Michael Nugent has a terrible, patronizing, let-me-fix-this post chastising Adam Lee for his article quoting Dawkins’s recent forays into anti-feminism. I’m very tired of Michael’s self-appointed let-me-fix-this posturing, and I was going to ignore the post, but then I saw on Twitter that Adam had responded so I clicked on the link, which turned out to be to a comment – a very good comment – on Michael’s post.
You said that you were going to address the question of where my article was “inaccurate”, but the majority of your article is a complaint about various choices of wording I made, the thrust of which is that it’s unfair for me to use emotive language in support of the conclusions I advocate. I reject this.
Over the last few years, I’ve seen some outstanding activists driven off the internet or out of the atheist movement entirely by torrents of horrendous harassment and threats. It’s an ugly silencing tactic, and it’s still going on: Rebecca Watson tweeted that she blocked or reported twelve abusive accounts yesterday. Not last month or last week, but yesterday. I believe that clueless, dismissive, or hostile remarks by prominent male atheists reward this behavior and encourage it to continue. Am I angry about that? Hell, yes! My words were chosen quite carefully to reflect that conclusion.
And that’s one reason Michael’s rush to defend Dawkins and Harris from the terrible verbal violence of a few feminist bloggers is so annoying. Atheoworld is already very comfortable and accommodating to Dawkins and Harris; it’s already full of worshipful guys worshiping them and scorning feminists who criticize them; it’s already deferential and flattering and soothing to them. They don’t need Michael’s help, but he rushes to give it anyway, stepping on us to do it.
The paragraph then refers to comments about thought police, click-bait for profit and fake outrage, which are not issues about sexism or feminism.
That couldn’t be more wrong. These are absolutely issues about sexism and feminism.
In context, what Dawkins was saying is that feminism is a non-issue, that the only reason people write about it and attack him or other atheists for allegedly sexist statements is that they’re acting in bad faith to drum up attention for themselves, or because they’re “outrage junkies” who simply enjoy getting angry over nothing.
As opposed to thinking his dismissive tweets about rape and his fawning tweets about Christina Hoff Sommers are calculated to put us in our place and to work up more rage from the enraged Macho Atheist Faction, and thus harmful to us (and to a larger and better atheist movement).
This is the same kind of demeaning, minimizing rhetoric that’s always used against people who argue for social-justice-based conclusions. It’s used against atheists ad nauseam, for example: that we’re thought police and outrage junkies who want to stop teachers from leading students in prayer, even though that’s a harmless historical tradition that no one ever complained about before. It’s an attempt to deny legitimacy to any criticism of harmful practices that are in accord with conventional wisdom.
But when Richard wrote about outrage in The God Delusion, he was responding to things like the Vatican police, in the nineteenth century, kidnapping Jewish children who had been secretly baptised by Catholic nursemaids. By contrast, when some people have recently expressed ‘outrage’ against Richard, it has been mostly about tweets on Twitter.
Michael, I hope you realize what you’re doing here. Whether you intended it or not, you’re saying that you’ve taken it upon yourself to decide which issues are or aren’t worthy of our attention, and you want to be accepted as the arbiter of what feminists should or shouldn’t get upset about. Even leaving aside the moral implications of a man talking down to feminists in this way, do you think this is a strategy that’s likely to meet with any success at all?
Exactly. Why is Michael taking it upon himself to decide which issues are or aren’t worthy of our attention, and to try to be accepted as the arbiter of what feminists should or shouldn’t get upset about? He’s not the boss of us. Why is he trying to be that?
I’m by no means the first to criticize Dawkins; plenty of prominent feminists and atheists have been explaining for years how certain of his remarks are untrue, hurtful, or founded in ignorance about the viewpoint and experiences of women. I guarantee those women could tell you that whenever Dawkins says something nasty about them, they get a noticeable uptick in harassment. His worse followers treat it as permission. His joint statement with Ophelia Benson was a welcome attempt to mitigate that, but it was years late, and in any case, I think whatever good it did has been mitigated by his more recent reversion to type – lashing out nastily at feminists by calling them dishonest, witch hunters, thought police, etc. Are those comments also “phrased to generate prejudice in readers”? Will you write a follow-up chiding Dawkins for using such language?
