It’s nice to see that Richard Dawkins still has some compassion for his fellow human beings, at least. After yesterday we might have thought he simply didn’t know what that might even be, but happily we would have been wrong. He has compassion. He has compassion for people he takes to have been abused by feminists.
Richard Dawkins retweeted
Pharaoh @bpaladin9 · 12 hours ago
@RichardDawkins Richard small token of appreciation is being made to Matt for his abuse. Please consider twting it. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/matt-taylor-rosetta-project-scientist
For his abuse.
Let’s take a look at that fundraiser.
Title: We want to buy a gift for Matt Taylor, project scientist for Rosetta
Details:
Matt Taylor is a project scientist for Rosetta, the first human made object to have ever landed on a comet.
He is responsible for the giant leap. It is a glorious moment for human space exploration and future.
Instead of receiving the recognition he deserved, he received tremendous backlash due to the fact that he was wearing a T-Shirt depicting scantily clad women. He was bullied over a t-shirt a FEMALE friend designed for him;
https://archive.today/e4Yyu (archive Verge article. I am not making you click on their link and allow them to generate revenue after publishing this sort of garbage)
Despite Dr Taylor’s efforts for humanity, he was forced to apologize and was under so much psychological stress that he broke down live. After all he has done.
What We Will Do
I made this crowd fund so that we can give Dr. Taylor the gift he deserves. Once I get sufficient funding I will buy for him an astronomical watch. The more I get, the more expensive the watch will be.
This is the starter watch shall I achieve the goal and not more :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/CITIZEN-CAMPANOLA-COSMOSIGN-LUXURY-MEN-WATCH-CTV57-1231-NIB-Rare-Last-One-/251315729891
If this crowdfund receives more money then I will purchase higher-end watches.
Since the crowd fund is very successful, I am considering also getting the project manager a pen from the Mont Blanc Star Walker collection.
If more money is received, it would make it possible to either organize a large dinner for the entire team or send everyone a bottle of whiskey with a custom label mentioning their names and role in the mission
Other Ways You Can Help
If you cannot contribute, be sure to send Dr.Taylor a message of support, sign this petition :
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support-and-honour-for-the-accomplishments-of-matt
And share this campaign on social media.
Update (16/11/2014)
Seeing the current donations, chances are that we will be able to afford Dr.Taylor a better watch. There will still be surplus money : I suggest we also get the mission manager Fred Jansen something (A Mont Blanc pen from the Star Walker collection) And also send cards or organize some sort of party/dinner for the entirety of the team.
http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/43058-mission-team/
Dr.Taylor knows about this according to his friend, but he has to ask the ESA about this first. This might take a week.
ESA, if you are reading this, please keep in mind that this has NOTHING to do with politics. We are just citizens of Earth willing to do a nice gesture and show some appreciation.
http://sci.esa.int/rosetta/43058-mission-team/
Dr.Taylor knows about this according to his friend, but he has to ask the ESA about this first. This might take a week.
ESA, if you are reading this, please keep in mind that this has NOTHING to do with politics. We are just citizens of Earth willing to do a nice gesture and show some appreciation.
DR.TAYLOR, PLEASE KEEP WEARING THAT AMAZING SHIRT YOUR FRIEND MADE YOU.
I stripped out the links to Shopping Opportunities, but you can find them all on the campaign page itself.
Dawkins thinks this is a good idea.
What a small-minded, petty, and nasty little man Dawkins has become. Or perhaps always was, and I just didn’t realize it. How profoundly undignified his involvement in this issue has been, and how ironic that he supports “reason” while being completely unable to exercise it when it conflicts with his prior ideological commitments (and self-interest).
Yep. Just him. The great man did it all alone. :/
ESA, this isn’t about politics. Dr. Taylor, don’t stop wearing the shirt, presumably to work.
It is precisely and entirely about politics.
By the way, what kind of present are they getting for Rose Eveleth, who was doxxed and had her family threatened?
Women need to toughen up if they think getting a constant barrage of death and rape threats is a big deal, but we should buy this man an expensive watch to show how sorry we are that his fashion sense was questioned.
