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.
Are we seriously seeing the argument here of ‘This guy says awful things but he’s useful to the movement, so you people he’s disparaging have to shut up and take it for the good of the movement’?
He’s wrong on the logic too. Stranger rape is terrible, but everyone already knew that there were terrible people in the world. What date rape teaches someone is that they can’t trust even the people who they thought they could, and that people who seem decent at first glance can also be terrible, and that you won’t necessarily be able to tell the difference until the person does something terrible to you, and that’s terrifying. That’s something that can eat away at a person’s ability to trust anyone and leave them feeling like they’ll never be safe again.
So no, Richie, you fail at both logic and empathy. Now go away and try to learn how to be a decent human being.
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have decided to renounce feminism because of Pallygirl.
Remind me what she did?
Save the tone trolling, Michigan Dude. We’ve heard it all before.
You don’t get to fucking tell women, including many rape survivors, how to react or speak to you, or about Dawkins.
Your comparisons suck. First, pallygirl, awesome as she is, doesn’t have a massive public profile, wealth and platform. Dawkins does. He is one of the faces of movement atheism, and one of the reasons that Atheism+ was started, because of all the misogynists and racists who swarmed out at the very idea that women get to say “Guys, don’t do that.” I very much doubt people are saying “Dawkins is a shit, I’m not gonna call myself an atheist!” or, much less, “I’m not gonna be an atheist!”
Because that’s what you’re implying. It’s the same shit we’ve seen from any number of dudes who claim they’re feminists – right up until the time they get called out, or ::clutches pearls:: sworn at by a woman. That’s not about calling yourselves feminists, it’s the old “I want to be an ally but you’re so meeean and don’t give sufficient deference to my manly manness!”
If you’re a conditional ally, you’re no ally at all. If rape victims being angry at Dawkins yet again dismissing their experiences is enough to upset you, because they’re not being Nice, you’re not even the sort of ally we’d want.
::puts moderator hat on::
GO AWAY.
::takes moderator hat off::
@Flying Mouse:
Erm, some of the rest of us are even older than that.
Back in my day…/shakes walking stick
Get off my lawn!
Michigan dude, meanwhile, just fails at everything. He should go fall down a well.
Lest we forget that this is the same Dawkins who, in The God Delusion, openly mocks victims of clergy abuse and suggests that they instigate legal action for money: “Plenty of money to be made from them thar fumblings in the vestry” is very close to how it goes; I’m too lazy to go and get the book.
Never mind the victims who have had their lives ruined or suicided. Crapweasle.
Oh, also, pallygirl, ILU! Trolly McSplainRape, not so much.
Man, the phrase ‘Kill your Gods’ has never been so ironic, or so necessary.
Oh shit, katz, it was the fucking swearing that did it, wasn’t it? Crap.
@ kittehs
Yeah, it’s almost like there’s a theme here of Dawkins thinking that rape and sexual abuse are no big deal. Hmm, I wonder why so many people don’t like him?
Steampunked: When you put it that way, the obvious conclusion seems to be “therefore I can say whatever terrible things I want as long as I’ve made myself indispensable.”
She didn’t make a fox cape for you, just for herself, the selfish feminist!
Hey, we could have a walking stick fight!
http://youtu.be/63Wv4e_k0nw
Shit, I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I didn’t mean to say that 45+=OMGANCIENT. I was more shocked that Mark Driscoll has been knocking around the planet for almost a half century, and despite all that life experience still acts like…well, Mark Driscoll.
Please accept my humble apologies for my Dawkins-esque foot in mouth moment, plus an assortment of (virtual) baked goods of your choice. 🙂
Yep. Even my fuzzy ladybrain can see it through all the emoting.
LOL kitteh and Flying Mouse
Flying Mouse: I didn’t find it insulting, more funny that you still think that – at least in that context – 45 is old. It reminds me of when I was 15 and thought the teachers who were in their 20s were positively ancient.
Driscoll comes across as being tragically stuck in his frat boy phase forever. He’s the boy who doesn’t want to grow up.
@pallygirl – With luck, I’ll be there in eleven years myself. We’ll hope I’m a little more self-aware then 😀
Katz: I keep wondering about that, but more and more, I just think it’s a total lack of empathy, and a prioritisation of ‘approved’ forms of emotional behaviour. Approved of, lauded, and considered to be ‘logical’.
It’s fine to be a complex man with many nuances that people misunderstand because they are foolish. But not to be any of those people – they’re stupid, and without nuance, especially women in atheism.
They’re emotional, I’m logical. I’m not a raging, insensitive tool, I’m Richard Dawkins. My anger is justified! AND SO LOGICAL. IT is SCIENCED.
The guy is constantly putting his foot in it over women, and constantly surrounded by people who reassure him that it isn’t so bad, and he’s just misunderstood. He has access to a tonne of empirical evidence that his views on rape are blindingly incorrect, but he chooses not to accept it because it doesn’t support his internal emotional worldview. He doesn’t want to view himself as terrible – he wants to be the Good Guy.
So all these other people must be wrong. They’re _emotional_ and they get all flustered.
Also, given that most rape victims know their rapist, reinforcing that “oh well it’s not as bad if they know each other” idea is about as clear a declaration of support for rape culture as you could possibly make.
Am I the only one who thinks Dawkins couldn’t gives fig about rape and pedophilia, and is trolling for attention like a bored child with too much free time on his hands? I have to admit that lecturing people about how to be a serious-minded logician while enjoying a twitter storm like a pig in slop is pretty rich.
Pretty much, brooked. Plus the people who do care about rape and pedophilia are likely to be feminists, and we know how icky he thinks feminists are. They don’t worship at the altar of the Great God Dawkins, so they are suitable targets.
Oh, my. I’m just now appreciating my own delicious obliviousness. I just expressed shock at a forty-five year old man’s lack of maturity. I did this on a comment thread attached to a post about a seventy-three year old’s willful jerkitude.
Thank you, everyone. I’ll be here all week.
Michigan person,
As an atheist myself, I’m of the opinion that Dawkins is in no way useful to us. In fact, he hurts atheists like me who aren’t assholes by reinforcing negative stereotypes about atheists.
Even if I did find him useful, that does not excuse his behavior. I don’t have to put up with bs from him just because he does some science. Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson make far superior public defenders of science because they are decent human beings.
Dawkins can fuck off and so can you.