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creepy feminism hypocrisy misogyny oppressed men patriarchy rape reactionary bullshit sexual harassment threats

Two atheists get in an elevator

So hereโ€™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, whoโ€™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 arenโ€™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 didnโ€™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 Inquiryโ€™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.ย  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 Watsonโ€™s comments on the creepy elevator dude were. ย 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.

Thatโ€™s it. Thatโ€™s the whole thing. You would think that most guys would be well aware that accosting a woman youโ€™ve never met before in an elevator at 4 AM is, you know, kind of a no-no. But, no, Watsonโ€™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 didnโ€™t, you know, actually do that at all. Nor did she even remotely suggest, despite Dawkinsโ€™ weird screed, that creepy dudes on elevators were somehow equivalent to genital mutilation or the general denial of womenโ€™s rights in Islamist theocracies. ย 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. ย 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 ย pontificator Christopher Hitchens, you may recall, seems to sincerely believe that women just arenโ€™t funny. Not that heโ€™s exactly a barrel of monkeys himself.) But some of the most vociferous critics of Watson have been other atheist women โ€“ 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 donโ€™t want to be put in that position. And they read these posts and watch these videos and they think, โ€œIf something were to happen to me and these women wonโ€™t stand up for me, who will?โ€

In a followup post, she noted:

When I started this site, I didnโ€™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 โ€œNo, theyโ€™re not logical like us,โ€ to โ€œYes, so we can fuck them!โ€ That seemed weird.

Watson began hearing from other women in the skeptic/atheist community whoโ€™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 didnโ€™t fully get it at the time, because I didnโ€™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:

Iโ€™ve had more and more messages from men who tell me what theyโ€™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 donโ€™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 didnโ€™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 Dawkinsโ€™ patronizing little screed โ€“ 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. Itโ€™s kind of inspiring, really.

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Marc
Marc
13 years ago

“Oh yes Marc, youโ€™re winning because I reply to you! Your power is unimaginable and weโ€™re all just puppets dancing to your tune!

Of course it could just be that I was just strip-mining the last bits of comedy I could get out of your tired routine before I stop responding entirely. Iโ€™ll let you figure out which. Genius that you are, itโ€™ll probably only take you a week or so to come to a conclusion.”

You don’t always deserve good comedy, my posts about the evo-psych theory were just to great, you can’t have all this all day.

But WOMAN, why am I still arguing with you, please be quiet!

Why should I listen to you, anymore?
You soon gonna be replaced by female sexbots with a living human tissue sheath over a metal endosceleton !

http://www.mgtowforums.com/forums/mgtow-general-forum/2860-technological-alternatives-women.html

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

Best rated comment, 48 thumbs ups:

Talk about brutally honest sexuality. Don’t know what’s sexist about it as some women enjoy BDSM. Damn feminists thumbed it๏ปฟ down.

YOU DAMN FEMINISTS!!! Spoiling everything!

Snowy
Snowy
13 years ago

I wish I had a metal endoskeleton. Are you German by the way? Or Portuguese?

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

“Her only sorrow is for women who live with lies [= feminism]”

This will gonna be the MRA anthem!!

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

“I wish I had a metal endoskeleton. Are you German by the way? Or Portuguese?”

Where are my grammar mistakes? I’m learning English here, please let me know them! Thanks!

Snowy
Snowy
13 years ago

You used a different spelling of “endoskeleton”.

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

You’re right, I didn’t notice that. That was just copy & paste of half of a sentence and removing the quotes, the OP on the mgtow-board already made this mistake.

I don’t think Germans would make such a mistake, skeleton = Skelett, also with “k”…

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

I figured you’d go back to that xD Apparently it ended up that you did go to the forum after all and read the rules! ๐Ÿ˜€

I know you want to get into this big debate over definition, but you know that I was speaking in generalities (there’s this whole bit about not misrepresenting another person’s point or lying about it etc xD ) but since you are concerned about the definition of the rules, you should email or ask David, since he’s the one who I’ll be going to about applying them :3

XD

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

We’re slowly getting there. xD I hope Marc posts more… hopefully he’s still tweaked by me.. and can keep going :3

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

Or is that reverse psychology O_O;;;

Maybe he’ll stop now!