It was my suggestion that he could mitigate the harassment he had himself helped to justify. That part was my suggestion; it was his suggestion that we should sign it jointly. That was a good moment – I thought there really might be some hope of improved relations all around. I did. But it was only two days later that he embarked on the “let’s grade rape according to severity” tweets…and it was all downhill from there.
I think Adam’s reply is eloquent, and I think Michael’s officiousness is infuriating.
Not JUST women, also see people with disabilities and Muslims.
He is a problem.
Will you write a follow-up chiding Dawkins for using such language?
A tone troll that trolls but north/northwest, is a “partisan troll” not even a tone troll.
Both links in the original post go to Lee’s comment.
… Vatican police, in the nineteenth century, kidnapping Jewish children who had been secretly baptised by Catholic nursemaids.
Was there more than one Edgardo Mortara incident?
Thanks Pierce; fixed.
I find it telling that Nugent is trying to paint the difference between “You can’t expect to convict a rapist of rape if you’ve been drinking” and “You can’t expect to convict a rapist of rape if you got drunk” as an actual lie.
That really is rape apologism.
What is particularly heartbreaking about this is Dawkins and Nugent and their friends speaking to rape victims as if we don’t know, from bitter experience, that our testimony is untrustworthy when our memories have been taken and there is no evidence.
And, if a person truly lacked ALL memory of anything that could lead them to believe they had been raped–waking up with clothes in disarray, someone else’s bed, the rapist brags about it to his friends–if none of that happened, then why would a person bother to report a rape? They would have no reason to believe they had been raped.
It logically follows that Dawkins was trying to warn us about the people who just make it up out of thin air.
This, in the immediate wake of Michael Shermer’s reputation as a rapist hit mainstream media outlets, and his accuser, Alison Smith, stopped being anonymous.
They’re so transparent. They think they’re brilliant because their particular blind spots are popular ones.
I see we’re on the merry-go-round now. Nugent says:
But the first paragraph of Coyne’s article says this:
So now Nugent can rely on Coyne’s objective interpretation, and Coyne can cite Nugent. It’s all so circle-jerkish.
And then there’s this:
Hmmm. I distinctly recall, when I first started becoming aware of organized atheism, around 2007 or 2008, that being one of the major themes of organized atheism at the time. Greta Christina put out her list of fantastically interesting and talented female speakers to invite to your conference (and did the same with a list of writers and speakers of color shortly after); Surly Amy and Skepchick were organizing scholarships to bring more women to conferences (I even got one, to the AA conference in Austin in 2012); there was some hoopla and a bit of back-patting when the proportion of women at the podiums (podia?) of skeptic and atheist themed events started to rise.
Adam Lee trusted that his readers would remember all of that, I expect. If Nugent doesn’t, well, that’s on him. Whether he forgot, or wasn’t paying attention at the time, who knows.
Yes. It was and is an ongoing concern. Here’s a post from 2010 in which I mentioned the Woman Problem (and also suggested a Women and Secularism conference; I am a prophet). I specifically mentioned a photo of a skeptic meetup that was notable for the paucity of women in it.
Of particular relevance to the continued assertion by Nugent that this is solely an American obsession — the photo was taken in Oslo. And let’s not forget that Elevatorgate happened in Dublin.
… if someone is too drunk to be a credible witness, they’re too drunk to consent to a sexual encounter. By definition, a bad witness has been raped. Dawkins is a rape apologist.
After noticing that Adam’s response was a comment, I went up and actually read Michael’s post. Well, skimmed some…that’s long. And I don’t really have the energy to do the quoting like SallyStrange did.
But I don’t see that Michael is doing anything notably different than what he accuses Adam of. He seems to just be asserting that Adam’s, and others’, criticisms are baseless and therefor hurtful and divisive. His first sentence:
How is that any less generating prejudice than his first section talking about the adjectives Adam uses? And there’s several other places he does the same sort of thing, on top of assuming that the criticisms are just wrong.
