Focus
Russell “begged” me yesterday to focus on something other than what I had been focusing on, so here is a slightly different focus. To put it another way, here is how to get everyone either shouting at me or deleting me from their list of ok people, instead of just a select few.
I partly sort of up to a point agree with Miranda about the Skepchick campaign. (I was only vaguely aware that there was one, because I haven’t kept up.) (You know, I tend to think I’m a terrible nerd, but at the moment I think maybe I’m not enough of a nerd. A real nerd would be ignoring all of this. I envy that nerd. Maybe I’ll set my alarm for 4 a.m. so that I can find that nerd and invite it to my place for coffee and conversation.)
I said at Miranda’s place, so I’ll paste it in here to save time:
I think Richard was wrong about this, but not insanely outrageously save the beer and the cats wrong. He’s the one who published Lisa Bauer’s account of her life as a Muslim convert and then apostate. He’s a fan of Maryam Namazie’s. Maryam was also at the Dublin conference…I suspect he may have been chafed by the contrast between what Maryam talked about and what Rebecca talked about. It’s true that there is a vast difference. I think he’s wrong to conclude that therefore what Rebecca talked about doesn’t matter, but I think I get why he felt that way. (Yes “get”; yes “felt” – these things aren’t fully rational. Such is life.)
And now I think I will close comments on Getting and not getting. Move it here.
Pretty much how I feel about Dawkins’ remark. I ended up defending him some because frankly quite a bit of the backlash was going a tad ballistic and making statements that don’t really correspond to where he evidently is and came from. I’m all up for critique, but let’s have skepticism paired with empathy.
I have huge respect for you Ophelia and Miranda as well as Richard. I would all happily ask you all back for a coffee and interesting discussion, and I’m sure you would all run a mile. Sigh.
People do seem to be attributing remarks to Richard that he never said. He should have been more sympathetic, but he never actually said anything offensive, as far as I’ve seen.
I think there’s a vital piece of the overall puzzle (on why certain people have taken the stances they have, that seem to have more to do with personality than anything) I’m missing. I have gotten hints that it has to do with the panel Rebecca Watson was on at the conference.
Sadly, I don’t have time to go read enough to figure out if I agree with anyone in particular, at least not yet. I had thought when I first saw it that the reaction was more earnest (or perhaps pseudo-earnest) “Dawkins has asked someone to explain what he doesn’t get, so here are a bunch of people who will”. And I stopped even occasionally reading both Miranda and Rebecca ages ago because I found them shallow and/or sloppy and/or boring thinkers on some stuff and just didn’t have the time.
I guess I’ll just have to say I don’t disagree with you, so you’re still ok people. :)
Huh. That’s the first I heard of a Skepchick campaign, as well! Up until now, I thought that I responded to Dawkins’ multiple comments in one post, and in another post on Skepchick another writer published letters people were writing to Dawkins explaining how his words made them feel. I’m not sure how that’s vicious or bullying or any of those things.
Mya, right – I suspect that panel has something to do with Richard’s reaction. I don’t know, and I don’t have any inside info; I’m just guessing/suspecting. He’s friends with Paula Kirby though; he may have agreed with her take on sexism and atheism, and disliked Rebecca’s disputing it on the panel. He may have been put off by Rebecca’s undershirt. (That’s flippant, but not really; I think it’s odd to give a talk at a conference wearing an undershirt. Too casual Friday; too Stanley Kowalski; too amateurish; too much skin for the context. I’m a fascist that way; so sue me.) He may have been comparing Maryam’s issues. I don’t know, but I suspect.
Hey Rebecca – I’m with you on a lot of this, but I do think Richard is not nearly as bad as you seem to think right now. Wrong about this particular issue, but not hopeless or evil.
. . . and I guess I’m not sure how to respond to someone who takes issue with what I wear over what I say. I’ll let the good people of Banana Republic know that their skirts and sleeveless tops show too much skin.
I don’t think Richard is hopeless or evil. I simply think he is dismissive of my concerns and those of many women who have written me to voice their feelings. Accordingly, I have no interest in continuing to give my money and my support to someone like that.
OK, I think I’m done here for a while. She’d neither said nor implied that it was in any way comparable. Her response was completely appropriate and he mocked her for relating an uncomfortable experience and saying “Don’t do this.” That anyone could see any problem with what she’d said is nothing short of astonishing to me, and makes me very worried. I get why he felt that way and expressed those feelings, too: because he’s privileged, arrogant, and sexist.
And it’s fairly ridiculous that you’re now heeding requests from Russell about what to focus on in a discussion of feminism.
Out.
What campaign are you and Miranda on about? RD asked for an explanation; a lot of us explained; the Skepchicks gathered those in one place. What is so nasty and horrible about that?
I respect you, Ophelia dear, but in this case, while if I squint and stand on my head I can kinda see your point of view, we shall have to go our separate ways.
Yes, Ophelia. Richard was wrong, but not wrong enough to be vilified.
Not over what you say; on the contrary; more like as a potential distraction from what you say. I could be wrong anyway; I’m a dinosaur; but I sure as hell don’t want to look at Dawkins or Sam Harris or PZ in an undershirt, so fair’s fair.
See? I told you I’d get everyone yelling at me instead of only some!
And for the record: it’s not Miranda and I. I told her there and I’ll say again here: I agree with most of Rebecca’s reply, but not with the never again part. That means I don’t agree with Miranda 100%.
Can I have a prize for courage now? Everybody else is getting one; I want one!
And just wait until I move on to Stef. I really don’t agree with Stef.
Ophelia: What about the two men on the panel in t-shirts, shorts, and sandals? I was dressed up in a skirt and heels and sleeveless top. Do you see why it might sound a little like slut-shaming to criticize my clothing alone?
I don’t think anyone is demonizing Dawkins. (At least no one at skepchick.) Several of the letters might have been overly flippant (he-he, Dick is a common nickname for Richard) but nothing calling him one of the Elder Evils. Besides, since when is Dawkins dismayed by less then reverent language?
Hmm – so Dennett’s your guy then? I get that – teh smart iz gud.
I mean, I even did my hair up, Ophelia! That took ten minutes of hardcore effort, at least. Give a lady props.
@Steve,
I think what Rebecca is saying is that she isn’t vilifying Richard. I think ‘I won’t support him financially any longer, nor encourage others to do so’ comes off as a bit more intense than Rebecca may have meant it.
I do think her post was a bit on the bridge-burney side for my taste, because I do think while he was completely wrong, Richard demonstrated at least some willingness to be convinced (though the Pharyngula comments section is quite possibly the worst place in the universe for convincing anyone of anything) of his own wrongness. I also don’t think the other stands he’s taken for women’s rights are negated entirely by this one intellectual blind spot. And, if I’m being honest, I don’t think skeptics need another schism; and by that I don’t mean that I think we should be accommodating to sexism: by that I mean, I think that we absolutely can communicate feminist ideas effectively to the majority of our fellow skeptics.
(Speaking of Ophelia being a dinosaur, I seem to remember something about hating it when people go out in public with wet hair. I do that all the time. Oops.)
I’m going to have to shout at you a bit there. I’m sure Harris could carry it off. He’s got that Ben Stiller on a good day thing going for him. I’m sure Harris could manage Blue Steel.
I took it to mean as in letter writing “campaign” here:
http://skepchick.org/2011/07/dear-richard-dawkins/
But other than that there isn’t a formal boycott campaign on the way (please correct me if I’m wrong). It seems as if you chose not to support Prof. Dawkins any longer (no buying books, paying to attend lectures etc.) and some of your readers are following in your footsteps. No more no less.
OK, the undershirt thing has me completely boggled. WHO CARES?
Depends. Got me to stop lamenting about how much it sucked having a penis. I would have thought Richard Dawkins of all people would have the fortitude score to get through it. Although judging from SC’s allusions, this isn’t the first time he’s done this. If that’s the case, it explains the frustration.
I can understand why you’d want to avoid a schism and why you’d want to keep Dawkins reputation (if that’s the right word here. I don’t think anyone is saying anything slanderous) intact. He is after all, a heavyweight and political weapons and what not. But the above doesn’t make much sense.
@designsoda You’re correct about the “boycott” – I was commenting on my own decision and remarking that others have told me they’re doing the same. I have no need to organize any kind of campaign.
Even the letter writing is something that we at Skepchick simply reacted to. My in-box was filling up with them, many from people who wanted/needed an outlet of some sort. So, I edited my initial post to let people know we’d post them if they wanted. Dawkins specifically asked for people to educate him, and I think many assumed that he’d be more willing to listen to letter-writers than blog commenters.
Frankly I don’t like the loyalty tests that seem to be at play. Skepticism isn’t about loyalty.
Ophelia, sorry, I don’t do prizes, but I do recognize and appreciate the courage. I’d say we really shouldn’t need courage, but that’s another strike to my naivete count.
>See? I told you I’d get everyone yelling at me instead of only some!
>Can I have a prize for courage now? Everybody else is getting one; I want one!
Yes of course, that’s exactly why we’re all in the same boat. Individual liberty, not group identity. That’s why it takes guts to disagree against the majority, even if you’re wrong, doing so in a dignified and rational way is the right way, and being open to being wrong. Some of us have gone through life (violins) dealing with bullies, being silenced, alone, dealing with group pressure and it’s not nice, it’s sometimes fucking traumatic and self-destroying. And so fellow victims do ‘get it’ we just may not always agree.
IMHO everyone should dress in Star Trek outfits. Not just at conventions, but all the time.
No way. How would we establish rank?
And think of all the posers, like me, who’d want to show up wearing TNG costumes and the ensuing war Kirk’s generation. It would be a bloody bloody day, my friend.
I’m actually optimistic here. Reading through all the comments across the fora (ok, maybe 70% of the thousands) I had my thinking turned around by the women explaining the situation. If I can do it, so can Prof. Dawkins. And if Rebecca doesn’t think he’s hopeless or evil then what more can one ask? I don’t see a bridge burned. More like a bridge provisionally set aside.
I mean, I’m not missing out on some subtle joke about undershirts, am I? If the dress criticism is being said with all honesty, I’m so not on board with it. Talk about ad hominem!
Sounds like the mob is slowly getting its undies unbundled and putting the pitchforks back in the haystacks. Soon we’ll be able to let Richard out of his secure location in the Rushdie suite at Hotel Hitchens, and book him for a short rest at the Old Skeptics Home for Feckless and Enfeebled Chauvinists, on the ward for Very Naughty Boy-Crumbs of the Upper Crust. Time for the rodeo clowns to come in and cart off the survivors, back at the ranch.
Why is everyone treating each step in this whole ugly mess as the next worse thing to ever happen to the world? I’m starting to feel like I’m not at the one or two steps removed from the heart of the matter, like I originally thought (and kind of prefer), but like there’s an entire universe of stuff going on and I’m stuck in a closet looking through a keyhole. I’m guessing that there are politics and machinations behind the scenes and all sorts of stuff that I’m never going to know about, and without that knowledge none of this shit is ever going to make sense to me.
So count me as officially “out” of this whole mess, for good and forever.
Off to my villa in Turkey for two weeks with no Internet access (how I’m I going to cope?) easy I’m taking 4 books (Bill Bryson: At home, Bad Science: Ben Goldacre, How mumbo-Jumbo conquered the world: Frances Wheen and Tom Sharpe: The Wilt inheritance.):-)
Wow people disagreeing with each other how terrible, well not really as conversations would be pretty boring if every second statement was ‘I agree with you.’
I liked Miranda’s Blog posts on this issue, a spot of calm in turbulent seas.
I think Stef is 22 years old can anyone of us still defend most things we thought way back then.
Rebecca, I agree with her about the elevator incident but most things afterwards not so much.
Just my two cents for what it’s worth feel free to totally disagree with me I wont take it personally:-)
P.S. I still love you Ophelia.
It’s the web, Joe. If you have any kind offiline life, you can’t keep up, so don’t dream of trying. You just sit on your blanket and watch the fireworks until it stops, and hope some random rocket doesn’t come unduckably your way.
I imagine it’s for the same reason the media treats any ‘misstep’ by a star or celebrity as the end of times. When you’re dealing with celebrities (regardless of how they reached that status) everything gets amped up to the millionth degree. Sadly it seems the same is true in atheist/skeptic circles.
Hey, can Ophelia get through 24 hours on this blog without som man gratuitously sucking up to her?
Julian – “Celebrities” Heh. Yeah, in our atheist mini-universe. Maybe godless nerds aren’t so numerous that we can afford to be breaking up into identity groups and following separate “leaders.” Time to focus indeed.
Rebecca
Even the letter writing is something that we at Skepchick simply reacted to.
Therein lies the problem. Simple reactions should be checked and examined before being responding to.
Argh – sorry about the blockquote fail above.
Not everyone sees themselves as a godless first. And not everyone shares the exact same priorities. Ms Watson is very much concerned about feminism at home and within this group. Richard Dawkins is more concerned about it abroad especially where it is directly brought about by religion. It would do everyone a diservice to try to prioritize one goal over the other especially when neither excludes the other one.
I don’t see Ms Watson doing that or anyone ‘on her side’ which is why I don’t get this ‘Watson is trying to undermine Dawkins’ thing.
Ditto, Hazel. This is why the old days of slow media and editors weren’t so stupid. And why Julian Assange isn’t a whistleblower but an informational diahhria pump and gossip monger.
