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.
Is it people who thought “The Real Ghostbusters” was shit compared to the original film?
Wait, but Mussolini didn’t personally kill all those people during his dictatorship. Are you saying we’re supposed to hold Mussolini responsible for what other people did??????
#GamerGate?
Yeah, and it’s interesting that Sargon has a moustache because you know who else had a moustache………
[Insert: MagnumPI.jpg]
So I’m a troll, a sealion, and now a sock puppet as well. I gotta say, y’all are the masters of insulating yourselves from outsiders. You have handy derogatory terms for every possible sub-category of people who even slightly disagree with you or the way you treat others. It must be nice, being unassailable.
Ah, the old “we’re just disagreeing”.
This attitude is why people think you’re a troll. You’ve been martyring yourself since your first damn comment.
I think we should call trolls who of only acknowledge the posters who identify themselves as male “beta mangina orbiters.” Use their own stupid red pill terms against them. Besides, that’s kind of what they are. They think feminist /ally men are manginas, yet they seem to hover around, eager to please.
@WWTH
Now that’s just cruel. :p
There is no way for me to engage you that won’t make you accuse me of trolling or martyring myself or whatever. You have no interest in acknowledging the possibility that a contrary opinion might be valid.
Okay. Bye.
Add me to the crowd who would like people to make an effort to talk about “movement atheism,” when that’s what you mean, or American atheists (not to be confused with American Atheists), if that’s what you mean. It’s also fair in some cases to talk about the advocates of particular philosophies like rationalism or mechanist materialism.
When people start saying stuff about “atheism” or “atheists,” I sometimes take umbrage, but I’m confused as often as offended. The way I read the word “atheism,” it just doesn’t parse. When used without qualification, I don’t think of “atheism,” as a group, movement, or philosophy at all. I don’t think of the self-professed inheritors of Western enlightenment thinking, I think of all the people throughout history who were not convinced by the religious preaching of their time and place. In that context, to say that “atheism has a problem with sexism” isn’t even wrong so much as nonsense.
1) Ideology is not a proper noun. One does not capitalise it.
2) Ellipses have exactly three dots. Not two, not four, not seven.
3) Ideologies don’t get offended. Ideologies are sets of ideas and are thus incapable of feelings. It’s humans that can get offended. C’mon, this is Atheism 101 stuff. You know this.
4) Every goddamn ideological group out there has, at some point or another, gotten offended over cartoons. Speaking as a liberal, there’s cartoons that offended me (for example Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon which suggested that Ayan Kurdi would have become a rapist had he grown up); I’m sure that there’s cartoons which offended you too.
To believe in anything at all is to be offendable. Do you believe in anything at all? If you do, I’m sure there’s cartoons out there which you’d find offensive.
@Master Beta
.
Where did someone say that behavior should not be mocked as a general rule? I simply won’t believe you without an example as this entire site is based on that to a large extent. Some behaviors are quite mock worthy.
What crimes? We are not in the legal realms here. We are in the part of society where we criticize things that we don’t like about one another. We are also in the part of society where a private organization is allowed to disinvite a speaker if they don’t like what they said.
What do you mean by “hold responsible”? Because I’m seeing a whole lot of whining about criticism and groups deciding to disinvite people and that is not something that can be honestly compared to “crimes”. Even if it’s a creative non-literalism it remains an abstract hyperbolic emotional impression until explained.
I thought I got editing time? Oh well.
My previous comment should have looked like this at the start.
It’s telling that simply make a group connection without saying why the connection is valid or relevant even if true. But using groups like social tools in communication is standard for bigots and xenophobes
Re: dogpiling. I have no tears to shed for Insipid, and I don’t feel like going back through pages and pages of comments to try to decide whether a dogpile ococurred. However, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
The rule against “dogpiling” is useless or actively unhelpful because it appears there is no consensus among regulars what dogpiling is or how to recognize it. I have emailed David asking him to clarify what he means by the word, with no response. There is a rule against publicly challenging the comments policy in the comments. I think that’s a good rule to have and acknowledge that I’m breaking it. However, I feel that when there is debate about how to apply the policy or whether the policy is being followed, I think it’s fair to explain why I am sitting out and state my opinion that appealing to this rule, as it currently stands, is unhelpful.
Did you miss the part where two thirds of the commentariat, who are atheists (including myself, who identifies as a movement atheist) have been disagreeing politely and constructively with the other third in a way that hasn’t caused huge fights and hasn’t resulted in anyone having to flounce in a huff?
No?
Must just be your irrationality coming to the fore, then. One day you’ll learn to be less emotional about it.
