- Joined
- Mar 25, 2020
Rebecca Watson 
Rebecca Kay Watson
twitter: rebeccawatson (a)
skepchicks(a)
facebook: skepchick (a)
insta: rkwatson(a)
youtube: rebeccawatson(a)
Imagine if Logan Paul suddenly insisted he deserved a seat at the Algonquin Round Table. Now imagine he got one and the moment he sat down he started yelling to anybody who would listen that the seats were uncomfortable, the table dressing is gaudy, and when nobody was looking Alexander Woollcott tried to fuck his mouth. This is the life of Rebecca Watson. A woman who didn't care about science or skepticism in 2004, then decided she was the most knowledgeable person in the world about it in 2005, and that the entire community based around it needs to change to suit her whims. A walking, talking, accusatory cautionary tale about the far-reaching effects of GOTIS.
Skeptic Community 1.0
In 2005 all was great in the Scientific Skeptic/Atheist community. They were enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was an up-and-coming and definitely NOT irritating as fuck science champion, saying you’re a “Pastafarian” and you believe in The Flying Spaghetti Monster was still the funniest shit around, and they were experiencing a big cultural boom with Penn & Teller: Bullshit championing their cause on Showtime. It was a close-knit community for whom it seemed the sky was the limit.
Then Rebecca Watson came around and realized this whole community had one major problem. It wasn’t all about her.
Rebecca Watson & Skepchick
In 2005 Rebecca Watson is a fresh faced woman in her mid-20s and has recently met James "The Amazing" Randi, magician and beloved elder statesman of the skeptic community, and was inspired to throw her hat into the ring there despite having no experience or even interest before meeting him(a). The attention was easy since any community full of as many socially maladjusted men as the Atheist community won’t care if you look like frumpy Mrs. Potato Head, you’ll still have an army of simps. Enter Skepchick, Watson’s scientific skepticism group for women and about women's issues and being a woman, and womanly things because she was tired of everybody else in the community being a man and Rebecca understands that women are, apparently, too stupid to join a movement on their own unless you cover it with glitter and hello kitty stickers for them.
Rebecca's master plan to stop objectifying and sexualizing the women in her community and entice more women to join was, drumroll please, a titty calendar(a).
Rebecca quickly rose to popularity, despite the fact that her purported love of scientific skepticism seemed to always take a backseat to her love of complaining that there's too many men in the community.(a)
In 2007 she entered a contest held by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Winners would get $10,000 to fund a pilot episode of a show that could then be picked up by PBS. Presumably because of her fedora simp army, she was one of the winners.
Her pilot, Curiosity, Aroused was one of three pilots in the running to become a year-long show on PBS. Watson's show was the only one not picked up. source (a)
Her pilot, Curiosity, Aroused was one of three pilots in the running to become a year-long show on PBS. Watson's show was the only one not picked up. source (a)
In the skeptic community at this time she was considered mostly benign and easily ignored if you were one of the many that just saw Watson as that grating woman in the community who guilts conventions into giving her panels and constantly talks about how many guys want to fuck her and how everything is oppressing her. But as Watson became more popular in the community it quickly became obvious that we wouldn’t be able to ignore her for long.
Elevatorgate
In 2011 Rebecca Watson was gaining a reputation as The Girl Who Cried "Rape" at a time when everybody still agreed that we don't like people like that. She spoke at the World Atheist Convention in Ireland, a speech that was more humblebrags about how many guys want to fuck her and overexaggerating how oppressed she is and less about Atheism or science. Afterwards a disgusting, terrible event occurred (a). By her own telling of the story, Watson was in the elevator going back to her hotel room and a man got into the elevator with her. They had a friendly discussion but then he
“...all of you except for the one man who didn’t really grasp, I think, what I was saying on the panel, because at the bar later that night, actually at four in the morning, we were at the hotel bar. Four a.m., I said I’d had enough, I was going to bed. So I walk to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, 'Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?' 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, here's the thing, Watson's story... actually isn't that unreasonable. It's 4am, she's a single woman in a hotel in a foreign country in an elevator with some strange guy. It's not horribly unreasonable for her to be a bit creeped out by the situation. And if any other woman in the community mentioned it in a video people probably would have cared or, at the very least, ignored it and moved on with their day.
