Huge Announcement! A New Podcast Has Entered the Chat

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello everybody. My god, you beautiful people. Hello. So happy to be here.

0:00:25 Thomas: It's like I just got done running an ultra marathon. Not even a regular marathon, like an ultra one. I don't know how long those are, but they sound somehow even worse than a marathon, which is already running. So that sucks. Anyway, I have been working so fucking hard around the clock to bring you what I'm about to bring you. And I'm super excited. I seriously. So let me take a step back. Here has been the issue among, of course, omnipresent issues that I'm not going to talk about, which are also an incredibly difficult, tough problem for me to deal with all the time. But setting Setting that aside, I've had an issue finding the identity of Serious Inquiries only. It's always been a mishmash. It's been like, hey, trust me that whatever I'm going to talk about or whoever I'm going to interview or whatever I want to say is, you know, trust that it's interesting and follow along.

0:01:15 Thomas: And that's fine. And I love that so many of you brilliant folks, you amazing, supportive folks have followed me on those journeys. But it's always a little awkward. It's always been a hard to sell, you know, hard to tell people about. Cause just like, ah, you knows a bit of, you always do everything interviews, but also, you and know, you've likely noticed these past few months, I've keep trying to get to a schedule and I keep not doing it. And And there's a lot reasons, but a significant one. I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, but I have ADHD and the worst thing for someone like me is too many options. It really is. Here I am, I set out the call experts and holy shit, I got so many amazing ones. I've got great interviews recorded. I've so many emails to look at that I haven't even gotten to. It seems like just a world of possibility I haven't even unlocked. And and then then something will happen in the world where I'm like, ah, but I want, I kind of want to talk about that.

0:02:11 Thomas: I got some opinions. And then what has also happened simultaneously is I went down these massive research rabbit holes for reasons that will soon become obvious. And I kept having the hardest time thinking like, okay, I want to do this thing. Yeah. Okay. Do I do this? Do I, do I post an interview? Does that make sense? And it felt like, well, the expert interviews are almost always things that can wait. You know, they're not usually about pressing life or death now issues and anything political, anything of that sort. It always feels like, oh, I got to get this out right away because I got a capture the moment. It's been killing me. And I finally figured out the perfect solution to it. And that was nearly a month ago. And then it was, of course, question of working my fucking ass off under the most impossible mental circumstances imaginable to bring you what to bring.

0:03:07 Thomas: Folks, I'm so happy. I really am. This is, it's, so perfect. So here's what we're doing. I, I'm going to split off SIO, Serious Inquiries Only, the feed you are on right now, that will solely focus on expert interviews. I have so many that I haven't even got to. I have a bunch that I've recorded and I want to get out to you. I haven't even touched on the potential of what this can be.

I really haven't, because there are so many cool experts waiting in my inbox. There are a bunch of experts. Lydia has been helping out with a lot of research. A lot of experts she's found. There are always science stories in the news that I imagine you just like me want to know about, uh, and figure out if they're real.

There's so much, there's such, so, a, now this show can just focus on that and I don't have to worry about anything else, because that's, that, that may sound like I could have always done that, like you're probably sitting there like, why didn't you just, you could have just done that? Well, no, because I have a weird brain and I had options.

0:04:03 Thomas: And so options meant that I didn't always know which was the best thing. What's the best things to do? But no, I'm cutting off those options and the best thing for this show is now those expert interviews. And little Easter eggs, if you notice, I changed up the logo slightly, very slightly, I am excited about the future of this show, of this feed. It is to be great. Now, here so the split off going to be something that I'm so fucking excited about. I'm double excited. The show is called Where There's Woke. And what I'm going to do is on that show is a shitload of research, which hence the entire month it's taken me to To not only, you know, write the theme song, which my brain says I have to do first, and then everything else that goes with the podcast, and all the while researching these very in-depth topics.

0:04:51 Thomas: And Where There's Woke going to be like You're Wrong About or If Books Could Kill, two shows I love. I know a lot of people who listen to this show also listen to those shows. Those kinds of deep research debunking shows. Shows, but for these fake ass woke controversies, because I've covered a lot of them on the show and they're always bullshit. And I explain it more in what you're about to hear, there are not enough people doing this. I don't, I'm not claiming I'm the only one doing anything. It's a big world, but all I know is in the course of researching for the show, there have been so many times where I search one of these woke controversies, which again, that's just Fox News or even sometimes like, you know, Bill Maher types, that like center left, I guess, anti-woke intellectual dark web type asshole.

0:05:39 Thomas: It's someone like that just fucking making something up or completely exaggerating something. Thing. And when I Google those things, inevitably I get 70 billion results from right-wing assholes and nothing else. Not only is that infuriating for just obvious reasons, it also makes me feel like this just isn't out there enough. Thing I discovered when I started researching a lot, again, is the swirl of surrounding topics. I have a lot of stuff going going on right now, like five different research projects at once, but the patterns are so interesting. They're so consistent and the history is going to be super fun. So not debunked, not only Am I going to debunking, know, the woke controversies you might've heard of the Fox news monster of the week, woke controversys, but also the history I'm I've actually started quite a bit of research into like maybe the ground zero, like the patient zero of anti-woke stuff, which back then was called PC going too far, political correctness going too far, and it's from the 80s.

0:06:33 Thomas: It's very fascinating. It's stuff like that. Seriously, I just have this feeling like, oh, I found like the perfect thing. I found A, what I want to be doing with this show, so please continue to listen to this as I know you will. You're amazing, supportive people because I seriously, I think I've gotten like 30% of the potential of this. Once I'm now focused on exclusively finding the best, most interesting expert, expert interviews for you folks each and every week, I'm not worried by like, oh, should I be talking about something else? Oh, should I cover something? No, I'm just going to do that. It's so it's so great for my ADHD brain to just take away that choice. It's just much better. So that's going to be phenomenal. I have a billion emails in my inbox with super fascinating experts who are going to teach us all kinds of things.

0:07:19 Thomas: So keep listening here. Here, but simultaneously check out where there's woke. So what we're going to do is we're going to launch the show on this feed. The last, I guess, week of the month, not even a week will be where there is woke on here. Pretty much. I may be able to squeeze in some, some expert interviews. We'll see. And then next month, starting July, we'll have that clean split. This one, just the expert interviews where Where There's Woke will be this very thing I've been telling you about. This is going to be so fucking great. I can't wait. So please out Where There'S Woke. Check out that main feed and check out patreon.com/wherethereswoke because first bonus content, the the First Exclusive Patron Only thing is Eli and me Me and my wife, Lydia, roasting roasting an atheist, misogynist YouTube asshole from 2011.

0:08:04 Thomas: And it's the funniest fucking thing ever. It is so, I'm telling you, it's so fucking good. I know I'm in a hype mood right now, but even if I weren't, I just got done editing this thing and I was crying laughing, I actually spilled wine because it's Eli Bosnick. He's the goddamn funniest person. And it's also making fun of a really, really ripe target. So for enjoy this first episode of Where There's Woke and check out that show and check out the Patreon. Thank you so much for listening. And here we go. Here's my new show, Where There'S Woke.

0:08:40 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming.

0:08:47 Clip: Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism, and you see woke principles being pushed.

