Richard Dawkins, I think it’s fair to say, is a bit of a dick. Though he’s an expert popularizer of science he seems to be a bit of a blithering idiot on every other topic he tries to address; his broadsides on religion are patronizing and profoundly ignorant, and his forays into gender politics are even more cringey.
He puts his foot in his mouth so often on Twitter that it’s sometimes difficult to tell the difference between his real account and this absurdist parody.
In a recent interview, he doubled down on some of his most appalling earlier remarks, reaffirming that he believes there is such a thing as “mild pedophilia” and that pregnant women who discover that they are carrying a Down syndrome fetus should probably “abort and try again.” And in that interview he reminded us all again just why so many feminist atheists have turned against him, telling his interlocutor that
I occasionally get a little impatient with American women who complain of being inappropriately touched by the water cooler or invited for coffee or something … .
ELEVATORGATE – NEVER FORGET!
Given how often he comes down on the wrong side on gender issues — heck, he recently suggested to his fans that they follow “Based Mom” Christina Hoff Sommers on Twitter — you might assume he would have a certain degree of fondness for the upside-down-and-backwards politics of the Men’s Rights movement.
But you’d be wrong.
At a recent event at Kennesaw State University – yep, the same place where a student organization tied to A Voice for Men held a little conference not long ago – Dawkins offered a surprising, if somewhat limited, defense of feminism. And he reacted with puzzlement when he was asked about the Men’s Rights movement.
“I didn’t, I hardly knew — is there a men’s right movement?” he commented. “If there is discrimination against men, then that’s bad too,” he conceded, only to add that “I haven’t heard of it.”
The audience responded with laughter.
To AVFM head boy Paul Elam, this was the equivalent of shots fired. In a post today, Elam excoriated Dawkins for not having heard of his little movement, and not being aware of the terrible gynocentric injustices being heaped upon the world’s men.
Richard Dawkins has not heard of discrimination toward men? Really? Sorry, Richard, but please tell me this is because you have invented human teleportation and have managed to remain in an academic setting constantly for the past several years. Tell me that you have so successfully avoided the real world that you are unaware of the ongoing problems of fathers and children in family courts, the egregious and blatant discrimination against men in criminal sentencing, and the transparent sexual double standards applied against males in the domestic violence and sexual assault industries. Perhaps you have actually done so well with insulating yourself that you have managed to exist completely within the walls of interdisciplinary studies departments, lest you may have actually heard of the loss of due process for young men now rampant across college campuses. Or maybe it was harder to notice, even for the great scientist-skeptic, because there are so few young men left?
Yeah, I’m sure that’s it, Paul. Dawkins can’t find any male students to talk to.
That is the problem with living the insulated life. Not only do you end up making foil-hat-worthy observations that translate to ideology being good for science, but eventually the insulation becomes so thick, so protective and muffling, that whatever tiny spark remains in the wire is of little use to science or to society.
Says the man who lives in an ideological bubble of his own making. The irony, it burns.
There are still places advertising “colonic irrigation” around Melbourne. Blech, blech, just ewww. When I think how physicians managed to ruin people’s health with enemas and bleedings and emetics …
Nope. Hate enemas, even when they’re actually necessary.
I suspect I’m not the only nurse here who remembers what ‘HHH’ stands for? So much wrong.
Tiffany: What the hell do you love about him? What redeeming features does he have?
Does a really strong bidet stream count as an enema?
@Tracy – That is perfect. Yes. Yes.
@weirwoodtreehugger – Your first comment was exactly what I thought when I read this – Paul’s rationalization hamster, if you will, is trying so hard to come up with an excuse for Richie not having noticed his stupid little treehouse club that he’s forgotten Holy Rule 17: Academia, insular or not, has already fallen completely into the grip of militant feminism. Clearly what he should have gone with was a “I see even YOU’ve been brainwashed, Dawkins!” Whoops. Or maybe Paul sees constant discrimination against female professors as equality, so academia is still alright? Sorry Paul, I can’t keep track of your ever-changing R’lyehian logic with my feeble woman mind, a chart would be helpful.
Full disclosure, I myself would almost certainly abort a Down’s fetus and “try again,” but that’s obviously not a decision for Dawkins to make for other people, or a nice way to talk about it. Anyway, his “oversensitivity” policing speaks for itself, though I think his idiocy is more fashionable than it is ideological. I predict that he’ll come around eventually.
That’s the thing – I would too and I wouldn’t begrudge Dawkins for saying he’d choose to terminate a pregnancy with a Down’s fetus were it up to him. My issue is him making universal statements like carrying pregnancies with Down’s fetuses to term is immoral. Maybe it is for him and for me and for a bunch of other people but it is not a universal truth and he’s way overstepping boundaries by accusing others of immorality for doing so, given lots of people with Down’s have great health and quality of life.