But Elevatorgate earned its -gate suffix for a few reasons.
First, people were real tired of Rebecca's shit. This was a community anybody could join, anybody was welcomed, anybody could participate in, and Rebecca and her followers couldn't stop making it about them, how oppressed they are, and how awful everybody in the community is. Understandably, this rubbed people the wrong way because it was insulting people that were members of this community and painting them all as borderline rapists. Not to mention that with her loudly painting a friendly, inviting community as a haven for violent misogynists and human scum, it was actually scaring women away.
Hindsight is 20/20 so it may not be surprising now, but back then we didn’t know the power that weaponized narcissistic virtue signaling had and it caused a schism in the skeptic community.
This is all to say nothing of the fact that Watson was generally not believed by much of the community. She made a lot of unlikely "and then everybody clapped" type claims very often. Though it's accepted as probably true now, many people at the time questioned whether the "elevator guy" even really existed.
Shitting Where She Eats
Here's a video where she expresses her completely normal and rational opinion on men in the skeptic community who would prefer it be about skepticism and not women.
They are all "worse than rape threats."
And here's a video she made for a charity, but, the endless font of charisma that she is, she still couldn't help herself and decided to start right out of the gate pissing on men and, by extension, half of her potential donating audience.
Rebecca was a drama machine, if you disagreed with her or pissed her off for any minor reason you can rest assured you'd have a Skepchick article written about you (a), there'd be tweets about you (a), or she'd just derail one of her speaking events that she was given out of gender guilt just to talk shit about you to a room full of scientists (see below). The remainder of her time in the sun was basically an endless string of her starting shit with prominent members of her community or prominent members of her community starting shit with her because of her insane opinions.
Since we had very little history with this kind of person and there wasn't a dangerhair trying to destroy something new that you love every 5 minutes at this time, a lot more people were willing to stand up to Watson and call out her bullshit and this included the biggest name in Atheism at the time, actual scientist, Richard Dawkins.
Richard Dawkins has been listening to Watson for weeks at this point, even sitting in panels with her watching as she hijacks panels about scientific skepticism and turns them into "you're all disgusting sexists." So it's understandable that he had finally had enough with all this Elevatorgate bullshit, and even went as far as to shit on her directly (a) in the comments of a blog post defending her, writing a mock letter to a muslim woman telling the fictional woman to shut up about her physical abuse and lack of rights because Rebecca Watson just got politely hit on, and isn’t that the real injustice?
Dear Muslima
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don’t tell me yet again, I know you aren’t allowed to drive a car, and you can’t leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you’ll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.
Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep”chick”, and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn’t lay a finger on her, but even so . . .
And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.
Richard
PZ Myers, the then 55-year-old man who wrote the piece gassing up Watson remained her fiercely loyal, pathetic lapdog forever after.
I wanted to do an OP on PZ Myers, but he really is just Rebecca's footnote. Here's his abbreviated OP.
The shit was flinging both ways though, some prominent atheists couldn't bother to lower themselves to interact with her, but she was always happy to fling shit at others. Even if they're international celebrities.
Celebrities didn't have time for this crap, but youtubers did.
Youtube was aflutter with news about Elevatorgate and who should be reporting on this but the man with "Atheist" in his name?
Kirk’s video mirrored the same sentiment of much of the movement at that time, that her outrage is much ado about nothing. A rare time TJ tells someone else to shove it up their ass.
videoBut he wasn't the only youtuber.
His strong opinons about Watson very quickly made him the main source of news regarding anti-Rebecca Watson and anti-protoSJW sentiment. Here's a video of him talking with TJ Kirk and that other guy that I don't know from The Drunken Peasants.
Also in the above video she asserts things about about big names in the community, DJ Grothe and Michael Shermer without evidence. If only they had some kind of community someone could join that espouses the value of evidence.
Which segues nicely into...