Not sure what you mean. Bloggers do this kind of stuff all the time. Hell, people do this kind of stuff all the time. When was the last time your community got together to write a congressional rep about this or that position they held?
Julian – Godless, feminist, libertarian, whatever. If one is first in your concerns and the others lower, fine. Of course. But if you try to do too much all at once and in the same place (some call it multi-tasking), focus goes to hell and nothing much works the way it should. That’s why I say slow it down and stop trying to bring it all under one umbrella on a 24-hour cycle. That’s when traffic jams and crackups like this last one occur. Impatient agile chick in a zippy car on cell phone alarms codger in land yacht with his left blinker on who’s trying to merge, horns blow, brakes squeal, and pretty soon everyone is all over the freeway arguing about who wasn’t paying attention, or driving too fast or too slow. Broom detail.
We’re still talking about it! Maybe I’m still “not getting it” but the guy is either a criminal or he’s not. I can accept that he offended a woman and she spoke about it… everywhere, but telling ALL guys to educate themselves not to offend women is patronizing as fuck! This was just ONE guy, what are you asking me to do about it? Women offend me all the time, not in small irrelevant ways either. Women are just as superficial and offensive as men. But I don’t come on the internet and say “women… don’t do that”. Because not all women are like that and why would I tell skeptchich “gals… don’t do that”.
For the record, I think Dawkins’ response was shocking and wrong. No, not as wrong as it might have been in whatever universe one posits in which more evil things happen, but wrong nonetheless. I also think Rebecca’s original video about the elevator guy was as mild and chill a rebuke as possible. This shit storm is not her fault.
And Kenny – aren’t you the one who called us all cunts on another thread?
Diahhrea. Why is such a beautiful word so damned hard to spell?
My take is – Dawkins made an ass of himself, but Christopher Hitchens has a much longer, more varied history of making a total ass of himself. When he wasn’t cheerleading for the Iraq war he was saying women aren’t funny – it hasn’t stopped me recommending The Missionary Position.
I think we should recognise that Dawkins can make great arguments while holding to some questionable ideas. We can quite strongly disagree with him on this one issue – while still thinking he wrote a good book in the God Delusion.
The work, not the man, is what is important after all.
Rebecca – ah, I didn’t see the two guys in T shirts and sandals. (That’s the trouble with this whole conversation; one is always leaving something out!) Yup I see, and I saw it anyway, but I always have ambivalencies about this whole subject. I’m with Ben: Star Trek uniforms for all.
And props for the hair, no question. (Which gets me thinking about combovers, and how prevalent they are. Do not go there…)
I probably won’t be buying any more of Dawkins’ books, not because he’s evil and wrong and I’m joining a boycott rah rah rah, but because I find that this lapse of judgment of his makes him less interesting to me. Besides, it’s not like Dawkins has ever been a beloved leader to me. I don’t have a beloved leader; I’m just doing my atheist thing here and listening to the people who interest me.
Like Josh up there, I thought Rebecca’s video was as temperate and reasonable a rebuke as you could possibly get.
Mya –
Nooooo – bed hair.
Is this conferance on video anywhere?
Steve –
That’s not the criterion! I’m sure they all could, or I don’t care whether they could or not; it’s just not what I want to be looking at or pondering at a conference. Beach, yes; bar, yes; bus, no; conference, no. Dinosaur.
Atheism is not Dawkinsism. Or Hitchinsism. Or Harrisism. Or Dennettism. Or Myerism. Or Bensonism. Or Watsonism. Or D’Holbachism.
It is sometimes worth reminding ourselves of this.
Dan
It’s supposed to be up soon on youtube. It’s being edited or something right now.
In my big post on the issue, I called Dawkins out for this part of the last comment (I think it was the last one, or one of the last anyway):
“If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics’ privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker. PZ didn’t physically strike any Catholics. All he did was nail a wafer, and he was absolutely right to do so because the heightened value of the wafer was a fantasy in the minds of the offended Catholics. Similarly, Rebecca’s feeling that the man’s proposition was ‘creepy’ was her own interpretation of his behaviour, presumably not his.”
See, knowing that Myers’ point in that was to demonstrate that Catholics didn’t have any reason to be offended, tying it back to the first point he’s basically saying that she really didn’t have any reason to feel that his behaviour was creepy or for it to make her uncomfortable. And that, in my opinion, is just wrong. At that time, in that place, in that context, her finding it creepy is reasonable. Not everyone would, of course, but I think anyone can understand why she might feel uncomfortable in that situation. So that was wrong of him. Not enough, I’d say, to stop reading his books or recommending them, for various reasons, but, yeah, he screwed up too.
I think he just meant that Watson was making a bigger deal out of it than he thought she should, but this part of the comment really does come across as dismissive.
Bruce, good point. And yes, you articulate exactly how I feel about Hitchens.
Let me say this plainly even though we are still in courage-land. Dawkins was insensitive and has blinders on. He has dismissed an issue and specifically one person’s opinion and feelings, but other people also took it to apply to them. Valid all around. But, if he makes true on the sentiment that he does want to champion the plights of women in oppressive cultures and throught systems, and his past record shows that he does, you know what? I’m going to take Dawkins as an ally over all those real and massive chauvinist pigs I meet every day. And I am going to take what the issue is here, on the scale of what it was. Yes, something for valid criticism, but no nothing I will boycott him over, or agree that it is worth boycotting. In fact Dawkins has contributed too much for me to agree to attempts to go after him beyond critical exchange over this.
Richard has invited that people explain to him why he is wrong. I still assume that he is good for that. That’s more than many people I know ever offer when they are criticized. That’s how horrible male white rich patriarchs can be, if we look beyond the labels.
And yes I agree with Josh and Cam. Rebecca’s video on elevator incident. About what happened around it, I actually have criticism for many parties (as some have seen). And Rebecca has gotten some completely vile backlash too, that is totally contemptible. There are very very real issues here and we’ll be dealing with them for a good long while. But I don’t think that we will solve those issues by branding people into simple categories, and imposing blue print and loyalty tests. I think we have to work with people as who they are and recognize for what they do offer.
I think I’m done with this tempest in a teacup. In future, I should just stick to coffee.
This is from the first letter (which is far as I got) posted at Rebecca Watson’s blog this afternoon:
<blockquote> [To Richard Dawkins:]
“… I look forward to watching your legacy crash and burn.” </blockquote>
Rebecca, I think you need to think about what you allow to be posted on your blog, and how that will affect your own legacy.
Julian
Fair question. What I am talking about is general knee jerk reactions. For example, Richard messed up with going all knee-jerk. Oh yes indeedy – he did do that.
Of course, most of us have also done this sometimes (including me – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa), but, again, most of us live to regret it afterwards. This is because it really doesn’t take the conversation any further. Groan: I can very definitely look at previous things I have said and later see that they are full of “me, me, me” and “I,I,I” and kick myself.
Unfortunately, ‘Knee-jerk’ and ‘All ‘Bout Me’ are good buddies :(
Now, with this particular situation, certain issues (which can be viewed in either personal or theoretical terms) have come into play. The most pertinent ones being
a) the pointing out of unequal power relations and
b) the identification of strategies which are used to silence those with whom we disagree.
Power relations I found hard to get my head around – for the mechanisms of power can be complex. What it is possible to (uncontentiously) say though is that some groups of people have more opportunities than others for using their power in different situations.
However, we cannot be too simplistic about this for differential power relations occur within social, economic, racial and sexual groups as well and across said groups. Situational factors can also effect the dynamic. Also, sudden upheavals can occur.
Happily, for the theoreticians, when the power balance is shifted in any fashion we can look closely at how people react in light of that. This is fascinating. However, if a previously dis-empowered groups use their new-found power to, in turn, dis-empower others then this is disappointing from a personal viewpoint.
OK. On to silencing:
Again fascinating theoretically, we can ask what words/phrases are used to silence? “Other’s have it worse” is a good one – as is “you are making a fuss about nothing”.
These quickly become personal though for the common rejoinders are, “you cannot understand my experience for you are a x” (me, me, me again) and “all my friends think I am right”.
This is also a silencing tactic.
When in disagreement with someone and seeking to deal with the disagreement amicably we should be very careful of not saying (or, if saying, not meaning) “let’s talk about this” because of a desire to talk “at” people instead of talking “with” them.
I agree Dawkin’s sarcastic post was inappropriate. But there’s a difference between pointing out inappropriateness and burning at the steak. It seems to me, there’s an awful lot of inappropriateness from all sides going on. Why is that? Isn’t that interesting, since we’re supposed to be rational intellectuals.
It seems to me, that sarcasm is the typical response from men whenever they start talking about feminism. It’s part of our awkward and clumsy sensibilities and our general stupid unconscious sexism in not taking women seriously. Even the most caring and sensible pro-feminist men can’t help but starting throwing nouns like ‘female’ when they start blubbering.
I’m tired of sexists and clueless inappropriate maleness, but I’m also tired of walking on egg-shells.
1. How can we combat religious oppression of women?
2. Why do godless women tend not to join/support atheist organizations, even though they support the goal of ending religious oppression of everyone? Evidence shows that this would be a key demographic for the movement (education, charitiable giving rates, leadership abilities, etc) How can we convince them that atheism/skepticism is a worthwhile cause to support?
These are 2 separate but related conversations.
The fact that someone who raises 2.) gets the kind of response that Rebecca has gotten, makes me think that the atheist movement is immature and floundering, and my volunteer hours and donation budget are better spent elsewhere.
Bruce Gorton, you make a good point. Hitchens has also nodded to women’s rights in his argument for how to end poverty:
But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking him a complete ignoramous about the reasons for the war in Iraq or a misogynist in some instances (especially in his dislike for Hillary Clinton which he goes on and on about for no good reason). Still, I love many things about the guy.
PZ says Dawkins will come around on this matter (and he does have a history of doing so), but even if he doesn’t, he will still have many good things to say that I’ll probably want to hear but by no means would I call for anyone to stop calling him out on his “zero-bad” response.
Having read thousands of comments at the various blogs, here’s my take.
I am pretty much with RW. I found Steffi’s and some utube Rose character’s criticism of RW immature and wrong. I didnt think that it was a big deal to call out SM at that conference. But that was the point where the shitstorm kicked off from. I got a sense of a rather personalised and petty and defensive campaign against RW by those aggrieved by the ‘attack’ on SM. Abby Smith at ERV was a pariticularly nasty misogynist piece of work – and since Miranda Hale was cheering her on, I totally undersatnd SC and Julian’s exasperation at those two.
Big props to PZ and his Hordes. The stalwarts there saw off wave after wave of nerdboy whinging and worse. Dawkins plunged in my estimation and his tonedeaf fanboys didnt help much. I’ll be watching that particular bright’ with beady eyes henceforth.
Joshua and Improbable Joe are really my kind of men – as opposed the masses of mansplainers that crawled out of the woodwork. Even russell blackford came out with that aspie defence, so that was disappointing to read.
Ophelia, all the years I’ve been reading you, you’ve been a big hero of mine. But that comment about RW’s singlet is just not right. It’d be interesting to know where that one originated.
lol there’s also a difference between burning at the stake and writing critical letters.
Is this what you think is happening? Just asking. I’m not sure what your overall point is but notice myself nodding as I read your post.
And clearly the undershirt snark went way over my head.
and what she was wearing?
What? Of all of the stupid comments this brouhaha has generated, that might just be the stupidest. What does it even mean? EG’s intent is completely irrelevant to the discussion. He was inconsiderately oblivious. Period.
Not a ploy. Empirical observation. See above.
Flora, the point is though is it the issue that matters or the maturity. If the issue trumps the right action is to help mature something. If the issue is not worth it, sure switch to something else.
To me there really isn’t much of a choice here. We are going to have to address it all, sexism, gender issues, people being interested in supporting non-belief and skepticism. All of that. The issues matter, and it’s not like I can see it being trumped by turmoil or things going haywire. And there are plenty of people who understand this is important and will put in the effort. It’s no accident that leadership in various organisations (SSA for example) have made diversity and gender problems a priority. That’s exactly the right thing to do. Yes, it’s blatantly obvious that there is a long way to go. But it’s clear where it is going.
mirax, I said the undershirt thing just in case there was anyone I hadn’t pissed off yet.
Anyway all the people who matter will be at TAM and no doubt they will work it out there. We obscurities are just mumbling in the background during the interval.
Did I miss much due to some internet absence?
Julian
Is this [disempowerment in turn] what you think is happening?
This is what I am worried that I am seeing. To mail my colours to the mast though this is currently more about individuals than groups. To take my own advice I must be now be clear about my views…
Rebecca
I think you are engaged in silencing tactics with this letter writing business. I think you are (and have) misused your position of being listened to in certain situations to settle personal scores. This is (to use a “privileged” British term) unsporting.
Jesus came back from the dead. Except he wasn’t Jesus and he wasn’t dead. It was some guy named Larry and apparently he’s supposed to be our new debugger. Jesus quit almost 2 thousand years ago. Something about poor health insurance and not enough benefits.
I think another lesson we can consider is that individuals are always individuals, and need to be considered and respected as such, not as representatives of some noxious class we deplore. Consciousness-raising isn’t perhaps a matter of pointing out all the instances of bad conduct we encounter, and repeating to everyone how rotten this particular brand of stupidity is. That’s the wholesale approach. But retail is where the best value is when it comes to changing minds and bad, old habits. One on one, patient and genuinely good-willed conversation with people whom we hope to uplift, to teach better, more mindful ways of acting. The real people in your real world is where you do that work And too often the web is where we undo it.