0:08:55 Clip: Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything, everything, everything, and everything. Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:09:18 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Where There's Woke. I'm Thomas Smith. Thank you so much for listening. You probably know me from Serious Inquiries Only, or maybe you don't. Hopefully you don't. That means I'm reaching new people. But if I could not be more excited for this project, trust me when I say there is so much good stuff coming. I mean, there's a lot. So, I, why this show, what are we doing here? Well, social commentary and researching quote-unquote woke controversies is something that I've long done on Serious Inquiries Only, my podcast, which now will focus exclusively on expert interviews. So it makes so much more sense. I had so many of those saved up that I wasn't able to get to because I didn't know what to put out because I couldn't tell what was more important. This is going to make it so much easier and so much better. I can straightforwardly tell you that Serious Inquiries Only is the place to go for interviews, different experts, all different stripes, learning cool things each and every week.

0:10:11 Thomas: It's going to be so much fun. Will be the place to go for those debunks, that social commentary, wading into the morass of and lies and distortions and all that that come in So what kind of things am I talking about? Well, there's so much, single week, every day, probably every, well maybe not hour, every several hours, there is a new story on Fox or wherever about college students doing this, or the woke mob doing that, or they're censoring this, they're taking away that, and without fail, every time I look into these, everytime, it's bullshit. Bullshit. It's unbelievable. The batting average is, I'll be generous and say maybe 1.3% of the time, they're not completely bullshit.

That's like the maximum I'll give them. And those are the things I want to debunk, but not just the right wing ones that are like obvious, that are super dumb, the M&M's controversy, all that stuff. Not just that. I want you do that this. So many reasons. Goes back the ever green college controversy I covered way back when it happened. That was the origin of Brett Weinstein, who you may or may not know. Boy, called that one. Don't. I covered that. I didn't have access to that much information, but even the information I did did have access to at the time.

When I looked into it, it just wasn't consistent with what, not just the right wing people, by the way, but the center left, I don't even know what to call them. I guess they're like classical liberal anti-woke people. Think Bill Maher. Together, that's what I'm more concerned with. Yeah, Fox News is going to Fox News, still want to cover it, still going to be funny, but it's the ones that are actually getting through to liberals, to a lot of like the center left of the country.

And That's having a real impact, like a really dangerous impact. Think it's clear that what's making the trans panic in our current moment particularly dangerous is not just that the right wing folks, the usual suspects are going for it.

0:12:07 Thomas: It's that the center left and the center right are going from the middle of America is going for it. And you know why? Because of the New York fucking Times and other sources like that, that are covering it terribly, absolutely terribly. And what else have they covered terribly? Well, that's going to come I'm up in the show. So, so what I'm doing here is a good old-fashioned debunking. I love going back, researching, delving into all of it as as much is humanly possible and finding out just how many levels of bullshit it is because it always is. There's always the same patterns. Here's here is another reason I'm excited for this project. In the course of researching what will be the second episode and in the third episode and maybe the fourth, we'll see. But my series on the NASA James Webb controversy as covered by The New York Times, which was terrible. Can't wait to tell you all about it.

0:12:54 Thomas: In the course of doing that, I found a number of other stories by the same reporter that are equally terrible. And one of them involves a a college students, black female college student. Someone young, not very powerful, no privilege or anything, goes to a college, but that's about it, who had security called on her. And I'm not going to get into, I will debunk this story eventually, but just very brief summary.

Had security on her one night and she thought it was to racism, was very upset by it, thought that if a white person had been sleeping on the couch of the dorm room or whatever it was, they wouldn't have had the security called them.

And like I I said we'll get to that more when we get to it when you search that person's name, which by the way the New York Times just doxed, just released to everybody, that's super cool, definitely reasonable to do that, a college student deserves to have their name put in the national press because they thought something racist happened to them, but anyway, when you you search that person's name, get not one, not two, not three, but like four pages of just right wing and center left anti-woke results on the search. It's 100%. I couldn't find a source that covered that in any sort of favorable way toward the student. I know it's out there. I'm not saying it's nowhere, but I'm saying we need more. And that's what I want to do here. I'm I I'm sure other people are doing this, but not enough.

I can tell you with certainty, not enough, because when I do research for these things, there's nothing. If there is coverage that's good somewhere, it's overwhelmed by just massive and massive amounts of coverage. It's so, and it breaks my heart. It's unfair. This poor college student, you search her name, all you get is people bashing her. She doesn't deserve that. Can't wait to tell that story. But that is a huge inspiration for this. I want to help boost the voices and help provide a little backup, a little signal boosting, a little support

0:14:37 Thomas: For the people who so often, every time in these stories, virtually every fucking time in these stories, it's a person of color, it's women, it's somebody, somebody in a very not privileged position getting just trampled and having all the argument and just all the conversation controlled by anti-woke white people, mainly their allies who sometimes might be non-white people. But you get the point. It's the powerful status quo just tramples this poor college student. So anyway, really excited to talk about all that and to try to push back a little bit because it's really harmful. I've like looked into, I think what a lot of people already knew was true, but that there is a real kind of anti-woke rot at The New York Times. And I think that's major. I think it's significant.

0:15:22 Thomas: I think it needs to be called out and I just want to I want to be another voice doing that. I think I've found some things that I haven't seen covered. I can't wait to get to. For today, for episode one, I want you to do something slightly different. I know it's weird to start out on like, well, this is slightly different. But in introducing the show for what I thought was episode one. I started going into an entirely different episode.

So I'm want to do I realized I had spent 20 minutes in the intro, talking about this other thing. Then it occurred to me like, oh, maybe I should do an intro episode that's that thing. So here I am. We're covering a controversy known as Elevatorgate. Elevater Gate, if you are not familiar, you are in for a treat. You're in for an absolute treat. Let me tell you. Oh my God. I hope, I hope you haven't heard of it.

I really, oh, show hands, of how many, you are just, it is like someone is about to show you The Godfather or something and they're like, I can't believe you haven't seen this.

0:16:17 Thomas: I can'T, oh I pick your whatever favorite movie. That's how I feel right now. I cannot believe you have not seen Die Hard and I'm about, or something, and I am about to show you that movie on Christmas Eve. Like God intended on because Elevatorgate is, oh, it's perfect. It's like the exact prototype of everything I want to cover with this show. Content note, this episode about a woman expressed an opinion that men didn't like and so therefore naturally contains descriptions of sexual harassmentand threats of sex. Sexual assault and things of that nature. So listen with caution. The So Elevatorgate, if is about the people who think they are the smart, literally their movement and brand. And I say they, you know what? I should be honest. I should include me because I was a part of this movement.

0:17:03 Thomas: I was not a partof Elevater Gate, but I was apart of the skeptic and atheist movement. And you know What? I shouldn't even say was. I still am a part of that because it still goes on. It thrives. There are strong plenty the skeptic and atheist movement. But back in 2011 were the, first very visible cracks to to my noticing a vicious split. The skeptic and atheist movement really took off, out a resurgence in the wake of September 11th, because September 11, of course, was an act of terrorism that was some part or in all parts inspired by horrible religious beliefs. When I say that, I don't mean all of Islam, of course, but I mean the particular brand of religious belief that would tell you if if you kill a bunch of people who don't worship the right God, then you'll be rewarded in the afterlife. That's a horrible belief, no matter what religion you're talking about. In that event, in the early 2000s, leading into the later 2000s, combined with some personalities who were charismatic, interesting, who I very much loved at the time, very much enjoyed, the Four Horsemen.

