Drawing criticism

Typical Pink News way of framing “he said a thing we don’t like”:

Richard Dawkins drew criticism Saturday (10 April) for a provocative tweet that compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal.

No he didn’t draw criticism; people decided to criticise him.

On Saturday morning, an entire minute after tweeting about the late Prince Phillip’s top hat, the evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist abruptly gave his take on trans lives that absolutely nobody asked for.

Remind me – how does Twitter work, again? You’re supposed to wait for someone to ask you a question before you tweet? You mustn’t tweet about subject X unless someone asks you to? Have I got that right?

Dawkins compared trans folk to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who appropriated a Black identity while pursuing Black activism and academia.

Note the “folk.” Why folk? Why is it so often folk? What is that?

Also what is it to “pursue academia”?

But to the point, yes, he compared people who say they are a sex they are not to Dolezal’s saying she’s Black when she’s not. There are core similarities, you see.

Dolezal once likened herself to trans people. At the time, her words were rebutted by the psychologist and author Guilaine Kinouani, who told BBC Newsnight: “Comparing [being trans] with trans-racialism is a fallacy. It’s a false equivalency, which in my mind doesn’t advance our understanding of race, of transgender issues, neither of Black womanhood. [She’s a] white woman who’s quite oblivious to the fact that Black women’s experiences and bodies have been appropriated.”

Wo, well that’s us told!

Kidding. What a bizarre item to choose to support the case you’re trying to make. “This one person said that’s false.” Not really a conversation-stopper!

Similarly, Dawkins’ comment quickly became a lightning rod for criticism, with trans folk and allies responding with frustration and exhaustion.

Folk again, and passive-aggressive imputation of guilt again. Dawkins’s tweet didn’t “become a lightning rod”; some people chose to respond to it. I’ve done some responding to Dawkins myself in the distant past, but I don’t think I called him a lightning rod.

His argument has long been debunked by, you know, science and the very advocacy group for “reason and science” Dawkins founded.

That part is true.

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