Dawkins Pedophilia Remarks - Derail from For Reason & Science

[JimC]

I agree.

Is that what RD means, though? I ask only because it's not clear from what I've just read.

I can understand people thinking he's downplaying the lasting effects of abuse, which, by the way, exists beyond past culture, and plays into current culture.

ETA, and the different ways people are affected by abuse too, actually .. What is mild for some may be profoundly disturbing for others, for example .. and vice versa.

Good points.

RD can only speak to his own experience; he may well had only a minor psychological impact from such abuse, but others are clearly not so lucky...

[cronus]

Can often lead to suicide in those with a less thick skin than Dawkins. He should check to see if any of his class mates topped themselves before drawing trivial conclusions from his own lack of affect?

[Audley Strange]

I've arrived at a bigger picture, rationalist approach to my past experiences of abuse too, which enabled my recovery from the effects of them, so I can understand advocating taking a bigger picture, rationalist view of abuse ..

.. but I also know that view can't be imposed on people, and we can't dismiss how other individuals are affected and respond.

OTOH, I think the opposite extreme of over-indulging or exploiting the negative effects of abuse is unhealthy, and counter productive.

Good point. But people have no problem imposing the opposite extreme do they? As I mentioned in my previous post the perception of paedophiles is that of a predatory pariah (that wasn't deliberate). That image has been exploited and popularised by the media to the extent we had, a while back, a paedo panic which left some paediatrician having their home attacked. We had shortly before that the lurid imaginings of the Christian right exploiting fictitious satanic child abuse. Currently we're going through the 70's back catalogue and a whole host of people are now being tarred with the paedophile brush.

Including this guy... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-ma ... r-24032449.

It is this sort of thing I think Dawkins was speaking about and consider that we currently consider people genetically disposed towards sexuality, it may well be something they are born with, a disability they can do nothing about. Should we consider the current narrative acceptable when dealing with people who we consider so dysfunctional? When a patient goes of their meds and rampages through a shopping mall with a hatchet we consider it a horrible tragedy, but we don't tend to revile them in the same way. We get horrified if some stranger gropes a nine year olds arse, yet many people still happily accept the removal of a baby's foreskin for "reasons". Likewise when I was told a story of a tribe who traditionally masturbate cranky babies people were horrified. Yet many parents here are keen to drug them to pacify them.

I don't think discussing such, is so much cultural relativism in the normal sense, but more an acknowledgement that our way of dealing with it may well look outrageous and shocking
to a future generation, in much the same way we do when we look back and so we can't really judge then by today's standards as if we are perfect.

[cronus]

If it is like a disability and can be detected using brain scans or specially designed tripwire questionnaires then chemical castration will be of great benefit for their victims? Given the high suicide rate amongst victims, decades later in some instances, the priority should be the victim not the culprit even if they appear harmless to some - which I find dubious from Dawkins since he surely must be well aware of the data concerning suicide and self-harming behaviours from victims of abuse?

[Coito ergo sum]

To me, Dawkins just sounds like he's dispassionately discussing the issue in minutia. He's not saying pedophilia is good. He's not condoning it. He just says that what he went through didn't do him too much damage, and in his opinion what he knew of other boys going through didn't do them too much damage. That's his view of it. So what? And, he does mention that there is a difference between what he is describing as minimal pedophilia and monstrous cruelty. He's just saying it isn't all the same.

To me, the teacher that put his hands down children's pants is a fucking whackjob, and I'd want him drummed out of the school and tried criminally for assault. But, I see where Dawkins is coming from. He's just not going to see any point in flying off the handle and calling for heads to roll.

It's a big meh. But, I would expect cunts like Greta Cristina to start down their road of incessant outrage. It's what they do. He has committed some sort of heresy, so they're going to denounce him. It's what they do.

[Bella Fortuna]

Oh, she was on a tirade on her FB page yesterday, castigating anyone who dared express a different opinion.

