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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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MissPrism
13 years ago

Seconding what Plymouth said.
I’ve been asked out, and even flat-out propositioned for sex, by perfectly decent men to whom I wasn’t attracted, in situations where I felt both safe and sure that a “no” would be respected. They weren’t creeps. The considerably better looking bloke who leers down your cleavage and tries his best to catch you drunk and alone? Creep.

Trollin'MRAs
Trollin'MRAs
13 years ago

Excellent post, David. It’s great to hear something good may come from this dust-up in the end.

We can also conclude the word “creepy” has some amazing powers, if it can even make a sooper-smarty like Dawkins puke out his lady issues.

As a seasoned troll I already knew that creeps hate being called out, but it’s great to see it in action.

MertvayaRuka
13 years ago

“So giving someone the benefit of the doubt instead of automatically applying the ‘creep’ label is now equal to the kid-glove approach? Do you even read what you write?”

As MissPrisim points out, Watson said his behavior creeped her out or was creepy, not that he himself was a “creep”. This I why I say you and other people like you are overly-sensitive whiners. She didn’t even say about him what you’re claiming, but in your mind she clearly labeled him and you’re all het up about it. She had an opinion about his behavior, she didn’t claim that she read his mind and he was a secret serial rapist. So yes, practically demanding she not use any negative terms at all to describe this guy’s behavior is pretty much exactly the kind of kid-glove approach you heap so much derision on.

“Do you honestly not see the irony in pounding out a spittle-laced diatribe against me and others for apparently “having our feelings hurt” (which doesn’t even make sense) when just a few minutes ago you were defending Watson’s right to feel uncomfortable and creeped out by a random guy in an elevator? I guess not. Self-awareness is not a mangina’s strong suit.”

Oh no, he called me a mangina. Quick, someone get me to the fainting couch.

Lemme see if I can simplify this for you. When you make other people feel uncomfortable, you’re not the real victim, even if it was not your intent to make them uncomfortable. If you realize you’re doing it or they tell you that that’s what you’re doing, you apologize, explain yourself politely and maybe try to learn from the experience so you don’t do it again. Or, I suppose, you can get your ass all chapped over it and tear into them for stepping out of line and daring to think such things about such a perfect specimen of humanity. I’m sure that approach works real well.

Asking you to try to be aware of what’s going on around you, what you do and how you act is not asking you to rewrite the collected works of William Shakespeare from memory using toilet paper and chalk. If you’re going to look at it as being impossible or not worth your time, I’m going to call you a whiner. Chances are I won’t be alone. Deal with it, whiner.

hellkell
hellkell
13 years ago

Plymouth,

Maybe at the very beginning, but if there’s no there there or a there that hates women, looks won’t go far.

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

Plymouth, MRAL still buys into his Greek Letter Hierarchy paradigm — he just thinks he’s been promoted from omega to beta. The basic worldview is still the same, so . . .

Also, what MissPrism said: “Creep” is not particularly subjective, there are plenty of objective criteria for labeling someone a creep.

Tabby Lavalamp
Tabby Lavalamp
13 years ago

Molly, thanks. I got it from The Onion some time back.

MRAL, holy crap, stop making it all about YOU! Can we please have one thread that doesn’t become the trials and tribulations of Omega Man?!?!

PFKaE, gotta love when people don’t take simple, good advice.

Now back to this story, Rebecca Watson is now in a can’t win situation. Teh Dudez and Dude apologists are claiming that she’s accused poor Elevator Guy of practically raping her and all he did was ask her an innocent question for an innocent cup of coffee, yet if she took him up on it and actually got assaulted, then OMG! What does she expect for putting herself in that situation!!?!?
Just. Can’t. Win.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Apparently she was only supposed to say no and not have any feelings about it at all or if she did, she needed to keep her mouth shut cuz like women are to be seen and not heard.

Ion
Ion
13 years ago

If someone accuses you of making them feel uncomfortable because “OMG YOU ARE A DUDE AND I AM A DWORKIN-ESQUE IMAGINARY FEMINIST WHO SPITS ON DUDES FOR BEING DUDES” then yes you have a legitimate complaint.

Watson “accused” elevator dude of making her uncomfortable because he was behaving in an inconsiderate fashion. Yes, the fact that he was male did color how she interpreted his behavior; in a society where men and women are socialized to play very different roles, that is somewhat inevitable. But the essential problem wasn’t his dude-ness. It was his behavior.

He was behaving in a fashion that SHE judged as inconsiderate/uncomfortable/creepy (sorry for repeating, but she did use the word). Based on the facts presented, I don’t agree. She never did mention her reaction to his question, or what happened after, but we can assume nothing more came of it and they went their separate ways. She then chose to make an issue out of it by mentioning this ‘creep’ on her blog. People took offense to the description, again based on the facts. That’s it. Like you said, I don’t know what’s so complicated.

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

Alright, no more talking about me.

Molly Ren
13 years ago

Ion wrote, “She then chose to make an issue out of it by mentioning this ‘creep’ on her blog. People took offense to the description, again based on the facts. That’s it. Like you said, I don’t know what’s so complicated.”

