Hyperbolic whining when criticized is the male analog to the trope of women crying when criticized. So it’s ironic to see Richard Dawkings “crying” (over and over again) about a male peer being criticized for saying maybe women should be segregated from men in labs because they cry too much when criticized. Sure, Dawkins thinks Sir Tim Hunt saying that was deplorable. But he thinks nothing should come of it. We should just laugh off a Muslim scientist saying it would be better if labs were gender segregated (and not meaning it sarcastically). Because of sexist false generalizations about women, and how “women” can’t handle criticism and relationships.

Sexism should never have negative consequences in Dawkins’ world. Which is why sexism will never end in Dawkins’ world. Which is why we should not help him make this world into that one. Hunt’s colleague Michael Eisen has the best essay on this point of any I’ve read. [See now also this and this.]

Dawkins cries watery tears whines hyperbolically almost every time he is criticized. (Just google around. The number of examples documented on the Internet is so bewildering it’s become a well known trope.) It’s always the same thing: someone exercising their free speech rights to express their negative opinion of him or things he said, becomes a “witch hunt” and an “inquisition” by a wild “angry mob.”

In fact it is never any of those things, but basically a lot of serious, thoughtful, often well-argued criticism. Mere free speech. And often well done and spot on at that. Not email bombs sent to his in-box to harass him. Not sea lioning. Not pornographic cartoons of him being shot in the head posted in public. No actual torches and pitchforks, prison time, or setting him on fire. No actual mob. Just a citizenry peaceably assembling and expressing their grievances to those with power.

No one even asked any organization to fire Hunt. He was only fired from a few honorary positions whose role was to promote the values of those organizations, entirely on those organizations’ own initiative. Because epically failing at your job, and embarrassing your employer on precisely a mission point of what they are actively fighting against, means you suck at your job. People who suck at their job can get fired. That’s how life works. Stop crying whining about it.

I’m sorry, but this behavior makes Dawkins look like a child. He can’t handle criticism.

Either A:

He shivers in terror, hiding in his closet (or as he calls it, the “muzzle” his critics have apparently sent thugs to attach to his face and hands), deathly afraid of being criticized, and blames the criticism for chasing him into that closet (muzzle). It’s all their fault, for criticizing him. Not his childish fear of criticism. Or his inability to deal with it. Or just stand up for his criticized views and laugh the critics off (like he would creationists and theologians). Or recognize his mistakes and value them as learning experiences. And then try harder to help us combat sexism, for example, instead of acting like a clueless twit hyperbolically attacking us for being against sexism.

Or B:

He wildly overreacts to criticism with a massive display of a shocking sense of entitlement. And learns nothing. And doesn’t even notice he has this flaw. He certainly doesn’t notice how sexist and insulting it is for him to use the witch hunt trope when defending his or others’ sexism or their right to be immune to the consequences from it. A lot of Big Atheism dudebros do the same (like Peter Boghossian). They also constantly cry watery tears whine hyperbolically when criticized, lashing out in an irrational state of intemperate anger and indignance, using the same inapplicable and inappropriate tropes.

Men are just too emotional.

Oh wait, see how that’s a false generalization? Yeah. Imagine if I said that men acting like Dawkins shows “men” are too emotional to work in science, because they can’t handle criticism, they always bawl like a baby whine like a baby and get all uncontrollably angry and indignant instead of learning anything. You’d say what an absurd false generalization and what a horrible conclusion to draw even from the fact that some men are like this. You’d criticize me. The whole population would criticize me. Organizations who hired or inducted me as a representative or spokesperson for their values exactly the contrary would dismiss me as an embarrassment who failed at his one basic mission for them. They’d replace me with someone who can do the job I clearly can’t. And you’d agree that’s how the sequence of events should go.

But as soon as it’s women and not men we are saying this sexist thing about, now it’s all witch hunts and inquisitions and mob mania and How Dare Ye.

