Almost three years ago, a feminist activist committed what many not-so-impartial observers apparently see as an unpardonable sin: she was less than polite to a small squad of Men’s Rights activists at a demonstration in Toronto. At least one of these gentlemen caught her outburst on video, and uploaded it to YouTube.
You know the rest: the video went viral, and the activist, a red-headed woman known as Chanty Binx (or “Big Red,” to the douchebag army), found herself suddenly transformed into “The Posterchild of Everything Wrong with Feminism,” as one of her haters put it. Her face has become ubiquitous in antifeminist memes, and she’s endured nearly three years of harassment.
Earlier this month, antifeminist YouTuber Sargon of Akkad — who makes his living pandering to some of the internet’s worst lady haters — posted an animated video by another antifeminist YouTuber in which an angry Islamist and an angry feminist sing a song explaining that they pretty much believe all the same things. (For some reason, this nonsensical theory is something that a lot of antifeminists have convinced themselves is true.)
The angry Islamist in the video is a familiar racist stereotype, complete with “funny” accent. [Correction: He’s evidently supposed to be a parody of this guy, known as Dawah Man, a legitimately terrible person you wouldn’t think atheists would have to strawman in order to criticize..]
The angry feminist, meanwhile, isn’t a generic figure; she’s an especially crude caricature of Binx, spouting nonsense that neither Binx nor any other feminist actually believes: the video ends with her encouraging the Islamist to rape her, because it’s not really rape if a Muslim does it, dontchaknow.
It’s a vicious, hateful little cartoon made worse by the fact that these words are being put in the mouth of a real woman who’s been the target of a vast harassment campaign for years.
Yesterday, Richard Dawkins, apparently seeing this horrendous video as a clever takedown of some brand of feminism that he must think actually exists, shared it with his 1.3 million Twitter followers:
Dawkins, a well-respected scientist-turned-embarrassing-atheist-ideologue, has become notorious for his endless Twitter gaffes. But this is plainly worse than, say, his famously pathetic lament about airport security “dundridges” taking his jar of honey; his Tweet contributed to the demonization of a real woman who’s already the target of harassment and threats.
The awesome Lindy West pointed this out to him in a series of Tweets and linked to one of my posts cataloging some of the abuse Binx got after the video of her went viral.
In a series of eloquent and angry Tweets, she made clear to Dawkins how and why he was misusing his huge platform and contributing to an atmosphere of hate online. Dawkins, alternately indignant and defensive, ultimately took down the offending Tweet, but not before making other Tweets that were nearly as bad. Dawkins can’t even do the right thing without being a dick about it.
Let’s watch Lindy at work:
After what was apparently an unsatisfactory response from Dawkins — I couldn’t find his Tweet, if there was one — West repeated and expanded upon her basic points. [EDIT: The unsastisfactory respose, West tells me, was that Dawkins posted a link to one of the videos of Chanty Binx at the Toronto demonstration.]
Well, that got his attention:
So there you have it: when informed that a tweet of his will almost certainly worsen the vicious harassment faced by a young woman whose only “crime” was being rude to a couple of MRAs in public, Richard Dawkins, a one-time winner of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year Award, replies by saying that “she deserves nothing more than ridicule.”
West replied:
Dawkins then decided to suggest that perhaps Binx was, you know, crazy:
Dawkins ultimately agreed to take down his Tweet linking to the execrable video. But he offered no apology. And he went on to suggest that just maybe Binx had … threatened herself.
We’ve seen this, er, argument before.
Does Dawkins have any conception of just how much abuse women like Chanty Binx get? If she were sending herself all the threatening and harassing messages she gets, she wouldn’t have time to eat or sleep.
And I wonder if Dawkins thinks she drew the caricature of herself that was used in the video he retweeted.
Thoughtful as ever, Dawkins made sure to remind his 1.3 million followers that Binx still deserved all the mockery they could deliver. Just not the death threats please!
And he begged his readers to think about the real victims here — those people, like him, who might have to curtail their mockery somewhat because their terrible, terrible fans might be inspired to hurt someone.
RIP, Richard Dawkins’ comedy career.
Is Dawkins actually unaware that by punching down at a woman who’s already been the target of a three year harassment campaign he almost certainly is contributing to the threats he claims to deplore? It’s hard for me to believe that he could be so naive. But the alternative explanation — that he knows full well that he’s encouraging the harassers — is even more disquieting.
One good thing has come out of this ugly episode today: The Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism has un-invited Dawkins from its event this year. A post on the group’s website today explains:
The Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism has withdrawn its invitation to Richard Dawkins to participate at NECSS 2016. We have taken this action in response to Dr. Dawkins’ approving re-tweet of a highly offensive video.
We believe strongly in freedom of speech and freedom to express unpopular, and even offensive, views. However, unnecessarily divisive, counterproductive, and even hateful speech runs contrary to our mission and the environment we wish to foster at NECSS. The sentiments expressed in the video do not represent the values of NECSS or its sponsoring organizations.
