Anyone ever heard of Rebecca Watson?

"Just a word to the wise guys, don't do that"And with those words began the strangest controversy in the skeptic movement for some time. The argument goes, as she says, that she was alone in an elevator with a stranger at 4am in a foreign country having spent the day talking about feminist issues. This is not the time to essentially proposition her. You might then want to read The Privilage Delusion, which is her response to Dawkins' "Dear Muslima" argument. This pointed retort opens it:

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Richard Dawkins believes I should be a good girl and just shut up about being sexually objectified because it doesn’t bother him. Thanks, wealthy old heterosexual white man!

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Some people are upset that she used her time at another conference apparently to go off topic to berate an atheist (another blogger (who happened to be in the room at the time), nobody particularly famous, IIRC her name was Steff) that had some disagreement over the 'elevator guy incident'.The debate essentially became was the 'elevator guy' incident 'zero bad' (As Dawkins claims), 'slightly bad' (as Watson seemed to be suggesting) or in some rare cases 'very bad' (as some commenters seem to have equated it morally with a threat of rape (even if no rape was intended)). There were some notable examples of saying that it wasn't bad at all, but actually perfect good, to be expected, anticipated and celebrated.This certain subset of skeptics, who have taken offense at the 'don't do this' line. have sometimes been dubbed 'Male Rights Activists' are saying they should be free to proposition whoever they want and when. Watson's point of course is that they are free to do this, but they will make women uncomfortable.And some of these people have become quite aggressive. Abbie Smith, if memory serves, called her Rebecca Twatson on her scienceblog, others have called her Rebecunt Watson. It got really quite nasty, to be honest. Incidentally I looked and I can only see commenters on Abbie's blog using those kinds of terms, but I seem to remember them being condoned by Abbie at some point. I may be wrong though. Anyway, here's a link to her take on at least one element of the controversy (the part where Watson called out Steff when she was speaking at a public event) Why not? She expresses she doesn't like strangers essentially propositioning her in enclosed spaces in a foreign land in the early hours of the morning. She doubly expresses exasperation given the topics she had been talking about all day.I think there is grievance to be had with Watson. But the 'guys don't do that...' riff is perfectly sensible and rational. Either way she has apparently received a lot of emails and comments that are very passionately arguing against her and many that are quite aggressive. She cites some youtube comments threatening her with rape, and says her inbox has a similar content.Whatever her crime, I don't think it is serious enough to warrant threatening hate mail. That said, I was capable of ignoring the threats from Markuze - random internet hate mail should be par for the course for any famous skeptics I would have thought. Myers has made it into a semi-regular spot, called: 'I get mail' but not everybody is like Myers or me and not everybody gets credible threats... I concur - she is certainly adept at dishing it out (just ask Lawrence Krauss (see the coal raking and the rebuttal )), but we're all human and getting the support of the community is always uplifting so I am happy that someone is offering to give her that if she's still getting inundated with angry emails and other public scorn.My own view is that Elevator Guy was a clueless idiot. There is a slim chance he was so genuinely clueless he didn't realize he was propostioning her, but I think it more likely it was intentional. That's the joyous ambiguity of a society that uses code phrases like 'wanna come in for a coffee?' Nevertheless, if you don't stop and consider the other person's feelings when you approach them, you need to be corrected on that approach to social life.That just about exhausts everything I can remember without reading through it all again.Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

The context starts at like 3:30, but the elevator guy anecdote crops up at about 4:30 That's wonderful news. But, your personal experience isn't data (and of course this applies to RW too). A more interesting question might be 'what percent of men and women have encountered some problem at conferences/wherever and is there any way for people to deal with these situations?' But surely there should be social boundaries in place. Maybe being propositioned in a bar is acceptable - as long as it is not persistent in the face of unwelcomeness. On the other hand, is propositioning a woman in a lift at 4am something that should be acceptable?I think its fair to suggest to men that, given their imbalance of power in this regard, they should try understanding how their 'quarry' might feel about the situation in the context. Being propositioned by a stranger at 4am in a closed space with only one exit, can be unnerving to some people - and I think its fair that men be aware of this possibility before diving in with an oblivious sense of entitlement. I agree. Although it seems calling people misogynist has become the in thing to do, and anyone and everyone seems to get caught up in advertising their non-misogyny or otherwise defending against the same claims.That said, there are some people who seem to be pretty obnoxious when it comes women or feminism. You don't have to have been 'extremely' lucky. The amount of women who have been sexually assaulted is quite high. This article reports on this survey which has just less than 1 in 5 women as reporting having been raped.