I think lots of Dawkins’ positions on religion are entirely accurate too (while his attitude towards religious people is often nauseating and, again, lacking any nuance.)
At this point he’s one of those people I desperately want to stop talking.
re: Nathan’s comment about the MRM not being mainstream –
As a substantial majority of people I see in the “real” world on a regular basis are over 70, I wouldn’t call myself in the loop, but I have had one or two similar experiences recently on line. On a couple of sites where people were generally familiar with and many used the term MRA, almost none of them had heard of MGTOW – another pleasant surprise.
Priceless!
I would like to offer you an enthusiastic high five.
Tiffany,
Why would you love a sexist shit like Dawkins? The fact that he leaped off the pedestal I once put him on with his sexist drivel did not give me warm fuzzies for him. He defends rapists and harassers. He can go fuck himself.
Re; aborting a foetus with Down’s. I actually had a close call with that one. In my prenatal screening with little Miss Grump, I scored really high on the risk for Down’s. My doctor offered an amniocentesis, but, given the very slight risk of miscarriage, I opted to take my chances (I had had enough miscarriages, by then, thanks). Turns out it was a false positive due to my (as my doctor so eloquently put it) ‘advanced maternal age’. Yay! Bullet dodged! But, I realised that I wouldn’t abort for Down’s, all things being equal. However, I am also not going to get all judgey mcjudgey pants on what other women (who know their own circumstances way better than I do) decide to do in similar circumstances.
@Nathan Hevenstone Thanks for sharing that. It gave me some much needed restored faith in humanity and my gender in particular.
While Dawkins is a clueless and egotistic twit, it kinda makes sense that he isn’t an “oppressed man”. Whatever persecution complex he might have, he’s ready to blame on religion.
Great that you can ignore them. But do you realize that’s also a privileged position? People making the stupid statements he has about rape and abuse make the world a worse place, and just add another layer of “authority” to sexist (and racist, don’t get me started on his colonial mindset) tropes that should have died out long since.
And that’s besides them being triggery as all f*ck to many survivors of rape and abuse.
Kittehserf:
Isn’t whole Australia a colony with lots of need for irrigation? 🙂
Oh lovely, looks like Simoncini’s idas have been (literally) percolating further out into the alt-med fields.
For those unaware of it, Tullio Simoncini is an Italian doctor who’s written a book about how cancer is actually a fungal infection rather than something wrong with your own cells. Yes, he’s one of those ‘everything bad is caused by my favourite problem, and I have the cure’ folks. Though he’s more a believer in treating cancer with baking soda injections rather than coffee enemas.
See http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/tag/tullio-simoncini/
Urgh, yeah. It wasn’t even that long ago that docs were prescribing enemas for migraines…and no, these were not snake-oil peddlers, these were mainstream medical doctors. The only thing an enema will cure is a bad case of constipation (and maybe dehydration, as the colon absorbs water from food and drinks.) Using it to treat a problem at the other end of the body is truly bass-ackwards.
Also, fungi cause cancer? On what planet??? I have yet to hear of one that does, unless mushrooms are somehow producing carcinogens and people are eating them unawares. Viruses can cause cancer, but fungal infections of the liver don’t even exist.
But what would I know, I’m one of those “sheeple” who know that “chemtrails” ain’t nothin’ but jet exhaust freezing at high altitudes, and never actually coming back to Earth, except maybe as hailstones.
@tiffany267
I don’t even know what good he is ‘as an atheist’. Even if you can put aside/don’t know about the horribly sexist things he’s said, his arguments always came across to me as a Christian, well, as David put it, “patronizing and profoundly ignorant”. Like the fundie Christian apologetics Evangelicals like to cite, he rarely convinced anyone outside the fold, he just riled up those who already agreed with him.
I will never forget the look on my cousins’ faces when I asked them if they’d ever heard of the MRA movement. Bearing in mind that 1) I am in Alabama, and 2) we don’t choose our family members 3) several of these guys are physically massive, hunt, shoot whiskey, watch (and played) college ball, and two are ex military special forces…….they literally thought I was joking, and they, then, proceeded to pee their pants laughing at what “prissy douchebags” they were. I wholly understand that this situation is ripe with everything I am opposed to, but I find it weirdly entertaining to think of what Elam (who my cousins stated “just needed someone to hug him”) would make of this. The “alpha” type that all these guys so desperately want to be, just laughing in their faces about how stupid they are being…..
Off topic and late but, did anybody read that first quote as water coolers groping American women?
@chaltab
Um… hi. *waves awkwardly*
I am, I’m ashamed to admit, one of the ones actually convinced by “The God Delusion”. I mean, I was already on my way to “deconverting”, as it were, but that book sort of made me admit it.
