Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Islamophobia; victim-blaming; video autoplays at link] Bill Maher continues to be an Islamophobic shitlord, using a segment of his show Friday night to discuss Ahmed Mohamed and his clock and engaging in more rank Islamophobia. And his guests Mark Cuban, George Pataki, and Chris Matthews happily joined in, with only journalist Jorge Ramos pushing back. For fuck's sake.
[CN: Islamophobia] And you knew Richard Dawkins had to get in the act, because he is the worst.
[CN: Islamophobia] In other news, Dr. Ben Carson said that a Muslim should never be president: "I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that." Senator Bernie Sanders pushed back, saying: "You know, this is the year 2015. You judge candidates for president not on their religion, not on the color of their skin, but on their ideas on what they stand for. … I was very disappointed in Dr. Carson's statement." Which is definitely more politic than saying, "Dr. Ben Carson, shut the fuck up, you asshole."
[CN: Islamophobia] And meanwhile, Donald Trump implies that President Obama is a Muslim, but begrudgingly offers that he's "willing to take [Obama] at his word" about being a Christian. This fucking guy.
[CN: Sexual violence; child abuse; child neglect; rape culture] This is utterly horrifying and rage-making: "Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally 'boy play,' and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene—in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. ...'The reason we were here is because we heard the terrible things the Taliban were doing to people, how they were taking away human rights,' said Dan Quinn, a former Special Forces captain who beat up an American-backed militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave. 'But we were putting people into power who would do things that were worse than the Taliban did—that was something village elders voiced to me.'The policy of instructing soldiers to ignore child sexual abuse by their Afghan allies is coming under new scrutiny, particularly as it emerges that service members like Captain Quinn have faced discipline, even career ruin, for disobeying it." What the fuck are we even doing. Goddammit.
[CN: Refugee crisis] Good: "In response to the current crisis in the Middle East and Europe, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States will significantly increase the number of refugees it will accept over the next two years. Currently, the U.S. accept 70,000 refugees from all over the world per year. In fiscal year 2016, that number will increase to 85,000. And in 2017, the total will be 100,000... That number, of course, will include a lot more refugees from Syria than the U.S. has taken in this year: just 1,500 since that country's internal conflict began four years ago. ...The Obama administration had previously said it would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, which will be possible within this new cap. 'This step is in keeping with America's best tradition as a land of second chances and a beacon of hope,' Kerry said, adding that the U.S. would also continue to supply financial aid to the humanitarian effort to solve this crisis."
Fuck you, Volkswagon: "Volkswagen's chief executive has said sorry after US regulators found some of its cars disguised pollution levels. 'I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,' Martin Winterkorn said. He has launched an investigation into the device that allowed VW cars to emit less during tests than they would while driving normally. ...The German carmaker was ordered to recall half a million cars on Friday. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found the 'defeat device' in diesel cars including the Audi A3, VW Jetta, Beetle, Golf, and Passat models. In addition to paying for the recall, VW faces fines that could add up to billions of dollars. There may also be criminal charges for VW executives." As well there should be.
RIP Jackie Collins. "She lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends, and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over 4 decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction, and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words."
This is brilliant: "The Truth Behind Instagram Photos."
Do you need more Tom Hardy with dogs in your day? Then you are in luck!
And finally! This husky is DEEPLY AGGRIEVED about not getting a bite of hamburger. LOL oh dogs! Never change.
In the News
Richard Dawkins Isn't Funny
[Content Note: Racism; slavery.]
Richard Dawkins has mastered the art of obliquely referencing in really outrageous ways topics that have been in the news, apparently in order to stir up reactions. Here is his latest, riding on recent conversations about the Confederate flag:
When called out for the dubious accuracy of this statement, Dawkins claimed that he was just offering an alternate-history novel idea in 140 characters, and chided those who responded for their "vitriol" and incivility.
I'm going to be honest that a part of me doesn't want to respond to Dawkins' outrageous tweets anymore. I now genuinely believe him to be a professional troll who is engaging in the internet equivalent of poking at us with a stick until he can get a reaction. Every word wasted on him at this point feels like giving in to his demands for attention.
But this isn't occurring in a vacuum. This narrative, whether admittedly "fictional" or not, that slaves "would've been freed" (eventually! somehow! by 2015, definitely!) by white people, through the kindness of those who oppressed them, feeds into the same modern cultural choice to obscure the work that marginalized communities perform in order to improve things for themselves right now.
These messages are constant and harmful and not anywhere even remotely funny. Dawkins' immense privilege allows him to joke about slavery and how the oppression of black Americans totes would have ended on its own somehow someway through the inevitable efforts of somebody, while ignoring all the oppression that is happening right now, today, and which many white people are blissfully choosing to ignore.
That isn't okay, it's not helpful, and in fact it's downright harmful.
Sartorial Misogyny, Feminist Concern Trolling, and the "Little Things" in Science and Everywhere
[Content Note: Misogyny; sexual violence; disablist language.]
So, last week, during the Philae landing, European Space Agency scientist Dr. Matt Taylor wore a shirt covered in half-naked, provocatively-posed women, seen all over the world during his interview on the live broadcast.
This was before I tuned in; by the time I saw him talking about the landing in terms of a date, and saying that Philae was moving in for a kiss, he had already changed into an ESA shirt.
There was a lot of criticism of Taylor, made by people who give a fuck that misogynist clothing was donned in a professional environment by someone who has an enormous amount of privilege in a field where there continues to be pervasive discrimination against women.
STEM Women has a terrific post, "Astronomical Sexism: Rosetta #ShirtStorm and Everyday Sexism in STEM," which I highly recommend you read as background on the entire thing, and why the criticism of Taylor matters.
Naturally, there was an outpouring of hostility toward women (and men) who took issue with Taylor's sartorial choice.
Some of it was at least honest enough to just be the usual gross misogynist silencing, shouting at feminists with the brazen venom that proves the point.
Others took a more embarrassing tack, trying to approximate some sort of principled defense of Taylor. London Mayor Boris Johnson, for example, accused Taylor's critics of being "abusive" and "humiliating" him "at the moment of his supreme professional triumph." Taylor, naturally, bears no accountability for humiliating himself by being a rank sexist on an international broadcast.
And then, of course, there were the feminist concern trolls, who came out in droves in order to declare feminism irrelevant or dead, because to criticize a sexist shirt is proof of our small-minded prudish pettiness.
Naturally, King of the Feminist Concern Trolls, Richard Dawkins, who loves nothing more than to pretend he gives a fuck about feminist issues in order to shit all over feminists, weighed in thus:
"True feminism." Of course. As defined by men who believe women should let men get away with wearing misogynist clothes in a professional environment, because there are "bigger things" about which we should be worrying.
Things other men are doing. Somewhere else.
Always, that should be the focus of "true feminism." To focus exclusively on other men who are doing worse things.
