Given that we've been building to this "new atheism" episode for-stinking-ever (it's scheduled to record at the end of August right now) and the next actual recording we'll be doing is on feminism (scheduled for a week from now, but originally scheduled for back in March, so it's not like we're neglecting atheism to do this one), it struck me as serendipitous to see this pathetic she-said-that-he-said-that-she-said piece about Internet bickering from Salon.com.
It wearies me to repeat the story, so you can just look at the article if you want details, but its point is that Dawkins is an insensitive male, since he interpreted something that someone said on a blog the wrong way. I agree with the author of the article (Tracy Clark-Flory) that the blogger (who was complaining about creepy atheist guys hitting on her at inopportune times just after hearing her complain about how she didn't like creepy atheist guys hitting on her) wasn't out of line, and that Dawkins (if the report is correct) was acting dickish, but I barely care about that aspect.
The interesting thing here is the dynamic of people united in a cause, whether it be political, religious, or whichever of these "new atheism" counts as, who, qua people (who are basically stupid and weak by human nature), undermine their own cause by sleeping with each other, or not sleeping with each other, or getting in petty squabbles, or having explosive diarrhea during a conference, or whatever.
I mean, look at you, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. philosophy person, who probably actually clicked on that diarrhea link in the previous paragraph thinking I'd actually found a funny video of someone having diarrhea at a conference. Shame! Our frivolous, animal nature overcomes our puny reason all too often (as Plato would surely agree, and Nietzsche moreso).
Beyond the characters of those involved, I find the Internet dynamics of this story as fascinating as they are irritating: Can we, for example, launch PEL to fame by saying something provocative about Dennett and getting him to respond, and then we respond back, and Salon.com or maybe even CNN will report on it? Probably not unless it involves sex, and I'd prefer that the concepts Dennett and sex not be joined anywhere near my imagination (no offense, Mr. D.).
OK, there is an actual question remaining here: does the type of militant atheism Dawkins exemplifies have anything in its character that would make its male followers more likely than anyone else to be all creepy and stalkery? I see no evidence of that from this article, but feel free to speculate madly.
Image credit: The comic is from Laughing in Purgatory, and as is my wont, I found it via a 3 second Google image search, this time on "atheism feminism," though I don't see what the comic has to do with feminism. Maybe the feminist point is that we assume all poorly-defined cartoon characters are boys. Shame!
”Can we, for example, launch PEL to fame by saying something provocative about Dennett and getting him to respond…?”
That would be so money! And yes, the diarrhea hook works.
First I have heard of this, and don’t think I will read more about it, but it does feed in to my suspicion that Dawkins really is a bit of a dick.
I’ll give him biology, but his attitude seems to put the lie to statements like this.
First, I’ll say I was dumb enough to click on the diarrhea link before reading on, was puzzled by the result, came back and felt kind stupid when I read the next sentence. So…have a good laugh at me, your benign little prank worked on at least one reader. 😉
Second, I agree with the author of the article. I didn’t get from him that militant atheism is responsible for being stalkery (other than stalking Christians and being psychotically obsessed with them online, that is), but I would say myself that Dawkins and the rest of the “rock stars of atheism” have abrasive and boorish personalities that may be attractive for socially inept persons to model, persons which may take their atheist identity seriously enough to go to “atheist conferences” and who may have been attracted to the atheism movement in the first place because people like Dawkins have pretty much promised that atheism is the “promised land” that rewards people with good personalities, instant intelligence, rationality, and a scientific education, all this is yours for simply for possessing the virtue of not believing there are any deities.
I’m sure that is an attractive promise for a lot of unsavory people. Not to mention that online atheists tend to band together to bother and/or rant about religious people, so I’m sure that’s attractive to creepy people that have found an “socially acceptable” bigotry where you can make friends instead of lose friends for being a creepy stalking bigot.
I think it is creepy to ask out a girl you don’t know when she is all by herself. The word “rape” does cross many girls minds when they are by themselves and a strange man is the only person around. Dawkins is really inept when he argues about himself and another man being in an elevator. Dawkins is a man, not a woman, most woman can’t down a 12 year old boy.
Anyway, sounds like the girl handled herself with class, but yeah, both Dawkins and the guy who asked her out when she was by herself in an enclosed space…are both inept.
So basically Dawkins left out the bit where the guy followed her to the elevator to make her complaint sound flippant? How childish.
Time for a PEL twitter account http://twitter.com/#!/DanDennett
It’s the best way- 140 characters at a time!
You can troll his fans I mean
Despite saying that I didn’t “think I will read more about it” I obviously did.
