“Can Rebecca and Dawkins please just hash this out in person at TAM?”

That’s right, no reason to get excited. Sexist behaviour in the atheist-skeptical-rational-humanist movement can be sorted out by two people over a coffee.

“I’m confident that this actually will be settled at TAM and a month from now this will be largely forgotten.”

Yeah, the sooner we all get back to the status quo the better. Cognitive dissonance makes me feel icky.

Also, not trying to say his comments weren’t tinged with a lack of awareness but I do think its relevant. In 2006, Dawkins wrote a blog entry pertaining to child abuse. In it he discussed that he was molested when he was 9. http://richarddawkins.net/articles/118

While one can still have the opinion that his comments were inappropriate, I don’t think its fair to assume that they were simply dismissive. One might criticize him for assuming that someone else will deal with an assault episode in the same way he did, its completely unfair to suggest hes never experienced it.

I’m confident that this actually will be settled at TAM and a month from now this will be largely forgotten.

Dawkins I think is very pro-feminist. I think he is a feminist. Hence why he thinks the women under Islamic oppression should be our number 1 priority, but this has blinded him to the people around him a little, and I don’t think he used his imagination to understand Rebecca’s situation… he just took it as her rejecting a guy, and this somehow bothering her. He pictured himself as the guy getting his heart broken, not as the woman thinking ‘if I say no, will he kick off? or should I say okay, then when the doors are open, make a run for it?’

Depending on what definition of decent you use this is surely a bit dangerous in these dark times? ;-)

Do you think that was maybe because he had an axe to grind already after not enjoying sitting through her talk?

And it isn’t like it is only men that are creepy, I’ve had (and heard of) plenty of weird women try it on after gigs.

Most men would never elicit sex in a lift, so why are they so damn angry that rebecca mentioned it? Because they don’t like to hear women talking about the way they feel. They don’t like to hear the truth that sometimes they can be unintentionally scary to us, it takes away their imagined control, it tells a different story.

That is why every time a woman speaks up she is usually shouted down. Moaning about nothing. Well, cock that.

Talk about bias. Wow.

Sure Dawkins is getting nailed to a wall, but a swath of others, not just nerdy men, are becoming more aware of the issue.

Occasionally there is value in someone being publicly clueless as it reminds us that there are still problems.

I’ve never been to one of these events and am male so not hugely qualified to comment but I imagine for a woman it would feel not too dissimilar to taking an engineering degree at university.

I’m not so sure that lecturing these guys on their inadequacies is near as useful as trying to get more women involved and allowing things to fix themselves that way.

This isn’t a ‘poor Dawkins’ this is ‘silly Dawkins should know better’.

Unlike Rebecca, I don’t think he as had any rape threats – just feminist skeptics going ‘oi, hang on a minute!’ and silly arseholes like me finding jokes in his book titles.

He’s the highest profile opposer so is bound to attract attention and is very lucky no one seems to have gone to the mainstream media with it.

Most men would think that wasn’t really cricket.

Hence why it is surprising that Rebecca’s ‘don’t do that’ got so much vitriol.

Dawkin’s comment was a bit callous and either uninformed or ill-considered or both.

However, Dawkins is an intelligent man with the capacity for reason and if, instead of attacking and demonizing him for a situation that he clearly did not fully understand, he had been approached calmly I would wager that he’d go “I hadn’t thought of it that way”

On the other hand, this has raised an issue that I’m sure very few people realized was an issue. I had never considered that anyone would proposition a relative stranger in an elevator.

So, by turning Dawkins into a bit of a punching bag, we’re all more aware of a very real issue. But we could have been a bit more restrained in our condemnation of the man.

Dawkins is also an old nerdy man and I so would expect his sexual etiquette advice to be up there with his ability on the dance floor although to be fair he did manage to pull that Romana bird.

I’m slightly suspicious of all this organised skepticism which sounds a bit to me like organised cat herding but maybe that’s me just being sceptical.

Anyhoo keep up the good work, I enjoy your podcast and the SGU one for that matter to whom I notice you have now offered your voice which does give those offspring of slave trading colonials a smattering of class.