Which is not only a neat little deflection of personal accountability, and preemptive shaming for any woman who considers scrutinizing them, but is also advice fundamentally incompatible with the basic work of feminist activism, because it is the pervasive, ubiquitous, inescapable little things that create the foundation of a sexist culture on which the big stuff is dependent for its survival. It's the little things, the constant drumbeat of inequality and objectification, that inure us to increasingly horrible acts and attitudes toward women.
Feminists who focus on the "little stuff" do it because that's It—that's the stuff, that's the fertile soil in which everything else takes root and from whence everything else springs, that's the way that the fundamental idea that women are not equal to men is conveyed over and over and over again.
When feminist concern trolls like Dawkins whine about the misuse of feminism, talking about feminism like it's meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, they're deliberately ignoring how culture works. The "little things" don't happen in a vacuum, but are part of a spectrum of expressed misogyny that forms a systemic oppression of women.
The "little things" and the "big things" are interwoven strands of the same rope, which Dawkins et. al. constantly want to unravel, in order to claim that only some of the strands (the ones belonging to other sorts of men, in other sorts of places) are really deserving of feminists' attentions.
They want to play a feminist ranking game, in which there is a hierarchy of concerns with which "true feminists" will busy themselves. But as soon as one begins to judge the worthiness of feminists' attention on a sliding scale, even generally-regarded "big things" like equal pay are dwarfed by global concerns like government-sanctioned use of rape as a weapon of war. And, for women in those war zones, on any given day clean water may be the even more pressing need. The fact is, it doesn't have to be one or the other—feminists can multi-task.
Because feminism by design functions to address all manner of issues, big and small. That women can (and do) utilize the tenets of feminism in every aspect of their lives does not undermine the history of the feminist movement, but instead does it a great honor. Feminism was never meant to be restricted to suffrage and genital cutting, held in reserve like a finite quantity in danger of depletion if it's used for "the little things." Feminism is a renewable resource.
All of which is to say nothing of the fact that it's not really such a "little thing," that shirt. A shirt that sexually objectifies women, worn in a professional space, for an international broadcast, by one of the most privileged members of a profession in which many women struggle to achieve the same levels of opportunity and recognition. A shirt that clearly none of the other men around Dr. Taylor suggested would be inappropriate.
It's not just the shirt. It's what the shirt communicates to women, not just about one man, but about his field, and women's place in it.
That's not a little thing. But maybe it takes a "true feminist" to understand that.
An Open Letter to People Who Defended Richard Dawkins for Many Years and Are Now Distancing Themselves from Him with Maximum Haste
[Content Note: Threats; misogyny.]
Dear People Who Defended Richard Dawkins for Many Years and Are Now Distancing Themselves from Him with Maximum Haste:
First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry. It stinks when someone you respect and admire, someone from whom you learned and helped you grow, disappoints you.
Secondly, I want to tell you that if you were among the many, many people who have, over the years, responded to feminist critics of Dawkins by reflexively screaming at us that we're overwrought, hysterical, opportunistic cunts who deserve to be raped and killed, then please let me offer you a massive treasure chest full of fuck yous.
For years, feminists (and others) have been highlighting Dawkins' misogyny, gender essentialism, rape apologia, racism, and disablism (just for a start), and, for years, we have been widely met with derisive dismissals.
Which is my polite euphemism for: Angry emails and tweets riddled with rank misogyny; garbage comments; harassment; name-calling; photoshopped imagery of our public photos; mocking and/or misrepresentative blog posts; mendacious attempts to discredit us; professional attacks; and/or threats of violence.
All because we saw, and called out, the reprehensible attitudes Dawkins has now made so manifest that you cannot possibly continue to ignore it.
And for the iniquity of being right about your hero, before you were ready to see it, you harmed us.
You owe us an apology.
More importantly, you owe us this: Next time there appear feminist critics of an Important Man, instead of reflexively screaming at us that we're overwrought, hysterical, opportunistic cunts who deserve to be raped and killed, or even engaging in the "more civil" variation of invoking classic misogynist silencing tropes or sniffing "I don't see it" from behind a gilded balustrade of claimed objectivity, you could take a moment to consider that maybe we're more sensitive to the red flags of misogyny than you are.
That maybe, just maybe, there's an outside possibility that we're right.
Warmest regards,
Liss
Why Does Anyone Listen to Richard Dawkins Anymore?
[Content Note: Rape apologia; misogyny; gender essentialism.]
That, of course, is a rhetorical question. People still listen to Richard Dawkins, despite the fact that he is a misogynist, racist, disablist rape apologist (not a comprehensive list), because he is a straight white man who upholds the kyriarchy under the auspices of science and rational thought. He confers the illusion of credible objectivity onto ancient oppressions and indecencies, and allows smug fauxgressives to pretend that their brand of subjugative abuse is superior to the brands justified by belief in deities.
Five days ago, BuzzFeed contributor Mark Oppenheimer published a piece [cn: description of sexual assault] on the misogyny endemic to movement atheism, a subject which has been discussed in this space (and many others) plenty of times. In his piece, Oppenheimer detailed Michael Shermer's alleged sexual assault of Alison Smith—an incident which has been long discussed in skeptic circles.
Smith reports that Shermer invited her for drinks, only to realize "he wasn't drinking them; he was hiding them underneath the table and pretending to drink them. I was drunk. After that, it all gets kind of blurry. I started to walk back to my hotel room, and he followed me and caught up with me." Shermer tricked Smith, then, once she was too inebriated to consent, he steered her back to his hotel room and sexually assaulted her. Other women have reported similar victimization.
Two hours after the piece went live, Richard Dawkins tweeted: "Officer, it's not my fault I was drunk driving. You see, somebody got me drunk."
There are a number of things wrong with that. Suffice it to say: Conflating being a drunk driver with being raped while intoxicated is bullshit.
And not just because it's an aggressive indecent bit of victim-blaming. For someone who prides himself on his splendid reasoning skills, that's a spectacularly poor bit of thinking, too.
Dawkins, however, routinely occupies himself with philosophical discussions on the nature of sexual assault. Just two months ago, for example, he tweeted: "Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think."
His expert thinkin' credentials invoked once again, in defense of diminishing the gravity of a crime he's now deemed the exclusive responsibility of its victims.
Naturally, critics of Dawkins' victim-blaming were dismissed as hysterics and reactionaries, blah blah yawn, who don't understand that Richard Dawkins is a feminist ally, blah blah fart.
One day later, another prominent movement atheist, Sam Harris, was profiled in the Washington Post, and the piece ended with this passage:
I also asked Harris at the event why the vast majority of atheists — and many of those who buy his books — are male, a topic which has prompted some to raise questions of sexism in the atheist community. Harris' answer was both silly and then provocative.Estrogen vibe. Wow.
It can only be attributed to my "overwhelming lack of sex appeal," he said to huge laughter.
"I think it may have to do with my person slant as an author, being very critical of bad ideas. This can sound very angry to people. People just don't like to have their ideas criticized. There's something about that critical posture that is to some degree intrinsically male and more attractive to guys than to women," he said. "The atheist variable just has this – it doesn't obviously have this nurturing, coherence-building extra estrogen vibe that you would want by default if you wanted to attract as many women as men."