Oooohhh, bed hair. Now I wonder if I misread ages ago, misremembered now, or have confused you with another dinosaur. I agree on the bed hair, though. You will have to try harder to make me mad at you.
It has to be one of those! I faintly remember saying something about bed hair, perhaps in a post titled “I air my prejudices” or “What are the things I don’t like, I see you wondering.”
I have no problem with wet hair at all!
Hazel: This is certainly the first time anyone has ever suggested that my position is somehow higher than Dawkins. Fascinating. I’m going to write a book immediately. Imagine the sales!
No idea what you’re saying about personal scores. Prior to this I had great admiration for Dawkins.
Ophelia:
Aaah, but there’s bed hair, and then there’s hair carefully styled to look like you just got out of bed and but are so cool that you don’t even need to comb… ;-)
I’m way out on the fringe of the community and haven’t come close to reading every word on this subject. Can’t help but take the opportunity to speak my mind, though.
What bothers me about RD’s comments is what always bothers me when he talks about Muslim women. He isn’t standing up for the rights of women to be treated as persons. He is using a particular caricature of women to attack Islam. I’m all for attacking religion, but this tactic negates the women as persons, and negates the experiences of Christian, Hindu, and other women who are living in cultures that support treating women as the property of men, regardless of religion. It is ridiculous to think that all or only Muslim women must live with the dangers he lists. It is also ridiculous to think those atrocities can be treated as isolated from the cultural context that leads to a continuum of behaviors that includes stoning for adultery, preventing access to reproductive health care, and, yes, not heeding a woman’s express wish to be left alone at 4AM in a Dublin hotel.
Funnily, it also leads to members of the blogosphere not allowing a public disagreement between two adult women to play out without jumping in to make sure that one is being patronizingly protected and the other properly punished.
Also (and more in keeping with this particular thread) would rather not see so much skin in a professional setting, but, it seems to be common everywhere nowadays. Dinos unite!
Hitch: For me, the right action is to invest my money and time where I am convinced it will do the most good. It seems like I would be more effective being an atheist in organizations that advocate for women’s rights, than advocating for women’s rights in an atheist organization.
Rebecca
Grow up.
Do you really think that Dawkins is the only personal score to which I referring?
I do actually pay attention to the links…
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/getting-and-not-getting/#comment-96744
… under which I post.
Try it.
To me this whole thing is starting to look like a fight between two large and growing strawpeople.
RW makes a mild comment about behavior that most (many, some?) men consider normal and fine. I think she was honestly just trying to point out behavior that really is kinda creepy, she did not name the guy or harm his reputation or accuse him of anything. She just said “hey, please don’t do that”.
There is the whole issue with Stef, I don’t really have much of an opinion on that except to note that If someone quotes something you said, and does not take it out of context, whats the problem if you were accurately portrayed?
Dawkins posts were terrible, not because of his opinion but because its obvious he did not actually know anything about the issue and what was said on it. I don’t know what happened there, my only thought is that he was perhaps responding to some of the more “strident” posts on Pharyngula. Seems weak but no one is perfect.
On the other hand I think everyone involved has kinda earned some slack, I don’t think Dawkins has a history of misogyny (does he?). While my knowledge of Rebbecca is limited to the SGU and a few posts I have read she always seems perfectly reasonable to me. Her post to Dawkins might have been a little over the top I guess, then again Dawkins posts were so fucking stupid, I thought they had to be fake. Either way everyone is entitled to a a mistake now and then.
Ok, who is Rebecca supposed to have a personal score with? You really aren’t being entirely clear, Hazel. Abbie Smith? I haven’t seen where Rebecca’s said anything about her, so perhaps you could provide a link?
Hazel: sorry, didn’t realize you were an asshole. Yikes! I’ll focus on more productive conversations.
MyaR
I was talking about McGraw.
Rebecca
“Arsehole” not “asshole” please – you are talking to a privileged Brit here.
We must all remember to considerately target our conversation and language to the person to whom we are speaking.
Seriously though, I am always happy to engage in productive conversations – it is a pity that you are currently too full of yourself to actually listen to what I have to say.
I am now, also, off to focus on more productive conversations.
Rebecca, I can perfectly comprehend your refusal to recommend his books or attend his lectures; is that unconditional? In my opinion (obviously shared by many) Dawkins is almost completely tone deaf on feminism, and a book or lecture by him on anything touching on feminism would not be worth reading or hearing at all – unlike his area of expertise, evolutionary biology. I’m a fan of your stance generally, and my admiration for him has been blunted also, but I’m not willing to shun him entirely.
I’m holding out the hope that Dawkins’ current silence is because he realises he has made a colossal blunder with his comments, and that he will offer a contrite apology. The longer he holds out on that, I suppose is more of an insult.
I think there is some chance the letter writing campaign may help – but at Pharyngula, despite many people (myself included) writing reasoned rebuttals that did use the word “fuck” in every sentence, there is no evidence Dawkins has shown any interest in reading what the commentariat has to say. That’s disappointing too. (At PZ’s the S/N ratio was low, naturally, thanks to the immense amount of trolling and the angry and impassioned reactions to that.)
I’m also hoping that this furore may result in someone (PZ, Blaghag? Maybe even Lalla) being able to twist his ear (at TAM say), and give him the bit of “consciousness-raising” that he says he imbibed from the feminists (in discussing non-gender specific language in The God Delusion) but has been totally absent in many of his public utterances – not just this most recent mistake.
I’ve just read Stef’s post again with a view to posting about it (oh god no) myself but fortunately I thought better of it (oh thank you jeezis) because I can’t possibly have anything new to say. But I think it does misrepresent the incident somewhat, by omission, and I also think it’s glibly dismissive (“merely”?), and overkill given that all Rebecca said was, “Guys, don’t do that.”
And we’ve heard from a lot of people who were there when Stef was mentioned and don’t think it was a big deal or humiliating. And the way I have all along understood Rebecca’s point about the ten thousand readers was not as an arrogant “I can crush you” but as pointing out that a blog post would have been worse in terms of publicity than a talk to 100 people. Her point was (I think) that it wasn’t more harsh to mention Stef at her talk but less so: 100 people as opposed to 10 thousand.
And Stef is an adult. So no…I don’t think I’ve given her short shrift.
Since we’re copying links, here’s mine, which in part comments on Russell Blackford’s point (which was Hazel’s link in #84). In my opinion, Russell is possibly pre-judging Rebecca based on what? – Twitter comments or blog summaries or other hearsay, rather than on the actual content of the CFI lecture which will hopefully be on YouTube soon.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/getting-and-not-getting/#comment-96825
Ophelia, in for a penny, in for a pound. Let’s have that post. You haven’t offended me yet, so have at it!
There is something similar about the reactions on both sides. The pro-Watson side is saying that Elevator Guy was being socially awkward when he did what he did and that it was symptomatic of the underlying sexism that runs throughout the atheist community and that it would be better for all if guys realized that and stopped doing it. The pro-Elevator-Guy side is trying to spin it as if it were Rebecca Watson who was being socially awkward: if only she had better social skills then she could have laughed off the idea of going to this guy’s room for coffee AND would not have used her bully pulpit to confront Stef McGraw AND would not have started this flame war against Richard Dawkins AND would have worn a more appropriate outfit during her talk.
As I said yesterday, we should focus on the common enemy, me!
I’m the peoples front of Judea!
The whole pro-X anti-Y thing is so wrong-headed I cannot even say. Can tribalism, campism, cliquism, favoritism, nepotism etc etc please just disappear into the nexus that is the past, thank you. This is a skeptic community not junior high.
Can we talk about issues and not who is for and against a person or personality whole-sale?
Brian – really – I don’t have anything to add. I stopped because I realized I was typing “4 a.m.” yet again and I just couldn’t stand it.
If you’re bored you could go look up this guy “Justicar” who is everywhere, and who calls RW Rebecca Watson on Miranda’s blog but Rebecca Twatson on his own.
Now why would anyone think any of this had anything to do with sexism???
Not really bored. Just being silly. This has heaps to do with sexism. What I’ve found odd is that a lot of women seem to have said it’s not sexist or at least that Dawkins didn’t do anything wrong or something or some such or shit I don’t know. I do know that I’m a tad dissapointed with some folks, not you Ophelia, who I thought would’ve acted differently. But perhaps they’re acting correctly, and I’ve got the wrong end of the pineapple?
Does anybody know how to set up one of those free internet polls? We could run one with the question, “would you prefer to move on to new issues, or keep hammering this one to death?”
Aratina,
Some of us think the actions (before the shit-storm) of EG, RW and RD were insanely trivial and had nothing to do with sexism, patriarchy or “silencing”.
I can’t keep up but I really don’t remember seeing even the most vociferous Watson critic say anything about what she is or isn’t allowed to wear. But everything possible has been said so maybe it’s out there.
This whole issue is no longer even about Rebecca Watson or what she said, its about the response to what she said.
Her video was harmless, I can’t believe people people even commented on it. The response to the video was simply astounding though.
honestly if you posted on the matter without even watching the video in question or knopwing what was said you may want to examine your personal biases, because they are fucked.
Hmmm, when one’s allies are calling your opposition sexist epithets, one might want to rethink one’s position. Not that I think anyone but the epithet-user is responsible for the action, just that it might be, y’know, a signal.
Quite.
Hey Adam, you forgot to say what your wife thinks.
Ophelia, I’ve actually spent the last half hour dipping into Justicar’s Youtube channel (username: integralmath) and it’s extremely offensive on a number of grounds which I won’t discuss. The main one is that he never addresses the actual points of his targets but sets fire to the strawman (uhh, strawperson) versions of the arguments he is attacking; he continually over-emphasises his contrariness by asserting a belief that is not actually held by his opponents (like, “but what would I know, I’m only a man which by feminist definition means I’m a rapist…” – not an exact quote but a commonly employed trope in his writing as well), and his language is deliberately crude and incendiary. He is not interested in a dialogue: he doesn’t listen to women’s points of view if they don’t reinforce his point of view and he loves the sound of his own voice. In short, the channel is a masterful demonstration of how one can be an intelligent gay male and also a despicable misogynist.
Bed hair? I guess it’s good that I started to get bold when I turned 18, then. I’m only sad I never sported a pink Iroquois (I hope this is translated correctly?), though. I miss being able to have something like a hair cut.
I just point out that I’m annoyed if men are wearing shorts in pubs. Grow up and wear pants, damn it. (Or skirts. hey, I’m part-time goth) Oh yeah, and gitofmalawn. ;-)
@Rebecca Watson – well, I was appalled at RD’s comments at Pharyngula, but I don’t think it’s very useful to publish letters containing, e.g.:
Racist? For using the proper term “muslima”? Seriously?
For fairness, I should add that I was quite selective in my browsing of http://www.youtube.com/user/integralmath by looking to the titles which addressed this ongoing “Rebeccapocolypse” (Greg Laden’s term?) and it’s quite possible that there were other examples of Justicar/Johnathan arguing in good faith to be found. It’s just that none of those I looked at were even close to attempting good faith.
Philip, yes, I read a little and it was bad stuff.
From what I’ve seen from Justicar at various places, I don’t want to associate with him.
Ophelia,
and many thanks for keeping B&W an oasis of sanity (or a “clear-thinking oasis” to steal the RD.net subtitle?) by comparison with the blog commentary of other places. I won’t deny it has been somewhat tense here, but not incendiary in the way other blogs have been, and I think you should be highly pleased with that! (Don’t give in and write what others want to you write, though. And thank Baal you gave up typing after having to type “4 a.m.” again.)
MyaR
“Hmmm, when one’s allies are calling your opposition sexist epithets, one might want to rethink one’s position”
I’m sorry, but I prefer to form my positions myself using my own thoughts and the evidence at hand, not what some people who might loosely agree with me have to say about it.
Aratina,
In these threads, I think the only person who mentioned Watson’s outfits was Ophelia, and I don’t think she’s actually on any side in this.
So, what’s up with Stedman and Co.? :p
I think the deal with RD, is that he was going for a sort of macro-feminism, where there’s a concern that pounding the table on little issues will turn off people in terms of supporting your larger issues, at least that’s the way I read it. I think it’s wrong, of course, I consider myself a micro-feminist (You can’t have the big issues fixed without fixing the little issues first), but I don’t think it’s at a shunning level of wrongness.
And of course, everybody gets hostile and defensive as in reality this stuff is very serious (no sarcasm) and has severe real world repercussions way beyond a clumsy pick-up line at 4 in the morning.
In short, everybody is right and everybody is wrong. (Except the people who use this to attack feminism as a whole. They’re outright wrong)
Just to be clear, when people are talking about allies using sexist epithets, are they referring to Justicar or Abbie?
Thanks Philip.
I won’t. But if someone sensible points out something, I might take a second or third look, and/or decide to mention things I had only thought before. This probably leads to the result you mention.
Salty – well I was thinking of Justicar when I replied, but I’ve thought of Abbie on earlier occasions (like yesterday). I noted that earlier today you quoted her calling someone a cunt. Epithets are the main reason I’ve never followed her blog. Yes: I seriously object to sexist epithets; they’re a deal-breaker. I’m kind of hoping Miranda won’t want a commenter who calls Rebecca “Rebecca Twatson.”
