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creepy feminism hypocrisy misogyny oppressed men patriarchy rape reactionary bullshit sexual harassment threats

Two atheists get in an elevator

So here’s a hilarious atheist joke for you all:

Two atheists at a conference get into an elevator at 4 AM. The dude atheist, apropos of nothing, invites the chick atheist to go to his room with him. The chick atheist, who’s never even spoken to the dude before, is creeped out by this. (She says no.) She mentions the incident in a YouTube video. A shitstorm erupts in the atheist-o-sphere because, like, how could she possibly call an atheist dude a creep and aren’t women treated worse in Islamist Theocracies?

Then Richard Dawkins says,

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

In a followup comment, Dawkins tops that bit of hilarity with this:

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.

Damn. That joke didn’t turn out to be really very hilarious at all. Maybe I told it wrong?

In any case, as you might already know (or have gathered), this whole thing actually happened over the past weekend. The atheist chick in question is Rebecca Watson, a popular blogger who calls herself Skepchick. The conference in question was the Center for Inquiry’s Student Leadership Conference. The part of Richard Dawkins was played by, well, Richard Dawkins. (You can find both of his comments quoted here.)

The incident has been hashed and rehashed endlessly in the atheist-o-sphere (and even out of it), but I think it deserves a tiny bit more re-rehashing.  Mainly because it illustrates that some really creepy, backwards attitudes can lurk deep in the hearts of dudes who think of themselves as enlightened, rational dudes fighting the evils of superstition and, yes, religious misogyny.

The strangest thing about the whole incident is how supremely mild Watson’s comments on the creepy elevator dude were.  Here is literally all she said about him, in passing, in her video (transcribed here):

So I walk 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 wise here, guys, uh, don’t do that. You know, 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 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and–don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You would think that most guys would be well aware that accosting a woman you’ve never met before in an elevator at 4 AM is, you know, kind of a no-no. But, no, Watson’s comments suddenly became an attack on male sexuality and men in general. One critic put up a video lambasting Watson, ending it with the question:

What effect do you think it has on men to be constantly told how sexist and destructive they are?

Never mind that she didn’t, you know, actually do that at all. Nor did she even remotely suggest, despite Dawkins’ weird screed, that creepy dudes on elevators were somehow equivalent to genital mutilation or the general denial of women’s rights in Islamist theocracies.  She merely suggested that guys might want to think twice before hitting on women who are alone with them in an elevator at four in the morning.  Pointing out the creepy behavior of one particular dude is not the same as calling all men creepy.

Now, the atheist movement tends to be a bit of a sausagefest, pervaded by some fairly backwards notions about women. (Prominent atheist  pontificator Christopher Hitchens, you may recall, seems to sincerely believe that women just aren’t funny. Not that he’s exactly a barrel of monkeys himself.) But some of the most vociferous critics of Watson have been other atheist women – including the one I quoted above.

Watson responded to this in the first of several posts she wrote about the whole weird controversy:

I hear a lot of misogyny from skeptics and atheists, but when ancient anti-woman rhetoric like the above is repeated verbatim by a young woman online, it validates that misogyny in a way that goes above and beyond the validation those men get from one another. It also negatively affects the women who are nervous about being in similar situations. Some of them have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, and some just don’t want to be put in that position. And they read these posts and watch these videos and they think, “If something were to happen to me and these women won’t stand up for me, who will?”

In a followup post, she noted:

When I started this site, I didn’t call myself a feminist. I had a hazy idea that feminism was a good thing, but it was something that other people worried about, not me. I was living in a time and culture that had transcended the need for feminism, because in my world we were all rational atheists who had thrown off our religious indoctrination so that I could freely make rape jokes without fear of hurting someone who had been raped.

And then I would make a comment about how there could really be more women in the community, and the responses from my fellow skeptics and atheists ranged from “No, they’re not logical like us,” to “Yes, so we can fuck them!” That seemed weird.

Watson began hearing from other women in the skeptic/atheist community who’d met far too many of that second sort of male atheist.

They told me about how they were hit on constantly and it drove them away. I didn’t fully get it at the time, because I didn’t mind getting hit on. But I acknowledged their right to feel that way and I started suggesting to the men that maybe they relax a little and not try to get in the pants of every woman who walks through the door.

And then, as her blog garnered more attention, she faced a virtual invasion of creepy dudes being creepy:

I’ve had more and more messages from men who tell me what they’d like to do to me, sexually. More and more men touching me without permission at conferences. More and more threats of rape from those who don’t agree with me, even from those who consider themselves skeptics and atheists. More and more people telling me to shut up and go back to talking about Bigfoot and other topics that really matter.

She didn’t shut up.

So here we are today. I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one. Every time I mention, however delicately, a possible issue of misogyny or objectification in our community, the response I get shows me that the problem is much worse than I thought, and so I grow angrier. I knew that eventually I would reach a sort of feminist singularity where I would explode and in my place would rise some kind of Captain Planet-type superhero but for feminists. I believe that day has nearly arrived.