0:18:02 Thomas: Boy, I was a fan. Fan of all four, all four of those horsemen, I was a big fan. You got Richard Dawkins. You've Sam Harris. I got all their, I got the rookie cards. You got Dennett. And of course, Hitchens. Not believe me, there will be a time and a place for more on those gentlemen. Because there's lot there. There's a lot of anti-woke stuff there. There's lot of controversies to talk about. That'll be a fun thing. Maybe I'll cover someday. But these were people, just the Four Horsemen, but a lot of people involved in this movement who their identity was based on rational thinkers, being skeptic, being clear thinkers. So they thought. And. It's something that if done correctly, I think is very good. Ideals, to logic and critical thinking and all those things. Those in good measure and applied properly, I think are are really good things.

Elevatorgate involves someone named Rebecca Watson, a very talented vlogger, as they, I don't know if they still call them that, but back in the day, YouTuber, I guess is another word for it, Very talented speaker, science enthusiast, co-host of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe for nine years, blogged and vlogged about atheism, feminist politics. She got herself started in 2005. I'm not going to go deep into her biography, but get the idea. She heard me describe the four horsemen earlier. They were called the four horsemen of atheism. They're the most popular by far by far the most popular figures in atheism at that time a by by a long shot, they wielded unbelievable power. If you could get one of them, them for an event guaranteed ticket sales for your conference, your convention, your talk, whatever you're talking about.

0:19:30 Thomas: And someone like Rebecca Watson was popular, not at all on that scale. And that might have something to do with how male-dominated the community in general was. Probably still is. I haven't checked lately. So our controversy begins a video Watson made. It's actually delightful, eight minutes. It's titled, About Mythbusters, Robot Eyes, Feminism, and Jokes. It's form June 20th, 2011. Obama's first term. What a different time. What a difference time. This video, even the majority of it, by the way, maybe half of it at most, of an eight-minute video, very positive, enjoyable video, funny, insightful, but just an update generally on what Rebecca Watson was up to at the time and what she had been doing in her travels and that kind of thing. Updating her fans, saying a few words.

0:20:17 Thomas: She talked about a recent trip to Dublin she had taken. The World Atheist Convention, Dublin Island. She spoke Spoke about liking being sexualized, constantly sexualized as one one of a very few women in a movement of men. That was the thrust of her discussion, of her talk the panel. And she had genuinely a good time. Good debate, she says. Enjoyable time. Well, why don't I just let her explain in her words?

0:20:42 Clip: Was interested in the response to my sort of rambling on that panel, the response was really fascinating. The response at the conference itself was wonderful. There were a ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never really considered the way that women are treated in this community, but were interested in learning more. So thank you to everyone who was at that conference who engage in those discussions outside of that panel. You were all fantastic and I love talking to you guys. 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 4 in the morning, we were at the hotel bar, 4 a.m.

0:21:28 Clip: I said, you know, I've had enough guys, I'm exhausted, go into bed. So I walked 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? Just a word to the wise here, guys, 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 a.m. in a hotel elevator with you, just you, and I don't invite me back to your hotel room right after I finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner. So yeah, but everybody else seemed to really get it, and and thank you for for getting it.

0:22:30 Thomas: If you're coming to this with, I don't know, fresh, young 2023 eyes and you don't know anything about this, I bet you're wondering why in the world I could possibly be talking about this completely reasonable, unobjectionable, calm, reasonable video that you just heard. That's it. That's the thing. And that's so often it. Cannot I wait to show you this pattern. That's so off in it. That's it. She was specifically a speaker who talked about not wanting to be sexualized, was out until four in the morning a hotel bar where she said, either there or later, she says, there already was coffee there, so it's pretty obvious that when someone corners you in an elevator in private, they are asking for more than coffee.

To the words she said, because what I tell you what happened as a result of this video, you are not going to believe it. Again, I just, it's Citizen Kane. It's the godfather. It's I a lot of male centric movies. I've just realized I was going to say Die Hard. Maybe I should check my biases. It's The Talking. Oh my God. Did you see that movie? That movie was incredibly good, actually. Watch Women Talking if you didn't see it. Boy, I cried for like the last hour. That is a great movie. Anyway, It's the whatever your favorite movie is. I'm so excited if you don't know what's coming. So let me go back one more time and let's hear what she said. Again, let's here what she set.

0:23:55 Clip: Just a word to the wise here, guys, uh, don't do that, um,

0:24:00 Thomas: "Word to the wise, guys, don't do that." She is expressing a preference. By the way, she's not even universalizing it. She already said earlier in the video that not every woman has the same experience and she just wanted to get her experience out there anyone else who might have her experience. And she recognizes, she says in this video, she recognizes not every women has the same experience. And she says, "guys, don't do that," she and particularize it to her. She says she just spent the time talking about this very topic, how she doesn't want to be be sexualized. And she gets propositioned pretty inarguably in an elevator. If someone says to you, "don't do that," it makes them uncomfortable. And it's something that's, you know, a totally voluntary behavior that you can control, by the way, it's some neutral keeping to yourself mandatory behavior that you must do, that's your private thing.

0:24:51 Thomas: It is something you you are doing toward someone you don't have to do, someone says, don't do that and it makes them uncomfortable, if your response is anything other, anything other than, oh, okay, I'm sorry, you're fucking nuts. And again, if you don'T know what's coming, you're probably like, why am I even saying that? Well, oh lot of man's in the atheism movement lost their fucking minds, including Richard Dawkins. And by the way, a little bit the show is going to involve, you know, digging in debunking, researching, unspinning the yarns that have been spun, the webs of deceit that have been spun. This is why this is such a good intro episode. I don't have to do any of that. I just played you the thing. There's one thing. It's that video that is nothing. That's it.

Normally, when there's the man in a lot of these that I'm going to be presenting to you of over this show, there's going tobe a lot. Lot of, but it turns out if you dig in, if you look at the FOIA requests, you get your magnifying glass out and you read for hours, you might find that actually people were wrong.

0:26:07 Thomas: Nope, none of that. It's just, that was it. You have all the data. You have every single thing. You have everything. Every single piece of information you need, you just heard it. And now let's talk about the fallout. While Rebecca naturally got plenty of shitty reactions from average YouTube neckbeards and so forth, it really took off when Richard fucking Dawkins decided to weigh in nearly a month later. Just to say a word about Richard Dawkin, this someone is who I respected immensely, I love listening to him explain evolution, explain nature, explain how it worked, there's so many fascinating questions about evolution that At this period of my life, especially when I had grown up religious upbringing, and while I wasn't super religious and I didn't have a bunch of very wrong beliefs about how things worked, I didn'T have a whole lot of actual knowledge about how things worked in terms of biology and evolution.

0:27:02 Thomas: I didnT learn that much at school for whatever reason. And in this period of my life, a year or two or three out of college, I just really took to movement. I really took two very smart people explaining how the world worked. I loved it. It's, it's, I still love it. And it's especially when it's something you aren't as familiar with getting a lot of the answers to questions.

I had always always wondered, cause I just didn't have, you know, the internet wasn't as good back then. And I didn't, I grew up in a small town around mainly conservative people. I always wondered like, how could an eye evolve? You know, like how, how, you like part of an eye, you know? How, at what point, it seems like things like that, where it's like, you need the entire thing. I thought you, you need to have entire thing be in very useful.