SC, I’m referring to both, myself. As in, if your so-called allies are using those tactics, but the opposition’s allies aren’t, you might want to step back and examine your own biases and motivations, as well as the epithet-flinger’s. And I haven’t seen any of that sort of thing from Watson’s supporters. I could have missed it, of course — hundreds of thousands of words have been thrown up around the intertubes.
Mya:Some people would see accusations of being privileged or sexist or even an asshole as an epithet all of its own. I disagree with that. But it’s really a YMMV
I don’t know much about Muslim culture (though I really, really should) and I’m not familiar with the situation in Europe with Muslim immigrants. But I think the vaguely was meant as a qualifier, in that the writer didn’t think it racist but still poorly chosen because of possible racial undertones. It may have sounded to the writer as something akin to Negro. Generally talking bout people or addressing them by their race/religion can be seen as carrying racist undertones.
Ophelia- 1) he hasn’t used that term on my blog. 2) I pointed out to him that I wouldn’t tolerate it if he did, but that what he says on his own site is none of my business 3) I would hope that you wouldn’t want commenters who throw around “gender traitor” or who make death threats. But that’s really none of my business.
Yeah, well, Miranda says it’s none of her business if Justicar calls RW “Twatson” as long as it’s not on her blog. Hmph.
Yeah, Miranda, I don’t see “gender traitor” as being in the same league as twat. Sorry.
Oh, just…ghghghgdjghkldj. Shuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuuuuuup.
Stop typing this stupidity. Stop it. I can’t take any more.
Adam, I just threw that one on at the end for a little snarky humor as it has been discussed on this thread.
Oh and the death threat (not intended as a real threat) was while I was not here, and I made a stink about it as soon as I was aware of it. So I don’t want commenters who make death threats…which I thought you already knew.
That’s silly. Telling someone they are privileged isn’t condemning or trying to insult them. It’s point out how they enjoy privilege in a certain society.
If you’re throwing around sexist and derogatory remarks you can’t very well complain about being called sexist. And being told you’re using sexist arguments or have been influenced by sexist thinking is just that. It’s pointing out an aspect of your argument/thinking that (at least in your critic’s mind) needs work.
And, as a rule, don’t be an asshole if you don’t want to be treated like one. I acted like one on Ms Hale’s blog and got banned for it. Sorta how it’s supposed to work.
“Muslima” is pretty much not used in the US, at least that I’ve heard, and I live in an area with a substantial Muslim population. So it seems to feel vaguely racist to some.
I’m leaving. Everybody behave. No death threats, no epithets. This means you.
Muslima is the standard word for a female muslim as used in the muslim community and in fact is considered a respectful way to address a female muslim. I use it when I converse with my muslim friends. The fact that this may be unfamiliar to some does in no way indicate it’s racist, and frankly given that Richard has had plenty of contact and discourse with muslims I’m sure he is aware what the meaning of the word is. And yes it is used plenty in the US muslim community.
No worries. I’m out of Rarebreed.
On Abbie’s blog, Sven has now been called a (IIRC) “dogma-bound ideological radfem.” Sven. And I’ve now been called a “rapist-in-waiting.” No, I’m not joking. Several more sexist epithets. And Pete Rooke. It’s almost a parody.
Never said I agreed with it. And I agree that genderized insults are horrible but in a entirely different fashion (you’re saying that the gender is bad). And yeah, privileged is a horrible example. But I DO disagree with Ophelia. I do think that “Gender Traitor” is an awful epithet, on par with genderized insults.
Miranda – come on. “Go die in a fire” was tasteless and raw, to be sure, but you know it wasn’t a death threat. Please don’t do this. There’s enough to disagree over genuinely without taking obvious rhetorical hyperbole as a serious threat of murder.
OMG, SC. Astonishing.
Is Pete Rooke really there? Did he bring his knee roll?
Ah, thanks Hitch. The people I know personally are ex-Muslim, so I didn’t know that. I should’ve said what I’m on firmer ground with — it’s not really used in American popular culture.
And I think that’s been one problem (from every which perspective, although more from some) — people talking too much before they do some research. and a lotta Dunning-Kruger.
Well, I’m going to kill that fucking egregious strawman I erected! Die skuzbucket, die!
(Clearly, I need to go find out who Pete Rooke is, though I can guess. And, ew, SC. Morbid curiosity will probably now draw me back there. It’s just so icky.)
*snort*
The capitals make it even funnier.
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/07/bad_form_rebecca_watson.php#comment-4357317
Wait till you read. And see #158.
Mya, I present you with Pete Rooke, my favorite troll of all time from Pharyngula.
You can never erase knee roll from your memory.
Wait, do people think he’s for real?
And, oh god, student groups are contacting Abbie as an “alternative female role model”? Aaaaack!
@SC – Oh, Rooke! “The two are not even married!” I love it. Love it.
Yeah,#158, real nice. Real, real nice.
Um, yeah Mya, I think he is real. I know, I know, Poe’s law.
@SC – Knee roll is unforgettable. I just love it. So. </Jon A. Davison>
It’s all very sketchy. For a long time, my theory was that it had to be performance art or an experiment of some sort.
But it could be real. It’s brilliant in any event. Just immensely entertaining.
What this whole thing has reminded me of is the old truism that one is bound to be disappointed in the writers you admire when one meets them, or even just gets a good look of the personages behind the pen. Quite tangental to the crux of the issue, I admit.And tangental is as close as I want to come to this shitstorm. I have enough to deal with in Real Life right now.
Yes, someone by the handle ‘Peter Rook’ is posting on my blog.
There is no censorship on ERV (Kwok is the only person banned, ever), nor has he done anything on my blog to warrant that.
No death threats. Nothing illegal. Those are the rules at my place since Day One.
However if one was on my blog, talking about drama on another blog, on a post not about said blog or drama, I would certainly get annoyed. Sorry for the spillover, Ophelia.
Ms Watson, I cant help but notice you too seem to have trouble posting at my blog. I assure I disagree with you more than Ophelia does :) I mean, *you* knew Richard Dawkins had been molested as a child, right? And yet, you are continuing with this ‘you dont get it’ charade? About how you think he doesnt ‘get’ what it feels like to be sexually assaulted because he is a ‘wealthy old heterosexual white man’… even though he has been sexually assaulted. Id like to hear the reasoning behind that decision. And of course, by ‘reasoning’ I mean ‘YouTube comments’.
Regarding ‘Muslima’, I took it as merely a fictional, generic-Muslim name of the woman he was pretending to address. And ‘Muslim’ isn’t a race, so how can it be racist?
Wait, Dawkins being molested as a child means he totally gets anything related to gender relations? That’s totally not the argument I thought was being made. It’s completely asinine.
And I don’t think anyone was asking you to ban Rooke. He doesn’t make constant appearances, it seems, so it’s exciting when he appears.
Oh my. The Watson/Dawkins affair has reached the blogs of the Atlantic, the New Statesman, and more, and Dawkins is taking a drubbing (the New Statesman’s column, natch, isn’t fair – it’s mainly used to grind the columnist’s axe against Dawkins’s gnu atheism). This comment on Pharyngula has links.
It seems clear Dawkins is going to have to respond. Will he admit his comments were ill-judged, or will he retrench defensively? Tune in for the next episode of As the Elevator Falls.
WTF? Again, “Muslima” is the proper – even politically correct term – to refer to female adherents of Islam. And I see that vaguely just to be a cop out, because the writer later – in the comments – admitted to having been ignorant about the term.
And I’d call it Islamic culture. Muslim(a) refers to persons.
Wait, what? If I address Christians as Christians or Hindus as Hindus I might carry racist undertones? Seriously?
*I* did. I’ve read his writing. As previously implied.
Did I spoil your cynical and ridiculous “Gotcha!”? So sorry.
How about this for the Skepchick “Campaign”
Dear Richard,Please write more about evolution and less about gender/sexual politics.Kind Regards,Steven
Lost control, get ahold of yourself! (I’m sorry, I couldnt help myself.) I don’t think anyone is defending the perception of it as racist((I hope I didn’t give that impression) but as an explanation, not defense, of the letter-writer. As this whole kerfuffle has shown, there’s a lot of muddled thinking around sexism and all the other isms.
Karmakin, don’t, no. Let’s hope he stays busy with posting about his tattoos.
Then it wasn’t a copout. They saw something that seemed kinda racist to them so they referred to it as kinda racist.
If you began your letter hey Hindu or hey Muslim, you couldn’t fault someone’s ears for pricking up.
Just read the back-n-forth on ERV with SC. I’m sorry, but Abbie just comes across as a teenager gleefully flinging shit left, right, and center.
The New Statesman piece, yes…
Doesn’t this show the silliness of notions of a “public intellectual” – a sort of all-purpose commentator. I mean, Hitchens’ views on Iraq (I use him as an example because he crops up above) are especially relevant ‘cos he’s an opinion columnist. That’s what he does. If Dawkins’ view of this affair colours his reputation – which, however one perceives it, is founded on entirely unrelated work – it suggests that our perceptions of the man were always curious.
(Unless it means as an all-purpose “rationalists”, which is odd as “rationalists” should be quite of aware of how irrational people – all people – are. Including “rationalists”!)
*
What’s this? No.
I know, SC. This entire affair has exposed a shocking pandemic of anencephaly among people you’d never suspect of being so afflicted. Seriously.
Totally screwed up my link to the the Pharyngula comment above. Mea culpa:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/in_case_youve_been_trying_to_s.php#comment-4359874
Who writes this rubbish?
Why, David Allen Green, legal correspondent for The New Statesmen, of course! You know, that liberal and progressive publication. Err. . .
It must be time to start explicitly negotiating the terms of a truce. I’ll start.
Term 1: Men attending atheist conferences will sign a pledge not to treat it as a singles retreat.
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – I signed up to sail the sea. Whales I heard. Big, White, and full of power, the male you know. Some fell, some wounded but the scars of the captain told the story of his personal vengeance. We hunt and shoot the whale not for what it is, but what we make out to be, what we see and project on it, our fears, our aspirations. But Ahab was driven. So far it has crossed us once, that that was enough to make it clear. It is our target, and we won’t relent. Too many scars received, wounds to lick and opportunities missed, if not for all the other monsters it must be this. Yes, yes! It is the monster that spoils the sea! Ignore those whalesplainers and sailor-traitors and all that ancient anti-sailor rhetoric. It has to be done!
Success! A white male privileged patriarch whale is going down! But Ahab neck got caught in the robes of the harpoon, and dragged him down into the sea. Ahab needed the whale, and it was his end.
And I only am escaped alone to tell thee. The Drama’s Done. Why then here does any one step forth? – Because one did survive the wreck.
This is doing my head in. Have now read more from around the traps, and it’s a freakin mess.
That is all.
Term 2: Elevators are a non-sexual environment. Propositions must be offered on clearly designated floors.
I enjoyed Gawker’s take:
http://gawker.com/5818993/richard-dawkins-torn-limb-from-limbby-atheists
Bite me, Gawker idiot.
You would.
Oh, that’s a riot, Ophelia. Don’t ever let it go. Sadly, she remains a “gender traitor” who thinks it’s all a tempest in a teapot.
Thank you, Brian.
Michael, do you really want to be throwing in behind that awful piece at Gawker? You know Brandon Thorp is just using this to advance his well-known anti-gnu position, right? Do you really approve of his sexualizing Rebecca in the most tasteless way in that piece, and making excuses for the “constitutionally awkward” guy (like he’d fucking know)?
Really? Are you that much of a . . . it’s only out of respect for this being Ophelia’s place that I don’t get more explicit.
Well, she married you, so her judgment is questionable at best.
Oh my, I read too quickly. Thorp is actually (really??) defending Dawkins. OK. He’s a sexist creep. I stand corrected.
I’m even more wrong than I knew. I completely confused Brandon K. Thorp with someone else, and that was stupid. Thorp is the guy who broke the George Rekers (“I only hired him to carry my luggage”) story. Don’t know how I confused him with someone else.
He’s still a sexist creep.
Wow, what a fustercluck. I’ve been staying out of this because, frankly, most of the commentators on all sides have been, well, suffering a temporary bout of raving batshit insanity.
Let’s say RW complained about, rather than elevator guy, about a someone who cut her off in their car when she was riding her bike. Same basic problem–thoughtlessness. Much greater possible consequence: death with a good chance of prolonged agony. Now, would we still be discussing this? Would anyone have thought it relevant to relay this on to others, or would a few people on her blog discussion just said, yeah, I run into this all the time on my bike, it sucks, and that would have been the end of it. She made a gripe. Bloggers do this all the time. So what?
Elevator guy was thoughtless, probably drunk, possibly on the autistic spectrum, and who knows what else. I’ve met women this clueless too. My wife and I once left a girl sitting in our living room in the dark at 2:30 in the morning while we headed to bed because she just couldn’t clue into the fact that we were tired and not up for company anymore, despite numerous declarations to that effect. But of course, we couldn’t sleep, not until we physically escorted her out and locked the door an hour later, because men do not have a monopoly on murder, we have knives in the house, and we barely knew this person.
So what is the moral of all this? Some people are clueless? Duh! Skeptic conventions have a lot of people on The Spectrum? Double Duh! Some men are clumsy when talking with women? What?
WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS?!?!