Yes, it turns out Michael Shermer is, indeed, King Of The Rapists. Who did he rape? More like who didn't he rape. Rebecca spent quite some time discussing Shermer's rape exploits. Let's take a look at the claims she helped levy against him (source in spoiler below):
First there was the lady he raped at an atheist event.
Well, attempted to rape.
Attempted to get her drunk, anyway.
Well, okay, actually he just got her and the other people they were talking to with drinks.
Next, at a convention, he started playing with his dong for a solid four minutes!
Well, he was doing a book signing and when a lady talked to him he definitely started fondling himself for four entire minutes.
I mean, yeah, sure, if you really consider the massive amount of time that is then that would be a comically long time to just be sitting there treating your dick and balls like a fidget spinner while some lady just watches, presumably with a line of people trying to get books signed behind her, but it's totally true!
Then there was the women he groped at a convention!
Well, he attempted to grope her.
And, yeah, there's pictures of them having a good time and smiling together that weekend.
But she just didn't realize the danger she was in until later, you see!
And then there was the woman he got intoxicated and raped!
Sure, Shermer says it was consensual.
And, yeah, there are emails from her asking him after the allged rape to speak on a sex panel at a convention and sending him winky emoticons in the email and begging him to come.
But, yeah, that's normal. You know he did it.
Here's what Shermer had to say about those claims, like it even matters.
A Personal Statement from Michael Shermer (sourced from here, deleted from michaelshermer.com)
Over the past few years there has been a growing movement—at conferences, college campuses, and businesses—to clarify or even to redefine the rules of sexual encounters. As this movement has grown, a number of prominent people have been targeted on Internet gossip sites with complaints of sexual misconduct. Some of these allegations are appropriate protests from the growing numbers of women in formerly male-dominated groups, who are eager to overcome the legacy of misogyny and exclusion women have had to cope with for years. But all revolutions, however welcome, bring unwarrented excesses and moral panics. As a public intellectual who interacts with tens of thousands of people every year, I have been targeted as well. And once a panic gets rolling, the anonymity of the Internet encourages others to start jumping on the bandwagon—“Yes! He did something similar to me…I think!”—and reinterpreting perfectly normal acts as evidence of misogyny, malice, or seduction.
Instead of due process, judicial fairness, and an assumption of innocence—as practiced in the legal system—these panics lead to drumhead trials by rumor and gossip, starting with an assumption of guilt. Allegations of victimization are rewarded with sympathy for the claimant, outrage against the accused, and in some cases revenue for the blogger for page hits. Many of the claims are so wildly implausible that even the most enthusiastic of the Internet gossips dismiss them: e.g., a rumor circulated last year from a guy who said he had nonconsensual sex with me—determined by the gossip bloggers to be a hoax. Until now I have maintained my silence on the subject summarized, in part, by Mark Oppenheimer in his BuzzFeed article, because I find the entire matter unseemly and suitable for tabloid trash—published as it is on a click-bait site that features such articles as “Butt Facts That Will Surprise You” and “Can We Guess Your Favorite Sex Position?” And, since it is all untrue, it is not worthy of a reply as it only associates my name with such indecorous accusations. But in our society mere association has a way of morphing into an assumption of guilt, and being put in a position of having to make such a statement I have no problem emphatically denying the claims.
I will begin with three examples of the kind of misperceptions that can feed false and inflated allegations. The first, from one of these bloggers named PZ Myers, whose post on August 8, 2013 included this story from a woman who said I flirted with her and “got her drunk” at a 2006 reception after my talk (included by Myers as “evidence” that I seduce women with alcohol):
Here is an eyewitness account of what actually happened from someone standing there in the group (who wishes to remain anonymous out of fear that he might be targeted):
Second, there was an Orange County conference in 2010 at which I spoke and did a public book signing. Oppenheimer quotes a woman who says that while I was sitting at a book table signing books and talking to her (in her view, “hitting on me”) I started “playing with my crotch” to get her to look at it, and apparently I did this for three or four minutes. Have you any idea how long that is? Would any man do such a preposterous thing at a public event with many people standing around, in a line to get signed books, where each exchange lasts perhaps 30 seconds at most? Whatever I might have been doing (adjusting my belt?, reaching for a pen in my pocket?)—if I was doing anything at all—rest assured that I think anyone who would behave this way is repulsive, and I am truly sorry if that is what she thinks I was doing. I can give her the benefit of the doubt that she is not just making this up, but in return she has to give me the benefit of the doubt that I would never do such a thing. This is obviously a misunderstanding along the lines of the wine glass-filling incident.
