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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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kirbywarp
kirbywarp
13 years ago

@Ami:

You find this a lot in religious circles as well. They’ll make all these pronouncements about how gays are of the devil or everyone is going to hell or abortion is baby murder, but when pressed or challenged (or when they hear about those evil atheists going around not believing in God) there response is “I’m in entitled to my opinion, aren’t I? Why are you attacking me for my opinion?” (or “Why can’t you just let people believe something different than you?”)

Not only does it belittle their arguments/assertions (its just an opinion after all), but its profoundly dishonest; until they were challenged, it wasn’t opinion, it was fact. Only when they couldn’t back it up does it suddenly become opinion. (Same thing happened with MRAL). Its just another dirty “debate” tactic.

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

ithiliana – Keith Olbermann mentioned that on his “Worst Persons In The World” segment today.

Simone Lovelace
13 years ago

Aww…I’m a princess! XD

ithiliana
13 years ago

Aha, so I wasn’t imagining it–my googlefu has deserted me, it’s late, and I have to get up at 6:30 am tmomorrow because floor installers are coming at 8:30. Have fun, y’all!

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Their attitude makes me want to rage…so I guess they are wrong re: Swallows’ post.

traindodger
13 years ago

At first, I skimmed through the article and didn’t catch the name of the one who wrote that bizarre little piece. When I reached the end, I was like “wait, Richard Dawkins?”

I just burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself.

So, which self-styled “celeb” is going to make a fool out of themselves next?

Alex
13 years ago

@traindodger,

“So, which self-styled “celeb” is going to make a fool out of themselves next?”

I don’t know, but I’m considering making a list.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

So, which self-styled “celeb” is going to make a fool out of themselves next?

I’d say Michele Bachmann, because she does it like she’s working on an assembly line.

Magpie
13 years ago

Michele Bachmann is already a fool, though, isn’t she?

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Does Roger Clemens count or did he alrdy make a fool of himself enuf beforehand? xD Cuz I suspect something more is coming as he scrambles to preserve his reputation… xD

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

I go to the store and there are 100 new comments!

you must hate that.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Sarah Palin…oh wait, she never was not a fool.

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

So I went back and read through a bunch of the blog posts that are associated with this story (like all the ones linked here: http://skepchick.org/2011/07/the-privilege-delusion/) and I’m struck by the fact that so many of them are talking about this incident in terms of a potential sexual assault. Which, yeah, I don’t deny that that potential was there, but it seems mostly irrelevant to me. What this guy did wasn’t creepy because of the potential for assault – it was creepy because of the context of her having already said she wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. I don’t see how anything Rebecca did was in any way an overreaction or unfair. But some of the response does seem to me to be an overreaction – making this a case about potential assault is making this seem bigger than it is. Sure, that’s there, way in the background, let it stay there and address what actually happened.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@Plymouth it does seem to be that rather than it being about the context (which is that she had just finished a speech on that) and what happened, it does seem to be about potential sexual assault. Either that it COULD have been, or the counter “hey it wasn’t like it was!” (or “she’s practically accusing him of assault!”) and as you said it is losing focus and also saying that her feelings should only matter if it had been about that : which isn’t to say that as you said, the potential might not be there, or on her mind, but I dun think she mentioned that… (did she?)

Pecunium
13 years ago

Ion: . But now suddenly this guy has all but been accused of rape, while Watson is a victim. This is a non-story that shouldn’t have blown up like this.

Yes, and if people (you included) didn’t try to turn it into her doing something she didn’t do (i.e. “practically accuse him of rape”) it wouldn’t be.

But Dawkins, and you, and all the rest, have decided this is a terrible thing. She said that being propositioned, by a guy she didn’t know, in an elevator at 0400 is something that made her uncomfortable.

She further said.. gasp! that maybe men might want to think about that aspect of things before they proposition people they don’t know.

The funny thing… this is the sort of advice men give women when talking about how to not get raped. They say, “don’t put yourself in a position where rape might happen.”

So she says,”don’t act like a creep, unless you want to risk people thinking you are a creep” and the manosphere goes nuts with rage.

