Richard Dawkins is not Sexist. He's Dawkinsist.

[miss_s_b]

Much of the furore surrounding Richard Dawkins' asshattery this weekend has involved accusations of sexism. Now, yes, his basic premise involved a startling lack of empathy for the woman he was denigrating, and he used a huge number of logical fallacies in his attack on her quite reasonable statement. But I think that accusing him of sexism based on this is possibly a leap too far. I think Dawkins would have behaved in exactly the same way - derailing, using straw men, invoking whataboutery - had he disagreed with a statement made by a man.

Dawkins does not specifically target women whom he disagrees with. He sees everyone as an intellectual inferior, male or female, black or white, wherever they fall on the queer spectrum, and whether or not they are ablebodied.

And to be fair to Dawkins, he probably has some justification. A lot of people are intellectually inferior to him. Where he gets it wrong, IMHO, is to use this as a starting premise. This person disagrees with me, they must be wrong is very rarely a good place to entrench oneself. I'm not saying I have never done it, but I do recommend this person disagrees with me. I wonder if they have just cause to do so? *examine evidence* * evaluate evidence* *come to conclusion* as a much less fraught way to proceed in a debate.

Just sayin'.

Comments

[ginasketch]

Racism and Sexism are learnt behaviours. Telling someone they have acted sexist is not saying they are inherently so. It's telling them "Hey, you acted like an arse and you hurt someone. Own up to your behaviour and listen."

And if they carry on it's not my job to educate them, especially when several people have tried doing so in a calm way and had it thrown back in their faces.

[telegramsam]

He actually pulled that "IT'S YOUR JOB TO EDUCATE ME. AND DON'T USE THE WORD 'FUCK' WHILE DOING IT" thing, I saw it somewhere in that morass of comments on Pharyngula's blog (I'd go find it but it would probably require a team of Sherpas at this point).

It made me a sad panda.

[ginasketch]

YES. ><

[telegramsam]

Now I'm just waiting for him to pop up going 'SUPRISE, IT WAS ALL A ~SOCIAL EXPERIMENT~!!1!' and his Derailing for Dummies performance shall be complete.