Atheism and misogyny

[Dworkin]

Some men sink to a new low when it comes to sexually objectifying a 15 year old girl on reddit. Sick and nasty stuff.

skepchick.org/2011/12/reddit-makes-me-hate-atheists/

I had a dream the other night that Facebook was full of ghosts and if you didn't log out and shut off your computer they would basically waft through the keyboard and have at you.

@ lollygag Way to shut down women's discourse. Like we don't have two brain cells to put together and so can't discuss, in a serious and urgent manner, the nastiness that exists for women who post on the internet. Why, it even infiltrates a supposedly safe place for women, like mumsnet.

Yes. The noted Andrea Dworkin. She was as angry as say, Martin Luther King, and I thank her for it.

I just think your time would be better served doing something more productive than trawling the internet to find things that fit in with your preformed prejudices.

Lollygag, how people spend their time is their business. That is a really patronizing comment!

It's so sweet that you're concerned about how other people spend their time. Perhaps you could set up a blog with time saving tips for everyday life

Well I am going to stick it out here - if others have "more productive" things to do then the are welcome to them.

noblegiraffe - I do take your point that the girl's photo will have been seen by not just the athiest "community" on that website - however Rebecca Watson would also have known that and she feels that this is illustrative of the sort of thing which goes on within the athiest community.

The reason I posted about the Richard Dawkins thing and also to a youtube of Rebecca talking about sexism at athiest conferences etc was just to highlight this matter.

As others have said it is "interesting" and saddening to realise that these issues are also in left wing politics and athiest groups etc.

It is very useful to me to discuss these things with other feminists. It is useful for to think through the differences between men who are heavily influenced by religion v those who are stongly athiest.

Richard Dawkin's "zero harm" comment is massively illuminating - and these are the sorts of people who are judges/barristers/older politicians etc.

IMO these insights can help bust through rape myths and other myths about violence against women. (EG first hand testimony from lap dancers and loval residents was used to persuade the House of Lords to get lap dancing clubs licenced as sexual entertainment venues rather than cafes etc.)

So I certainly won't be silenced from talking about these things. The ripple out effect is far reaching and positive.

I suppose for me the shock isn't that athiests said this!

It's that directing comments so appallingly graphic and violent at a 15yo girl (or a female of any age TBH) is broadly met with a shrug and "oh well that's the internet".

The site (as I understand it) is has a very high number of users and is split into subsections. It's not a site especially for paedophiles or rape fantasists or something. It's a very broad site which covers anything you want to talk about. This girl posted in the athiesm section, and the thread also appeared on the front page of the site. And in a huge site used by people of both sexes and presumably a broad representation of people responded to her with imagery from the most violent rape fantasy. And a lot of people say "well what did she expect" and seem to think this is quite normal.

Is this really quite normal now? If a female posts something on a general purpose website does she need to understand that hundreds of men might threaten to rape her? I mean, really?

SGBs comment about how it was good for the girl that she didn't burst into tears and run away showed excellent character is correct. But at the same token - if she had burst into tears and run away that would have been a reasonable reaction wouldn't it? It reminds me of when I was growing up and girls were taught by society that a bit of "banter" from some men - shouting "show us yer tits" or touching you up a bit was something to be "laughed off". Now we have a situation where women and girls are expected to "laugh off" people talking about rape and blood and tears?

That is really scary to me and I definitely think it is worth talking about. My friend has a 14yo daughter and the idea that if men threaten her with violent rape it's just "one of those things" is appalling. This is much worse than when I was young - in those days if a man threatened you with rape it was generally considered to be a bad thing rather than a bit of a laugh.

In fact someone on this thread has even described what was said to that girl as "banter" IIRC

Will look back

You know, forkful, but the best men are the humble agnostic ones.

The ones who aren't 100% sure about such matters are are uncocky.

The idea that it was not the atheists, but only the other faceless people who've been drawn in through a frontpage link, who did the rape threats, totally ignores all the sciencey sexual punnage (including getting extra upvotes for shoe-horning the doppler effect into a sexual context) -

That said, no, not all atheists are sexists and misogynists (neither are all men), but it's either naive or disingenuous to claim that there is no sexism in the atheist or sceptic community.

Yes SardineQueen I agree with exactly what you are saying: that this wasn't a site for rapists and paedophiles, it's a mainstream site for normal people, the majority of whom presumably are men.

And normal men apparantly think it's OK to make jokes about raping children who are pretty and female.

And some of them reproved the others, but mostly they didn't.

And lots of people don't find it very shocking, they think that's just the nature of the internet.

Does that sum it up?

Vis a vis Richard Dworkins, that comment reeks with privilege doesn't it. A man who has never konwn what it's like to be trapped with someone much biggger and stronger than you, in a space you can't easily get away from. Of course he can walk out into a light, big space - he's strong and has never been held menacingly with the threat of worse violence if you struggle.

Absolute incredible lack of insight and lack of respect for the insight of poeple whose experience he cannot even begin to imagine because he's so fuckign smug and arrogant that he can't think that far. And that passes for intelligence in our culture