On Slate’s Double XX blog, Rebecca Watson yesterday put up a deeply depressing post about the sexism she’s faced in the skepticism/atheism community. At a skepticism conference some guy had asked her in an elevator to come back to his room for “coffee”. She later mentioned offhand in a public address that skeevy sexual pick-up lines are not necessarily best-practice for men who want to not be assholes. She was then, inevitably, deluged with hate mail from men telling her she was a bitch and that they didn’t need to be lectured about sexism by no bitch, duh, ’cause we’re smart and skeptical, yeah? (And if you think I’m being unfair to her interlocutors, just read the comments on her post.)
Anyway, Richard Dawkins weighed in with a post on a blog about the controversy. As you’d expect, he was thoughtful, even-handed, and eminently rational.
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and … yawn … don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so …
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
So Richard Dawkins is a giant flaming asshole. No one is especially surprised, I’d guess.
But what’s interesting I think is the way his assholish-ness is framed. Specifically, his misogyny — his sneering at women for acting as if harassment matters — is framed through and by his explicit antipathy towards the Muslim world. Violence against women abroad doesn’t raise his consciousness about violence against women at home. Rather, misogyny abroad (the fault of some other culture) becomes an excuse to dismiss misogyny at home (which may be less virulent, but is certainly something that is more his responsibility.)
Dawkins’ knee-jerk rhetorical recourse to the evil of Muslims to wipe clean his own sins reminded me again of the main reason that the new atheists creep me out. That reason being that the new atheism is an imperialist ideology. It’s marinated in US-Islam tension, weaponized by 9/11, and generally used as a justification for variously sneering at, bombing, and conquering peoples who it is convenient for us to view as irrational barbarians.
Dawkins’ comment also shows, with unusual clarity, why imperial adventures abroad are horrible for civil liberties at home. In an imperial power, the evil of your enemies is always infinitely more important than the evil at home. The injustice committed by those benighted religious backwards subhumans always trumps any possible injustice committed by you or me. Moral outrage is kept safely for the other, the opposition to whom guarantees one’s own immaculate virtue. Anyone who disagrees is a pampered whiner, who doesn’t realize how good (s)he has it. After all, are our rational bombs not the scourge of evil bearded menfolk everywhere? (And perhaps of the occasional woman in hijab as well, who is probably better off dead anyway?)
Of course, it’s not just atheists who are imperialists or anything. The Christian right, not to mention the Jewish right, have thrown their all behind our ongoing crusade of blood and self-righteousness. Dawkins likes to think those believing blowhards are his enemies – but his oleaginous condescension and brazen hypocrisy tells a different story. A bully who hits you on the orders of the hairy thunderer isn’t much different, after all, from a bully who hits you at the dictates of his own immaculate reason.
Surprise! People who are atheists can be assholes just like people who are religious. Atheists are people too!
I will add, that I have never gotten the whole atheist… intellectual thing. I’m an atheist but I don’t feel the need to join an atheist club or read books about atheism by atheists arguing about religion.
Though I would love it if being an atheist were considered as normal as being religious rather than some kind of weird abnormality.
Depends on the circles you move in, I think. If you’re an academic, it’s way weirder to be a Christian than to be an atheist….
Oh, sure, but we all know academia does not at all represent the culture in general.
I realize this is getting us off topic fast, but I have to disagree with Noah on the atheism in academia supposition. This doesn’t comport with my personal experience, which is that while a lot of my colleagues are secular (atheist or agnostic, I can’t say), a good half of them are Christian or Jewish, and more than a few are Muslim. I also did a quick search for studies on the question, and while I didn’t find much the one I did find (The Religiosity of American College and University Professors. Gross, Neil; Simmons, Solon. Sociology of Religion. Summer2009, Vol. 70 Issue 2, p101-129) shows that most professors express some religious belief, and only 10% are atheist. That’s higher than the national average, but hardly a majority. But even if most college professors were atheist, they’d still be in classrooms surrounded by students who aren’t, and interacting with churchgoing staff and members of the public.
Do you really feel especially singled out as an atheist? I’m an atheist too, and I feel way more like the odd person out because I’m interested in theology and get pissy when people say Christians are idiots than because of my atheism.
I do live in Hyde Park in Chicago, of course, so that probably matters (the whole academia thing.)
Huh, that’s interesting. I mean, do you feel odd for being an atheist in academia? (Presuming you’re an atheist!)
Wikipedia says Dawkins opposed the Iraq war, so is he really “sneering at, bombing, and conquering peoples who it is convenient for us to view as irrational barbarians.”??
That said, he’s clearly an ass hole.
Here’s an interesting complementary article (Woman gets attacked online; Democrats and Republicans are assholes too): http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/10/internet_fail_the_truth_about.html
I know Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens (the other rockstar atheists) are pretty committed to what sure looks to me like an imperial agenda.
Here’s him calling Islam an unmitigated evil, saying it’s worse than Christianity, and when asked why his answer is basically that they don’t have a history of questioning…which is fairly insulting since Islam was a sophisticated culture with lots of science while Christendom was still grubbing around in feudal ignorance. No mention of the possibility that a century of oppression and bullying might create intransigence and mistrust on the part of the bullied…and then he says that he thinks we’re being “too nice”, which means what? Not enough bombs dropped?
Yeah…color me extremely unimpressed. I don’t think I was wrong to call his ideology imperial.
I’m too much of a relativist to commit to atheism… I just can’t muster up the certainty required for disbelief. For the same reason, I can’t get too bent out of shape at others for their certainty. But to answer your question, I don’t really feel singled out in academia or in society in general for that. It seems to me that as unsavory as a lot of people might find my 1% attitude toward religion they’d be less likely to discriminate against me (I’m a white guy) than the 51% of the population that’s female.
Being an atheist makes sense, but having an atheist identity can be a way to anoint your insecurities with elitism, just like being a Christian can anoint them with weird fakey magical joy, and being a Star Trek fan can anoint them with autistic frenzy.
But I saw Dawkins in a horrible intelligent-design-apologia movie featuring Ben Stein, and boy do they deserve each other.
Its possible Dawkins is not the most coherent or consistent person in the world when talking about Islam.
He seems to take a non hawkish stance here:
http://www.atheistsnsd.com/atheism-reference-information-for-atheists/the-atheism-tapes-bbc/the-atheism-tapes-richard-dawkins-transcription/
“JM
… A spirit. Now, do you think that notion of evil as an autonomous principle, uhh is… inseparably associated with a religious belief in a deity?
RD
Well, umm… I think it’s very similar and I think there is a sort of impulse in humans to personify. And to… instead of just recognising that evil and good are descriptions we give to things that people do – I mean good things and bad things – I think there is a tendency to personify and to think there is a spirit of good and a spirit of evil, that implies some kind of a war between them… you can kill evil by… having a war against, in this case evil people, without realising that that may very well spawn a whole lot more people who may not necessarily be evil, but who will simply rise up and do things like terrorist acts as a consequence.”
My reading is he seems to at least be somewhat pragmatic, in that he doesn’t necessarily think bombing middle eastern countries will have a positive outcome.
I think there’s a distinction between hating or insulting a group versus wanting to launch missiles at them.
“I think there’s a distinction between hating or insulting a group versus wanting to launch missiles at them.”
I definitely agree with that. And that quote does seem less hawkish, I agree.
And I’ll add that from what I can find, he seems in general much less imperialistically gung ho than either Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens.
Being less imperialistic than Hitchens is setting the bar rather low, though.
Allowing oneself to be called an atheist can be seen as foolish, because why be described as what one is not? Am I a not-dog? After going so far as to reject one’s programmed set of belief structures, one might want to avoid being defined by religion, even in an inverse way.
Noah, I think when he says “we’re being too nice”, he’s referring to things like allowing the use of Sharia law in Britain, faith schools and things like that. Unlike Hitchens or Harris, Dawkins is an outspoken critic of the Iraq war.
He’s overall more on the left liberal side and I think his aversion to religion is mainly motivated by his many years of opposing creationism than being a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11.
And you also have to keep in mind that his “Dear Muslima” comment, while obviously wrong-headed was made almost one and a half years ago right after what they now call “elevatorgate”, and to my knowlwdge he’s completely kept out of the internal disputes about sexism within the atheist/skeptic communities ever since. Making him the poster boy for misogyny, imperialism and (why not that one too?) racism is somewhat disingenious.
The atheist/skeptic communities are a very heterogenous bunch, consisting of leftists, liberals, liberterians,(and even a few conservatives) scientists, hobbyists, nice persons and jerks, and that’s basically why this whole controversy has erupted, leading to the recent formation of the “A+” movement(basically atheism plus social justice), whom Rebecca Watson is a proponent of. This schizm is maybe only natural when you have a single-issue movement like grow to a certain size.
Oops, I missed some of the posts that were posted while I wrote mine. Well, I guess at least some of what I said is still relevant…
And sorry for my shitty grammar. It’s rather late over here…
Hey FuFu. Nice to hear from you again.
I maybe need to read one of Dawkins’ books…which I’ve mostly avoided because I’m pretty sure it would make me really angry. I will say, though, that staying out of the discussion of sexism isn’t necessarily super impressive. He’s a leader in the community, he stepped into the debate — if he thinks he made a mistake, why not say so? If he doesn’t, it seems fair to talk about his comment, even if it was made a bit ago.