Dawkins, naturally, jumped to his defense, accusing critics of Harris' rank misogyny of merely being outraged as clickbait and recommending—I shit you not—professional anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers as a solid thinker on the subject.
This is well beyond the criticisms that the most prominent leaders of movement atheism have failed to be sufficiently inclusive. This is one of the most prominent leaders of movement atheism actively defending rapist and misogynists, from even the most basic criticisms.
I note with gales of mirthless laughter that Sam Harris suggests it is women who don't have the constitution for having our ideas criticized.
[Related Reading: This Female Atheist, and Where She Is.]
Richard Dawkins Is Still Terrible
by Shakesville Moderator Hallelujah_Hippo
[Content Note: Misogyny; racism.]
This time, he's taking the bold stance that the achievements of old white guys are talked about and lauded not because of bias, but because they are just the best at everything, all the time.
Later, Heina Dadabhoy tweeted at Dawkins: "Just so I'm sure I'm reading this right, are you intending to say that old white men are the best at everything?"
To which he replied: "No of course not. But do you know a better poet / composer / scientist than Shakespeare / Schubert / Einstein?"
There are about a million things wrong with this bullshit (feel free to tease all of them out in comments), but I'm going to focus on the ones that struck me first.
Leaving aside that I can think of lots of examples to counter his shitty rhetorical question, his premise completely ignores institutional barriers (such as lack of funding, active exclusion, and purposeful erasure) to women seeking education and practicing talents in a hell of a lot of countries for a hell of a long time, while simultaneously denying the existence of languages other than English in which non-white dudes are considered some of the greatest poets ever. For a start.
Additionally, given his specific choice of examples, Shakesville Mod Aphra_Behn (quoted with permission) said it by email better than I could:
The fictional Shakespeare's sister and her limited opportunities are of course central to this blog's history. And the real-life Mileva Marie Einstein, who gave up a fucking PhD in physics after becoming pregnant with Albert's child, is another fucking bookend to the story of limiting brilliant women.The stories historians tell are not free of bias or agendas, and the people held up as superlative figures in their field and work are not chosen in a vacuum free of prejudice, agenda, and race- and gender-based assumptions (just to name two factors at play).
Shakespeare's sister and Einstein's wife, asshole. Get a fucking clue.
To keep pretending that old white dudes are the focus of praise to the exclusion of everyone else because they are inherently better than everyone else, is to keep pretending that other people have not been ignored, marginalized, and silenced in order to better support that very narrative.
And that is mendacious bullshit.
We Signed The Invitations With Our Most Contempty Ink
[Content Note: Bullying, Ableism, Misogyny]
Via Skepchick, a UK charity called Entangled Bank Events is hosting a "major science talk" in mid-November with the boast that "It’s never been done before in a venue of this scale." Astute readers will notice that the five headline speakers (Bill Bailey, Richard Fortey, Richard Dawkins, Richard Wiseman, and Quentin Cooper) are all men.
In the helpful FAQ, which includes such questions as "Is the event suitable for children?" and "Is the event accessible to wheelchair users?" and "Are there any opportunities for volunteers?" there originally was also the following question-and-answer (link courtesy of Google cache):
I am a fanatical, misandristic ‘feminist’. May I drone on about the lack of women in the line-up and despatch abusive, bigoted, mis-spelt, ungrammatical missives to the organisers and presenters?Apparently enough people pointed out that this wasn't particularly cute such that Entangled Bank Events got nervous and deleted the whole question-and-answer, and then enough people pointed out that the internet doesn't work that way such that Entangled Bank Events decided to clarify with this non-pology:
No. Please save your talents for Twitter and Facebook, that is what they are for.
We’re actually very disappointed that none of our female invitees accepted, but that is just how it was. As scientists we have no choice but to accept reality. Wanting something to be otherwise does not make it so.
Why are there no women on the panel?Oh, if only the lady-internets weren't so humorless!
We tried. We failed. The event was set up at short notice and as it happened, of all the excellent people we approached the only ones available on the day were men. We knew this wasn’t ideal and questions would be asked, so we tried to make a joke about it.
We tried. We failed. Should have been spotted by us, but as soon as our attention was drawn to it – via Twitter – we removed it. That only added to the confusion as some people saw the reactions without always knowing what was being reacted to.
So, sorry. It’s not through lack of effort the line-up is wide-ranging in the nature of their brilliance but entirely mono-gendered, but it is our fault the attempt at levity about it fell flat. And we do appreciate the efforts of all those who drew our attention to the error.
The thing that makes me laugh the most bitterly about all this is that an event which is ostensibly supposed to be about science and skepticism and understanding things is trying to deflect criticize by seriously claiming ("As scientists we have no choice but to accept reality. Wanting something to be otherwise does not make it so.") that scientists are helpless in the face of magical forces they cannot hope to comprehend, and that they are utterly unable to effect a change in the world, nor can they study and understand the causes of things in order to alter that which is into that which is desired. Science! It's apparently just like a straw-religion where the only action available to its followers is to cower in terror at the harsh immutability of a cruel, unchangeable reality.
The thing that makes me saddest about all this is that the (understandable) attention on this shitwipe of a "joke" (and note that "it was only a joke!" is the rallying call of all bullies everywhere) means that we necessarily have to spend less attention on asking genuinely probing questions about how the event miraculously ended up with only male speakers. Questions like "How many women did you invite to this event?" and "Did you ask the women who turned you down why they wouldn't attend or did you just assume there was a calendar conflict?" and "Was your pool of available lady speakers narrowed by one or more male speakers maintaining a blacklist against specific- and/or feminist- lady skeptics?"
The thing that makes me the angriest about this is that lady science-skeptic-atheist speakers are not stupid. There is no way, no plausible way, that an organization which would write the above "joke" and subsequent non-pology just picked up its misogynist coat of many colors after all the awesome lady invitees turned down their rainbow-scented invitations with outpourings of regret and much fist-shaking at their cluttered calendars. I will bet my hat that the invitations were just as whiffy with woman-hating as their FAQ.
And I will further bet my best shoes that the invitations in no way addressed the kinds of things which lady speakers tend to care about, like "Also, here is our anti-harassment policy" or "Though you will be sharing a stage with Richard Dawkins, we promise not to let him vent racism and sexism at you" or "Seriously, we are going to do our best to make sure Richard Dawkins doesn't start a grudge campaign against you". You know, the sorts of things that lady speakers might genuinely want to know about in advance when trying to decide whether to make room on their calendars for a scaled venue of bigness.
But this leads me to a larger point: Let's presupposed that Entangled Bank Events asked hundreds of lady speakers to their event, and asked in the nicest possible way with gift baskets of kittens and a 50-page paper on all the ways that Entangled Bank Events will make sure that the lady speakers have only a lovely time and aren't in any way harassed or harmed or heckled by their fellow speakers or their fellow speakers' fans. And let's presuppose that all those lady speakers still turned the event down, not because Entangled Bank Events wrote their invitations wrong or failed to anticipate basic needs. The onus would still be on Entangled Bank Events to ask themselves (and the lady speakers) why that is, and to then fix those issues.