I wish it hadn’t, to be honest. I wish I had a better, stronger, not-so-pathetic reason for admitting to my atheism, but… there it is. And I have a lot of atheist friends who credit Dawkins with pushing them to reject their faith completely, too (though less and less are so proud of it anymore, like me).
@vbillings, well I didn’t, but now I do! Those dastardly water coolers!
Actually, to make it worse, I got “The God Delusion” (and “The Greatest Show on Earth”, which itself is another conversation) signed by Dawkins about a year and a half ago when he came to Miami to give a speech… it was after Dear Muslima, but I, in my not-quite-gone privilege-blindness, still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt at the time.
Ugh… *iz ashamed*
Boogerghost:
I just pulled a face like the cat in that photo upthread … D:
Arctic Ape:
Pretty much! XD
Bina:
Urgh, I knew they were doing it centuries back, but not that recently!
Nunya – that’s a really entertaining image! How frothy Pauly would be if he knew.
vbillings – yep! XD
tiffany267
In other words, people can have strange notions about ethics whatever their religious beliefs or lack of them. Which is hardly news, though it seems to be to the more blinkered of whatever group, who like to think they and only they are ethical and upright.
Maybe he saw a headline about cancer rates mushrooming and misunderstood.
I’m not surprised that Richard Dawkins supports feminism. He is a rational thinker and, like probably most of us on this forum politically liberal. Having read his books and talked with him in a small group for a few hours, I found him to have a great sense of humor and to be generally a strong supporter of social causes. His humor is a great tool to get people to consider ideas that challenge their current beliefs. Unfortunately, It is also that sense of humor that gets him in trouble. I don’t think he is a bad guy–quite the opposite in fact, but his sense of humor and tendency to use sarcasm and hyperbole results, at times, in socially inappropriate and “politically incorrect” statements. Perhaps it is my own privilege, but I think I can understand Dawkins humor, while also face-palming because I know how it will be interpreted. I certainly don’t think he should be shunned for his faux pas.
As for his recommendation that people follow Christina Hoff-Sommers, I can understand that. I already did follow her, because I see some of her commentary as useful criticism of feminism and useful social commentary in general. I disagree with her on some issues–most especially on the “gamergate” issue which I personally think makes no sense. While I can see the point in defending “gamers” per se, “gamergate” itself seems to be about a huge non-issue, used to hurt several women and threaten many more, and, so far as I can see, has been largely co-opted by anti-feminist, misogynists. I do, however, think that she has had some moderating effect on the core of the movement, and I would argue, has perhaps reduced or modulated the influence of the MRA on gamergate. Even if you don’t like Hoff-Sommers, would you not prefer her brand of “equality feminism” influence gamergate to reduce overt, toxic misogyny? I do find it upsetting that she has given any legitimacy to the GG movement though.
About the only thing Dawkins would have for common cause with MRA’s (as do I) would be recognizing infant circumcision as a human rights/children’s rights issue, so I am not surprised that he hasn’t heard of the movements. I would be very surprised (and disappointed) if he became an MRA supporter.
In every group there will be haters. This is true for Mra’s’ and true for feminism. there are some voices who say awful things, but to characterize the entire movement based on those cherry picked examples is misleading and dishonest.
We all know there are haters in feminism too! Just like, 100 years ago, there were prominent feminist leaders who said things like ‘it would be better to lynch a thousand negroes a week than for a woman to lose her most cherished possession’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Latimer_Felton
Last year we had the #killallmen thing on twitter. This year we have ‘BanMen’. Not to mention endless lists and websites dedicated to documenting any and every time men do something feminists dislike, until it seems like there is nothing good to say about men. (If men made lists and websites of every time women did things they disliked until it seemed there was nothing good to say about women, it would be easy to see how this was misogyny)
There is this feminist woman, who genuinely wants to kill most all men http://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/utopia-what-would-a-womens-society-look-like/
Does that mean feminism is a hate group? She is an actual person who actually feels that way? No, of course not, because she is just one person and does not speak for the movement as a whole.
What this site, We Hunted The Mamoth, does, again and again and again, is cherry pick only the worst and most egregious examples, shows them completely out of context, and uses it to portray the movement as a whole. If the only thing one knew about feminism were the bad examples, it would seem evil. Just like here, if the only thing one knows about Mras is the bad examples, it seems evil.
The fact that there are negative voices within the men’s movement, in no way whatsoever means that the movement is generally about hate.
Look at the leaders and most prominent voices, like Warren Farrell. He is literally one of the kindest, most loving and egalitarian people I’ve ever been exposed to. If you disagree, you probably have only heard ABOUT him, rather than actually listened to him.
.