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Author Topic:   The war of atheism
Rahvin
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Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


(3)
Message 166 of 526 (678274)
11-06-2012 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 165 by roxrkool
11-06-2012 12:49 PM


Re: Atheism+
Tribalism is unfortunately a natural instinct in human beings. We continuously find new ways to subdivide ourselves into "us" and "them," and those ways are usually pretty silly.
In this case, it would seem that the Atheist+ movement's culture of exclusion and defamation is counterproductive to what they should (and purport to) actually want - that is, convincing others through well-supported argument that their views should be adopted.
The drive to identify, vilify, and dehumanize an "other" is the cause of many human evils. Atheists aren't magically immune to millenia of social evolution any more than theists...and sometimes, I think, Atheists can become so caught up in thoughts of superior rationality that they imagine themselves immune to the cognitive defects present in all of us. Just like Christians get caught up in feeling superior by being "saved," or political parties get caught up in feeling superior to...well, okay, I still say American politics is more akin to soccer hooligans than any reasonable enterprise. But that illustrates the point rather well.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
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roxrkool
Member (Idle past 989 days)
Posts: 1497
From: Nevada
Joined: 03-23-2003


Message 167 of 526 (678278)
11-06-2012 2:18 PM
Reply to: Message 164 by Modulous
11-06-2012 11:32 AM


Re: Atheism+
Despite high ideals and noble intentions, we humans do have a tendency to take things to the extreme. And what results is that we become the very thing we fought so hard to overcome.
Social justice issues are worth fighting for, but not at the expense of another group of people, including wealthy, white, privileged heterosexual males.

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roxrkool
Member (Idle past 989 days)
Posts: 1497
From: Nevada
Joined: 03-23-2003


Message 168 of 526 (678279)
11-06-2012 2:23 PM
Reply to: Message 166 by Rahvin
11-06-2012 1:17 PM


Re: Atheism+
Well said. Exactly what I was thinking.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


(1)
Message 169 of 526 (678292)
11-06-2012 6:52 PM
Reply to: Message 155 by roxrkool
11-05-2012 1:08 AM


Re: Even more complicated
I particularly dislike the attitude that if you don't agree with her version of feminism, that you are a "gender traitor." Or in effect, not a *real* feminist.
Well, if you don't agree that the value of a woman is equal to that of a man, and that women deserve, by dint of being human beings, equal access to public spaces and institutions, then why should she, or anyone, allow you to call yourself a "feminist"? It's a bit like saying "I'm a vegetarian, except that I eat pork and chicken and beef." Do words just not have meaning?

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


(2)
Message 170 of 526 (678333)
11-07-2012 4:52 AM
Reply to: Message 169 by crashfrog
11-06-2012 6:52 PM


Re: Even more complicated
crashfrog writes:
Well, if you don't agree that the value of a woman is equal to that of a man, and that women deserve, by dint of being human beings, equal access to public spaces and institutions, then why should she, or anyone, allow you to call yourself a "feminist"? It's a bit like saying "I'm a vegetarian, except that I eat pork and chicken and beef." Do words just not have meaning?
Are you suggesting that there is only one school of feminism, and that your first sentence sums it up? What you say in that sentence would be included in all schools. I think Rox was referring to people from a specific school of feminism calling others, who would be feminists by your description above, names like misogynist.
Do words just not have meaning?
As you know well, often more than one. Misogynist has become very interesting. Traditionally, it was applied to a small minority of men who seem to have an almost pathological dislike or hatred of women. It isn't cultural in this sense, so in a culture like Saudi Arabia, there will be individual misogynists in the context.
Some schools of feminism have given "misogynist" another sense, which is cultural, and makes misogyny in a way both the driving force and product of patriarchy. In this sense, the whole Saudi culture would be very misogynous, and almost everyone in it could be given the label "misogynist", both men and women.
An interesting thing is that some radical feminists are close to fitting the traditional sense of being misogynists. That's because they can see the majority of women as being duped by the patriarchy, and their social and political views as being essentially invalid and mindless. They are behaving as if all other women, the great majority, are too silly to know what's good for them, although they rarely actually say this. And the classic misogynist is a great believer in the silly mindlessness of the sex.
So, yes, words usually have meanings, but the end result of all this seems to be that pretty much everyone is a misogynist of one sort or another.
Maybe I can start a meme that will stop people using misogynist in their name calling, and use something like "sexist" instead. Of course, the case could be made that we're all sexist. Sometimes, throwing words around too thoughtlessly does actually leave them without meaning, in answer to your question.
BTW, I thought that your summary of what Dawkins said had a bit of spin on it. At the time of his comment, I thought some things were getting blown out of all proportion (although not by any side in particular), and that's all that he said. Someone could read into it that he's implying that there are no problems of sexual behaviour that need to be dealt with at the atheist conferences, but so far as I know he hasn't said that, and as problems exist at all other conferences, and he's been around, it would be odd if he thought so.
Like me, he's likely to remember some of the more ridiculous forms of seventies feminism, and he may well know what he's doing. I remember announcements from feminist leaders like "all penetrative sex is rape", from a well known New Yorker.
Do words just not have meaning?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 169 by crashfrog, posted 11-06-2012 6:52 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 171 of 526 (678339)
11-07-2012 6:12 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by bluegenes
11-07-2012 4:52 AM


