Re: Atheists: No God, just whining Yes, and those dismissive comments provide an excellent example of one delusion that still permeates even some of the more rational minds. Richard Dawkins should have known better than to make those dismissive comments. He should have understood what Rebecca Watson was saying, especially because he was sitting right next to her at that very same conference where she spoke about these very issues. Unfortunately, he is blinded by the perspective he has gained from his own life experiences.
Richard Dawkins is committing the Psychologist's fallacy, as do many other people within the skeptic community. Guys, don't do that.
The psychologist's fallacy is a fallacy that occurs when an observer presupposes the universality of his/her own perspective when analyzing a behavioral event.
Rebecca starts talking about sexism at around the 3-minute mark, then starts talking about the elevator incident at around the 4:30 mark.
Here are the circumstances surrounding the incident:
1) Rebecca has been negatively affected by sexism within the skeptic and atheist community. It has become such an issue for her and many other women, that she decided to raise awareness of these issues during a panel discussion at an atheist conference in Dublin.
This link should take you to the 3:10 mark, where she starts speaking. She talks about the laws the religious right keeps trying to pass in the US (and some that have succeeded) to revoke women's reproductive rights, then around the 7:00 mark, she starts talking about emails she receives from both fans and detractors.
Richard Dawkins is sitting next to her on this panel, and I think it's important to note his body language throughout most of Rebecca's speech. He laughs at a couple of her jokes that pertain to religion, and laughs when she mentions his funny hate mail video, but I feel like he's taking personal offense to what she's saying about the sexism problem, even though she's only pointing out the truth in the nicest possible way, and isn't directing any of the criticisms toward him.
Also note that she talks about how, in addition to the usual death threats that many men in the movement receive, she also gets a lot of rape threats and other sexually degrading emails in addition to those.
Even some of her fans send her sexist emails, describing things they would like to do to her sexually. They seem to honestly believe they are giving her compliments, but I speak from experience when I say that this is really, really degrading to any woman who receives those kinds of "compliments" on a very regular basis. This denigration and sexual objectification actually falls under the label of "misogyny," even if it isn't the man's intention to degrade a woman in this manner.
Back to the series of events at the hotel where the conference was held:
2) That night, after the panel discussion, Rebecca was in the hotel bar with a group of conference attendees, where she talks about the sexism problem again, as well as how uncomfortable it makes her when men sexualize her. From my own perspective, I'm sure she was talking about the way some men seem to believe they're entitled to a woman's attention, to make unsolicited sexual comments, to keep persisting when we keep politely telling them we're not interested, to act like a victim and show aggression toward us when we finally drop the polite charade and have to flat out ask them to go away and leave us alone, to lurk in the shadows and invade our privacy, to make us feel like objects instead of actual people with our own thoughts and feelings, and a whole slew of other things that some of these men may not even realize they're doing.
Guys, don't do that. Seriously, guys. Stop doing that.
3) Around 4am, Rebecca told the group she was exhausted and going to bed, excused herself, left the bar, walked to the elevator, and stepped inside.
4) A man she had never met before entered the elevator behind her, and the door closed. Rebecca was now alone with this man in an enclosed elevator.
Ok, try not to worry. It's probably just a coincidence, and he probably just happened to be going that way at the same time. Then again...
5) The man told Rebecca, "Don't take this the wrong way..." For starters, if you feel the need to start a sentence like this, then you should already know there's a good chance that someone will take it the "wrong" way. Or perhaps the right way, if what you're about to say is a euphemism for something else.
Guys, don't do that.
The man continues "...but I find you very interesting..." Ah, so it's not a coincidence that he got into that elevator at the same time. This man purposely followed her into this elevator so he could have her undivided attention, or maybe even worse, so she would have no way to escape. He must have been standing by silently, watching her during the group conversation, too, and then followed her from the bar to the elevator. This seems like the most likely scenario, even in hindsight. Even if he didn't happen to catch her panel discussion (which seems highly unlikely, since he was a conference-goer and it was a panel discussion that also included Richard Dawkins and Aron Ra), he surely must have been standing nearby, watching Rebecca as she was talking with the group in the bar, before he followed her from the bar to the elevator.
Guys, don't do that.
My own personal observation: He stalked her. There's really no other way to put it. Guys, don't do that. He stood there silently, watching her and listening to her voice, but he either wasn't paying attention to what she was actually saying, or he just didn't care. Guys, don't do that. He did not care that she had spent all that time discussing the problem of sexism and saying how being sexualized makes her feel very uncomfortable, and he did not care that she said she was exhausted at 4am and needed sleep.
How can anyone not already see this as a threat?
The man continues "...and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?"
Guys, don't do that.
If I had pepper spray with me, it would have been in my hand by this point and ready to use. I actually had a similar incident happen to me this year, where I did have pepper spray in my hand and was ready to use it. Doesn't this guy understand that she doesn't want to be hit on? Does he not care that she's exhausted and really needs sleep? If he will not respect her explicitly-stated wishes, then will he respect a polite rejection of his offer?