Ok, add “abuse” to the list of things men claim women do to them by speaking up about sexism.
It is like lynching, witch hunts and rape. But it IS abuse to speak up to (mostly white) men. That’s the claim.
Meanwhile, who is getting abused and who is doing the abusing in reality?
From here: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html
But uppity ladies are the problem that needs sorting out, not sexism.
That’s what Dawkins and his fans consider logic and reason.
More threats, I imagine.
Talk about inventing a narrative. Our M.A Melby had a look at Taylor’s Twitter timeline:
So most of the abuse Taylor is facing is coming from people pissed that he apologized. To have them turn around and fund-raise on his behalf because of the abuse he faced is just…. mind-blowing. And Dawkins is utterly clueless to it all, content to push outright fabrications that suit his pre-defined conclusions.
The funny things about this whole business is that Matt Taylor has demonstrated more integrity and character than any of his supporters.
Jackie @ 2 – I know, right? I missed that on first reading because I was looking for the “for his abuse” part, so when I did notice it I decided to take it on separately. It’s plenty bad and wrong enough for its own post. Yes THIS ONE GUY did the whole thing; that’s science. They probably think Dawkins invented the gene.
I’m sure Dawkins will be helping to pass the hat for a gift for Melody Hensley any day now.
Do you feel that it is appropriate to shame and humiliate someone for their clothing? I ask just to be clear on where you stand on the issue before I comment further. I feel I would be better able to make a well reasoned argument if you would clarify this and help avoid the straw-men that seem to be abundant in the comments here.
Kevin, nice example of a Loaded Question!
Kevin, that was the most transparently dishonest question I’ve seen in a while. I feel pretty confident that nothing you say here is going to be ‘well reasoned’.
Was Dawkins always this rotten on any feminist issues ever since the “Dear Muslima” fiasco, or has he just gone off the deep end ever since Michael Shermer got outed as a sexual predator? It feels like he’s been much more of an asshole in recent months.
Gee, I wonder where Kevin Farrell plans to go with that one!
But let’s be fair to Kevin, comrades. We PRETENDED to criticize the choice to wear that shirt on that occasion, supposedly because a shirt that objectifies and stereotypes women sent an inappropriate message for a global broadcast, but secretly we all just wanted to HUMILIATE and SHAME Matt Taylor personally, right?
brett @ 14 –
My impression is much worse in recent months. To be honest, my impression is much worse since we did the joint statement – which is kind of embarrassing. I don’t think the goal was to make things worse, or to prompt him to say escalatingly-worse things. It certainly wasn’t my goal, and I don’t think it was his either.
Kevin, this is not about clothing. It is about sexist depictions of women in an extremely inappropriate place and the impact it has on women to be bombarded with images like this, even at work and in the classroom.
God, you’re an ass.
Because women are so weak that they’ll get scared by going into SMET by cartoon women dressing sexily and holding guns on a T-Shirt worn by a person who was forced to apologize on what was supposed to be a day or rejoicing for him and his team. Who cares if there are women in it too. Why focus on their achievements. Noooo. It’s all about the t-shirt!
And now you complain about people trying to support a man bullied into tears. When you want to talk about real issues, light a fire. Gondor will answer. Or not.
Ophelia,
I think the Joint Statement is a classic example of an “agreement” that didn’t really involve a meeting of the minds. Dawkins viewed the Joint Statement as a vow to play by Vulcan Rules. Not just no slurs about Dawkins’ race or age or gender, but no mention of the entire concept of privilege. And certainly no insults, no expressions of outrage or emotion whatsoever. Only detached “rational” commentary and debate allowed. The stuff about threats and harassment was just the price he had to pay to get you to agree to his other terms; he thinks it’s so obvious that he doesn’t condone those things that it’s as if you asked him to agree that puppy-kicking is bad.
So then, with that agreement secured, he felt he could go all-out on his anti-feminism, and any non-Vulcan criticism would be a violation of the Agreed Rules. In fact, the only thing surprising here to me is that he hasn’t gone on a campaign of demanding that you denounce so-and-so’s tweet or blog post as violating the Joint Statement.