Jesus Christ. Head-desk over, and over, and over, and over, and over. Any goddamn excuse for why he didn’t do nuffink dat seriouz. Including the Aspie Excuse. Rinse, repeat.
The Aspie Excuse is the new “Maybe he’s just an old-fashioned guy who grew up in the age of chivalry.”
Josh, Brandon Thorp might be more of a Christian than a sexist creep and taking this opportunity to try and smear the atheist movement as if we are having a drawn out fight over something that isn’t important (since we all know how Christianity treats women).
Mark Fournier
Nice example. Now imagine she’d politely said to a load of car drivers, “Hey guys, don’t cut up cyclists.”
Would we be having all this fuss? Would RD have waded in saying “Pedestrians in Asia get much worse, stop whining!”?
Damn cyclists, and their wanting to be treated like they have the right to be road-users. Whiners, the lot of ’em.
Yes people are clueless, but some people simply don’t want to listen either.
I didn’t want to contribute this, but I will. [Advisory: possibly slightly triggering post]
As a young man, after a long night of drinking at the bar, on my way back after leaving the pub (and after midnight) I was the victim of an opportunistic rape by a friend as a result of being very inebriated and completely incapable of consenting to sex. I might have been able to force my way out of the situation (which is not necessarily an option for others) if I’d been a little less drunk. It was traumatic at the time but like Richard Dawkins I would say of my experience that it didn’t harm me terribly much – and I am also completely aware that what I went through bears almost no comparison at all to truly horrific cases of rape that some women and men have gone through (some of whom might be reading and commenting on this thread). Thus far, there’s a few things in common like Dawkins’ story in The God Delusion, right, so I should be in agreement with him, yes?
Being like Dawkins the victim of molestation does not mean (contra ERV) I agree with him that he should lightly shrug off what happened in Glasgow and claim it was “not even slightly bad” or “zero bad”. Watson did not accuse Elevator Guy of being a rapist – but his creepiness, and stalkeriness (ample comments provided elsewhere, go look it up) and the fact that he had manipulated the situation to ensure that he was alone in a secluded environment with her before uttering a single word would have signalled large red flags for her, and no one – NO ONE, and certainly not Richard Dawkins – has any valid justification to say that’s of no importance at all.
The common thing about these situations (like mine, like what happened to Rebecca in Ireland, and presumably what happened in the case of Dawkins’ schoolmaster with inappropriate affection towards little boys?) is that the man could not make his approach in public without also somehow coercing the by-standers to not intervene; thus, the situation has to be manipulated until the other party was alone with him. It doesn’t mean that every time a man is randomly alone with a woman in such a situation the outcome is a rape (my word, some people have run with that goddamn stupid idea); but it is a known tactic of rapists to attempt to isolate the victim before taking advantage of the seclusion and lack of escape route.
So let’s get this really clear. Was Elevator Guy a high-risk situation? Well statistically speaking, almost certainly not. But every situation is a different case, and while it was happening Rebecca would have had no inkling whether it was going to be a harmless encounter or not (and thankfully it was). She has the absolute right to say “don’t do that” and only completely insensitive douchebags would tell her to shut up about it because it’s not important. Sorry, respecting other people’s autonomy is important (and while other things might be more important you don’t get to nullify this).
Is there anyone here with Asperger’s or Something on the Autism spectrum? What’s your take on this?
Julian, this is anecdotal, but I have a friend whose son is currently undergoing tests to see if he he has autism. One of the traits that the Dr picked up on is that he’s very painfully shy. Point being, I’m pretty damn sure that he wouldn’t have acted the way EG did, as a rejection would leave him stick in a lift elevator with a person he’d just unsuccessfully hit on, and extremely embarrassed.
“stuck in an elevator”
That’ll teach me to try to edit into non-Brit English. :-)
Julian @ #181,
yes to that too (not clinically diagnosed; but anecdotally the remainder of my family are convinced I’m Aspie), and I’m not convinced at all this is Aspergers or an Autism spectrum related thing and that a major lack of empathy was at work. Besides which it’s complete speculation about intent and thus completely unknowable unless Elevator Guy comes forward (I’m guessing he won’t): contrast the creepiness/stalkeriness (which I referred to #180) as alleged by Rebecca and other conference-goers, which is a description of how the guy was perceived.
Philip, I’m sorry to hear that you are a survivor. I know how that feels. I know you gave the warning but this did trigger me.
You know that this really makes me upset. Most people don’t give a rats ass about a male survivor. Our fears are ignored and dismissible. I think it would be great if people did respect other’s autonomy. But you know what. Following this shit-storm lots of people in all camps/cliques have no interest in respecting other people, their autonomy, their fears, their concerns. It’s ideolotical/political hackery with lots of heartlessness all around. Going recklessly after those we have a disagreement, totally fair game. But you know what, that’s actually inconsiderate and abusive. It’s disrespecting the other and ignoring their condition.
For example it is still totally acceptable to be dismissive about “shy and lonely guys”. Forget about asking for sympathy or sensitivity. And forget about open dialogue about all the experience that are on the table. “Respecting autonomy”… sigh. Yeah sorry. I’m not taking this well.
Not just shy and lonely guys, but shy and lonely guys who went and asked a total stranger to go to their hotel rooms late at night while riding in an elevator alone with the woman. Isn’t that like being dismissive of drunk drivers? Do we really need to show sympathy and sensitivity for their hurt widdle feelings after they’ve done something like that?
Hitch,
my sympathy to you as well, and my apologies for triggering. Maybe I should have used bold on the warning now that I’m getting familiar with commenting here rather than lurking. I think it’s probably best if I sit silent in response to what you raised, because I too think the shit-storm would make an honest and civil discussion in good faith impossible at present.
Regards, Philip
Aratina, don’t talk about contexts you don’t understand. I’m talking about me and how my attempts to discuss my own context was received on this very blog. Granted I didn’t talk about my history, but frankly it shouldn’t matter. But yes, you do make my point. We shy and lonely guys are dismissible and our condition will be twisted to fit whatever political narrative is on the table. I don’t appreciate it. So please don’t do it, thank you.
(Who knows if ElevatorGuy was shy or lonely. It’s quite irrelevant to me. It apologizes nothing about his behavior or choices.)
I know! Maybe they’re recovering alcoholics. Maybe they’re lives are so bad they can’t help but drink. Did you think of that before you criticized someone for engaging in clearly and obviously wrong behavior?
Our condition?
What about loud and obnoxiously flamboyant?
Philip, not your fault. Not mine either. Frankly it’s the world that hasn’t yet learned to actually by sympathetic that is the problem. But one won’t be changing the world in a moment.
Julian, if loud, obnoxiously flamboyant is your condition, then you better speak to that. I won’t be able to say much I fear.
Go to hell.
@Hitch
Sadly I am neither. I’m just asking what makes shy and lonely so pitiable once we enter the adult world. In grade school it was protecting the individual from undue scorn, ridicule and harm. I don’t see what the goal would be in the adult world.
Sorry, I didn’t know you were discussing yourself at all with respect to shy and lonely guys. You made no mention of that aspect of your post.
No, look, I understand how I misunderstood you because you tried to not make #185 personal and distanced it. OK, I get it now.
I really do think I know where you are coming from. But just because someone is shy and lonely doesn’t mean that anything they feel compelled to do out of fear of rejection or whatever is OK. It shouldn’t be too hard for shy and lonely guys to listen and learn following this elevator incident, and who knows, maybe a really horrible thing can be avoided because of it.
I’m just saying. I have a LOT of sympathy for alcoholics. LOTS! Some of them I love dearly. That doesn’t mean the whole world is at fault when they get into a vehicle and drive while drunk. No, it is their fault. Really, it is. The lucky ones get to wherever they are going alive without causing any accidents or deaths. It’s dangerous. They shouldn’t do it.
I think we actually agree then, don’t we?
I leave the Internets alone for a few days and all hell breaks loose. Clearly all these times I’ve been indulging my SIWOTI Syndrome I’ve been having some salutary effect.*
I can’t possibly keep up with what must be an entire book’s worth of blog posts and comments on the topic, but I think I have a couple cents to throw in. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed, something a number of comments, including Dawkins’ “Muslima” letter, and in this thread Kenny’s (#48) and Mark Fournier’s (#175) share in common (with widely varying levels of dismissiveness and assholery). The pattern is that their comments seem to be based on the following mistaken chain of reasoning:
1. Rebecca Watson made a complaint about a guy in an elevator making her feel unsafe.
2. The Blagusfear has been in a tizzy about it.
3. Therefore Rebecca Watson is making way too much of an ultimately harmless non-incident with said Elevator Guy.
Hence we see Kenny showing his true colors and denying the validity of Watson’s experience, Dawkins hyperbolically saying it was “zero bad”, and Mark Fournier wondering what one bad experience with Elevator Guy has to do with anything. The problem of course is that Watson wasn’t making that big a deal about it–making the comparison to female genital mutilation irrelevant– but was making a big deal about problems with sexism within the atheism/skepticism crowd. PZ’s final explanation to Dawkins said it best: it’s not about Elevator Guy per se, it’s about Watson being so heavily criticized for talking about Elevator Guy’s [creepy/thoughtless/mean-spirited/ignorant] actions in the context of criticizing sexism.
Maybe I’m hopelessly mistaken and not assessing the situation properly, but I think I’m seeing something that hasn’t quite been mentioned explicitly so I thought I’d throw it out there.
Relating this to the OP, I don’t approve of Dawkins’ dismissal of Watson’s complaint about Elevator Guy, and critique on those grounds is entirely fair, but I also think he’s earned better than being boycotted for basing his comment on what seems to me to be a misappraisal of what was going on. This of course is not to say the implied assumption is always a misapprehension: in some cases the dismissal of the whole affair as Watson quailing at every man she sees is pretty clearly more about the person making such accusations than about Watson.
*standard Internets facetiousness disclosure.
[…] Banson at Butterflies and Wheels reports: I think Richard was wrong about this, but not insanely outrageously save the beer and the cats […]
Oh, for feck’s sake, will all you people please go and do something useful with your time and energy?
Is this really what anybody wants to be doing? Indulging in an ever-proliferating round of shitstorms based on ONE mild remark about ONE incident?
Narcissism will kill us all, you know.
See the next thread entitled La la la la la.
I really debated about whether or not to repost on this site, but I felt that I needed to state that on many points of this debate, I was wrong. I hope that I will be heard out rather than dismissed, so here goes:
1) On the original incident, Ms. Watson (RW) really did not make a big deal about it. I’ve rewatched her video, and it seems that she is simply stating , for future reference, men should not make women feel uncomfortable in that way. She does not call EG a potential rapist or say that she felt the threat of rape, so I apologize about anything that I may have said about RW.
2) On comments about RW: I was extremely shocked and often disgusted to see what many people had posted about the incident, both on RW’s own site and particularly on YouTube. Quite a few people stated that she “needed a good raping” and other such garbage. It’s scary that, in this day and age, so many people think that way. The Internet has brought good and bad into our lives, and its promise of anonymity allows many to release their “demons” of racism, sexism, etc. in ways they never would in everyday life.
3) On Dawkins’ comments: I love Professor Dawkins and will continue to buy his books and listen to his conferences. I see RW’s point; he should had expressed himself in a more diplomatic manner and not seemed so patronizing. Plenty of horrific rapes do take place in the Western world and victims shouldn’t have to compete in a “who had it worse” contest. As a victim of sexual abuse himself, Dawkins should had been more sensitive. However, I believe the horrible insults bestowed upon him really were over the top and were abusive. He strikes me as old fashioned but not sexist. I believe (and this is simply my take on it; I’m not claiming to read his thoughts) that his sarcasm had much more to do with the people responding to RW and not RW herself.
4) On EG: yes, when someone asks you back to his hotel room, he is asking for sex. Just about everyone knows this, and if he actually wanted to chat, he should had asked her for a coffee the next day in the lobby cafe. That’s what the proper thing would had been to do. To take the “strategy” of not having said a word to the woman and then, right after “Hi,” asking her to your room for sex is doomed to almost 100% failure. Very few women will go for that (not to judge the ones who do). As Jerry Seinfeld said, “People don’t just bump into each other and have sex. This isn’t Cinemax.” Cold calling is almost never a wise thing to do, and especially not after having heard a lecture on how objectification turns the woman in question off.
5) On men: I still don’t agree with Schrodinger’s Rapist and treating all men as potential rapists. I would feel pretty cruel and over entitled if men began to cross the street because I was walking down it. However, some people have suggested that self defense techniques are all a woman needs to protect herself from a rape. Sadly, no. When one is attacked, he/she often goes into a state of shock in which staying alive takes priority over not being raped. The number of rapes which occur in the military between fellow officers (which includes victims of both genders) shows that even the most highly trained people in the world often cannot defend themselves against an attack. Sadly, like most women, I don’t go to many places alone and never go out late for exactly this reason. The only way most of us can truly defend ourselves against rape is to not put ourselves in situations in which it’s possible.
6) On my “trolling”: Honestly, it wasn’t my intention and I apologize if that was how my posts were perceived. I did grow up in a more traditional household and have never become fully accustomed to “salty language.” It was very frustrating to have any ideas which I presented dismissed because I was considered a “tone troll.” As for the “DuBois,” my husband is French Canadien, so it is not an homage to Tennessee Williams.
