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The witch-hunt under the bed

And more from the Department of Please Please Please Please Stop, Dawkins Division:

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins Jun 14
“A moment to savour”? Really? Please, Guardian, could we just lighten up on the witch-hunts? #ReinstateTimHunt. http://reason.com/archives/2015/06/13/the-illiberal-persecution-of-tim-

Again with the putative witch hunts – again used by a man, to rebuke women for rebelling against casually contemptuous treatment. Wouldn’t it be nice if Richard Dawkins actually came out against some item of casually contemptuous treatment of women? Wouldn’t it be nice if he didn’t keep insisting that because stonings and forced marriages are so horrific, therefore women in places like the UK and the US should stop rebelling against casually contemptuous treatment? I think that would be nice. It would make a change, too.

And he didn’t say it in haste and then withdraw it, either. He said it and then defended it.

Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins Jun 14
@SquashedLumps I didn’t like Tim Hunt’s joke. But I loathe and detest mob rule and witch hunts and politically correct feeding frenzies.

And that’s the important thing. It’s never the important thing to say, “my dear fellow, with all the respect in the world, you really mustn’t talk about our women colleagues  in that way; it’s not right.” No. That’s not the important thing to do. The important thing to do is to protest against the women colleagues’ protests, by calling the women witch hunters and mob rulers and PC piranhas.

So I wish he would Please Please Please Please Stop. But I know he won’t; he’s made that crystal clear by now.

He was at the CFI conference this past weekend. He was – naturally – at the awards banquet Friday where he was among those receiving an award. His was a lifetime achievement award. I naturally kept wishing he hadn’t mucked up the appearance of his lifetime achievement by indulging in so much hostility to rebellious women recently. It doesn’t adorn his record. It makes it harder to read his books with unalloyed pleasure.

In his remarks after receiving the award, he made a “People’s Front of Judaea” reference. For the millionth time, I wished he wouldn’t. It’s not petty little squabbles over nomenclature, it’s the horrible sexist bullshit that women still have to deal with and that he is encouraging. And now here he is again, back at work, belittling women and complaining of witch hunts. What a pity he won’t stop.

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Comments

  2. John Morales says

    Ophelia:

    Again with the putative witch hunts – again used by a man, to rebuke women for rebelling against casually contemptuous treatment.

    Whatever the inferences to be drawn*, what you quoted was literally addressed to the Guardian, not to women.

    On a literal level, I must therefore judge your claim as a misrepresentation of what he wrote.

    —

    * You address a putative corollary of what he wrote.

  4. says

    So the tweet was “addressed to the Guardian” the way “can’t you shut that bitch up?” is addressed to her husband or boyfriend, or the way Saudi Arabia asked the whole Human Rights Council to silence “that woman” who was making a statement about Saudi Arabia’s abysmal human rights record.

  5. John Morales says

    [meta]

    Ophelia, thanks for the response; had your #4 been part of the OP, my comment would have been otiose and therefore would not have occurred.

  6. Al Dente says

    So Dawkins supports Hunt’s right to make unfunny jokes as free speech but is against other people using their free speech to criticize Hunt.

  7. says

    John Morales@5:
    Thank you for expanding my vocabulary by another word. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it is not often that that happens anymore now that I’m approaching 50 years old, but you have enabled me to add “otiose” to my arsenal.

  8. Bluntnose says

    He was complaining about the idea that the humiliation of Hunt was something to ‘savour’. I agree with him. That kind of spiteful pleasure in other people’s tribulations is horrible to see although increasingly common.

  9. John Morales says

    Bluntnose @8, I find it remarkable that you interpret “Yet this is a moment to savour. Hunt has at last made explicit the prejudice that undermines the prospects of everyone born with childbearing capabilities” as “the humiliation of Hunt was something to ‘savour’”.

  10. Bluntnose says

    Morales, I think that is the only reasonable interpretaion and it is obviously what Dawkins was driving at. It might be worth mentioning that in Hunt’s field people with ‘childbearing capabilities’ (notice how that writer is careful to exclude trans women from her field of concern) seem to be thriving, as the many women who have come out to support Hunt attest.