I should say too…I’m not entirely convinced that the guy in the elevator did anything all that wrong. It seems debatable anyway. But if the incident didn’t quite make the case for sexism in the skepticism community, the crazed, out of proportion backlash certainly did.
Oh, and Richard, I don’t know if you’ve read Sam Harris, but he’s even nuttier than Hitchens, I think. He’s explicitly endorsed torture, for example, which Hitchens adamantly and eloquently did not.
Yeah, that’s the weird thing about the controversy… it started with a trivial incident and then unfolded into a full-blown schizm. Fundamentalists must be laughing their asses off.
Dawkins is an asshole, but “the new atheism” isn’t a movement, and he isn’t its leader, organizationally or ideologically. He’s certainly not the boss of me.
The whole “new atheism” tag is a lazy shorthand that unsympathetic journalists invented to describe atheists.
Besides that pedantic quibble, this is right on. Dawkins does couch himself in what i would describe as a xenophobic strain of atheist thought.
Rebecca Watson is amazing, btw. She actually downplayed what she’s had to put up with in the Slate piece. She’s still just as smart and funny as ever, despite the deluge of creeps.
Er… how smart she is isn’t variable, of course she’s still smart. What i mean is that at least in public she appears unflappable.
Online atheism can seem like a boys club since it gets taken up by subcultures that are very much boys clubs. A lot of Randroids are atheist. A lot of comic geeks are atheist. Find a subculture for geeks and you won’t have to look too hard for an atheist.
These groups all tend to be extremely hostile to anything perceived as telling them what to do. Even if they’re being told to approach women in a setting that isn’t straight out of a serial killer movie.
Geeks first. Atheists and skeptics second. In Dawkin’s case: Rich old Englishman blinkered by a life of privilege first. Atheist second.
I’m not entirely convinced that the guy in the elevator did anything all that wrong
I want to address this, because it makes my stomach hurt. Have you ever read the long email lists of ‘how to avoid being raped’ that keep getting sent around in various forms? My stepmom sends them out all the time, not because she thinks women deserve to be ‘paranoid’, but because the world has taught her the hard way and she doesn’t want anyone else to be hurt. Fear of rape is something that most women think about as soon as they’re followed by a stranger.
Think about this. It’s dark outside. You’re surrounded by a community who has made graphic sexual threats directly at you and who have followed up by touching and groping you. You leave the room. Someone follows you. A stranger.
Not only do they follow you, they follow you into an enclosed space where you can’t escape. You are now all alone with this person, who is, at a guess, significantly larger and physically stronger than you are.
Totally out of the blue, they suggest casual sex.
That is some scary shit.
I mean…do you not get that? That is like a laundry list of how to frighten a woman. Appear out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, as soon as she’s alone (as opposed to when she’s in a group), wait until she’s trapped, make a sexual euphemism, and then–what, this is supposed to come off as harmless flirting? :( You know how much ‘she couldn’t be raped, she went to his hotel room therefore her sex was officially on offer’ stuff there is out there?
Let me put it this way. I was told, straight out, as a young woman, that any woman who leaves the house after dark is asking to be raped. (I came back with ‘what if she has to work?’ to which there was, of course, no answer.) But….we can’t tell guys it’s creepy to follow people into an elevator and make sexual comments? That’s not what I would call progress. There’s two ways to deal with the rape and sexual violence problem. One is for women to live very secluded, paranoid lives (been there, done that, it sucks). The other is to gently suggest to the guys, Hey, stop being so fucking scary.
Seems worth a try. I mean, is it really too much to ask to not follow people and hit on them only when they’re alone and trapped?
I’d say that Dawkins comment is pretty spot on.
Blind Watchmaker is a good book, written before 3 or 4 atheists were seen as a movement.
Good to see Fufu is still out there.
Vom, read it again:
Not anywhere close to what you describe.
Yes, he waited until she was alone, and then he followed her into the elevator, a stranger, and made what many women will consider a sexual innuendo. That’s frightening to many women. I don’t think people are going to believe me, but whatever.
Charles: you read it again. Elevator man’s actions were threatening.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/10/heeeeeres-rebecca/ a more detailed account. there is no disputing that the man in Dublin acted inappropriately.
Charles, the Dawkins comment is not “spot on”. It’s assholish and ridiculous. Just because someone somewhere far away has it worse doesn’t mean that injustice doesn’t exist close to home. And women are actually harassed and raped here too, you know? If you care about misogyny, care about it where you can do something about it, not just as a rhetorical bludgeon to keep from having to deal with your own issues.
VM, I do get that. But…I mean, I think it’s a situation where different people can have different takes. My wife was maybe even less sympathetic to Watson than I was.
Watson didn’t sound frightened. And she didn’t say the guy threatened her, or even that he was threatening. He made a fairly explicit sexual come on…but not crude or graphic. And I mean of course he asked her in private. You wouldn’t ask somebody that in public — that’d be even less appropriate, surely.
I see where you’re coming from too. As a guy, I wouldn’t ever do this. But…I”m reluctant to say that the asking itself is wrong. Gauche, maybe, but not in itself dangerous. I’d presume that in a situation like this an adult could just say “no” and walk away — which is what Watson did (and what my wife says she did in her halcyon days of singlehood.)
I do agree with you that men not being jerks is a goal to work for…and Watson’s response to the incident wasn’t hyperbolic or anything. She responded to what could reasonably be seen as a minor infraction by saying in a low key way that this sort of behavior should be avoided. The resulting firestorm is pretty insane — and like I said, confirms everything Watson says, or might say, about sexism in that community.
IIRC Elevator Guy, upon figuring out that Watson meant him, apologized profusely for being unaware of how his approach was being perceived. Watson accepted his apology at face value because she is a reasonable human being.
If being clueless is a crime, most of the species should be in jail.
“I’d say that Dawkins comment is pretty spot on.”
Dawkin’s comment seems full of hateful bile, the subtext seems to be women need to shut up if somewhere, in some country, he can find a woman treated worse. It seems pretty much indefensible.
Vom, I believe you when you say the situation is threatening to you. It would be interesting to see a poll or something, my impression is that women (like men of course) have different comfort levels depending on their particular life experiences and personality. I’m certainly open to the idea that most women would find it threatening… though it seems Noah’s wife is a data point in the other direction.
Noah, Watson did use the phrase “I decided to use that as an example of how not to behave at conferences if you want to make women feel safe and comfortable” which could be taken as meaning she felt threatened (i.e. not safe), but its not really entirely clear…
William…yes, but this is a way that guys are disproportionately likely to be clueless, right?
Let me see if I have this right: apparently there is just as much likelihood of finding assholes in the ranks of those who don’t believe in religion are we all know there is in those who do. Big surprise.
Noah, the power dynamics between men and women are skewed towards men. There is no doubt of that. Perhaps this is why most men would be open to that approach if the roles were reversed. (At least I would be open to it once I looked for the hidden camera since I’m on the losing side of attractive.) Perhaps it’s biological and not social. Or maybe both.
A lot of people have used it to stake a claim in whatever culture war they’re fighting which annoys me. Elevator Guy admitted to being wrong. Watson accepted and tried to move on. Folks stole the experience from them for their own ideological purposes. Dawkins was just the best known of these thieves.
It stopped being about helping men behave better around strange women and became another useless Internet drama.
Michael,
I see nothing threatening about asking someone up for coffee in private. It clearly means “I’m interested,” but not “I want to fuck the shit out of you and then forget your name.” Good grief.
Noah,
Dawkins was right on. This guy didn’t do anything wrong based on that description. She acted like an ass about it (later, in making it an issue, not in simply saying, “no, thanks” — perfectly decent response, end of issue, unless it’s the web). If the guy actually apologized, then it means she really overreacted (he doesn’t sound remotely like an overbearing masculinist asshole now). She deserved the ridicule.
Michael, thanks for that video. I watched a good chunk of it. The discussion of the elevator incident is at 47:00, about.
I don’t think it exactly changes my mind. She doesn’t sound like she was scared…more exasperated. And…actually the way it might change my mind a bit is that she’s actually more low-key about it than I thought. She says it’s “boneheaded”, not sexist or harassing. Which seems pretty reasonable — especially since as she says, she was just in a conversation with him and many others where she was talking about how she is tired of being sexualized at the conferences, and about how she was exhausted.
It’s funny that this is the thing that’s a flashpoint, because holy crap is the rest of the stuff she talks about just significantly more terrifying and horrible. Endless rape and death threats, crazed stalkers (including a woman), friends driven out of the movement and driven offline; it’s brutal. And Dawkins has been on panels with her; he knows about this stuff. He knows she’s gotten credible death threats. His behavior is completely inexcusable.
Well it’s going to depend heavily on context, yes, but this is a conference where she’s already been touched and groped. That would definitely heighten my personal wariness factor. (As opposed to say, a librarianship conference, where everybody has learned to keep their hands to themselves.) And as for asking her in private, well yes, but there’s kind of a huge difference between private and trapped in an elevator with a strange guy whose first words are a come on. (And there’s always tomorrow. If the moment isn’t right, it isn’t going to kill anyone to wait.)