Third, consider Pamela Gay’s claim that I almost touched her in the wrong place (she says breast) when we were introduced at a conference. What can that possibly mean? She reached out to shake my hand and I did what? Reached out to shake her breast (but missed)? In front of a bunch of people—including friends and colleagues—in the middle of the day in a hotel lobby? Again, who behaves in such a gross way? Not me. In any case, if I did do something that childish and revolting, why was Pamela so friendly with me the rest of the weekend at that conference? Interested readers can see pictures of Pamela (in the leaf-pattern dress) taken after I had allegedly assaulted her by my greeting, in which she is as friendly with me as everyone else, posted by someone (I do not know who) here: http://i.imgur.com/xloWwSs.jpg
One claim involves a real interaction that happened six years ago, one that I remember as sober and consensual. So, apparently, did the woman in question whom Oppenheimer identifies as Alison Smith, as her subsequent behavior with me for years afterward was warm and amiable.
Late one night, at the June 2008 TAM, around 10 or 11, I wandered over to someone’s suite at the hotel where there was a party going on. It was jammed with people. Everyone was drinking and having fun. I talked to lots of people, including Alison, whom I knew reasonably well. We were talking and flirting, and after some time she took me by the hand and led me to the bathroom and closed the door behind us, where she proceeded to proposition me in a very direct, assertive, and physical fashion. I was taken aback. Sex in a hotel bathroom isn’t my idea of a romantic evening, plus I could tell she’d been drinking, so I encouraged her to put herself back together and rejoin the party. We went back to mingling with the crowd and a short while after that we went outside to get some fresh air and we ended up walking and talking for a couple hours out on the Las Vegas strip. We did not drink for the several hours we walked together after the suite incident. She was sober. I was sober. I invited her back to my room and she willingly accepted my invitation.
As far as I knew then and for all these years after, we both had a good time. In fact, the next day I saw Alison and she was pleasant and polite. I saw her at a couple of conferences after that, where she was unfailingly affable and friendly to me. Two years later, for example, for the 2010 TAM she invited me by email, warmly and affectionately, to be on a panel she was organizing on “myths about sex and sexuality.” (I declined.) Here is her email:
If Alison was unhappy with our sexual encounter, let alone if she believed she had been raped, why would she ask a rapist to be on her sex panel, and throw in a smiley face for fun? Why didn’t she tell me back in 2008, or years later, or even now, how she really felt? I don’t know. But I do know this: at the time, Alison definitely wanted to have sex with me, she was not intoxicated when we did have sex, it was consensual the entire time, and by her actions before, during and after she seemed to have no reservations or misgivings. Had Alison changed her mind and decided she wanted to stop, I would have stopped. And I would never have sex with a woman so intoxicated she could not consent.
No doubt this statement will be poured over, analyzed, and deconstructed sentence by sentence in the days and weeks to come. I will not participate in any of the “he said/she said” battles that play out on the pages of Internet gossip sites. But I will freely respond to Alison or any other woman who communicates with me directly and privately who believes I have insulted or mistreated her. Let’s try honest person to person—and most of all timely—communication as a way of dealing with such issues.
Over the past few years there has been a growing movement—at conferences, college campuses, and businesses—to clarify or even to redefine the rules of sexual encounters. As this movement has grown, a number of prominent people have been targeted on Internet gossip sites with complaints of sexual misconduct. Some of these allegations are appropriate protests from the growing numbers of women in formerly male-dominated groups, who are eager to overcome the legacy of misogyny and exclusion women have had to cope with for years. But all revolutions, however welcome, bring unwarrented excesses and moral panics. As a public intellectual who interacts with tens of thousands of people every year, I have been targeted as well. And once a panic gets rolling, the anonymity of the Internet encourages others to start jumping on the bandwagon—“Yes! He did something similar to me…I think!”—and reinterpreting perfectly normal acts as evidence of misogyny, malice, or seduction.
