Rebecca Watson wrote:[12:03] There is another comment I found on a blog, from actually one of your own. I want to use it as an example not to embarrass this person but to point out that we have a serious problem when young woman are this ignorant about feminism. So let me read it to you. This is from the UNI Freethoughtblog; Stef McGraw, she posted a transcript of the story that I just told you [mumbles] and she writes:
- Watson quoting McGraw: my concern is that she takes issue with a man showing interest in her. What's wrong with that? How on earth justifies that he is creepy? Are we not sexual beings? Let's review. It's not that he touched her, or made a unsolicited sexual comment. He merely asked if she liked to come back to his room. She easily could have said, and assuming did say, ‘No thanks I am tired I would like to go to my room to sleep
[13:00] So there are many things wrong with this paragraph, I won't really go into them all. I mention that, asking someone back to your hotel room at four in the morning who you've never spoken to, is the definition of unsolicited sexual comment and in the transcript that Stef posted, she conveniently edited it to begin after I told everyone at the bar that I was exhausted and going back to my room – kind of important point, in which I exactly state exactly what my desire is, because later this man in the elevator, specifically trying to talk me out of doing that. So I did actually made it quite clear, that I was tired and going to my room to sleep. But the real problem is actually in the first sentence. And it's sort of the same problem that the other commenter has: "my concern is that she takes issues with a man showing interest in her"
[13:56] This is unfortunately a pretty standard parroting of misogynistic thought and it's not new. It's something that feminist have been dealing with for ages. In fact, it's feminism 101. In fact, it's covered on a blog called "feminism 101" which you should definitely check out, because it's great. They go over a lot of concepts that maybe new to many of you. But in this case, what we're talking about is the difference between sexual interest, sexual attraction versus sexual objectification. Objectification has a few things about it that separate it from interest. For instance focusing on the physical aspects of a person, ignoring their individuality, and their stated desires; for instance my desire to go to sleep, my desire to not be hit on, which is all I've been talking about all day and also a disinterest in how your actions will impact the object in question and that is really a serious point I think you should consider especially if you want to encourage more women to join to your groups.
[15:00] Because there are people in this audience right now, who believe this, that...
- Watson reads slide: A women's reasonable expectation to feel safe from sexual objectification and assault at a skeptic and atheist events is outweighed by a man's right to sexually objectify her."
There are some good overviews, Freethoughtkampala for one. There are several different events that have to do with Elevatorgate. The "situation" itself is composed of three different events. The aftermath lead to several additional situations (however, there is no agreement what is important). The three are:
- The situation in the lift itself. Retold in the video.
- The video on youtube, and the reaction to it.
- Both of the former, retold on the CFI event and brought to general attention.
Further, significant events where...
- "Always Name Names" where PZ Myers comments on the situation, without having seen the CFI talk. Because he doesn't know what happened, he cannot fathom the reaction. This has in part to do because the subject exploded into different directions already, but fueled by the accusations on the CFI event.
- Important for the Slymepit was Abbie's "Bad Form" comment. This has led, over time to a polarisation of the comment section ships, who then fired broadsides at each other shortly afterwards.
Both of these refer directly to the CFI talk.
Now enter Richard Dawkins...
- Richard Dawkins had not seen the CFI talk and apparently thinks it's overblown. Like PZ Myers, he has no idea that Rebecca Watson had made extreme accusations both towards atheists in general, to people in the audience "right now" and to Stef McGraw. The confusing situation and major actors not caring enough what happened, and consequently not commenting on these aspects make it seem they never happened. At this point, both Dawkins and PZ Myers agree that the situation was only "slightly bad". Richard then adds his "Dear Muslima" from that perspective, which is in that context actually a step towards feminism, not away from it (little did we know about the Age of Islamophobia that was to come yet).
- Dear Muslima was posted into PZ Myers "Always name names", i.e. also in direct reference to the CFI talk.
The next are the reactions...
- PZ Myers at first agrees with Dawkins, that it was slightly bad. But Rebecca Watson's and the SJW side's behaviour has led to a massive polarisation for reason now well understood. She went in with accusing people of being death thread writers, parrotting misogynist thoughts, laughing down rape victims, that people wanted to grope and sexual harass and deem this normal, and this tone carried over from then. Myers, siding with Watson, saw only the anger directed at him in response and -- ignoramus that he is -- thought the reaction was rather overblown (like Dawkins, ironically, just confirmation bias from a different side).
- Rebecca Watson, continueing in this fashion, then declared a boycott on all things Dawkins. When you declare such things from your blog on a network, it's a call for a boycott, not merely a private choice. Again, PZ Myers, who is never wrong, had to go with this, and this costly signal, but he was still in good terms with Richard Dawkins. To resolve his cognitive dissonance, he claimed it was not a boycott at all and misogynist were making this all up. He believes now evil misogynists have made a mountain out of a molehill.
It goes into all kinds of other directions, but this is in essence how the lines were drawn, including between the SJ blogging faction and the YouTube faction. The cocktail created by that point was a strong contrast between the "slightly bad" on the one hand, and the extreme accusations ("rape culture") at the other end, plus a fan-war over people who like Richard Dawkins, or found him unfairly attacked, and the fans of the self-escribed Queen of the Nerds.
Dates and more for the Historian:
Pretext(there is some, detailled here).
Actual Elevatorgate
- Jun 20, 2011 // About Mythbusters, Robot Eyes, Feminism, and Jokes, mentions the incident for the first time.
- Jul 27, 2011 // CFI Talk Rebecca Watson: The Religious Right vs. Every Woman on Earth | CFI Leadership Conference 2011, retells the event and the YT reactions.
- Jul 01, 2011 Bad Form, Rebecca Watson // Abbie's take. "Furthermore, because the audience has no clue what youre talking about, they just kinda have to take your word for it that the situation is what it is. [...] How would they know if Watson totally quotemined McGraw?" Hence, bad FORM.
- Jul 02, 2011 // Always Name Names (with comments restored)
- July 2, 2011 // Dawkins writes Dear Muslima into Always Name Names in this comment section, #75. He clarified why he thinks it's not the fallacy of relative privation (not as bad as fallacy) on #104 only twenty or so minutes later.
- Jul 03, 2011 // Oh, no, not again…once more unto the breach PZ Myers comments on it again, interesting quotation: "Since Richard Dawkins has responded and is asking for an explanation of what he is missing, I’ll try to oblige." Like most people, except a few (notably Watson herself), he has no idea what the CFI talk was about. The video is only uploaded nearly a month later...
- Jul 05, 2011 // Rebecca Watson answers with her All-Thing-Dawknis boycott in "Privilege Delusion", many links suggest that it blew up already by then.
- Jul 27, 2011 // Video upload of the CFI talk.
What most people were missing is that it's two things. A "slightly bad thing" in a lift, and "rape culture" in a superimposed state, like the Schrödinger Rapist (another thing that came up at the time). The Official Story...
... as well as the mainstream reporting, don't even mention the CFI talk that sparked it all. Curious, isn't it? It's not even a side-note. Hence, later on the story is more like: "Rebecca Watson said "guys don't that", Richard Dawkins responds to her and unleashes the trolls and the hatred against all women". For that, hunt down Richard Carrier, Adam Lee, Amy Roth's SkeptiCon talk and so forth and so on. Misdirection, by accident. Rebecca Watson didn't plan for it, but since nobody pinned her to her words, and only referred to the coffee thing vs Dawkins, this became the official story. We know that it was later in her interest, since she also denied the boycott when that backfired.
I wanted to post a final thing for the anniversary anyway, and had looked up a lot of material
before (the formatting was wrecked by some forum update).
