My turn to give advice
You know what I wish? I wish Dawkins would just change direction. I wish he would buckle down and find out who all those progressive feminist universalist Muslim and ex-Muslim women are and promote them. That’s what. I wish he would stop using his massive Twitter voice to attack and bully individual women he takes a dislike to, and individual Muslim schoolboys he takes a dislike to, and instead use it to tell his million fans about people he likes. Stop the bashing, and start promoting instead.
He could do that. It wouldn’t hurt him. It would be fun, and he could feel he was accomplishing something. He would be accomplishing something. He’d be putting his fame to good use.
What’s he accomplishing now? What good does he do by trashing feminism and promoting other people who trash feminism? How does that help anything? In fact how is he not just wasting valuable time and resources that he could be devoting to promoting the very people he claims to be such an ardent ally of? I feel like writing a new Dear Muslima addressed to him. Millions of girls taken out of school to be married to men older than their fathers, and here’s Dawkins busy retweeting MRAs all day instead of doing anything to help those girls.
I’m serious. He could be helping, and he’s not. Why not?
Yeah, he could help, but how would that feed his persecution complex?
I recall your post about that now-deleted tweet of his, regarding a “good Muslim woman” or similar description. I suspect his concept of praise or promotion would be like that, always in contrast with people who did things the “wrong” way, the way he doesn’t like, rather than simply praising work, promoting people who do good things.
I was thinking this very thing today. The only time Dawkins posts about feminism is when he is angry about something. Why doesn’t he use his platform to promote the great work so many feminists – and many Radical Feminists – are doing? He says he has no problem with the majority of us, and claims he is a feminist himself, so it shouldn’t be too hard for him to find examples of feminist initiatives and organizations for him him to endorse. Currently, he only posts about feminism when he wants to show his contempt for it and the only “feminist” he promotes is Christina Hoff Sommers and she’s a Men’s Rights Activist, not a feminist at all.
Ah well that’s a point. I guess it’s not such a good idea after all.
Well away from Twitter he also promotes Maryam. But on Twitter – yes, it’s pretty much all bashing all the time.
Richard Dawkins is to feminism as Kent Hovind is to evolutionary biology.
Dawkins’ “where are the feminists” tweet from the other day is Hovind’s “where are the transitional fossils?”
Dawkins’ retweet of the video last week is Hovind’s “science is a fundamentalist religion.”
Dawkins’ support for CHS is Hovind’s support for any non-evolutionary biologist who disputes evolution.
And I’d bet a dollar that he promotes Maryam’s anti-Islamicness, and not her feminism, much like Hovind will quote actual evolutionary biologists if they happen to say something Hovind thinks supports his creationism (Ken Miller, perhaps).
This is why Dawkins won’t promote the good stuff: like Hovind, he doesn’t have any. Hovind can only bash evolution because he doesn’t understand it, refuses to learn and can’t promote an evidence-based alternative (because there is none), and Dawkins can only bash feminism because he doesn’t understand it, refuses to learn and can’t promote an evidence-based alternative.
Dawkins knows the creationist tactics well enough from fighting against them. Now, he’s putting them to use.
Nail, meet Hammer. Hammer, Nail.
Normally I wouldn’t compare something I scraped off my shoe to Kent Hovind, out of deference to the dignity of what got scraped… but Dave W’s analogy is painfully apt. The sheer level of willful, ideologically-driven ignorance Dawkins displays about feminism is very akin to creationists’ willful, ideologically-driven ignorance about evolution.
Holden: The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.
LeonRichard: What do you mean I’m not helping?To add to the analogy, Dawkins tweeted:
And Kent Hovind is passionately in favor of scientists, just not those who disagree with six-day creationism.
Well, it’s imperfect…
I have never read one of Dawkins’ tweets, because I never use Twitter. That being so, I am not well qualified to have an opinion, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else, so why should it bother me? My opinion is that there may be some people for whom Twitter’s combination of brevity and immediacy works well, but there are many for whom it does not. Richard Dawkins appears to be in the latter group.
G Felis @7: But one thing Kent Hovind has over Dawkins is that Hovind has someone to blame. Dawkins isn’t parroting God – he has no one to blame but himself.
Dave W. @6 and @9, I really like the comparison. And Dawkins is just self-unaware enough — and egotistically puffy enough — for him to dismiss that comparison as outlandish.
TonyInBatavia @12: Of course. I can’t imagine do more than hand-wave it away, though. It’s not like he’d make a reasoned and rational argument against each point of similarity.
It seems to be a failing of more than one natural scientist: a stated commitment to ‘evidence’ and rigorous thinking within my discipline, but outside the domain of science, since everything is ‘subjective’, anything goes, and I can fall back on those comforting and unexamined prejudices I rely on when not in the laboratory or conference room.
Actually, Tim, they believe this is the result of their excessively developed critical thinking skills. They feel like feminists are being emotional and subjective and they just hate that. Their superior logic allows them to dismiss most feminist claims as over sensitivity. If we would just be more logical like them…
In no way does it absolve Dawkins, but would it be fair to give some credit to the Goldsmiths Feminist Society student group (i.e. their reaction to Maryam’s treatment by the Goldsmiths ISOC student group) for providing Dawkins’ some rhetorical ammunition in rationalizing his statements? I may have missed it, but if not; I’m surprised that that incident hasn’t already been cited as a direct defense of video&meme he’s tweeted: “…Just look how feminist organizations responded when Islamic bullies intimidated and tried silencing Maryam Namazie”.
@ 16 Kevin Kirkpatrick
Kev, I love ya man, but where have you been? ;-)
Goldsmiths has absolutely been used as a justification by the anti-feminist brigade, for example here and here.
The fuckers are making as much hay from it as they possibly can.
Ah, thanks! I hadn’t dug very deep, but I had been wondering along the lines of, “Maybe their idiocy knows some bounds after all. Maybe they actually recognize the difference in scale and composition between a university student group and a noteworthy fraction of feminists worldwide.”
Yeah, I feel pretty silly for even typing that….
Kevin writes:
You and me both. Instead of the brainless slinging of hateful memes attacking a ludicrous nonexistent position, Dawkins could actually mock the muddle-headed Goldsmiths Feminist Society and Goldsmiths LGBTQ Society for their pandering to fascists who mean them harm.
Maajid Nawaz has brought us the term “the regeressive left”. It is useful, and those two student groups qualify as regressive left if anyone does. I’d be happy to have righteous ire from megaphones like Dawkins has, be directed to actual regressive left groups like that.
But no, Dawkins splats about unthinkingly in the muck, covering all around him with his messes, and continually affronted that anyone would complain about the collateral slime.
Not for want of information – he’s certainly had enough people telling him what’s what – but for want of listening. The man desires some of the right things, but he’s no longer an asset.
I wish he’d be convinced to be a better ally. But I no longer hope for it.
Dawkins is an expert in biology.
Outside of his field of expertise he’s just another cranky old man, just like anyone else.