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.
@kirbywarp: I thought the only one conclusion Marc’s idea leads to is some rambling nihilist troll screed about how unworkable our liberal political correctness is which is only supported by him eventually expanding the idea of separation to absurd proportions not unlike the ones you just mentioned in jest.
I have a much better idea. How about we just separate from the rest of society all the people who can and do blame rape victims for being raped?
It’s against human rights to banish people who just said something disagreeable, and I’m also afraid it won’t work against, because those people are not identical with rapists.
Where would trans women go? o_O What about intersectionality? xD
We have to decide about trans women later, these are the fussy details. And we won’t force anyone.
If we start hiving off populations based on risk from the “privileged” population (clumsy word xD ),what happens when you belong to conflicting groups? xD
There’s not much intersection between the sexes… 😉
@Ami – Silly girl, in Marc’s separatist utopia, trans people won’t exist! Neither will intersex or genderqueer people! Jeez, it’s almost like you think you’re people or something.
It’s not an utopia. It’s about the right for women to not get raped. Women have not much choice but attending a mixed college, I want to change that. How can you mock this ideas?
PS: I wanted to say:
“As you probably increase your chances of being raped if you stray around totally drunk and naked in the city park at 3 am, it’s of course not your fault.”
What if a majority of women don’t go to these colleges (women-only colleges alrdy exist)? o:
also what if women don’t qualify for them but qualify for mixed gender colleges? o_O would every college be split up? Like an all female MIT? xD
this is fun! xD
@MertvayaRuka:
But he is the only one that is suggesting separation!
@Marc:
Again, you seem to think that men are so incapable of changing their own behavior that the only possible way to fix the problem is to separate the genders. Being a gay man yourself, I can’t exactly accuse you of not wanting to change your own behavior (unless you are being creepy towards women as well), but really.. The people who claim the most are basically saying “you have no right to expect me to act like a decent person. If you don’t like me acting like a dick, you can just git out.”
Which is nonsense, of course.
But you are… Kirby.. YOU ARE TERRIBLE AND EVIL!
*tackles you*
terrible and ev…ooh.. *feels your chest*..i…ll……
*makes out w/ you*
@Marc: Wait…you’re actually in favor of safe spaces for marginalized and oppressed groups? Wow, you’re actually going a step in the right direction. Maybe you should keep going with that?
@Ami: Well, Amanda does post here doesn’t she? Maybe you could try to get her to answer you. I mean, I don’t know, just a thought.
“It’s not an utopia. It’s about the right for women to not get raped. Women have not much choice but attending a mixed college, I want to change that. How can you mock this ideas?”
I’m gonna have to go with “because the only way you could possibly be any more obviously insincere is if you were jumping up and down waving your arms and yelling ‘I’M JUST MAKING THIS ARGUMENT TO PUSH BUTTONS, SEE HOW FUCKING CLEVER I AM'”. Shit, why not just rickroll us and get it over with.
@MertvayaRuka
I’m gonna have to go with “because the only way you could possibly be any more obviously insincere is if you were jumping up and down waving your arms and yelling ‘I’M JUST MAKING THIS ARGUMENT TO PUSH BUTTONS, SEE HOW FUCKING CLEVER I AM’”. Shit, why not just rickroll us and get it over with.
but this is fun xD even if ppl are just making it up, I like to get out the whole world view XD It gives me ideas for stuff :3
@kirbywarp:
“But he is the only one that is suggesting separation!”
Oh I know. What he’s doing is yet another stale routine from the troll playbook. Starts out pretending to be supportive of an idea but then exaggerates the idea to the point of the ridiculous in order to show all us dopes how much smarter he is. It doesn’t matter that nobody’s suggesting separation but him, he’ll argue that it’s the only logical extension of the idea.
@Ami:
Mockery is always fun for me. Plus it’s good practice. 🙂
Obviously there is only one conclusion Marc’s idea leads to. Separate everyone on every possible axis, to prevent any possibility of offense. Maybe we could build robots that will put us all into little boxes, maybe storing them in big warehouses. They can give us food and water and so forth, and we’ll be perfectly safe from anybody assaulting our sensibilities.
No, that’s ridiculous.
1 in 4 women are raped in college.
25% chance!
I hate the slippery slope argument! It’s always used by nitpickers like pecunium.
We can of course not prevent any possible offense, but we can prevent 25% of college women being raped.
I’m also against nuclear power, because of the safety, but I’ve to admit, even a wind turbine can kill someone!