Even if it's nothing more than a simple calendar conflict (HA HA NO), and somehow some of the biggest male names in science-skepticism-atheism were free, but absolutely none of the lady names in etc. etc. were free, then that's still a problem that Entangled Bank Events needs to seriously address as opposed to flinging their hands in the air and saying OH WELL in a sing-songy voice. Because diversity in your convention speakers is more than just a nice-to-have thing, up there with getting a caterer who offers the really snazzy double chocolate chunk cookies in addition to the crumbly sugar ones. Diversity in your "all proceeds go to charities and to scientific research and education" is kind of important in the sense that you're overlooking huge portions of humanity with your supposedly charitable outreach.
And overlooking huge portions of humanity is in itself is bad enough. But doing it while painting people who might object as hateful and mentally ill merely for objecting to their own exclusion is bullying, plain and simple.
Auditing Victims' Experiences
[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia; auditing experiences]
Here is something that I should not have to say and yet apparently must be said: A disclosure that someone is a survivor of sexual violence is not an invitation for others to decide how that experience did (or did not) cause them to change. Nor is it an invitation for others to decide how that experience should (or should not) cause them to change. In short, a disclosure that someone is a survivor of sexual violence is not an invitation for others to audit their experiences for them.
When Richard Dawkins announced this week, speaking of his childhood molester (and inappropriately speculating on behalf of those of his peers who were also abused by the same man), that “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm”, atheist blogger PZ Myers chose to respond by saying this:
I can think of some lasting harm: he seems to have developed a callous indifference to the sexual abuse of children.I know of only two ways to take this statement. One is to read it as a straight-up no-kidding seriously-meant armchair-psychiatrist-diagnosis suggestion that Richard Dawkins is a rape apologist as a direct result of being molested as a child. The other is to read this as a grossly unfunny "joke" where the punchline is that Richard Dawkins is a rape apologist as a direct result of being molested as a child.
I neither know nor care whether PZ Myers meant the statement in seriousness or in jest. The suggestion, whether serious or satirical, that Richard Dawkins is engaging in rape apologism not because lots of people engage in rape apologism in order to entrench their own social privilege nor because lots of people engage in rape apologism because they were indoctrinated into rape culture from an early age nor because lots of people engage in rape apologism for the vast, wide, varied, multiplicity of reasons why lots of people engage in rape apologism, but rather that he is doing so manifestly because he is a victim of sexual abuse is a truly odious and deeply harmful suggestion to make.
It is a suggestion which harms survivors of sexual violence in order to take pot-shots at a rape apologist not because his rape apologies are rank and disgusting, but because he himself is a victim of sexual violence. It is a suggestion which is born out of, and which upholds firmly, a Rape Culture which demands that all victims of sexual violence must react in the "right" ways (or else you weren't really abused) and which suggests that all victims of sexual violence are changed -- or, to use the language of rape culture, damaged -- in the "right" ways (or else you weren't really abused), and which then deliberately uses that enforced framework as an excuse to dismiss victims of sexual violence as overly-emotional, fundamentally-damaged people who shouldn't be listened to.
Survivors of sexual violence are not a monolith. Some of us may react to our victimization with one or more emotions; some of us may not feel a strong response or an emotional reaction to our experiences with sexual violence. Some of us may have differing reactions to our victimization at different times; some of us may maintain the same unwavering reaction to our experiences for our entire life. Some of us may feel changed by our victimization; some of us may feel unchanged by our experiences with sexual violence. Some of us may label all or part of some felt change as negative or harmful; some of us may label all or part of some felt change with positive connotations. There is no right or correct or standard way to react or respond or change or not-change as a result of sexual victimization.
It is wholly and completely up to the survivor of sexual violence to decide how, if at all, hir experiences with sexual violence have affected hir. Which is one of the many, many reasons why a disclosure that someone is a survivor of sexual violence is not an invitation for others to audit their experiences for them.
Richard Dawkins is a rape apologist, but it is not our place to assume or guess or joke or psychoanalyze from afar that he is a rape apologist because he is a victim of sexual violence. And just as Richard Dawkins is wrong to assert that his peers weren't harmed (because it is their right to determine whether they were or not), it is equally wrong for others to assert that Richard Dawkins was harmed when he says he wasn't, because it is his right to decide whether he was harmed or not.
Rape Apologia Is Not a PR Problem
[CN for the post and linked pieces: rape, rape apologia, rape culture, judicial malfeasance, suicide, mental illness.]
Rape apologia is not a PR problem. Rape is not a PR problem. Sexual harassment is not a PR problem. And so on, and so forth.
It is really pretty simple. Oppression is a problem because it harms the oppressed person or people. Not because it makes an individual or group sound bad.
But apparently, this is not as self-evident as I thought. Over at Daylight Atheism, Adam Lee is appalled by Richard Dawkins' recent rape-ranking remarks (good), but then proceeds to frame his own response primarily around the harm Dawkins is doing to the reputation of atheists:
...Even if we atheists were determined to be charitable in our interpretation, we can be sure that Dawkins’ many enemies won’t be, and will use these remarks to paint both him and the larger atheist movement in a poor light, or to deflect attention from their own moral failings. As I said on Twitter, the next time a priestly pedophilia story breaks, we can be almost certain that some Catholic apologist will say, “This is no big deal, and you’re just trying to exaggerate how serious it is to embarrass the church. See, even Richard Dawkins says it’s not always so bad!”
He also has some advice for Dawkins:
When you’re under scrutiny by people who are eager for you to make a mistake, it’s vital to carefully weigh your remarks so as not to speak in ways that can easily be used against you. Dawkins doesn’t seem to understand this, and it speaks poorly of him that he keeps committing these unforced errors. I have no explanation for why he can’t see that he’s harming not just his own reputation, but the entire secular movement that, for better or for worse, he’s widely assumed to speak on behalf of.
WHAT THE EVERLASTING FUCK.
No. The fact that Dawkins "keeps "committing these unforced errors" is not what "speaks poorly of him." Perpetuating rape apologia speaks poorly of him.
It's not that I don't sympathize with members of a marginalized group cringing at a prominent member's oppressive remarks. It's shitty when the world, the media, or whomever, judges an entire group by the words or actions of one well-known asshole; that judgement is, predictably, far harsher for atheists, people of colour, LGBT*Q folk, women, and all those in groups already under the thumb of kyriarchy. But when you centre PR, you further marginalize survivors.
If you want to be an ally, encourage others to allyship, and support those in your group who are survivors, then it's simple. BE AN ALLY. Understand that being an ally is a continuous process, not a fixed state. Keep working at it, always, and understand that there will be fuckups. Don't assume you've mastered everything, don't seek cookies, and most of all, don't further the oppression you are trying to condemn.
For example, when you're writing about Dawkins' despicable rape-ranking and auditing of survivors' responses, you should probably not write shit like this:
I’d agree that not all cases of child abuse are equally harmful, and that there should be degrees of punishment depending on the circumstances. For example, consensual sex between a teenager and an adult, like a teacher, shouldn’t be punished with the same severity as the violent rape of a child.But again, like the last time, he’s managed to couch this point in probably the worst possible way....