[Coito ergo sum]

It sickens me to think of how statements like this contribute to the shaming and silencing of sexual abuse victims — especially the victims of sexual abuse in childhood. Dawkins is entirely entitled to express his own experience with sexual abuse however he experienced it — but he is absolutely not entitled to tell other victims that their abuse “didn’t do any lasting damage.”

LOL -- but, all he did was express his view that it did not do himself or others any lasting damage. He did not tell other victims that their abuse didn't do any lasting damage. He expressed his view that it did not do him or others any lasting damage.

There’s a petition up — asking Dawkins to retract his statements, but also demonstrating to the world that these ideas absolutely do not reflect the values of the atheist community, and that we utterly repudiate them. Please sign — and please spread the word.

Uh, greta, what view are we repudiating? A view that Dawkins stated explicitly was his opinion?

PZ Myers, of course, goes off the deep end --

Just when did it stop being OK for acquaintances to put their hands inside Richard Dawkins shorts? I presume it would be an utterly intolerable act now, of course — at what age do the contents of childrens’ pants stop being public property?

Well, I mean,all Dawkins said was that not all pedophilia is the same. He did not say that reaching in other people's pants was a good idea or public property. He just said that what happened to him wasn't the crime of the fucking century.

Jiminy Crickets...the outrage lobby is in full swing. http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2013/ ... ual-abuse/

[Bella Fortuna]

For a group of people who so love to be outraged at the mere thought that other people might be telling them how to feel (which usually consists of just interjecting a different viewpoint or suggesting a new perspective), they sure seem to be incensed that they can't control how RD feels about what happened to him.

[cronus]

Without this 'painless' trauma for Dawkins there may have been no 'Selfish Gene' and no cultural push towards selfishness via it's memetic tail? The ethos of the eighties 'it is mine not yours' could in whole or part be laid at the door of this one incident? And we all know how destructive that eighties ethos was for both culture and the well being of the planet. Like a snowball something small and seemingly inconsequential could be the catalyst for the destruction of the planet itself?

[Thinking Aloud]

Without this 'painless' trauma for Dawkins there may have been no 'Selfish Gene' and no cultural push towards selfishness via it's memetic tail? The ethos of the eighties 'it is mine not yours' could in whole or part be laid at the door of this one incident? And we all know how destructive that eighties ethos was for both culture and the well being of the planet. Like a snowball something small and seemingly inconsequential could be the catalyst for the destruction of the planet itself?

Well, only if you think The Selfish Gene was about being selfish, then yes. Which some people did.

[cronus]

Without this 'painless' trauma for Dawkins there may have been no 'Selfish Gene' and no cultural push towards selfishness via it's memetic tail? The ethos of the eighties 'it is mine not yours' could in whole or part be laid at the door of this one incident? And we all know how destructive that eighties ethos was for both culture and the well being of the planet. Like a snowball something small and seemingly inconsequential could be the catalyst for the destruction of the planet itself?

Well, only if you think The Selfish Gene was about being selfish, then yes. Which some people did.

[Rum]

It seems to me that it is dangerous for any person of any description remotely in the public eye to make any comment whatsoever (good, bad or indifferent) concerning paedophilia, rape, gender issues and the like with any expectation that the remarks will be treated objectively. Anyone with an agenda will immediately rip them to shreds for what they are interpreted as actually *meaning* and often their reputation will be damaged beyond prepare. It is getting beyond a joke.

..and that is before we get started on Islam!

[Bella Fortuna]

Yeah, I don't think anyone's disputing that he has a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease, and sometimes should just keep his trap shut!

[Svartalf]

Oh, she was on a tirade on her FB page yesterday, castigating anyone who dared express a different opinion.

Bugger her. I may think with my balls, but I won't let a cunt tell me how or what to think.

[Clinton Huxley]

Not...........A PETITION!

They should start a petition for Assad to hand over the nasty chemicals, that'd sort it. Petition!