It occurs to me, after the fact, that it might not be clear why my awful experience with the religion panel is related to the larger problem of the political dialogue. I mean, it could serve as a kind of example of hostile attitudes without having to be related to politics. The program description ran like this: "Patriarchy, guilt, sex-hate, homophobia, vilification of the physical (human), fear of female sexuality/power, worship of Phallos, sacrifices sons to teach males to accept that their lives are cheap, reducer of a sacred erotica to mere sex and animal impulse where eroticism is debased into a monotonous process of reproduction, teaching a sex that isn’t necessarily different from sexual assault. Organized religion is mightily implicated in forming/maintaining rape culture. Discuss."
There's more to it than just generalized hostility towards religion, though. (and more to it than the fact that, for at least one of the panelists, this panel was more about personal theraputic value than it was about thoughtful discussion.) Religion, Christianity in particular, has become a politicized issue in America. I can see how it happened--conservative politicians have brought religion in to the dialogue as though it was a thing that belonged to them, which means that anyone opposing their political positions has to engage with their religious positions. Once that's happened, it's easy to see how people on the left, especially people who have been agitated beyond the point of reason, start to see religious belief as tangled up with the conservative political agenda.
In the spirit of inclusiveness, I feel like I should say that it's not only the right that politicizes issues. The right has politicized both religion and patriotism, but the left has politicized (for example) environmentalism. It was hard work, by the way, finishing that sentence. "The right has politicized both religion and patriotism, but the left has politicized... er... uhm..." The problem being, of course, that from where I stand it's easy to see what issues the other guys have made partisan, but not easy to see the same faults in the people I mostly agree with. I'm trying, though.
Everything I've ever tried to articulate about the brokenness of public discourse about politics, it was all present in a kind of microcosmic form at this year's WisCon. People who regularly attend WisCon (The World's Only Feminist Science Fiction Convention) have come to think of it as a place you can rely on for thoughtful and interesting discussion. Sure, the discussion is mostly about feminism and science fiction, but there are a lot of issues wrapped up in those two topics alone, and that's before you even get to the intersection.
WisCon also tends (strongly) towards a left/liberal atmosphere. That's not particularly surprising, or in of itself particularly controversial. This year, though, a lot of people (many of them proudly self-identified liberals) felt that the atmosphere had crossed some line from "biased" to "intolerant". Those are both loaded words, so here's what I mean by the difference: someone with politically or socially conservative tendencies should expect, coming to WisCon, to be argued with. They should not have to expect to be vilified.
Vilification abounded at WisCon this year. I didn't attend a lot of panels (I didn't attend any that I wasn't on, actually) because most of the ones I went to were kind of horrifying. (In the interests of fairness, I should say that I did have one fabulous panel, on the multiplicity of feminist identities and the conflicts between generations of feminists.) I watched a room full of people take at face-value the statement that political conservativism leads people to violence; when someone tried to suggest that crazy people can be found all over the political spectrum, they were mostly ignored.
And then there was the religion panel, already discussed a little over at Jed's site. I've deconstructed that panel experience so many times since it happened that I'm having trouble mustering the energy to do it again, but the short version is that I spent most of that hour and a half being kind of appalled that so many people could say with such straight faces that a Christian belief system is intrinsically tied to hatred, oppression, and violence. ("Appalled" was periodically broken up by "amused"--other panelists kept insisting that I was a Christian myself, no matter how many times I said that I wasn't, apparently just because I was taking the position that the theology of most established religions can be flexible enough to encompass a variety of social and political beliefs.)
I know I've got more to say about it, but for now, I'm still kind of processing. It's one thing to have been saying that anger and fear are keeping people from meaningful political discussion. It's another thing entirely to see that problem played out so clearly in an environment that I've come to associate with meaningful discussion.