I hope that clarifies a few things about my stance and I know that this will be edited down, but I hope that some portion will be read instead of out right deletion. I have enjoyed reading this blog for over a year and have been exposed to many fantastic stories and opinions which I have seen only here and not on the mainstream media sites. I think that Ms. Benson is brave for exposing the goals of the Religious Right and writes passionately about the horrors and abuses which religion and hatred has brought into the world. My hope on this matter (and I think that most people share it), is that this doesn’t cause a schism in the atheist/rationalist community. There are going to be issues which strike some as being more important than others, and that’s great. We can have different points of view without resorting to dehumanizing each other, non? Anyway, thank you for reading and again, my apologies for offense or any unintentional trolling.
Jenna, thank you for being able to reexamine your position and for being brave enough to come back here. I can only speak for myself, but I had been reading hundreds of comments on other blogs, including some of the awful ones you mention, and I was feeling very testy and suspicious. I apologize for the name-calling.
Regarding the Aspie defense, can I just say that it’s utterly irrelevant whether EG was drunk, shy, confused, had Asperger’s, lobotomy etc.? It’s irrelevant because so many people (men and women) consider his behavior completely acceptable *regardless* of whether he suffered from any of those conditions. They think it’s acceptable for a sober, grown up, mentally stable etc. man to do what EG did, and that’s what the debate is all about. If you can’t see that, you clearly haven’t been paying attention.
No problem, Stacy. I think this whole debacle really turned up the tempers. I was very surprised at the threats and lewd comments Ms. Watson has received. I’m shocked that kind of treatment is legal. Perhaps it was naive of me, but I honestly thought that we had moved beyond such behaviour. Oh, well, I guess this is one more thing to fight against, as if theocracy and the destruction of the environment weren’t enough. Thanks for reading, Stacy.
Oh, and another thing. Saying “I wish you were dead” is as much a death threat as saying “I wish you were rich” is a money offer.
Tea,
Everyone who uses the ASD “defense” is explicitly saying that it isn’t perfectly okay to do that, since they’re tying it to a disorder that contributes to people making socially clueless moves. What they’re saying, though, is that that social cluelessness does not, in fact, indicate that EG didn’t respect her as an entire person, treated her only as a sexual object, or that being treated only as a sexual object isn’t okay in some circumstances (probably not that one).
Why is it so hard for people to understand that you can think that Watson’s discomfort was reasonable and that this was a bad way to approach her while at the same time disagreeing that this is an indication of sexual objectification and that it means anything beyond that incident?
Jenna, thanks for re-reading, re-watching, re-thinking, and coming back. No, the work is not done yet.
On Schrödinger’s Rapist, the point isn’t to treat all men as potential rapists — it’s explanatory and prescriptive for men who are nice guys and want to make sure they do not put women in uncomfortable and scary positions.
And VS, it’s so hard to understand because it is not some sort of objective fact. That is, because you are not right. You still seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle.
MyaR,
“And VS, it’s so hard to understand because it is not some sort of objective fact. That is, because you are not right. You still seem to be missing a piece of the puzzle.”
It is, in fact, a perfectly objective fact that it is possible to hold both the views that Watson was right to feel uncomfortable but that this incident doesn’t indicate sexism. That’s a fact. Now, what may be “not right” is whether this was an incident that indicating sexism. You claim I’m missing something, and I can just as easily claim that you are or that you’re reading in more than was actually there. This, then, is something we can settle, but simply saying “I’m missing something” doesn’t in any way help to settle the issue. And if you tie that disagreement to a position that requires the opposition to claim the action acceptable, that doesn’t help, either.
Verbal Stoic,
Because this is about identity politics. No matter how much we support equality or individual liberty, we (the collective identity known as ‘men’) are forced to forego our individuality into a guilt-ridden post-colonialist ‘maleness’ because the other identity ‘women’ view themselves as a collective persecuted group. This makes us (the collective identity known as ‘men’) uncomfortable because we don’t identify as men, and yet we’re forced to, and yet most of us are against persecution by actual men in positions of power. It’s a no win situation, that leads to greater and greater drama and absurdity.
Sorry, I don’t identify myself as ‘men’ and won’t be forced into playing identity politics. I am against persecution, of men, of women, of gays, of theists, of atheists, of everyone, because I’m a free individual and want others to be free too.
facepalm, over and over and over again. I am done for now, I have actual work to do.
Hi MyaR. Thanks for the welcome back and for explaining the Schrodinger’s Rapist concept a bit more. It makes much more sense as guide for what guys might want to avoid doing. As a mother of two boys near their teen years, I have already tried to impart some simple do’s and don’ts, both for the safety of the women they date and for any risk to themselves legally. In addition to reading a lot (and I do mean A LOT) of comments on various sites concerning this incident, I also asked my husband, an incredibly shy guy, if he would ever approach a woman that way late at night and in such an enclosed area. He said that a truly shy guy would be afraid that the woman would kick him in a particularly sensitive area for being that forward, so there’s a comment from the Shy Guy panel, for what’s it’s worth in this discussion.
Verbose Stoic,
OK, I’ll try to make myself clearer instead of repeating that you haven’t been paying attention: the point Dawkins and many others were making is that there’s nothing wrong with what EG did REGARDLESS of whether he had Asperger’s or not. Their point is that there’s nothing wrong with such behavior, EVEN WHEN it’s done by someone who has absolutely zero social awkwardness problems.This is why other people’s pointing out that maybe *the* EG had Asperger’s is completely irrelevant to whether *people in general* (i.e., those who do not have Asperger’s) should do what he did. And the relevant debate concerns the latter question, not the former. (Remember, it’s “GUYS, don’t do that.”, not “EG, don’t do that.”)
I think I am with Watson in that I don’t really see how the Skepchick stuff is “bullying”… I think it’s a bit over the top and maybe not seeing where the other (wrong) side is coming from — but OTOH in a situation like this where so many people are just not freaking getting it, there is value in a voice that refuses to even see the wrong side’s point of view. (After all, don’t we say the same thing about the value of “strident” atheists in changing the public conversation about religion?)
I also agree with your characterization of Dawkins’ screw-up here as wrong-but-not-insanely-outrageously-wrong. The more disappointing part is not so much the initial comment, but that he’s not really backing down at all.
Jenna,
However, speaking as another branch of the at least formerly Shy Guy panel, a lot of well-meaning advice for shy men is to simply ask a woman for coffee or something if you’re interested, since too many do get overly analytic about signs as at least an excuse to not move out of their comfort zone and approach. Things are generally a bit too complicated to say anything one way or the other.
Tea,
I called out Dawkins both here and on my blog for his dismissive attitude, expressed best in the comparison to Crackergate. But the people who are using the ASD “defense” — mostly here, which is where I’ve seen it — like myself and Russell Blackford are indeed using it to express a different point, mainly to agree with Watson that guys shouldn’t do it but to deny that it had to mean that he was not respecting her as a person or objectifying or sexualizing her. He may indeed have legitimately been that clueless, and if that’s possible the link to social objectification can’t be made.
James Sweet,
“… but OTOH in a situation like this where so many people are just not freaking getting it, there is value in a voice that refuses to even see the wrong side’s point of view.”
How does completely dismissing someone’s point of view work to convince them that their stance is wrong, except perhaps through weight of numbers and bullying?
I’m glad to see us all making so much progress. Well, one or two of us anyway. BTW, I hope Hazel doesn’t take this the wrong way, but I find her very interesting, and if we ever meet at a convention hotel I’d like to invite her up to my room for conversation and coffee. And to meet my wife, another reasonable woman.Rebecca, is safe, for I don’t find her interesting. Less so with each petulant remark.
Since no one else is saying it, I have to: What about the shy, lonely women? I used to be extremely, painfully shy and am still more on the shy side. I spent an unnecessary amount of time worrying about what other people thought of something I said or did, although I’m sure I’m the only person who remembers that incident. This interferes with my dating life and makes me lonely.
It’s not just men who are shy and (romantically) lonely. I want some sympathy as well! :-)
Re: gender traitor
It’s been pointed out that “the term…looks so similar to St*rmfr*nts idea of a “race traitor”,” which is just…ew. So I won’t be using it anymore. Until an equivalent of Uncle Tom appears, I’ll just have to content myself with describing the behavior: using and encouraging sexist epithets, attacking feminists, trivializing sexism, painting yourself as different from and better than other women, etc.
As I was just saying over at Pharyngula, this silliness over “gender traitor” being bullying and so forth reminds me of the responses to people calling out Chris Stedman for attacking those who criticized Sojourners for going along with religious homophobia. They tried to make it not about the organization’s anti-human rights actions or Stedman’s sellout attack on those critical of them, but about people having called him names and Aquaria using *gasp* swear words. It’s a transparent attempt to derail the discussion.
Which was exactly my point. It’s wrong when either side does it. Or to be specific it’s not constructive to dismiss a point of view because some other people use very aggressive language in support of it.
It’s one of my pet peeves. (Strangely enough this thread hit another one of my big pet peeves, the idea that someone should be dressed up in order to be taken seriously. Drives me insane)
Let me just make clear, that I think that people in general should have much more empathy (and probably much less confidence) about the effect of their approaching a stranger has on the other person, and in most cases, simply not do it.
SC, ew, ew, ew, ew. And thank you for passing that on. Ew.
Your point is on the top of your tiny head, Karmakin.
Replying before having read or skimmed quite all of the almost 100 new (to me) comments, which is probably a mistake, but this –
Why? Why are you talking about you?
Why do people so damn often talk about me when the subject is someone or something else?
[From one of the comments from yesterday, I think that may have been the root of Richard’s beef with Rebecca – but given that all we have is a huh???? outburst-comment at Pharyngula and then some incomplete follow-up, he did a crappy job of registering that beef, if that is what his beef is.]
“I’m talking about me and how my attempts to discuss my own context was received on this very blog.” Just classic.
Hey Jenna. Thanks for coming back. Sorry I was harsh…I think the use of “ladies” felt like mockery, and I got irritable. I get irritable very easily.
Dave – yes, I’m planning to. Meanwhile just think of it as a form of Higher Gossip, and avert your gaze with a weary but forgiving smile.
“Is there anyone here with Asperger’s or Something on the Autism spectrum? What’s your take on this?”
Its annoying, especially since most commenters on asd disorders are usually clueless about what actual people with ASD act like, and seem to be relying on what they have seen in television dramas.
You can say the incident in the elevator was not sexist, you can even make a reasonable case that it was harmless I suppose, but the thousands of posts in response to RWs innocuous video clearly show there IS an issue.
I distinctly remember your response David because it was the third response on the first thread on this issue and hence one of the very first comments I read on this crazy issue. You were very quick off the bat to say :
I don’t man in this day and age can be so clueless as to not know how inappropriate that encounter was, I have autism and completely lack social skills and tact, yet I still know better than to approach a woman like that, at 4am in a hotel.
Thereafter, the thousands of excuse making posts involving autism sounded pretty hollow to me.
Apologies in advance for a lengthy quote, and for revisiting a comment that is now (less than 24 hours later!) merely 67/214 (or worse by the time I finish writing it). The quote is to show the parallels in my response:
I’ve been staying out of this conflict due to fear of being misunderstood and being maligned due to such misunderstandings. I hope anyone reading this asks for clarification if they think I’m doing something wrong or evil–but it’s the internet and I have no control over that. Oh well. The above quoted post was too perfect a contrast to my own opinion to pass up. Here goes:
Having read thousands of comments at the various blogs [and watching at least 4 videos, as well as Stef McGraw’s initial blog post, as well as this excellent early summary: http://malimar.livejournal.com/412658.html ], here’s my take.
I am pretty much [not] with RW. I found [McGraw’s and stclairose’s] criticism of RW [cogent, well-spoken, well-articulated, and respectful of RW]. I [did] think that it was a big deal [to SM and to the audience at the talk] to call out SM at that conference [because of the imbalance of power, but especially because RW’s response was not to the content of SM’s critique, but to SM herself, i.e. ad hom (she said Stef was “parroting misogynistic thought”) and apparent guilt-by-association when she juxtaposed SM’s harmless critique with more reprehensible sexual comments from others whom she did not name]. [If you read SM’s critique, which again was well-spoken and could easily have been dealt with as a mere difference of opinion to be debated over, you will be hard-pressed to identify anything worthy of the smear tactics RW used: http://www.unifreethought.com/2011/06/fursdays-wif-stef-32.html ] But [when RW made a post on her blog, again repeating an ad hom attack on SM, saying “I hear a lot of misogyny from skeptics and atheists, but when ancient anti-woman rhetoric like the above is repeated verbatim by a young woman online, it validates that misogyny in a way that goes above and beyond the validation those men get from one another.”] that was the point where the shitstorm kicked off from. I got a sense of a rather personalised and petty and defensive campaign [by] RW [against] those aggrieved by the [real] attack on SM. [Abbie] Smith at ERV was a particularly [interesting critic, considering she had experienced a nearly identical ambush by creationist Casey Luskin at a talk at which Abbie was in attendance] – and since Miranda Hale was cheering her on, I totally [do not] understand SC and Julian’s exasperation at those two.