So how how good could it have evolved in stages? Ages. Well, it turns out there's perfectly good answers to that. And it turns out you don't need the whole eye to be useful. Need very little of it to be useful. And, it's things like that that I just love. Maybe I'll play a little bit of Richard Dawkins to give you a sense. Think this is important to emphasis who who this man is, what he normally spent his time doing.

0:28:06 Clip: I think the way to look at the DNA problem is to say that sort of DNA that has been sequenced and the sort sort of thing on which we base that calculation of the 98% is if you look at the, look at a computer, and you'll find that most of the programs that are written are, at the machine code level, are calling up the same set of subroutines. There's a subroutine for pulling down menu bars and a subrutine for moving windows and so on. That's what we're looking at in this 98%. What we're not looking at is the set of sort of high level instructions that say call this subroutine now, now call this one, now this one, now call that one. It's not just humans and chimpanzees. All mammals have pretty much the same repertoire of genetic subroutines.

0:28:54 Clip: And it's the difference between a man and a mouse is like the difference between a chimpanzee is the order in which they're called, the sequence in which they're called during embryology, which causes the really quite substantial anatomical differences between a human and a mouse, and the quite big differences in brain size, if

0:29:13 Thomas: I actually missed the days when I had an uncomplicated view of Richard Dawkins and could just enjoy his science talking. But back to our story. So here's what happens. In Rebecca Watson's words, quote, "Even Dawkins weighed in. He hadn't said anything while sitting next to me in Dublin as I described the treatment I got. But a month after that, he left this sarcastic comment on a friend's blog." Side note, dear listener, when I read you this again, oh, we're at the, we're at the part where Aragorn kicks the helmet and he broke his toe and I can't wait, I'm just looking, I'm, I'm just watching you, you're watching Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers, and I'm just watching you, ready to tell you that in this scene in which Aragor kicks the helmet really hard, he actually, the actor, act, I almost said Victor Hugo.

0:30:01 Thomas: Viggo Mortensen, that's it. He actually broke his... That is a reference several of you will think is funny. I. We're the good part where I make sure you are watching this damn movie. Look over, you're looking at your phone. I'm like, hey, put that the fuck down. We're. Here is what Richard Dawkins, an adult wrote in response to what I played you. There's no more. There's not more. There's now more information. You've got the information. It was there. You heard it. You heard the sum total of what matters in the information here's what he wrote Muslima a great start to seems insane to me, but that was just his way of saying female Muslim, I guess. Now, just for shits, looking that up, there is a word Muslima with an H at the end, but he didn't spell it with an F.

0:30:48 Thomas: I know you don't have that because I'm reading it to you, but he didn' spell it with an A. So I think he just added the A, as in, like, generic Muslim woman, I guess. Okay, back to it. I promise you this is real. I promise what you are about to hear is real. Quote, "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 that are not 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 Skepchik. And do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee."

0:31:37 Thomas: I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her to into his room. 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." End of quote. That is the most insane fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. Can you imagine someone saying, "Word of the wise, guys, don't do that, that made me uncomfortable," comfortable, and saying, "Dear, what," what? Know what you might be thinking, person in 2023. Oh, well, surely he got canceled out of the universe.

Well, I've got bad news for you. For one, the term canceling hadn't really taken off by then, to my memory. I don't think that it would would really, we would have said that. And two, no, not, not at all. Like barely any. Some other people who were, you know, not fucking insane misogynists defended Watson and tried to criticize Richard Dawkins, but it had no material impact on the man who, by the way, is a multi-millionaire, what to be going on in your mind? Like imagine you're sitting in a bus or something and someone's kicking the back of your seat. And And you'RE like, Hey, can YOU not?

0:33:01 Thomas: Do you mind? Do you MIND not doing that? And the person kicking your seat was Richard Dawkins. Oh, dear Muslima, stop whining, will ya? Yeah, I know you had your janitor, blah, blah. But only this week, someone in front of me had someone tapping their toe a little bit on their seat. I'm not exaggerating. And you think you have misogyny to complain about. What? It's so nuts. It's such nuts that this happened. It is so, it is, is impossible. It is impossible that this happen. I don't even, I'm looking at the words. I don't believe they're real. I was there. I remember reading this. I still, I think this is a Berenstain Bears situation. It is hard to believe this is real. This is the most absurd thing I've ever seen in my life.

0:33:46 Thomas: But it doesn't stop there. Not even close. It actually begins there. When Richard Dawkins comments on something in the atheism movement, that's when you really get to see everybody. That's when the men come out to back him up. Know I'm making a little bit light of this, but it's not at all lighthearted thing. This is horrible. Here's, in Rebecca's words, some of what happened next.

0:34:32 Thomas: To celebrities and my friends. The worst accounts were deleted by Twitter, but some such as this one are allowed to remain so long as they remove my name. Entire blogs were created about me, obsessively cataloging everything I've ever said and quite pathetically attempting to dig up dirt in my past. Stepping out for a second. All these links in this article, this is from 2012. So she's writing this article by the way, a little bit over a year later. A later, year later, she's still going through this. I have to tell you, these links are still live. This is how ravenous the of women is and of that misogYNIS have toward women. Some of these pages, some of these links, they're still there, still blogs, they're obsessed with, like, no, they're not writing about Elevatorgate every day, but they're still obsessed with Rebecca Watson, they're all doing it. Will tell you, I've crossed the manosphere a time or two in my internet life, and I got a lot of harassment from the idiots, from the misogynists, and it's, it's not fun at all.

Once in a while, I'll see a comment on something of mine from one of those idiots, from one of those asshole people, the same joke that they all did for years. And I'll think, wow, they're still going, huh? But that is nothing. That is nothing compared to the energy that these people have if a woman something they don't like. It's crazy.

0:35:52 Thomas: It is deranged. I'm going to go down a little bit in this article. Just a week after Dawkins' Dear Muslima comment, I was scheduled scheduled to speak at the the amazing meeting, Tam, a skeptics conference in Las Vegas that in years past, I had fundraised thousands of dollars to send dozens of women to. In the weeks leading up to Tam, a man tweeted with the link, the hyperlink, the screenshot that he was attending and that if he ran into me in an elevator, he'd assault me.

Here's the tweet. Tweet reads, I run in, this is just a guy with their name, by the way. This is a person with a face who tweeted this. If Watson in an elevator at TAM 9 next week, I'm totally copping a feel. That's someone ha ha, quote unquote, that they are going to sexually assault someone if they see them at a meeting they know they are doing. Going to. That's a tangible person who's going to be at a thing about how they are going to sexually assault a specific person who is going to be there if they run into them. She continues, "The organizers of the conference, the James Randi Educational Foundation," I that don't wasn't just some speculative theory she was laying out there about about the organizers of the amazing meeting.

She has a link there, which talks about what she's referring to, DJ Grothy at the time, I don't know what's become of that organization, I don't really care, who was the leader, the longtime leader of that organisation, in fact, publicly, in a quote to media, that the reason women weren't coming to that event anymore was the fault of the people who gave them the impression that it was unsafe, as in not the people who made it unsafe or who might've made other conferences unsafe. The fault is anyone who would dare talk about it. That's a little bit of a digression, but, but wow. Wow, wow.

