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.
Well, now that they’re gone (and hopefully they went to take a nap, someone’s cranky.), can we please continue to discuss the actual topic now instead of being derailed by sea lions?
@guest
… Even putting aside the douchey asstheism… He does realise that so many people speak Spanish as a result of genocide, not exploration, right? And that Spain was just as religious? That the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t just a Monty Python sketch?
What does the man have against cathedrals?
I mean look at this thing.
If you don’t like posting here, then please do fuck off. I’m tired of your bullshit already.
You’re not going to “open my eyes” to anything because you’re not the first person to march in here and tell us all how mean we are for pointing out sexism, while ignoring anything else anyone has to say kthx.
Honestly, I don’t have the spoons to deal with your bullshit anymore.
Leave. No one is holding your sorry ass here but you.
@ guest
He, of course not all religious struggles were particularly bloody. Are you familiar with the Prayer Book Rebellion?
A Cornish bishop got into a bit of a row with the authorities over it and went to challenge them. That’s commemorated in the Cornish national anthem “Trelawney” which goes:
“And will Trelawney live. Or will Trelawney die? There’s 20,000 Cornishmen would know the reason why”
I annoy my Cornish friends by pointing out:
“Live of course! That wasn’t even in issue. The worst they were going to do was sack him!”
Mulling over an earlier point that WWTH made, the following occurred to me:
It’s definitely my lived experience that I’ve had to tiptoe around my atheism in progressive spaces. As WWTH said, as a group we seem to be tolerated only to the extent that we make that aspect of ourselves invisible.
Back when I was a child in a religious environment, it was my experience that religious people talk about religion a lot when they’re around other religious people. It’s seldom the topic of a conversation, but very few conversations go past without at least some reference. It’s just part of the shared cultural framework.
I don’t see that happening within progressive spaces, even between people whom I know to be religious.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that religious people in progressive spaces are also tiptoeing around it, and are also feeling as if they’re tolerated only to the extent that they make themselves invisible.
This must be what a mutually-respectful shared space feels like.
Religious people – is this also your experience?
@guest @SFHC
Yeah, SFHC, that’s right. And I’d like to add, while Spain was out killing people, cathedrals and churches were prime learning spots. Sure, it was a pretty exclusive club, but both men AND women of the cloth learned how to read.
But, yeah, people were being colonized and killed by religious people so it doesn’t make sense.
(Also, fun fact, as long as they didn’t fornicate, people could love who they want. Monks and nuns had wedding-like ceremonies with their same-gender significant others and such; they just couldn’t have sex because you should only have sex to procreate and stuff. At least I’m pretty sure. It’s neat.)
@Chaltab
If there’s one good thing religion has going for it, it’s architecture. Gothic cathedrals are awesome.
So I uh, did notice that Neil Degrasse Tyson’s post about Spanish explorers was made in October 2010. So while it is an incredibly ignorant thing to say, maybe he’s learned something in the over 5 years since?
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs What I got out of that tweet was ‘genocide is awesome’. When I shared it with a friend, her reaction was ‘huh. ‘explorers.”
@Alan I’d never even heard of this until I happened to run across an exhibit at the museum in Knaresborough:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage_of_Grace
I can’t believe this isn’t part of ‘standard’ history–it’s incredibly significant.
@Chaltab:
As an architecture geek it hurts me to say this, but cathedrals are deeply problematic.
@guest:
I learned about the Pilgrimage of Grace in secondary school, when I came to England. It was covered in a very British National Curriculum way, which is to say it shied away hard from anything which could be considered remotely divisive, but it got covered.
@Chaltab
Oh, it’s over five years old? He probably has then. I didn’t notice the date either.
@EJ
How are cathedrals problematic? Is it the high ceilings? I bet it’s the high ceilings. High ceilings are never good.
@EJ TOO
Generally, yeah.
I mean there are certainly places, IME where bringing up religion gets you dogpiled by jackass atheists, and plenty of fundamentalist spaces as well where atheism is considered literally of the devil…
But I’ve not encountered those attitudes in any *progressive* space in quite some time. Perhaps because people like Sargon, Thunderf00t, and Dawkins have made it clear even among staunch atheists that religious folk do not have a monopoly on being stupid assholes?
@Tesse
Hello, reader for a while, but this is my first time posting, and I’ve decided that with my first post I’d be a useful little engine, and try to find the source of these. While I couldn’t find the exact original posts I was able to find some proof that they weren’t posted originally with the text on them.
I found the first one on this tumblr about neck beards (which I have now learned are also called neards).
the second one I found on a less then polite website so I’m trying to only link the one post but if I screwed that up trigger warnings ahead (though if you want to flip through it you can see some examples of atheist dooshbags, mostly in the form of death threats, so again trigger warning).
Also apologies for any run on sentences or grammatical or spelling gaffs. I write like I speak, and I have a tendency to be very wordy and to probably use more words then I have to. Also also fingers crossed I did the block quote, and link things right.
edit: and it looks like it’s kind of off topic know, sorry.
edit edit: also hey the time limit on editing is pretty cool, I can dig that.
EJ (The Other One): I’m trying to think of a good response to you, but I’m finding myself not really understanding what you mean by “as a group we seem to be tolerated only to the extent that we make that aspect of ourselves invisible.” What exactly would the opposite look like? (making that aspect of ourselves visible, that is.)