Re: Even more complicated
Like me, he's likely to remember some of the more ridiculous forms of seventies feminism, and he may well know what he's doing. I remember announcements from feminist leaders like "all penetrative sex is rape", from a well known New Yorker.
Maybe this happened, but the best source for this quote I could come up with is Catherine MacKinnon who claims it was a false quote designed to undermine her credibility, possibly manufactured by the pornography industry - of which she was a vocal opponent.
There was a similar case in the 80s, Andrea Dworkin:
quote:
She argued that this kind of depiction enforced a male-centric and coercive view of sexuality, and that, when the cultural attitudes combine with the material conditions of women's lives in a sexist society, the experience of heterosexual intercourse itself becomes a central part of men's subordination of women, experienced as a form of "occupation" that is nevertheless expected to be pleasurable for women and to define their very status as women.
Such descriptions are often cited by Dworkin's critics, interpreting the book as claiming "all" heterosexual intercourse is rape, or more generally that the anatomical mechanics of sexual intercourse make it intrinsically harmful to women's equality. For instance, Cathy Young says that statements such as, "Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women,"are reasonably summarized as "All sex is rape."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 170 by bluegenes, posted 11-07-2012 4:52 AM bluegenes has replied

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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


(3)
Message 172 of 526 (678346)
11-07-2012 7:48 AM
Reply to: Message 171 by Modulous
11-07-2012 6:12 AM


Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
Modulous writes:
There was a similar case in the 80s, Andrea Dworkin:
It was Andrea Dworkin that I was thinking of, so perhaps I got the decade wrong. And:
quote:
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women,"
That would have made the point just as well as the phrase I used. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if something very close to my actual phrase was used by some "slogan and jargon" type feminists, because it was getting a bit like Poe's law. If you made up something satirical to put in the mouths of feminists, people wouldn't know the difference. At the same time, as now, there were much more scientific feminists, who made a lot of sense about a lot of things.
For a "Poe" slogan, try: "Non-white people can't be rascist", for the atheist+ people.
They don't actually say that, but they want "racist" used in this way on their site. That's because in "social justice" terminology, people cannot be guilty of an "ism" like racism if they are victims of it, because they are (apparently) unable to "institutionalize" their "ism". So woman can't be sexist in this terminology, also.
They have "PoCs", people of colour, as a description. (Anyone who isn't white, including people who often are pretty white, like some Hispanics). PoCs, apparently, shouldn't be called racist, because they cannot institutionalize their racism.
Where? China? As most of the world's population are PoCs, and most countries have clear majorities of PoCs, this seems odd. So, atheism+, at present, is clearly parochial, and seems concerned with majority white societies, and mostly, the USA.
PoCs are not privileged, in A+ speak, and white people are. So, we know that an unemployed working class white male who has recently been diagnosed with a serious illness and cannot afford the health-care can comfort himself with the thought that he has two important privileges which he must learn to recognize. Being white and being male. Whereas Michelle Obama and her daughters need our sympathy and understanding for their lack of privilege on those two counts, poor souls.
IOW, we're not really looking at who really are the haves and havenots as individuals, but taking groups by gender or ethnicity and basing privilege around the average status of the group for them all. And even that doesn't work with groups of PoCs, because Asian Americans have the highest incomes of all major broad ethnic groupings, followed I think by white, black and Hispanic in that order, which looks to me more like a zebra crossing than a light to dark caste system.
Anyway, it's all very interesting, and I predict dissent from the real left, who can point out that privilege is inevitable under capitalism, and if you really wanted to get rid of it, capitalism would have to go too.
PoCs!
Edited by bluegenes, : spilling

