The story is a bit old already, but it’s always instructive when various factions of the left clash with each other, and nobody beats the feminists for causing trouble and drawing attention to themselves.
Rebecca Watson, an atheist groupie and feminist, took offense to a late-night invitation to coffee from a fellow atheist, and subsequently used the experience to engage in feminist posturing and pedantry.
What’s kind of funny about these things is that feminists love to talk about how creeped out they are by men who pay attention to them, and they love to carry on in detail about the particular experiences. What they are doing is offering proof of their attractiveness (important even to feminists), making a stir, and calling for people to come to their defense — natural behaviors that females indulge in from time to time.
Somehow, people took the bait in this particular case, and it became a raging issue in the atheist community. Even atheist high priest Richard Dawkins addressed the incident, making light of Watson’s outrage:
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
Feminist atheist PZ Myers, however, was not all that amused. Myers, who engages in stunts designed to offend Christians, may not believe in a patriarchal God, but he certainly behaves as though he is in awe of the transcendent feminine:
There is an odd attitude in our culture that it’s acceptable for men to proposition women in curious ways — Rebecca Watson recently experienced this in an elevator in Dublin, and I think this encounter Ophelia Benson had reflects the same attitude: women are lower status persons, and we men, as superior beings, get to ask things of them. Also as liberal, enlightened people, of course, we will graciously accede to their desires, and if they ask us to stop hassling them, we will back off, politely. Isn’t that nice of us?
It’s not enough. Maybe we should also recognize that applying unwanted pressure, no matter how politely phrased, is inappropriate behavior. Maybe we should recognize that when we interact with equals there are different, expected patterns of behavior that many men casually disregard when meeting with women, and it is those subtle signs that let them know what you think of them that really righteously pisses feminist women off.
Isn’t it odd that Myers thinks nothing of desecrating the host – a serious provocation to believing Catholics – yet he demands that people recognize “subtle signs” that might offend women? Of course, as he explains, this is because “liberal, enlightened people” are “equals,” as opposed to those benighted religious types, who deserve no such sensitivity.
This is why I, despite my rather unconventional take on religion, am an atheism skeptic — the faith has all the trappings of an elitist cult with its own taboo, ritual and dogma. Furthermore, an irrational belief in qualitative equality is a faith in and of itself.
People who simply don’t believe in God or anything beyond what they know shouldn’t, as Dawkins suggests, have much to complain about in the West, where they have freedom of conscience and remain unmolested. Myers, however, is not content to leave well enough alone, but instead has made it his mission to eradicate alternative faiths in favor of his own hard-left feminist theology.
PZ Myers has tenure at the University of Minnesota, Morris, where he is supported by taxpayers.