Nobby
Nobby
13 years ago

@Ami I do think it’s kinda there, in that it’s about her feeling comfortable, and part of the lack of comfort is that issue. However, she didn’t mention any possibility of assault from this guy, and she did make it clear in the video (it’s better to hear the context, naturally), that it was mostly him simply doing pretty much the exact thing she gave a long talk about not doing.

And, naturally, if you’re going to open with “You’re very interesting”, it helps to know what the person just talked about >.<

Also, You are totally turning out other people's cards before mine to spite me. You're definitely the vilest person here.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

The funny thing… this is the sort of advice men give women when talking about how to not get raped. They say, “don’t put yourself in a position where rape might happen.”

So she says,”don’t act like a creep, unless you want to risk people thinking you are a creep” and the manosphere goes nuts with rage.

Actually if you want to use that comparison w/ what’s going on here and what has been said about “preventing” rape, it’s more akin to “don’t dress attractively, unless you want to risk people thinking you’re attractive.. and then you’ll get raped”

while hers just ended at “or ppl will think you’re a creep” she didn’t add “and then women will accuse you of rape” or “and then women will beat you up” or etc…

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

@Nobby I do agree that it’s kinda out there, or prolly part of her fear of why it disturbs her : I’m just saying I agree w/ Plymouth that whether the risk was ACTUALLY there or not is irrelevant, since it turns into the whole issue of “intent” and also the whole “well it’s not like he assaulted you” or etc… and then shifts the idea into how much risk is real risk, at what point SHOULD she be justified in her feelings, etc etc :

I’m trying to think of a card for you : sometimes things just pop up and I do them, smoetimes I have to think 🙁

luke123
luke123
13 years ago

Much as the elevator guy is a bit clumsy socially, Rebecca is not very socially skilled either if she thinks laying bare here personal issues and hangups on a public forum that is not designed for that is a good idea. Either she is terrible naive or she was well aware that this would cause criticism and pushback. If it’s the last then she is nothing but an attention whore.

It’s one thing when an unknown, anonymous person puts up a video like that, but if you are a more or less prominent figure in a community it’s a whole other matter.
To see what I mean, imagine the president giving a speech on television about how he doesn’t get enough sex from his wife.

And Dawkins is right.

MertvayaRuka
MertvayaRuka
13 years ago

I am planning on blaming Ami, Kirby and Molly for the sugar coma I feel coming on.

Moving on…

“Tuck your dick between your legs and slink through life apologizing for your Y-chromosome, mangina.”

Aw, give it a rest snowflake. That “Hurr hurr yer a GIRL” shit only works on you insecure, wanna-be “alpha” types who live in constant dread of being seen as unmanly by your fellow knuckle-dragger “real men” morons who think “female” is synonymous with “inferior”. Twenty years ago or so, that might’ve worked. Now, I just see it for what it is: you wishing that I was afraid of the same things you are.

So you go ahead and puff your chest out and strut through the rest of your life, always with that fear of being perceived as “less than a man” gnawing away at you like a rat. Bury every single bit of yourself that might make every one of your “friends” abandon you and pray none of it ever surfaces when times get tough. Always keep in mind that they’ll mock you, shun you and turn on you in a heartbeat the moment they see you displaying something they see as “feminine” weakness, probably when you need their help the most. Maybe when that happens, the idea of me being anything like the caricature in your head will give you comfort.

I wouldn’t bet money on that though. Just sayin’.

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Somebody rly buried the lead. xD

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

Of course I’m also one of those girls who doesn’t entirely get the “shroedingers rapist” thing. I mean, I understand the concept, but it’s not how I live my life. It’s utterly foreign to me to think of everyone as a potential rapist. If I’m looking for the more populated subway car it’s generally because I worry about getting mugged, not raped.

Nobby
Nobby
13 years ago

@Ami Okay! Let me know if you need more info to help get it going. I’ll stop being annoying now >.<

@luke123 Wait, so her talking about an issue with a guy that is 100% related to one of her main discussion topics, that is, an issue she frequently give speeches and panels and blog posts about, is a bad idea? Interesting tactic. Hey, everyone! It’s a bad idea to talk about things that you talk about!

Also, there’s kids dying of hunger in Africa, luke. Why are you here talking when you should be there saving lives?

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