Richard Dawkins Suggests Feminists May Have Caused His Stroke

[Alex K]

I wonder whether he ever paused to consider how much stress he caused Rebecca Watson by piling onto that shit-storm with gusto. Probably not.

Some context, in your own words? What is this about?

I hate to use the E word, but does Elevatorgate ring a bell? This is how I remember it (i followed it in realtime online, but it's been a few years, fortunately)

So Rebecca Watson, former Member of the SGU podcast and feminist skeptical activist, made an innocuous offhand comment at the end of one of her videos where she recounted an anecdote from a recent conference in Dublin or so - she said that, after she had excused herself from the conference hotel bar because she was tired, a guy from the conference crowd went riding in the same elevator and when they were alone there, invited her to his room "for coffee", and in the video she just said that maybe guys should consider not doing that late at night when they're alone with a woman they don't know personally, and who said that she wants to go to bed. Whether you agree with that or not, it was all in all undramatic and a complete non-issue. So then a HUGE shitstorm broke lose, and RW was stalked, harrassed online with rape and death threats by the hundreds. When this was going on for a while and thousands and thousands of angry blog posts and comments had been written and tempers were heatet, Richard Dawkins became aware of that and rode in on a high horse, scolding Rebecca Watson for making such a big deal out of this when women in muslim countries have it so much worse, tsk tsk tsk. This was doubly stupid on his part because first of all it was never RW who made a big deal out of anything (she was currently the victim of a gigantic wave of hate), and secondly because using this kind of cheap argument to put down activists in western countries is really a bit too pathetic for someone like Dawkins. Anyhew, Ms. Watson reacted angrily at this ignorant comment from one of the big figures of the movement, which also greatly boosted the influx of hatemail and threats from trolls who now felt vindicated and supported by Dawkins (something he of course did not intend). RW then said that she was deeply disappointed by Dawkins and does not feel like ever buying one of his books again. Dawkins' reaction to this was to try and get Ms. Watson thrown out of a conference they both were supposed to speak at, because in his mind she was apparently plotting against him. I remember reading Dawkins' comments back then and groaning loudly.