Instead of due process, judicial fairness, and an assumption of innocence—as practiced in the legal system—these panics lead to drumhead trials by rumor and gossip, starting with an assumption of guilt. Allegations of victimization are rewarded with sympathy for the claimant, outrage against the accused, and in some cases revenue for the blogger for page hits. Many of the claims are so wildly implausible that even the most enthusiastic of the Internet gossips dismiss them: e.g., a rumor circulated last year from a guy who said he had nonconsensual sex with me—determined by the gossip bloggers to be a hoax. Until now I have maintained my silence on the subject summarized, in part, by Mark Oppenheimer in his BuzzFeed article, because I find the entire matter unseemly and suitable for tabloid trash—published as it is on a click-bait site that features such articles as “Butt Facts That Will Surprise You” and “Can We Guess Your Favorite Sex Position?” And, since it is all untrue, it is not worthy of a reply as it only associates my name with such indecorous accusations. But in our society mere association has a way of morphing into an assumption of guilt, and being put in a position of having to make such a statement I have no problem emphatically denying the claims.
I will begin with three examples of the kind of misperceptions that can feed false and inflated allegations. The first, from one of these bloggers named PZ Myers, whose post on August 8, 2013 included this story from a woman who said I flirted with her and “got her drunk” at a 2006 reception after my talk (included by Myers as “evidence” that I seduce women with alcohol):
Here is an eyewitness account of what actually happened from someone standing there in the group (who wishes to remain anonymous out of fear that he might be targeted):
Second, there was an Orange County conference in 2010 at which I spoke and did a public book signing. Oppenheimer quotes a woman who says that while I was sitting at a book table signing books and talking to her (in her view, “hitting on me”) I started “playing with my crotch” to get her to look at it, and apparently I did this for three or four minutes. Have you any idea how long that is? Would any man do such a preposterous thing at a public event with many people standing around, in a line to get signed books, where each exchange lasts perhaps 30 seconds at most? Whatever I might have been doing (adjusting my belt?, reaching for a pen in my pocket?)—if I was doing anything at all—rest assured that I think anyone who would behave this way is repulsive, and I am truly sorry if that is what she thinks I was doing. I can give her the benefit of the doubt that she is not just making this up, but in return she has to give me the benefit of the doubt that I would never do such a thing. This is obviously a misunderstanding along the lines of the wine glass-filling incident.
Third, consider Pamela Gay’s claim that I almost touched her in the wrong place (she says breast) when we were introduced at a conference. What can that possibly mean? She reached out to shake my hand and I did what? Reached out to shake her breast (but missed)? In front of a bunch of people—including friends and colleagues—in the middle of the day in a hotel lobby? Again, who behaves in such a gross way? Not me. In any case, if I did do something that childish and revolting, why was Pamela so friendly with me the rest of the weekend at that conference? Interested readers can see pictures of Pamela (in the leaf-pattern dress) taken after I had allegedly assaulted her by my greeting, in which she is as friendly with me as everyone else, posted by someone (I do not know who) here: http://i.imgur.com/xloWwSs.jpg
One claim involves a real interaction that happened six years ago, one that I remember as sober and consensual. So, apparently, did the woman in question whom Oppenheimer identifies as Alison Smith, as her subsequent behavior with me for years afterward was warm and amiable.
Late one night, at the June 2008 TAM, around 10 or 11, I wandered over to someone’s suite at the hotel where there was a party going on. It was jammed with people. Everyone was drinking and having fun. I talked to lots of people, including Alison, whom I knew reasonably well. We were talking and flirting, and after some time she took me by the hand and led me to the bathroom and closed the door behind us, where she proceeded to proposition me in a very direct, assertive, and physical fashion. I was taken aback. Sex in a hotel bathroom isn’t my idea of a romantic evening, plus I could tell she’d been drinking, so I encouraged her to put herself back together and rejoin the party. We went back to mingling with the crowd and a short while after that we went outside to get some fresh air and we ended up walking and talking for a couple hours out on the Las Vegas strip. We did not drink for the several hours we walked together after the suite incident. She was sober. I was sober. I invited her back to my room and she willingly accepted my invitation.