I have dealt with guys who have asked me out nicely, then persisted when I have politely declined, only to have them seem angry when I finally convince them several minutes later that I'm really not playing hard to get, and I really am not interested. Hearing Rebecca speak, I get the impression that her experiences have been a lot like mine.
So again: Does he not understand that she doesn't want to be hit on? Does he not care that she's exhausted and really needs sleep? If he will not respect her explicitly-stated wishes, then will he respect a polite rejection of his offer?
Or will he get angry, hit the stop button on that elevator, and rape her? They are in an enclosed elevator, so there is no way for her to escape. Is it any wonder why she felt threatened, or why she felt the need to mention this in her video and advise guys not to do that, to help other well-meaning guys realize that this is not a good thing to do?
Guys, don't do that.
Now for the short, anti-Rebecca version:
Some guy invited Rebecca Watson for coffee, she turned him down, and he accepted the rejection gracefully. Instead of taking it as a compliment, she got all huffy about it. She's a radical feminist who hates men, feels some sense of entitlement like women are superior to men, and thinks it's perfectly ok to boss men around like they were put on this planet to serve women. Believe it or not, some guys have actually spouted this crap.
There are different short-version variations, where Rebecca is supposedly overreacting or whatever, but much of the vitriol that's been spewed at Rebecca and her supporters seems to come from ignorance, and this is still going on! There has been this whole war going on within the skeptic and atheist community ever since that video was uploaded, all because a woman was put in situation where she very reasonably felt threatened, and asked guys not to do what that guy did.
This is where we (finally) get to what I said here:
I've spent the last 7 years, or so, trying to understand various religious mindsets, but lately, I'm finding more and more atheist skeptics exhibiting similar mindsets. I'm not just talking about stuff like Bigfoot and Nessie, either, but about the vastly different perspectives of people, based on lifetimes of experience.
Richard Dawkins is an intelligent man, and his heart seems to be in the right place when he sees an injustice that is obvious to him and speaks out against it, such as the stoning of women, or the mental and physical harm that is often caused by religion.
However, he is not stoning women, he is not telling children they could burn in hell for all eternity, he is not killing people in the name of religion, he is not denying people life-saving medical treatment just because they can't afford it, etc, so he doesn't take it as a personal affront when someone talks about these issues, and he will speak up about them himself because he seems to be a decent man.
On the other hand, maybe he has made sexual comments to a woman without a previous acknowledgement that those comments would be welcomed, or maybe he has called a female colleague pet names while referring to male colleagues by name, or maybe he has pursued a woman who has already turned him down, or maybe he has done many other things that would be perfectly ok with him if a woman did the same things to him, and he just doesn't realize the kind of negative effect these same actions have on women in our patriarchal society? No decent man wants to believe that he has oppressed women, so when women describe how some of these behaviors negatively affect us, some men get defensive, and take it as a personal denigration of their very character.
Sexism is still a big problem in our society, and the very fact that many men don't realize this only contributes to the problem. I've heard the claim far too many times that women have supposedly achieved equality, and some men will even claim that there's no real wage gap when it's been empirically demonstrated that there is, so when women complain about the problems we face every single day, many men just see us as radical feminists who want women to rule over men.
Some guys will even go so far as to say that women have more rights than men these days. It's true (and unfair) that men in the US have to register for Selective Service (the draft) when women don't, and that single fathers seem to face more discriminatory attitudes than women face, but they don't even notice the problems that women face, and don't realize that these problems are caused by the very same patriarchy that drags women down in other ways. These guys are angry with feminists, when it would be in their own best interest to work with the feminists to gain equality for all, because equality is what the feminist movement is really about.
The radicals do not represent feminism any more than Al Qaida represents Islam, or any more than family planning clinic bombers represent Christianity. They are all extremists, and do not represent the whole of any group.
That thing he said about textbook cases reminded me of the anti-feminist MRAs in the atheist community. When the debate is evolution vs creationism, it's true that personal experiences can't be accepted as evidence on the matter, because these things can be explained by things like coincidence, hallucinations, and confirmation bias. But when the question is whether or not certain things have certain psychological effects on people, then personal anecdotes are pretty much the best evidence we've got.
Unfortunately, many of the so-called skeptics in the atheist community don't actually have the reasoning skills to realize this difference, and they're just parroting the same talking points they use against creationists in a debate about evolution.
To these 'skeptics,' I say, personal experience isn't evidence of a deity, but personal experience is evidence of personal experience. Why is this so hard for some people to understand?
Re: I just saw a movie trailer for a new movie coming out this week called Moon Boy. He has an imaginary friend and there's a scene where he's in church, seemingly distracted, and the priest asks him what he's looking at. When the kid says his imaginary friend, the priest says that the church is no place for imaginary friends. That struck my funny bone.
