Author: Ophelia Benson

Today’s installment of wit and insight from TwitterDawkins – another insightful retweet.

Nadine Feiler ‏@nadine_feiler 8 hours ago
@RichardDawkins @thunderf00t @Sargon_of_Akkad Change of mind ;)

An item that Dawkins retweeted this morning:

Yes, that’s right, Richard, feminists get upset by a tits and ass shirt worn by the talking head for a big exciting space event, and they don’t get upset by women being shot in the head on the street.

Except no it’s not. It’s not right, it’s a lying crock of shit, and you’re a mean bullying ideologue for repeating this kind of thing.

Not to mention how fucking callous it is to use that photo to make a cheap and dishonest point about feminism.

Dan Fincke made excellent points in a public post on Facebook sharing a public post by Julia Galef about the Dawkins-NECSS disruption.

1. Dawkins is not just any speaker, he was to be the keynote and he’s got outsized influence in the movement. With greater power comes greater responsibility. Endorsing him to speak is to effectively continue to endorse him as the de facto face of our movement. It is worse when someone of his stature does something like this.

2. Dawkins is also not just any speaker because he is building off his academic stature in gaining his reputation and outsized influence. Standards are different for a professional activist like, say, David Silverman, and a professional. Professionals are expected to police themselves as part of the responsibility that comes with their authority, prestige, and prominence related to their academic titles and institutional affiliations. The idea of tenure is a trust. We trust you to behave professionally and in return you get unrestricted free speech rights. Soft penalties for abusing that authority like being academically shunned or disinvited from speaking opportunities are a relatively a mild form of recourse still left available to chastise someone abusing their professional privileges.

I think he meant a professional academic, or an academic (since professional academic is tautological), rather than just professional. Professional entertainers for instance work under different rules. At any rate, yes, that. Dawkins should police himself as part of the responsibility that comes with his authority, prestige, and prominence related to his academic titles and institutional affiliations – including CFI. He should police himself in order to avoid making CFI look bad by being a bully on Twitter days after the merger was announced.

6. Even after he “took it down” because it was a real person he acted spiteful and petulant in follow up tweets. He started questioning whether she was really harassed (ignoring evidence presented to him) and calling her vile and recommending that this very low totem pole individual who was already disproportionately signaled out for harassment and death threats and mockery be given plenty of more mockery. He’s STILL willing to make a lowly street level activist a target of unrelenting mockery rather than shift the focus to ideas. That’s irresponsible, especially coming from such an extraordinarily powerful person. I agree with those that found her actions in the original video that made her infamous to be repulsively uncivil. But seriously, street level arguments between ideologues are emotional and intense confrontations. They shouldn’t destroy someone’s life. Dawkins and his defenders are constantly bemoaning powerful people being raked through the social media mud over a single comment. But Dawkins is rallying millions of social media followers to redouble their efforts to mock a street level activist for being obnoxious in the heat of an argument? This doesn’t make him unfit to receive continued treatment as the de facto face and voice of our movement? Then this movement is fucked.

That. I couldn’t agree more.

There are seven, they’re all good, you should read them all.

Dawkins’s Twitter is of course full of his retweets of people raging at the “witch hunt” against him. (And yet he goes on pretending to be unaware that many of his 1.34 million followers will harass anyone he targets on Twitter. He remembers them when they’re raging at the witch hunt, but not when they’re harassing Chanty Binx.)

A sample, with account names left off to simplify.

@NECSS Shameful display of intolerance and ignorance on your part, in your treatment of @RichardDawkins. Ridiculous overreaction to satire.

@JackSyit @RichardDawkins I agree. He’s a liberal feminist who abhors racism and sexism. But he’s brutally honest & many hate that.

.@RichardDawkins #cologne rapes and enormous problems of Muslim world but “feminists” and Islamists unite over hatred of cartoons.

I can’t be the only one that see the irony in this situation. @RichardDawkins is more of a feminist than any of those attacking him.

@RichardDawkins Fundamentalist feminists are irony deficient.

@NECSS You people have lost all credibility. Unless you can issue an absolutely rectifying apology to @RichardDawkins . Admit you’re wrong

I’m an atheist. I don’t agree with @RichardDawkins about everything & don’t need him to speak for me, but this Twitter lynch mob is pathetic

@RichardDawkins The regressive left is a new enemy of logic and reason. Stay classy, prof.

@RichardDawkins The regressives have multiplied and have made you their newest target. Stay strong, we have your back.

Feminists turn on @RichardDawkins because he tweeted this amusing video. Humourless harpies. http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sceptic_faith_disturbed/ …
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ecJUqhm2g08&feature=youtu.be …

@ttrwttr @RichardDawkins @NECSS

Don’t always agree with @RichardDawkins but he’s fair & consistent. Same can’t be said about his hysterical detractors.

