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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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Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

Erg. “The United Mexican States.”

Anyway.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Okay okay, United Mexican States

Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
13 years ago

Well sure, you can call yourself what you want. If a Brazilian wants to be referred to as an American on the continental level, that’s fine. But people from the US are identified on a NATIONAL level as Americans, and thus the term in regards to them (us) is more common. Anything else is insulting and unpatriotic.

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

Politically correct? Oh for fuck’s sake, I just think it’s descriptive. We’re in the USofA. The only shortening of that I really find offensive is “‘Murika”. (and even that’s only “eyeroll” offensive not “fuck off and die” offensive)

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

We alrdy WENT thru this -_-;; you even admitted at the end that maybe it is America, you just declared that it doesn’t matter b/c nebody who allows USan is a traitor xD

does this ACTUALLY bother you that much btw? or is this rhetoric.. like how do you feel when you see somebody use USan (not in reference to you?) and how do you feel when you see an US/American accept that usage and not respond the way you do?

Kaylee
Kaylee
13 years ago

@ Holly & @ Havebookswilltravel:

Yeah, I learned that a few years ago and for some reason my brain switched it around. My fault for not checking myself.

Fuck MRAs
Fuck MRAs
13 years ago

Having seen the Gene Simmons sex tape, I have to say that while it might be long, he sure doesn’t know how to use it. Or even TO use it.

Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
13 years ago

It bothers me a lot because I cannot shake the impression that “USian” is vaguely derogatory and borne out of politically correct shit.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

But people from the US are identified on a NATIONAL level as Americans, and thus the term in regards to them (us) is more common. Anything else is insulting and unpatriotic.

What if other US/Americans don’t find it insulting and unpatriotic? What if they encourage the use or use it themselves when talking w/ others?

Do you believe this does harm to your country? and if so in what ways? What do you believe will be the effects of this becoming popular usage? What do you fear? :3

Molly Ren
13 years ago

*pushes everybody into the pool with me, Ami, and Kirby* Why argue? :3

havebookswilltravel
13 years ago

Damn slow internet, Holly beat me to it. Also, I don’t think anyone here is saying a USian or person from the States or even someone reps state pride heavily (Ohioan, Massachusettsian, etc.) isn’t American. The US is American, but so is Canada or Mexico or Uruguay.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

O_O

*scoots behind kirby and pushes up against his back clutching him* eek! other ppl! D: and my top fell off too D:

ithiliana
13 years ago

*wipes drops of water from splasy game going on in hippo pool off glasses*

**reveals age by deciding to use the radical alternate spelling Amerikkka in future**

Tabby: well I hang out with an extremely high percentage of academics and other pedants and we talk about language use often. I also spent a good chunk of the mid-1980s writing to textbook companies explaining I would not use their anthologiesi n my four or five comp classes a term because of the low number of essays by white women and ethnic minorities and by the generic use of he” to mean all humans.

And lo and behold., not just beause of me, things changed in the 1990s. My tech writing textooks all have directions on how to use non-sexist usage (for the most pragmatic of reasons), and the anthologies available are much more diverse in all ways.

And the stylistic rules concerning pronouns has changed showing the direct cause of the fall of Western Civilization: FEMINISTS ahahahhahahahahaha.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Ami, it’s a big pool! It was made for hippos, after all.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Men’s Rights Activist Lieutenant | July 6, 2011 at 11:01 pm
Ami, I think that all AMERICANS should object to the term out of principle. It’s derogatory and stupid, and not our name.

What if they do not object? Do you only have ONE name of the country? Do you get offended if ppl say USA or US? or “The States”? Or must they say “America”? o_O

theLaplaceDemon
theLaplaceDemon
13 years ago

“It bothers me a lot because I cannot shake the impression that “USian” is vaguely derogatory and borne out of politically correct shit.”

Do you have any more concrete reasons, or logical arguments for that?

I can understand finding the term clunky or personally unappealing, but it really just is a more descriptive way of saying where you’re from.

Is it “more politically correct”? I suppose yes, in some ways it is. But I don’t think being “politically correct” automatically makes something bad (or good, for that matter).

Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
Men's Rights Activist Lieutenant
13 years ago

What if other US/Americans don’t find it insulting and unpatriotic? What if they encourage the use or use it themselves when talking w/ others?

What if certain black people don’t have a problem with the word “n*gger”? Some definitely don’t, but a lot of blacks dislike it when other blacks use it. That’s their right. And I would agree. It sends a bad message.

Kaylee
Kaylee
13 years ago

I think it is unpatriotic to call my state California. We should really refer to it by its proper title, the People’s Gaypublic of Drugafornia.

(Just kidding MRAL, I mostly just wanted to work in that 30 Rock joke.)

theLaplaceDemon
theLaplaceDemon
13 years ago

@MRAL – “It sends a bad message.”

Which is?

ithiliana
13 years ago

MRAL: You do know that there are lots of derogatory terms used by people with less social and cultural power amongst themsevles that the people who have social power may never know about? (I made gringo jokes a while ago). And Anglo.

Lots of people in the world have lots of legitimate gripes about Amerikka–and no reason to think anything good about us.

And “politically correct shit” changes over time.

Also, and while w’ere on the subject, could you define for me what you mean by “politically correct”?

Becuase if it’s anything but “my identity group doesn’t get to control everything any more and we’re all pouty about it, ” I’ve never heard it. In fact the majority of people I ask to define it, can’t They just use it because they know it’s DEROGATORY. And you misspell feminist (forgive me if I’m misremembering who uses all the Ys in it) all the time–for derogatory purposes. So why complain when you are being trreated like you treat other people, Mr. USian?

Spearhafoc
13 years ago

What if certain black people don’t have a problem with the word “n*gger”?

Are you honestly comparing…? Oh, never mind.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Terms like the n- word and “tranny” and others come from a place of historical oppression, tho those words are trying to be reclaimed by some… where do you believe the oppression comes from the word “USan” that it is derogatory to you? (beyond that you “can’t shake the feeling” that it is xD)

darksidecat
13 years ago

I’m with Kirbywarp and FedUp, the bit where a man did mildly creepy thing, and a woman points out that men should avoid doing said mildly creepy thing was not the big issue, the thing that really bothered me was the incredibly massive sexist response. There were comment threads on some atheist blogs worse than the MRAs on comment thread here (and, yes, the term feminazi was actually used on one, and there was a comment blaming Rebecca for being out late at night and for having allowed “sexy” pictures of herself to be taken in the past, comments claiming reverse discrimination, that she was saying all men are rapists, etc.). This issue of sexism in the atheist movement, including sexual objectification of women at meetings, is a longstanding one, and one that many women have complained about. I am a pretty anti-relgious atheist myself, and I have seen this shit happen. There was a campus group at my undergrad that I refused to associate with because the guys running it started up with that sort of crap. I had contacted them using my school email, which has my birth name on it (my birth name is one that is a relatively common very female coded name). Not only did they react to my appearance (fat, butch) with disappointment obvious even to me, they then went on to say refer to a young woman there as being “quiet, and probably dumb, but at least cute.” I actually walked out at that point, in part because I knew her (she was a sporadically attending member of the philosophy club). Yes, she was a bit shy, but she was also a dual major in math and physics and one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. She was the physics major that even the other physics majors thought was exceptional, and yet her intelligence and opinions were dismissed with a glance. She was cute and quiet, so they assumed she was an idiot, I was neither, so I was unwanted due to not being a proper sex object. People read as female can’t win in a space like that. Apparantly, that was not there only problem, because, as someone who knew a lot of atheists on that campus, many of whom were queer people, people of color, and women, the only people in that group were white cis hetero guys.

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