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The award they gave him in 1996. His tweet that upset them: https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1380812852055973888 https://mobile.twitter.com/Ri

The award they gave him in 1996. His tweet that upset them: https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1380812852055973888 https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/13808128520...

pomian 6y ago
Strange. Disturbing even. An award given 24 years ago can be taken away? To quote that tweet you posted: Discuss
londons_explore 6y ago
Looks like a pretty interesting tweet to me... But I daren't say more for fear of my own Twitter history attracting unwanted attention.
dragonwriter 6y ago
It wasn’t one tweet, FTFA: “Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” (Of course, before and contemporaneously with being given the award Dawkins was notorious for using the paper-thin pretext of scientific discourse (and sometimes not even that much cover) for both broad and specifically targeted anti-religious bigotry. While humanism is inherently in opposition to religion, it need not be bigoted in the way Dawkins always has been, and he was always a poor choice as an exemplar of that community.
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
  I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Arguments for “social justice” (for lack of a better term) often aren’t logical or consistent, and maybe they can never be, because human nature just isn’t that way, which is not even to say that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but it should be scrutinized and one should be aware of it. There are countless examples of this in the replies to Dawkins’ tweet alone. Someone literally says that transracialism is invalid because, unlike gender, race isn’t a spectrum. That seems completely wrong to me and even if “race” (as a German I’ve always found this word’s fashionability pretty weird btw) were descrete, what about that precludes transracialism? Others focus on the aspect of choice, with some implying that the specific woman in question “chose” to be transracial, while transgender people are inherently transgender. Does this mean someone claiming to have been born in the wrong skin color would not get vilified? And again, what makes this the deciding factor? I remember this was a huge point in favor of gay rights as well. Why? I suppose because it’s easily defensible and somehow worked in the discourse at the time, but we should be so honest with ourselves as not to conflate auch tactical manouvers with actual foundations of our beliefs. Some people focus on the privilege aspect, alleging the transracial woman only posed as black to gain some benefits afforded to black people. Yet the same doesn’t seem to apply to MTF transwomen. I’m not going for a “gotcha, checkmate sjws” here and it’s sad it has to be said. Obviously, presumably like Dawkins himself, I’m all for social liberties. I don’t care what other people do with their bodies and I shouldn’t regulate it. I consider myself on the side of “the left” if you will, and that’s the only reason I cringe so hard at it. The right wing trolls under Dawkins’ tweet are deplorable, but they don’t affect me as much and generally don’t intersect with my bubble a lot. They don’t feel very powerful to me, so even ridiculing them seems pretty self congratulatory. Dawkins is challenging social justice like he challanged christianity 20 years ago: because they are dominant and wrongly feel infallible. It’s just more sad having to do it to what you consider your own camp, and being vilified by them.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Viewing the tweet AHA is referencing as the most recent problem in isolation, and taking the question it poses at face value as a discussion prompt on supposed contrast in reactions that implies nothing more than is explicitly described, the explicit delegitimization of trans identity is stark and glaring in the framing of the question (the implication AHA finds about Black identity being a casual choice, however, is more of a stretch; indeed the delegitimization of trans identity is particularly stark because of the asymmetry wherein being trans is explicitly described as a choice of identity whereas Dolezal’s Black identity is not described as a choice.) Aside from the offensive content, the “inconsistencies of the predominant social framework” Dawkins sees are...kind of BS. Transexual identity (especially of transwomen) is intensely controversial (even on the left, and even on the far left not just rhe fuzzy centrish border of the left; there is a reason for the “RF” in “TERF”) for the exact same perceived cooption and endangerment by further marginalization by erasure of a marginalized identity group reason as transracial identity is controversial, and while the support levels for each are different, the demographic trends are similar, with race essentialism, like gender essentialism, being less supported by the young.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  There are a few other tweets, but spread over 2.5 decades, i don't see cause for notoriety? Dawkins is controversial but is there evidence of bigotry? Example from 2015: https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/658622852405534721?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/65862285240... Controversial maybe, but I don't think bigoted...
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > There are a few other tweets Dawkins problematic output has never been restricted to (indeed, predates, though the language of the AHA statement likely indicates that what they are concerned with is comparatively recent) tweets.
    - LatteLazy 6y ago
      Can you provide some concrete examples of bigotry? So far, this is very inspecific and "problematic"...
  - curryst 6y ago
    The "I call her 'she' out of courtesy" part is fairly offensive, and just totally uncalled for. It adds nothing to the rest of the content, and I can't think of any reason to add it other than to fan the flames. It's like saying "I call them Dr out of courtesy". No, you don't, you call them Dr XYZ because it's their title. It's not a courtesy to call them by their title, it's just an insult to call them anything else. To make matters worse, there's not even anything insightful in that tweet. Yes, we get it, words mean what society decides they mean. At least the latest tweet brought up an interesting point, and he didn't finish it off with a childish jab.

