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.
AAARRRRRGGGGGGH;
OK, I can deal with the absolute inability to distinguish the contraction of IT IS (it’s) from the possessive pronoun ITS because I know people get confused because to make a possessive of a noun, you add an apostrophe + S, and while it bugs me, I see it so often I am fairly innured.
BUT GODAMNIT, “REIGNS” is what a king or the goddess empress in my fantasy life does.
If you cannot substitute “rules” for “reigns” in the sentence, you’re doing it wrong.
So “men do not hold the rules of power.” They hold the REINS of power, as if power were a horse or some other mighty phallic symbol of power.
SO many frakking people on the internet use “reigns” when they should be using “reins” and vice versa.
So when in doubt, replace “reigns” with “rules” and see if it makes any fucking sense!
*whew, that felt good*
Historical men of note are honored because they were honorable, fair and impartial.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You haven’t studied actual history as opposed to glorification myths, have you.
@Ithiliana You need to read this: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
It’s (I did it right!) not about reign/rein, but it is hysterical, and everyone should read it.
Jumbofish: I’m totes for aiming at 2000!
“By the way, Tim Hortons rocks.”
This is the first time NWOslave has sounded… well, *human*, as opposed to a runaway spambot program. o.O
Nobby: SOUL MATE! I know hyperbole1/2 (her wolf pack is one of my favorite readings, right after “The Secret Diaries”), and this particular post is traded amongst many of us English teacher types on teh internetz (and let me tell you, just you, nobody else, come closer, I’m going to whisper now: there are ALOT of us English teacher types on the internet, ahahahah).
About 15 years of teaching first year composition pretty much trained me out of wincing at that as well–ideally, that phrase would never be used in academic writing–it’s too vague. Ditto with “very” and “so” (weak intensifiers).
Everybody should read it (I actually have a macro a friend made me using the image from the post that reads “I’m online alot!” which I adore).
“It’s (I did it right!) not about reign/rein, but it is hysterical, and everyone should read it.”
As long as we’re bein all partiklar about words n stuff, it’s hilarious, not hysterical.
(Sorry, Nobby — I couldn’t help myself!)
@Molly Ren
So nothing in my reply to Alex held any value?
Alex: I hope you are incredibly grateful for the Supreme Enlightenment NWO has given you!
Next time you see flames in your kitchen, tell yourself it’s an illusion and walk away.
If you see a car driving straight at you while you’re in an intersection without the brake lights going on, tell yourself it’s an illusion and stop right there.
Because otherwise, you’re a misandrist!
*flings hand up and waves wildly in air and bobbles in seat*
I can answer that, NWO.
You’re absolutely correct: your comment to Alex contained nothing of value.
Bad analogies are completely fucking useless, and should be used as support for claims only rarely and only with great care.
Bee and Nobby: We could reach 2000 pretty fast if we started going all grammar tyrant on people (sorry, I cannot stand the use of “nazi” even in that phrase).
*pulls out gross of red pens, pops caps off, lays them out in straight line and waits expectantly*
@Bee Nope, it totally hysterical, because the reaction to it is always uncontrollable. Uncontrollable outbursts of joy.
>.>
Oh, wow, messed it up again. Um, i mean, I totally meant that the post is obviously uncontrollably emotional. I mean, MS paint? really? Surely a sign of mental instability. Also, women, amirite?
>.> <.<
*afraid to type while the red pens are out*
@Mr. Slave,
Considering I have been sexually assaulted on multiple occasions, I think it’s more than reasonable of me to be cautious around men. Didn’t you say women should be cautious in order to avoid sexual assault? You can’t have it both ways, sir. If those men wanted to hurt me, it might not have been the smartest idea, considering our being right outside a restaurant, with people inside, in broad daylight. It’s as likely as anything that they decided it wasn’t worth it. Maybe they didn’t mean any harm, but they sure as hell had a funny way of showing it.
And yes, Tim Hortons does – Oh GOD! Please don’t tell me you’re Canadian! PLEASE say you’re one of the USians who lives near a US Tim Hortons. Or that you’ve visited. I’m wondering why we would have let you in – Oh! That’s right…Harper’s in charge. Fuck.
Bees are magically immune to red pens, doncha know.
And by NATURE evolved in such a way never to make grammatical errors.
Or that’s the buzz I’ve heard XD
@ithiliana,
Yes! And the next time my creep senses tingle, I’ll ignore them because, of course, that’s an illusion and those men will never sexually assault me! My fear is paranoid! It’s all in my head! Mr. Slave style enlightenment for all!…Oh, wait…
@NWOslave
In a word, “No.”
I think we need to strike a balance between personal safety and giving people the benefit of the doubt, but, to you at least, context never matters.
I’m interested to know if you have ever been in a situation where you were around another human that felt dangerous. No bar fights? No one ever follow you down the street yelling “Faggot!” or other slurs? Have you ever been somewhere and afraid you might be mugged?
And yet NWO fears the gay agenda xD He fears the feminist conspiracy. xD He fears false rape accusations… etc etc xD But I suppose that’s rational, and has nothing to do w/ his ideology xD
I fear that I will stop being ridden.
On to 2000,
@Ami,
Here’s a curious thing about Mr. Slave: he’s against homosexuals; he’s also against abortion. Well, quoting George Carlin, “Well, who has less abortions than homosexuals?[…]Leave these people alone![…]You’d think they’d make natural allies.”
30 more comments! We can do it!
Er…30 more to the 1600 mark that is…
Well, 430 anyway. But we’re close! Ish!
Ami: Of course, he’s totally rational.
Because he has a penis.
It’s all very clear to me now…..that I have drunk the kool aid