If Dawkins actually wants us to believe that these tweets are just misunderstandings that we’re blowing out of proportion and taking the wrong way, then in the future he might want to consider comedian Craig Ferguson’s three questions before he makes a comment,
Does this need to be said?
Does this need to be said by me?
Does this need to be said by me right now?
The most charitable (and least believable) interpretation would be that Dawkins didn’t think about any of these things and, apropros of nothing, decided to tweet out a little fortune cookie of wisdom about alchohol and rape; and by an unbelievable stroke of bad luck his tweet coincided with other current events.
Or, as seems more likely, all three questions did occur to him, and his conclusion was that “Yes, this moment, as the Buzzfeed article on Shermer is gaining traction, this is the appropriate time for me, the most visible person in atheism, to remind everybody that drunk people do not make reliable witnesses. Maybe I should also remind people that there are worse things than date rape? No, already did that.”
Fact is, Dawkins is too good of a writer to fail to convey his point. We know what you’re saying, Professor. Don’t be disingenuous.
I wish someone could explain something to me. Nugent has 12 kittens and 35 cows over tone and language. He gets extremely prissy about language, about how it’s not right to demonize people over things that they haven’t been convicted of in a court of law. So, here’s where I’m confused:
On Nugent’s website, he has a list, a directory if you will, of atheist/secular songs. All well and good. One of those songs is by the extremely talented and personal favorite of mine, Tim Minchin. The Pope Song. C’mon, you know the one that starts out, “F*** the mother****ers…..” (words elided since I’m not sure about Ophelia’s feelings about them). It seems a strange choice for Nugent to list since it’s chock full o’ outrage (rightfully so). It’s a good song, but let’s look at this. It deals with:
A. Calling the Pope to account for something he was never charged with in a court of law.
B. Equating him and anyone who supports him with a rapist.
C. Equates anyone who ever covered up for an abuser with a rapist.
D. Deals with assuming the stories of all child-abuse victims whether or proven in court or not, are facts.
E. Uses naughty language that could, in no way, be considered conciliatory.
F. Expresses extreme outrage.
So, apparently, if it’s dealing with the Pope and child-abuse, outrage, “naughty language”, assumptions of guilt, are all just fine. If, on the other hand, you have feminists discussing the sexual misconduct of someone in the atheist/secularist “Holy Trinity”, depending on the stories of far more than one woman, dealing with stories that describe a “hunting pattern” astonishingly alike in each description, or dealing with another of the “Holy Trinity” comparing rape with drunk driving and yet a third member saying that that danged estrogen-vibe is why we can’t wrap our lady-brains around logic, we’re to watch our tone and our language, our outrage is all just a fake and, since nothing’s been proven in a court of law, it shouldn’t be brought up in the first place.
I see. If someone could explain that strange dichotomy to me, I’d appreciate it. And Mr. Nugent? You might want to give another listen to The Pope Song. This verse might get it across, especially if you add the words, “or anyone else” to the end of the last line:
“And if you don’t like this swearing this mother****er forced from me
And reckon it shows moral or intellectual paucity
Then f*** you mother****er, this is language one employs
When one is a little bit cross about f***ers f***ing boys” – Tim Minchin
I’ve been ridiculing Nugent’s “but Dawkins only foments outrage about important things” complaint on Twitter. Yes, important things like honey and the number of Nobel Prizes won by Muslims.
I think a lot of what Coyne and Nugent’s problems here is that they’re conflating “Dawkins/Harris said this sexist thing” to “Dawkins/Harrris is a sexist.” Note Coyne’s insistence that he knows both of them and is sure they aren’t sexist. Note Nugent’s fixation on “personalised” criticism. They’re committing the precise mistake that Jay Smooth warned of in the video I’ve linked more often than anything else in comment threads.
It’s a similar problem that we’re seeing with Tf00t and the other Sarkeesian-haters. Pulling out examples of sexist tropes in video games or sexist comments made by atheist leaders is only “cherry-picking” if your point is to prove conclusively that a given game or person is sexist, an effort that falls apart upon even a few moments’ thought. But to prove that sexist memes are being perpetuated by a number of sources, including big-budget games and major movement thought leaders, pulling out examples of those comments and tropes is precisely the evidence you want.
