Good girls shut up
about being sexually objectified
First watch Louis CK on "Being White":
Done? Ok.
I'm not saying white people are better, I'm saying that being white is clearly better. ... And I'm a man, how many advantages can a person have?
I've read some stuff during the last days which got me thinking. First, if know the sceptics community online you probably have read about that already, Richard Dawkins who is one of the most famous atheists and sceptics (and a white wealthy old hetrosexual man) told Rebecca Watson who is another famous sceptic and white but a woman, to:
... be a good girl and just shut up about being sexually objectified because it doesn’t bother him.
Go on and read The privilege delusion you will need that to be able to follow my discussion here. Or for you lazy bastards here are the comments the whole thing is about.
Rebecca Watson said as kind of a open letter to a man who she met in the elevator just before:
Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don't do that. You know, I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I'll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and—don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.
And Richard Dawkins (and PZ Myers, the owner of the blog where this comment have been posted, confirmed that it was him) commented on that:
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
So which fallacies do we see here? First the two which I am paraphrasing because I couldn't find them again after seeing them once somewhere:
- Because people are dealing with much greater crimes in some foreign country, this trivial offense in your home town is not worth the attention.
- Because I'm not interested in this topic the argument is invalid.
And here copy & pasted from the Wikipedia and different other websites on the net, don't think of it as a definite list but more like what I found surfing webpages about fallacies and thought it was related to Richards comment:
- Ignoratio elenchi (irrelevant conclusion, missing the point): an argument that may in itself be valid, but does not address the issue in question.
- Cherry picking (suppressed evidence, incomplete evidence): act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.
- Ad hominem: attacking the arguer instead of the argument.
- Appeal to emotion: where an argument is made due to the manipulation of emotions, rather than the use of valid reasoning
- Appeal to ridicule: an argument is made by presenting the opponent's argument in a way that makes it appear ridiculous
- Red herring. This means exactly what you think it means: introducing irrelevant facts or arguments to distract from the question at hand.
- Appeal to pity. The appeal to pity takes place when an arguer tries to get people to accept a conclusion by making them feel sorry for someone.
I always thought of Richard Dawkins as a bright and literate man who can point out the fallacies in creationists arguments. But it seems like the bible says in Matthew 7:3
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?
I sincerely hope that Richard reasons about it and concludes that he should apologize.
Comments
This happens to feminists all the time. If for instance a scandinavian woman gets unwanted sexual attention from, let's say her boss, and this makes her uncomfortable, she's most likely to hear that women in other parts of the world don't even HAVE a job, but instead get raped by military forces. Of course those women are in a much worse situation, still this doesn't mean the scandinavian woman should accept HER situation. One can't compare peoples suffering and tell the one part to just shut up and stop whining.
What is the difference between telling a woman to shut up and telling a christian to shut up? It's just consistant. (And that's why I don't like Dawkins and people like him ... they're just another type of fanatics, nothing better than religious fanatics - well, in fact they ARE religious fanatics, atheism could be seen as a religion)
I would tend to disagree on that because it doesn't follow. Atheism ist not a religion because of the same reasaons as that not collecting stamps is not a hobby or not playing football is not a sport.
Atheism is the strong believe (there is no proof) that there is no god. So it is a religion. Face it.
I'd still disagree because afairysm is the strong believe (there is no proof) that there are no fairies, and it is not called a religion either.
Because it is not about god. If they'd believe, god is not a fairy but an old bearded man, it would be a religion.
Hm, I'm not sure I follow. How is god different from a fairy?
Because that's religion: the believe (or disbelieve) in a higher (sometimes even almighty) creature named 'a god.'
I see so you are redefining words. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religion doesn't say anything of disbelieve. In that way you could say that meat is the flesh of an animal (or a plant) as food.
Whatever. I don't want to grab for words. You know what I mean: fanatical ahteism is a similar believe system as religion is. If it weren't, you would just ignore religion and fight against the bad things in the world, you wouldn't fight against a believe system because it is a believe system.
Yeah, I agree with that. Although, many bad things such people fight against would not happen in the world if it would not be for the religious believe system which encourage just that behaviour, isn't it? So in some sense they're not fighting against a believe system just because it is a believe system but because this believe system encourages people to do bad things which they would not do without it.
Yeah, right. But you could also argue for the other side: many good things in the world wouldn't happen if there weren't such believe systems. E.g. Misereor, the children's villages of the church, adveniat, the Sternsinger, etc, pp
Of course causes religion a lot of bad things in the world. But it also causes a lot of good things in the world. So fighting religion because it is religion is silly.
And to say they wouldn't do such bad things w/o religion is naive. Bad people do bad things, with or w/o religion.
But that is not true, things like the SOS children's village or the red cross are happening without the need of this believe systems.
I didn't deny that. All I said is that religion causes good things and bad things, both of them.
Much violent crime and murder is based on sexuality, would you deny sex because of that?
Also the absence of religion will cause good things and bad things, both of them. It is silly to fight believe systems just because of the fact that they are believe systems. Just begin to fight bad things in the world, don't bother what these people believe.
Oh, and by the way: the red cross is really a bad example...
The best way to deal with religion is to ignore religion. Don't care about the believes of people.
When it gets dangeruos, then begin to worry about their believes, but not earlier. It simply doesn't matter. Live and let live.
The problem is, without sex we can not survive, without religion we can just fine.
Which bad things will the absence of religion cause?
How can I fight for gay rights when people say "but my god says they have to die"? Or how can I stop people of stoning a raped woman when their god says the should do so?
You can not ignore religion because it affects every one of us on a daily basis within politics in schools at work and often even in the bedroom.
