstrably anti-scientific doctrine as critical theory.
As for the misogyny charge against atheism as a whole, I will have to go all skeptic and ask, once again: where’s the evidence? For I’m pretty sure there are misogynist atheists out there, but anecdotal evidence is by no means evidence that such attitude and thought are extended or even prevalent.
Shame on the European Humanist Federation for lending credibility to such gratuitous claims, especially given that such claims have been used and weaponized to decimate the humanist efforts in the last 10 years.