That’s a tiny, tiny sample. I gave up trying to scroll to the bottom of them.

His own tweets are as horrible as ever, if not worse.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins

‘It’s time feeble feminists started to condemn the misogyny in Islam’
Yes, don’t tell me, I know there’s a paywall http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4678093.ece …

[In response to someone saying the vid is not funny]:

.@ttrwttr @NECSS That’s your opinion. I found it very funny and acute. Maybe not as good as Lehrer or Python but they set a v high standard

Now who will de-platform me for posting this? Come on, why not?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M …
Or this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk …
Both “offensive”

Dear @NECSS, please listen to @StephenFry before you disinvite anyone else for “offending” the offence junkies,

@Ivriniel @CHSommers She most certainly deserved mockery. In spades. She did not deserve violence. Nobody does, not even her.

That one is particularly disgusting. Again he insists that a random powerless ordinary woman “deserved” mockery, and not just that, but “in spades” – deserved extra added mockery. Reasonable people with a nodding acquaintance with basic decency consider that bullying and harassment, while Richard Dawkins thinks it’s just reward for a woman he dislikes. Then he says nobody deserves violence, “not even her,” as if she were so evil she came close to deserving violence.

He’s become the George Galloway of atheism.

Steven Novella has written the blog post he said he would write, explaining the decision to withdraw Dawkins’s invitation to speak at the NECSS conference in May.

NECSS is run by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society, both non-profit organizations. NECSS has its own executive committee, consisting of members of both organizations. There has been much speculation about who is making the decisions for NECSS – it is this committee. I will just say that there were a range of opinions on this matter within the committee, and we came to the best decisions we could, given that range of opinions. When I refer to “we” in this article, I am not speaking for every individual on the committee, just the majority result.

It wasn’t one person, and it wasn’t unanimous.

Richard Dawkins has been a polarizing figure in the skeptical community for several years.  On the one hand, many people (myself included) greatly respect the work that Dawkins has done. He is a brilliant science communicator. His books have brought many people to rationalism. He is one of the few “rock stars” of our movement.

For what it’s worth, I still agree with that. On the other hand, sadly, I think he’s done a lot to tarnish even his brilliant science communication now; that’s one of the many reasons I wish he would stop. Now that he’s so firmly established himself as a serial outrage-machine on Twitter, it just really is hard to read his books without that getting in the way. Imagine you found out that, oh, Paul Krugman, say, or Daniel Dennett, is actually the mind behind Milo Yiannopoulos. That would change how you saw him and his books.

I also greatly respect and appreciate the fact that he is an outspoken public atheist. This is tremendously important, and serves to legitimize atheism for many. Dawkins has dedicated much of his career and effort to charitable endeavors, to make the world a better place.

I guess, sort of, but less so than the part about brilliant science communication. Now the “outspoken” quality is all tangled up with the “mean bullying” quality, and I have no idea how to disentangle them.

All of this is why it has been very puzzling to many that his social media activity has often not reflected his reputation as a public intellectual. He has famously made tweets or blog comments that have come off as insensitive or worse. I will not dissect each instance here, which is well trammeled territory already.

Interestingly, Dawkins himself recently tweeted:

“I’m really as polite as my books. Twitter brevity forces you straight to the point, which can sound aggressive.”

Interestingly and horrifyingly. Yes, really – I find it horrifying how completely unable he is to see (or admit?) even that he is frequently rude. I speak as a frequently rude person myself. I make some effort not to be, and doubtless should make more, but for sure I do not go around telling people how especially polite I am. It creeps me out that Dawkins keeps insisting he’s actually a nice guy.

For further background, over the last 5-6 years the skeptical movement has been rocked by intermittent controversy over sexism and racism in the movement. This is a complex topic I am not going to tackle or resolve here. Suffice it to say this controversy has caused many in the movement to form various camps, some championing free speech, others social justice. Others have tried to chart a course down the middle, while still others left the movement.

In the mix, unfortunately, there have been truly vile trolls who have made threats of violence and rape, serving mostly to radicalize the entire issue. Trolls and psychopaths are part of the new social media reality, a new reality to which we are all still adapting.

Some of them, of course, are commenting on Novella’s post.

Given all this, they had to figure out whether or not to invite Dawkins. They had reservations, but decided to go for it anyway.

Unfortunately, within a week of opening registration many of us became concerned that this might not be tenable.

Dawkins retweeted a video (called “Feminists Love Islamists”) depicting an Islamist and an angry feminist (who it turns out is a real person and not just a character) and essentially making the claim that these groups share an ideology. Dawkins tweeted:

“Obviously doesn’t apply to the vast majority of feminists, among whom I count myself. But the minority are pernicious.”

He included a link to the video. This, of course, set off another round of controversy over Dawkins’ social media activity and the attitudes they reflect.

That made things awkward for NECSS.