[It’s too bad about PZ and his Hordes, most of whom I suspect have not looked as deeply at the origins of this conflict to see the spin that RW has put on the whole thing — and this is EXACTLY why what she has done to SM is so irresponsible, and, frankly, unethical. The general public at large hear the distorted message, dismiss reasonable critiques as coming from “young”, “dismissive”, and “uneducated” people, while the targets of these smears are unable to counter such a widespread mischaracterization by what is essentially the good ol’ rumour mill.] Dawkins [took a risky stance, again not unjustified, but probably not worded clearly enough to get his essential message across, especially in an atmosphere already pre-disposed to mis-interpretation. As a result, he was mis-interpreted, and has] plunged in [some people’s] estimation. [This is comparable to the situation with the ‘brights’, where, while I do consider myself a ‘bright’ by the definition put forth by Paul and Mynga, I choose not to use that word to communicate my metaphysical position because it is too easily misunderstood as saying something it is not intended to say. As a result, those prone to ‘mind-reading’ others’ intentions will] be watching that particular ‘bright’ with beady eyes henceforth.
Joshua and Improbable Joe are really my kind of men – [but unfortunately appear to my eyes to have been caught up in the overall misunderstanding of the origins of this kerfuffle. I could be wrong, of course, and I’m open to being corrected, but I wonder if they have read SM’s original blog post, watched stclairose’s original video, read malimar’s original summarization of events, and then compared that relatively even-tempered commentary and/or critique with RW’s rather dishonest representation of those events. This all should have been a simple difference of opinion, but in my opinion, RW was driven to turn this into drama and to shift focus away from her irresponsible behaviour and many people (such as Richard Dawkins) have subsequently misunderstood this whole kerfuffle to be about Elevator Guy, when it is not.] Even [R]ussell [B]lackford came out with that aspie defence, [which is not that implausible to me, along with several other relatively plausible alternative hypotheses, such that it is not unreasonable for people like SM and stclairose to bring this up as a valid topic of debate without being smeared as being supporters (“validators”) of “misogyny” for doing so. But unfortunately, such reasonable differences of opinion have been turned into Us vs. Them loyalty tests, and it’s considered ‘misogyny’ just for bringing them up in the first place,] so that was disappointing to read.
Ophelia, all the years I’ve been reading you, you’ve been a big hero of mine. [And] that comment about RW’s singlet is just [another sign of how awesome you are for thinking for yourself even in the face of intense social pressure to put on a ‘pro-feminist’ face]. It’d be interesting to know where [your doubts about RW’s tactics] originated.
[And that’s the last thing mirax commented on.]
I consider myself extremely on the side of the primary principles of feminism, which I interpret as: 1) Equal rights, dignity, and respect for all people, regardless of gender, race, or any other incidental characteristic which would be fundamentally unfair to discriminate over. 2) Correcting the imbalance of power that women in particular experience in society.
I do not hold (2) to be an exclusive program. I would also be interested in seeing all imbalances of power corrected. However, I interpret feminism as focusing its efforts on that particular imbalance, which is fine.
In particular, I do not believe this kerfuffle advances feminism in the long run, because it is fundamentally based on 1) Not treating others with equal dignity or respect (RW over SM and stclairose), 2) Establishing and maintaining an imbalance of power that has yet to be corrected (again, RW over SM and stclairose). All other efforts in this kerfuffle (such as boycotting Richard Dawkins) are, in my personal opinion, corrupted by these deep errors in the foundation of motivation of RW’s actions.
If one is going to fight for equality, rights, and respect, it does NO good to throw those principles out the window at the first sign of someone disagreeing with your opinion.
Apologies to mirax for using your comment as a template. It is not meant as a direct challenge to you, however (well, only a little bit in a couple places; mostly I’m just expressing my very different take on the situation). In fact, I’d like to thank you for laying out the situation in such a way that it prompted me to finally say something. Prior to reading your comment, I didn’t have the right framework of speech to express myself properly.
I just got perhaps the most disgustingly vicious email I’ve ever had, from someone I thought was a friend. I think it’s time for me to talk about other things now. (I was planning to anyway.)
I’m sorry to hear that. Don’t know what else to say. :(
Wonderist, your post is pretty much unreadable. Whatever you were going for with that rewriting of mirax’s comment, you seem to have ended up with unintelligibility. (At least for the level of effort I’m willing to put into a blog comment, which is, admittedly, probably lower than some people’s. But definitely higher than others.)
I’m really sorry, Ophelia. I don’t see how you could deserve such a thing.
A vicious email from a friend? Yikes! Some atheists (mostly men) seem to have real anger control problems when it comes to this issue of male sexism. Don’t they see that it proves the point Watson originally made? How can they be sure they will stay calm and not go ape-crazy no matter what response they get from a woman after propositioning her when they can’t even control themselves over email, Twitter, or blogs?
#226
I am very sorry to hear that, Ophelia. If it is about this issue, you absolutely do not deserve the nastiness. Just as you didnt deserve Stangroom and Kazez going ballistic on you for challenging Mooney. It’s a small comfort but ‘friends’ who’d do hurtful, vicious stuff like this to you are unworthy of that honour.
Aratina Cage,
You are jumping to conclusions that the email is from a man.
Egbert, have you seen the vicious Twitter messages being sent to Rebecca Watson by atheist men? Chances are good that it is a man who did the same to Ophelia, but even if it wasn’t, there still is a significant problem of sexism going on here in the atheist community where men can’t seem to control their anger over being told “no”.
Egbert, no she’s not; read the comment again.
(I can never remember if Aratina is a woman or just has a woman-sounding handle. Adjust pronouns to suit.)
And it was a man.
The kind of sad thing is that the original question has long since been lost. The original question from before elevator guy even showed up.
If atheist conventions are intellectual symposiums, then its inappropriate for men to assume that the women in attendance are there to meet men. This is no different from any other professional or intellectual context- a woman in a classroom, or a scientific conference, or any other similar setting should be able to participate in the activity for which she attended without being sidelined into the role of the object of romantic pursuit.
On the other hand… if atheist conventions are meet-and-greets and social gatherings where young people, often isolated young people who don’t know many like minded people, can get together to connect with a community with which they share some things that are important to them, and to meet people in their area with whom they have things in common… then yeah, it actually ISN’T appropriate to expect men not to approach women and flirt. If that’s the context, then expecting men not to do this is actually an imposition on everyone else, male and female, who attended for the express purpose of making friendships and romantic connections within the atheist community. If that’s the context, then RW’s original point is rather like going to a nightclub and getting upset that people keep asking you out, because you were just there to dance. You might be genuinely annoyed, but its unfair to expect everyone else in the nightclub to change their behavior just to match your needs. They were there to meet people and date, and they shouldn’t have to stop just because one or two people in attendance might not want to.
The problem, as far as I can see it, is that atheist conventions are both. You start with some intellectual conversation, then everyone goes and chills out and drinks together. Leaving elevator guy’s obvious poor execution aside (even in contexts where flirting and asking women out is appropriate, its not appropriate to do it in a manner that predictably makes women feel threatened), its understandable that people could cross wires on this issue. The context shifts, and the social norms change, and its easy to see how not everyone would be on the same page.
Maybe this could be addressed from an organizational perspective- run two “tracks,” like at dragoncon. Social and intellectual. Or flag the various events as professional versus social. I don’t know if that would work, but its an idea.
Sorry for the confusing genderized name. I’m a gay male. Name comes from “a rat in a cage”.
I think that’s one thing a lot of people don’t get if they’re not familiar with the online feminist community is that it’s nasty out there. The outright hatred for feminists and feminism is absurdly strong, and it really does predate much of the online feminist community. Because of that, the language and attitudes that are used in the community are really forged in that fire.
It’s why I’m both surprised and not surprised that the good host received hate mail, even though I think she’s bent backwards, forwards, then backwards again to keep an open mind in terms of this. It’s not deserved, but it’s probably still going to happen.
Patrick
Not really – from what I understand in this case if the guy had hit on her while she was chatting in the bar RW wouldn’t have strictly minded, but waiting until she was alone in the lift going to her room (At 4am in the morning) was a bit creepy.
Also (this like all points in the discussion has been said 90 thousand times, sorry for repetition) there’s a difference between meeting, talking, flirting, and just baldly asking for sex (or “my room for ‘coffee'”). Some people are funny that way: even if they’re actually looking for friends and lovers, they don’t like requests to go from zero to fucking in one move.
A good rule of thumb, it seems to me, is “if she wouldn’t like it from a stranger at the supermarket, she wouldn’t like it from a stranger at a convention.” Or to put it even more simply: slow down. At a minimum, slow down. Even during the social part.
Right, I’m trying to talk about the original debate that existed before elevator guy was even in an elevator. The issue of making women feel welcome at atheist conventions, and not in a “we’re glad you’re here because we’re a huge group of single men who need girlfriends” sense.
On the shy guy bit:
I am in that class of people. I can be quite gregarious once someone engages me – but I am not comfortable engaging with others.
This means I get stuck with people suspecting I might be a serial killer. Shy guys have one heck of a stigma built up over years of neighbours saying “But he was always so quiet.”
But that said, to demand sympathy for my hang-ups seems somehow off – like demanding sympathy for the fashion impaired.
Patrick
Just a general observation, but I’ve ‘got lucky’ in my life by just not looking for sex. I’ve met women, had conversations, made friends and all the normal social stuff. Sometimes sex has been an outcome, sometimes it hasn’t, but I’ve never started a conversation/relationship with sex as a goal. It doesn’t seem to have held back my sex life much, and I’ve made a lot of non-shagging friends along the way, who would have remained virtual strangers if I’d only been interested in getting them into bed when I first struck up conversations with them.
Hmm, I kinda made that look like ‘all about me’. I’ll summarise (and it’s quite simple):
People are people, not walking targets in the ‘game’ of sex. Just make friends, and let what happens happen. That way, you also don’t have to worry about whether the purpose of the gathering is ‘intellectual’ or ‘social’.
I am frequently disappointed with Richard Dawkins when he thinks on his feet. I say this as someone who bought the first publication of “the selfish gene” and who has read pretty much everything he has published since. When he has time to make a considered argument I rarely if ever disagree with him, but when he appears live in interviews or comments “off the cuff” he is less erudite (or at least politically aware) than one would expect. For example he appeared recently on “The Big Question” a BBC Sunday morning show that debates religious issues. In one section he described the authors of the bible as “ignorant”. Now I understood what he meant, (by scientifically literate standards they were) but the choice of language lost him the argument when he should have nailed it.
Now I know this is not strictly comparable, RD’s comment on this affair does expose an underlying attitude which as a white middle aged privileged male he is probably oblivious to holding. I suspect, being the intelligent individual he is that some re-evaluation will be happening since there has been more than enough explanation by now.
Yes, but the problem is that there’s a lot of people out there who don’t see things that way, and as such act in such a way as to make other people feel uncomfortable. I think this was the context for what RW said, meaning as I’ve heard before, ‘Don’t do this!” It was just a particularly egarious example to get the point across. But yes, it’s all about making women feel more comfortable in the community.
Steve – funny, I just did a post saying much the same thing. He may have had a partly ok point, but the way he made it was no good at all.
Wonderist, sorry, but please give the condensed version. I can’t get through that one, and I’m somewhat interested. Most people will skip it after two lines.
@MyaR (#228): “Wonderist, your post [#225] is pretty much unreadable.”
Sorry to hear that. If you ignore the [s and ]s, and just read it straight, it is exactly my opinion on the subject. No need to even refer to mirax’s comment, really.
I was simply struck, upon reading mirax’s comment, how mirax would use certain words and phrases which sounded perfectly reasonable to me, and then suddenly come to basically the exact opposite position I have. It at least inspired me to put my two cents into this, which I’ve been itching to do from the beginning. Sorry it didn’t work out readable for you.
It was unreadable for me too, I’m afraid. Try chopping things into smaller bits.
Umm, that IS the condensed version. That’s kind of the point. The whole mess is extremely complicated by a long history (over two and a half weeks! I don’t think most people really have that sense of how this kerfuffle has been festering in the background for so long, but only *suddenly* seems to be a shitstorm. It’s a shitstorm that is long in the making), but boils down to one basic issue: Lack of respect. But it’s not the disrespectee and disrespector most people seem to think.
I’ve posted it here http://gnuatheism.wikispaces.com/Elevator+Guy+Kerfuffle
Ok. (It’s not that long, or that complicated. I have read McGraw’s post – I almost did a post about it myself yesterday, but then I got too bored to go on, thank god.)
There your lot goes throwing smearing around again.
There was no imbalance of power.
Shorter version of Wonderist’s post; Rebecca Watson started all this, she slandered Ms. McGraw and misrepresented her position, attempted to humiliate her infront of her peers and is a hypocrite. Nothing new.
@wonderist – I read your rebuttal and understood it the first time. After reading your page I still disagree with you. Your point is that Stef McGraw was unfairly called out at a conference for responsing to RW’s post and that’s where the incorrect behaviour is. My impression (I was not there and have not seen a video) is that Watson spent as much time referencing McGraw in her talk to a smallish group as she did the elevator guy in her original video WAtson used McGraw as an example of how women buy into sexism and the reaction to Watson shows how correct she was using this example. McGraw started this meme of Watson being intolerant to men by leaving out integral parts of the back story. That is an indication of shoddy research to me and I thought sceptics valued accurate portrayals of reality more than anything else.
OB -I’ve ready your blog for a long time. At least this got me to participate. Thanks for being such a great host.
I’ve wikified the thing so it should be easier to read now: http://gnuatheism.wikispaces.com/Elevator+Guy+Kerfuffle
Who is ‘your lot’? What assumptions are you making about me based solely on my different opinion?
