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.
Viscaria, you at least avoided the amazing atheist, right?
… Why are there SO MANY prominent atheist misogynists?
What a hateful bunch of twats.
@Viscaria:
Same with Dawkins and Thunderf00t. If I had known who Mehta was at the time, I probably would have liked him too. The first time I heard about him, though, was when he and PZ Myers were falling out (coincidentally I think it was over stuff concerning either Dawkins or some other famous atheist).
I feel like at one point I could have been a hairs-breadth away from joining the dark side depending on who I kept following… And thank goodness I followed the folks who ended up supporting things like Atheism+ and other social justicey stuff.
@ikanreed:
Because there are so many prominent misogynists. Atheists truly are no different than anyone else.
Small grace, but yes, The Amazing Atheist was beyond the pale even for me during my days of watching angry white dudes bloviate on YouTube about atheism (which would have been 2007-2008, or thereabouts).
The most embarrassing one of the lot, though, has to be Phil Mason, because in retrospect he was always nasty, and always okay with harassment. It’s just he used to pick targets that I didn’t like. I hope I’ve matured enough since to recognize that the behaviour is never acceptable, regardless of target.
I don’t believe Richard Dawkins is a misogynist.
Severely misinformed about feminist issues? Yes.
Promoting real misogynists like Sargon of Akkad? Yes.
Siding with the wrong people? Yes.
But actual woman-hater? No… Just blind and starting to take on the “SJW”-hating attitude of his followers.
The problem is that he’s an extremely privileged man who doesn’t see any other issues other than that of atheism and religion.
I do believe he’s going down the wrong path and is going to start retweeting/promoting horrible things if he doesn’t take a step back and look into the people he’s supporting. The online atheism movement, particularly on youtube, has a huge anti-feminist/misogynist problem filled with rape apologists and people who harass Anita Sarkeesian and Laci Green etc. What FUCK does this have to do with atheism?? What the FUCK does bashing a videogame critic have to do with atheism?? I’m a hardcore atheist and am sick of the anti-feminist bullshit pervading our movement. It makes absolutely no sense. I hope Richard Dawkins realizes this soon.
Not to dominate the comment section too much (can you tell I’m on my lunch break?) but @LinkxZeldaFan, these:
Are things misogynists do. And this isn’t new for Dawkins. He’s been saying – not just repeating or agreeing with or retweeting, but saying himself – clueless, misogynistic and otherwise bigoted things for years.
@LinkxZeldafFan
Dawkins retweeted this:
Change your mind?
He really is a dishonest little fucker, isn’t he?
First he wrote that “NECSS Response” on his website, in which he stated:
The he retweeted this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
This shit is ALL HE DOES ALL DAY.
I’m gonna say Dawkins is no better than Sargon, Milo, Juicebro, etc, at this point.
@LinkxZeldaFan:
You don’t have to say “I hate women” in order to be misogynistic, just like you don’t have to belong to the Klan to be a racist. It’s enough to just consistently find yourself supporting a misogynistic system or mindset, even if you think of yourself as progressive.
Misogyny, just like any other bigotry, is a continuum. Dawkins is afflicted with a milder case then other people featured on this blog, but as you can see it still causes huge problems.
Once you realize that Dawkins is approaching this matter from a position of ignorance rather than evidence, you start to understand that when he looks at what people say about feminists or anti-feminists, he’s going to intuitively side with the people that are most appealing to him. In an amazing coincidence, those people happen to be the anti-feminists time and time again. That to me is a pretty clear sign that that is where his inclinations lie.
So will he be more radicalized, or will someone finally knock some sense into him? I share your hope that it will be the latter.
@Alan – I volunteer to be more cynical than you. I clocked in quite a bit of Barbie play back when I was young.
I wish I didn’t keep getting disgusted at Dawkins.
@Anon
No.
@sunnysombrera & @EJ
Perhaps there’s a better name for it, but I think the ‘fallacy of rationality’ – the belief that one is capable of seeing things purely rationally, unclouded by those pesky emotions and thus is ‘right’, can be an incredibly dangerous attitude.