If I protest against nuclear power, I’m not saying it’s possible to produce energy totally risk-free. I’m just saying that we have to shut down nuclear reactors because they are so much worse than any other way to produce power, there’s no justification for it. Risks and benefits bear no proportion (can you say this in that way in English?).
In the same way, there’s really no justification of teaching men an women together if it’s so extremely dangerous for them.
I can’t think of any benefit of mixed colleges… but the risks are clear.
Apparently all women do like bad boys. And apparently I’m a bad boy. Both of these things are news to me. Oh well.
@MertvayaRuka:
Yeah, as I’ve said before, Marc will say absolutely anything, even something partway decent, just to troll us. Problem is, of course, is that, as I’ve said multiple times, Marc wants to bring the onus onto the victim to change her behavior, rather than trying to get the offenders to change theirs. It’s misandry, as has been pointed out in the past; men aren’t capable of being decent human beings, no sense in trying to get them to change their minds, better make the women protect themselves.
I’m not against single-sex colleges, (though I don’t like the idea of them), but Marc is simply being slimey and dishonest, and has absolutely no credibility even when he makes a decent suggestion.
I’m suggesting separation! I like Kirby’s box idea! XD Then I break out and help Kirby break out… some fights w/ the robots shooting at us ensues, I got half my top blown off .. and then we make it out of the factory alive into the beautiful Vancouver American landscape… and hope for the human race is alive once more! and me and him can repopulate the Earth!
except.. y’know… I can’t… xD
oops xD
Thomas–excellent taste on your part, but just as you do not find young women your age appealing, generally, I am bored by young men (too many of whom I’ve taught), and besides having a lifetime partnership with a woman, prefer men in my own age range, to perv over on those occasions when I’m perving over a man instead of a woman (Sean Bean, for example!) But thanks for contributing a view that’s rarely heard!
That was supposed to say
VancouverAmerican landscapexD
@Marc:
“I can’t think of any benefit of mixed colleges… but the risks are clear.”
How about, I dunno, being able to figure out how to interact with the opposite sex? Learning how your own behavior affects others? Becoming aware of any misandry/misogyny/bias and learning how to deal with it? You seem to be saying that its better to separate people then to allow them to learn to interact, and thus my little rhetorical point is pretty much spot on.
@kirbywarp:
“It’s misandry, as has been pointed out in the past; men aren’t capable of being decent human beings, no sense in trying to get them to change their minds, better make the women protect themselves.”
That’s the gag that always gets me. All this shit about women needing to cover up and dress “nice” because it’s their fault if men react badly, what statement is that making besides “All men are inherently predisposed to jerks and rapists”? Why is it okay with them in this one instance to say exactly what they claim feminists indoctrinate people with?
Here’s what we know about the horrifying case of, what I’ll dub, “the elevator creep.”
Woman says she’s at a party. Say’s she spoke about bad timing for being hit on. Man ask’s for coffee in elevator at 4 AM. Woman writes bolg about his bad manners.
How long did woman talk about bad timing for being hit on?
Was man in bathroom as conversation happened?
Did he just not hang on her every word?
Was he having a conversation with someone else while she said her piece?
Man, with extreme gentleness asks woman to join him for coffee at 4 AM.
Woman declines.
Woman writes blog soon after on mans bad behavior.
Blogosphere in feminist camp erupts to the point of this man is “cornering” woman in a threatening manner.
1) Did man want sex? Maybe, and so what if he did. Rumor has it. women want sex as well, or so I’m told. Another woman might have said no to the coffee but she’d love to have some sex.
2) Did this man do anything threatening what so ever? Not in the least could it ever, in any way shape or form be considered threatening or poor behavior. Another woman might have been flattered, another might have went to his room for coffee, another woman might have went to his room for sex.
3) Did the feminist community leap on this insignificant non-issue to proclaim another victory in the never ending victimiztion of all womanhood and piss behavior of men? Most definitely.
4) Did the man have a rebuttal? Maybe he just wanted to get to know her. Maybe he wanted to ask in private so the axe wouldn’t drop in front of everyone else.
5) Did any of this even really happen?
Good night.
Marc: separatism (chosen state) already exists–a number of women (often but not always lesbians) have chosen to craft their lives in ways that exclude men as much as possible (it was a really big thing in the 70s in parts of the US)–lesbian separatist utopias by major feminist sf authors, lesbian separatist communes, etc.
One might argue that on a different axis, convents are separatist organizations–i.e. no men allowed to become nuns! (No women allowed to become monks or priests).