You and I can survive w/o religion. For many people religion is the thing that gives meaning to their lifes. They can't live w/o religion.
If there wasn't religion, things like the Dom in Koeln wouldn't be built, Adveniat or Misereor wouldn't exist, etc, pp. Religion is both, good and bad.
When someone says 'my god says, gay people have to die' you should convince him that he is wrong. That's what happend during the enlightenment in Europe. 'Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.' (Emmanuel Kant)
@CK:
"What is the difference between telling a woman to shut up and telling a christian to shut up? It's just consistant. (And that's why I don't like Dawkins and people like him ... they're just another type of fanatics, nothing better than religious fanatics - well, in fact they ARE religious fanatics, atheism could be seen as a religion)"
First of all: Atheism is not a religion, just as theism is not. Atheism ist just the summary of a position on one specific issue, namely the existence of one or more gods. Most (but not all) buddhists are atheists, but they certainly qualify as religios. Jains are atheists. Atheism is just a label for people who do not believe in a god, for whatever reason. Conversely, jews, muslims and most christians are all monotheists, but you wouldn't call "monotheism" a religion, the word just expresses a single position, i.e. the belief that there is one and only one god. If you look at the differences between monotheistic religions, you see that a religion is more than just the single claim about the existence of one or more gods - every religion has a set of tennets and dogmas that its adherents (supposedly) share. "Atheism" has no tennets, no dogmas, no doctrine, in what one might call the "atheist community" there is pretty much disagreement about everything, except the single position that there is no god. In that sense, the "atheist community" seems much more like a "knitting club" than a religion. And while there are more prominent people in this community, (just like everywhere else, it's just human) nobody really is a "religios leader" in the classical sence. Everything anybody says is under strict scrutiny - and when Dawkins posted his comments about this incident, he clearly got a LOT of backlash from lots of different people. (Obviously, backlash against outrageous comments of religious leaders also exists. I'm just presenting the point that this occurs far more often in the "atheist community".)
Aside from the fact that Dawkins is clearly wrong in this specific instance - when did he ever tell christians in general to "shut up" just because they were christian? Did you read his works, for example "The God Delusion"? Yes, the title is obviously very provocative (the guy wants to sell books ;-)), but I don't recall him telling people to "shut up just because they're religious". On the contrary, in the past he has always (well, except here, when speaking about the elevator incident) been in favour of free speech and free expression. You may or may not disagree with his position on the subject - but I don't even remotely see him in the category of a "fanatic".
The only reason why he seems so extreme to many people (including you) is the fact that he dares to speak up about issues that are taboo. And why ware they taboo? Because religion has a special place in our society that makes it immune to criticism. Compare anything that the prominent atheists that have sold lots of books in the last few years have said with regards to religion with a review of a restaurant or a movie or politics. It's tame. So tame in fact that as a movie review it might even still be called slightly positive. Ideas should never be immune to criticism, regardless of their origin.
You make the point that people shouldn't care about religion. Isn't that telling people like Dawkins to "shut up"? Isn't that the very thing you are accusing him of with respect to religion? Also: beliefs matter, because beliefs inform actions. Nobody is claiming that religious people don't also do good deeds, and that some are perhaps inspired by their religion. The problem that is it comes at a terrible cost - and I'm not only talking about extremists who think homosexuals should be stoned to death. Just saying that you personally don't think that a god exists - without even criticizing somebody else for it - will often lead to you being ostracized - even in our modern times and even in Europe and America. Or take for example the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church. Now, I'm not saying that everybody in the church is directly reposible for abusing children, but the concept that the church has access to a higher authority than anything on earth provides a convenient justification for people to cover up these crimes and not report them to the local authorities - which is why this is still happening today (still not all internal documents have been handed to the prosecution). And so, the church IS responsible for every abuse a priest has committed after he was moved to a different parish after allegations were made. Also, were this any other organisation than an established mainstream religios group, after the child abuse scandal broke, the first thing the police would have done was to raid the corresponding offices to get a hold of possible evidence. Instead, except in Belgium where this actually happened, the implicit respect that even non-religious people have ingrained in themselves for religious ideas prevents an effective prosecution of this matter. And in Belgium, instead of cooperating with the police, the Bishops complained loudly about the raid as an infraction on their religious liberty. The problem is: I don't think the Bishops and police in question are necessarily bad people - it's just that religion has skewed their own moral code in such a way that they don't do the right thing anymore, even though they want to.
Also, religion is holding our society back when it comes to moral progress. Almost every bit of it had to be acchieved against the push of religions, take topics such as women's rights, gay rights, abortion, heck, even freedom of religion. Religions in Germany just don't seem very extreme because they adjust to their environment. For example, in current Germany, the Catholic church is against gay marriage but does not say much about gay rights in general, because they know they'd look ridiculous. But when one or two years ago the Indian supreme court overturned a ban on homosexuality in general, (which was abolished in Germany in 1972 or so) the Indian Catholic church was outraged. Certainly, social progress is not only inhibited by religion, tradition also plays a large role and there are also quite a few non-religious people who for example oppose gay rights. But, if you can't hide behind the cover of religion, tradition is a much harder thing to defend. Take for example Dawkins's comments that this thread was about. At some point in the future he will either have to apologize or people will lose respect for him. Because he clearly is on the losing side of the argument and he can't hide behind a smokescreen of dogma.
Anyway, tl;dr: Please read his book "The God Delusion" for criticizing his stance on religion, you will find that he is far from the simplistic religion-hating zealot you paint him to be. That does not change that he's wrong in this instance, but it does allow for his words to be a mistake and not a general character flaw.