  11. John Morales says

    Bluntnose @10, I wrote that I found your interpretation remarkable; clearly, I already know that it is what you claim to think.

    It might be worth mentioning that in Hunt’s field people with ‘childbearing capabilities’ (notice how that writer is careful to exclude trans women from her field of concern) seem to be thriving, as the many women who have come out to support Hunt attest.

    It ain’t, since the subject at hand is the reaction to a writer’s savouring a moment of oblivious revelation of prejudice from a senior scientist acting in an honorary position, not whether women scientists can thrive or whether they support him.

  12. Bluntnose says

    It does matter how real women are doing in the actual field when judging the effect of some remarks and so it is worth mentioning. It is also interesting how many women have attested to Hunt’s positive contribution to the careers of women in science. That matters to people who care about more than simply policing other people’s language.

  13. K says

    I think I’d have to come down on Dawkins’ side in all this. As the first woman in my lab many years ago, and an outspoken feminist to boot, I experienced plenty of sexism. But then, sexism is rampant in all walks of life, and not all of it headed in one direction.Things have changed enormously, almost always for the better. What Hunt said was stupid, remarks that might have been ok for a stand-up comedian in a bar… but even there, these days, wouldn’t have got many laughs. But the reaction to his words need not have been so virulent. Dawkins, too, can be an ass, but he’s entirely right to suggest that we should be keeping things in perspective. There are things that bother me a lot more than Hunt’s words (and they rarely seem to generate editorials in bien-pensant sites like The Guardian). http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/06/05/exp-gps-0607-bangura-isis-sexual-violence.cnn

  15. Radioactive Elephant says

    @Bluntnose #12
    If you make it a point that women can thrive in that environment, why not encourage the same treatment of men? Obviously to you it’s so important that women be disparaged and discouraged that you’ll defend and sing the praises of that environment, so don’t you think men deserve the same? Surely you believe men are also quite capable of being told throughout their life that science just isn’t for them or have public statements by acclaimed scientists that they just aren’t capable of science and still thrive.

  16. John Morales says

    Bluntnose @12:

    It does matter how real women are doing in the actual field when judging the effect of some remarks and so it is worth mentioning.

    Dare you ever deviate from your script?

    Again: the issue at hand is the revealing nature of his remarks and the reaction (in this post, Dawkins’ specifically) to someone who found that revelation savourable, not the castigation of Hunt by those who found his remarks offensive.

    It is also interesting how many women have attested to Hunt’s positive contribution to the careers of women in science.

    Leaving aside they’re being character witnesses rather than his revealing claims about women scientists in the lab, your appeal to them is every bit as convincing as creationists’ appeal to ‘Project Steve’.

    That matters to people who care about more than simply policing other people’s language.

    Remarkable how you imagine opprobrium of stated prejudice is linguistic policing.

  17. John Morales says

    [erratum]

    Leaving aside they’re being character witnesses rather than his revealing claims about women scientists in the lab, your appeal to them is every bit as convincing as creationists’ appeal to ‘Project Steve’.

    should read

    Leaving aside they’re being character witnesses rather than endorsing his revealing claims about women scientists in the lab, your appeal to them is every bit as convincing as creationists’ appeal to scientists, which was parodied via ‘Project Steve’.

  18. Athywren, Social Justice Weretribble says

    What we need to do, clearly, is get together every time something like this happens, and appoint a single spokesperson for our displeasure.

    “Sir, that which you spoke was impolitic, perhaps you might withdraw it?”

    After that? Silence. Never more must we speak of it. To do more than this? Witch hunt.

  19. deepak shetty says

    Eh – if instead of Tim Hunt it was some Mohammed Khan asking for sex segregated labs , then Dawkins would be rummaging about for his pitchfork.

    @MrFancyPants @7,@John morales
    And here I thought otiose was a spelling mistake and was trying to figure out what word was actually intended

  21. Crimson Clupeidae says

    Seems like everytime someone complains about the rampant sexism in science, Dawkins goes on a witch hunt…..

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