Just so. Not only talking as if people don’t already know that, as if it’s something that has to be patiently explained, but then talking as if that’s not a bad thing, not a problem to be worked on, not an injustice to be righted – but as if the victim in such a situation has a duty to just… concede. Set up so you don’t have much hope of getting a conviction for the crime against you? Just let it go, then, you’ve been outmaneuvered, fair cop, good game, no point holding a grudge about it. Definitely don’t, say, tell people what happened so that those who’ll believe you even without a conviction in court can know to protect themselves; no, that’s bad, not because you’re assuming a risk of libel action or anything like that, but because it’s bad and wrong to accuse people of things you can’t prove, even things to which you were the first-hand witness and victim.
It’s vile.
simulateddave @ 12:
Absolutely. Nugent seems very much hung up on the “context” of Dawkins’ other tweets, the “rape is bad, BUT…” stuff, but he’s completely ignoring the glaringly obvious context of when Dawkins made the tweets in the first place, and why he’d suddenly and spontaneously start talking about the credibility of intoxicated victims. If it’s not willfully misleading then it’s so gullible and unskeptical as to discredit Nugent entirely as a source of reasoned argument.
(And on the subject of context: look, a fig leaf disclaimer that “of course rape is bad” or the like does not erase the bad from subsequent rape apologism. “I’m not a racist, but the Irish sure are dirty, lazy thieves”, or “I love and respect women, which is why I don’t think they should be allowed out without male escorts to protect them” are still racist and sexist despite the “context” they provide themselves. I don’t doubt Dawkins doesn’t think he’s sexist or engaging in rape apologism (…well, I’m actually not so sure of the latter; his current output is so bad it’s hard to believe he’s not deliberately trying to shield Shermer), but just saying so doesn’t change the statements he then actually makes.)
The person denying the context of Dawkins’ tweets is Nugent. The person disguising a hatchet job as legitimate criticism is Nugent.
The person hosting victim-blaming and personal attacks in his comments section is Nugent.
So far, he has immediately, and at the first available opportunity, failed to live up to the standards which in the OP he has explicitly accused others of breaching. He has done so either in the OP or via failing to enforce his own standards for commentary.
He has tried to preempt criticism, now (and in his previous dealings with these issues) by claiming to either not be in full possession of the facts, or being willing to learn, or stating that he is being impartial or addressing injustice. Somehow he never manages to find the opportunity to publically address the much more harmful attitudes and behaviour which underlies these issues, and do so in a timely manner which places those calls for justice alongside his calls for civility. I would say that is very irresponsible given the potential for harm.
His self appointed role as mediator starts to look like nothing more than an attempt to steal the moral high ground, even if it preserves a dangerous status quo.
Paucity of women doesn’t equal “all male” and Lee’s article is talking present tense, not 2007 or even 2010.
Watson is American and “elevator guy” ? Do you know something nobody else does?
https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/510656024169447424
I’ve read all of this in context. In order to not see this as victim blaming, you really need to engage in the kind of sophistry that certain religious people do when discussing unpleasant scriptural verses.
So what did Neville Chamberlain– err, I mean Michael Nugent, say this time?
I’m seconding what Bernard said – Michael Nugent is a disingenuous hypocrite. His claims to desire a reasonable, non-rancorous discussion are belied by his actions and his double standards.
Tom Foss @14:
.
.
What is the difference between “someone who says or does or believes sexist things” and a sexist? I see the former as simply the definition of the latter. IMHO, pretending that there’s a distinction is just a word game people play to allow sexists to pretend that what they believe and do isn’t really all that bad.
.