See that? See what you did there, Adam? YOU JUST RANKED RAPES. You blew off age differences. You blew off power differentials. You blew off a million different factors that may affect the survivor. You assumed that you could make broad judgements about the degree of harm done based on a few mechanical facts about the act, rather than on the perspective of the survivor.
This is not incidental; it enables the Lolita narrative that remains a huge problem in our rape culture. Otherwise, judges wouldn't sentence 54 year old teachers to 30 days for raping a 14 year old student (a student who, in this case, committed suicide, a pretty good indicator of the tremendous harm done). The judge ranked this particular rape by saying that the student exercised "some control" in the situation and "It was not a violent, forcible, beat-the-victim rape, like you see in the movies." That's rape apologia in action. Need more to get the point? Then read this piece by Emily about the harm done to her by men who had "consensual sex" with her 13 year old self.
The problem is not how Dawkins couched his point. The problem IS his point. (If that's not clear to you, then this is a time to put some conscious work into the continuing process of allyship.) Rape-ranking harms survivors, putting their experiences through someone else's Validity Prism. It enables more rapes, by signaling that there is some objective rubric to judge the harm based solely on the mechanics of the crime, not the impact on the survivor. The fallacious assertion that other people are in the best position to judge a survivor's experience is not a bad way of making a good point. It is a bad way of making a garbage point. It is not a PR problem. It is another stone, strengthening the foundations of rape culture.
[With thanks to Liss and Ana for input.]
Dawkins Defends Himself with More Rape Apologia
[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia.]
[Tweet links to this piece at Dawkins' site.]
So I read it, as requested. It includes:
Now, given the terrible, persistent and recurrent traumas suffered by other people when abused as children, week after week, year after year, what should I have said about my own thirty seconds of nastiness back in the 1950s? Should I have lied and said it was the worst thing that ever happened to me? Should I have mendaciously sought the sympathy due to a victim who had truly been damaged for the rest of his life? Should I have named the offending teacher and called down posthumous disgrace upon his head?As I noted in my previous piece, the auditing and ranking of survivors of sexual violence and/or the auditing and ranking of various acts of sexual violence itself is rape apologia. The intent of the person engaging in it is irrelevant: Auditing and ranking survivors and acts of sexual violence functions to suggest that some acts of sexual violence are tolerable, and, further, that if a survivor of the "not as bad" sort of sexual violence has lasting psychic injury from that trauma, they are "overreacting." Accusing survivors of abuse of being attention-seeking, melodramatic, lying is a centerpiece of silencing victims.
No, no and no. To have done so would have been to belittle and insult those many people whose lives really were blighted and cursed, perhaps by year-upon-year of abuse by a father or other person who was deeply important in their life. To have done so would have invited the justifiably indignant response: "How dare you make a fuss about the mere half minute of gagging unpleasantness that happened to you only once, and where the perpetrator was not your own father but a teacher who meant nothing special to you in your life. Stop playing the victim. Stop trying to upstage those who really were tragic victims in their own situations. Don't cry wolf about your own bad experience, because it undermines those whose experience was – and remains – so much worse."
That is why I made light of my own bad experience. To excuse pedophiliac assaults in general, or to make light of the horrific experiences of others, was a thousand miles from my intention.
Dawkins is feeding into these narratives, regardless of the claim that rape apologia "was a thousand miles from [his] intention."
To not do so would not require him to lie, to say that being molested was the worst thing that ever happened to him, to mendaciously seek sympathy, or to name his abuser. It simply would require him to make a minimal effort to not universalize his experience.
At the end of his piece, he writes, regarding his assertion that none of his classmates who were abused in the same way by the same person suffered lasting harm:
If I am wrong about any particular individual; if any of my companions really was traumatised by the abuse long after it happened; if, perhaps it happened many times and amounted to more than the single disagreeable but brief fondling that I endured, I apologise.Never mind the tacit suggestion that only someone among his peers who suffered more abuse could be acceptably traumatized; he fails utterly to address the implicit shaming of any person, anywhere, who experienced similar abuse and might regard it as rather something more than "thirty seconds of nastiness."
For many survivors of sexual abuse, lasting trauma is defined not by the actual acts, not by their quality or quantity, but by the support they receive following the abuse. Dawkins notes that, as soon as he got away from his abuser, "I ran to tell my friends, many of whom had had the same experience with him." He may not recognize that as a crucial point in his not suffering lasting harm, but the fact that he immediately found support among peers who validated his experience, who neither shamed him nor called him a liar, and the fact that, years later, they would still speak to one another about the abuse after the abuser died, is an invaluable resource to a survivor, which many of us do not have.
To the contrary, many survivors of sexual abuse are silenced and neglected and shamed by the very people who are meant to support and protect us.
The profound feelings of unsafety engendered by being failed in this way after surviving sexual violence is, for a number of survivors, equally or even more traumatic than the abuse itself.
And instead of drawing reasonable and sensitive and decent and helpful comparisons between his survival experience, and those of survivors who did not have access to support, he draws unhelpful comparisons between "levels" of sexual violence, suggesting that only those who suffer abuse at some arbitrary level of intensity or duration might be reasonably traumatized.
I cannot speak for any survivor other than myself, but, as a person who did experience sustained sexual violence at a young age, "year-upon-year of abuse by a...person who was deeply important in [my] life," I would not "indignantly respond" in the way Dawkins suggests, were anyone who did experience lasting harm from any act(s) of sexual abuse to publicly acknowledge that harm.
I would not say: How dare you. I would not audit the importance of the abuser in a survivor's life. I would not accuse someone of "playing the victim." I would not accuse anyone of trying to "upstage" other survivors. I would not accuse someone of crying wolf. I would not ever, ever, tell another survivor that hir experience of assault was better or worse than mine.
Because all of those things act in service to the rape culture—which sustains and thrives in a space where some victims don't matter.
I have been involved in anti-rape advocacy for a very long time now, and, while in this infinite universe some survivor somewhere has certainly told another survivor that their abuse doesn't matter, I haven't seen that happen. I have, however, seen an awful lot of rape apologists engaging in "rape ranking" and telling victims that their abuse, whatever it is, doesn't warrant whatever lasting trauma they report.
In fact, I recall Richard Dawkins greeting Rebecca Watson's report of sexual harassment with precisely that strategy.
Sexual violence does not exist as a series of unrelated abuses that act in competition with one another for attention and concern, but as a spectrum of abuse on which exists both women being creeped on in elevators by strangers and rapes so brutal their victims do not survive.
The implication that there are survivors of sexual violence who have no reason or right to "complain" as long as there are survivors who have experienced something "worse" somewhere in the world not only elides that post-abuse support profoundly affects trauma prognoses, but also creates a justification for ignoring all but only the "worst" manifestations of sexual violence, which necessarily means neglecting survivors in a way that makes them vulnerable to further trauma.
"Rape ranking" is not a neutral position: It is active rape apologia that harms survivors and abets predators.
