chapotraphouse

It's definitely odd, but I think I have a good insight.

I fell into that pipeline, and I think it happened in part because atheism and online atheism had that initial 'facts and logic' streak - relying on 'biology', and especially evolutionary biology (that creationists deny).

When issues of gender came to the front, an appeal to evolutionary biology made a lot of sense to me, as it was a 'language' I spoke - far more than social biology.

But that's not all. It's the free-speech and liberalism angle too - lots of atheists rallied against the Christianity in schools, in law, and the political system, etc etc - to an end that being blasphemous was the rebellious thing to do. To be able to criticise god is free speech, and for a time it did seem quite transgressive. To judge these Christian systems in the West, you inevitably must eventually critique Islam too (rightfully so) - the difficulty is that Islam is so wrapped up in imperialist messaging, foreign policy, and decades of islamophobia, that it was susceptible to highjacking by those who wanted to use it as such. It's also difficult because in most islamic countries, the west has funded far right Islam to be the very worst version of itself, and provoked it to expressing itself violently. It's this history that New Atheism was missing too.

Look at the various crossovers - Milo Yiannopoulous bridged being an atheist, who was also gay, who was also was an antifeminist. Hitchens was an atheist antifeminist liberal, who switched sides in the Iraq war to be pro war. Peterson was free speech. Dawkins was a scientist, atheist, but anti feminist, and islamophobic.

It all became a real muddle, but each character in this era did have one attractive part of their calling card that sucked people in, and once you were in, the algorithm did the rest of the work and kept feeding you worse and worse.

When I was 13, I was arguing with Christians online about being pro choice, pro gay, pro blasphemy - I was a very progressive 13 year old. But with only instincts guiding me, my 'values' aligned most with libertarianism - particularly saying whatever I wanted to say, and judging other cultures for not allowing a level of 'freedom' to women and queer people - essentially believing in one part rainbow imperialism (before the trans rights debate really took off), and one part snarky British liberal intellectualism. This just sent me down the wrong path.

In hindsight, what I needed was a history lesson. Atheism will devolve into this sort of shit if it is not accompanied by anti-imperialism. As soon as I found anti imperialism, the world suddenly made sense, and I shed my manosphere exoskeleton in a matter of months (and years - I'm sure it's still an ongoing process to purge it all).

because they still want to own women, they just dont want to own them religiously.

elevatorgate was the watershed moment for the "atheist movement".