Apparently Richard Dawkins was worried that people might have forgotten what an asshat he is. So, helpful fellow that he is, he decided to give us all a demonstration of why he’s one of the atheist movement’s biggest liabilities, a “humanist” who has trouble remembering to act human.
Earlier today Dawkins decided, for some reason, that he needed to remind the people of the world of a fairly basic point of logic, and so he took to Twitter and thumbed out this little thought:
However petulantly phrased this is, the basic logic is sound: If I say that Hitler was worse than Stalin, I’m not endorsing either Hitler or Stalin. Unless I add “and Stalin was totally awesome and I endorse him” at the end.
The trouble is that Dawkins didn’t stop with this one tweet. He decided to illustrate his point with some examples. Some really terrible examples.
Yep, that’s right. He decided to do what comedians call a “callback” to some terrible comments he made last year about what he perversely described as “mild pedophilia.” And then he added asshattery to asshattery by suggesting a similar distinction between “date rape” and “stranger rape.”
Anyone seeing these comments as insensitive twaddle designed to minimize both “mild” pedophilia and date rape has good reason to do so. As you may recall, in the earlier controversy about so-called “mild” pedophilia, Dawkins told an interviewer for the Times magazine that
I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.
He went on to tell the interviewer that when he was a child one of his school masters had “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.” But, he added, he didn’t think that this sort of “mild touching up” had done him, or any of the classmates also victimized by the teacher, any “lasting harm.”
Huh. If Dawkins says that a teacher groping him was no big deal, I guess this kind of “mild” abuse shouldn’t be a big deal for anyone else, either, huh?
I’m pretty sure there’s some sort of logical fallacy here.
Given his history of minimizing these “mild” sexual crimes, it’s not a surprise that his crass tweets today inspired a bit of a twitterstorm.
Dawkins has responded with his typical petulance, and has stubbornly defended his comments as an exercise in pure logic that his critics are too irrational to understand.
What I have learned today is that there are people on Twitter who think in absolutist terms, to an extent I wouldn't have believed possible.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
.@mikester8821 Yes, it is so obvious it is painful. But they aren't debating, they are emoting.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014
If you take a few moments to go through his timeline you’ll find many more tweets and retweets reiterating this “argument.” Dawkins is not the sort of person to admit to mistakes. Indeed, he so regularly puts his foot in his mouth it’s hard not to conclude that he must like the taste of shoe leather.
But these recurring controversies can’t be doing much for his reputation. Indeed, they seem to cause more and more people to wonder why anyone takes Dawkins seriously on any subject other than biology. Even his critics on Twitter are growing a bit weary.
https://twitter.com/somegreybloke/status/494045464308629505
https://twitter.com/markleggett/status/494044606342782977
https://twitter.com/endorathewitch/status/494071064008597504
Good lord. Look at Dawkins feed. Like every third tweet (or sequence) is something deplorable.
— 🦇VaginoplASCII🦇 (@nataliereed84) July 29, 2014
It seems that no matter what point Richard Dawkins tries to make, he only ever ends up proving that Richard Dawkins is a tosspot.
— Steph. 🏳️⚧️ (@EccentricSteph) July 29, 2014
Seems like it. I’m beginning to wonder why any atheists — at least those who are not also asshats — continue to think of Dawkins as an ally of any kind.
I think there’s really a gendered component ot his behavior. He and his fanboys treated elevatorgate as some kind of collective feminine overreraction, and his decision to use rape for his comparison this time around strikes me as trying to deliberately upset women so he can once again prove that we’re irrational, emotion-driven, possibly even hysterical creatures.
This seems like a good explanation to me, emilygoddess. I don’t see much point in insisting that I’m correct on topics about which I’ve done no research and in which I have no experience. That wouldn’t be especially logical.
Sometimes I feel like a large part of the atheist community doesn’t really want us lady folks… well outside of maybe for props or for numbers. We’re props in that the men can all go “See, secularism allows for women to be educated and not wear hijabs and heck, we even sometimes let them talk… Islam on the other hand, is horrible to its women. Women that are religious are sooo stupid.”
Oh, I forgot, we’re also potential suitable mates as we’re marginally less irrational than our religious counterparts… well at least when we aren’t ruining atheism with our feminism or “emoting” while telling Dawkin to stop being such an apathetic asshole… or talking about video game stereotypes or about some guy being a cad on an elevator… or saying “don’t be that guy”…
“I think there’s really a gendered component ot his behavior. He and his fanboys treated elevatorgate as some kind of collective feminine overreraction, and his decision to use rape for his comparison this time around strikes me as trying to deliberately upset women so he can once again prove that we’re irrational, emotion-driven, possibly even hysterical creatures.”
