Right. And I’ve heard people say that getting falsely accused of rape is as bad as getting raped. No! It’s bad, and it should certainly be treated as unacceptable, but it’s not nearly as bad as being raped.
waiting for accusations of the latest posts being examples of shrill feminism, for, as we all know, being made to feel bad about your opinions is also as bad as being raped, and also an attack on free speech
Well put!
Hmm… Okay, maybe because give Watson’s background, it’s hard to tell how seriously to take a statement like this. Maybe because whether or not it’s a joke, she’s still insulting half the audience in the process. Maybe because her tone is completely deadpan, and we don’t know that she’s Leslie Nielsen in disguise. It’s not funny, it’s just sexist (akin to a “lazy mexican” joke where the entire makeup of the joke is just “mexicans are lazy”), and coming from a feminist, and her in particular, I feel perfectly justified in assuming that if the joke was reversed, and it was women being insulted, she would not take such a cavalier attitude about it. If you can start a video about funding for blood cancer research by immediately insulting half your audience to the point where many just tune out there (take a look at the likes vs. dislikes on that video), congratulations: you’re incredibly bad at your job.
But it’s not about RW-followers. If she were just some semi-popular youtube personality like NonStampCollector or WildwoodClaire, I wouldn’t care. It’s about the public persona of the atheism movement in general, and degree to which she is a negative influence on it. I don’t want to have to care about her, but if I’m part of this movement, I kinda do. It’s like if Dawkins starting saying incredibly offensive and racist things, and this became a major part of public perception of him, and he still went around representing the movement. Yeah, I’d get pissed that that too.
In fact, had she gone up to the room with him, and then he put the moves on her and put her in a position where she had to be be assertive to the point of rudeness just to leave, she’d probably have a bunch of people telling her to quit sending mixed signals.
Indeed, whatever else followed in the ensuing controversy, in that elevator Watson found herself on the horns of a dilemma. By the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, the world lines split and now there is a universe in which she did not interpret the proposition as sexual in nature, and our own universe in which she suspected it was. Both universes are the same, the main difference being exactly what she’s being called a stupid cunt for. Also possibly in the other universe she got raped, with people (possibly the same people, as you say) wondering how she could seriously be stupid enough not to have understood that coffee in a hotel room at 4 am didn’t mean coffee.
Nobody wants to go back to the system where women had to be escorted everywhere they went by male family members. But we don’t have to put the burden on women to both be on alert for rapists and contrarily not to assume all males are potential rapists. Men can also help by not putting women in these dilemmas. This is now what it means to be polite, thoughtful, respectable men worthy of good repute. We avoid putting women in situations in which she’ll be uncomfortable now, and called a cunt no matter what she does about later. You can call it being a gentleman, if you need a paradigm to hang our new decorum on.
Bullshit twice over. Only the blatantly biased would think this joke represented Rebecca’s view on men in general. And you need to be that biased to consider it an insult to men. So to most of her audience it’s a joke about the absolute flood of feedback she gets on every goddamn video with the message she lampoons, and the response of that crowd to criticism from men. Your indignation on behalf of all men is stupid.
RW: <Message>
Troll: You’re an ugly c—, I wouldn’t rape you if you begged. Haha. Of course I’d rape you.
Male commenter: Why don’t you get lost, troll.
Troll: What crawled up your mangina.
Are you on drugs? Deadpan humor is the best kind.
Here you’re at least touching on valid criticism, but it hinges on two points where I think you’re wrong.
- It’s an insult to men. No it’s not. It’s not described as a belief most men have, it’s not giving in response to an argument by any particular group or individual that would indicate they are the target. It’s an insult to trolls who happen to be men.
Now of course that’s just half your argument, but even if it can be considered by the thin skinned to insult all men (as evidenced by your outrage), the other half falls short.
2) RW would criticise the reverse joke. Jokes exist in a context, and there are no male RWs, so there’s no way to reverse the joke. No male vlogger gets the kind of gendered vitriol from females that RW gets from males, no male vlogger has the kind of dedicated female haters bringing up old disputes on every damn video that RW has, being an actual man-hating feminist is vanishingly rare compared to be an actual misogynistic, feminists-of-and-gender hater. A similar joke the other way is much more likely to actually have the qualities and intent you read into this one.
Ah, but there is no monolithic atheism movement, and no general consensus that RW is negatively influencing it. And contrasting RW with Dawkins is particularly ironic since he’s a much more prominent atheist and has done plenty that, fairly or unfairly has been criticised for negatively affecting the public perception of him and of atheism, by those who can’t separate the individual from the principles. By your standards of indignation and interpretation Dawkins has insulted all feminists, all women, all muslims, all victims of childhood sexual abuse, anyone religious.