Science

The fact of the matter is, studies show (like Grossman & Wood 1993 and Kring & Gordon 1998 and Simon & Nath 2004 etc.) that men and women do not substantially differ in emotionality. In terms of how often and how many emotions they feel in a day, they are the same. In terms of the average intensity of those felt emotions over time, the tops of their bell curves are separated by barely ten percentiles.

That’s not a huge difference. A lot of men are more intensely emotional than the average woman. A lot of women are less intensely emotional than the average man. And the variances are so small, they would barely be visible without a statistical study. Walk into a room of a hundred men and women, and their difference in emotionality would barely be visible. As long as by emotionality you mean all emotions. That are actually felt (and not just the emotions that are expressed).

This is sexist culture. Men are enculturated to hold back their tears and displace the emotion of embarrassment, for example, with anger and outrage and indignance. Which are emotions. Felt just as intensely. Thereby disproving the myth that women are substantially more emotional than men. Men just channel and express emotions differently, because they have been taught to, often abusively, throughout childhood. Women, meanwhile, aren’t pipelined that way as kids, but allowed, even expected, to express emotions with tears. We know this because in some cultures, like Ancient Greece, men would cry almost as often, because tears were coded in those cultures as manly.

Consequences

Tim Hunt’s joke demonstrates he actually believes women are too emotional and immature about workplace relationships to do science. So, haha, maybe they have to wear a burqa work in separate labs than men, so as not to be so lusciously tempting and distracting to men, and so men can live in peace and not feel sad when someone tells you your criticism of them made them feel bad. The exact same emotion, incidentally, that Dawkins expresses, only in the form of anger and indignance and hyperbole, every time he is criticized, proving he responds to criticism just as emotionally as Hunt joked women do, as if women had the problem and not men.

Notably, unlike Dawkins, Hunt himself did not whine like a baby. He apologized and expressed understanding of why what he did was wrong and deserved censure. Or maybe not. Certainly the dudebros like Brendan O’Neill definitely don’t get it. They see they don’t control the world anymore, because now everyone has a voice and can exercise their free speech rights and be heard, so now there are consequences to being a sexist, and promoting sexist jokes at conferences aimed at ending sexism while representing organizations combating sexism. And they do not like this. They are no longer as privileged as they use to be. They have been reduced to equals. And like children they angrily howl and pout and whine about it. Like children, they think it’s everyone else’s fault. They don’t understand, and clearly fear, a world that doesn’t put up with their shit anymore.

Sexism is no longer funny. Unless you are making fun of it. Which the dudebros then describe as a witch hunt.

The world is more fair now. And they don’t like that because it means they have to admit they’ve been unfairly prejudiced and backing a prejudiced system and that would be awful (right?) but they can’t be an awful person therefore all the evidence for climate change evolution vaccines their prejudice and support of prejudice must be false (just like witches don’t really exist and this therefore has to be a witch hunt, minus the actual hunting part, you know, the torture and kidnapping and killing). So it’s just deny deny deny whine whine whine.

Suck it up and get over it. Stop acting like a baby. Stop being so emotional. And start living in the 21st century and not the 19th. Women are your equals now. Sexism is to be removed from mind and society, not endorsed or left untouched as harmless. Because dudebros like Dawkins are so self-centered and inured to the plight of others less advantaged, they don’t realize that the fate of Tim Hunt indicates we live in a better world now.

Tim Hunt was not silenced. He was not cast into penury. He was not imprisoned. He was not burned at the stake. He just can’t represent organizations anymore that don’t share his beliefs. And he has to cope with the fact that the world now gets to talk about all this. And at worst, poke fun at his dinosaur views. If he wanted, he could start a blog or a Twitter account or self-publish a book and say any damn thing he wants. He can even run a kickstarter for his research (if he actually has any). He is a free man.

So no thought is being policed here. It’s being criticized. And criticizing something is not outlawing it. Choosing of your own free will not to support it is not outlawing it either. It’s liberty.