As far as I knew then and for all these years after, we both had a good time. In fact, the next day I saw Alison and she was pleasant and polite. I saw her at a couple of conferences after that, where she was unfailingly affable and friendly to me. Two years later, for example, for the 2010 TAM she invited me by email, warmly and affectionately, to be on a panel she was organizing on “myths about sex and sexuality.” (I declined.) Here is her email:
From: Alison Smith
Subject: Sex workshop?
Date: May 24, 2010 12:16:40 PM PDT
To: Michael Shermer
Hi, Michael!
I'm working on some TAM things, including the workshop I'm running on Skepticism and Sexuality. The workshop takes place on Sunday from 2pm until 4pm. The first hour will be a lecture where I discuss myths about sex and sexuality. There will then be a short intermission, and at around 3pm, a panel discussion will begin. I'll be moderating the discussion, and will hold a Q&A session between the panelists and the workshoppers.
So far, the panel consists of:
Liz Cornwell, sexologist
Heidi Anderson, rape crisis counselor and author of erotic fiction
Brandon Thorp, gay rights activist and researcher into reparative therapy
I was wondering if you'd like to be the fourth panelist. I think that your knowledge of psychology would make you a great addition, and that you'll bring interesting viewpoints into the discussion.
Will you still be in Vegas at that time? And would you like to participate? (Please say yes!!)
Thanks so much!
-- Alison
If Alison was unhappy with our sexual encounter, let alone if she believed she had been raped, why would she ask a rapist to be on her sex panel, and throw in a smiley face for fun? Why didn’t she tell me back in 2008, or years later, or even now, how she really felt? I don’t know. But I do know this: at the time, Alison definitely wanted to have sex with me, she was not intoxicated when we did have sex, it was consensual the entire time, and by her actions before, during and after she seemed to have no reservations or misgivings. Had Alison changed her mind and decided she wanted to stop, I would have stopped. And I would never have sex with a woman so intoxicated she could not consent.
No doubt this statement will be poured over, analyzed, and deconstructed sentence by sentence in the days and weeks to come. I will not participate in any of the “he said/she said” battles that play out on the pages of Internet gossip sites. But I will freely respond to Alison or any other woman who communicates with me directly and privately who believes I have insulted or mistreated her. Let’s try honest person to person—and most of all timely—communication as a way of dealing with such issues.
Freethought Blogs, atheist blogs that were strongly allied with Watson (a) at the time, decided to write this fair and balanced piece on the issue:
Woman likes sex? Empowered & Girlbosspilled
Man likes sex? Sleazy & Rapepilled
And she also brought up...
DJ Grothe
DJ's comment(a):
tl;dr "We're getting quite a bit less women attending our conference. I'm no expert, but I think it might just be the fault of the loud dangerhair lady that keeps calling us a den of misogynists with an unquenchable lust for rape."
Watson isn't a fan of the kind of freethinking that means they don't unquestioningly listen to her so, for his crimes, Watson made a declaration she would never attend another TAM (The Amaz!ng Meeting) ever again as long as DJ Grothe is in charge.
Plenty of women did still attend though, like...
Don't ever let someone make you feel bad for being you, for being male, for being funny, don't ever believe the
lie that us delicate girls cant take being hit on, cant keep up with the filthy jokes, cant argue you blue in the face, and need special treatment.
I love you guys.
Don't change.
lie that us delicate girls cant take being hit on, cant keep up with the filthy jokes, cant argue you blue in the face, and need special treatment.
I love you guys.
Don't change.
Though some women were happy with the way the community was, others simply felt Watson was a bully...
For some reason this set Rebecca off. Lost was her normal go-to of dismissive, condescending snark. She went nuclear, calling her an idiot, the dumbest person on twitter, and blocked her.
A recurring trend you'll also see is that anybody who disagrees with Rebecca will soon have their comment section flooded with angry simps. This happened to Sara and also to...