Dawkins may have been aiming for "a thousand miles" away from minimizing sexual violence, but his aim is shit. For someone who claims he isn't a rape apologist, he sure keeps hitting the apology bull's eye.
Richard Dawkins, Again
[Content Note: Sexual violence; rape apologia.]
The thing about movement atheist Richard Dawkins is that he is the worst. And, yesterday, he reminded us once again why he is the worst by engaging in some truly gross rape apologia, while simultaneously disclosing that he is a survivor of sexual abuse:
In a recent interview with the Times magazine, Richard Dawkins attempted to defend what he called "mild pedophilia," which, he says, he personally experienced as a young child and does not believe causes "lasting harm."There are a lot of ways to respond to surviving sexual abuse. One of them is to minimize it. That is an understandable (and common) response to sexual abuse, and I am not in the business of policing people's individual response to trauma.
Dawkins went on to say that one of his former school masters "pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts," and that to condemn this "mild touching up" as sexual abuse today would somehow be unfair.
"I am very conscious that you can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don't look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can't find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today," he said.
Plus, he added, though his other classmates also experienced abuse at the hands of this teacher, "I don't think he did any of us lasting harm."
So if Dawkins wants to speak, for himself, about not personally condemning someone who molested him, and say, for himself, that he experienced no lasting harm, that is his right.
But the moment he starts extrapolating that response into a universal application, we've got a problem. It is categorically not his right to audit the lived experiences of other survivors and assert what the effects of surviving abuse have been (or should have been) on their lives.
This idea that anyone who was sexually abused in "an earlier era" doesn't or shouldn't experience lasting harm is implicitly victim-blaming, suggesting that anyone who has experienced lasting harm is weak, or wrong, or lying.
Embedded within it is also an argument that it's not the actual abuse that harms, but culture's response to abuse that harms. That is, anti-rape advocates are to blame—because it's not the actual abuse that causes harm; it's the awareness around abuse that causes harm.
This is a key piece of rape apologia—the idea that it's talking about abuse which traumatizes survivors, rather than the abuse itself. Naturally, no one should be made to disclose or discuss abuse against their will. But processing abuse is a crucial survival strategy for many victims—and, in fact, being denied the opportunity to process, being silenced, is a secondary trauma for many survivors.
Another key piece of rape apologia is the auditing and ranking of survivors of rape and/or the auditing and ranking of various acts of rape itself. Whether it's Republicans trying to redefine the legal definition of rape, Whoopi Goldberg defending Roman Polanski with comments about "rape-rape," the use of minimizing terms like "grey rape," calling rape "a disagreement between two lovers," or any of the other endless examples of language which posits there is some "real, serious, harmful rape" and some other sort of "sorta, kinda, not that bad rape," the idea that certain types of sexual abuse are tolerable is about the most basic rape apologia there is. "Mild pedophilia" is just not a phrase that should even exist, no less be uttered aloud.
The thing is, Richard Dawkins is a child rape apologist. One of the first things I ever noted about Dawkins in this space was his reckoning that a child is "arguably" better off repeatedly raped than raised religious:
In the penultimate chapter of his best-selling book The God Delusion, biologist and world-renowned atheist Richard Dawkins presents his view of religious education, which he explains by way of an anecdote. Following a lecture in Dublin, he recalls, "I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place." Lest his readers misunderstand him, or dismiss this rather shocking statement as mere off-the-cuff hyperbole, Dawkins goes on to clarify his position. "I am persuaded," he explains, "that the phrase 'child abuse' is no exaggeration when used to describe what teachers and priests are doing to children whom they encourage to believe in something like the punishment of unshriven mortal sins in an eternal hell."So, he "can't condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours" when it comes to the sexual abuse of children, but he's totes cool with it when it comes to religious upbringing. Priorities. He's got 'em.
It is my personal, individual experience that a Christian upbringing made my surviving sexual abuse even more difficult than it already was. I have real concerns about how certain, ubiquitous, rarely challenged aspects of religion both abet the sexual abuse of children and shame survivors while protecting abusers. This is a subject that desperately needs more attention and public conversation. Setting up "religion" and "rape" in some kind of vile contest for Worst Thing Ever, instead of engaging the intersection at which they interact to target children, isn't a helpful part of that conversation.
But, of course, Dawkins isn't interested in being helpful. He is interested in minimizing the gravity of sexual violence.
If he wants to do that for himself, for his own survival, fine. But he needs to leave the rest of us the hell out of it. The last fucking thing I need is another survivor publicly concern-trolling me for being affected, and offering himself up as a useful tool to the predators who share his loathsome opinion that a little rape ain't so bad.
Richard Dawkins Takes Brave Stance Against Racism and Sexism
[Content Note: Racism; violence; stalking; misogyny]
Richard Dawkins -- whom many of you know from his Dear Muslima letter wherein he blatantly appropriated the violent oppression of Muslim women in an attempt to silence an American feminist he disagreed with while at the same time making the racist assumption than "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups -- has done a complete 180 today in announcing on Twitter that he cares about racism and sexism after all...
...as long as it's racism and sexism directed against white men, and as long as the "racism" and "sexism" on display are things like pointing out the race and sex of the privileged person, rather than normalizing privileged classes like 'white' and 'male' as the default and therefore without need of descriptors:
"insufferable smug white male making snide comments in loafers." Racism & sexism are fine, so long as they point in the right direction!
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) May 24, 2013
Learn to think clearly and use language precisely. You may JUSTIFY racism & sexism towards white males. But it's still racist & sexist.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) May 24, 2013
So many people incapable of drawing an elementary distinction: between racism and INSTITUTIONAL racism. Probably studied sociology.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) May 24, 2013
@richarddawkins It is sexist and also irrational to judge white males just because they are white males.
— Blue Sky (@EarthenBlueSky7) May 24, 2013
And maybe while he's at it he can explain why he, an adult white man, is immune from social condemnation for speaking positively about casual drug use and for using social media to post violent words and imagery, even while our society uses those things as an excuse to condemn young black men like Trayvon Martin, and how that isn't a function of his white male privilege.
Tweet of the Day
Tweet of the day:
English is my native language. My words mean what I intend. If you read them differently because of "social context" that's your problem.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) April 18, 2013
It's probably a total coincidence that we had this exchange yesterday:
Do you really not understand the social context in which you are making your remarks? @richarddawkins
— Ana Mardoll (@anamardoll) April 17, 2013
Richard Dawkins Remains Deliberately Ignorant
[Content Note: Hostility to Reproductive Rights, IVF]
I'm just going to leave these here. (As screenshots because the Twitter embed is acting funky at the moment.)
 |
| Thinking in unfamiliar ways is one of the things academics do. If you don't like that, hesitate before following an academic on Twitter (Link.) |
 |
| As D Barash pointed out, if a certain edible berry had strong contraceptive effect on our ancestors, we'd be phobic about it as if poison (Link.) |
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| If our Pleistocene ancestors had easy contraception, would natural selection have weakened sex lust at the expense of lust to give birth? (Link.) |
I could point out that this line of thinking only makes sense if you assume without evidence that early humans treasured a "reproduce all the time, as much as possible" paradigm, rather than -- as many humans have demonstrably done at many times throughout history -- seeking a balance between quantity of birthed children as well as quality of upbringing so that the children are more likely to survive to adulthood and accrue the necessary skills to survive as adults long enough to live their own lives, parent their own children, and build their own societies. And that these "reproduce constantly" humans which supposedly existed are therefore (again, without evidence) our evolutionary ancestors rather than their early human counterparts who reproduced at a lower rate but nurtured their offspring more effectively to ensure a higher survival rate.