0:38:08 Thomas: The, the things Rebecca Watson had to deal with back then. I don't, I don't know how she did it. Now, if you think there isn't any room for more insanity on this, um, you don't think that, let's, let's face it, if you've listened this long, I think you know that's not true. There is a particular asshole, misogynist asshole, a very popular YouTuber, seems to still be going, I, who went by the Amazing Atheist, guy fucking sucks, but he was very popular, I guess, still quite popular. More subscribers than Rebecca Watson has by quite a lot, which is incredibly depressing. Here is the unhinged lunacy that this person put out, and not just put out, out, and was well-received. Again, this person, I wish I could play this whole video.

0:38:56 Thomas: It's 13 minutes. The whole thing is this, this, I'll try to find some appropriate clips to really make, try to really illustrate the disproportionality, and that's the point I want to make, again, this is all, this whole episode is, in addition to going down memory lane, this is an introduction to what I plan to do on this show, what I plans to do is show you how consistent this pattern is, off the video, by trying to do a little, like, sarcastic, of Rebecca Watson's preference that she not be propositioned in an elevator.

He says that is tantamount to, that is identical to religious, about sex. This is not an exaggeration. He is saying mere act of being Rebecca Watson and saying, "I would prefer to not have that event happen," in the softest of terms, in the gentlest of terms, not naming who the person was, not, not publicly embarrassing them, short of if anyone I guess saw, maybe they'd know who it is, but not doxing them, not doing any of that stuff. She's saying, here's an example of something not to do. By the way, you know, it's implied in general, but she's pretty generous in that she's talking about her, she's saying, don't do this to me especially, but probably apply the same principles to others, you know, if someone else gives a talk.

Talk about, "Hey, I really hate this thing." By the way, a good way to put it, imagine, take the sex part out of this, and imagine Rebecca Watson or anybody, imagine anybody gave a talk and then spoke for hours at a bar with other people, because that's what you do at these conferences, it's fun, I do it, speak, I, you could totally relate to that fun experience of being at the bar all, all hours of night.

0:40:37 Thomas: You're having that conversation. You're debating. You're Having a Good Time. And pretend all of that was, I don't know, me, I guess, saying, don't, you know, hug me without my permission. You know, I'm just, I know not everyone feels this way, but I'm just somebody, I just don't really want to be hugged without my permission. This is just, uh, I I'm giving a hypothetical. This not is not even close to a good comparison, but if you play it out, you'll see how absurd this whole situation is. If you haven't already, I'm giving a talk on panel in which I say, yeah, I don't I personally like being hugged without permission It keeps happening to me like all the time. Like I come to these conferences and for whatever reason, people just hug me all the time without my permission. I don'T like it. I I, don' what to do. I mean, II just don't like it, it's not okay. That, that was the panel. And then later on at the bar. Yeah, I DON'T like IT.

0:41:23 Thomas: And a lot of people are agreeing. They're engaging. Oh, yeah. No, that makes sense. We're having a nice discussion about it. And then I say, again, to just make this an analogy. And then, I say. All right, everyone. We've had a good time. We've had a discussion. This is fun. Hey, it's 4 a.m. I'm feeling tired. I'm going to head back to my room. And I walk over the elevator. And a gentleman gets in the elevator and hugs me without my permission. Instantly. Right away. Way I'm then make a video where I say, guys, I don't, word to the wise, by the way, if that were me, I wouldn't not be anywhere near as polite as Rebecca Watson was in that video. I would name the guy. I would put his picture up there and say, I just spoke for 12 hours about not like being hugged. This guy comes into the elevator, waits till I'm alone, corners me in an elevator and hugs me without my permission.

0:42:14 Thomas: Am I nuts? Why are they doing? I would have been, it would have been a yelly video, let's I think that goes without saying, if it were me. But no, Rebecca Watson didn't do that. Pretend I did, just to keep the analogy going. I make a video and I say, yeah, no, I had a good time, a lot of videos delightful, talking about other things. And then this experience happened, I spoke for 12 hours about not liking being hugged without my permission.

And I got in an elevator and a guy hugged me without my permission. Guys, word of the wise, don't do that. Imagine having any reaction that isn't... Wow, that guy was. That was really stupid of him. I shouldn't do this, I should make sure I don't ever accidentally do that. Someone expressed that they didn't want to be hugged and then you just hugged them, like, that seems, wow, what an asshole, why would you, why, why would you do that to that person? That's I'm gonna avoid that person, I might yell at them, they suck.

That, I mean, if your reaction was anything other than that, you're nuts, I'm sorry, you're not. Now let me point out the obvious: being hugged while obviously without your permission, not great, is worlds away from being in a a potential scary situation, knowing, knowing the background experience and fact about our world are often very dangerous to women, and women reliably know magically which ones might be the dangerous ones and which ones might not. So while my little cheeky example about being hugged is like, yeah, no, even then you would be nuts if your reaction was anything other than, well, fuck that guy.

0:43:46 Thomas: Why do you, why do you hug him after you just got done? That's weird. No, set that aside. This is don't hey, don'T put me IN a position where you have cornered me in an elevator. I'M tra, you have trapped yourself with me or me with you rather. And you're propositioning me in a way where do I know if IT's safe to say no? Do I know that magically somehow? That's why going back, I want to point this out, go back to the dear Muslima, dear Muslim, my God, the part where he said, quote, of course she said no. And of course he didn't lay a finger on her. End quote. Why? Of course. I What, know that's part of his like brilliant humorous construction. Don't quit your day job, Richard. Uh, I know That's part of his brilliant construction he's doing with, Oh, of course she's said no, like that weird sarcasm that doesn't work that he's doing.

0:44:38 Thomas: But like, why would you know that? Of course he didn't lay a finger on her. Do you live in a world that I don't live in where no man ever puts a finger, on women or all men take no for an answer easily. I don'T live in that world. Do YOU? Why the, of course he DIDN'T lay a FINGER on her? What an insane injustice this whole thing was. I didn't even get to the video. That was all me starting introducing the Amazing Atheist video.

So that's what he did, by the way. That's how he started the video for the first minute. It's making it's making that comparison to religious puritanical ideals of sex and suggesting, which is just so fucking absurd and offensive that Rebecca Watson expressing a preference about how she'd like to be treated or not treated, I guess. Is anything in the universe as puritanical religious restrictions on sex. Little setup, that charming setup, you would think, based on how angry this person is, I actually did think, I thought, well, there's no way he actually plays the video. Because if he plays the videos, And then every everyone's going to see that she just said, hey, don't do that. And that'll kind of ruin your whole thing. Like if your whole ding is you're going to yell like a fucking insane person about what Rebecca Watson said. And then but you show it.

And then the people the watching also see it because they have eyeballs and ears. They hear that. She just said. Hey, don'T don'T do that that'll ruin the magic trick. That'll ruin. You can't do That. That's so I've stupid me. I assume there's no way he shows the video, but no, he shows the video and then listen to where he goes after that.

0:46:19 Thomas: I, oh my God, I cannot wait. This is okay. What's next part of the Lord of the Rings that I would apply here. We might be at the tomato eating scene. We might beat the Denethor eating tomatoes. That's, that's where we might be now off. Oof. I am not watching that screen. I'm watching you. I'm watch you watch Denethr for the first time. Eat those tomatoes in that disgusting way. I love making references that maybe 13 people get. Here we go.