And yeah, I’m sure that other women will have other takes. Personally, there’s zero chance I’d have walked alone to my room at a conference like that in the first place. But that’s partly because of the experiences I’ve had with direct inappropriate touching, both at conferences and elsewhere. I don’t go to certain kinds of conferences anymore–it’s just not worth it.
Here’s a less dire example, which I am willing to admit to instead of eliding, for the curious, that happened to me multiple times at SF cons was being picked up, from behind, by a total stranger. (As in, my feet left the floor, my arms were pinned, I was in the air.) I have a serious startle reflex and accidentally elbowed some asshole in the gut one time. Nor do I regret it. Usually I freeze.
For some reason, some guys think it’s ‘funny’ or cute and bystanders often laughed. It wasn’t until I started talking to other shortish women who went to SF cons that we all discovered that this actually seems to happen a lot–I don’t know if guys think this is a mating ritual or what, but dudes, let me tell you right now–any guy who grabs me from behind and lifts me up off the floor is permanently on my shit list. If I was going to make a list of Avoid, it would be ‘do not pick me up from behind, especially if I have no idea who the fuck you are’. In fact, some women did make such a list, and were roundly argued with by other women, who said they did not mind it. It’s not even overtly sexual, but being hauled around by strangers was one of the reasons I won’t go to cons much and unless I have friends with me. (And do I think the guys picking me up intend to be frightening? No. But their intent doesn’t impact my reaction.)
And no, Watson didn’t say she was frightened, but– *shrug* Having been in these kind of discussions before, admitting to fear can cause even worse feeding frenzies than calling behavior ‘sexist’ or ‘wrong’ or whatever. And who wants to admit they feel like prey? It’s a shitty thing to feel and when there’s a tendency have it discounted, that only makes the whole shit sundae worse. I can’t tell you what Watson felt, but I can tell you how I would feel. I’d be frightened and feel threatened. The world is full of guys who make clumsy passes who are harmless, but it’s also got guys who make very careful predatory passes (I know this for a fact). Those two things often look the same. I’d rather have some false positives than the other option. I’m sure some of it also has to do with me being short and not being able to run away anymore. There’s always going to be various takes on it, but again, I can only tell you what I’d read there. I don’t think Watson was saying that Elevator Guy was evil, but that if you want women to feel comfortable at conferences, there are going to be things to avoid.
Charles: if you’re going to keep selectively ignoring the circumstances that made this bonehead’s pass above and beyond ordinary flirting, and you’re not going to listen to Rebecca or Vom or any woman thoughtfully explaining why something like that request at that time and that place was inappropriate, then there’s nothing more i can say that’ going to convince you.
[personal comment redacted]
Okay…there’s actually additional discussion a little further on (about 51:00 or so and following.) A guy says something similar to what I’m saying — basically, that this maybe doesn’t sound so bad (though I hope I don’t sound quite that snotty —”no one is more pro-woman than I am” he says. It’s not a convincing rhetorical strategy…). Anyway, she says that at humanist conferences she’s constantly groped and constantly hit on all the time over and over. So it’s an issue in part where women in that community are just compulsively sexualized. Ironically, this guy in the elevator sounds like one of the less egregious ones, since he was polite and no groping and when he was called on it he apologized rather than (for example) issuing a rape threat.
It seems like in part she was trying to find a low key way to make the point that men at these conferences need to not act like assholes, and chose the incident in part because it was so low key. (Being picked up from behind by a stranger for example is a lot more dramatic/clearly wrong. And multiple times? WTF?) Though Watson does also agree with someone in the audience that being in an elevator with someone bigger and stronger is potentially frightening.
I think I’m persuaded by the video and by VM’s discussion that Watson was in the right. I asked my wife if she was persuaded, and she said, (a) why in god’s name does she keep going to these conferences?, and (b) would you please stop talking about this now? So I guess that’s what I’ll do.
Michael,
What circumstances, the nice hotel, the group of like-minded people, that he accepted no as an answer, or that he admired her intelligence? Sounds brutal.
I don’t much follow the skeptic community, but here’s a different take on RW’s trustworthiness. From the comments, this gal seems more like my idea of a skeptical feminist.
Dawkins being an asshole doesn’t have anything to do with Watson’s trustworthiness, nor with which skeptical feminists you’d prefer, Charles.
Well, it does have relevance to the fact that Dawkins wasn’t the asshole here.
Christ, Charles, that comment is completely full of shit. Watson didn’t say the guy harassed her or that such conduct should be made illegal. She said that he’d been a blockhead and that people should (voluntarily) not do things like that. She didn’t say that it was a threat of rape either. As far as I can tell that comment doesn’t seem to actually be responding in any way to anything Watson said. If I didn’t know better I’d say you liked it not because it was coherent or pointed but because it confirmed your prejudices.
Re Dawkins, Charles. You don’t think his response seems like an example of imperialist ideology? What about inventing a Muslim woman and calling her “Muslima”? That doesn’t strike you as condescending, not to mention stupid?
Oh, and Dawkins is an asshole pretty much no matter what. He could have disagreed with her without pretending that sexism in the Middle East is the only sexism that can possibly matter, and/or without suggesting that no woman in the US can complain about harassment because people somewhere else are harassed. That’s sexist, imperialist bullshit, and spouting it makes you an ass.
He didn’t say that it was the only sexism that matters, but that Watson’s view of misogyny (or objectification) is entirely out of proportion. Here’s a follow-up comment from him about that very issue:
(PZ refers to PZ Myers, a skeptic blogger and big fan of Watson’s.)
I watched a bit of that long video. I asked a former girlfriend and pureblooded metalhead if she’d ever had her genitalia groped at any metal shows. She did have her butt possibly grabbed once, but wasn’t quite sure due to the overcrowding, but nope, definitely no genitalia. It’s amazing that RW has found it happening so prominently (at least she presents it as a regularity) at humanist conferences. Call me skeptical of her interpretations of just about anything.
No, I don’t see the imperialism in that response
As for ‘muslima,’ it doesn’t appear to offensive to Muslims, or according to the Urban Dictionary. Admittedly, I’d never encountered the term before, so this is provisional. I guess Dawkins could’ve come up with an actual name, but then people would’ve accused him of assuming all Arabs are religious or whatnot. This way, he specified the kind of woman he was talking about. Of course, now you can accuse him of religious intolerance or bigotry.
Hi, Charles! Yes, I’m still alive.
If Watson had mad such a big thing about the incident I agree that Dawkins’ comment would have been justified to a certain extent. But in fact all she was doing was giving young male skeptics advice not to behave like that. Then the discussion got heated and Dawkins must have been drawn into it at a point where from the other reactions it seemed as if she was far more whiny about it than she really was in the initial video. That was his first mistake, his second more important mistake was that he didn’t realize how it came across, and failed to apologize or at least clarify his position.
It’s funny that people focus on D.’s comment again after such a long time, after all there are some far more important players in the affair.
Like William above, I find it not at all surprising that there are a lot of sexist, misogynist douchebags in the “atheism” and “scepticism” and “humanism” “communities”. There’s the noted cross-over with Randroids and other socially maladjusted geeks…but there’s also this fact: men who thus self-identify, to such an extent that they would go to a conference on the theme, or join online communities, are likely to be, let’s face it, cranks with a very high opinion of their own intellectual capacity and discernment. And they’re likely to have such a high opinion of same that they will be 100% confident that they have construed any social situation correctly and that any woman who suggests otherwise is just cuh-razy and in dire need of mansplaining.
Academic philosophy is like that, too — on top of the generic confidence which you find in all kinds of men that he’s read the situation right and the woman is just overreacting, there’s an occupational hazard of intellectual arrogance that just makes male philosophers (all too often) triply sure that they’re right, and let me tell you why what I did was not harassment in a three-part argument, then I’ll discuss some possible objections you might pose, and then I’ll go into the problems with those objections in great detail…
if you don’t believe me, read some of this group blog, if you think you can take it: http://beingawomaninphilosophy.wordpress.com/
RE Dawkins:
This has been mentioned already but I really think it bears repeating. It’s f’ed up to use the problems facing women in one place to belittle the problems facing women in another. This is f’ed up for two reasons: 1) It abstracts the real and particular problems of both women for the purposes of scolding one of them for feeling threatened and talking publicly about it, and 2) it’s a bad argument from proportionality. If a freshman in an argumentation/persuasion class gave this to me I’d hand it back and tell him to take the assignment seriously.
RE whether this could reasonably be perceived as a threat:
I think its telling that of the two Watson provided a fairly elaborated and context specific rationale for being frightened, and the fact that she was frightened by what some would consider a harmless (if clumsy) pass says more about the conferences she’s going to than her detractors would like to admit.
Again, all this has been said already. But I’d hate to see it get lost in the shuffle.
What Jones and Nate said. In addition, I actually just read a book by a female metalhead, who talks about the sexism in the scene at some length. But…I have absolutely no problem believing that an atheist conference would be more sexist than a metal concert. Not even a tiny, tiny little bit.
