Skeptics I no longer have any respect for.

[DeistPaladin]

Rebecca Watson
Also known as "The Skepchick", Rebecca Watson is a blogger on skepticism among other things. She also does a few podcasts apparently, although I've never listened to them. In the last year, she's managed to solidify her position among quite a few fellow skeptics as a radical feminist bent on alienating anyone who has the audacity to disagree with her. Her two offenses are:

1) Elevatorgate - Ms Watson was in an elevator in a hotel in Dublin at 4am, with a man who had apparently been at the hotel bar with her and all the other skeptics who had attended some skeptical conference. The man said he liked her views, and asked whether she wanted to come to his room for some coffee. She politely refused, the man went to his hotel room alone (as any gentleman would), and that should have been that.

Except that Ms Watson made a video blog a few days later saying the man had made her feel "uncomfortable" and asked men "not to do that"...because apparently asking people for coffee is creepy now...who knew? Anyways, the internet asploded, Dawkins made some funny sarcastic comment about overreacting, and the skeptic community was split into three groups: those who think Watson is a hero (sorry, heroine) for standing up for the rights of women not to get hit on in elevators, those who think Watson is a feminazi who wants men to be seen and not heard (and also not seen), and the rest of us, myself included, who were watching from the sidelines saying "WTF, it's just coffee."

My wife talked to me about this case and helped me to understand it. She managed to do it in a way that didn't sound like male bashing. I'm going to try to pass it on.

Women are terrified of being raped, stalked or sexually harassed. This is not just hypersensitivity but due to a very real danger. I've heard various statistics that suggest about 1 in 4 will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime. A wary woman does well to be suspicious of a male stranger that approaches her in a confined area.

For men, this is a difficult fear to fully understand, since we're not as physically vulnerable to being raped. An invitation to coffee seems innocent enough, right? What we don't realize is that from the woman's perspective, every male stranger is a potential attacker. He asked her in a confined space. She had nowhere to run. His intentions may have been innocent but he may have unwittingly creeped her out just from the circumstances. Also, his invitation to HIS ROOM rather than a public area like the hotel was another source of creepyness.

For men, it's important to realize this fear exists and to always make sure when we approach a woman that she's not in a confined space or in any other situation where she feels like she can't say "no" with no consequences.

For women, please understand our difficulty to understand your legitimate fears. You will do better to calmly explain them in the way I just have rather than just assume we're insensitive jerks.