Questions

To Dawkins, PZ Myers asks a very pertinent question:

If you’re one of those people who called this a “witch hunt”, an “Inquisition”, a “lynching” — what would you have people do differently when an esteemed senior scientist gets up to a lectern and says something sexist, or racist, or simply idiotic?

You are, apparently, unhappy that people commented on it on Twitter, or wrote blog posts about it, or wrote op-eds decrying it. You seem to be distressed that others are even talking about it negatively. Be specific: what do you propose that a person hearing a Nobelist announcing that women should be segregated from men in the lab should do?

Bonus points if you manage to find a rationalization for that, and you’re also on record deploring the habit of Muslims demanding segregated seating for men and women at public lectures.

Of course, what Dawkins would say is, he doesn’t think Hunt should have been dismissed from his honorary positions. Even though those positions come with the expectation that you will represent, and not publicly shit on, the values being promoted by those organizations. But notice, no witch hunting mob dismissed Hunt. They didn’t even ask for his dismissal. All the people did was say in public what was fucked up about what he said. All they did was exercise their right to free speech, and publish their thoughts. That’s all they did. The organizations on their own dismissed him, because they can’t combat sexism by keeping a sexist as their spokesperson or representative.

Dawkins needs to explain why they were wrong to do that, not why “the people” were wrong to publish their grievances (the “witch hunt” and “mob” he whines like a baby about). But that’s precisely what Dawkins is attacking: the right of the people to express and publish their thoughts about things. We are not talking about lying or harassment. We are talking about calmly or humorously honest statements of what happened and how people felt about it and why it was bad. Dawkins wants that to stop. Poor soul.

And of course Hunt did not actually argue for segregation. He just joked that it might work. Hence his joke intentionally reveals that he actually did think that would improve things. And (and as we know from what he later said) he really did think it would improve things because women are too emotional and immature about relationships. Oh, and also, because he wants to have sex with them all the time (or love them? or accidentally cause them to fall in love with him?), and how dare they be so pretty and interesting dating prospects (?) for a monogamously married man. He just Can’t Do Science with such cool hot chicks around? Poor soul.

No organization wants to be represented by someone who thinks like that. Indeed it’s amazing that people like him even still exist, in such a field and at his level of education. Too many people are better qualified for the honorary roles he was dismissed from. Because most people actually share the beliefs and values against sexism that those organizations want to be known for.

But Dawkins wants there to be no consequences for being that way. And thus no prospect of ever changing people not to be. Dawkins is fine with sexism in official science promotion. It’s no big deal. And what he wants is for Hunt to be completely unaffected. And for The People to shut up [or to even take steps to shut them up]. Because he is sick of the ruling mobs (= citizens of democracies) going on witch hunts (= expressing their negative opinions about him and his peers in public).

Conclusions

Dawkins is evidently not aware that what he is actually advocating is for the suppression of free speech. Not by the state or anything, of course. But by some sort of self-enforced or brow-beaten social norm that keeps “the people” quiet. Can’t everyone just shut up already? (= stop using your free speech rights and publishing your thoughts to larger audiences than me).

The final irony is that Dawkins is actually the very witch hunter and member of the very mob he is attacking. Because he expressed his negative opinion about Hunt’s words. Exactly all that the witch hunters and mobs did. They didn’t do anything he didn’t do. Yet when they do it, it’s a witch hunt and a mob. When he does it, it’s a brief CYA aside. In other words…

“OH yes, I agree with this mob of witch hunters on everything they are saying, I’m just saying there should never be any consequences for being a sexist, and the only way for there to never be any consequences for expressing sexist beliefs is if no one ever talks about it or says they don’t like it or makes fun of it. Then sexists can go on representing organizations that want to be known for fighting sexism in their field while openly expressing sexism at events those organizations send them to. See? Everyone’s happy.”

WTF.

Dawkins must think sexism is like the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. If you close your eyes and refuse to see it, it can’t harm you. And then nothing has to be done about it. So if we don’t talk about it and it never has any negative consequences (to the sexists), it will just go away. And thus never have any negative consequences to women. Like magic.

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