Also…Dawkins appears from his follow-up comment not to know that women in this culture suffer from misogyny in very real ways as well. There is rape here; there is domestic abuse here; there is patriarchy here. Women have their lives substantially damaged by misogyny and patriarchy here. He’s either ignorant enough about this that he should not speak on these topics, or he’s deliberately ignoring things he knows about to score a rhetorical point. Either way, it’s an incredibly clueless, mean-spirited, and dumb-ass performance. Your effort to defend it mostly demonstrates that it’s completely indefensible, as far as I can tell.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Here’s [Hitchens] calling Islam an unmitigated evil, saying it’s worse than Christianity…
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The “unmitigated evil” is nonsense, but for fundamentalists, of course “it’s worse than Christianity.” Do even the most rabid fundie Christians go around chopping thieves’ hands off, stoning women to death, performing “honor killings” of daughters who stray? Banning competing religions from their countries?
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Islam was a sophisticated culture with lots of science while Christendom was still grubbing around in feudal ignorance.
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And cultures change, decline. When was the last time a Muslim country made a scientific discovery or advance? They just ride on the West’s technological coat-tails.
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No mention of the possibility that a century of oppression and bullying might create intransigence and mistrust on the part of the bullied…
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Is, among the less-enlightened Muslims, female genital mutilation, beating women who dare to go out without a male companion, murdering women for disobeying their parents, denying them freedom and education, to be characterized as “intransigence and mistrust”? Only driven and excused by oppression from the West?
Yes, the ol’ “we must never blame the oppressed for anything they do” bit. If, during the Civil Rights struggle days, African-Americans shut women out of leadership positions, it was the racism that made them do it! If they indulge in homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism, it’s the racism that makes them do it!
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William George says:
These groups all tend to be extremely hostile to anything perceived as telling them what to do. Even if they’re being told to approach women in a setting that isn’t straight out of a serial killer movie.
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Maybe I’ve missed that particular “serial killer movie”; I thought it’d be an underground parking lot, late at night; a deserted cabin; being lost in a lonely country road…
Instead, looking up in Google images “couple in elevator,” was surprised to see how highly sexualized this situation can be perceived; why, there’s even an “Elevator Sex” book! https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1191&bih=907&q=couple+in+elevator&oq=couple+in+elevator&gs_l=img.12…69631.71251.1.72759.6.6.0.0.0.0.216.682.5j0j1.6.0…0.0…1ac.1.A7MY_qPt7NM
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vommarlowe says:
…Fear of rape is something that most women think about as soon as they’re followed by a stranger.
Think about this. It’s dark outside. You’re surrounded by a community who has made graphic sexual threats directly at you and who have followed up by touching and groping you. You leave the room. Someone follows you. A stranger.
Not only do they follow you, they follow you into an enclosed space where you can’t escape. You are now all alone with this person, who is, at a guess, significantly larger and physically stronger than you are.
Totally out of the blue, they suggest casual sex.
That is some scary shit.
I mean…do you not get that? That is like a laundry list of how to frighten a woman. Appear out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, as soon as she’s alone (as opposed to when she’s in a group), wait until she’s trapped, make a sexual euphemism, and then–what, this is supposed to come off as harmless flirting? :( You know how much ‘she couldn’t be raped, she went to his hotel room therefore her sex was officially on offer’ stuff there is out there?
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Put that way, it certainly is “straight out of a serial killer movie.” Never mind that the “graphic sexual threats directly at you and who have followed up by touching and groping you” didn’t happen at this event.
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Rebecca Watson:
In June of 2011, I was on a panel at an atheist conference in Dublin. The topic was “Communicating Atheism,” and I was excited to join Richard Dawkins, one of the most famous atheists in the world, with several documentaries and bestselling books to his name. Dawkins used his time to criticize Phil Plait, an astronomer who the year prior had given a talk in which he argued for skeptics to be kinder. I used my time to talk about what it’s like for me to communicate atheism online, and how being a woman might affect the response I receive, as in rape threats and other sexual comments.
The audience was receptive, and afterward I spent many hours in the hotel bar discussing issues of gender, objectification, and misogyny with other thoughtful atheists. At around 4 a.m., I excused myself, announcing that I was exhausted and heading to bed in preparation for another day of talks.
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Oh, but they’re part of the “community” of atheists and skeptics, of which a portion later “made graphic sexual threats”; therefore the fear she was to feel in the future traveled back in time, infusing the “elevator experience” with dread. Never mind that at the event itself, “The audience was receptive, and afterward I spent many hours in the hotel bar discussing issues of gender, objectification, and misogyny with other thoughtful atheists.” Which sure sounds like she received an interested and sympathetic response to her talk.
And, all this is happening in (presumably) a well-lit hotel filled with staff and non-conference people.
But…
“It’s dark outside.”
(Low, skewed camera angle of the massive darkened slab of the hotel, only a few windows lit. Lighting flashes, rain lashes down. The wind howls…)
“You’re surrounded by a community who has made graphic sexual threats directly at you…”
(It’s like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” or some zombie movie! It’s only you…and them. There’s no one to ask for help. Or, as Tim Kreider drew it [NSFW] http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/hidingfrom.jpg )
“You leave the room. Someone follows you. A stranger.”
(Extreme low camera angle. The tiny figure of a woman hurriedly retreats. In the foreground, a man’s shoes, looming huge, move into the frame. Pursuing his prey relentlessly, footsteps amplified, echoing through the deserted hallways: Click…Click…Click….)
“…they follow you into an enclosed space where you can’t escape.”
(The woman rushes into the elevator, frantically jabs at a button. The doors start to close…too late! A figure swathed in a black trenchcoat darts in at the last moment.)
“You are now all alone with this person, who is, at a guess, significantly larger and physically stronger than you are.”
(Another low, skewed camera angle, the male figure looming in the foreground, the woman cringing back into a corner. He towers over her, an arm with a black-gloved hand jumping out, sudden as a striking snake, to lean against the elevator wall to one side of her, further cutting off her movements.)
“Totally out of the blue, they suggest casual sex.”
(Harsh shadows from the unshaded elevator light rake his face; a blackened mask, with the glittering of lust-crazed eyes and saliva-moistened, trembling lips the only highlights. His free hand trembles, in spasms clutching, squeezing the air. Screeching violins from the shower scene in “Psycho” blare out as he finally speaks: “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?”)
“That is some scary shit.”
Ah, the magic of perceiving reality through FeministoVision!
http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/scientist-feminist.jpg .
That said, though, it’s not as if men aren’t mostly schmucks, with Only One Thing In Mind. Again, Not Safe For Work, from Tim Kreider: http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l542/Mike_59_Hunter/KreiderKnowDiff.jpg
And, of course women are in far greater danger of sexual assault than men are. But — as I regularly argue — exaggeration “devalues the currency.” In this case, of talk about sexual harassment, when some guy’s asking a woman in an elevator to his room for coffee is inflated into a terrifying, soul-scarring nightmare.
And, what ever happened to “Take Back the Night”? “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar”? What about women taking martial arts, learning to be confident, always aware of their environment and assessing possible threats, ready and able to defend themselves? (Which it doesn’t take a mass of muscle to be able to do.)
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William George says:
IIRC Elevator Guy, upon figuring out that Watson meant him, apologized profusely for being unaware of how his approach was being perceived. Watson accepted his apology at face value because she is a reasonable human being.
If being clueless is a crime, most of the species should be in jail.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…yes, but this is a way that guys are disproportionately likely to be clueless, right?
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While I detest “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” oversimplifications, through some biological differences (which society then promotes and exacerbates), “what we have here is a failure to communicate”:
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Men often misread women’s sexual cues
Men often have difficulty accurately reading a woman’s level of interest in them, a new study finds.
In what should come as no surprise to any woman who’s spent time in the dating world, a certain type of guy tends to think all women want him, while other guys just can’t seem to pick up on the cues.
…The researchers found that:
-Men who wanted a short-term sexual encounter were more likely to overestimate a woman’s desire for them.
-Men who believed they were “hot” also thought the women were hot for them, but men who were actually considered attractive by women did not think this way.
-The more attractive a woman was to a man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest.
-Women tended to underestimate men’s desire.
The study appears in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science.
“There are two ways you can make an error as a man,” study author Carin Perilloux, a psychologist at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., said in a journal news release. “Either you think, ‘Oh, wow, that woman’s really interested in me’ — and it turns out she’s not. There’s some cost to that,” such as embarrassment.
The other male error is failing to realize that a women is interested in him.
“He misses out on a mating opportunity. That’s a huge cost in terms of reproductive success,” Perilloux explained.
When it comes to human evolution, it’s likely that males who overestimated their appeal to females and pursued them even at the risk of being rebuffed were more likely to reproduce and pass this trait to their genetic heirs, the researchers suggested.
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http://www.newschannel5.com/story/16339189/men-often-misread-womens-sexual-cues-study
When even nicer guys are told that “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?” is considered a “skeevy sexual pick-up line,” with “coffee” an obvious code-word for brutal, impersonal screwing (“At a skepticism conference some guy had asked her in an elevator to come back to his room for ‘coffee’.”), and that such behavior makes them “assholes,” and women unable/unwilling to more clearly indicate that advances would be reciprocated…
…the pushy jerks will be the ones who “win.”