The award they gave him in 1996. His tweet that upset them: https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1380812852055973888 https://mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/13808128520...

pomian 6y ago

Strange. Disturbing even. An award given 24 years ago can be taken away? To quote that tweet you posted: Discuss

londons_explore 6y ago

Looks like a pretty interesting tweet to me... But I daren't say more for fear of my own Twitter history attracting unwanted attention.

dragonwriter 6y ago

It wasn’t one tweet, FTFA: “Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values.” (Of course, before and contemporaneously with being given the award Dawkins was notorious for using the paper-thin pretext of scientific discourse (and sometimes not even that much cover) for both broad and specifically targeted anti-religious bigotry. While humanism is inherently in opposition to religion, it need not be bigoted in the way Dawkins always has been, and he was always a poor choice as an exemplar of that community.

pwdisswordfish0 6y ago
I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Arguments for “social justice” (for lack of a better term) often aren’t logical or consistent, and maybe they can never be, because human nature just isn’t that way, which is not even to say that there is anything inherently wrong with that, but it should be scrutinized and one should be aware of it. There are countless examples of this in the replies to Dawkins’ tweet alone. Someone literally says that transracialism is invalid because, unlike gender, race isn’t a spectrum. That seems completely wrong to me and even if “race” (as a German I’ve always found this word’s fashionability pretty weird btw) were descrete, what about that precludes transracialism? Others focus on the aspect of choice, with some implying that the specific woman in question “chose” to be transracial, while transgender people are inherently transgender. Does this mean someone claiming to have been born in the wrong skin color would not get vilified? And again, what makes this the deciding factor? I remember this was a huge point in favor of gay rights as well. Why? I suppose because it’s easily defensible and somehow worked in the discourse at the time, but we should be so honest with ourselves as not to conflate auch tactical manouvers with actual foundations of our beliefs. Some people focus on the privilege aspect, alleging the transracial woman only posed as black to gain some benefits afforded to black people. Yet the same doesn’t seem to apply to MTF transwomen. I’m not going for a “gotcha, checkmate sjws” here and it’s sad it has to be said. Obviously, presumably like Dawkins himself, I’m all for social liberties. I don’t care what other people do with their bodies and I shouldn’t regulate it. I consider myself on the side of “the left” if you will, and that’s the only reason I cringe so hard at it. The right wing trolls under Dawkins’ tweet are deplorable, but they don’t affect me as much and generally don’t intersect with my bubble a lot. They don’t feel very powerful to me, so even ridiculing them seems pretty self congratulatory. Dawkins is challenging social justice like he challanged christianity 20 years ago: because they are dominant and wrongly feel infallible. It’s just more sad having to do it to what you consider your own camp, and being vilified by them.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I don’t think he is trying to demean the actual marginalized groups. He just points at the inconsistencies of the predominant social framework. Viewing the tweet AHA is referencing as the most recent problem in isolation, and taking the question it poses at face value as a discussion prompt on supposed contrast in reactions that implies nothing more than is explicitly described, the explicit delegitimization of trans identity is stark and glaring in the framing of the question (the implication AHA finds about Black identity being a casual choice, however, is more of a stretch; indeed the delegitimization of trans identity is particularly stark because of the asymmetry wherein being trans is explicitly described as a choice of identity whereas Dolezal’s Black identity is not described as a choice.) Aside from the offensive content, the “inconsistencies of the predominant social framework” Dawkins sees are...kind of BS. Transexual identity (especially of transwomen) is intensely controversial (even on the left, and even on the far left not just rhe fuzzy centrish border of the left; there is a reason for the “RF” in “TERF”) for the exact same perceived cooption and endangerment by further marginalization by erasure of a marginalized identity group reason as transracial identity is controversial, and while the support levels for each are different, the demographic trends are similar, with race essentialism, like gender essentialism, being less supported by the young.
LatteLazy 6y ago
There are a few other tweets, but spread over 2.5 decades, i don't see cause for notoriety? Dawkins is controversial but is there evidence of bigotry? Example from 2015: https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/658622852405534721?lang=en https://mobile.twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/65862285240... Controversial maybe, but I don't think bigoted...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > There are a few other tweets Dawkins problematic output has never been restricted to (indeed, predates, though the language of the AHA statement likely indicates that what they are concerned with is comparatively recent) tweets.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Can you provide some concrete examples of bigotry? So far, this is very inspecific and "problematic"...
- curryst 6y ago
  The "I call her 'she' out of courtesy" part is fairly offensive, and just totally uncalled for. It adds nothing to the rest of the content, and I can't think of any reason to add it other than to fan the flames. It's like saying "I call them Dr out of courtesy". No, you don't, you call them Dr XYZ because it's their title. It's not a courtesy to call them by their title, it's just an insult to call them anything else. To make matters worse, there's not even anything insightful in that tweet. Yes, we get it, words mean what society decides they mean. At least the latest tweet brought up an interesting point, and he didn't finish it off with a childish jab.