0:46:44 Clip: Their response at the conference itself was wonderful. There are ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never really considered the way that women are treated in this community. Yeah, that's a good one, ain't it? It's got an interesting dogma that says that men are slime no matter what they do unless they're basically behaving like castrated, asexual imps that just kind of, yeah, uh-huh, woo, the pretty lady, she talking, that's all I need. The

0:47:20 Thomas: What Did I a stroke? How did he get from what she said to what he said? Can you? This is probably bad pod, but I have to play this again because I actually, even though this is my show and I've prepared this for you. I'm more confused than when I prepared to show you this. I actually, in the moment right now, I'm concerned that I did have a stroke because I don't know where any, where did that, here we go. I got to play this again.

0:47:47 Clip: The conference itself was wonderful, there were a ton of great feminists there, male and female, and also just open-minded people who had maybe never really considered the the way that women are treated in this community. Yeah, that's a good one, ain't it? It's got an interesting dogma that says that men are slime no matter what they do unless they're basically behaving like castrated asexual imps that just kind of, yeah, would the pretty lady, she talking? And that's all I needed to know.

0:48:22 Thomas: What? I'm all right. I'm going spare you playing this 15 more times while I try to comprehend. I think I get stupider her every time I watch, I don't know. So there's nothing missing, there's no, there's no visual component, like, that's what she said. There's some great people, there's some open-minded people who maybe were like, oh, I didn't realize that's how women often can feel in these situations. And then he said that it's a dogma, that brain hurts trying to even restate what he said.

It's dogma that men are slime unless they behave like castrated animals. What? What are you talking? Okay, there's more that's worth showing, it's worth playing on this video. There's video, but that's enough to talk about the pattern that I've referenced multiple times. There's a lot of elements to this pattern. I can't wait to see it again and again and again on the show, is disproportionate, hysterical reaction of the privileged to being told, perhaps, maybe, if you, hey, if maybe just, ifyou don't mind, ifyoudontmind, if you'd like to, would you consider, maybe putting this out there, maybe thinking about I feel, sometimes. This exact horrible, disgusting man, in response to that

0:49:45 Thomas: I couldn't even call it a request, in response that just ever so polite hint that maybe think about how I might feel uncomfortable about this, they lose their fucking mind like a toddler, they're like four-year-old, oh, I can't even breathe, so I don't even, it's hard, hold on, it's hard to even make fun of this properly. I, I, I keep trying to do like an exaggerated version of this and I can t how do you do that? How do do you, how do you exaggerate this? This is already, 11. he already said you have to walk around like a, like a castrated, because she said someone might be understanding of how she's treated in this situation.

0:50:36 Thomas: That, that pattern, oh my God, it's so consistent. It's this disbelief, the shock of have someone else daring to have the the gall to suggest you might be missing something, and that you mightbe missing something quite harmful, maybe, to people. God, if you don't know anything about this, you might think I'm just nut picking, which is a great term, for, by the way, that's going to come up a lot too. Nut picking means picking, if you're not familiar with that, picking, like, the worst example, the worst argument from the other side and only engaging in that. Put a pin in that for when we talk about NASA, the Daily episode. You might think I'm not baking. No, this is, as I said earlier, this is a more prominent, popular person than Rebecca Watson at this time.

0:51:21 Thomas: Way more popular. This video was well-received. I've only played, it's only up to two minutes and 43 seconds on that video. It's a 13 minute, 49 second video. It gets worse.

0:51:38 Clip: And it's quite fortunate that her last name is Watson, because it really draws attention to the fact that she is no Sherlock Holmes. She does a somewhat popular podcast called the SkepChick Podcast, and she's actually attracted some pretty big names to her show, like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Adam Sandler at

0:51:56 Thomas: Why are you yelling like that, you hysterical person? Don't men get called hysterical? This is hysterical. If anything is hysterial, this is hysteria. And this person, this exact thing happens so often. This hysterical nut job is perceived, I swear to fucking God, I'm not making this up, I was there, this person is perceived as the rational, thoughtful, logical interlocutor of this conflict. Why, what could it be, why, how could it be that this, what you are hearing, this, he can't even say her name without doing, doing a weird yell thing about it. Rebecca Watson.

0:52:41 Thomas: And he's just like Alex Jones almost, but slightly different, a higher pitch or something. Just talking about a feminist, he goes into yelling and weirdness. And I swear to you, I swear you, if you were to take an instant flash poll of the common audience here, which is the skeptic movement at this time in 2011, when this happened, if you're somehow able to just take a quick flash poll of everybody's opinion, and you said, hey, who's more logical, who's rational, who's calmer, who's whatever, all those things I said, Rebecca Watson or this amazing atheist, they'd say, oh my god, well, Rebecca Watson is a hysterical feminist nut job, hysterical feminists, and amazing atheist, he's that super logical, rational guy who just like makes those smart arguments. I fucking guarantee you the numbers would be at best for Rebecca Watson, 80-20 against her. At best, she would gather 20% of that. Swear to God that's true. This person,

0:53:35 Clip: The bar later that night, actually, at 4 in the morning, we were at the hotel bar, 4 a.m., I said, you know, I've had enough, guys, I'm exhausted, going to bed. So I walked 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 the wise here, guys, uh, don't do that.

0:54:04 Thomas: That's the hysterical radical feminist. And this is the calm rational dude.

0:54:08 Clip: Why am I making a video about this? Who conceivably could give a about some girl being hit on in an elevator? Not even for sure hit on, just maybe hit on, an elevator. Not even... it wasn't like, hey, want some dick? It was like, hey, you want some coffee? Maybe the guy just wanted coffee. But why do we care? Why are we here? Why are talking about this? Because apparently the atheist community has no more problems to solve in the world. Apparently acceptance of atheism is up a hundred percent, and God is off the money and he's out of the the Pledge, and all the God-fearing politicians that tell us about how Jesus wants them to run the country this way, they're all out of office. We're all outta problems, folks.

0:54:54 Clip: Creationism no longer has any foothold in the schools because the entire atheist community apparently feels like it can focus its attention on this.

0:55:05 Thomas: There's another common one. And this ist particularly apropos for for the crisis that is transphobia right now. Another common element is everyone making a big deal about this, do you care, why does anyone care, somehow putting that on the person who dared to say, hey, don't do this, you mind not doing this, not on the throng of hysterical idiot men who then did things like say, do we need to just walk around like a bunch of, I'm trying, again, I'm trying to do a bit, I can't do a bit of this guy, he is, that's already, he's already that, there's

0:55:43 Clip: Do we have to embrace anything that someone says makes us more enlightened? If someone says, hey, enlightened people wear turds on their heads. See? It's

0:55:58 Thomas: Like, how do I exaggerate that, there's not, I'm not able to do that, sorry, file not found, can't exaggerate this fucking guy. Why you put the burden of why is this such a big deal feel on her and not, you know, all the yous that are doing this. Because someone expressed, hey, this thing's making me uncomfortable, might make other people uncomfortable, maybe think about that, maybe don't do that. It's, and by the way, it's, there's no maybe about it. I'm having this experience a lot, and I know not every woman is, as I've already acknowledged, but a lot of women seminar, and it sucks. If you have any reaction other than, wow, oh, that sucks, I'm sorry.

0:56:43 Thomas: Or something like that. She's not the one making a big deal about this. You are. You, you are the one making a big deal about this. The human thing to do, the adult human thing to do, is to say, oh, well, shoot, I didn't think about that, good point, okay, sorry about that, done, and no more bad behavior. That would be if we were all adults. And so the people to be mad at would be anyone who's not doing that. Not, not the woman for saying, guys, don't do that.