Riight, because rape is inherently about women. It’s not like once you take into account rapes that happen in prison and forms of rape that include coerced penile envelopment that men get raped in any significant numbers now, is it???
Less sarcastically, look at his statement more closely:
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at *knifepoint* [emphasis added] is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”
If you look up date rape on say Wikipedia you can find something like this “Date rape occurs when a perpetrator uses physical or psychological intimidation to force a victim to have sex with him against their will, or when the perpetrator has sex with a victim who is incapable of giving consent because they have been incapacitated by drugs or alcohol.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_rape
So, plenty of situations fall under the notion of date rape which do not entail a direct, clear, and real threat on a person’s *life*. For instance, if two people are dating, and a woman pushes her finger into a man’s butthole half an inch for a split second without his consent, then she raped him according to the F. B. I.’s definition of rape ““The penetration, *no matter how slight* [emphasis added], of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/attorney-general-eric-holder-announces-revisions-to-the-uniform-crime-reports-definition-of-rape
Now consider a woman holding a knife up to a man’s neck and then forcing him to have sex with her.
In the first case, the man’s life is not in jeopardy. In the second case, the man’s life is in jeopardy. There does exist real reason for the man to fear for his life in the second case. In the first case, the man’s life isn’t in danger. He gets violated, yes, and of course such a rape is wrong. But, the knifepoint rape is worse, because not only is personhood getting violated by such an action, but his life itself stands in a perilous situation.
And in plenty of other date rape situations, the person’s life, whether man or woman, is simply not in danger. In a stranger rape *at knifepoint* a person’s life, whether man or woman, is literally in danger. His statement thus ends up emphasizing the difference in the degree of wrongness between the acts here.
So Dawkins here stands correct…
“Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at *knifepoint* [emphasis added] is worse. If you think that’s an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think.”
Doug, you’ve made me have an epiphany. Because of you, I’ve realized something that I’d never thought about before:
That sarcasm sounds really stupid if you’re wrong.
Doug Spoonwood: So are you actually arguing that use of a weapon is what makes one rape “worse” than another? Is that exactly what your trying to say?
So, like, a rape is “less wrong” if there’s no weapon used?
I can’t even with this shit.
From the book of Furballs, chapter XLII, verse 23-26:
Doug, you’re totally ignoring all the evidence that date rape can be more traumatic than stranger rape, as evidenced by the firsthand statements to that effect AND the studies cited upthread. And you haven’t even defined by what metric we’re measuring the badness of a rape.
I knew some asshole was going to try to read me for saying rape was a gendered issue. I am aware that rape happens to men*, and I agree that the examples you mentioned are rape. BUT (1) women are far more likely to be raped than men, and our lives are circumscribed by the fear of rape in a way that men’s are not, and (2) rape is widely known to be an issue of feminist concern, so if, as I suggested, Dawkins was deliberately trolling feminists, that would make his use of it in this instance a gendered act.
I know there are male survivors here. If they object to the way I’ve framed this, I’ll reconsider my wording. But I suspect that like most MRAs, Doug is not invoking male survivors in good faith.
One thing both Doug and Dawkins don’t seem to realize is that many women do not need to treat rape as a hypothetical. It is a reality they have already experienced.
Prison rape is indeed a terrible problem, but that doesn’t appear to be the point of this little exercise.
emilygoddess comes correct as always.
*not just many women, but for many people, this is not simply hypothetical
Indeed, prison rape isn’t even included in Dawkins’ little intellectual exercise, as it’s neither date rape nor (usually) stranger rape at knifepoint. In fact, the majority of male rape survivors are raped in prison or as children, neither of which is covered in the example given.
Meanwhile, both date rape and stranger-knifepoint rape are things that our culture thinks of (correctly, afaik) as happening mainly to women.
Dawkins pretense that his subjective opinion is logical is absurd. Once more demonstrating that he is an enormous mendacious disembodied anus.
Spoonwood’s back? Fuck off, Doug.
***trigger warning for various crimes here***
So Doug,
1. Is it less bad to be strangled to death or to be knifed to death? Assume that time to death, from when the attack starts, is the same in both cases.