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 173 of 526 (678347)
11-07-2012 7:53 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by bluegenes
11-07-2012 4:52 AM


Re: Even more complicated
Are you suggesting that there is only one school of feminism, and that your first sentence sums it up?
I'm suggesting that words have both meaning and connotation, and that sometimes bad actors want to avail themselves of the positive connotations of a label without merit. I'm suggesting that there's no "label police" but us, and therefore that we should push back when people attempt to appropriate labels they don't deserve. Like "feminism."
I think Rox was referring to people from a specific school of feminism calling others, who would be feminists by your description above, names like misogynist.
Then doubtless she could provide a concrete example for discussion. I took her to be referring to the groups, individuals, and ideologies that Rebecca Watson was saying were not feminist, and those would be groups, individuals, and ideologies that aren't feminists by my description above, but call themselves that regardless.
An interesting thing is that some radical feminists are close to fitting the traditional sense of being misogynists.
An interesting thing is that you don't provide even a single concrete example of this. Are you familiar with a creation called the "strawfeminist"?
BTW, I thought that your summary of what Dawkins said had a bit of spin on it.
His remarks were read into the record - by you, as I recall. I saw perfect concord between his remarks and my summary.
At the time of his comment, I thought some things were getting blown out of all proportion (although not by any side in particular), and that's all that he said.
Right. The proper "proportion" he sees for discussion of women's issues in atheism is that so long as a woman anywhere in the world is wearing a burkha, there's absolutely no need to discuss women's issues in atheism.
Look, I continue to think Dawkins is great, but he just flubbed this. He was needlessly snide and dismissive at a time when the discussion was about how the male leaders of "movement atheism" are completely dismissive of the concerns of atheist women. How bone-headed.
Like me, he's likely to remember some of the more ridiculous forms of seventies feminism, and he may well know what he's doing.
Like you, I bet he doesn't remember even a single actual example of a "ridiculous form of seventies feminism. All he remembers, like you, is the strawfeminism promoted to discredit the project of equality for women.
I remember announcements from feminist leaders like "all penetrative sex is rape", from a well known New Yorker.
The problem is, you remember something that nobody actually ever said.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 174 of 526 (678348)
11-07-2012 7:57 AM
Reply to: Message 172 by bluegenes
11-07-2012 7:48 AM


Re: Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
It was Andrea Dworkin that I was thinking of, so perhaps I got the decade wrong.
She didn't say it either, though.
If you made up something satirical to put in the mouths of feminists, people wouldn't know the difference.
You're not making a very strong case for your ability to tell the difference between things feminists have said, and things people have said feminists have said in order to discredit them.
For a "Poe" slogan, try: "Non-white people can't be rascist", for the atheist+ people.
They don't actually say that
Oh. Well then.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by bluegenes, posted 11-07-2012 7:48 AM bluegenes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 175 by bluegenes, posted 11-07-2012 8:48 AM crashfrog has replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 175 of 526 (678352)
11-07-2012 8:48 AM
Reply to: Message 174 by crashfrog
11-07-2012 7:57 AM


Re: Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women,"
"violation is a synonym for intercourse."
Dworkin.
I don't think my original phrase was a wild misrepresentation, and I do think those two claims are ridiculous. But you're in a better position than she was to support the view expressed in the first quote from personal experience. Is intercourse the way in which you express your contempt for women? Or is she wrong and ridiculous?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 174 by crashfrog, posted 11-07-2012 7:57 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 176 of 526 (678355)
11-07-2012 9:18 AM
Reply to: Message 175 by bluegenes
11-07-2012 8:48 AM


