(Hat tip to Tauriq Moosa at The Indelible Stamp)

Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, shares his thoughts on the recent catcalling video that highlighted the problem of street harassment.  Spoiler: he’s an entitled, oblivious, privileged twit.

As regular readers know, I am a big fan of the feminist movement through history. A lot of brave people sacrificed and worked hard to move society toward greater equality. That was all good stuff. And the problem of sexism was so large a few decades ago that you really did need to approach it with a sledgehammer and not a scalpel.

But in 2014, sexism is not so much the “can’t vote” type of problem it once was. It’s more of the “Someone is making me uncomfortable” or “I think my gender played a role in a decision” or “I can’t tell if this is a business meeting or a date” sort of thing.

Right off the bat, we see how ignorant he is of the problem of sexism.  He thinks all the big stuff is out of the way and sexism is relatively minor. Uh-huh. Mmm-hmm. Right. Ok. Sure.  <—-All those links? First page of a Google search for “examples of sexism in the United States”. They weren’t hard to find.  I just had to take about 10 seconds to search and BAM!  Adams really ought to do the same thing.

So today we have pockets of sexism as opposed to universal sexism, at least in the United States. That is still bad, obviously, but the point is that in 2014 feminists need to use a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer. And to use a scalpel you need some feedback on how the cutting is going. I am here to help

“Pockets of sexism”?

WTF?! Google. Search. Not. Hard. Go. Now.

One of the huge obstacles to successful feminism today is that there is no useful feedback on how their message is doing with men. Men have been trained to keep their heads down when this topic comes up. And that is a great disservice to women who need to know whether they are being heard on this topic, and whether the message is effective.

The hell is this?! I don’t even…

If men have been trained to keep their heads down on the topic of feminism or sexism, then they have failed. Utterly. So bad that they don’t get just an ‘F’. They get a ‘F’-squared. Men most certainly do not keep their thoughts to themselves.  Every single article about sexism or feminism I’ve read online has men who chime in with their thoughts and a great many of those comments are from men demonstrating why feminism is still necessary.

My first reaction is that editing ten hours down to two minutes is so overtly manipulative of the viewer that I had a bad reaction to it. I understand why they had to edit; no one watches ten hour videos. But while the video clearly states it is edited, the human brain still processes it as if it is in real time. My emotional reaction to the video is a reaction to a woman being harassed every five seconds, and that is not what happened.

I don’t understand why this is a problem. The focus of the video was on how men harass women on the street. The video showed examples of this. You don’t need to see all 10 hours of the video to understand this. Does he think there’s some wider context that he needs to better understand the problem? Or does he think that some greater context will explain the actions of the men and make them acceptable? If so, he is quite mistaken. There’s no context that makes sexism acceptable.

My emotional reaction to the video was not dissimilar to Adams. While I didn’t literally think “a woman is being harassed every 5 seconds”, I did come away thinking “this is shit women deal with every day, everywhere”.  Adams didn’t get this message.

Here’s my actual reaction: “MOVE SOMEWHERE BETTER, YOU IDIOT!”

Here we see how blind he is to the extent of sexism. He thinks there is somewhere that women can move to that they wouldn’t have to deal with street harassment.

In addition, he thinks that women can just up and move somewhere to avoid street harassment. He gives no thought to how difficult it is to just “up n move” somewhere. He gives no thought to trying to find a job or a home. He gives no thought to women who are in relationships that they don’t want to give up. He gives no thought to women who are married or have children who they would have to consider when trying to move. He seems to think women have the ability to just uproot themselves and go elsewhere (to a place that is magically free of street harassment). Then there’s the biggest problem with his proposed solution:  it shouldn’t be on the shoulders of women to move. They aren’t doing anything wrong. The men who are harassing women? They are the ones doing something wrong. They are the ones who need to stop. They are the ones who need to alter their behavior. But Adams doesn’t think so. At no point does he criticize the men. At no point does he ask men to quit being sexist shitspigots. He never criticizes men.  That’s glaring.

If you can’t see how problematic it is to tell victims of sexism to move, how about if the video documented racism? Would Adams then tell African-American or Hispanic-Americans that they should move to avoid being called racial slurs? What about LGBT people? We face a lot of street harassment too. Where can we move to that street harassment won’t be a problem for us?  Why should we move? Why can’t our harassers stops being assholes and amend their behavior? Why can’t they become better people?

Adams ends his “Feedback for Feminists” with further calls for the victims of street harassment to “Move! Move! Move!” showing that he really doesn’t understand how pervasive the problem is, that he doesn’t think men are doing anything wrong (or that they need to change their behavior), and that women are the ones who should change their lives to avoid being harassed (and he offers no place where they could go or any proof that their harassment would end).

My response to that bullshit?

Hey Scott Adams: