Read Phil Plait's summary of events here. Finnish readers can also check out Kaj Sotala's blog here. Ms. Watson's own reply is here. Frankly, the only way I can describe this is that Richard Dawkins is not only being an asshole, but is adamantly refusing to acknowledge it.
This whole thing is just depressing. As I understand it, what Ms. Watson was saying, was that a dude was creepy to her in an elevator, and she thought it was creepy. Her advice to men: don't be creepy.
Of course, what with the culture wars going on, you don't have to go far down in Mr. Plait's comments section for this to start:
At this point you are basically advocating total segregation of men and women.
Men are not allowed to make even the slightest advance towards women.
And it goes on from there. On that forum, and on so many others, people are jumping on bandwagons, and the most popular one is dedicated to framing her view as an attack on all men everywhere. According to these feminazis, men aren't allowed to have a sexuality at all and aren't allowed to talk to women, and so on and so forth.
I would be intellectually dishonest if I didn't mention that a particularly obnoxious anti-feminist from my very own political party got on the same case, ridiculously summarizing this whole episode as feminists being enraged at a woman being asked to have coffee, because they think all men are rapists.
You can watch the video that prompted all this nonsense here, and determine for yourself that she says none of the things she's been accused of. Seriously, she doesn't. She gives men everywhere a very good, reasonable piece of advice: don't be creepy.
Most of the response to this is just astonishing. Not only is what she actually said being totally distorted to make her look ridiculous, but the whole point of this concerted attack is that she feels wrong. How dare that woman feel threatened! Why, it's an insult to men everywhere.
Read Ms. Watson's rejoinder to the whole thing here; it's beautiful.
So here we are today. I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one. Every time I mention, however delicately, a possible issue of misogyny or objectification in our community, the response I get shows me that the problem is much worse than I thought, and so I grow angrier. I knew that eventually I would reach a sort of feminist singularity where I would explode and in my place would rise some kind of Captain Planet-type superhero but for feminists. I believe that day has nearly arrived.
I, too, would like to say that this is exactly what makes me a feminist. From my point of view, the people attacking Ms. Watson live in an insane world. She felt creeped out in a situation where I, at least, consider that it was totally reasonable, and in response to her saying that, men from Richard Dawkins on down attack her. Clearly she's not allowed to feel creeped out!
What makes it quite simply sinister is that this fits in perfectly with the attitude that so much of our society takes to sexual harassment, objectification of women and even sex crime. The victimization of women in our society is real, but far too often any attempt to draw attention to it is dismissed and ridiculed. Feminist critiques of the gender system are totally misrepresented as ridiculous strawman caricatures, and things like false rape accusations are played up far beyond their actual numbers to suggest that all these women are just being silly.
I'm constantly surrounded by this. I already mentioned the ludicrous caricature that a fellow Pirate party member presented of this particular incident. Earlier, another fellow blogger dismayed me on the topic of rape. I have the greatest respect for him as a person, but it's just shocking when he puts together blog posts with such utterly ridiculous strawmen as "feminists claim rape accusations can never be false" and so on. Just last week, Finland's Aamulehti published a particularly idiotic article where the author claimed that in America, men can't even get into the same elevator as women without facing a rape charge, with no evidence beyond the woman's word required.
This stuff is completely moronic and untrue, and the people peddling it are being maliciously dishonest. What's even worse is that by doing so, they're actively trying to make claims of sexual harassment and rape appear suspect, overstated and false. Bizarrely, they often justify themselves by claiming that they're pursuing sexual equality: a lunatic definition of equality where men's sexual needs are paramount, and women simply aren't allowed to feel differently. The Pirate party member I've mentioned also authored a proposal for increasing sexual equality, which included using the school system to, frankly, teach girls to put out more. When it was pointed out that this kind of approach would almost certainly increase sexual harassment, in his response the proposer simply ignored this. To him, it seems, sexual equality means the satisfaction of men's needs, and the adjustment of women to conform to men's needs. And he, in all seriousness, calls himself an "equality activist".
By attacking feminism, and especially by attacking feminist critiques of sexual oppression, these people are quite simply enabling more sexual harassment and sex crime. The more we create an atmosphere where complaints of sexual harassment are viewed as frivolous, the more we make sexual harassment acceptable. It's absolutely unconscionable and immoral to participate in this kind of activity. Given my "criminal record", it should be obvious that I'm all for highlighting problems of gender and sexual equality for both sexes; what I don't approve of is this idea that it needs to be done through undermining feminism and women's rights. That whole notion is based on turning feminism into a ludicrous strawman.
The single most appalling reaction I've encountered to this whole business came from a wealthy white man, who was absolutely incensed that people like Ms. Watson are treating men as potential sexual offenders. He was hurt by this sexism! So somehow, Ms. Watson feeling creeped out is transformed into not only her being a sexist against the man who was creeping her out, but an attack on the rights of a man half the world away. Never mind that neither Ms. Watson nor Mr. Plait made any claims that "all men" are anything at all, or even the fact that this "all men are rapists" notion mostly comes from rabid anti-feminists who are hell-bent on regarding the SCUM manifesto as feminism's Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In my opinion, nothing illustrates how bad the situation is as well as a privileged white man coming away from this incident feeling hurt because women feel harassed and threatened, and somehow that infringes on his rights.
So really, when I see this kind of activity going on, it reaffirms my belief not only in feminism, but in the necessity of feminism. When someone like Richard Dawkins feels the need to speak up solely to belittle and ridicule a woman's experience of feeling harassed, it's obvious that we have a problem. When Ms. Watson regularly receives threats of murder and rape for speaking out, we have a problem. To far too many of us, women are still second-class citizens whose emotions and concerns can be dismissed, and even should be dismissed.
It's easy to think we live in a perfect world of gender equality, where feminism is no longer necessary. Then something like this comes along, and we're forcefully reminded that feminism is still very necessary. Sexual harassment isn't something to point and laugh at. It's especially reprehensible when privileged white men are the ones doing the pointing and laughing.
**
On the subject of response, I'd be remiss if I didn't note that this even made the front page of Conservapedia! You know, the Reliable Encyclopedia (tm) that's bowdleriz...erm, retranslating the Bible. What it said when I checked was this:
Boorish and uncouth atheist men are causing disharmony between the sexes in the atheist community.
Followed by a link to a ridiculous blog post on this very topic. Atheists: boorish, uncouth and fat. Yes, there is a Conservapedia page titled "Atheism and obesity", and even worse, somewhere there are people who think that that page is a reasonable argument.
And I'll finish with a humorous endnote: Skepchick also has a Swedish-language site, which I shouldn't have been reading in the middle of the night, because I genuinely misread the second item of this post as "Finskor har också känslor. Så även skaldjur."
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