Re: Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women,"
The hanging comma doesn't tell you that there's maybe some context here you're not getting? I mean what you've quoted isn't even a complete sentence.
Dworkin.
Except that it's not.
Or is she wrong and ridiculous?
I don't know. We're not yet talking about things that Dworkin actually said.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by bluegenes, posted 11-07-2012 8:48 AM bluegenes has replied

Replies to this message:
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Panda
Member (Idle past 3713 days)
Posts: 2688
From: UK
Joined: 10-04-2010


Message 177 of 526 (678363)
11-07-2012 10:33 AM
Reply to: Message 176 by crashfrog
11-07-2012 9:18 AM


Re: Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
CF writes:
Except that it's not.
Except that it was:
"violation is a synonym for intercourse."
Intercourse: Occupation/Collaboration (1 of 2)
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women"
Intercourse: Occupation/Collaboration (2 of 2)
CF writes:
The hanging comma doesn't tell you that there's maybe some context here you're not getting?
Ok - here it is:
"Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se."
{abe} From bluegenes' post, I see that she re-uses the same sentence in multiple places. She definitely means it.
CF writes:
I don't know. We're not yet talking about things that Dworkin actually said.
Yes we are.
Why do you think otherwise?
Edited by Panda, : No reason given.
Edited by Panda, : No reason given.
Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

"There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god." J. B. S. Haldane

This message is a reply to:
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Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 178 of 526 (678364)
11-07-2012 10:38 AM
Reply to: Message 151 by crashfrog
11-04-2012 4:36 PM


zero bad
Richard Dawkins came out and basically said "there can't be any such thing as a sexism problem in atheism so long as a single woman, somewhere, is wearing a burkha. Or if there is, we're certainly not going to pay attention to it."
I think Dawkins' point was that elevator guy wasn't just being mildly problematic in comparison to the cultures of (say) the near east, but that he was not being problematic at all:
quote:
I sarcastically compared Rebecca’s plight with that of women in Muslim countries or families dominated by Muslim men. Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse. We should fight all bad things, the slightly bad as well as the very bad. Fair enough. But my point is that the ‘slightly bad thing’ suffered by Rebecca was not even slightly bad, it was zero bad. A man asked her back to his room for coffee. She said no. End of story.
But not everybody sees it as end of story. OK, let’s ask why not? The main reason seems to be that an elevator is a confined space from which there is no escape. This point has been made again and again in this thread, and the other one.
No escape? I am now really puzzled. Here’s how you escape from an elevator. You press any one of the buttons conveniently provided. The elevator will obligingly stop at a floor, the door will open and you will no longer be in a confined space but in a well-lit corridor in a crowded hotel in the centre of Dublin.
No, I obviously don’t get it. I will gladly apologise if somebody will calmly and politely, without using the word fuck in every sentence, explain to me what it is that I am not getting.
(I can't find the original, but I remember reading it once. It is on many blogs as a quote now but the links are to another blog post where Dawkins commented. It can be seen Here for example)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 151 by crashfrog, posted 11-04-2012 4:36 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


(3)
Message 179 of 526 (678369)
11-07-2012 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 176 by crashfrog
11-07-2012 9:18 AM