I saw this a ton at my engineering school, people who believed that they were just superior to the ‘idiot masses’ because they were always thinking through things logically. The concept of perspective or bias was lost on them. They truly believe that their mind was ‘clear and logical’ and thus couldn’t be wrong. And of course, anyone who showed emotions was automatically dismissed. This type of thinking is exceedingly dangerous, because no human being can think truly objectively. So what you get is someone with an over-inflated ego who believes whatever ingrained biases.
Often times ‘being rational’ can be used as a justification. “I’m not an asshole, I’m just speaking the cold hard truth”. Or “we disagree, but I’m rational and logic-minded, therefore I must be right and you must be wrong”.
I guess what I’m getting at is that emotions do not get the credit they deserved. Sure, feelings are not rational, but the world is a complex place, we don’t have the time to analyze every variable and come up with a ‘logical’ solution. And plenty of times, there is no ‘rational solution’, problems don’t have a clear black-and-white answer. And of course, most of the time, we never have access to all the variables to even attempt a logical ‘answer’. In this messy world, emotions are our guide. (like “my life is great right now, why do i feel so empty?”)
Yet so often emotions are portrayed like some sort of great human failing, or a weakness. This is, of course, exacerbated by the sexist dichotomy of ‘men are logical; women are emotional’. In my experience, when someone has prided themselves on being ‘above’ human emotion, it usually means they just are incapable of recognizing their feelings, and they end up like Richard Dawkins, believing every thought that enters their brain is correct. These kinds of people cannot ever be wrong, because that would unravel their ‘superior logical being’ persona.
I roll my eyes at those people, and instead here’s how I like to handle this world. I let my feelings be my guide. When I see something and say “this doesn’t feel right”, I investigate to find out why I feel that way. So far, my only mistake was has been not listening to my feelings enough. I’ve often gotten bad vibes from people who later turned out to be total assholes. Like my intuitive irrational feelings were way ahead of my logic skills (or my logic skills were useless, because there was not enough information to make a logical deduction).
Most importantly, I think there are too many people in this world who simply cannot ever admit to a mistake. Richard Dawkins is clearly one of those people, as he begrudgingly tries to admit “yeah maybe that video was a bad idea, but whatever I’m still right!”
“The capacity to admit one’s error” is a talent, and one I’d like to see more in the world. Listening to other people is how we learn. And other perspectives that are fundamentally different from our own will always have new lessons to impart on those who have the ability and willingness to listen.
For my most cherished emotions, I go with empathy and sympathy. We need more of those in our current world.
Viscaria,
Same
TheLulzWatch
“You know that by reporting the shenangians of Doosh V, Matt Forney or Heartiste, you inadvertently increase the harassment and death threats they are getting, right?”
So you are saying that either we cannot ever say anything about anyone else, or there should no moral or legal restriction on what anyone says about anyone else.
In the real world, there are many other options. In the real world, it makes more sense to draw some kind of line between “reporting shenanigans” and malicious attacks meant to incite harrassment.
Ironically enough, you provide one clue as to where such a line should be drawn. That is the word “reporting”.
David is indeed “reporting”. That video that Dawkins retweeted reported nothing- it misrepresented with malicious intent. It’s rather an important distinction- and in this case, it is a distinction that can be unambiguously drawn.
In short, you picked the wrong place to try to muddy the waters.
I see it more as ignorance. To me a full-blown misogynist is someone who actively makes videos attacking women, rape victims, and feminists etc. Dawkins has said some really dumb things regarding feminism but so far he hasn’t been tweeting anything stupid like “women are sluts and deserve to get raped” or anything akin to the AVFM forums. He’s also laughed at the idea of MRAs.
He IS displaying some unconscious sexist rhetoric that he needs to check.
Yes that’s a dangerous way of thinking, denying that women are victims but I’m giving Dawkins the benefit of the doubt here and assuming he’s an old guy extremely clueless about what goes on in social media. For example he didn’t know that the feminist in that horrible video was a real woman.
I’m not saying that what he’s doing is okay. It’s not and he’s siding with bigots. He’s just really dumb when it comes to issues about feminism.
I became an atheist in college, about 12 years ago. For most of my adult life, the primary reason I’ve kept my beliefs about the nature of the universe private is because I want my grandmother to be able to die in peace rather than spending the last years of her life trying to save me from eternal hellfire.