0:57:17 Clip: This guy said, have sex and you have no choice in the matter. And it's not even like this guys said, hey do you want to have sex, which I still think would have been okay, but he said, do you wanna get some coffee? MAYBE THE MOST WANTED COFFEE, I MEAN SERIOUSLY, IS THERE ANYONE OUT THERE WHO'S KINDA PERPLEXED BY THIS? I MEEN LIKE THIS IS NOT AN OUTRAGEOUS INCIDENT, IT'S NOT LIKE, YOU KNOW, SHE WAS IN THE ELEVATOR WITH LIKE A FUCKING RENOWNED FUCKING ATHEIST AND LIKE STEPHEN PINKER OR SOMETHING AND HE JUST LIKE WHIPS OUT HIS DICK LIKE YEAH START SUCKING BITCH. BY ASKING A GIRL TO HIS ROOM FOR COFFE, ASKIN' IF SHE WANTS TO COME TO HIS ROOM COFFEEEEE. Oh, you just view me as an object! I'm just a piece of meat to you! Does anyone here, watching this video right now, think for a second that there would be any backlash whatsoever in that situation?

0:58:10 Clip: What if it was two guys? What if there was a guy and another guy, and they're gay, and one says to the other, want to get some coffee, does that mean that gay men view other men as objects?

0:58:23 Thomas: Boy, yeah, uh, bad bad news, the Amazing Atheist. Yeah, often gay men do view other gay men as objects, and often those gay men might have a problem with it. That's, that was a very bad example that you chose. But this scrambling for, like, "what, what if it was a, okay, what if it was a badger and a squirrel?" Would we think, why does that matter? Why, if you create a different situation, why would we necessarily mean that's the same? It's not the same situation. There's context. If Rebecca Watson was 8 foot 12 and the dude was 3 inches tall, do you think we'd be having this conversation? Well, I mean, maybe not, because, like, I bet she wouldn't have really felt that uncomfortable because he's like three inches tall.

0:59:09 Thomas: So she could probably squish him if anything went wrong. Yeah. If it were a different dynamic, if it were different situation, people might view it differently. What point is being made here?

0:59:18 Clip: That mean they're sexist against their own sex? Okay, now I know that there must be some people out there watching this video. Maybe it's a lot of you, maybe it's only a few of you. I don't fucking know. But there's bound to be someone watching this videos who disagrees with me, who says, "Yes, she was right to have that reaction, and the atheist community must stand up against sexism" and blah blah blah. 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?

0:59:49 Clip: Just a word to the wise here, guys. Don't do that. Why the fuck not, question for everyone out there. I know there's probably not a lot of you, but some of you probably agree with with this girl, some of probably agree that that guy was is way on the fucking line and he needs the scarlet letter pinned to his fucking chest for life.

1:00:09 Thomas: That these people who branded themselves as skeptics and rational thinkers and smart people and all that cannot see the hysterics involved in this. The most annoying fucking thing in the history of time to me, I'm sorry, that that is the, I, that is what is the most motivating thing about this, is seeing yelling hysterical clown being regarded one, the more reasonable person. And if you don't believe me, well, I've got a whole lot to show you. I've got a whole lot to tell you in the coming episodes, it happens again and and again, and again. So maybe just a little bit more of this insane rambling and then we'll call it.

1:00:51 Clip: He's an evil, deranged pervert, and sexism is a rampant problem in the atheist community, and this is the evidence for it. I have a question. How should guys behave when they're around a girl they want to sleep with? Like, do we just never bring it up? I mean, do we try to bring it up even more subtly than "want to come back for some coffee"? Do we have to like have like a complex network of code words that, you know, could be understood only in a certain context, is what we're actually talking about, to maximize the comfort of the girl being hit on. So,

1:01:27 Thomas: I Can't help it. Sorry. I just answered your question from 12 years ago. Well, couple a of thoughts, pretty easy ones. For one, you could ask somebody else who didn't just talk for 12 hours about not wanting this exact thing. That a thought. You know, you just ask somebody else, you could even, as she alluded to, you could even have done so at the bar, where is coffee, as she, I think she said in the article, actually, I'm not sure if said in the video, but it was in the particle, there was coffee there, and there's also safety somewhat of people and numbers, so you could do that, that's an option, you could, oh, I don't know, just keep it to your fucking self. Possibly you could do that until maybe you a rapport or any reason to think that this is something the other person might be interested in.

1:02:21 Thomas: You could do that. And this is where it really, I just, this is where this this fucking idiot person shows how irrational and hysterical they are and blind they are to their own biases. Listen to this.

1:02:35 Clip: The thing she says it made uncomfortable. I don't really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Who gives a fuck, cares if you are uncomfortable in a fucking elevator for 12 seconds? Oh, this is a, this is an awkward ride. Lord fucking forbid, Lord forbid that there was an awkward tension between you and another human being. Lord knows that's exclusive to girls. Lord knows that there's never been any other situation in the history of mankind where two people shared an awkward moment together. The, what is reasonable about pinning a scarlet letter to this guy's chest? What is scientific about declaring that you don't care about human biology, you don' care about the rules of attraction anymore, the only thing you care about is your own comfort, your own feeling of, "Yeah, this is how the world should be, this how it ought to be."

1:03:33 Clip: And anyone who disagrees with me is a misogynist. Anyone who disagrees with me is a sexist. You are the sexist! I call you a sexists because you presume to tell men what to do with their feelings and how to express themselves when it really has no impact on you aside from a moment of discomfort. A moment of discomfort that really only springs from the fact that you've embraced this stupid, tired, disproven ideology. Ideology.

1:04:05 Thomas: If that was a comedy bit where he was trying to contradict himself and not notice in in more and more extreme ways, you couldn't do it much better than that. Couldn't. You just, to how many ways he's blind to the contradictions. He says, "How dare you feel uncomfortable? How dare you?" Not only how dare you feel uncomfortable, how dare you express, in a video on your own channel, the politest terms, not naming the person at all, contrary to your hysterics, not putting a scarlet letter on them, how dare you express discomfort. All the while, he is saying any discomfort a man might feel by not doing this.

1:04:51 Thomas: Any discomfort I, a man, might feel by having to think a little bit and be like, "Maybe I shouldn't do that." No, that discomfort is over the line. That is unacceptable discomfort. That discomfort cannot be countenanced. That's unacceptable. That. The discomfort of, "Hey, well, maybe just don't hit on her like that." That's, no, how dare you? You, that discomfort cannot be tolerated, but your discomfort, that's nothing. Up, and as if to outdo himself, he then says, "How dare you police my behavior." Policing someone's behavior, I, it would seem that his biases and his blinders, his privilege, have led him to believe that men ought to be able to hit on anyone however they want, because heaven forbid they feel any discomfort by not doing that.

1:05:48 Thomas: And any attempt to change their behavior is this dystopian, religious control over them, it's only about your discomfort. But if you turn the tables, is asking her to modify her behavior and to accept the discomfort instead of him, instead of men. Instead of men feeling a slight discomfort of, "Maybe, maybe I won't proposition a woman alone in an elevator at 4am when she's just done 12 hours of talking about how she doesn't want that to happen." That amount of discomfort, men can't handle it. They're too fragile. They cannot possibly handle that discomfort. But women can handle the discomfort of being being trapped in a metal box with someone they don't know is safe or not.

