The Winds of Change Blow Dawk Right Outta the NECSS Conference

So here’s a bit of news that gives me an iota of hope for organized atheism and skepticism:

The Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism has withdrawn its invitation to Richard Dawkins to participate at NECSS 2016. We have taken this action in response to Dr. Dawkins’ approving re-tweet of a highly offensive video.

We believe strongly in freedom of speech and freedom to express unpopular, and even offensive, views. However, unnecessarily divisive, counterproductive, and even hateful speech runs contrary to our mission and the environment we wish to foster at NECSS. The sentiments expressed in the video do not represent the values of NECSS or its sponsoring organizations.

Allow me to find a collection of gifs that properly express my reaction:

Gif shows Katy Perry dancing in a circle waving her arms while fireworks go off in the background.

A scene with popping champagne and a very happy couple from How I Met Your Mother.

A blonde woman on the street has a jumping excited and happy reaction.

And this is my expression every time I think of the Dawkins Fanboyz who must be having absolute conniptions right now:

Image shows Jackie from That 70s Show laughing: she's a woman with long dark hair against a golden-brown background.

Image shows David Tennant sitting on a red couch and nearly falling over with laughter.

Oh, my darlings, I am utterly delighted to see a major conference take this shit seriously and shut down no less famous a fuckwad than Dawkins.

Now, some people may think that what Dawk did wasn’t all that bad. Some may think he deserves credit for removing that horrid tweet after he realized it wasn’t going to be tolerated. Those people need to proceed over to Skepchick and lay eyeballs upon the whole series of fuckery, which began with him tweeting a video containing a rape joke from an anti-feminist harasser, and continued with him deciding the woman targeted by that video deserved harassment. He removed that tweet due to the consequences to himself, folks, not her. He hasn’t suddenly developed a great big conscience. He remains the same asshole he has been for ages now.

And I couldn’t be more delighted to see him finally being shut down by a major conference for it.

Thank you, NECSS.

Gif is grayscale, showing Lana del Rey blowing a kiss.

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The Winds of Change Blow Dawk Right Outta the NECSS Conference
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11 thoughts on “The Winds of Change Blow Dawk Right Outta the NECSS Conference

  1. 1

    Dawkins is now agreeing with all the randos on his TL that she probably deserved the harassment, feminists lie about threats and abuse to avoid “criticism” … Basically he’s doubled, tripled down!

    The fallout from this isn’t going to be good, Sargon is a GamerGate whiner so his army of turds will be digging into whoever made the decision to drop him. Louise Mensch and the defenders of prominent white men slightly snubbed by feminists will be going into overdrive. Dawkins has a paper thin ego, he’ll be pushing the other speakers to drop out IMO. Deep rifts all over again I fear.

  2. 3

    He’s already walking back the deletion – he’s describing it as “I deleted it because I was momentarily persuaded, probably wrongly, that a human life (however vile) might be threatened.”

    I just… I don’t even.

  3. 8

    Dawkins can’t believe he’d do anything bad, so when people present him with a thread that allows him to believe that Chanty Binx is a horrible person who would lie about being threatened, that’s all he needed to set everything right in his view of himself in the world. He’s still a Good Man, and this is a Just World where Binx deserves everything she gets (but not death threats, NO NO NO).

  4. 9

    Yup.

    He’s trying so hard to have his cake and eat it to, even from the first tweet.

    He starts off saying he’s a feminist, and that the video is generally false, then POSTS IT ANYWAY. Just mind-blowingly self-centered.

    His attempts to encourage ridicule of feminists he hates without death threats….ugh, it’s like throwing a grenade into a crowd, and saying because he told the grenade to only maim the people he doesn’t like, not kill anyone, he disclaims any responsibility for the horrible damage it might cause.

    Irresponsible and despicable.

  5. 10

    And he’s saying that women are “vile” and deserve to be mocked and ridiculed when they argue back against people who are trying to shut them down. Nice.

  6. 11

    Dawkins has a paper thin ego, he’ll be pushing the other speakers to drop out IMO.

    pretty sure I did indeed see tweets from him a couple days back in general suggesting nobody should attend NECSS.

    he’s regressed to the point of a pre-teen spoiled brat.

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