And there certainly is a significant percentage of women who, as far as indicating interest in sex, prefer to sit back and let the man do all the work. (And risk being thought of as an asshole/harrasser.) As with the “bodice-ripper” romances that indicate an acceptance of the attitude that a “good woman” must be passive, forced into sex, ideally by some hunky, good-looking, rich nobleman who loves her so much he can’t help himself. And how about the submissive, masochistic fantasies being eaten up by women readers of “50 Shades of Grey”? ( http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/power-play/201206/50-shades-grey )
And, yeah, no surprise that any group which views reality through a narrow ideological perspective reacts in a thoroughly nasty manner to being criticized. I’ve no problems with Watson; while I’ve not studied all the ramifications and interpretations of her commentary, her basic argument was hardly unreasonable, and the loathsome tide of threats and hatred she received is outrageous.
Noah, have you read Angry Women Of Rock? It has an amazing interview with Jarboe and her talk about the abuse she suffered touring in Swans is astonishing.
Noah said: “But what’s interesting I think is the way his assholish-ness is framed. Specifically, his misogyny — his sneering at women for acting as if harassment matters — is framed through and by his explicit antipathy towards the Muslim world.”
Nate: “It’s f’ed up to use the problems facing women in one place to belittle the problems facing women in another.”
I don’t think that’s what RD was doing or thought he was doing since he seems to have been under the impression that RW was crying “harassment!” after clumsily being hit upon, and if that had been the case I think he would have had a point. But as I said earlier that’s not what RW did in her video, she only said “Guys, don’t do that.”, which is completely justified. But it got the ball rolling and started a chain reaction which then turned into a flamewar, in which RD unfortunately weighed in rather ham-fistedly. Again, I think his even greater mistake was not to be too proud or self-righteous to peddle back. I don’t think he’s a huge misogynist, he often stated the feminist and LGBT causes as positive rolemodels for his own atheist agenda. I don’t think he has a hatred for the “muslim world” either, but just like in Christianity’s case he dislikes the religion because from his POV it’s a stumbling block for scientific and social progress(and I tend to agree). He rants about Christianity far more than he rants about Islam or Judaism, but in the end he views them all as different facets of the same problem. “i respect you too much to respect your ridiculous beliefs.” is a phrase he quotes a lot, and I think he means it.
When he says “We’re being too nice”, I don’t think he’s talking about not dropping enough bombs, I believe he’s referring to things like allowing Sharia law in Britain, faith schools, censoring possibly insulting caricatures and so on.
What in my view makes this incident and the following development interesting is not that it shows that atheists are assholes too, or that Dawkins is a misogynist, but that it was a tiny little spark which catalyzed which lead to a fracturing of the “movement” (and I think 20.000 people from all over the US coming to washington to demonstrate DOES justify calling it a movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason_Rally) And the reason for that is, that right from the start there were some internal ideological and political divisions which just weren’t talked about. I’m curious how this whole thing evolves.
I meant “I think his even greater mistake was to be too proud or self-righteous to peddle back.”, of course. Without the “not”. (this place is just like the old TCJ board, right down to the missing edit function)
“to NOT peddle back”.
I’m having connection problems, so real quick:
Fufu, I think she was saying the invite was harassment quite clearly. She referred to how awful and threatening it was to be “sexualized” in such a manner. She was relating the incident to the “misogyny” of atheist conferences. Seems to me Dawkins understood her meaning.
Noah, when such ridiculous interpretations are taken as the truth by some wouldbe feminist commentators, it does the rights of women no favors. RW is a joke, and should be acknowledged as such. Why believe her supposed groping incidents, when she’s so full of shit on this matter?
The same could be said of your overuse of ‘misogyny’ — it depowers the word, like ‘awesome’. Patriarchy isn’t synonymous with misogyny.
Patriarchy functions through misogyny. And clearly the word isn’t depowered when people absolutely lose every portion of their shit at the mildest mention of it.
You don’t actually seem to be reacting to anything she’s saying, and are instead getting upset at what you take her to be saying — and then insisting that she shouldn’t be believed on the basis of the things you claim she’s saying, which don’t actually seem to be what she’s said. When you’ve constructed a perfect echo chamber like that, it’s hard for me to know how to talk to you about it.
I guess I’d just say briefly that many, many of your arguments on these matters come down more or less to your refusal to believe women when they talk about their experiences of being harassed or oppressed. Is that really the brave and independent stance you claim it is? Or does it actually fit more easily into that not-all-that-depowered word, misogyny? I don’t really expect you to think about that, but I kind of wish you would.
Isn’t it weird how every single time these issues of rape or male sexual abuse of women come up on HU, the same people diminish the victim’s viewpoint? Obvious, predictable and disgusting.
Open discourse, James, try it.
Yep, Noah, patriarchy functions through misogyny. It just doesn ‘t always make for misogyny. It really ain’t hard to make a distinction, but you refuse. Anyway, i’m not upset. I don’t take this incident very seriously. The women i know are a lot stronger than what’s portrayed here, so i gave my reaction.
Yeah, well, I found that my sanity held up better when I didn’t watch Fox news too…call it a low dick threshold.
Why watch it, then?
I’m just gonna go out on a limb here and say being a man and giving your point of view unwarranted self-importance and throwing up pretenses like “open discourse” and “dialogue” are padded, insubstantial, “safe” ways of obfuscating womens’ lived experiences. I have absolutely no patience for that, I’m sorry. What a lot of dudes don’t understand is that they get to play with these ideas for their rhetorical amusement while simultaneously doing nothing to prevent women from being followed home, catcalled, creeped on at conventions, come in contact with all manner of demeaning slurs several times throughout their day. We see this shit all the time in queer spaces too. “Your lived experiences are getting in the way of my THEORIES”
Have you read Butler’s take on the cloying, rich liberal concept of “dialogue”, the idea that progress is accomplished solely through back and forth between the oppressor and the oppressed is broken as fuck because it assumes the oppressor and the oppressed will ever have the same idea of what constitutes ‘fair’. And you see that shit all the time when experiences like this are brought to the table – “It’s not SEXIST for me, a total stranger, to interrupt you while you’re at work and tell you you should smile more” “It’s not SEXIST for me for hit on you after following you onto on elevator right after you finish up a lecture on feeling creeped out at skeptic cons” ah good, glad we could clear that up, glad this “dialogue” helped us invalidate the pathological imbalance that skews the way men view and treat women. I’m tired of “dialogue”. Listen to people who feel threatened at events like this and treat their narratives with the respect and seriousness they deserve. Or maybe those women aren’t “strong enough”, whatever bro.
@ vommarlowe–strangers literally PICK YOU UP FROM BEHIND?!?!? Whoa. That’s fuckin’ weird. Not to be facetious but is it an American thing, I wonder? Never seen it over here in the UK…”English reserve” and all that….I dunno. But why any man would think it’s his right to pick a lady up like that is just…strange.
Go for the windpipe next time.
Rory,
You go from lecturing against placing theory over lived experiences to citing Judith Butler … really?
Sounds to me like you’re saying dialogue is impossible with you, so I’ll leave it at that.
Seems some here are hankering for a flame war, for which I have no desire. So I’m going to bow out respectfully. Besides this really sucks on an iphone.
Yeah, and? Were you hoping I’d pull out some talking points about sexism penned by a man? And furthermore, would you even give feminist theory penned by women any more or less respect than you would their direct, visceral experiences? Especially given what you’ve said about RW’s -own account- of her experiences with harassment?
I’m entirely open to dialogue; I’d love to see your favorite subreddit.
To me it seems really excessively, almost maniacally determined to do what Watson’s done. To continue to confront these issues in the face of such an enormous backlash…I mean, I wouldn’t do it, I don’t think. It seems pretty inspiring to me.
Additionally: I’d like to hear what gives a man the authority to decide who the “good female role models” are
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FuFu says:
(this place is just like the old TCJ board, right down to the missing edit function)
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No, the incarnations I participated in had an edit function…
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ant says:
@ vommarlowe–strangers literally PICK YOU UP FROM BEHIND?!?!?…Go for the windpipe next time.
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A lifetime ago, while taking a class in Cuong Nhu martial arts (which originated in Vietnam, and is especially suited for women since the Vietnamese are not a big people, and thus do not emphasize brute force), we listened with delight to a class member who, waiting in a parking lot, had a man suddenly reach out and grab her from a parked car. WHAM! She lashed out with her elbow without thinking, breaking the creep’s nose.
I guess she couldn’t go around thinking of herself as a “victim,” though…
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Rory D says:
…Or maybe those women aren’t “strong enough”, whatever bro.
——————
Well, “bro,” the same woman who here at HU threw a fit because Noah said an argument was “lame,” irately charging that he was “denying the humanity” of disabled people…
(And that’s how “Political Correctness” gets an idiotic reputation)
…later told him elsewhere that Hooded Utilitarian wasn’t a “safe place” for women. She complimented Noah for trying his best, but he couldn’t help what some posters said.
Now, what is in that feminist’s POV that made HU “not safe” for women? Is it that they get threats of violence or sexual assault? That HU-ites stalk them, in real life or cyberspace? No, it’s that some big bad males disagreed with their arguments; don’t automatically bow in awe before the Wisdom of Woman on all matters of women and sexism.
And, when they make a dubious argument, actually call them on it and debate the subject, instead of considering them frail flowers who can’t “take the heat,” or like those putrid scumbags within the atheist or skeptic “communities,” heap on threats and vilification.