I could also point out that there is no reason to assume without evidence that early humans didn't face the same concerns regarding the balance between adult providers capable of acquiring resources and child consumers incapable of fending for themselves that we still face today and which still drives many of us to adopt reproductive strategies other than "bear all the children", and that early humans didn't therefore devise their own reproductive strategies designed to cope with these challenges in order to ensure their own survival in the moment as opposed to some kind of "long-game" strategic attempt to position themselves as the ancestors of people on Twitter in the year 2013 A.D.
I could additionally point out that the concept of contraception is not a modern one; as far back as we have historical records to show, humans have been deeply concerned with controlling their reproduction. Abortions are not a new thing; hormonal methods of birth control are not new things; barrier methods of birth control are not new things; rhythm methods of birth control are not new things; reproductive abstinence is not a new thing. I could point out how foolish it is to assume that these methods only came into vogue with the existence of historical records, and that everyone who existed pre-historical recordings simply felt completely differently about the importance of reproductive control than most of their descendents did. (But their attitudes toward porn were obviously handed down to their Twitter descendents.)
I could perhaps point out that assuming our ancestors were stupid -- so stupid that they could not note cause and effect and would instead suspiciously treat a hormonal birth control berry as "poison" -- is a common error among people who have chosen to other our ancestors as fundamentally inferior to themselves, and that this error is commonly rife among (for example) religionists who seek to claim that the Bible must be divinely inspired because how else could a bunch of backwards pre-historical fools notice that people need to keep their blood inside their bodies if they want to survive? And I could point out that Richard Dawkins, as a professional atheist, would almost certainly have encountered this very same appeal to the supposed profound ignorance of our ancestors.
But I will instead point out only this: I am utterly amused at Dawkins' claim that he is an "academic" and that therefore he thinks in "unfamiliar ways" to his inferiors on Twitter.
Richard Dawkins, your way of thinking isn't unfamiliar to me, it's contemptible. I say this because you continue to deliberately choose to remain blissfully ignorant of the things you opine on as though they are nothing more than cutesy little brain-teasers even though you could easily research these topics and despite the fact that you know for certain that your ignorant opinings on birth control and IVF -- which you continue to trollishly repeat for attention and controversy -- adversely affect the lives of the women (and others with uteri) around you, as we daily struggle to maintain a hold on our right to control our own reproduction.
Please do us all a favor and shut the fuck up. If you absolutely must spout evo-psych bullshit, grab a hairbrush and American Idol that shit into your bathroom mirror. You'll get less Twitter drama out of it, but at least you'll still have your favorite audience.
Genetic Testing is not Genetic Engineering
[Content Note: Infertility, IVF, Eugenics, Hostility to Reproductive Rights, Animal Cruelty, Hitler]
[NB: Not only women have uteri, get pregnant, and/or have need of access to abortion.]
Richard Dawkins needs to stop talking about pregnancy, as far as I'm concerned.
Last Wednesday, he felt the urge to devote a series of tweets rehashing an old discussion he had with Peter Singer regarding whether or not the mythical pain supposed felt by an aborted fetus was hypothetically comparable to the pain felt by an adult pig slaughtered in inhumane conditions and came to the conclusion -- all the while ignoring the fact that human women can demonstrably feel pain too -- that while Dawkins was generally supportive of abortion and reproductive rights, he felt that fetal pain "could outweigh a woman's right to control her own body."
Presumably feeling that the attention generated in the wake of these tweets -- as bloggers such as myself pointed out that Dawkins' position absolutely requires the rhetorical removal of the pregnant woman from the discussion of her rights -- was particularly satisfying, Dawkins decided on Sunday to recycle his old arguments in favor of eugenics with this series of tweets.
The Rhetorical Power of Pig Pain
[Content Note: Hostility to Reproductive Rights, Appropriation of Slavery and the Holocaust, Animal Cruelty]
[NB: Not only women have uteri, get pregnant, and/or have need of access to abortion.]
On Wednesday March 13, 2013 at approximately 4:42 am Central Standard Time, Richard Dawkins decided to weigh in on women's reproductive rights using his twitter account @RichardDawkins.
I want to point out that reproductive rights are actually a very relevant thing to weigh in on following two years of US states enacting record numbers of abortion restrictions in state legislatures in 2011 and 2012, and in light of the fact that later on that same Wednesday, a new pope who has compared abortion to the death penalty would be elected. And given that I'm writing from a political climate where too many supposedly-progressive men have been silent for far too long on the issue of women's reproductive rights, I think it's potentially a very good thing to have a famous left-leaning speaker and writer standing up on twitter for women's right to bodily autonomy.
Except for the tiny little problem that Richard Dawkins' opening position made it clear that this wasn't going to be a statement about women's right to bodily autonomy so much as it was going to be about why anti-abortionists are totes hypocrites if they eat pork sausage for breakfast.
The Point, You Are Proving It
[Trigger warning for misogyny, rape culture, violent imagery, anti-Islamism.]
Rebecca Watson of the skeptics blog Skepchick recently posted a video in which she speaks, in part, about being on a panel in an atheist conference in Dublin during which she spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. The video, with transcript for the relevant section, is at the bottom of the post. (If the video does not automatically start playing at 2:20, skip ahead.) She then describes how the discussion continued at the hotel bar late into the night, and how a man who purported to be interested in what she was saying followed her into the hotel elevator and propositioned her. Missing the point award.
PZ Myers wrote a post in which the video was mentioned, largely making another point about naming people with whom one disagrees, but acquiescing that perhaps hitting on women and backing off when they signal disinterest possibly is not enough: "Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted pressure, no matter how politely phrased, is inappropriate behavior. Maybe we should recognize that when we interact with equals there are different, expected patterns of behavior that many men casually disregard when meeting with women, and it is those subtle signs that let them know what you think of them that really righteously pisses feminist women off."
I almost can't conceive of a more innocuous, virtually noncommittal ("maybe") expression of support for the idea that it's pretty gross to creepily pursue a woman who has said she is going to bed in order to invite her back to your hotel room to further discuss an idea she had introduced in a professional capacity, no less when the idea is not sexualizing women.
And yet, totally predictably, the thread erupted in a hideous gushing explosion of misogyny, anti-feminism, and rape apologia, not only proving Rebecca Watson's point, but illustrating precisely why it is that, despite being an atheist and online activist, I don't touch movement atheism with a 10-foot pole. Were it a place merely hostile to feminist women and outspoken survivors of sexual assault, well, so is the rest of the world. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't passionately advocate against ignorance, only to feign it when asked to examine its privilege.