Your choice of way to criticise this joke is pretty ironic as well. Returning the insult you found so horrifying is okay because you’re not a publicly known face of atheism?
A bit late now that I can’t edit the original post, but that should have read “compared to being an actual, misogynistic, feminists-of-all-genders hater.”
Best write-up of Elevatorgate here. Warning: LONG.
Talk about OTT reactions, including one guy that insists - apparently in all seriousness - that all men, when walking down the street behind a woman, should cross the street and ‘pass’ the woman that way. Or cross the street to prevent approaching a woman coming towards them.
Watson apparently thinks that no man should dare speak to her unless she’s buzzed them into a saferoom, and then only unless spoken to first and given permission to speak in the presence of Her Highness. Hey Princess! Being asked back for cup of coffee is not being ‘propositioned’ or ‘harassed’. Claiming it ‘objectified’ her is pretty fucking rich coming from someone that posed in the fucking nude for her calendar. And I still strongly suspect that Elevatorgate is a non-issue if Elevatorguy had been better looking.
I find it baffling that there are actually people who don’t believe that being asked back to someone’s hotel room at 4 AM cannot be reasonably interpreted as an invitation for sex. Slightly less baffling is that some people don’t realize that such behavior (when alone in an elevator) might incite a bit of fear and feelings of discomfort in the woman being asked.
I don’t find it the least surprising that there a lot of people who go to atheism conventions who don’t understand how basic human interaction works.
Of course it certainly could have been. Or maybe not. And what the hell difference does the time make? Is she saying she would have interpreted it differently at 4pm, or 11:15am, or 9:30pm? They were at a conference, there were any number of people about, and they both ended up in an elevator at 4am. Big whoopee dee doo. If being asked to go back up for a cup of coffee offends her, she probably needs to rethink her whole ‘feminism’ schtick.
This is an absolutely fascinating post and a glittering example of why Elevatorgate is still going strong in some areas.
Yeah, I didn’t read through all of that, but it appears to start out fairly straight, if perhaps a bit biased, and brings up some of the early issues, such as Rebecca’s response to McGraw, which can be legitimately criticised. But DragonAsh doesn’t go there. Instead he (if improbably DragonAsh is not a guy he doesn’t appear to be the kind of person who should take offence at being thought male) picks what I assume is the most egregious example he finds:
Sets up a strawrebecca to dismiss:
Makes some more strawfigures:
Makes it clear that if you’ve ever used your looks to promote an issue, even if you’ve late changed your mind about it’s appropriateness you’re forever banned from considering problems with objectification.
And finishes off with playing the old “women will fuck any pretty guy”-card.
Are you really this stupid, DragonAsh?
Are you saying you wouldn’t have?
It didn’t “offend” her. It made her feel uncomfortable. That’s not surprising to those of us who have experience with having feelings. And having feelings is a perfectly good argument when one talks about interpersonal interactions. I have no idea what your schtick is, but if that’s beyond your ability to grasp you should certainly rethink it.
I know right. Atheists should go to church. It’s a good place to learn to socialize.
Come on, everyone knows “I’m super hot, of COURSE she wanted to sleep with me” is a perfectly valid defense against rape accusations.
The time that it happened wouldn’t change the interpretation much, but the fact that it happened at 4am ads an extra element of danger in the mind of the recipient, for what I would have thought would be the obvious reason that there are less people around and if something did go wrong, there’s less chance of help. The people saying that Watson is to the situation (and let’s be clear - she did not day that this is the worst thing ever, just that it was something that her uncomfortable and it would be nice of men stopped doing it. It had only continued as an issue because her critics will not let go of it) seem to be incapable of putting themselves into her shoes and/or seem to reject the idea that she has anything to teach them about behaviour. Which their reactions since pretty much prove that they do.
No, it’s more like “If she’d fuck a hot guy, then when she won’t fuck me, it’s discrimination and being a stuck up bitch”.
Rebecca Watson is a STRONG EMPOWERED WOMYN who settles for no less than a Justin Theroux lookalike.
Anything below that ? WOW JUST WOW ITS RAEP CULTURE 11!!11!!111!!!
That elevator dude (I know the Irish love their booze, but how drunk do you have to be to find that ugly nerdling Rebbecunt worthy of your dik ?), yes, he wanted to fuck her. Tooo bad she din’t find him fuckable at all. Yes, she’s a nerd. Barely a 4. But she’s got the requirements of a 9.
I’m an atheist, but I banged religious gurlz that were actually less religious than her. She’s the priestess of privileged hypergamy and PC Meyer is her prophet.
Saint Tumblr, pray for the annihilation of the vile heterocisgenderedwhitemale bigot !