2. Is it less bad to be defrauded of $1000 by a family member or to be defrauded of $1000 by a financial institution?
3. Is it less bad to be burgled by an acquaintance or to be burgled by a stranger?
4. Is it less bad to be maimed by a drunk driver you know, or a drunk driver you don’t know?
Such a shame. I still think “The God Delusion” was such a great book. Dawkins could have simply stayed a great author. But then he had to and ruin everything with one stupid comment after the next. I mean, as David rightfully points out, the point Dawkins was originally trying to make was in itself correct: Just because you consider something a lesser evil does not mean you condone it. But the example he chooses is so inconsiderate and so misogynistic… and really, so flat out *stupid* – why would any sane person think this is a good idea for an example? The funny thing is, by *needlessly* invoking this example, this does in fact come off as trying to relativize date rape at least, if not entirely condone it, so Dawkins is even undermining his own point here. Oh, and of course, showing himself to be a horrible human being.
I think there’s more to it. It does come down to male entitled behaviour, of course, but I think it’s like… that kind of atheists, they pride themselves so much on being “free thinkers” and “rational”. Of course, they’re often neither, but that self-image means having extreme positions is a kind of badge of honour for them. That those extreme positions always end up favouring their social group (and since they’re just new ways to justify old attitudes aren’t really extreme, either), well, that’s the aforementioned entitlement.
Eleanor Robertson, you are my idol: “Another day, another tweet from Richard Dawkins proving that if non-conscious material is given enough time, it is capable of evolving into an obstreperous crackpot who should have retired from public speech when he had the chance to bow out before embarrassing himself.”
From here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/richard-dawkins-what-on-earth-happened-to-you?CMP=soc_567
Rape is a patriarchal tactic used to control women, Doug. No one asks what a straight cis man was wearing when he was raped or says he should not have been drinking or at a party if he didn’t want to “get himself raped”. (Gay men are often treated as “asking for it” by existing, much in the same way women are. Trans men face “corrective” rape. That’s a form of patriarchal control and an offshoot of misogyny too.) Yes, even though men are also raped, rape is a gendered issue. When I took my kids camping, I was told by a neighbor that I was going to “get myself and my kids hurt”. My husband is never told that when he takes the kids camping or camps alone. Didn’t I know a woman alone should expect to be raped. When women go out, they are to navigate their entire lives around not getting raped and with the knowledge that if we get raped we will be blamed and retraumatized over and over again. It is a punishment for being too independent or to proud and in control of our own bodies and sexuality. When one woman is raped and blamed for being raped, it serves to remind other women to keep to their place, too be women the way the patriarchy wants us to.
When my daughter was at a con and was invited to a male acquaintance’s room to see the merch he’d picked up, she declined because she knew going to a guys room was dangerous in a way a boy her age would not have to fear. Men jog nearly nude with no fear of being raped. They can walk alone at night and know that they won’t be told they should have been more careful if they are attacked by a rapist. They know they are not targeted. They know they are not considered the sex class, whereas women are. Men don’t carry pepper spray and rape whistles just to pick up groceries at night. They don;t worry that if they put a drink down at a party they may be roofied. They don’t think about parking too close to blind corners how to get from a parking lot to their front door safely so as not to be raped the way women do. Getting a college education does not increase a man’s chances of being raped. Politicians do not claim that men’s rapes are not “legitimate” rapes and there are not entire movements built around calling male rape victims liars who merely regret consensual sex or are”crazy” and out to destroy men for the “attention” and “power” coming forward about being raped supposedly brings.
Boys who are raped are not told that they developed too soon or too much, so their rapist could not help his or herself. In war women are raped to punish and demoralize women and to seek revenge against other men. Every week there is another story about a girl raped while people watch, because hey, that’s what girls are for. I don’t see stories of a sports team proudly circulating tapes of boys they rape. There is no saying “girls will be girls” used to excuse female perpetrators. This is a gendered issue.
You know all of this. Stop pretending to be ignorant of the society you live in.
“Why does Woody insist in clinging to The Woody Delusion, which is that people here want to talk to him and are interested in what he has to say?”
What makes you think I care what you think?
“Riight, because rape is inherently about women. It’s not like once you take into account rapes that happen in prison and forms of rape that include coerced penile envelopment that men get raped in any significant numbers now, is it???”
QFT
Woody, do you have a point? No.
Then shut up.
Because your entire existence is nothing but caring what other people think.
Also, shut up, Woody. Doug won’t love you any more than Paul does.
I can see how Dawkins could think violent stranger rape is worse than date-rape if he thinks that it’s the violence that’s harmful and that the rape part is not a big deal.
And just because this thread is so fucking depressing with the rape and pedophilia apologists, here is something nice:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/15/never-drink-alone-again-because-now-theres-wine-for-cats/
Um…grapes are poisonous to cats.