The fact that Coyne says Dawkins & Co. aren’t sexist doesn’t mean they aren’t sexist. Given the number of blatantly sexist public utterances from Dawkins & Co., it’s far more likely that Coyne doesn’t recognize that what they’re doing is sexist. E.g., saying that ladybrains can’t understand Dawkins’ logic because of estrogen can’t be sexist because it’s Teh Truth.
morgan #15:
And that’s what makes it rape culture – because talking about any of this, how predators use alcohol, how victim-blaming tilts the playing field, how women and feminists have real agency and real data to be considered, ruins the game. (‘Women are not the opposing team; they are the ball.’) Anything that might give victims a fair chance or a fair hearing ruins the happy hunting ground for good ol’ boys who rape as a hobby. (With collateral damage to disempowered victims of all genders and ages along the way.)
Even those defenders who don’t themselves join in the happy hunting, like Randi, Nugent, or Dawkins, still protect the hunting grounds at all costs so their fellow bros can enjoy the rich pickings therein. It’s got nothing to do with ladybrains being naturally worse at atheism or science – it’s that if women join a community and aren’t kept in check by stereotypes, they might gain credibility and allies and become harder targets. It’s okay to have men around who aren’t in on it – they’ll be oblivious to harassment and grooming going on right under their noses, and by accepting them provisionally into the bro network, these neutral guys will be too much of a risk for targeted women to approach. Unless they’ve been primed by, say, frank discussions of rape facts, or reading freely available anti-harassment policies. Suddenly any neutral man might be potentially On THEIR Side, watching out for drunk or vulnerable women and ready to have their backs if they speak up. And that would be intolerable, a betrayal of The Game and all that bros-before-hos stands for, an ‘I don’t want to live in this world anymore’ level of ruination.
The hunting ground’s no longer a safe place for predators to rule unchallenged. The meteors are striking and the dinosaurs know they’re about to be dethroned.
Pretty much everyone says or does or believes sexist things, but being A Sexist implies being distinct from non-Sexists: you’re markedly more sexist than is usual, it’s an immutable characteristic of your being, etc. Crommunist has written about the distinction as it applies to racism. Of course it makes perfect sense to say that someone who says/does/believes a lot of sexist things is sexist, and to call them a sexist (especially) if they’re particularly persistent and incorrigible, but as a matter of rhetoric people often construct “sexist” as a category of Bad Person defined by extremes and to which they obviously don’t belong because they don’t match the caricature. Focusing on sexist things rather than sexist people (the idea goes) makes it easier for people to admit error and make changes without getting excessively defensive.
Cross-posted from basically everywhere:
What Michael Nugent is doing could be called “fractal epistemology.” There’s always a deeper level of justification required by his rules. Example. Someone says, “women don’t like analytical debate in public.” You say, “that’s sexist.” Nugent says, “but you haven’t explained how it’s sexist.” So you say that it’s sexist to make shopworn generalizations like that. Nugent says, “But HOW is it sexist?”
Were we to apply fractal epistemology to any other banal claim, it would be ludicrous:
“Oh my gosh, it’s really dangerous to leave burning candles lit while sleeping.” Nugent: “But HOW, exactly, is it? You don’t explain.”
What it is is radical epistemological nihilism. Is what it is. By Nugent’s rules we can’t know *anything* at any given time. Of course, on some level he knows this. He knows it’s “inquiry” without end. He wouldn’t use it on anything he wasn’t trying to squelch.
Nugent is an unctuous Pecksniff, and no mistake.
This strikes me as wrong. When we don’t take the time to stop and think, yes, we all rely on the cognitive biases that have been drilled into us. Being a sexist is mostly about what you do and say when you do have the time to stop and think. If you strongly identify with sexist ideas or you consistently engage in sexist behavior, chances are you’ve had the chance to stop and think about it and come to the conclusion that your sexist ideas and behavior are a-okay. But it doesn’t take frequent behavior or strong identification for someone to have concluded, in their own mind, that sexist beliefs and behaviors are valid. Someone who doubles down on sexism after being called on it is, in fact, a sexist.
Critical thinking is largely about overcoming and correcting for your cognitive biases. When you attempt critical thinking and fail to overcome your cognitive biases, when you stop to think about it and decide that yeah, that estrogen-vibe just doesn’t jive with atheist activism or that women who are raped while drunk are just shit-outta-luck, nothing to be done about it, you’re a sexist, even the first time it happens. You’re a bigot if your biases are strong enough to overcome your ability to think critically.
