Some religions are secular- Atheists should oppose these too

[TaraJo]

I've been looking more and more at Atheism+ and I've been wondering why I didn't wind up falling in with them. I mean, I've spent a long time on internet forums strongly populated by the kind of hyper-feminists they love, so you'd think it would rub off on me, right?

So I did a little self reflection and I think I've realized what's happened with me and I do have a bit of a theory or two that I wanted to see what other people here think of.

A bit of my history; I've been an atheist ever since I was 20, so that's 14 years identifying as atheist (god I feel old ). It wasn't until 2009, just three years ago, that I first got involved in the ts-forum that became the hyper feminist forum; however, at that time it wasn't so feminist; that was something that only seemed to start to happen in late 2010 or early 2011.

One of the important skills I learned when I became an atheist was to question things and to look at everything from an analytical angle. Yes, that includes turning those questions on the basic beliefs of feminism; sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't and sometimes I think they're making a mountain out of a molehill. And, yes, that's where a lot of the conflict seems to come from. In case you hadn't noticed, hyper-feminists aren't very friendly to the idea of their theories being questioned. However, as I go into more detail, I found a couple of specifics there.

First, it's well accepted that religion in general has played a role in homophobia and misogyny, right? If you don't believe me, talk to someone who has escaped from a fundamentalist group. I suspect that a lot of the feminists and social activists had been led to reject religion not because of a sincere questioning of supernatural beliefs but because they've seen the negative impact religion has on their social justice causes. And while feminism doesn't specifically talk about Gods or supernatural woo, they don't even realize that they're exhibiting many of the same behaviors as religious fundamentalists: The 'you don't understand it if you don't agree with me' attitude, attacking people over slight disagreements over dogma/feminist theory, an 'us vs. them' attitude that includes demonization of 'them.' Most alarmingly, they both seem to lack an awareness that the rest of the world thinks they're batshit crazy and neither one seems to care how they're dividing whatever groups they're in.

Then there's a second group I call hipster activists: they can only object to something if it's mainstream. Yep, they'll attack Christianity here in the US because it's the mainstream religion, but when you try to speak out on the abuses and flaws to Islam, they're attacking you because Islam isn't mainstream (at least not in the US, anyway). They justify it by citing the power and privilege that comes with being mainstream and having the majority of the population on your side, but this mindset fails to notice that privilege levels don't determine truth. If just ten people in the entire world believe in the flying spaghetti monster, that doesn't mean the flying spaghetti monster is any more factual than God. What's worse, this mindset doesn't take into account that many beliefs or ideas are mainstream for a reason: they work or they're true. I mean, cutting my foot off isn't exactly mainstream either, is it?