Re: Slogans, Privelege and PoCs
crashfrog writes:
The hanging comma doesn't tell you that there's maybe some context here you're not getting? I mean what you've quoted isn't even a complete sentence.
You're right. It should be "women's bodies". Now do you agree with it? Yes or no?
And you might or might not agree with all of these. You're a biologist, so you might wonder how she came up with her biological knowledge that men are "biologically inferior to women". As you know from experience with creationism, idealists always have the option of just making stuff up and stating their fantasies as fact.
quote:
"One of the differences between marriage and prostitution is that in marriage you only have to make a deal with one man." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Marriage . . . is a legal license to rape." (Letters From a War Zone)
"The hurting of women is . . . basic to the sexual pleasure of men."
"... [W]omen and men are distinct species or races ... men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability; to eliminate it, one must eliminate the species/race itself ... in eliminating the biologically inferior species/race Man, the new Ubermensch Womon will have the earthly dominion that is her true biological destiny." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women's bodies." (Letters From a War Zone)
"In everything men make, they hollow out a central place for death, let its rancid smell contaminate every dimension of whatever still survives. Men especially love murder. In art they celebrate it, and in life they commit it." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Marriage as an institution developed from rape as a practice. Rape, originally defined as abduction, became marriage by capture. Marriage meant the taking was to extend in time, to be not only use of but possession of, or ownership." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Rape, then, is the logical consequence of a system of definitions of what is normative. Rape is no excess, no aberration, no accident, no mistake -- it embodies sexuality as the culture defines it." (Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics)
"As I see it, our revolutionary task is to destroy phallic identity in men and masochistic nonidentity in women -- that is, to destroy the polar realities of men and women as we now know them so that this division of human flesh into two camps -- one an armed camp and the other a concentration camp -- is no longer possible. Phallic identity is real and it must be destroyed. Female masochism is real and it must be destroyed." (Our Blood: Prophecies And Discourses On Sexual Politics)
"The cultural institutions which embody and enforce those interlocked aberrations -- for instance, law, art, religion, nation-states, the family, tribe, or commune based on father-right -- these institutions are real and they must be destroyed. If they are not, we will be consigned as women to perpetual inferiority and subjugation." (Our Blood: Prophecies And Discourses On Sexual Politics)
"Only when manhood is dead -- and it will perish when ravaged femininity no longer sustains it -- only then will we know what it is to be free." (Our Blood: Prophecies And Discourses On Sexual Politics)
"... [T]he prisons for women are our homes. We live under martial law. We live in places in which a rape culture exists.... Men have to be sent to prison, to live in a culture that is as rapist as the normal home in North America. We live under what amounts to a military curfew. Enforced by rapists. In the United States, violence against women is a major pastime. It is a sport. It is an amusement. It is a mainstream cultural entertainment. It saturates the society." (First published in Canadian Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme, Vol. 12, No. 1, Fall 1991)
"The annihilation of a woman's personality, individuality, will, character, is prerequisite to male sexuality." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Rape is the primary heterosexual model for sexual relating. Rape is the primary emblem of romantic love. Rape is the means by which a woman is initiated into her womanhood as it is defined by men." (Letters From a War Zone)
"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." (Ice and Fire)
"Men are rapists, batterers, plunderers, killers." (Pornography: Men Possessing Women)
"Like prostitution, marriage is an institution that is extremely oppressive and dangerous for women." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Under patriarchy, every woman is a victim, past, present and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's daughter is a victim, past, present and future. Under patriarchy, every woman's son is her potential betrayer and also the inevitable rapist or exploiter of another woman." (Our Blood: Prophecies And Discourses On Sexual Politics)
"[M]en are biologically aggressive; their fetal brains were awash in androgen; their DNA, in order to perpetuate itself, hurls them into murder and rape." (Letters From a War Zone)
"Female masochism is real and it must be destroyed"
"masochistic nonidentity in women"
Women, not surprisingly, were not joining up to Dworkin's vision of feminism in their masses. And they kept on having sex with the likes us. Something must be wrong with the silly things. So, they have masochistic nonidentity. That's the kind of thing that I mean by some feminists seeing most women in a way that's similar to the classic misogynist's view. They are weak nothings. Non-persons.
But Dworkin is just one feminist, and Rebecca Watson is no Dworkin. And just as she would disagree with Dworkin on some things, other feminists will disagree with her.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 180 of 526 (678371)
11-07-2012 12:13 PM
Reply to: Message 178 by Modulous
11-07-2012 10:38 AM


Re: zero bad
I think Dawkins' point was that elevator guy wasn't just being mildly problematic in comparison to the cultures of (say) the near east, but that he was not being problematic at all:
You guys keep restating what I'm saying, and then telling me I'm wrong. I don't get it.
I agree with you, Mod, that Dawkins is being completely dismissive of Watson's issue with the elevator guy, and with the larger problem of sexism in "movement atheism" altogether. And that's the problem. Dawkins' reply is to continue to be dismissive. The problem isn't that Watson and others are refusing to accept his dismissal; the problem is that he's dismissing them. Dawkins is basically asking, here, exactly what the problem is that can't be solved by just ignoring it. People are trying to tell him, but because they use naughty words he doesn't feel like he has to listen.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 178 by Modulous, posted 11-07-2012 10:38 AM Modulous has replied

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 Message 181 by Rahvin, posted 11-07-2012 12:24 PM crashfrog has not replied
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