Ion’s first comment on this thread: “My guess – the guy wasn’t attractive. If he had been, she would’ve been recounting it the next day as an exotic adventure.”

Why you gotta make it so complicated, Ion?

Ymata
Ymata
13 years ago

PFKaE: “Apparently she was only supposed to say no and not have any feelings about it at all or if she did, she needed to keep her mouth shut cuz like women are to be seen and not heard.”

Of course! And it is much more important that Elevator Dude is never potentially made sad by being told that his approach was inappropriate, than Rebecca’s desire to feel safe!

Orion
Orion
13 years ago

For MRAL: A question, a comment, and an apology.

Question: Do you think that “creepy” is word that only applies to men? When it’s applied to women do you think it’s slurring them by associating them with masculinity? Because where I come from, it’s fairly commonplace to gossip about “creepy” women.

Comment: Different social circles are different, but in experience building up a reputation as a creep is actually pretty difficult, and people are usually happy to give men they know socially the benefit of the doubt. I’m a little socially clueless, a major flirt, and I form strong attachments quickly, and as a consequence I have definitely creeped out quite a few women (in most cases through my own error, in a few through a blameless mismatch of personalities.) At my college I’ve personally creeped out at least 4 people I was attracted to, and I feel bad about that, but it really hasn’t affect my life much. Most of my friends don’t seem to know, or if they heard they assume it can’t have been that bad, or they’re willing to forgive or don’t see it as their business. And my dating life is fine too.

Xtra
13 years ago

A protip for hitting on anybody, if your line starts with, “Don’t take this the wrong way….” you already know you are saying something that, well, CAN BE TAKEN THE WRONG WAY. So, perhaps you should remove your head from your ass and not say things that can possibly be taken the wrong way. Oh and in an elevator, alone at 4 am may not be the best place to proposition someone. Even if you’re still a selfish person thinking only of yourself, you might cause a trigger for someone and they may harm you because they fear for their own safety.

Ion
Ion
13 years ago

We can also conclude the word “creepy” has some amazing powers, if it can even make a sooper-smarty like Dawkins puke out his lady issues.

As a seasoned troll I already knew that creeps hate being called out, but it’s great to see it in action.

You realize that makes about as much sense as calling you a “feminazi” and then claiming you ‘hate being called out’ if you take any offense to it, right?

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

Agreed.

So, how ’bout them Sox?

Orion
Orion
13 years ago

Forgot the apology: If your therapist doesn’t want you coming here, I should refrain from addressing you so it’s easier to stay away. I’m sorry that I don’t have the strength to do so.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

We do have to be careful with the little darlings feelings…they are such delicate tings after all.

/sarcasm for those who are not able to pick up on it.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Which Sox? There are three of them right?

hellkell
hellkell
13 years ago

I was just thinking that the main “holy shit, that was fucked-up or outright scary” incidents in my life with strange men have happened pre-dawn.

#1) I’m London and can’t sleep from jet-lag, so I showered, threw on a sweatshirt and jenas and went to the Starbucks around the corner from the hotel for coffee. On the way back, a guy pulls up to the curb and says, “Hey love, would you like some company?” I’m gobsmacked, but yell, “NO” and he takes off. He thought I was a hooker in my wet hair and sweats. Time: 5am-ish.

2.) I’m leaving to pick up a friend at the airport around 5:30am. It’s dark and rainy (it’s Seattle) and my car is across the street from my building. As I’m leaving my building, this dude (foreign, but don’t know what) come up to me and asks me to give him a ride. I say no and keep going to my car. This fucker, nay, this CREEPY fucker, is following me. I get in, and he tries the passenger side handle, thank god it’s locked. He’s saying something, I don’t know what, but as I start the car I realize I will run his ass over if he doesn’t move. That incident had me freaked out for quite a bit afterward.

So yeah, if I get approached pre-dawn, I might be more than a bit leery. I suppose according to some, I should just be grateful for the attention. *giant fucking eyeroll to that*

Molly Ren
13 years ago

@Johnny Pez How about the next Magic card story? I mean, I dunno nothing about sports… >>

Johnny Pez
13 years ago

In New England, there’s only one pair of Sox.

Molly Ren
13 years ago
Tabby Lavalamp
Tabby Lavalamp
13 years ago

I owe MRAL an apology. He hasn’t been talking about himself in this thread that much and I overreacted. Sorry, MRAL.

Ion
Ion
13 years ago

Asking you to try to be aware of what’s going on around you, what you do and how you act is not asking you to rewrite the collected works of William Shakespeare from memory using toilet paper and chalk. If you’re going to look at it as being impossible or not worth your time, I’m going to call you a whiner. Chances are I won’t be alone. Deal with it, whiner.

Like I said, and you ignored, I’m not against common courtesy. But if some easily-offended nutcase with emotional issues decides that I somehow made them feel uncomfortable, I’m not the one with the problem. And I’m not alone in this. Tuck your dick between your legs and slink through life apologizing for your Y-chromosome, mangina.

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