Are those who treat women as fragile Victorian antiques, to be sheltered from all disagreement; who let extremist feminists lead them down a self-destructive and isolating path, and raise not a word of objection to the idiocies being held up as Feminist Gospel (like, “no woman can have sex with a man and be a real feminist”); who say it should be totally up to men to make sure that women don’t feel “threatened,” rather than them learning to take care of themselves…
…truly doing women a favor?
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James says:
Isn’t it weird how every single time these issues of rape or male sexual abuse of women come up on HU, the same people diminish the victim’s viewpoint? Obvious, predictable and disgusting.
———————
Rape and male sexual abuse of women (uh, female sexual abuse of women happens too, BTW) are vile actions, deserving prosecution or condemnation.
Apparently what here qualifies as “diminish[ing] the victim’s viewpoint” is being dubious as to whether or not Sally Jupiter was actually raped in “Watchmen” (despite massively detailed proof to the contrary, some — who must have the power to see things happening outside the comics frame — are utterly, outragedly certain she was not only raped, but anally raped)…
…or, in this case, to argue that — while the insults and rape threats aimed Rebecca Watson’s way were loathsome, contemptible stuff, some guy asking her “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?” in an elevator hardly fits the “straight out of a serial killer movie” situation it’s depicted as by Watson’s would-be defenders.
Indeed, it’s obvious that many “defenders” of both Dawkins and Watson did them no favors; bumping up the level of hysteria and animosity.
And, does every “victim’s viewpoint” deserve to be given equal weight? What if some abused woman says — as was stated in the “feminist classic” “The Women’s Room” — “all men are rapists and that’s all they are.” What about the extreme example of the sexually abused and raped Aileen Wuornos, who became a serial killer of males?
If one disagrees with the above, then, one is guilty of the “obvious, predictable and disgusting…diminish[ment of] the victim’s viewpoint.”
What about when extremist feminists (who as women, no matter how sheltered and privileged their background, can see and portray themselves as “victims”; while all males, no matter how impoverished and abusive their backgrounds, are depicted as swimming in the privilege the Patriarchy supposedly bestows on all guys) claim any criticism of their most absurd, sexist, contradictory or hypocritical positions constitutes proof of sexism and misogyny? And that anything any woman says about the condition of Woman is automatically more valid than anything any male would say?
Of course, just as any criticism of Bush II’s policies was said by right-wingers to be “America bashing,” any criticism of anything — no matter how misguided — by a black or feminist activist means one is slammed as a racist and a woman-hater.
Funny how it’s also the same people who exalt and inflate the “victim’s viewpoint.” And when it comes to blacks and women, that is how these “defenders” perpetually view them: as victims, utterly helpless, with no control over their lives; passively dependent on welfare and the largess of whites and tolerance of males. Any dysfunctional behavior they sink to infinitely excusable: “The oppression made them do it!”
By the way, many African-American women on the subject of the overwhelmingly-white feminist women sound an awful lot like Dawkins. “What the hell do you have to complain about??!! Other women have it way worse than you pampered, privileged, college-educated…”
“Feminism still isn’t for black women”: http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2008/02/14/a-black-woman-contemplates-breaking-up-with-feminism/
“An Open Letter to the White Feminist Community”: http://dearwhitefeminists.wordpress.com/
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It is what it is, and Black women like myself, are sick and tired of white women dismissing, overlooking, and just flat out ignoring our concerns, while simultaneously and ever so self-righteously proclaiming to be the champions of diversity where women are concerned.
It’s clear through NOW’s and CWA’s deafening silence on the personal attack on Whitney Houston that when it comes to defending women, even multi-platinum, international pop icons, that groups like NOW and CWA are concerned only with sexist slurs hurled at white women.
So NOW and CWA, please, spare us all the sidestepping, double talking, excuses and after-the-fact statements. Please, just make a simple modification to your names and add the word “white” before “Women.” Yes, I’m serious. It’s perfectly clear that today’s feminist movement is led by, for the benefit of, and about middle-class white women only. Period. The end.
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http://www.eurweb.com/2012/03/white-feminists-dont-care-about-black-women/
Come to think of it, early Suffragettes argued to their fellow whites that they should be given the vote, so that they could help cancel out the votes of those freed slaves now being enfranchised…
Mike, I didn’t read all of that…but it wasn’t the same women, and there was polite disagreement, not a fit. Sheesh.
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Rory D says:
Additionally: I’d like to hear what gives a man the authority to decide who the “good female role models” are
———————-
If some Rap musician exalts homophobia, misogyny, violent machismo, drug-dealing and crass materialism in his lyrics and behavior, would you likewise ask “what gives a white man the authority to decide he’s not a good role model”?
Sexism and racism, that’s what it is. Which also contributes to women and blacks being marginalized, seen as the “other” rather than a part of the same society and culture.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Mike, I didn’t read all of that…but it wasn’t the same women, and there was polite disagreement, not a fit. Sheesh.
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So it wasn’t just one with those…”interesting” positions? Sheesh, indeed!
And it sure came across like your “that argument was lame” comment inspired a fit of outrage.
Oh, yeah, and that “lame argument” bit also got you charged as…”ableist”!
That argument was really low key and polite, as I remember it. Not acrimonious at all.
Noah: “…I mean, I wouldn’t do it, I don’t think. It seems pretty inspiring to me.”
But what happened to listening to your wife’s advice? See option (b) above.
Ah, well…ignoring each other’s advice is what marriage is all about….
BTW Mr. Google you are included in the usual suspects of fucking annoying antifeminist rape commentators.
Mike: I’m confused, who are you talking about?
White feminists have always had a history of blindsiding race and class – and I’m hardly a stranger to what harmful effects the evo-psych idea of dudes as unchanging predatory brutes can have, radical feminists frequently pull that one on me as a trans man. Citing Butler was retrospectively a bad idea as I’m not actually much into her (or any white feminist – they hate me) but if we’re specifically contextualizing this to Dawkins atheists, who don’t have the best history regarding class and race themselves..
Mike, I understand what you’re trying to introduce here – these sorts of activists often ignore intersectionality and more complicated power dynamics beyond man and woman, and many MRA-types and radfems have quite a lot in common, but I’m having a hard time buying the relationship you’re trying to draw between the condescension of the ‘victim’ concept, as it relates to class/racial oppression, and the actual invalidation of people who are physically violated. I’m having a hard time parsing “I guess she couldn’t go around thinking of herself as a “victim,” though…” Really? Yes, you can just drop-kick a creep, but where do you factor in people who come across as milquetoast/”safe” and prey on emotional vulnerability rather than fitting this indeed false stereotype of aggro, predatory rapists. In other words, people who come across closer to what elevator dude’s demeanor is like, whether he was actually a threat or not – it’s not unheard of. That said, this is probably a good time to bow out, though – it’s impossible for me to divorce visceral emotional response from discussions of sexual harassment/violation because of my personal history.
“I’m not actually much into her (or any white feminist – they hate me)”
Susie Bright! Julia Serano! And William Marston too, I’d argue. There are other trans/queer-friendly white feminists too; Butler’s gotten a fair bit of pushback on this sort of thing, I think… (presuming the issue you’re talking about is white feminists and transphobia?)
Noah: Hyperbole, there are some who get it. Yeah, I see you saw the Roseanne thing, outbursts like that are common and encouraged. It wouldn’t be my place to speak on behalf of trans women, though. (and I don’t wanna hijack the comments)
Charles said: “Fufu, I think she was saying the invite was harassment quite clearly. She referred to how awful and threatening it was to be “sexualized” in such a manner. She was relating the incident to the “misogyny” of atheist conferences. Seems to me Dawkins understood her meaning.”
Okay, so I went back and watched the video that (from what I remember) started it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKHwduG1Frk
It’s true, she sneaks “harassment” in there somewhere, but otherwise she’s just giving advice on how not to hit on a girl in an elevator. But maybe I’m missing something, and I certainly haven’t followed the whole flamewar.
Mike: I know in the end the was an edit function on TCJ, but way before that I seem to recall a lengthy period in which everyone was constantly complaining about there not being one… am I hallucinating?
You werent hallucinating, how could anyone forget those graphic photos that could not edited off the posts? There were two completely different forums for TCJ.
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Robert Adam Gilmour says:
You werent hallucinating, how could anyone forget those graphic photos that could not edited off the posts? There were two completely different forums for TCJ.
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I’ll unfortunately never forget a manga page of “Baby Rape” somebody put up, that lingered for days…
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James says:
BTW Mr. Google you are included in the usual suspects of fucking annoying antifeminist rape commentators.
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“Fucking annoying” I can cheerfully accept. As for “antifeminist,” does being opposed to Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell-types make one “anti-Christian”?
I’ve repeatedly said how I emphatically am in favor of women having equal rights and protection under the law; how they are fully capable of handling most any jobs that males can; how in the places where their perceptions, neural processing and general attitudes differ from males, they can provide a valuable different perspective, which males should appreciate and use to enhance their own way of seeing and doing things. (For instance, women police officers, faced with a violent criminal, are far more skilled than males to “talk them down” and get them to surrender peacefully.)
But, because I have trouble with the absurd, sexist assertions that radical feminists regularly make, I’m “antifeminist.”
