Richard Dawkins, I think it’s fair to say, is a bit of a dick. Though he’s an expert popularizer of science he seems to be a bit of a blithering idiot on every other topic he tries to address; his broadsides on religion are patronizing and profoundly ignorant, and his forays into gender politics are even more cringey.
He puts his foot in his mouth so often on Twitter that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between his real account and this absurdist parody.
In a recent interview, he doubled down on some of his most appalling earlier remarks, reaffirming that he believes there is such a thing as “mild pedophilia” and that pregnant women who discover that they are carrying a Down syndrome fetus should probably “abort and try again.” And in that interview he reminded us all again just why so many feminist atheists have turned against him, telling his interlocutor that
I occasionally get a little impatient with American women who complain of being inappropriately touched by the water cooler or invited for coffee or something … .
ELEVATORGATE – NEVER FORGET!
Given how often he comes down on the wrong side on gender issues — heck, he recently suggested to his fans that they follow “Based Mom” Christina Hoff Sommers on Twitter — you might assume he would have a certain degree of fondness for the upside-down-and-backwards politics of the Men’s Rights movement.
But you’d be wrong.
At a recent event at Kennesaw State University – yep, the same place where a student organization tied to A Voice for Men held a little conference not long ago – Dawkins offered a surprising, if somewhat limited, defense of feminism. And he reacted with puzzlement when he was asked about the Men’s Rights movement.
“I didn’t, I hardly knew — is there a men’s right movement?” he commented. “If there is discrimination against men, then that’s bad too,” he conceded, only to add that “I haven’t heard of it.”
The audience responded with laughter.
To AVFM head boy Paul Elam, this was the equivalent of shots fired. In a post today, Elam excoriated Dawkins for not having heard of his little movement, and not being aware of the terrible gynocentric injustices being heaped upon the world’s men.
Richard Dawkins has not heard of discrimination toward men? Really? Sorry, Richard, but please tell me this is because you have invented human teleportation and have managed to remain in an academic setting constantly for the past several years. Tell me that you have so successfully avoided the real world that you are unaware of the ongoing problems of fathers and children in family courts, the egregious and blatant discrimination against men in criminal sentencing, and the transparent sexual double standards applied against males in the domestic violence and sexual assault industries. Perhaps you have actually done so well with insulating yourself that you have managed to exist completely within the walls of interdisciplinary studies departments, lest you may have actually heard of the loss of due process for young men now rampant across college campuses. Or maybe it was harder to notice, even for the great scientist-skeptic, because there are so few young men left?
Yeah, I’m sure that’s it, Paul. Dawkins can’t find any male students to talk to.
That is the problem with living the insulated life. Not only do you end up making foil-hat-worthy observations that translate to ideology being good for science, but eventually the insulation becomes so thick, so protective and muffling, that whatever tiny spark remains in the wire is of little use to science or to society.
Says the man who lives in an ideological bubble of his own making. The irony, it burns.
Bahahahahahahaha!
Oh, my. Oh, dear. Oh, the flying spaghetti monster. Oh, ceiling cat.
This is hilarious.
I wish I’d never heard of either the MRAs or Richard Dawkins.
Gather round for the cage match! Two assholes enter, only one can leave.
MRAs – too misogynistic for even dyed in the wool sexists to tolerate. That aura of baffled amusement that Dawkins is displaying in response to the idea that men are oppressed? That’s your future in the even that the mainstream ever realizes you exist, MRA dudes.
This presents quite a quandary for the asshole atheist bros*. Do they defend their hero Dawkins, or do they stick up for “men’s rights?” I don’t know, but I’m going to start making some popcorn.
*Not to be confused with most atheists or atheists as a whole.
This does nicely prove what I’ve been saying all along about even the most sexist men, the ones who can’t seem to help looking down their patrician noses at women, think MRAs are ridiculous. Because they’re ridiculous.
Ahem. To the tune of “Fish Heads”:
Man tears, man tears,
Booey-hooey man tears!
Man tears, man tears,
Drink them up, YUM!
So Paul Elam, upon hearing that someone famous hasn’t heard of the issues they talk about, makes fun of the person? Wouldn’t the correct response be that it’s a sign that more awareness has to be raised? That’s what I’d expect of the most important human rights movement of the 21st century.
U lol’ed at “head boy” Pauly accusing someone else of making “foil-hat-worthy observations”.
Oh yesss! 😀
Ophelia Benson noted it, too. Here’s what I wrote as a comment on her blog:
————————————————————-
I actually kind of believe that the existence of a men’s rights movement caught [Dawkins] off guard, though I have to admit that it’s only because of my limited experience.
Nearly all of the MRAs I’ve encountered are online. Whenever I end up in a discussion of feminism offline, and manage to bring up the Men’s Rights Movement, the conversation ends up something like this:
Person: Wait. Hold on. What do you mean “men’s rights movement”?
Me: Yeah. There’s a movement out there of men and, unfortunately, some women, who think men are losing rights, so they have to fight to get them back.