By the way, I didn’t just ‘throw’ smearing around. I quoted the actual smear (here: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2011/focus/#comment-97298).
Are you dismissing Stef McGraw’s experiences now? Stef says there was. She was there. I trust her report more than yours.
Well, except for the whole *shitstorm* part, where she also goes on to *again* smear and misrepresent McGraw, which has the practical effect of deceiving PZ into thinking this is all really about Elevator Guy, and shitstorm ensues.
So, yeah, you *almost* got the shortened version right. Minus the “Nothing new” part. The whole shitstorm followed *after* your ‘shorter version’. So, yeah. Almost. Not quite.
I wonder why it must be unreasonable for Ms McGraw’s words to be interpreted the way Ms Watson and many other feminists have. Wouldn’t whether they support a misogynistic world view also be a difference of opinion? Or is there something about being implicated in supporting an unjust world view that ‘forward thinking’ individuals really get themselves worked up about?
The biggest overreaction from what I can see is from people being told they might be part of a privileged class. “You called me a serial rapist and mommy murderer!” No. Please grow one of those tough skins people have been trying to sell to Ms Watson. I think you need it a wee bit more.
No. No, definitely no. The calling out at the conference is only the very first inkling of Rebecca’s wrong actions. It is the very first incident of the lead-up to the shit-storm. Prior to that event, which I labelled as P for clarification, there was only a difference of opinion between two self-declared feminists.
Yes, that is incorrect behaviour. No, that is not *only* “where the incorrect behaviour is”. There is far more incorrect behaviour (on many different sides, some completely unconnected to the original disagreement). I am not aware, however of any incorrect behaviour on Stef McGraw’s part. I could easily be wrong, but I have not seen it, and it was not in connection to Rebecca’s Power Play (P). I have not followed McGraw beyond her follow-up post explaining her perspective (which, again, I thought was well-spoken, and, despite having just been dissed by RW, still maintains respect for RW as a person).
The Power Play was only the first incident. The biggest problem so far has been the escalation to full shitstormitude, which occurred, again, in the dishonest representation of the Naming Names post.
There may have been other wrongs, I’m not keeping score. Not interested, thanks. Between Stef McGraw and Rebecca Watson, where this *entire* thing originated from in the first place, I am only aware of wrong-doing on one side: Rebecca Watson. Again, I have not followed McGraw, so I can’t speak further there. But Stef McGraw is definitely not responsible for said shitstorm. That falls firmly on Watson and no one else.
None what so ever. ‘Your lot’ obviously refers to the group of people who have been making the same argument you have for some time now.
Forgive me. I should have been clearer. What I should have said was ‘Your lot has used the word smear to describe Ms Watson’s actions towards Ms McGraw but you’ve failed to explain why what she said is a smear.’
Heh. No I am not. In fact, I’ve mentioned several times that I understand why she felt the way she did. The environment (from how it’s described to me) her expectations for the talk, being caught off guard, ect. I understand why she felt the way she did. That does not mean I have to accept Ms Watson was in a position of power over her. A good thing considering she wasn’t.
Misrepresent how?
But Rebecca Watson is because she supposedly misrepresented Ms McGraw, borderline slandered her and attempted to turn the atheist movement against her? The list of charges against Ms Watson don’t seem at proportional to the evidence laid out.
Considering that you are quoting me, have I *ever* said, *anywhere*, that “it must be unreasonable for Ms McGraw’s words to be interpreted the way Ms Watson and many other feminists have”?
No? Nowhere? Okay. Got that sorted then.
If you believe that I have made such a comment or that I *intended* to *imply* such a comment, then you are simply mistaken. I have not and do not.
This is a good example of the kind of ‘mind reading’ and ‘rumour milling’ that I talked about.
You do *not* know my intentions beyond what I’ve written, and I have written actually very little about this topic, for precisely the reason that I did not want to spend hours and hours defending myself against such ‘mind reading’ insinuations. *This is the very real danger of this whole situation*! This is why I move from simply saying that Rebecca acted unfairly or whatnot, to going a step further and saying that she acted irresponsibly, and indeed unethically.
I have stated very clearly that I am all for balancing power and supporting equal rights, dignity, and respect for all people, and that 100% includes women whether they call themselves feminists or not. That is what I am standing for in this conversation.
As I said at the very outset, I hope people will ask me for clarification if they feel I’m doing something wrong or evil or what have you. I understand I can’t demand that. This is the internet, and I’m not 100% sure I *should even try* to demand such a thing. But I put that out there nonetheless, as a request, if you will.
You have already made two comments which have (in my eyes) crossed that seemingly reasonable line: Lumping me in with some nebulous “your lot”, and representing me as saying something I did not say. I only draw your attention to this because this is actually the whole problem with this entire kerfuffle: Repeated instances of people ‘mind reading’ other people, not treating the other with respect to first clarify one’s assumptions, and then spreading misrepresentations all the fuck over the place as if they were stone cold facts.
Are people still confused as to what this shitstorm is all about? This is it. This is the whole thing. The entire bloody mess boils down to this: Assuming the other guy “doesn’t get it” for nefarious reasons.
That is it.
Wonderist, I really can’t accept your characterisation of SM and Stclairose as ‘feminists’. They didnt simply have a respectful difference of opinion with RW’s vid. They mischaracterised the vehemence of RW’s reaction(which was so mild as to be unremarkable, as even you admit it), left out salient facts and basically accused Rw of ‘reverse sexism’ , hypocrisy and demonisation of men. For feminists they were remarkably dense about even listening to another woman’s point of view and did a whole lot of mansplaining, at RW’ expense. Not impressive on any level. FYI, I reread and watched their initial responses again, to find out if I had misjudged them. I wish I can be more charitable towards them but I am not in the habit of patronising people, even young people (I teach kids and it is a matter of principle to me to not have lowered expectations of young people) .
SM and SRose are adults btw not kids.
I am no fan of RW as I had not even heard of her before this furore arose. I also am not going to be a skepchick regular even now. However RW comes off better to me than SM, SRose and definitely a couple of other women bloggers who seem to delight in making this all about RW and her ‘dishonesty’. nor do I like the oft made suggestion that PZ is some kind of patsy whom RW manipulated into her corner. Pretty insulting to PZ, who is a much better feminist than a number of those with a ‘vagina license’ !
The video of the speech is not up yet (I think) So I can not really judge for myself what occurred there. What I understand to have happened is that..
1, Stef made a public post about RWs video about elevator guy.
2, RW pointed to that post as a form of unconscious sexism that even women can put out without really knowing it. As far as I know she did not take it out of context (like Stef did in her post) or alter the meaning of her post. She just put out exactly what Stef said and pointed out why it is a problem.
3, Stef got offended because…I don’t know. (honestly I have no clue here)
What am I missing?
Then why is it a smear when Ms Watson honestly relates her interpretation of Ms McGraw’s words? If a reasonable person would read it this way, then it isn’t a smear.
What rumor milling? I’ve said nothing about you or your motives.
I’ve said nothing to the contrary.
1)It isn’t nebulous. It’s the set of people who’ve made the argument you have about Ms Watson’s behavior towards Ms McGraw.
2)Smear implies a level of dishonesty and conscious effort to twist someone’s words or to tarnish their reputation. If Ms Watson is simply posting her honest opinion I don’t see how it can be an attempt at smearing Ms McGraw. Sorry if I read you wrong.
‘Nefarious’ reasons? Could you elaborate?
Ew, the vagina license term is from Abby Smith. Some self-decription, no?
Especially considering his record. This seems like a no brainer for him. (Sorry if that’s to presumptuous of me.)
Exactly, she only spent 2 minutes on it because it was mostly irrelevant to the overall topic of her talk, which is the exact same reason why it is unreasonable to say that McGraw had a position of equal power, to bring up the topic in Q&A, which would have derailed the Q&A. At least according to McGraw herself, she did not feel this would have been appropriate, and is one of the major reasons why she feels it was an imbalanced power situation in the first place. According to the equally valid experiences of McGraw, which ironically parallel RW’s experiences about the situation EG put her in, there was a power imbalance. I will not argue this point further, as I can only rely on McGraw’s experiences to judge, just as we can only rely on Watson’s experiences regarding EG.
However, while she only spent 2 minutes on it, during that time she was able to smear McGraw as “parroting misogynistic thought”, associate her name with actual misogynists’ comments, completely ignore McGraw’s point of view with a mostly irrelevant quote mine (read McGraw’s post and compare to what RW quote of it to see for yourself; McGraw’s opinion, though different to Watson’s, was far more well-argued than RW’s quote makes it seem; I am not defending McGraw’s argument here, only that she did not have such a simplistic one as RW made it out to be), and falsely insinuated that McGraw was espousing “anti-woman” sentiment (according to McGraw’s account).
That’s called a Gish Gallop, where you throw out so many false associations, red herrings, and distractions that even if Stef had tried the Q&A thing, she could not possibly have responded to them all. Again: Unequal power relationship. (Oops, wasn’t going to argue that again. Oh well, it does seem different enough to be relevant.)
If you examine McGraw’s post, there is zero anti-woman sentiment in there. Again, ‘mind reading’ and assuming nefariousness. Even the quote which Watson provided does not support an objectively discernible ‘anti-woman’ interpretation. That is Watson’s own personal interpretation, projected out and onto McGraw.
McGraw’s post puts forth an argument which comes from a perspective that is pro-equality, pro-respect, pro-feminist, pro-woman, and pro-human.
Watson is free to disagree with McGraw, of course, and to make a case that McGraw’s post was actually anti-woman because of whatever reasons which she believes makes that case. But she did not address the content of McGraw’s arguments and did not (according to McGraw) make that case. She (according to McGraw) just brushed her off as a lightweight (who parrots misogyny and is anti-woman) and then moved on to the real topic of the talk.
So, again: Difference of opinion between two self-identified feminists, needlessly turned into a smear against one of the (not coincidentally less-powerful) of the two.
And unfortunately, it did not stop there, or probably very few of us would have heard about it, as most of us did not hear about it a full 10 days from the initial smear and ensuing mini-shitstorm to the full Pharyngulation and shitstormation of the whole thing a whole 6 days ago.
That shitstormification is the result of Rebecca’s dishonest portrayal of the situation.
If PZ had known of McGraw’s experiences and Watson’s smears, I imagine he would probably have stuck up for McGraw, as he stuck up for the Crackergate guy. (I’m speculating on this last bit, of course. Could be wrong, and willing to be corrected.)
Meanwhile the barbarians are banging on walls…
Wonderist can you try to be a little more concise?
Were you there? Or is the video up?
Again she did not misquote McGraw or take her out of context. (as far as I know) How can you “smear” someone with their own words?
(Have to reply a bit out of order to the chronology of comments. I’ll return to previous comments in a bit.)
Thanks for taking me at face value. I appreciate that.
They are self-identified feminists. It is their own characterization, not mine. Take it up with them.
Can you quote them where they “mischaracterised the vehemence of RW’s reaction”, “accused Rw of ‘reverse sexism’”, because I cannot find those. I have an intuitive gut feeling that you *might* be reading intentions into McGraw’s post, but I could be wrong on that and I’m willing to be corrected. Could you show me what exactly you are referring to, so I can check my assumptions and see if they are actually mistaken or not? Thanks.
Instead, here is what I find in McGraw’s post (I don’t have time right now to review SR’s video, but I don’t recall it in there either):
Sounds like an honest question to me. It does not sound like a mischaracterization of Watson’s vehemence to me. Could you clarify?
Was Watson upset about it? I think it is fair to say, “Yes.” Could be wrong, willing to be corrected.
Again, this does not appear to me to be a misrepresentation, but instead an honest question, which is indicated by the phrase “my question is this:” and the question marks. (I’m not intending to be facetious, only trying to communicate why I see it differently.)
As to leaving out salient facts: Definitely possible. However, she does make several admissions such as that she wasn’t there, and obviously doesn’t know everything about it. However, what are you interpreting about Stef as a person when you bring up this point? I have seen honest people leave out salient facts in reasonable disagreement between two people with different agreement that did not involve any nefarious intentions. It may ‘hint’ at nefariousness, but there are too many alternative hypotheses to definitely pin it down to nefariousness. Not that you are necessarily doing that, only that it seems a little suspicious to me. Could be wrong. Willing to be corrected. Not implying I actually know this is true, and in fact I’m suspicious of my suspicions.
As to hypocrisy: Stef wrote:
I see an effort to express her own opinion about how the situation appears to her, and I see her referring to Watson’s comment as hypocritical. We all commit hypocrisy of this sort all the time. It is not an attack on Watson as a person to point out an instance of what one sees as being a hypocritical comment. I do not interpret it that way.
As for demonization of men, again, this appears to me to be SM’s opinion about Watson’s actions, not as a personal character defect in Rebecca as a person.
So, again. I see a difference of opinion between two self-proclaimed feminists. I do not see anything worthy of the types of smear tactics (which I detailed earlier) that Watson herself used.
Again, I’m not attacking Watson as a person, only her actions as being a power play.
(Unfortunately, I have to run. Will be back later.)
That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Ms Watson quoted Ms McGraw in context and did not misrepresent her views. Despite Wonderist’s assertions, I see no reason to believe she was ever being dishonest (especially with PZ. If Ms Watson is so brilliant a manipulator she should run for office.) or trying to smear Ms McGraw.
What was the quote?
Time’s up!