<Update 13/11/11 : CFI Vancouver has now issued a statement about this situation. I have edited this post to include it and a link to the on-going discussion.>
It’s been reported that CFI Vancouver, and presumably CFI Canada, have decided not to sponsor feminist-skeptical meet ups. Notably, the Reasonable Women group here in Vancouver, which began as an initiative by some local volunteers of CFI Vancouver.
Reasonable Women organizer Natalie Nikolaeva is quoted:
“We are no longer affiliated with CFI Canada, as of today. This changes some things for us when it come to financial support, organization of future events, recruitment of new members, etc. I think this is both a small set back and a great opportunity to help us redefine our goals, aims and procedures. As I stated at our previous meeting, we need to create something like a board of directors or a committee to help us manage Reasonable Women better. I would be in favour of an egalitarian, vote-based system, where all members participate.”
So far, CFI Vancouver has not issued a statement nor has CFI Canada. CFI Vancouver has now (as of 13/11/11) issued a statement as mentioned above. Here it is:
–Regarding Centre For Inquiry Vancouver’s ‘Reasonable Women’ Initiative–
Reasonable Women was the working name given to a new initiative for a women’s skeptical discussion group run by Centre For Inquiry Vancouver. As Executive Director for CFI Vancouver I approved the initiative because I accepted the proposal of a local volunteer that this sort of event would be a useful way to appeal to women new to the community who might not yet feel comfortable at other skeptic/atheist events.
After only two meetings it quickly became apparent that the interest and direction that the organizers and attendees of the event wished to go in went beyond the scope of the socially-focused discussion series that I approved. The series was erroneously described as a feminist sub-group of CFI Vancouver. CFI Canada does not have ‘sub-groups’, and advancing feminism or performing any type of activism or advocacy work was not the agreed-upon purpose of the initiative. In addition, a film screening was planned and advertised, and represented as a CFI event without notice, consultation, or approval of the branch executive. Both the change in description and the unapproved event were breaches of the protocol observed in organizing all of CFI Vancouver’s activities.
After careful consideration and discussion with the volunteer organizing the group, Natalia Nikolaeva, it was decided that CFI Vancouver would stop the ‘Reasonable Women’ discussion series after only two meetings. I understand that Natalia is interested in creating a group in Vancouver to continue the meetings and she has my full support in doing so. There is no doubt that such a group has an important role to play.
This decision should in no way be interpreted as indifference or lack of support on CFI Canada’s part with regards to efforts to see greater diversity in our communities, women’s rights, or gender equality in general. CFI Canada is very concerned about making our events welcoming to all people (and I welcome any and all comments and suggestions for continued improvement), and any instance of volunteer or staff acts of discrimination are treated as extremely serious.
While we do hope to see increased diversity in the wider movement over time, it is important to acknowledge that CFI Canada cannot be all things to all people, and pursuing this particular goal is not the focus of our activism and advocacy. Our national efforts are currently directed towards combating issues such as the regulation of ‘Natural Health Products’ (including homeopathic preparations) by Health Canada, climate change denial, and the incursion of pseudoscience and religion into public policy.
CFI Canada enjoys a healthy amount of diversity within its membership and volunteer groups across the country. We encourage anyone who would like to find out for themselves to join any one of our dynamic volunteer teams and committees.
Thank you for your continued support and understanding.
Jamie Williams
Executive Director
Centre For Inquiry Vancouver
This message was posted to the CFI Vancouver Facebook group. Here is a link to that statement where there is an on-going discussion, including comments from Reasonable Women chair Natalie Nikolaeva.
<Original post as follows>
Much ink will undoubtedly be spilled over this issue and debate over whether this a good thing or bad thing or whether such a group like Reasonable Women falls under CFI’s mandate or mission operandi or not will go on for a while.
I think that’s a good debate to have considering that the reason I find this development so concerning is that I can’t figure out what CFI is doing.
The mandate of CFI Canada (or at least, what they wrote on their website) is:
“The Centre for Inquiry promotes and advances reason, science, secularism and freedom of inquiry in all areas of human endeavour.”
How does a Reasonable Women group not full fill that mandate?
For the record, I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths or anything like that. I honestly don’t what CFI’s reasons are for this change and I’m really not interested in throwing out wild speculation about that. I don’t have the information to go on, I haven’t been invited to meetings or planning sessions so I don’t know what’s being said behind closed doors.
What I can say is why I’m really upset about this latest development.
First, it stinks. Literally, this stinks of hypocrisy. The Center for Inquiry Transnational (the CFI in America) is hosting the “Women in Secularism” Conference next May in Washington DC. It features an impressive line up of feminist skeptical humanist speakers like Lauren Becker, Ophelia Benson, Jamila Bey and Greta Christina and more.
How does holding a whole conference on feminism and skepticism work for one version of CFI and a woman’s skeptical meet up not work or another?
In addition, we all witnessed Elevator-gate right? We all know that the skeptical movement has a problem with making people who aren’t white, middle class, white dudes with university degree’s feel welcome, right?
We should also all know the old adage that the definition of insane is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. The skeptical movement has more or less been hammering away at a lot of the same old topics for decades now. Big foot, homeopathy, alt med, religion etc. We’ve made a remarkable amount of progress growing our movement by hammering on these old hats. And don’t get me wrong, we need to hammer on these hats because they won’t go away on their own. But there’s this notion that we in the skeptical community really need to grow if we’re going to have the success we want, and that means finding new people, people who perhaps don’t care as much about big foot and homeopathy.
This is where I think CFI has a big advantage over other groups out there. CFI is duel mandated to promote skepticism and secular humanism. And under the wonderful umbrella of humanism is this notion of advancing the equality and life of everyone on this planet. Guess what? That means that humanists should care what feminists have to say.
Over the last few years I’ve seen a wonderful surge of amazing content previously unseen in the skeptical community. Blogs about science an politics, race and poverty, feminism and biology, all of them taking as a foundation a firm grounding in skeptical methodology and critical thinking.
Here on Radio Freethinker we dive into topics like crime and punishment, economics, history and sociology. Do we shrink away when these fields lack the black and white/yes or no answers you see in science? No. We roll up our sleeves and get to work. You look at the evidence that is presented, you evaluate it and put it into context. You do your homework. It isn’t always easy and sometimes the answers are a bit to gray for my liking but we make an effort.
By bringing new topics in our debate bag and making our presence known to those who care passionately about them, we can grow our influence and perhaps cross pollinate a bit. We find someone who doesn’t really care about vaccines but does care a lot about drug policy. By coming to our events about drug policy, they might like us and come back when we talk about vaccines.
Getting back to Reasonable Women and CFI. I personally think the Reasonable Women’s group will do fine. They’ve built up a lot of momentum and have really tapped into a previously untapped vein in the skeptical community. I’m less optimistic about CFI. Saying no to Reasonable Women is a really troubling development and I understand that at the moment CFI Canada is preparing a massive overhaul of its mission statement and structure. However that overhaul is happening behind closed doors and I don’t know what exactly they are defining skepticism and humanism as since Reasonable Women would fall exactly in those categories. It’s kind of odd as well since last I checked I was an advisor and associate member of CFI Canada and yet no one’s consulted me over any of the changes.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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