Heterosexual women who want to have sex with men might find that lifestyle less than appealing, and it was never more than a minority movement within feminism. But it exists, and your ignorance of it proves..you are ignorant.
There have been a number of women only colleges in this country as well–I assume elsewhere, but I don’t know history of education. Many of them today have gone co-ed for multiple reasons; but the point is, they existed at a time when women were not allowed to attend the “men’s” universities (a similar history is behind historically black colleges–which, by the way, accept white students and have for years). However, just because a college admits only women, doesn’t mean there are no men on campus (many, especially in earlier decades, had a mostly male faculty, and lots of male staff, and it’s not as if they build high walls around them to keep the men in the surrounding communities out). Saying that if there were same sex colleges there would be no rape is again, absolutely astounding in its simplistic binary thinking.
Statistics by the way show that women often do better in all female settings/classrooms, especially in the sciences and math and technology subjects.
It’s just so….bizarre…when you trolls sneer “well if you don’t like X, why don’t you do Y,” when in fact Y has occurred for decades if not more, and you all didn’t even know about it.
@Mertvaya: The reason that those who aren’t MRA trolls might get on her case is because they do wrongly think that “not wanting to be sexualized” is the same as “don’t find women attractive, and don’t show attraction if you do get attracted.”
They ask “so I can’t even approach a woman without being at risk?”
I would say “short answer is yes, long answer is think of it from her perspective and realize that she can’t read your mind and heart, so yes she could well decide you’re a Schrodinger’s Rapist.”
I think these men can be reached, they just need to learn more empathy for women, especially women they might be attracted to.
Another retort that comes up, especially towards those more fierce and less forgiving of MRA trolls or other dissenters, is “maybe you’re just still traumatized from being raped/divorced/some other issues you had.”
In fact, I do recall one person saying this in regards to Rebecca Watson, about her divorce.
Other than saying “people with issues still have a right to have their beliefs taking seriously,” is there anything else that can be said?
@NWO: Well, here goes nothing.
a) She talked for about 15-20 minutes, if I recall correctly.
b-d) Doesn’t matter, it still was bad timing.
We don’t know the manner in which he asked, but we do know the words. It’s in her video.
Woman makes a video, during which about 2-3 minutes are dedicated to the incident.
Blogosphere erupts only after multiple people jump in defending the guy and attacking the girl.
1) Probably. But this particular woman didn’t want sex at that time, and she just gave a whole speech saying that exact thing.
2) The guy apparently was polite, yet still creepy. Aproaching a girl in an elevator, alone, at 4am, in a foreign country, can and was taken in some vague way to be threatening.
3) No, not in the slightest. In fact the biggest reaction from the feminist community I’ve seen is against all the people attacking the woman for even daring to suggest that perhaps men could be inclusive to women by not acting creepy.
4) Doesn’t matter.
5) Yes. Do you have any reason to doubt this, apart from assuming all feminists are liars?
Good night, slavie.
I mean, we don’t even know who the guy is! She isn’t personally attacking the guy, she took the situation as an example to men in the movement of how not to act. She didn’t name names (like some extremests do), she barely gave enough context for the people who were present to go on (unless someone saw them both get into the elevator). This is not a comment directed or meant to attack one particular guy, it was a general point.
Bleh.. It’s not like he’s actually gonna read this post, why do I bother? XD
So clearly we’ve got to go for a 2000 thread!
I see the trolls are doing their trollish little best to help us, bless their shrivelled little hearts.
So…hmmm…I’m hitting the sack soon because we’re in the middle of having new floor installed which, while I’m not installing it (glad to pay them to do it, another example of evil feminists exploiting men, although I will note that both the installers are driving newer better fancier cars than either of the two women who are humanities professors who are paying the company which is probably the true exploiter in the process), I am having to move a lot of stuff around.
A flood is good for the decluttering impetus though.
So, how many MBers have had a flood in their residence?
We were lucky–it was bust pipe which meant insurance paid (some) of cost.
@Marc actually, especially the slippery slope argument is usually referred to as the ‘slippery slope fallacy’, pecunium doesn’t use it. He calls out people using it, usually.
Also, 1/6 is the more correct number, from the accounts i’ve seen. the 1/4 comes from a survey with some methodology problems.
Oops, nitpicking. Oh well. Though, I really don’t want to derail anything here. Just clearing some things up.
Who is hotter: Sean Bean or Viggo Mortensen?
I slash them both, but a lot depends on my mood.
Or alternately, Boromir or Aragorn for you LOTR fans out there?