Why Atheism+ is still (And always will be) necessary

There’s a point I see made… a lot. “I don’t disagree with the goals of A+, I just don’t see why it’s necessary”

Now, ignoring our goal of “get rid of the sexist shit in the Atheist community that is so prevalent”, let’s pretend there was no sexism in the Atheist community. There are still a lot of reasons we need to exist.

My reasons:

I’m a… transgender… genderqueer… thing, not quite a trans man but definitely not a woman, but still very femme, and somewhere on the masculine side of things identity wise… using he pronouns. Atheism+ gives me a place where I can be that, without everyone flipping their collective shits asking invasive questions and misgendering me. And while not everyone will necessarily understand, the questions that they have will be asked respectfully.

I’m super-duper suicidal at random times* even whilst medicated (sometimes? I’m bad at medicating) and nobody there shames me for being the horrible terrible thing that is… mentally ill. Or the horrible terrible thing that is NOT TAKING YOUR PILLSSSZZZ.

…and in regards to those things, nobody is going to say that I’m an abomination against god OR try to comfort me with “God made you that way” OR pray for me.

Then there’s the fact that we get to combine skepticism with social justice. We don’t just have to look at claims like, say, “Trans people are mentally ill” (a fucked up phrase that needs a lot of unpacking, more than a post worth) from a moral point of view; we have the community with the skill set to look at that claim skeptically, from a scientific standpoint, to back up our claims. Differences between the (more than two) sexes? We have science to use there too, not just feminist reasoning. Not that there’s anything wrong with arguments from morality or feminism, but when we add science to the mix, we’re fortifying ourselves.

 And finally, there are about eleventy billion Atheist orgs out there who claim to be “Good without God,” but in my experience they don’t like to really explain how. They refrain from taking stances on issues, like feminism and racism, and as a result end up sticking their feet in their mouths regarding such.

A+, though? We can tell you what we believe and how we believe it and why. We are, non-controversially, pro-feminist (though some, for good reason, would argue womanist), we’re anti-racist AND anti-islamophobic, we’re pro-trans AND genderqueer people, and those who aren’t cis but are neither of those things, we’re against ableism (and ableist shit like Autism Speaks)… we are essentially very explicitly caring about social justice issues, and are not vague about what those issues area. Whereas I’ve seen orgs go “We don’t have a mission statement! We don’t have a philosophy or ideals!”… we DO.  And I think that is important for getting real things done, not just pandering to the middle about how we’re Just So Good. Atheism+ says, “We are good. This is how.”

*-For the record though, I’m happy to say that I’m currently over my last bout o’ fun