And yes, I don’t always specify it’s extremist feminists I’m talking about. Still, from all my years of commentary — with which you are well acquainted — it should be obvious I’m hardly a “women should stay at home and have babies” type. Indeed, I’ve actually criticized those who want to do that, as “copping out” of the challenges of the outside world and retreating to the home. And yeah, I know a woman should have the right to do that, just as an African-American should have the right to sell themselves into slavery. Which still doesn’t mean I’m going to approve.
Oh yes, I can anticipate the “Who are you to approve or disapprove of what women or blacks do?” rejoinder. Which can be extended to, “Who are you to approve or disapprove if Idi Amin kicks all the Asians (hardworking prosperous business-owners) out of Uganda, to wild approval from the rest of the population?” I’m neither black nor an African, therefore my opinions are worthless, and I should say nothing. (Not that anyone is advocating that nasty ol’ censorship, of course…!) And if the Turks were these days committing genocide against the Armenians (who were Christian, a point that frequently “misses” being mentioned), then since we’re not Muslims, “…who are we to judge?”
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Rory D says:
White feminists have always had a history of blindsiding race and class – and I’m hardly a stranger to what harmful effects the evo-psych idea of dudes as unchanging predatory brutes can have, radical feminists frequently pull that one on me as a trans man. Citing Butler was retrospectively a bad idea as I’m not actually much into her (or any white feminist – they hate me) but if we’re specifically contextualizing this to Dawkins atheists, who don’t have the best history regarding class and race themselves…
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No “specific contextualizing” to Dawkins and his bunch; I’m kind of wandering all over the place here, blasting away.
Appreciate your added feedback re being “hated” by white feminists as a trans man, and pigeonholed as just another macho brute.
Which reminds of how bisexuals were regularly slammed by many gay-rights activists, who noxiously and idiotically denied there was such a thing as bisexuality, said that bi’s were just “uncommitted” gays and straights, and accused them of wanting to “have their cake and eat it too.”
Oh, I guess because I’m criticizing this…
-First, I shouldn’t be criticizing in the first place, no matter how absurd and egregious a wrong it might be, because I’m not gay; therefore not entitled to take a position on anything which does not involve my “group.”
-Second, it means I’m an “antigayrights commentator.” Because if you disagree with anything a group or portion of a group does or says, therefore you are the mortal enemy of everything they stand for. (Just as all those dedicated Communists who opposed Stalinism were said to be anti-Communists, on the side of the capitalists.)
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Mike, I understand what you’re trying to introduce here – these sorts of activists often ignore intersectionality and more complicated power dynamics beyond man and woman, and many MRA-types and radfems have quite a lot in common, but I’m having a hard time buying the relationship you’re trying to draw between the condescension of the ‘victim’ concept, as it relates to class/racial oppression, and the actual invalidation of people who are physically violated.
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First, people who are physically violated are not truly “invalidated.” They may be treated like they are, feel that they have been. But a victim of rape, violence, or child abuse is every bit as valid and worthwhile a person as someone who’s not been so unfortunate. (And no, I didn’t think you were arguing otherwise; I’m just trying to set things clearly here.)
When I clawed my way up out of 25 years of suicidal depression, I absorbed myself in psychology; not Freudian malarkey, but its studies and understanding of the way the human mind tends to work and react under specific circumstances. By far the most helpful was the then fairly new Cognitive Therapy, which for people with depression or other negative attitudes explained that it’s not that sufferers really were worthless, or others Were Out To Get Them or whatever, but that’s the way they thought and interpreted and misinterpreted external reality.
Because, even if you have an image of yourself as utterly worthless garbage, it’s more threatening to your view of yourself and reality to think that you might actually be a worthwhile person. Therefore, positive external experiences and reactions are dismissed (“If my family knew what I really was like, then they couldn’t love me. And they’re probably all faking it, anyway”).
Which leads to the “self-fulfilling prophecy”: I was told of one boy, dumped by his parents, who’d been shuttled around a bunch of foster homes. A friend told how “this kid does everything he can to make you hate him!” Sure; he felt worthless, unwanted, rejected. In order to keep the reality going where he kept being treated that way, he unconsciously behaved in such a way as to make sure things never changed, and his self-image as worthless and unlovable was reinforced.
The psychological dimension and mechanisms are routinely left out of politicized views of oppression. It’s all seen in a simplistic fashion, where the fact that there are human beings involved here, rather than divisions between economic, racial, gender, etc. lines, is left out.
Where this extends to oppressed groups is that yes, “even paranoids have real enemies.” Of course there are plenty of external forces deliberately trying to keep blacks, women, trans people, gays oppressed and suppressed.
But with all the legal and public-attitude ground that as been gained (and which can so easily be lost; we’re just one conservative Supreme Court Justice away from the abolition of Roe v. Wade), we are still usually our own worst enemies; and while we cannot control what others think of us and how they treat us, we can control how we think of ourselves and how we live. To a far greater degree, anyway.
Doesn’t expecting or asking for those who have oppressed you to “act nice” give them the power over you? Consist of behaving passively, waiting for a knight on a white charger to come along, slay the dragon, and strike off your chains?
And doesn’t this attitude lead to oppressed people thinking of themselves as helpless? Discourage their making active efforts to improve their lot? Rather than “empowered” (a term since ripped off by right-wingers), making them “disempowered”?
Re “Victim Consciousness,” where — instead of someone seeing themselves as someone who has been victimized, and need not keep being so — they see themselves as Victims, make that the way they define themselves:
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It is now politically incorrect to explore the role of victims in violent systems, as exploring the psychology of victims has become synonymous with blaming the victim. While shying away from blame, this article will explore the familial and cultural origins of victimhood, victims’ characteristics, their relationships with the perpetrators, and offer a victim typology. As we move from blame to a more complex understanding of violent systems, the perpetuation of these systems in our culture, and the role victims play in these systems, we provide ourselves with better tools to predict and prevent further victimization.
…Traditionally, two main approaches have dominated the way we look at victimization in the modern West. In the first approach, the finger points the blame at the victim (Brownmiller, 1975; Ryan, 1971; Sundberg, Barbaree, & Marshall, 1991; Walker, 1979). This may be a battered wife, a woman who was raped, a person of color, or an economically disadvantaged person. The second approach views men as solely responsible for violence, whether as soldiers on the battlefields, politicians in government, or husbands in domestic violence (Hughes, 1993; Keen, 1991; Zur & Glendinnning, 1987). These two approaches of blame have not only failed to resolve the violence and suffering but in fact, as this paper explains, have tended to perpetuate and exacerbate them.
…While it is clear that abuse of women by men is unjustifiable under any circumstance, still it is important to differentiate between relative degrees of responsibility. To adhere to a victim ideology which states that victims are always and completely innocent is absurd. It has yet to be widely understood that by alleviating all women or any victim from any and all responsibility to predict, prevent, or even unconsciously invite abuse, is to reduce them to helpless, incapable creatures, and in fact, re-victimizes them.
Any analysis which assumes that women make choices, contribute to their misfortune, and that they are neither the only victims nor totally innocent and helpless, is seen as blaming the victim, betraying women, and allying with patriarchal society and sexist men (Caplan & Hall-McCorquodale, 1985; Cook & Frantz-Cook, 1984; Herman, 1992; Sundberg, Barbaree, & Marshall, 1991; Walker, 1979; Yollo & Bogard, 1988).
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Emphasis added; the whole at http://www.zurinstitute.com/victimhood.html
Mike – I don’t want to be irresponsible in my position, though, if I’m speaking to someone who is not queer, so to clarify: apprehension towards trans men is not completely unfounded, the “fey feminist boyfriend who can do no wrong (because they’re not Really men)” stereotype affords trans dudes opportunities to get away with some pretty skeezy shit – and they often do. http://writingtoknow.blogspot.com/2007/11/sexual-predator-in-our-community.html (other offenders include Asher Bauer, Ira Gray)
( In fact while we’re considering skeezy self-identified male feminists, it would be prurient to bring up this sleazeball http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/exile-in-gal-ville-how-a-male-feminist-alienated-his-supporters/252915/ )
As for everything else you’ve written, there’s quite a bit of it, I’ll try to remember to come back later
prudent, not prurient, bleee uuu ggggg hhh need coffee
For a long time, I was pretty obsessed with a “radfem” blog called iblamethepatriarchy.com, run by a woman who basically believes that all heterosexual sex is evil. I really came to despise her and her legions of adoring syncophants, particularly after she wrote a post about how Lolita (my favorite book) is the kind of barbaric child pornography that will no longer exist after The Revolution wipes away our evil culture of domination (see http://tinyurl.com/926dply). Anyway, I fervently hope that Mike will never post on that site, as he’s almost the Platonic ideal of the kind of “liberal dude” that they’re always complaining about. According to them, such “dudes” are in love with the sound of their own voices and never shut up about how enlightened they are while tirelessly arguing against feminists. Man, if they ever met Mike, their (in my opinion, dumb) worldview would be reinforced a million times over. (Although it might be amusing to watch Mike’s unrelenting niceness and chipperness slowly drive them insane.)
“such “dudes” are in love with the sound of their own voices and never shut up about how enlightened they are while tirelessly arguing against feminists.”