Or maybe I’ll stop! D:

I think I’m in the alternate universe of my story again D:

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

that’s like Schrodingers Rapist…

Ami Angelwings
13 years ago

It could be!

Hey Marc, do you like sports? ๐Ÿ˜€

plymouths
13 years ago

Omg I want a metal endoskeleton too!! Please? Can I? Made of adamantium?

darksidecat
13 years ago

@Marc, On the Manowar song, I can imagine some might thumb it down just for being a terrible piece of noise. ๐Ÿ˜‰ It does not make the song non-sexist simply because some women like subbing in BDSM, it only makes the song non-sexist if it is actually about a nongeneralized BDSM fantasy and people are just mistaking it as being about stereotyping and general expectations for women. If it is actually invoking a rapey cultural ideal and could just be mistaken as being about BDSM, then it is still sexist. Let me give a different example of the same concept

I would say that this is a song about BDSM and lines like “no escaping when I start” are not meant to evoke rape, but rather a voluntary reliquinshment of control within a specific BDSM scene. It is not sexist, because it is not meant to evoke this as a stereotype or to the idea that all women should or do want this (it might not even be about women at all, considering the song was written to be sung by a woman and the performer is a queer man). If someone is defending “Pleasure Slave”, that should be their defense-that is is not intended to invoke stereotypes about women or to support a generalized expectation of women, but rather that it is about specific people’s desires in a specific type of BDSM scene. (I’m not totally convinced that Pleasure slave is in fact about BDSM, but I am open to that argument)

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

I love Manowar! My ex was a huge fan of theirs. And he always found that particular song to be more over-the-top-silly tongue-in-cheek than any serious commentary on gender roles. I rather agree.

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Off topic but good lord the weather out here in AZ is being weird…supposed to have a high of 99! IN JULY!

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

Omg I want a metal endoskeleton too!! Please? Can I? Made of adamantium?

So how are we going to replace your chest, backbone and skull? That’s a bit too complicated.

Besides that, endoskeletons are intended for sex bots to replace women, we don’t make endoskeletons to make women stronger, that would be absurd.

Do you know this old shitty 90s anime “Armitage III” (it sucked sooo bad… like all animes…? :-D) ?

This Armitage girl there is the perfect sex bot, perfect she has not only a perfect human like figure, human tissue on endoskeleton, she has also an artificial womb (she gets pregnant in the movie… how sick is that ? ๐Ÿ˜€ ), the two best MRA technologies combined in one!

An Armitage-like android would be the Holy Grail of the Freedom From Women Movement.

Ok, the creator made one big mistake, one horrible big mistake: Armitage is intelligent and behaves like a real woman… well, now… all this massive effort, this devotion of a genius and in the end we just get what we already have?!?

Plymouth
Plymouth
13 years ago

So how are we going to replace your chest, backbone and skull? Thatโ€™s a bit too complicated.

Finding adamantium though, that’s no problem ๐Ÿ˜‰

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

Hey Marc, do you like sports? ๐Ÿ˜€

Do you want to talk about womens soccer? ๐Ÿ˜€ No Canada, but USA is in the semifinal.

Marc
Marc
13 years ago

Finding adamantium though, thatโ€™s no problem ๐Ÿ˜‰

No, Adamantium must be real!! It’s appears in every Final Fantasy!!!

Pecunium
13 years ago

Beth… Damn… time to break out the long sleeves.

I’m only half joking. When I got to Landsthul (from Iraq) they were apologising for the heatwave (it was in the mid-80s) and I was asking for sweaters.

Jumbofish
Jumbofish
13 years ago

This is relevant I swear.
Oh hi marc:

Jumbofish
Jumbofish
13 years ago

Hey marc, what’s your opinion of pie?

PosterformerlyknownasElizabeth

Pecunium, that happened when I was in San Diego last weekend…they were all “it is hot!” and I was all “no.”