We will issue a full refund to any NECSS attendee who wishes to cancel their registration due to this announcement.
The NECSS Team
Good for them. The atheist movement needs to stand up to the haters and harassers in its midst, including those like Dawkins, who may not directly harass or threaten but who use their huge platforms to amplify and embolden this hatred and harassment.
It would be nice if Dawkins were to actually learn something — a little humanity, a little humility? — from this incident, but when it comes to the subject of feminism Dawkins seems incapable of taking in new information, much less learning anything from it.
EDITED TO ADD: And now, as if to prov what I just said in that previous paragraph, Dawkins is now second-guessing his decision to take down his tweet linking to the video, because GamerGaters are telling him that Chanty and I made up the evidence of the abuse she got.
NOTE: Lindy West has a book coming out soon. Pre-order it below!
CORRECTION: I added a bit noting that the Islamist in the cartoon video is supposed to be a parody of a real person.
EDIT: I added a line about Dawkins tweeting a link to a video of Chanty Binx at the Toronto demonstration.
FWIW, speaking as a Christian, if people ever want to ask “Why are Christians so misogynist?”, I am happy to have that conversation. (I’d love it if David brought up sexist Christians more often, but he’d have to start a whole second blog just for that. Or, hell, probably several blogs.)
However, responding to a post about an atheist behaving badly with “Atheists are an oppressed minority! Why aren’t we talking about how awful Christians are?” feels suspiciously like derailing.
I can’t believe that I used to take this asshole seriously.
That ass is probably going to make himself out to be a freeze peach martyr in the pc war.
I do think it can be tough to talk about the label “atheist” when the discussion is happening between people in a variety of countries. Christian supremacy is so much more a thing in the US than it is in the UK or Northern Europe. I do think it’s more important in the US to claim the label of atheist because half the country thinks you can’t be moral if you don’t have a religion, atheists are one of the most hated groups, and half the country has said they wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president. Given that, isn’t it easy to understand why American atheists are often defensive and sensitive to feeling attacked in progressive spaces?
I do understand why claiming the label of atheist is not a big deal in countries where atheism isn’t particularly loathed. But personally, I’m not backing down from it.
@Linkx
To raise a counter-point, there are plenty of people in the #GamerGate tag who are in it for Ethics in Journalism. By refusing to give up the tag, they lend credibility to some awful things.
Not saying that your decision is wrong! It’s not, I don’t know what a good answer to the problem is. But it does have a down-side.
@Katz
You said “sexist Christians”, I read it as “sexist Christmas”. Which sounds like whisky and leather chairs and cigars and the scent of pine and a cracking fire and old doods chortling about the missus. I was entertained :3
@WWTH
FWIW, my American SO feels the same way I do. But you probably have a point.
You didn’t immediately think of “Baby It’s Cold Outside?”
@ scildfreja
Gamergate though was a neologism created for a specific cause.
It’s easy for people who are actually interested in ethics to abandon that label and create their own.
Atheism though is the only word to describe a specific (lack of) belief system. It’s harder for people to walk away from it just because they disapprove of the behaviour of some people who identify that way.
How do they then identify themselves if they do?
What exactly are they trying to do with feminism? Stamp it out? Ban the word and replace it with “egalitarian”? Egalitarian is a stupid word because it leaves out the gender part of the issue, that women aren’t currently the most oppressed sex and that their empowerment is necessary to be equal with men. It denies women’s history.
Are they trying to get Sarkeesian to shut up? They claim to love free speech but can’t tolerate a critic pointing out sexism… >.> I don’t even know what they want…
Close cousins to the white feminists and the brocialists I suppose!
Where are those memes from? I don’t see a source so I hope somebody wasn’t taking an image of a stereotypical atheist and attributing a quote wrongly. Or are those YouTube atheists? I don’t really know any of the YouTubers on sight because I don’t watch them.
An acquaintance of mine was stopped by a local paper, asked to comment on some story, and his picture was taken. His image has since been hijacked and used as an example of douchey hipsters all over the internet when he’s actually a pretty nice guy. So I am a little sensitive to this phenomenon!
It seems like David started writing about misogyny in movement atheism because so many MRAs seem to be atheists. Plus, the misogyny (and other bigotries) in Christianity is pretty well covered by Right Wing Watch on the serious side and Christian Nightmares on the humorous side. I can see why he doesn’t feel the need to write about fundie misogyny unless it’s coming from someone who also identifies as MRA or PUA or whatever.
I don’t think that’s really a good equivalency though. It’s not like atheism was invented to be smug and sexist. It’s just that misogynists have hijacked a lot of atheist and/or secular spaces and movements. Gamergate, on the other hand, was started specifically to harass women in gaming and the ethics in journalism thing was a cover.
