Richard Dawkins has finished Material Girls and tweeted!

[bloodycoldagain]

Richard Dawkins has just tweeted this:

Finished Material Girls. I recommend it, in baffled despair that this clear-thinking, humane, reasonable woman was hounded from her university. If any of the guilty reads this, please, why did you go to university? Did you honestly not understand what a university is for?

Quite!

Ooh interesting! I'm not normally a fan of Dawkins: he came to speak at my uni when I was a student and came across as extremely arrogant and self satisfied, but I can't disagree with him on this.

It's surprising to me that he didn't get it straight away. He's been skirting around he issue, dipping a toe in, but apparently failing to really see it, but stock's book seems to have done it. Hopefully he will realise there is real sex denialism going on and lead his weight on that front.

It would be really interesting to hear his thoughts, because I was also surprised it took him so long as well.

Ages ago, when the Twitter account of his Institute (something like that anyway) posted some clownfish-type, the-intern-wrote-this comment, I replied with some kind of logical challenge, and rather to my surprise, Dawkins himself liked it. It interested me as it indicated he was aware of the whole thing, but hadn’t taken any action to get the illogical comment, being made in his name, taken down. I don’t remember any more such comments though, so maybe he quietly told them to stop.

So I too would be interested to hear what made him jump now. I do wonder whether the tide is turning enough now to mean that men like him can now more or less jump in with relative immunity.

Isn’t that wussy. Jump into the fight only when you think it won’t hurt you

It's a mix of the tide turning and most probably just not knowing/caring to get to know enough until now. I mean, three years ago I was very pro trans. I had started having misgivings about transwomen in sport. I had become aware of the issues with lesbian women after the London Pride protest. While I didn't fully understand the seriousness, I was amazed at how utterly dismissive many people I knew were of the lesbian group straight off the bat. I was reading up on it but not obsessively and only starting to recognise the problem. I did not like terms like chestfeeding and pregnant people one bit, but was still trying to puzzle out if that was just my issue that I needed to resolve. (Check my privilege maybe?)

I still thought that it was good and important to be kind and validate transpeople. And as I became more and more aware of it. As I became increasingly angry at what is being allowed to happen to women's sport. A little personally affected by it as in online spaces for lesbian and bi women welcomed more and more transwomen who it was becoming apparent were acting out a fetish, steering the talk towards sex, then dominating it. I was still very, very tied into my desire to be fair and kind. To not be a bigot. To not discriminate. To assess if my feelings were based on prejudice.

Even now, when at times I'm honestly terrified and utterly seething about what is happening to women in prisons. To gnc children. To "female" crime statistics. To women like those in the Wi Spa, in shelters and us all being made vulnerable in toilets and changing rooms. When I have genuine fears about what happens after this peak, when the backlash extends to gay men and women. I still have to check myself every now and then because the fight we have on our hands feels like it goes against so many of my instincts.

So I do fully understand how someone like Dawkins can know but not comprehend for so many years. It took me the best part of a year to fully go from misgivings to horror. And the things that peaked me for once and for all was trying to discuss my misgivings with a TRA. The absolute wall I came up against, where women's issues were utterly irrelevant made me push back a little harder and realise that we had a real problem. To Dawkins seeing this happen to another academic was probably what is making him push a little. And the wall he's coming up against with many of his TRA followers will probably solidify him.

@Spitspotsput

Isn’t that wussy. Jump into the fight only when you think it won’t hurt you

No, it's self-preservation. Not everyone is able, or willing, to jump straight in, especially for a fight that doesn't concern them.

It's no good wishing for wider recognition of what's going on, then criticising when people begin to get involved.