What Orion said.
That’s because the rule was demanded and effectively written by the “YOU’RE ALL MEAN” snipe trolls and most of them were never seen again.
However, there is a loosely accepted standard: Two or three responses per post (to allow for ninjas or different points), until they double down or out themselves as trolls, at which point, it’s showtime. *jazz hands*
I’d ask what I did wrong, but I don’t think I’d get a constructive response. All i can say is, the line between people you do and do not treat like dirt appears to be razor thin, and it just seems exhausting.
IN51P1D, have you considered that a large part of the problem is that you’ve chosen to spend your time to come to a feminist blog and lecture the commenters (many of whom are atheist, some like myself ardently so) on how we’re hurting your atheist feelings instead of going to where anti-feminist atheists are congregating and lecturing them on how they’re giving atheism a big image problem?
Some of us have been dealing with this shit since Elevatorgate, some have probably been dealing with sexism in atheist circles even longer, so please forgive us if we don’t agree that the problem here in this thread about Dawkins and his fans shitting all over feminism is that you are hurt over how people here are perceiving atheism (or movement atheism if you prefer).
Good heavens, the sealion brigade is on parade! Also, LinkXzelda totally pulled the WHTM equivalent of OK cupid’s “Hey you’re so beautiful, oh you rejected me? Well, YOU’RE UGLY AND MEAN”
Fucking hilarious. And no, the comment policy does not protect trolls. We all get to point and laugh. The rules on dogpiling are to stop an actual commentator for getting 6 different people telling them about the small mistake they made after they’ve already acknowledged their mistake.
EDIT: this part ^ was ninja’d by SFHC. And yeah, fuck that asshole Had To Be Said for actually convincing commentators here that he was legit and not a troll and turning people against each other (I’m even embarrassed for my own contributions to that awful thread).
@Imperator Kahlo
Even though this was all the way back on page 2, I wanted to say thanks! I wish that book was available, the part you quoted was great and I wish more STEM fields acknowledged the power of emotions as their own type of problem solving.
Something I really enjoyed about the TV show Fringe, is Olivia (the main character) being told “you need to stop being so emotional in your approach to your job as a detective”, to which she basically says “no, my emotions are my strength, it’s how I evaluate what to do and how I get into people’s heads and understand what they are after. Got a problem with that? too bad, I don’t care”
—
The ‘fallacy of rationality’ that I saw in STEM fields is definitely present in ‘movement atheism’ (@ddog, that would be WeirWoodTreeHugger who coined the term earlier, and I wholeheartedly agree with her description)
Count me in to the club of “I’m an atheist without having delusions of superiority and smug condescension”
Even if I don’t agree with religions, they aren’t ‘useless’ or ‘pointless’. Moral guidance is important in life, and ‘movement atheism’ is a good example of how much of a douchecannoe someone can be when they’ve decide they are ‘above’ having a moral compass.
In deliberate irony, I feel obliged to say that Richard Dawkins has a God complex
In a related topic of Atheists being sexist assholes, a bunch of people from the Slymepit (which is basically where people like Thunderf00t hang out because they think Atheism plus and feminists are just so mean) have apparently tried to wrap PZ Myers in some kind of weird plot to accuse Neil Degrasse Tyson of rape.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/01/27/disgraceful-exploitation/#more-26840
Sorry if this seems like derailing, I just felt like the gross exploitation of this woman is worthy of attention.
Regarding atheists “needing to own” the problem of misogyny within atheism: This strikes me as a little too close to the suggestion that Muslims “need to own” the problems of misogyny and terrorism within Islam.
Do I feel an absolute duty to fight with the feminist atheists (along with all other feminists) to shame Richard Dawkins, et. al. (and even better, although perhaps futile, to try to show him where he’s gone wrong and change his mind), when they say vile shit? Absolutely.
Do I feel it is unreasonable for an atheist to say, “Please be careful in how you talk about the problem with misogyny among atheists, because it hurts to get lumped in with the bad actors?” No.
Is there room to discuss the problem of misogyny within Islam, and whether women dressing modestly to avoid leering eyes is completely compatible with fighting rape culture and patriarchy? Sure.
But do I feel it is unreasonable for a Muslim to say, “Please be careful in how you talk about it, because comments that suggest that Islam is particularly compatible with misogyny and/or terrorism are hurtful?” No.
There can be a fine line between concern trolling, and legitimate concern that overly broad language will empower the misogynists within a group at the expense of the feminists within that group. I think we could do better at how quickly we jump to “don’t let the door hit ya.”
IN51P1D:
You’re really not being constructive at this point, either, are you?