Sort of interesting. So now, Dawkin’s books on Evolution and such, which I have been told are quite good, will not be recommended by Watson because of the schoolboy views he holds on women?
I think she makes some valid points in the post above, but I don’t think misogyny is more prevalent in skeptic circles than elsewhere. Men can be dicks wherever you go.
Scott Adams of Dilbert Fame in a brouhaha on salon:
Bob Ellis – Australian who believes that feminism is killing the Left or some such thing
If you haven’t already, I propose you consider Walter Kaufmann’s Faith of a Heretic and Critique of Religion and Philosophy for inclusion in the podcast on atheism. He was in a better position to critique modern attempts to reconcile religion with philosophy than the “New Atheists” are, because he was more familiar with the philosophical aims of continental philosophy. His critique is rigorous and passionate, but unlike so much of the New Atheist work, you always get a feeling he is trying to get an accurate account of the ideas he is discussing.
Thanks, Mark. I’ll check it out.
Charles Taylor’s “A Secular Age” may be helpful for the “new atheism” podcast.
If Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the “left”, then maybe it deserves to be killed.
I know, I’m so terribly old-fashioned to insist that leftism represent a critique of neoliberalism, not a submission to it, and that the IMF is not an institution that will or can ever be headed by anyone who can be considered a committed leftist, but there you go.
Also, I don’t see Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s life being ruined for having committed rape. I say committed rather than “charged with”, since the entire prosecution team is already falling all over themselves to see DSK acquitted, and I think that it might be useful at this juncture to remind people that all the physical evidence (bruises, torn clothing, semen) supports the maid’s accusation.
DSK will get off because his victim hasn’t been behaving like the Victorian ideal of Innocence Ravish’d, then he will go back to France and pick up his life from there. The only lasting change, aside from the presumable psychological damage to the maid, is the fact that NYC might finally ban the “perp walk”—a move I agree with, but I don’t see why they couldn’t have done it when the arrestee wasn’t rich, white, and politically well-connected.
The fact that rapes apparently occurred in his day at drive-in theaters every night is hardly more reason to accept it than it is to bring back the torture and burning of heretics just because that happened “back in the day” too.
I feel a little nauseated having read those two paras. I’m sure the complete article is much worse.
Sexual assault and rape are two different things.
What,
The DSK case is a rape case. There is clear evidence of intercourse which not even DSK’s lawyers are bothering to deny anymore, although that was their first tactic. Now they’ve switched to the argument that it was consensual, which is the standard defense in rape cases when the physical evidence is otherwise against one. If it were just a case of an unsolicited grope, then chances are DSK would have never been arrested, and in the remote possibility that he had been it would have been easier for him to plead guilty and accept a slap on the wrist.
I thought he was referring to this http://www.news.com.au/business/markets/david-jones-ceo-mark-mcinnes-quits-over-inappropriate-behaviour/story-e6frfm30-1225881219845 as akin to groping at the midnight theater hence sexual assault not the DSK case or rape case. If he was equating the DSK case and McInnes case as being the same thing he is an idiot.
It sure is.
I found this article interesting http://exiledonline.com/conspirators-unmasked-in-the-strauss-kahn-drama/
I just came back here to update my original comment after thinking about this a little more.
I still stand by my original comment, but what I think may have angered Dawkins and the men who got upset over this and feminism and whatnot is that it is kind of a feminist canard to paint men as dangerous, rapists, etc. And I could see how that could raise the ire of men when that kind of implied gender slander is thrown out there when nothing happened.
I don’t think this reaction has anything to do with atheism, or the rock star of atheism, I think it’s a male backlash to feminist slanders of the male gender, and that’s why the fact that this woman was a feminist seemed to be an important point to men who were outraged over this.
It’s not fair at all that the male gender has to put up with being “wrong” for simply activating a feminists over-active imagination, but it could have been worse, she could have lied and said he did try to man-handle her or something, which does happen.
And so while I stand by my comment that it’s creepy for a strange man to isolate a woman by herself, and that the guy was inept to do that, and Dawkins was inept for not understanding it…I also think men for their own safety and well-being should not put themselves in a situation where there are no witnesses and it would only be his word against hers. Yes, women need to be guarded against being potentially vulnerable to dangerous men, but there are dangerous women out there and men need to protect themselves from potential dangers a woman could inflict on him too if they happen across the wrong woman at the wrong time…and there are no witnesses to clear his name.
I’ll add too that my thinking this is a male backlash to feminist slanders is what makes Dawkins comment make more sense. I think he was offended as a man, and hence, why he contrasted what this woman has to put up with from “evil” men here, vs. what woman in the middle east have to put up with.
I don’t think atheism has anything to do with his reaction, or the like-reactions of the males in the atheist community.