Oh god. I wonder if they realize how crap it is, when you realized you did something not okay, apologized, and then suddenly you face those people who cheer the thing you accepted as wrong.
They really have no empathy, do they? For no-one, actually. It would be hilarious, because one of so popular arguments was that women can’t take a t-shirt, and yet here they deny the man the agency to decide whether what he did was wrong.
FIQST
Aleksander Modzelewski ,
Were I in Matt Taylor’s place, the most bitter tears shed would come from seeing that such vile people think I agree with them. If he did not understand the full implications of wearing that shirt when and where he did, he surely does now.
Women getting death/rape threats and doxxed = no big deal. Calm down you hysterical feminazis!
Man gets emotional while apologizing in front of a lot of people = bullied into tears by vicious feminazis.
You really just can’t win, huh?
Nope. The game is rigged and it is rigged in such a way that we are not allowed to complain about it being rigged or even state that the game is rigged. After all, the winners think the system works just fine and the winners make the rules.
@18 Because- I, personally, needed Matt Taylor to cry because I’m all out of male tears to bathe in.
@ Aleksander Modzelewski ,
I was thinking exactly the same thing. Part of me hopes that he’ll do something classy like ask that the raised money be donated to a pro-women-in-engineering foundation, but I hate to think what the fleshturds who started that fundraiser would do in response if he was to do that.
@screechymonkey:
Exactly. My first thought at seeing that: “so, did Dawkins retweet links to Karen Stollznow’s legal defense fund?”
Back in 1919, the Morning Post presented Col. Dyer with a handsome purse of 26,000 GBP for the murder of over 1000 unarmed civilians in what is known as the Amritsar Massacre.
So Dawkins is following in a long tradition of this sort of thing.
Matt G @ # 8: … Matt Taylor has demonstrated more integrity and character than any of his supporters.
Imagine the responses he’d get if he declined the watch.
If I were him, I’d accept the gifts, then sell it and donate the money to a women’s rights charity. Bonus: He can heat his house with the outrage.
No one has still answered about what “harm” was actually done? And outside of the crazies stepping in, there are many people, including many women who don’t agree that the shirt was in any way offensive. Now some things have gone overboard since then, but that initial question has never been truthfully answered. That is also a separate judgement about whether it was professional or not which has nothing to do at all with any of the arguments about harm. The only argument I have seen and that is not clearly presented at all is the shirt caused “collateral harm” because it objectifies women, and neither of those have actually been shown to be true in any way what so ever. If I placed that shirt in another cultural context it would have no meaning at all and probably be considered simply a colorful shirt, but simply because a couple of writers raise their hackles about is meaning, the scientist is the punished for the great cultural crime of wearing a shirt his artist friend made for him. And now you criticize anyone who supports him in any way as some sort of collaborator aligned with all who oppress. That simply isn’t case. There are a great number including numerous women I know who simply find it a travesty, that he shirt wasn’t offensive, or as my girlfriend called it, “cool, and I’d wear it”. Now all of thus does not justify threats against a person, but the fact is many people like Ms. Eveleth and Mr. Plante at The Verge and all the other SJW types tend to find signs of oppression in the minutiae. And, just like here, the attitude towards any of those who might dissent is as intolerant and controlling as ay of those on the right. The difference is instead of Jesus and Stepford wives, anything that any individual judges as offensive is dragged off to the twitter-sphere’s guillotine of judgement. Before you say that the shirt was harmful, and most in fact don’t think it is, you have to show by argument, logic and evidence that it was. The offended never did that and now they are paying for it. You need to do that first also, and it cannot just be ” I think it is”; that is the same logic of the Hobby Lobby decision and “sincere believers” who feel violated when they have to serve someone they don’t tolerate.
miskwaa @31,
Give us a hypothetical example of the type of evidence you would find sufficient.
Better yet, he could donate to an organization that specifically advocates for eliminating just this sort of casual sexism/misogyny in the workplace. Or since I’m fantasizing here: he could donate it directly to FTB, Rebecca Watson or any number of Feminist orgs that would make Dawkins’ head explode.
And when you do, use your ‘return’ key.