1:06:39 Thomas: That's fine. That is okay because it's not me. Why do I care if that is not me? And this is for rationality. This I am expressing the position that you ought not to have feelings, means I'm more rational because I'm saying, fuck your feelings. I'm yelling like I am yelling hysterically like a crazy person, unbelievably angry, but that doesn't count because I'm telling you, a woman, stop having feelings. So I'm looked at as the rational person. The hypocrisy and the injustice of this to believe. By the way, someone who worked with Dawkins on a tour that after this, he he essentially blacklisted her from at least one event, I think, because of all this.

1:07:26 Thomas: The insecurity involved, this hysterical overreaction to the slightest that you might be in the wrong, these fragile little white men's hearts and brains, and it comes out of their noses and they vomit it out onto YouTube often. And for a minute, it's not just the misogynist, neckbeard, atheist assholes of YouTube. It is not just them. If it were just them, that's one thing. What Richard Dawkins did was just so fundamentally cruel. Even more so because, because I went back and I watched the entire panel, the original panel that Rebecca Watson was on with Richard Dawkins, also Arne Ra, somebody I'm friends with, actually. I love Arne. He's great. He was the one who posted the video. And what's particularly heartbreaking about that, watching it now, is Rebecca Watson is so nice to Richard Dawkin.

1:08:17 Thomas: She's a fan. She's fan of Richard Dawking. She talks about how her ringtone was a quote of his that was was really funny and they joke about that and she asks him to, "Hey, can you say something new in this?" And then I'll use that for my, like, she was very kind to him. And to think about that, in just the cruelty, turn around and in that Dear Muslima insanity, say, "Oh, she calls herself skeptic." Like, pretend like you don't even know her, don't remember. Yeah, I get he's a big name, he does a lot of stuff, but I don't know. It's how cruel these men often are able to get so quickly, that sensitivity. Because here's one final point, and I know I've already bulletproof this 870 different ways, but one thing I often think of when we look at these is, you know, you also always had the option to just disagree.

1:09:03 Thomas: I know all my previous things are like, here's why these idiots are wrong, you know, and here's why Rebecca Watson's right. But set that aside for a moment. Think about what it means that they don't just say, "Oh, you know, I kind of disagree with that. You know, she says that you shouldn't, you Now, offer someone coffee and elevator. I kind of think like, yeah, OK, I see. I see what she's saying. But, you, I think as long as you do it in a in a gentle way and in a non intimidating physically way, I don't think there's much wrong with that." Mind you, this is not me voicing this opinion. This is just me saying that's an option that I think we just forget even exists in cases like these. We're so used to the explosive anger of misogyny, of racism, and other cases we'll talk about, and of homophobia and other cases of transphobia.

1:09:50 Thomas: We get caught up in who's right and wrong in these arguments that that we forget that it, something, you don't give these folks the dignity of merely disagreeing with them on a human level. Because if it were just about the arguments, if it were just the content of what Rebecca Watson were saying, if we're just about the points being made, that's what you would do. That's what a genuine intellectual would do, too.

A genuine skeptic, who prizes learning and argumentation and all the virtues that I talked about earlier. You'd say, "Okay, I'm listening to her point. I'm hearing the point she's making. It seems like she's being made uncomfortable." Well, and again, isn't my point of view, but you could make this argument in a way that's like, "Yeah, no, I think, I, and I don't know, I think she's claiming a a little bit too much.

If she's saying that no one should ever do this, I could think of some circumstances where it might be," you know, again, just emphasizing that that's always an option. But the fact that that is not the option they take shows that what is happening here is not any sort of logical disagreement.

1:10:49 Thomas: It's not any sort principle to stand or anything. It hatred. It is hypersensitivity, I think, honestly, a littlebit of fear and guilt that you know actually what she's saying is correct and you don't want to admit it. That's just me throwing that in there. Insecurity, I thinkthat's whatcreates this angry, lashing out reaction. And someone who, set the neckbeard asshole aside, and someone who I just love to hear explain nature to me all of a sudden devolves to that. It's just, it's gross. And so Elevatorgate, my friends. That's that's it. A woman said, guys, don't do that, please. Word of the wise and never heard the fucking end of it to this day. Never heard the fuckin end of it. And the people who were in hysterics over this woman saying, guys, maybe don't do that.

1:11:36 Thomas: They are the ones who fucking dared to call themselves the rational ones, skeptics, the logical ones, the feminists. Well, they're the crazy, irrational ones, of course. If you like what you're here, if you want to hear a lot more, go to patreon.com/wherethereswoke. I'm so excited because if you go there right now, you can hear a bonus is already up with Eli Bosnick and me and my wife Lydia. And we're going through some of the other YouTube videos from NeckbeardAtheists from this exact moment in time. And we are to skewer those a little bit, the three of us. If you don't know Eli, he is the funniest human on earth. That's going to be a ton of fun, make sure you catch that, patreon.com/wherethereswoke. Of course, you also get ad-free episodes each and every episode and you'll get episode three already right now. Episodes one and two are the only ones on the normal feed for a little while here, episode three is only available for patrons, so make sure that subscribe to, thank you so much, truly, truly, truly.

1:12:35 Thomas: Your support is badly needed to make this project project work. And I'm really excited for what we're going to do together.

1:12:44 Thomas: Up next, begin our deep dive into coverage, coverage, the naming controversy over the James Webb telescope, and it is so much worse than you could possibly imagine. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.

1:13:01 Thomas: And once again, you can find that show, look on your podcast player for Where There's Woke, but go to patreon.com/wherethereswoke to subscribe, to pledge, to get ad-free shows, and to get bonus extras, that first bonus with Eli. But I want to tell you one more thing I forgot to tellyou earlier. When Eli and Lydia and I went to record that very bonus I was telling you about, we inadvertently recorded two hours. It was supposed to be just like, all right, one hour, hour. We'll do it. And the first hour actually ended up being perfect for bonus for the month for this show. So it's a little tricky. I know it's like a lot to keep track of, but just be a patron of both shows and then you don't have to keep drag of anything. But if you aren't and you want to make a decision here, patrons to serious inquiries only we'll get the first half of that, which is it's, it's self-contained.

1:13:49 Thomas: Don't worry. It's not like a mix and match thing that is going to be annoying. The first half of that, we talked about the atheist movement, what happened to it, our vantage points, where Eli was in 20, you know, 9, 10, 11, where I was, how I was viewing it. And we talk about the Elevatorgate controversy in those terms. It's really interesting. And then in the second hour, we finally get to skewering this very video that you heard me do some of on this episode, but plus Eli Bosnick and Lydia, and oh my God, seriously, I know I already told you, it's so fucking funny. That part is only on Where There's Woke Patreon, but the first part is for you fine folks here on patreon.com/seriouspod. So check that out if you'd like to hear that first part.

1:14:36 Thomas: And again, thank you so much for bearing with me in this intermittent schedule, but I'm telling you, I've cracked it now. I finally, I think I figured it out. Schedule should be great. July, we're good. And I'm so excited about both shows. Yes, I've started one new one, but honestly, it's mitosis. Is that what it is? The cell splits off? Is that what that's called? It's that because I now have two shows that I'm freshly excited about that I think have so much potential and I hope you'll come with me. So thank you so much again. Please pledge and I'll see you very soon.