I see people talking about eshewing the term “atheist” to avoid association with Dawkins. Although I am not an atheist, I can see Dawkins’ behaviour really has nothing to do atheism per se. All athiesm is is the conclusion that this idea of there being some kind of God doesn’t make sense. Nothing follows from that in terms of how one treats other people, or women in particular. One can also disagree with religious people and even find their beliefs ridiculous without being a total dick about it.
His behaviour does reflect badly on the atheist movement he is a major figure of, especially since he is only the most prominent example of men in the atheist movement doing their best to keep it a comfy men’s club for themselves. But the concept of atheism is not thereby tarnished.
I don’t deny that the #GamerGate thing has big differences with the use of the term ‘Atheist’! Not at all. I do call myself an Atheist, too. I just wanted to point out that, by claiming the term, we end up swimming in the same water, for good or bad. I don’t have a good answer for what to do – I don’t think that abandoning the term is a good idea, but I’m also concerned on what to do about the associations it brings up.
@ Paul
Yeah, I think adopting an “I’m not an atheist because (something Dawkins said)” attitude is a bit like those “I’m not a feminist because (straw feminist or extremist outlier example)” memes.
ETA: I would accept “I’m not an atheist because I don’t want Santa to not deliver my presents” as an acceptable justification.
I think the double standard here is that religious fundamentalists are already viewed as discreditable, plus they’re not actually that popular on youtube. Atheism is being looked up to and seen more as a symbol of rebellion especially by younger people, which is why its misogynists are getting more coverage. They’re more vocal on the internet than religious misogynists which is something I never expected.
@ scildfreja
I suppose it’s a bit of a Catch 22. If you ‘leave’ because of the behaviour of fellow travellers, then you let them define the term by reference to their own behaviour.
If you stay you ‘dilute’ the bad stuff maybe? At least you show the crap is not the test of a ‘true Scotsman’.
It’s a bit like here where our national flags got co-opted by racists. Some people said that by using the flags you were tacitly supporting them, but we went “bollocks, they’re not having them” and reclaimed them.
Reasons I’m not apart of any atheist community even though I am one: This.
@Alan,
You’re right, it’s just a case of how much dilution is required. It’s really an individual decision when you boil it down, anyways, though this point
is a very good one.
I have to say, those neckbeard and trilbydude memes made my day. In the Oppression Olympics, these guys win the gold for grandstanding over a whole lotta…not much, actually.
And speaking as a pagan (Wiccan) from Canada, where religion isn’t nearly the shitpile it is in the southern US, I have to say that the idea of atheists-as-oppressed-minority doesn’t really resonate. If these dudes tried that up here, they’d be looked at very strangely. It’s not that we don’t have religious fanatics and fundies — we do — but they don’t dominate our discourse any more than they would in, say, the UK. Nobody jumps down a politician’s throat for being an atheist up here. Maybe if they were Muslim or Sikh, because of the “terrorist” connotation that turbans and brown skin currently carry for some idiots, but for being a plain and simple nonbeliever? Hardly.
I’ve never gotten any negative comments on my religion even though I’m out of the Broom Closet, except from the odd proselytizer at the door…and even they were polite and well-meaning, if misguided. My pentacle, when I wear it, doesn’t get me any “SATAN!!!” reactions. Kind of disappointing, really. But since I’m not in the Oppression Olympics, meh…I’ll live!
I’m with Panda.
Dangit, can those pics in my earlier post be taken off? I didn’t really source them well… Most likely they are fake. *sigh* I’d rather not have them hinder my original point.
If Dawkins wants to pal around with MRA types, maybe he can join them in the land of no-longer-verified twitter accounts.
@Bina
Yeah I actually kind of like the wary looks I get when I say I’m an atheist, it gives people new ideas and that not everyone believes the same. The only stigma I can think of is in politics, where most Americans still don’t want to vote for self-proclaimed atheists. But other than that ,yeah, we atheis aren’t oppressed…we dominate the science fields like TECH etc.
Now when it comes to other human issues like race, sex, and orientation, I think those prejudices are more deeply rooted because they’re physical differences not mental (atheism/religion).
@Jamesworkshop “If Dawkins wants to pal around with MRA types, maybe he can join them in the land of no-longer-verified twitter accounts.”
He better not start rolling with those Gamergate people because that will likely result in his little checkmark being taken away. If he’s truly as clueless about real-life feminists-turned-cartoons as he says then he needs to start being more educated.
@Paul
For those who eschew the atheist label, I think what they mean more precisely is “I do not identify as a movement atheist”. When asked about my religious beliefs I say I’m a humanist which is atheistic; however not only does this allow me to distance myself from the misogynistic filth in movement atheism, but it also carries a set of beliefs with it – beliefs which I think allows ideas like mysogyny to thrive.
All humanists are atheists, but not all atheists are humanists.
I’m not sure why feminists are so quick to stand up for any religion that has no respect for women. It may also help to point out that criticizing Islam does not equal Islamophobia.