The more the merrier
David Futrelle covers the story of Dawkins’s passionate defense of relentlessly mocking people we dislike; he covers it with great thoroughness. I read through Dawkins’s numbingly horrible tweets earlier today and didn’t have the stomach to blog about them.
Earlier this month, antifeminist YouTuber Sargon of Akkad — who makes his living pandering to some of the internet’s worst lady haters — posted an animated videoby another antifeminist YouTuber in which an angry Islamist and an angry feminist sing a song explaining that they pretty much believe all the same things. (For some reason, this nonsensical theory is something that a lot of antifeminists have convinced themselves is true.)
The angry Islamist in the video is a familiar racist stereotype, complete with “funny” accent. [Correction: He’s evidently supposed to be a parody of this guy, known as Dawah Man, a legitimately terrible person you wouldn’t think atheists would have to strawman in order to criticize..]
The angry feminist, meanwhile, isn’t a generic figure; she’s an especially crude caricature of [Chanty] Binx, spouting nonsense that neither Binx nor any other feminist actually believes: the video ends with her encouraging the Islamist to rape her, because it’s not really rape if a Muslim does it, dontchaknow.
It’s a vicious, hateful little cartoon made worse by the fact that these words are being put in the mouth of a real woman who’s been the target of a vast harassment campaign for years.
Yet Dawkins thought it was quality enough and on target enough to share with his 1.34 million followers.
Dawkins, a well-respected scientist-turned-embarrassing-atheist-ideologue, has become notorious for his endless Twitter gaffes. But this is plainly worse than, say, his famously pathetic lament about airport security “dundridges” taking his jar of honey; his Tweet contributed to the demonization of a real woman who’s already the target of harassment and threats.
The awesome Lindy West pointed this out to him in a series of Tweets and linked to one of my posts cataloging some of the abuse Binx got after the video of her went viral.
In a series of eloquent and angry Tweets, she made clear to Dawkins how and why he was misusing his huge platform and contributing to an atmosphere of hate online. Dawkins, alternately indignant and defensive, ultimately took down the offending Tweet, but not before making other Tweets that were nearly as bad. Dawkins can’t even do the right thing without being a dick about it.
Those were the other tweets I saw and couldn’t face blogging. I saw some of them late yesterday, and some this morning. What they tell us is that it’s terrific to mock people, as much as possible, it’s just not cool to threaten them.
Like the one where he tells Lindy, “I think she deserves nothing more than ridicule. I would never shriek “Fuckface” at her. But I would laugh at her. Ridicule.” Futrelle comments,
So there you have it: when informed that a tweet of his will almost certainly worsen the vicious harassment faced by a young woman whose only “crime” was being rude to a couple of MRAs in public, Richard Dawkins, a one-time winner of the American Humanist Association’s Humanist of the Year Award, replies by saying that “she deserves nothing more than ridicule.”
Exactly. It turns my stomach.
Then he decided to take down the tweet, while throwing more shit at Chanty Binx.
“Can’t believe anyone’s as nasty as her.” Says the guy with 1.34 million followers who has just been reminded that his followers tend to harass people whom he attacks. The “humanist.”
There’s more, then Futrelle gets to the tweet I think I hate the most of all (though there will be worse tomorrow, never fear):
Yes, she deserves abundant mockery, the more the merrier. But she doesn’t deserve violent threats. Nobody does.
He simply said a woman he disapproves of deserves all the “mockery” he can incite – which is a massive amount, and is never confined to what reasonable people would consider mockery. I think that’s the tweet that prompted me yesterday to call him a bully. He is a bully, a terrible, unrepentant, gleeful, conscienceless bully.
Does Dawkins realize that the Chanty Binx/MRA confrontation occurred THREE YEARS AGO?
Does he know that feminists protested the talk because of Warren Farrell’s approving remarks about (certain kinds of) pedophilia?*
Does he think she deserves continued ridicule? After three years?
Has he bothered to look at the screenshots provided by Dave Futrelle? How does he justify his implication that she may have lied about receiving threats?
If he thinks CB is a “vile human being,” what does he think of Sargon of Akkad? Dean Esmay? Paul Elam of A Voice for Men?
For example the one where he seems persuaded Binx is making up the threats?
And the one where he calls her “vile”?:
to which someone said
and Dawkins responded
What does he even mean she’s nasty? The fake charicature of her?
The only good thing I have to say about this situation is that at least I gave up admiring Dawkins (for anything except some of his books) years ago. I can’t even read the good books without feeling distaste now.
As an aside, people used to ask me who my hero’s were, and regarded me as either arrogant or ignorant when I said I didn’t have any. While I didn’t know about Dawkin’s shitty views or behaviour back then, this is why I don’t have hero’s. People are human. they can do good work and still be whack jobs, or rapists, or paedophiles, or fraudsters, or maybe just shitty in other aspects of their lives. making someone a hero implies that they are exemplary, and no one I’ve ever met or observed closely was/is (myself included). I have people I admire for specific reasons, but no heroes.
And he doesn’t even say why she deserves all this ridicule. He doesn’t mention anything that’s substantively wrong in what she’s said, it’s apparently just her rude and angry tone.