Go read the rest of her post. Despite the creepy dudes and the misogyny and Richard Fucking Dawkins’ patronizing little screed – which led Watson to a moment of despair much like that of virtually every movie hero(ine) at the end of act two in the story arc — Watson ends it fairly hopeful. It’s kind of inspiring, really.

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Spearhafoc
13 years ago

Stop using the term “USian”.

Stop using the term “Fymynyst”.

ithiliana
ithiliana
13 years ago

Tabby: The issue of USIan is quite strongly debated in the areas of online media fandom where I hang out, and I choose to use it — along with other terms like kyriarchy, privilege, and etc. that bug some of our friends MRA dudes. That is of course the only reason I use them!

I’m quite sure that many Candians don’t care (ditto USians), but a nunber of my personal friends who are from Canada and the UK and other English speaking but not US countries have written quite movingly about “American ethnocentrism” on line — especially the very naive assumption that “free speech” laws are the same in every country.

Sarah: I’m big on calling people what they want to be called, but I only ever use USian in a group/umbrella sense. If I was speaking of myself, I’d say “I’m from the US” or something like that In formal writing, I use the full term then the abbreviation –because different contexts require different linguistic choices.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@David does he have restrictions to the rules again or can he do w/e he wants from now on? xD I’m just curious… since he’s always so worried he’ll be banned if he crosses a line and I thnk that’s why he’s so scared about telling me what he rly thinks of me xD

Molly Ren
13 years ago

*turns into a pygmy hippo & goes up to Kirby and Ami* Will you adopt me too?

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

awww *hugs Molly* :3 yus! you can curl up w/ us! (Kirby is prolly exploding in squee atm xD )

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

David, would it be too late to add some Dramatic Chipmunk to your announcement?

Molly Ren
13 years ago

*wags tiny hippo tail*

Spearhafoc
13 years ago

As an atheist, and someone who has liked some of Dawkins’ work in the past, this whole thing saddens me.

I’m sorry that Scepchick, and other women in the atheist movement (any everywhere else in society, for that matter), have to go through this crap. She voiced an opinion – a quite reasonable one, at that – and got insulted and belittled in return. No one deserves that kind of treatment.

Spearhafoc
13 years ago

By the way, how’s “Yank” for everybody?

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Isn’t Yank an intra-American term? like it doesn’t apply to all Americans due to regional stuff? o: (or Baseball affiliation)

kirbywarp
kirbywarp
13 years ago

@Molly and Ami:

Don’t mind me, I’m just picking up pieces of me… I think I broke every window in the apartment with that one..

*squeeee!*
*pets little hippo tail*

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

They really are quite lovable, even if sometimes they do get a little rambunctious.

Canadianoids? Or zombies?

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

CanAminoids! 😀

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

I think you’re on thin ice calling someone from Georgia or Mississippi a “Yank.”

I also think the whole Kirby/Molly/Ami lovefest is adorable.

I also think I’m sort of eager/terrified to see exactly how NWO makes David regret this decision.

I am thinking a lot tonight.

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

By the way, how’s “Yank” for everybody?

No thanks, I don’t know you that well.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

“Yankee” can refer to USofAperson generally, or northerner specifically, or New Englander very specifically, depending on the context.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Or if can refer to the vilest (aka the AMIest) team in all of baseball xD

Spearhafoc
13 years ago

No thanks, I don’t know you that well.

That reminds me: I need to catch up on the current Sadly, No! thread.

I got first post this morning! I’m so proud.

Tabby Lavalamp
Tabby Lavalamp
13 years ago

ithiliana, American ethnocentrism is definitely a force to be reckoned with. Heck, I’ve known Canadians who have seemed to be under the impression that the Bill of Rights affects us. I do think they may be getting a little pedantic though if they’re complaining about USians referring to themselves as Americans. 🙂
The way I’ve always seen it, “American” comes from America which I’ve always seen as specifically referring to The United States of America (blame your founders for not coming up with a more concise name :D), and America is just part of the Americas.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

BTW, I’ve decided to stick with USofAperson.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

*it

oh and Spearhafoc, thanks for hanging out w/ me today! I got a top (but not the one I wanted : i DID get another 15% coupon from them tho… xD this is a good scam of theirs)

i still need to find the top someplace tho : i wanted too long.. all the extra smalls are gone 🙁

But srsly, I had a great time and I enjoy all your little geeky knowledge you share :3 I’m sry that I like to be in places that are loud and uncomfortable for you tho 🙁 next time we will hang out in quieter places :]

Ymata
Ymata
13 years ago

We use “Yank” for any USian here in Australia, and the UK too, I think. I didn’t know it might be offensive for southern USians 🙁

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Or it refers to the Rochester Americans! xD

Tabby Lavalamp
Tabby Lavalamp
13 years ago

spearhafoc, I was a Dawkins fan before this. What he did saddens me, and even though I don’t expect anyone to be perfect he just went too far and doesn’t seem to have learned from it.

sarahejones
13 years ago

@Ymata: I don’t really consider it offensive–I’m from Virginia. But my dad’s family is Southern, and my mother is from Maine, so I’m a bit of a mixed bag anyway 🙂

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