@AMM #22: Echoing what others said, we live in a bigoted society and unconsciously, inevitably absorb bigoted stereotypes and attitudes. Sometimes, even those of us who try our best to overcome them end up expressing or supporting them. The difference, I think, between someone who says and does bigoted things occasionally, and a bigot, is in the response. If someone says “hey, that thing you said was bigoted,” a decent human being says “oh, shit, my bad, I didn’t realize.” Even if that person ultimately concludes that it wasn’t a bigoted thing to say, the first response should be one of apology and thoughtfulness, and the second one should be of thinking about it and seriously questioning your biases and assumptions.
A bigot doubles down. “No it wasn’t! I’m not a bigot, you’re just a PC outrage junkie!” That’s a bigoted response, a response of someone who has no interest in questioning their assumptions, reevaluating their positions, or listening to other perspectives. It’s the social equivalent of “well I just believe it on faith.”
@ #25 Josh
I loved your post. Pointing out that Nugent is repeating “But HOW is it sexist?” reminds me of the 2 to 4 year old tactic of the repetitive WHY? I think it should be answered in the same vein as I used.
Sample conversation with 2-4 year old
We need to put on your raincoat to go outside.
WHY?
It’s raining and we need to go to the store.
WHY?
Because we’re out of milk and we need to go out in the rain to get it.
WHY?
Because I said so. (I had a rule about the third why)
Maybe a third why policy would be useful in this case, too. “Because I said so” doesn’t work, but maybe some version of “Since you don’t seem to be understanding what I am saying, you could research the topic on your own, here is a link to begin with (insert link here) might do.
@R Johnston: I don’t really disagree, and wasn’t as clear as I should have been. Looking at Tom Foss’ comment to which AMM was replying, I see the video he linked makes the point very well. Yeah, there are plenty of times when it’s totally reasonable to classify someone as sexist (or racist or…) based on the sexist (or…) things they say and do, but on the one hand it may not be the best approach to take in talking to them about the problems with what they said or did, and on the other hand pretending that being told “that thing was sexist” means “you are A Sexist” lets them – consciously or not – jump into “you can’t judge me like that based only on that one thing!” territory. Which is defensive bullshit, of course, but that’s what I took Tom Foss’ original comment as pointing out – that Coyne and Nugent (and Harris – not sure about Dawkins in this exchange) are distorting specific, pointed criticisms of actions and words into unsupportable slanders of people’s entire characters and identities.
My take would be this: If the sexist thing is pointed out and explained and you still refuse to correct your behavior, then you’re a sexist. On the other hand, if you recognize the problem and correct it, then you’re not a sexist, even if you may have said a sexist thing.
We’re all steeped in sexism (and racism and classism and half a dozen other -isms). What matters is how you deal with it when you’re faced with these ingrained prejudices.
People aren’t perfect and it’s unreasonable to expect them to be so. However, it’s not unreasonable to expect them to try to improve when a problem is pointed out. I don’t blame Dawkins for saying stupid shit; I’ve said plenty of stupid shit myself. I blame him for not correcting it when it’s pointed out.
Predictably, the commenters chez Nugent have attempted a bit of well-poisoning, or are looking for a hypocrisy “gotcha.” That they have used Ogvorbis’ past in this is no surprise, but now they’ve also seized on something I said:
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2014/09/21/adam-lees-misleading-guardian-article-about-richard-dawkins-sam-harris-and-the-atheist-movement/#comment-1008813
Like I said over there, I just love the smell of civility in the morning.
My comments keep getting blocked? Please fix, when you have a chance, Ophelia.
SallyStrange
Yup. Despite the stench of the sewer you’ve just jumped into, you can rest assured you won’t be assailed by any norty werdz while you’re there.
(I’ve decided to avoid going over there again. It’s just too irritating to read the OP and it’s distressing to read the comments.)
Someone who has his ear needs to challenge Nugent about his current commentariat. He got away with it last time.
I wonder whether he is willing or able to give a straight answer.