But because of Richard Dawkins’ and Sam Harris’ descents into irrational bigotry and general pompous assholishness, I now have another reason to be dishonest about what I believe, even in situations where I know it would never get back to my grandmother. So, thanks, guys. You’ve really improved my quality of life. It’s so wonderful to have to qualify, “Yes, I’m an atheist” with “and yes, I think Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are irrational, blindered thinkers who are spreading wrong and dangerous ideas about what it means to be civil.”
@Mike, I fail to see what about my comment was trolly. Seriously, I have commented here before under this name. I’m not a troll, and I am certainly not a troll for admiring a feminist woman, thanks.
I get from cognitive dissonance every time I think about Richard Dawkins. It’s astounding how a man so wise can be so ignorant. I can almost feel blood dribbling from my ears as my brain desperately tries to reconcile these two contradictions.
Guyyys, he’s totally not a misogynist! He just randomly happens to agree with everything misogynists say!
re: Why the heck is the atheosphere so gosh darn misogynistic?
It’s true that the world at large is misogynistic, so you’d expect to see them there. But the atheosphere has an extra heapin’ helpin’. I think that there are extra factors.
Atheism draws in people who have a love of rationality and science, and have been socialized that “smart == good”. This is mostly boys. Boys are rewarded by being told that they’re smart, and girls are rewarded by being told that they’re pretty. (All as horrible overgeneralizations, but the trend is there) So, more boys.
Atheism also values the ideas of criticism, skepticism, and debate, but isn’t actually any good at directing it inwards. Atheism, as a social movement, is about attacking outwards – not developing itself as a community. Internal problems are dealt with just as external problems – vociferous attack of opposing ideas, with a ‘last man standing’ concept of which idea is better.
So it draws in more men than women, and has no real tools for ingesting new concepts. It also turns out that atheism seems really bad at understanding rationality outside of a lab or episode of Cosmos. I wish people would realize that you can’t beat biases. You can’t become unbiased so long as you’re a human being. Rationality is all about realizing that all your ideas are bad and you should feel bad, and then figuring out what to do next.
It makes me very sad to think these things – I was hopeful that rationality might win out the day in this tiny corner of society, and that it might do some good in the world. It was what Jen McCreight suffered that made me realize how unremittingly awful most atheists are, at least those interested in it as a movement.
At least, all of that is my personal take on it! Probably wrong in a number of points.
“Guyyys, he’s totally not a misogynist! He just randomly happens to agree with everything misogynists say!”
Please don’t twist my words. It’s very immature. I’m simply giving my honest thoughts here. If Richard Dawkins starts retweeting more anti-feminist stuff then I’ll agree with you that he may be an unconscious misogynist.
He’s been retweeting misogynists for literally years. Stop being stupid.
@Dreadnought,
I’ve never thought he was wise. He’s certainly smart, and the book that made him famous, The Selfish Gene is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in biology, evolution or genetics. It’s the one book by him that I can still stand to read, really (Have tried rereading others and can’t do it).
He’s very smart, and has excellent instincts about how evolution works. It’s dangerous to parlay that into wisdom, though.
Academics are a funny lot. They’re blisteringly brilliant in their slice of understanding, but often suffer everywhere else because of that intense focus. And I say that as someone currently working in academia!
@Moocow
This entire post was wonderful, thank you. Couldn’t agree more on the dangers of the ‘fallacy of rationality’.
There’s been a rash of true-crime courtroom books over the last decade or so in Australia, all of them written by women, none of them pretending a cold objectivity. I came across a great quote by Alecia Simmonds, author of Wild Man, last night*:
I think that’s getting at the same points that your post did. Sometimes our emotions will be hateful or driven by fear, so as you point out we need to investigate our feelings, test them against other sources of evidence. But Dawkins et al aren’t as coldly objective as they like to believe – by denying they even have emotions, they’re oblivious to the ways they’re being guided astray in their dude-logicking.
QFT
* quote is pulled from Truth on Trial in the latest Kill Your Darlings. The article’s an interesting look at the subgenre from a feminist perspective, but doesn’t seem to be available online.