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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

She felt afraid and “creeped out” because he was a man.

No, she felt afraid and creeped out because of how he’d acted. If he’d just stood there, being all mannish, it’s very unlikely she would have responded that way–and impossible that she’d have gotten widespread sympathy for it.

He didn’t just stand there.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Hellkell: Yah. Sometimes you can’t help it, tho… >>

hellkell
hellkell
13 years ago

Are you MRAs just projecting? Because Watson never called the guy hisownself a creep, she said his behavior towards her felt creepy and sexualizing. There is a difference.

I think you all hear the word creep and it makes you think about all the times your behavior could be tagged as creepy and you can’t handle it.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Molly Ren

There was no disadvantage.
You are taught to fear men.
He was simply “there.” and this caused fear/discomfort.
Had she not been taught to distrust, fear and hate men she would have been thinking, “thank god a man is here to assist me since I seem to be in a bit of a pickle.”
Misandry dictated her actions and she felt uncomfortable.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

“Had she not been taught to distrust, fear and hate men she would have been thinking, ‘thank god a man is here to assist me since I seem to be in a bit of a pickle.’”

I am probably just a paranoid person, but I wouldn’t think that about anyone coming to help me in such a scenario, man or woman. I’d probably lock myself in the car and call AAA on my cellphone. 😛

Now, if I’m in a Starbucks waiting in line for a coffee, and a man stands behind me? I’m not scared of *that*. If a guy comes up to me in a grocery store, I’m not scared of that either.

Context. It’s important. Really.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Holly Pervocracy… “No, she felt afraid and creeped out because of how he’d acted. If he’d just stood there, being all mannish, it’s very unlikely she would have responded that way–and impossible that she’d have gotten widespread sympathy for it.”

Notice the contempt in which you say, “all manish.” This is misandry, hatred of all things “manish.”

The sympathy she recieved further illustrates the rampant misandry you approve of. A man can be deemed a creep by a woman and she will recieve sympathy. He is a creep because she decided his actions were unacceptable, her feelings at any point in time for any reason dictates his status. This is acceptable misandry. She is right to feel that way, he is wrong because she said he is wrong.

caseymordred
caseymordred
13 years ago

Okay, I’ll throw the MRA trolls a bone here:

Just for the sake of argument, from their perspective, perhaps they view a woman’s insistence on safety over considering whether or not a man is harmful or just awkward to be a lack of empathy on their part.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Wait… does NWOSlave think women can’t change tires?

I mean, *I* can’t, but I’ve also never owned a car. (Public transit all the way, baby.)

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

God, NWO, you really hate elephants today.

I said “all mannish” sardonically, to illustrate that simply being a man is not an offensive action, or indeed an action at all. I said it to illustrate how silly someone would look if they said “he’d been all mannish” at me!

But you don’t really think this, do you? You weren’t actually hurt by the word “mannish” and you didn’t really pick it out as something offensive to you as a man. You pre-decided–like, before I was even born, I think–that women hate men, and you’re just looking for confirmation.

At this point, you’ll find it every time a woman says “I like snowcones” or “nice weather out today.”

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Molly Ren

Context is not important. This is nothing but an excuse. If it’s dark out your fear of a man is justified? You’re taught from birth to fear/hate men. Every TX show, commercial, movie, billboard. It’s everywhere, man is evil.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

@Holly Pervocracy

Excusing your bad behavior, while condemning a man behavior based on a womans feelings. Isn’t this misandry?

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

By the way, NWO, do you know why we started baiting you with “you hate elephants”?

Because you repeatedly accuse people of hating things that they don’t hate, and refuse to take any answer. It’s very frustrating when I say “I don’t hate men” and your response is “you liar, you secretly hate men.”

So if you’re frustrated by the fact that you don’t actually hate elephants, that you never even mentioned elephants, that the conversation you were trying to have wasn’t about elephants, and that you have no way of proving you don’t hate elephants–this is what we call “a taste of your own medicine.”

You elephant bigot you.

mediumdave
mediumdave
13 years ago

Oddly enough, I was in Slavey’s flat-tire scenario once… as the person with the flat tire. Only I was on a bike, but it was a dark, lonely highway and it was a woman to stopped to see if I needed help.

I assured her that I was fine and didn’t need help, but instead of leaving she stayed and made sure I was OK. I didn’t feel threatened, and that’s partly because of socialization… but OTOH I. personally, don’t have a history of being harassed by women. I’ve hardly ever been catcalled, leered at, propositioned inappropriately; any of that stuff. I’d bet a ton of money that every woman alive, including Skepchick, has had a history of being harassed by men.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

NWOSlave, you missed the part where I said, “I am probably just a paranoid person, but I wouldn’t think that about anyone coming to help me in such a scenario, man or woman. I’d probably lock myself in the car and call AAA on my cellphone.”

I’ve been walking home myself after dark (I worked as a waitress for a while, so I’d get home around 1am), and in the day time, which for some reason inspired some people to offer me rides. I would turn down “free rides” from women as well as men.

I’m non-biased: I distrust everyone equally. 😉

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

Context is not important.

Well, alrighty then, I guess that settles that.

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

Isn’t this misandry?

nope.

NWOslave
NWOslave
13 years ago

If the man in question, who this fine woman deemed a creep wrote a blog that he felt this woman was a creepy bitch, would you sympathize with him and support his feelings?

If not, misandry dictates your every thought.

Keep up the hate. Cya.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

I guess Slavey gets told “No!” by everyone, wherever he is, so it makes sense to him that context doesn’t matter. He’s had a hard life.

Holly Pervocracy
13 years ago

Excusing your bad behavior, while condemning a man behavior based on a womans feelings. Isn’t this misandry?

I don’t know what my bad behavior was.

I don’t hate men. I feel indifferent toward men in general–they’re just people, with good ones and bad ones–and warm toward many specific men like my father and my boyfriend and my male friends. The only men I hate are the ones who have committed violence or who are themselves hateful.

If a woman had made a man feel creeped out and uncomfortable, I would condemn that. But this isn’t recursive–you can’t say “you made me feel bad by telling me that I made you feel bad.” He made her feel bad, and she has the right to say so, no matter how it makes him feel.

God, if he’s even reading this. He may not be. The point of her telling the story–which did not use his name–was to provide an example to other men of how not to act in the future, so that no one, male or female, would have to feel bad in the future.

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

If the man in question, who this fine woman deemed a creep wrote a blog that he felt this woman was a creepy bitch

I would, however, wonder why he was hitting on her.

Captain Bathrobe
Captain Bathrobe
13 years ago

At this point, you’ll find it every time a woman says “I like snowcones” or “nice weather out today.”

Notice the contempt with which you talk about snowcones. You are so indoctrinated to hate delicious, icy, sugary treats that you don’t even recognize the depth of your missnowconey. Your claim to like snowcones is empty and convinces no one outside your own narrow circle of snowcone haters. Fortunately, I am here to expose your anti-snowcone hypocrazy.

zombie rotten mcdonald
13 years ago

I don’t know what my bad behavior was.

Disagreeing with a mannish man.

And hating elephants.

Captain Bathrobe
Captain Bathrobe
13 years ago

I don’t know what my bad behavior was.

Disagreeing with a mannish man.

And hating elephants.

And snowcones.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

Cap’n B, that’s missnowconerey.

You obviously have reading comprehension issues.

hellkell
hellkell
13 years ago

And Holly, seriously, your anti-nice weather bias is showing. What did nice weather ever do to you?

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