In my experience, most discussions with fellow atheists tends to be either in the context of the response by religious people within a religious culture, or discussion of the atheist community. In progressive places, they are often more secular, so even highly religious people would be just as inclined to reduce pushing religion or lack of on a cultural level. And in that context I’ve never had any problem identifying as atheist. But I might be misunderstanding your point.
“Guys I’m really nice and smart and looking out for your best interests and it looks like you folks are really not very welcoming and should maybe allow more discussion?”
“What are you talking about?”
“EFF YOU YOU EFFITY EFFS I DIDNT LIKE IT HERE ANYWAYS IM GONNA GO GRACE ANOTHER FORUM WITH MY DIVINE PRESENCE EFF YOU ALL, EFF THE ACADEMY, I HATE YOU ALL AND “””””””PUMPKIN SPICE”””””” CRAP. EEFFFFFF YOUUUUU ALLLLLL.”
ok, I have’t caught up on this thread yet but linkx is now banned, for obvious reasons.
Not here in particular so much, but in progressive internet spaces in general. There are a lot of otherwise cool places where it feels like part of the culture to make constant jabs at religion and religious people. I don’t tend to feel personally attacked but I do feel like my beliefs aren’t seen as equally reasonable.
However, I tend not to complain about this (and I’m using the word “feel” a lot) because:
First, they’re not my sites and if their community wants to use the space to rag on religion, they have a right to.
Second, I’m cognizant that my religious background is socially privileged and I’m biased that way, so what feels like constant attacks to me may well be the normal background radiation of everyone else’s lives.
That said, I really value the fact that WHTM is not one of those spaces and I’m strongly vested in it not becoming one. Naturally, I also very much want atheists and people from other traditions to feel that they are not being attacked or belittled. And I’m optimistic enough to think it’s possible to have a space where everyone feels comfortable at the same time.
@Chaltab
… Oops. I was so busy thinking “Wut” I didn’t even notice.
@Jackie:
Medieval cathedrals were built by gangs of hundreds of starving people, using revenues raised from the savage oppression of thousands of starving people. If they had been public works projects then it might have been at least semi-justifiable, but they weren’t.
It’s easy to forget, in this modern age, how deeply unpleasant the pre-industrial age was for the vast majority of its inhabitants, and how brutal the society needed to be in order for the tiny ruling minority to have any resources to build their monuments. It’s also easy to forget how much that society would have benefitted from large-scale infrastructure investment, instead of spending that capital on prestige projects.
Wow, I went to work and this thread exploded. And then it literally exploded.
Atheist here, although I’ve never considered it to be a very prominent part of my identity so I can’t really speak to the relative tolerance between different online communities. Being lucky enough to have never been marginalised for my disbelief, I tend to side-eye religion-bashing harder than I do atheist-bashing, so the latter may wash over me more than I realise. I was also under the impression, from my occasional lurking over at FTB, that the sexism problem in atheism was a pretty uncontroversial concept, at least among those who aren’t actually part of the problem. So I certainly didn’t read the comments here as an attack on all-atheists-ever. Still, I would definitely add to what seems like universal support for WWTH’s request to qualify the atheist label with something if we ever revisit this debate. Seems to me a pretty easy way to make people feel more welcome.
On cathedrals as monuments to inequality and atrocious labour rights, I’ve always felt vaguely uncomfortable in most houses of worship for that very reason. Until I visited Chiloé. The island is home to simple churches of wind-blown wood, with hand-painted murals on the ceilings. My favourite was a faded blue sky with white stars, nothing more. No ostentation, just a peaceful shared space for worship. My atheist, feminist, uninterested-in-marriage, single arse was determined to get married there.
@EJ
When you said cathedrals were problematic, I thought you meant the actual building, not the history of their construction. 😐
@Imperator Kahlo
I’ve actually been picked for my atheism in high school. I admit, when I was younger, I could be obnoxious about it, especially when people brought up religion around me, but I couldn’t say I ever made fun of people for it like they did to me. It was only twice but I found it was twice too many.
@ EJ
It’s always amazed me how much resources in terms of money and labour cathedrals sucked up. In inflation adjusted terms the average medieval cathedral cost more than the Apollo project.
They were showcasing of faith though. One wonders how keen the average peasant was to see his efforts in terms of tax money and/or labour being spent on one, but to start a project that wouldn’t be completed in your grand kids’ lifetime perhaps demonstrates an unusual mind set.
The skilled masons were on good money though. Even he lowest ranking mason was on the equivalent of £50k pa and master masons averaged around £200k. Hence the rather convoluted ways of demonstrating your qualifications as emulated in Freemasonary.
@Pandapool
I’m sorry you had to go through that. Even once is too much. I definitely didn’t mean to diminish or deny the marginalisation or bullying other atheists had experienced, just add my own data point to the discussion.
As I said, and should perhaps have stressed more, I’ve been damn lucky that it hasn’t been an issue.
@Imperator Kahlo
Oh, um, I forgot to add about the fact that even if I was picked on, I’m dubious about people making fun of religion or specific religious people. I think I had 20-40 seconds left to edit so I didn’t have time to add that.
That was actually my whole point for editing my comment. Haha.