Anyway, among the many comments in the thread was one left by the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, who had also sat on the panel at which Rebecca Watson spoke about misogyny in the atheist movement. Given Dawkins' history of doing things like making anti-Muslim rape jokes and reckoning that a child is "arguably" better off repeatedly raped than raised religious, his comment (which Myers has confirmed is indeed the real Dawkins) is not surprising, but it is nonetheless appalling.
Dear Muslima
Ah, the old there are more Important Things to worry about chestnut. I always love when a man decides what the Important Things feminists should be worried about are for us feminist women. I also love the idea that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups, and the idea that there no American women, Muslim or otherwise, whose lives are controlled and whose bodies are violated with impunity. And I love the mendacious misrepresentation of Rebecca Watson's experience—being innocently invited to coffee, as opposed to followed into an elevator at 4am after announcing her intention to go to bed and asked back to a man's room "for coffee" immediately following her public request to not be sexually objectified—and the profoundly disingenuous implication that because Watson had the unmitigated temerity to mention this incident, she is either equating it with other women's suffering or somehow arguing that her experience is more important than other women's.
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
I love those things almost as much as I love the embedded premise that the marginalization of women is a series of unrelated injustices that exist in competition with one another for attention and concern, as opposed to a spectrum of injustices on which exists both women being creeped on in elevators by strangers and female genital cutting.
That is a silencing mechanism.
The implication is that women with relative privilege have no reason or right to "complain" as long as there are women who are experiencing something worse somewhere in the world—a truly despicable position given that it creates a justification for continued brutalization of women across the globe. Feminist scolds like Dawkins, who fancy themselves enlightened, recoil with horror at the suggestion that they support the violent oppression of women, and yet they nonetheless reference it at every opportunity they have in order to defend their lack of concern about injustices done to relatively privileged women in their own communities.
The abject suffering of the world's most vulnerable women is thus used as rhetorical weapon to silence feminists—and feminism is treated as some sort of finite resource that is meant to be kept under glass, broken only in case of a "real" and "serious" emergency, as determined by men who want to silence feminists.
Men who police feminism and feminists, and judge the worthiness of feminist complaints on a sliding scale, don't recognize oppressive acts as interwoven strands of the same rope, and they don't respect the reality that most feminists can multi-task: I can write about a sexist t-shirt being sold to little girls at Wev-Mart, and I write about the rape epidemic in DR Congo in the same day. And do, frequently.
Commenters in the thread made variations on the same argument I am making now, reasonably concluding that Dawkins was arguing that "since worse things are happening somewhere else, we have no right to try to fix things closer to home." But Dawkins left a second comment, insisting that was not his meaning:
No I wasn't making that argument. Here's the argument I was making. The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that.
Again, he implies that "Muslim women" and "American women" are mutually exclusive groups; again, he implies that American women do not "suffer physically from misogyny," nor are their lives "substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny." Certainly, Dawkins and I would disagree on what constitutes "substantial damage," as I suspect his definition would start just beyond what any relatively privileged woman had ever suffered, but suffice it to say I disagree with his contention. As, I imagine, would the many American women who have been sexually abused by religious leaders, without justice. Just for a start.
If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics' privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn't physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.
Muslim women suffer physically from misogyny, their lives are substantially damaged by religiously inspired misogyny. Not just words, real deeds, painful, physical deeds, physical privations, legally sanctioned demeanings. The equivalent would be if PZ had nailed not a cracker but a Catholic. Then they'd have had good reason to complain.
Richard
Of course, I don't guess this is the sort of stuff that really matters to a man so privileged that he can, with a straight fucking face, assert an equivalency between being followed to an elevator and propositioned by a strange man and having to share an elevator with someone who is chewing gum. Yiiiiiiikes.
PZ Myers followed up with another post, attempting to inject some perspective back into the conversation, to no avail. Dawkins continued to insist that Watson had nothing to complain about in the first place:
I sarcastically compared Rebecca's plight with that of women in Muslim countries or families dominated by Muslim men. Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse. We should fight all bad things, the slightly bad as well as the very bad. Fair enough. But my point is that the 'slightly bad thing' suffered by Rebecca was not even slightly bad, it was zero bad. A man asked her back to his room for coffee. She said no. End of story.
Spoken like someone who does not understand what it's like to live as a woman in this world and has never even bothered to try.
But not everybody sees it as end of story. OK, let's ask why not? The main reason seems to be that an elevator is a confined space from which there is no escape. This point has been made again and again in this thread, and the other one.
No escape? I am now really puzzled. Here's how you escape from an elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently provided. The elevator will obligingly stop at a floor, the door will open and you will no longer be in a confined space but in a well-lit corridor in a crowded hotel in the centre of Dublin.
Eventually, Myers appended this to his post: "[Rebecca Watson] asked for some simple common courtesy, and for that she gets pilloried. Sorry, people, but that sends a very clear signal to women that calm requests for respect will be met with jeers by a significant subset of the atheist community."
And 'round and 'round we go.
[H/T to Shaker Insomniax, who hat-tips Jen.]
----------------------------------------------------
And I was on a panel with AronRa and Richard Dawkins [which] was on 'communicating atheism.' They sort of left it open for us to talk about whatever we wanted, really, within that realm. I was going to talk about blogging and podcasting, but, um, a few hours prior to that panel, there was another panel on women atheist activists, and I disagreed with a lot of what happened on that panel, uh, particularly with something that Paula Kirby had said.
Whoooooooooooooooops, Richard Dawkins! Almost everyone else.
Paula Kirby doesn't have a problem with sexism in the atheism community, and, because of that, she assumes that there is no sexism, um, so I thought that I would, during my panel, discuss what it's like to communicate atheism as me, um, as a woman, but from a different perspective from Paula. I don't assume that every woman will have the same experience that I've had, but I think it's worthwhile to publicize the fact that some women will go through this, and, um, that way we can warn women, ahead of time, as to what they might expect, give them the tools they need to fight back, and also give them the support structure they need to, uh, to keep going in the face of blatant misogyny.
So, I was interested in the response to my sort of rambling on that panel, um, which, like this video, was unscripted and rambling, for which I apologize. [grins] But the response was really fascinating. The response at the conference itself was wonderful, um, there were a ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never considered the, um, the way that women are treated in this community, but were interested in learning more.
So, thank you to everyone who was at that conference who, uh, engaged in those discussions outside of that panel, um, you were all fantastic; I loved talking to you guys—um, all of you except for the one man who, um, didn't really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel…? Because, um, at the bar later that night—actually, at four in the morning—um, we were at the hotel bar, 4am, I said, you know, "I've had enough, guys, I'm exhausted, going to bed," uh, so I walked to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me, and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more; would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?"
Um. Just a word to the wise here, guys: Uhhhh, don't do that. Um, you know. [laughs] Uh, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4am, in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room, right after I've finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.
So, yeah. But everybody else seemed to really get it.
