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.
i support all of these things too.
https://twitter.com/SkepticFeminist/status/698026960396484608
The Skeptic Feminist say the regressive left is real.
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcsy1p5WfN1rthxy9o1_500.gif
I wonder if it’s possible to trick this dumbfuck into throwing his own computer out the window and duct taping his own hands together.
did you read what the skeptic feminist said about the regressive left?
… TW for that Skeptic Feminist person’s Twitter account. The header image and first few tweets alone are full of transphobia, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and Sargon Of Akkad.
(Though is anybody fucking surprised at this point?)
the skeptic feminist is not a person it is a group of 3 people. 2 women and 1 man. They say they are inter sectional feminists
also i don’t see any transphobia, islamophobia or antisemitism from them.
what did they say that was transphobic, islamophobic or antisemitic?
This had better be the setup to the best joke of all time.
So, you decided to just ignore my point entirely then, huh? Instead of engaging with what’s being said, you just want to keep piling on “evidence”, as if your points are anything more than “see what other people believes me? You should to!”
You’re incapable of examining an idea critically, or engaging with anyone who disagrees with you. Your response to criticism of your points has been to ignore, and then to double down. You’re not here to talk, you’re here to bluster.
Back to the animated gifs for replies then.
http://pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw4412-918.gif
I tried to, but it was backwards.
He’s still here?
http://data.whicdn.com/images/20753253/large.gif
“I didn’t see it, so it needs to be pointed out to me, as I am obviously an expert on these things, and would know if someone were being a bigot!”
What, like every other person you’ve tried to reccomend to us and we proved to be bigots???
I’m gonna have to bust out the RvB gifs for this one too.
http://i.imgur.com/L0xgtom.gif
Has this become the longest comment section on this site yet?
More trolls to dissect? Maybe that is what I should blog about. I need to simplify what they do into simpler forms to describe.
(How do I embed images and videos?)
Oh hey, are we still doing this?
Maybe David should rethink the whole cats-as-mods idea. I’m not saying that the mods aren’t cute as heck. Just that cats don’t have a work ethic.
You just simply copypasta the link into the post verbatim. No tags needed!
For images, you need to make sure they end in a proper .jpg or .png or .gif, and most YouTube videos embed automagically.
Though if you want to do it with HTML, W3Schools is your best bet to learn how.
Ah, OTD enjoyed Religulous. I’m glad to have my decision to never watch it confirmed as the right one by such an impeccable source.
I’ve seen, like, five minutes of Religulous. It’s basically just Maher being nasty to people. I much prefer the Jon Stewart model of political/social comedy.
Bill Maher is a prentionious asshole because he believe his aethism makes him smarter than people. He also doesn’t believe in vaccines. That alone is enough for me to never listen to that blowhard.
@isidore13
i’m not really in favor of silencing, it deprives me of the pleasure of mocking idiocy but degrading, well yes it is.
@Imaginary Petal
you should pay attention when i name them, if you’re not deliberately ignoring them.
actually i can say there is even a newspaper dedicated to them, the guardian.
this paper regularly provided column space to all all kinds of islamists even Bin-Laden(rest in pieces), if a paper did the same about MRA then it would be called MRA supporter, wouldn’t it?!
logical illiteracy.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moral_equivalence
it’s a damn famous fallacy, and yes people actually draw comparison between “bad” things and and confess both are bad.
why they do that?!”to make a point that one is just as bad as the other or just” or “to claim one isn’t as bad as the other”
he mentioned ISIS crimes and then USA, to show that there is a moral equivalence between a vicious violent islamist group that systematically rapes, kills, imprisons(less frequently!) anyone who opposes it or just “can’t fit in” with what America did in iraq.
that reason is that why it’s a fallacy and why i call him an example of regressive left.
it’s like we are discussing rape and somebody says” hey raping women by men is bad and horrible but don’t ignore men that are killed by women”
@Scented Fucking Hard Chairs
seems you overdid it against my advice.
ok, so it’s against the rules to speculate on mental illness based on what people write, but you can repeatedly speculate on people’s identity and accuse them of having multiple identities for the site based on what they write.
i was under the impression that accusation is not fine:
anyway seems you are a better source on people’s color and sexual orientation than themselves, you gonna continue to be an idiot psychic?! Good luck with that.
@Scildfreja
you’re just projecting your mind, “your experience” doesn’t define actual usage.
since i’m not going to do the same mistake and since there is no statistical information regarding this (to my knowledge) i suggest we google it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=to+my+knolage&oq=to+my+knolage&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60j69i59l2j69i65j69i60.2208j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#safe=off&q=regressive+left
as you see most of primary results use the meaning i advocate and yes some use it to bash liberals (which i acknowledged earlier).
i see a bit of exclusionist view here.
because people like dawkins, bill maher, sam harris AND… have some different or stupid ideas then they are not “proper liberals” and if they use a word like “regressive left” it shouldn’t count as liberals or the left using it.
Mentally ill people are harmed by the stereotype that dangerous or hateful is synonymous with mental illness. People aren’t harmed by being mistaken for a sock.
Also, there’s no rule that regulars have to be nice to trolls.
There’s also never been any rule that you can’t accuse someone of sockpuppeting. Half the time it’s not even a serious accusation I don’t think. More like a way to say we’ve heard all the same arguments a million times before. David just doesn’t want us saying something along the lines of “I bet you’re just spewing rape apologia because you’re a rapist.” Something I actually disagree with because well, the gift of fear. I trust my instincts when I see red flags and I’m perfectly comfortable declaring that someone who is dedicated to rape apologia is probably not safe to be around. But, his blog his rules and I’m digressing.
FWIW, I don’t actually think you and OTD are the same person. But you are both making the same bad argument, which is essentially boils down to “you’re doing feminism wrong if you’re not Islamophobic.”
@diaper rash
Gawd.
Look, I woke up with a dozen different strains of the flu and simply can’t be arsed responding to your eminently self-righteous yet witlessly tedious sockery right now, so instead, I’ll make you an offer.
If you leave right now and never come back to this site, I promise that I won’t puke on your shoes.
Deal?
@SFHC, I hope you feel better soon!
——-
So it’s really cool that this thread went above 1000 posts, but I’m more than a little disappointed that it was now because of One Tedious Douchecanoe over here. 😛
Thank you to the regulars for taking the time to shred his unresearched assfax though! His favorite examples of people are always so… out of touch? Like his so-called “non-misogynist” MRAs and even now his so-called left-wing examples
Although just wondering, but can someone purporting to be truly, stubbornly (and apparently not maliciously, though I doubt it) oblivious in the way Onerous Tautological Dullard claims to be really exist? Like, can well-meaning people ACTUALLY be this unbelievably obtuse?
Or is it just for show, as in to either attempt to get his ideas accepted unchallenged or be able to call feminists/progressives mean or something?
And if the answer is yes to either, I ask whyyyy?