A key section is as follows:
A reasonable criticism and one shared by many. Rebecca decided to rebut in the most Rebecca way possible. She derailed a talk she was giving to dig up internet drama nobody cared about and shit on Stef McGraw publicly. And even worse: the talk she was giving was at Center For Inquiry, McGraw's employer.
Her talk was filled with that ol' Watson
That same talk started by treating another woman in the skeptical community like an idiot for saying she doesn't believe sexism is as big of a problem as Watson believes it is.
Paula went into great detail on her opinions on the matter in her essay Sisterhood of the Oppressed.
I won't go over the whole thing but the first paragraph gives her opinion on Watson rather succinctly (emphasis is mine).
Paula had the audacity to say "Women are treated pretty well in this community, actually" and was called privileged and ignorant by Watson as a result.
She wasn't the only one, many women felt they needed to make it very clear that they love this community and feel welcomed, even longtime members.
Harriet drew Watson's ire because of the t-shirt (a) she chose to wear to The Amaz!ng Meeting, a skeptical convention Watson frequently liked to make claims of sexism against.
But there was actually another woman that felt women were treated okay in the Skeptic community. Not just okay, this poor, ignorant girl actually believed they were deified and treated like royalty. Sexism didn't seem to be a problem to her and she was even told this by all her female peers when she was getting into the community. This brings me to the final woman whose opinions were at odds with Watson's, and that is:
You see, when you take it upon yourself to become Witchfinder General eventually you'll be able to see everything as the work of bloodthirsty witches, but it does take some time to really take hold of your thinking. In the very beginning, 2006, Rebecca was just starting Skepchick and had just gotten into the skeptic community. She had friends, a community, and sometimes she even smiled for reasons other than sarcastic, embittered jabs at perceived enemies.
Here's what she said about the community (a).
So, to recap her words here:
- Her female peers have all let her know it's a great community and they're treated like royalty.
- Watson has also felt she has been treated like royalty.
- Watson admits she is accepted and embraced in the community.
- Her only problem was there there just weren't a ton of women in the movement.
James Randi I saved for last because this one is pretty important. The James Randi Educational Foundation was well respected and the JREF forums were the go-to meeting spot for skeptics.
I mentioned him earlier and it really can't be understated how beloved he was in the community. Everybody could disagree on many things, but everybody agreed James Randi was their beloved, jovial grandfather that always had a good story to tell them or a fun magic trick to show them.
Watson became friends with Randi and credits him with inspiring her to get into skepticism and, ipso facto, Randi could be credited with introducing her to her livelihood.
When Randi died in 2020 Rebecca celebrated him with a touching obituary and held a parade in his hon--
lol, nah, just kidding, she wrote an article in Slate shitting on his grave and his legacy for not agreeing with her more.
How James "The Amazing" Randi Hindered His Own Movement (a)
According to Watson herself:
Looks like Randi was worse than rape threats.
It's genuinely not an exaggeration to say that Watson took a functional, close-knit community and single-handedly dismantled it, and it wasn't lost on the people who created and participated in it.
So was Watson right? It's a simple principle, your choice is between believing every single prominent male in science, skepticism, and atheism are all sociopathic rapists or maybe Rebecca Watson is just paranoid. The simple answer is what is true. I believe they call it Occam's Raper.
The After Times
So looking back, does Watson have any regrets that she destroyed the community she claimed to love?
In a word:
Remember Richard Dawkins' letter to her, satirizing her overreaction? She genuinely believes THAT was the pulling of the keystone that crumbled the rest of the movement.
Oh yeah, they're all awful misogynists too. And they wanted to murder her. All of them.
Thanks to Watson's efforts in the skeptic community she, ironically, pushed out an age of nuanced debate, enlightenment, and skepticism and ushered in an age where the first one to call the other a sexist wins. With this way of thinking taking hold all over the internet and driving discourse soon after, there was no longer any fertile soil left for a skeptic community. What's the point of inquiring and rationalizing anymore if the wrong conclusions will get you branded a racist/sexist/etc and you'll be treated as persona non grata?
Watson still screams into the void on a regular basis hoping someone will listen but, like a parasite who killed its host, it has nothing left to do but fade away.
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