Person: That does not sound real. At all.
They then go and look it up, and come back to me with something like this:
Person: So I looked up that men’s rights thing, and holy crap it’s ridiculous. Are you sure this is real and not somebody’s bad idea of a joke?
The people can be men or women, and many times they are not the biggest fans of feminism. A couple times, at least, it’s prompted the ones who really dislike feminism to do a little more research. At least two men who, in our conversations, expressed all but a hatred for feminism told me, after looking up this MRM thing, that they’re going to do more research on feminism, because if this is what exists in opposition, then feminism must be doing something right after all.
So most people that I’ve interacted with offline, while aware of feminism, seem to be entirely ignorant of the whole MRM, and seem to be, [when they find out about it,] if not outright disgusted by it, at least turned off of it. Often they’ll mention finding A Voice for Men and actually being a bit afraid of what they’ve read on the site.
GamerGate is a more recent discussion, as one of the very few places I hang out in is frequented by a lot of gamers, and a number of them have told me that GamerGate basically made them feminists.
I grant my experience is heavily limited, but people I actually talk to about this stuff offline don’t know about the MRM, and when they find out, at least a couple of them end up being pushed towards a more favorable view of feminism because of what they read from places like A Voice for Men. And I’ve mentioned in the past how one very good friend of mine sees the MRM as a source of wonderful comedy. He’s a prat, and loves to use MRM arguments as a way of making the whole thing look patently absurd, which it is. So he’s making fun of MRAs, in his own prattish way.
So I guess, from what I’m seeing, the MRM is definitely not mainstream, and seems to be turning away people who, at first, sound like they might actually like the idea of it.
http://youtu.be/rX7wtNOkuHo
How could Dawkins NOT take a guy who talks like that seriously? I have a baffled.
teehee
We really need a stock image to represent that frowny, confused face that most people make when they first find out about the MRM. Even Dawkins probably made it, it’s an almost universal reaction.
“domestic violence and sexual assault industries”.
That turn of phrase sickens me. No mention of prevention or therapy or treatment or investigation. I’m surprised he doesn’t say “domestic violence and sexual assault industrial complex”.
When even Dickie Dawkins thinks you’re ridiculous….
Ninja’d by Lady Mondegreen!
Go Dawkins go!
Never thought I’d be saying that.
But wait. I thought the academia was the realm of the evil feminazis. The MRA equivalent of Mordor. I thought drunk college girls could have consensual sex, “cry rape” and the poor oppressed male student would be run out. I thought yes means yes policies were suppressing male sexuality. I thought the curricula was taken over by the cultural Marxists. I thought universities were SJW paradises.
If men were so oppressed in academia, wouldn’t that be noticed by the men who work in it? Why would they have never heard of the concept? How could a white man be live the “insulated life” in an institution that supposedly thinks white men are the devil?
Pauly didn’t think this one through. One can hardly blame him. First gamergate steals the limelight from him and now this?
Shut up, Woody.
I
Damn you WordPress! Why did you add a period??? Why????
Well hey, it could be a lot worse. Dawkins at least has heard of Christina Hoff Sommers.
@Bina – when I have the “Fish Heads” song stuck in my head for the next week, I will know who to credit.
*sulks away, humming*
He recommends her, no doubt for her “feminist” factuality. That is, I would argue, worse.
Reblogged this on iheariseeilearn.
I spend a lot of time on other sites online, one of which has an international readership. Most of the people on that site have never heard of the MRM, and when linked to Elam and others tend to recoil in horror and disgust. On the site I’m most active on, MRM post a lot of disingenuous questions and remarks, that get dutifully flagged and responded to with facts that they don’t read, but neutral parties do (and run far, far away from them.)
I’m not surprised Dawkins hasn’t heard of the MRM and doesn’t share their concerns. But I think it’s hilarious that they think he does and would, especially considering his general response to arguments about inequities.
Dawkins is Exhibit A in the case that a thing called “Privilege” exists, and is harmful, both to society as a whole, and even to the individuals who wield it.
He’s also case-one when it comes to demonstrating that sexist, misogynistic attitudes and actions don’t have to be motivated by an actual malice–that privilege + societal sexism is sufficient to produce harmful outcomes (as opposed to, for instance, the active malice of almost-certainly-a-rapist Michael Shermer).
Oddly, though, his privilege also serves to insulate him from direct contact with dregs like the MRM, who feed off of resentment (over both illegitimate and legitimate concerns) and re-direct it towards women specifically. Can’t get a decent romantic partner because you fall outside the conventional range of ‘attractive’? Feminism’s fault, because it gave women the power to choose. Can’t get a job? Feminists have stolen all the jobs. For someone like Dawkins, literally at the top of the food chain, the MRM offers nothing, because it cannot even find some delusional slight to latch onto.
Who’s been convicted of rape on a college campus without due process? Does he even have an anecdotal case of this happening, because I would think I’d have heard of it by now.