Since we had just opened registration this created an urgency, because we did not want to “bait and switch” our attendees if we would ultimately decide to reverse our decision to have him at the conference. We felt it was important to make a decision quickly.

You can see how that makes sense. Dawkins’s tweeting seems to be getting progressively more obnoxious, ratcheting down almost every day, so what would he be blurting out in March, let alone April?

He addresses some concerns – why invite him in the first place, why not talk to him first, what about free speech.

People have a right to speech, but they don’t have a right to access a private venue for their speech. In fact, whom we invite or uninvite to our conference is the primary mechanism of our free speech. This was ultimately about the character of NECSS and the statement we wish to make (or not make) to our community. Obviously where one sets the threshold for not inviting, or uninviting, a guest is subjective and there is room for reasonable disagreement here.

I think there should be a much higher threshold for disinviting than there is for not inviting in the first place. I suppose this situation should be a warning for other orgs, even if they don’t already have scruples about inviting Dawkins to speak – they don’t know what he’ll be tweeting next month, and disinviting is a much bigger deal than not inviting in the first place, so think carefully about inviting.

Others have questioned whether or not we condemn all satire, with South Park being brought up as a frequent example. We are not against satire, but this video is no South Park. The video in question, in my opinion, was spiteful and childish and was merely hiding behind satire. That is a judgment call, but making that judgment does not condemn satire as a form.

Satire as a genre is a good thing. It doesn’t follow, and it’s not the case, that all satire is good.

Another frequent point is that we are against any criticism of feminism, as if it is a taboo topic. This is also not true. No topic should be taboo, and we favor open and vigorous discussion of all important issues. In fact, pointed criticism is good for the feminist movement – or for any movement. (This does not mean that NECSS is the proper venue for any particular topic.)

The point, rather, is that this video, and the discussion that surrounded it, was not constructive. It was hateful and divisive.

It was one item in the massive catalogue of hateful garbage the antifeminists have been cranking out for the past several years. It had nothing to do with reasoned criticism.

I want to directly address Dawkins’ last statement:

“The science and skepticism community is too small and too important to let disagreements divide us and divert us from our mission of promoting a more critical and scientifically literate world.”

I completely agree. That is, ironically, the exact reason we were so disturbed by that video and Dawkins spreading of it. I do wish Dawkins would recognize (perhaps he does) his special place within our community and the power that position holds. When he retweets a link to a video, even with a caveat, that has a tremendous impact. It lends legitimacy to the video and the ideas expressed in it.

That is why Dawkins is so polarizing. In my opinion, someone in his position, with his eloquence, knowledge, and intellect, with his academic background should be doing everything he can to elevate the level of discussion. He has the ability to address legitimate criticisms of feminism, or atheism or skepticism, if he thinks he has them. He could be a force that is helping unite our very small and critically important rationalist movement.

Instead, I fear, he is helping to divide us, 140 characters at a time, and helping to lower the level of the discussion.

Precisely. I also do wish Dawkins would recognize his special place within our community and the power that position holds. I told him that when we had the conversation that led to the joint statement in July 2014. He definitely does recognize his special place for some purposes, i.e. when it’s pleasant for him, but he seems not to when it comes to recognizing the harm he does to the random people he targets. He’s doing it now, today – he’s still producing hateful tweets about the woman in the video, still insisting that she deserves all the mockery possible. His special place right now seems to be Bully in Chief.

The Independent has reported on Dawkins’s latest excellent adventure.

The evolutionary biologist is a controversial figure. He has been criticised for Islamophobia – a term he has described as a ‘non-word’ – on several occasions and last year sparked outrage by comparing who he described as “clock boy” Ahmed Mohamed with a child soldier forced by Isis to behead victims.

The Independent has approached Dawkins for comment.

He also – often – called Ahmed Mohamed “Hoax Boy” – which is even less friendly than “clock boy.”

The International Business Times also reported.

The atheist movement has been accused of being dominated by men often insensitive to women’s concerns. The NECSS decision to disinvite Dawkins as the keynote speaker is one of the few times an organization supportive of his atheism has taken action against him.

Or, rather, the only time? I don’t know of any other. Correct me if I’m wrong.

More about Richard Dawkins

• Richard Dawkins under fire for comparing ‘clock boy’ Ahmed Mohammed to Isis child executioner
• Richard Dawkins take heed: Even atheists instinctively believe in a creator says study
• Peshawar school massacre: Richard Dawkins says Pakistan Taliban attack exposes evils of religion
• Richard Dawkins Makes ‘Worst Comments Yet’ on Twitter about Down’s Syndrome Babies
• Richard Dawkins on Syllogism: ‘Date Rape is Bad, Stranger Rape at Knifepoint is Worse’
• Sun editor David Dinsmore beats GTA 5 to be crowned ‘Sexist of the Year’ by feminist group

The pride of atheism.

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.