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Nearly 1 in 5 women (18.3%) and
1 in 71 men (1.4%) in the United
States have been raped at some
time in their lives, including
completed forced penetration,
attempted forced penetration,
or alcohol/drug facilitated
completed penetration.

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I expect the number of women having experienced groping, or intimidating persistence or what have you must be higher. So I can well understand that a large number of women, might be feeling nervous about my presence especially when we're alone and she has few options to leave.

I think almost everybody's experience of attending events of whatever kind will observe that men generally behave themselves. I am not aware of any formal study done in this area. There are a number of cases that have been spoken about by bloggers and vloggers regarding questionable behaviour around (usually) women. From memory, the cases are a little more harassing than RW's case, which was just something that made her feel uncomfortable, and I've not heard or read her saying that she thinks it entered into the realms of harassment. Just a sexualization of her in a worrying situation. Unfortunately, while the vast majority of men follow social boundaries much of the time, there are still plenty of men that push the boundaries, and unfortunately too many that simply ignore them as convenient.I think it is charitable to assume that some of this may be down to an education issue ('Guys don't do that'), which has lead to many discussions (though a great deal of heat is produced to the light generated, in my opinion) about what is appropriate behaviour.It won't work in every case, some men are wilfully clueless, others are actually misogynistic. I don't feel like looking for examples, and the one that I remembered could be argued as not being 'truly misogynistic', but I think it reflects on the issue. Here is a quote: **Unpleasant Content hidden, use peek to view**
(source)And, in talking with a rape victim: **Unpleasant Content hidden, use peek to view**(source) I'm not sure that's true. It might be. But many certainly don't pay the price. Most rapes go unreported, and few that do end in a conviction.I think something like groping, or intimidatingly persistent and vocally unwelcome sexual advances would be even less reported.Of course, a guy that acts jerkish in public, is likely to feel at least social penalties for his actions. But I think there are way more jerks that manufacture plausible deniability than not. We already have boundaries, as you say. Committing them to a list won't make them any bigger than they already are.It might be that some women enjoy being propositioned in lifts, but if a significant number of women feel significantly unneasy or fearful in that situation, maybe the ethical thing to do is to find somewhere else to make your proposition - as most women will accept propositions in places other than lifts. I think the nice thing for a man to do, is to make one's propositions in the bar where the girl is near a social group that can offer her protection. I didn't mean to imply you were ignorant of these matters, but getting them written down seemed important to the discussion.I think it's fair to expect men to consider the context before making their 'move'. When a girl is on her own, in a foreign country, at 4am, on her way to bed, in an enclosed space, is not a winning combination. And, on a somewhat unrelated note - what kind of idiot calls a notorious feminist 'interesting' and then runs the old 'fancy a coffee?' line on her? The term the feminists seem to be using to describe this is Schrodinger's Rapist. We can't change women's point of view, but we can choose to modify our behaviour once we discover it.

This message is a reply to: Message 180 by crashfrogThis is really a more appropriate thread I think. Well I think there's a small, but noteworthy difference between 'Dawkins does not believe the situation is a problem.', and 'there can't be any such thing as a sexism problem in atheism so long as a single woman, somewhere is subject to worse sexism'.I'm not telling you that you were wrong, not entirely on every point. But you seem to write as if you held the misconception that Dawkins believed that lesser evils should be ignored where greater evils exist, when his position is that no evil took place to ignore or deal with at all. Yes, I'm aware. I don't think he suggests that the solution is to ignore it, even implicitly. He just doesn't believe there is a problem to begin with, or at least he didn't at the time of writing. In his defence, I'd probably use quick but flawed filters if I was receiving the sheer volume of words from people over the internet, especially in times of controversy. He does show willing to listen to reasonable arguments, 'Somebody made the worthwhile point (reiterated here by PZ) that it is no defence of something slightly bad to point to something worse'.

But that's the very view that Dawkins says he was not espousing. His message was meant to say that 'Muslima' faces actual misogyny, being asked to a hotel room for coffee is not actual misogyny. I think there's a difference betweena) between being aware of something, and choosing to act as if one is not.
b) being unaware of something.To be of the position that the 'solution' to the 'problem' is to 'ignore it' - one must be aware of the problem, and then consciously opt to act as if it wasn't there.Whereas I think Dawkins is suffering the common failings from his own position of privilege and background culture. He is truly oblivious to the problem. Or at least he was. He clearly gets some of the issues that women or families have to deal with: he did promise RDF funding for childcare at conferences for example. Yes, but if you are ignorant of a problem - you'd do likewise.