I watched that video when it was linked yesterday, so I would have some context for the shitstorm I could see coming. And all I could think was WTF?
I pay some attention to people that I disagree with–Republicans, conservatives, etc–partly out of morbid curiosity, and partly because, Know Your Enemy. And even though I disagree with people, I can usually understand what they are saying: I can see how it fits in with their beliefs; how it advances their agenda.
But this video…I got nothing. All the words were in English, and none of it made a bit of sense. Presumably, I need to be paying either more or less attention to these people, but I can’t tell which. I’d certainly rather it was less.
I must admit that when I watched the incriminating video for the first time, I just shrugged. “Ah, so Dawkins shares a video expressing a dislike for the feminists? He considers them dogmatic and self-righteous? He thinks that the feminists give Islam a free ride? He embraces merciless mockery as a political tool? Yup, he evidently does all of this. Oh my, how amazing! In other fascinating news, water is wet” – that was my initial reaction. In short: I learnt nothing new about Dawkins from his tweet and if I were to invite him earlier to some event, the tweet wouldn’t change anything. Why was he disinvited, I wondered? What did the organizers learn about Dawkins that they didn’t know beforehand?
Only later I learnt that the video in question depicts a concrete, real person. Yes, I fully agree that this changes a lot. Dawkins claims that he wasn’t aware of it either and I tend to believe him. At the moment the only thing that remains unclear to me is whether the NECSS disinvited him *with this knowledge* or perhaps the information surfaced later (I’ve never been a fan of Dawkins but if the latter, then I’m still not happy with their decision).
All the rest (the content of the OP) is an epic fail on Dawkins’ part.
Either this, or he is so butthurt that he doesn’t realize what he is doing and how his words sound. At the moment that’s the only optimistic interpretation I can think of.
Back in 2009, I remember my evangelical Christian brother-in-law complaining about what a nasty piece of work Dawkins was. My first reaction was, what? I mean, are we talking about the same person here? I wrote it down to Dawkins just being direct and outspoken in his criticism of religion, which I approved of then and still do. (Plus, he counted the archbishop of Canterbury among his friends …) Now, I can’t help wondering if my brother-in-law was in fact right, even then. But I lack the energy and inclination to go back in time to try to find out. For now, I don’t feel like spending any time on him.
His old books, on the other hand – The Ancestor’s Tale is still an excellent book, well worth reading.
There are plenty of great books out in the world written by people who did not subsequently become malevolent.
Or malignant, even. JMHO.
And, of course, now Michael Nugent has chimed in on this. Guess which side?
Of course he has.
I’d forgotten that Binx achieved “fame” after challenging Farrell.
And so I was thinking about that and Dawk’s defense of “mild” pedophilia.
And then the peculiar fervor with which RD jumped on the 14-year-old boy in Irving, TX.
And now I need to go find Kerr-McGee and ask for the same shower they gave Karen Silkwood.
There are people who deserve ridicule, and the whole horror of ‘progressive’ and ‘feminist’ support for Islamism is a real thing.
Ophelia has done FAR MORE against these things than Dawkins has. His higher visibility and name-recognition makes his addled and lazy recklessness all the more inexcusable.
I was reminded of the joint statement that you and Dawkins published that basically said “guys, don’t do that”. And here he is, not 2 years later…doing exactly that.
Hypocritical asshole. My already dim view of Dawkins is reduced further every day.
John @ 14 – Well, to be fair (yes even to Dawkins), he has given all kinds of support to Maryam’s work, and in that way his much higher visibility has been a big plus. He goes to her rallies and thus gets them news coverage. In that sense it’s the other way around: he’s done far more than I have, because he has the fame to do it.
For the millionth time I wish he’d never found Twitter.
Michael Nugent places that piece of crap video and its maker in the same camp as Tom Lehrer. I had been thinking about saying something about how, as satire, it fails utterly, but then realized I would have been lending some level of respect towards the intentions of Mr. Whatever-His-Name-Is-I-Can’t-Be-Arsed.
From Wikipedia, here’s Richard Dawkins on satire:
But it’s totally ok to ridicule someone by pretending that they believe that rape is ok if a Muslim does it. At least, I guess, if you consider that person “vile.”
Oh, good find.
I should add: I agree with Dawkins’ criticism of the South Park parody. The rest of it was all fair game, but the stuff with “Mrs.” Garrison wasn’t satire and was just tasteless and transphobic.
My point is that Dawkins used to know the difference between satirizing someone’s views and just engaging in hateful abuse. Or, perhaps more cynically, that he knows the difference when it involves him.
Given Dawkins’ social background, it’s not surprising that Binx appears as a kind of a monster figure to him. Dawkins would have been raised to believe that women should sit quietly in the corner and sip tea, make pleasant conversation, and not to interfere in the Serious Men’s Business. As late as the 1960s talented women from the British aristocracy were pressured to abandon their careers and settle into a life of docile domesticity.
I find South Park sophomoric and tasteless most of the time. That said, IMO their Dawkins episode was positively high-minded compared to the feminist/islamist video. Comparing it to Tom Lehrer, Tim Minchin, Randy Newman and even Sarah Silverman insults all of them.