Some empathy and intellect, please.
As the token woman at An American Atheist, I feel obligated to respond to the recent controversy about Rebecca Watson’s recent experience at an atheist conference and Richard Dawkins’ response. I am also happy to do so, as I do identify myself as a feminist.
If you are not familiar with the basic outline, you might want to familiarize yourself with Watson’s original video and PZ Myers’ reply to Dawkins. But basically, Watson recounted her experience of being propositioned in an elevator at a conference, and made what I think is a pretty mild comment about it:
Um, just a word to wise here, guys…uh, don’t do that. You know, I don’t really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and—don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.
Now, you can disagree with Watson about whether or not she interpreted this event correctly – many bloggers sympathetic to her have already pointed out that of course, this guy could have had innocent or “romantic” intentions. Yet of course, none of us were there and it is hard to capture a creepy affect and awkward atmosphere in a retelling. However, I am not of the opinion that when it comes to questions of sexism, the woman’s interpretation is automatically the correct one – I know that women are as capable of misunderstanding as men.
But here’s the thing. Watson’s comment, whatever you happen to think about it, was hardly hysterical, was not even approaching bombastic or dramatic. It was merely a comment on an incident which, while unpleasant, she never characterizes as horribly traumatizing. This is why I was very disappointed to read Dawkins’ sarcastic reply, which went as follows:
