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.
“Shite” is mostly said by people pretending they’re not swearing. It does crop up in some accents directly, but for the most part Brits say “shit”.
Yes, this is more interesting than Dawkins.
Still not going to your blog, christopher allman. And your teal deer has fuck-all to do with the OP.
There’s a cure for this: leave your mom’s basement before 2 AM and meet some people.
Oh yeah. Joan Didion wrote about her migraine-prone tendencies in a typically excellent essay, and says that an Air Force doctor (she was a USAF kid) prescribed one for her when she was very young. Can’t imagine it doing much for her nausea and headaches (and can’t imagine it being anything but nightmarish for a small child!), but I guess she had no trouble pooping, anyoldhow.
Oh, probably. There are also mushrooms that are liver-toxic, but those tend to kill within hours or days, not the months-to-years timespan that cancer does.
I know what being loved looks like and it does not look like Warren Farrell.
Oh, Christopher Robin, is that the best you can do? You do realize that the Earth has gone around the Sun more than 100 times since that idiot said that stupid thing, right? But MRAs are a very recent movement, no more than 30-40 years old, tops. And they’re hatemongering right now, advocating for “Bash a Violent Bitch Month”. I’m guessing that a “violent bitch” is one who fights back when a man tries to beat her up or rape her.
As for your beloved “Dr.” Farrell, he’s not an actual MD, nor is he a Ph. D. in psychology. He is not an expert in anything germane to human interactions at all. And not that long ago, he was advocating for parents to “genitally caress” their kids, and that he believed father-daughter incest to be sensual and beneficial. That’s MOLESTATION. And as far as I know, he’s never come out and said “I was wrong, I take that back, parents should never sexually touch their kids.”
If that’s your idea of “loving”, I don’t want to see your hate. Kindly go trip over a whole roomful of Legos.
I think it’s time for Christopher Allman to play the name three non-misogynist MRAs challenge.
He’s already failing by selecting Warren Farrell
Here is saying that a woman’s “noes” should be respected. Unless of course a man decides he thinks she didn’t mean it. He’s literally saying raping shouldn’t be prosecuted if a man thinks a no means a yes.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/05/01/warren-farrell-on-date-rape-defending-the-indefensible/#more-11780
Try again Christopher. Name three MRAs who aren’t misogynists. Preferably those that have some sort of leadership role.
Bonus round; name 3 things the MRM has done to actually help men. And no, trying to steal from the White Ribbon campaign doesn’t help men.
But-but WWTH, women never kiss men without wanting to have sex, immediately! It’s loving and absolutely egalitarian to spread the idea that a kiss = consent in all cases, even the cases where the woman said, verbally, No!
Bina, my oath, that poor child.
I can’t imagine how people managed to keep going through the treatments their doctors inflicted on them. Having hundreds of enemas and bleedings and purgatives in a year – that’s hundreds of each … and the enemas beginning in childhood, multiple times a day …
In case any new commenters are wondering, no one to my knowledge has ever been able to name 3 non-misogynist MRAs.
I’m getting really tired of the “cherry picking” accusation. It’s a correct accusation when someone is taking quotes removed from context or quotes that are not otherwise representative of a group. Since MRAs say misogynistic things all the time, it’s not cherry picking to quote them.
Oh, and did anyone else notice the inconsistencies between today’s post and Christopher’s post from yesterday. He pretended that he had never heard of the MRM until he somehow stumbled on this blog and our unfairness to them has had the opposite intended effect and driven him straight into their arms.
Yet this
would suggest that he is a long time fan of Farrell’s.
And tongues still touching never, never means he’s the aggressor who’s shoved his tongue in her mouth!
WWTH – and bozo can’t even get it into his head that David quotes Farrell and links to his shit, same as with all the other MRAs. That isn’t “having read about him,” that’s reading his own words – which is somehow still bad because it’s cherry-picking. MRAs condemn themselves with their own words but somehow they’re still the good guys. ::snort::
Kissing is not sex.
Kim Kardashian’s butt pics did not actually break the internet.
Why are MRAs so stupid?
And if that’s the case, he might well have heard of the “genitally caress” horror, too. And thinks it’s somehow an answer to all the slights and indignities men have suffered at the hands of ball-busting women. Solution: Rape your daughter! She’s sweet, she’s innocent, and she can be TRAINED to be the perfect sextoy your wife never was! Flawless, loving logic, that…
Yeah, the day MRAs can marshal a coherent argument that isn’t also god-awful through and through is the day I start taking them seriously. Until then, they can stay far away from my ass.
The next time I’m tongue kissing, I’ll remember that some dudes have a castration fetish and bring it up mid-kiss. If he says no to the castration thing but continues kissing I’ll take that as a go-ahead to fulfill his fantasy. Thank me later, fella.
TELL ME HOW I’M LOGICKING WRONG HERE
You do know that there is this neat thing called “Search the blog”, right?
If you
used a fraction of the time it took you to write that “feminist are horrible, ‘cos I say so!” teal dearbothered to search this blog for posts about Farrell; you would have found plenty “negative” and “generally about hate” toward women things he said / wrote.But points for “been exposed to” part of your post!
I often feel like I’ve been exposed to toxic waste after reading MRA (Farrell’s included) screeds.
Are you a woman? If so, that’s how you’re logicking wrong. Everybody knows that!
Not on topic but tangentially related because of the discussion of Warren Farrell’s rape apologia, here’s a pretty new Robot Hugs! http://www.robot-hugs.com/risky-date/
Haven’t caught up on the comments yet, but I watched that video, and it just shows what Richard Dawkins could be. He’s clearly capable of being a decent human being, and that just makes it all the more disappointing and infuriating when he doesn’t do it.
@kittehserf,
I was just going to say, but you ninjaed me like yesterday. 😛
Alex, I borrowed Pauly-boy’s magic teleporting device to do it. 😛
I just wonder where Warren Farrel, Grandfather of Gross, gets the idea that every woman’s fantasy is to have some ol’ skeevster ram his tongue past her tonsils unasked, then take that as a “yes” to rape her.
Or worse, some skeevster who’s also her father, since he also thinks women are lying liars who lie when survivors say no, they never wanted that.
Hey, Christopher Allman, is that your real name? If it’s not, why did you pick a pseudonym that matched the name of a fellow recently convicted of raping and murdering a pregnant woman?
http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Christopher-Allman-sentenced-to-life-for-the-murder-of-Sarah-Hart-258121231.html
More details here: http://www.wlky.com/news/man-who-admitted-killing-pregnant-jogger-to-learn-his-fate/25830444
This reminds me of the way Pat Robertson reacted to the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye. It’s like, when even a total douche thinks you’re ridiculous then that’s some epic stupid you’re spouting.