I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that such people exist…or that Lolita is morally problematic in some ways (Nabokov takes a strong stand against pedophilia I think…but there’s some vacillation.) Sex as evil and banning books are both bad ideas though, I’ll agree with that….
Okay, I read it. You wander around a lot – beg your pardon if I’m not parsing well:
I think you are misunderstanding marginalized folks to a certain extent. I’ve hardly met anyone who consciously identifies as a Victim. There are a ton of people making very aggressive strides to inform and improve their own lives – and they sure as hell don’t need the help from “allies”, or desire that their oppressors be ‘nice’ to them. Hence a lot of marginalized folk just straight up not taking any guff from people who won’t understand why they would consider certain things to be menacing. The familiar scene of dudes whooping at a woman when she’s walking home at night by herself, various microaggressions people hear and see on a regular basis, etc.
For one thing, I rarely meet people who identify as progressive (who aren’t full of shit) who consider men mindless automatons programmed for violence, in fact that directly conflicts with the notion that violence is a conditioned behavior that men can rise above. I’m not keen on this dichotomy between mystifying abusers and blaming ‘victims’ either – but these relationships are not separate from eachother (not to accuse you of saying that they are, but it isn’t addressed to the extent I feel it should be) – feeling helpless and afraid as a result of having abusive behavior inflicted on you is pathological and where, exactly, do we draw the line between holding victims responsible for their pathology if so much of that pathology -was- influenced by an abuser. I’m not defending “learned helplessness” the way you’ve set it up here – I’m saying from that we’re not taking things like gaslighting into consideration. Many victims are gaslit, gaslighting is one of the strongest weapons in an abusers’ repertoire. It’s hard to confront any ideas that dissolve your sense of self, if you aren’t even able to comprehend that anything is wrong until it’s too late. “This man honestly made me uncomfortable.” “No he didn’t! You’re crazy.” (This is also a case where ‘dialogue’ can just wind up being gaslighting.)
Now, if we’re getting autobiographical, as far as my personal experiences with abuse go, I would feel uncomfortable talking about them here. However, interpersonal/familial relationships with destructive men have made my overall experience as a human being (and as a man) a lot more distressing than anti-trans feminists ever could. And contrary to the image of a person robotically inflicting loutish brutality that I’d imagine you yourself would disagree with, most abusers I have known have come across as extremely pitiful and helpless themselves, it’s not quite so obvious that one can just attempt the romantic “beat up a creep in a parking lot” story you recalled earlier. I’m talking about even on a level transcending just personal relationship abuse – MRAs love to act like women are picking on them, rich people think they themselves will be personally victimized if forced to cohabitate with proles, radfems love to entertain these wild fantasies of trans women entering womens’ bathrooms to take advantage of cis women, etc. They desire a certain level of control at all times and have these cheap ways of obtaining it that are pretty effective – and an absence of control seems like oppression to them. They play off this when you call them on it, it feels like you’re punishing them if you do anything other than cow to their demands. And that’s what makes it really suck, honestly, you care enough about people to not want to hurt them – what happens when not wanting to do something that makes you seriously uncomfortable for them is “hurting” them?
So, if we’re going off your unified definition of victim, there’s more at play on behalf of abusers than I think you are considering here. It’s not that victims are always innocent – it’s that victims are strongly influenced by the conscious and unconscious tactics of their abusers.
I think you may be mistaking fighting back for victimizing yourself, correct me if I’m misreading you. If I could honestly say I had met many marginalized people who see themselves as victims, as opposed to a people who routinely put up with bullshit, I would be inclined to agree with you, but I have not. Even queer folk living in the South where I grew up – dear friends – who knew, factually, that their parents would abandon them: it made them feel miserable and unlovable, and sometimes too weak to even function, but never in the manner in which you are describing. The ones who don’t love themselves became anti-gay bullies, not pro-gay activists. And I’m not trying to be contrarian, these are things I care a lot about. I’ve known so many people who have suffered this way and I would not want to think of them as Victims any more than they themselves would.
One last thing:
“-First, I shouldn’t be criticizing in the first place, no matter how absurd and egregious a wrong it might be, because I’m not gay; therefore not entitled to take a position on anything which does not involve my “group.””
Honestly straight folk finger-waving prejudice within queer spaces is mostly seen as condescending because it often comes attached to this assumption that queer folks don’t know better and aren’t doing anything to stop it. So it’s less about contempt for the oppressor and wanting them to stay in their own “group” and more about feeling exasperated by the Burden Of Educating Those Shallow Queers they ascribe themselves.
this thread has traveled a long way from home, chooo choooooo
And I should also clarify I’m not saying victims shouldn’t get better because it’s not their fault (I’ve had to fight past conditioned fears that made it hard to be myself) just that certain expectations of traumatized/warped folks can get pretty dicey
Noah, I don’t think it’s crazy, either. Like I said, Mike fits pretty well into what they’re complaining about. (Mike, the only reason why I freely talk smack about you like this is that it never seems to phase you in the slightest.) I think it’s human nature for people to think that their own perspectives are most important, but I don’t know, maybe white guys like me really are the worst offenders.
About Lolita: I can definitely understand someone reading the book and saying, “Jesus, that was a story about a kid getting raped, but the author was way more interested in packing in as many jokes, riddles, puzzles, games, parodies, literary references, and other art-for-art’s-sake stuff as he could come up with. It kind of trivilaized the kid’s pain.” I can even understand someone speculating that Nabokov might have had a thing for young girls (Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens both suggested this as a possibility). He definitely didn’t have Humbert-style “nympholepsy,” as Humbert found adult women disgusting and Nabokov was kind of a ladies’ man, but the pedophilia theme came up so often in his work that it’s natural to wonder whether some prurient interest was going on.
But that blog author (“Twisty”) went beyond all of that to describe the book as erotic literature by an obvious pedophile about how it’s awesome to rape kids. I really think that anyone who reads the book and comes away with that is either stupid or has internalized a very narrow and simplistic political ideology.
Sorry to take things off-topic as always. By the way, I read about the elevator-man/Hawkins incident on “Twisty’s” blog several months if not years ago.
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Jack says:
…Like I said, Mike fits pretty well into what they’re complaining about. (Mike, the only reason why I freely talk smack about you like this is that it never seems to phase you in the slightest.)
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You’re right, it does not. Smack away!
And, I’ve learned to take these “If you’re against the war in Iraq, then you hate America!”; “If you disagree with Andrea Dworkin, then you believe women should be oppressed!”-type reactions, from right or left, for granted.
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I think it’s human nature for people to think that their own perspectives are most important, but I don’t know, maybe white guys like me really are the worst offenders.
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Yes, it sure is the PC attitude to think that white, male, hetero, Christian, able-bodied, etc. folks are uniquely bad.
It’s simply a series of accidents of culture, biology, and history that placed people in that group in a position where they could impose their own perspectives.
Dig a tiny bit, and it’s readily apparent that all these oppressed groups likewise “think that their own perspectives are most important” (and valid), and all “would be tyrants if they could,” as the remarkable Abigail Adams put it.
No time to deal with further comments, but something about the supposedly creepy/outrageous (certainly not tactful, though) “guy in the elevator — a stranger –asking Rebecca Watson to his room for coffee” situation struck me.
When a movie star goes out in public, don’t “strangers” act as if they know them and walk up to chat, ask for an autograph?
When a thespian acts in a play, don’t “strangers” wait outside the dressing-room door or theater exit with flowers, compliments?
When someone makes a speech or academic presentation, don’t members of the audience — “strangers” — later come up to them with questions, arguments, or the occasional invite?
In other words, when you put yourself out in public in such a fashion — rather than remaining a private, enclosed individual — as a public figure, people are going to take it for granted that your “personal space” is somehow more permeable; that they have more of a right to come up to you and start talking away.
Oops, am I “blaming the victim” again? Because nothing is more “victimizing” and soul-crushing, than getting a ““Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting. Would you like to come back to my hotel room for coffee?” invitation.
Yup, that expression “PC” crept in there….I was expecting it. It always makes me think the user is worried that their local Hooters will be shut down and then they’ll have nowhere they like to take the wife and kids to Sunday dinner because the hamburgers are REALLY GOOD there.
Yes, that’s exactly the type I am; Rush Limbaugh-admiring, football fanatic, never read a book once I graduated high school and wasn’t required to, hooked on Fox News, always railing about th’ “Liberal Media” and that far-leftist Socialism Muslim from Kenya Obama.
And if you criticize anything radical feminists say, that’s the way you’ll be thought of.
(Hey, post #100!)
Mike, the fact that you keep on referring to people who disagree with you as ‘radical feminists’ doesn’t do you any favours. Most of the women I know define as feminists – not radical feminists – and they would disagree with you on a variety of points. I may be mistaken here, but it sounds like you need to get out there and have a conversation with these kinds of people – if only so you can get a clearer picture of who you’re supposedly debating.
And, yeah, you gotta be careful with terms like ‘PC’. They can get out of hand. Go mahaaaaad.
I’ve asked Mike to stop straw-womaning feminism for years…long enough that I’ve basically given up at this point.
Most women would be more likely to agree with Mike than radical feminists on most issues discussed here, I suspect.
This thread has outlived it’s usefulness, I think. I’m going to close it. Thanks everyone for commenting.