Richard Dawkins under fire for ‘mild pedophilia’ remarks

[rug]

Trevor Grundy | Sep 9, 2013

CANTERBURY, England (RNS) Richard Dawkins, one of the world’s best-known and outspoken atheists, has provoked outrage among child protection agencies and experts after suggesting that recent child abuse scandals have been overblown.

In an interview in The Times magazine on Saturday (Sept. 7), Dawkins, 72, he said he was unable to condemn what he called “the mild pedophilia” he experienced at an English school when he was a child in the 1950s.

Referring to his early days at a boarding school in Salisbury, he recalled how one of the (unnamed) masters “pulled me on his knee and put his hand inside my shorts.”

He said other children in his school peer group had been molested by the same teacher but concluded: “I don’t think he did any of us lasting harm.”

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/09/09/richard-dawkins-under-fire-for-mild-pedophilia-remarks/

[longship]

1. Saw this one earlier.

PZ Myers blogged about this.

I just don't know why Richard Dawkins says things like this. The guy's brilliant in biology, but he certainly has a problem weighing his words before he flaps his gums.

Sometimes I think he says stuff to deliberately get a rise out of people but I don't think this is one of those occasions.

It's one of the most ill informed things I have ever heard and he deserves what he's getting about it.

[rug]

2. Yeah, PZ really laid into him over this.

I just keep coming back to his public boarding school mentality.

[coldmountain]

4. The title makes it seem like Dawkins did it instead of forgiving those that do

Not approving just, clarifying that Dawkins is himself not a pedophile.

[cbayer]

5. Just to clarify further, he seems to be dismissing it as not a real problem,

not just saying that those that do should be forgiven.

[Crunchy Frog]

49. Exactly. And he has a history of doing that.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/05/richard-dawkins-and-male-privilege/

[cbayer]

6. Link to PZ Myers piece on this:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/09/09/i-beseech-you-in-the-bowels-of-christ-please-stop/

[cbayer]

3. Is he purposefully flaming out or does he thrive on creating outrage.

Can't wait to see how he and others are going to try and justify this.

I guess it's ok when school masters do it.

This isn't the first time he has minimized pedophilia.

[rug]

7. Interestingly, it's not pedophilia alone he minimizes, but the scandals themselves.

suggesting that recent child abuse scandals have been overblown.

[cbayer]

13. This is what he wrote in The God Delusion

Priestly abuse of children is nowadays taken to mean sexual abuse, and I feel obliged, at the outset, to get the whole matter of sexual abuse into proportion and out of the way. Others have noted that we live in a time of hysteria about paedophilia, a mob psychology that calls to mind the Salem witch-hunts of 1692… All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affections for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if, fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defence, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).

[rug]

15. Hmm, I'll have to think on that one.

[ZombieHorde]

8. He is saying what is true for him.

If he says he is OK after a schoolmaster put his hands down his pants, then he is probably OK after the schoolmaster put his hands down his pants.

[rug]

9. Or putting the hand down the pants in the first place is sort of ok.

Or just mildly wrong.

[ZombieHorde]

11. He was talking about past standards versus modern standard.

From the article in the above link:

“I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,” he said.

[rug]

12. He's 72. The standards he tolerates are at best only 60 years old.

[ZombieHorde]

16. Yes, that is why he used the term "decades." nt

[rug]

17. In the same sentence ha said 18th century.

[ZombieHorde]

18. Yes, he started with a commonly accepted premise,

and then he narrowed it to make a point about his personal experiences.

[rug]

20. All to express a mild disapproval.

[ZombieHorde]

23. Yes. nt

[okasha]

26. Well, gee.

I guess the usual suspects can let go of their outrage about the Inquisition, slavery and a few dozen other evils now that Dickie D. has announced that we can't judge actions and people from other centuries by our current standards.

Wonder if he'll extend it to not judging other contemporary cultures by the standards of our own.

Oh, wait. That would mean renouncing his own Islamophobia. Silly idea.

[skepticscott]

58. If you care to accept arguments from authority, feel free

For myself, I'll pass.

Not sure why you and the "usual suspects" seem to think that every atheist in the room needs to have their thinking conform to what Dawkins proclaims, or explain why not. He's not god, he's not the pope, he's not anyone's graven idol and he doesn't speak for any atheists except himself. No one here is posting his pronouncements every other day in an attempt to show how wonderful he's going to make the atheist "movement", and no one here has any obligation to defend what he says just because they happen to be an atheist too. He's a big boy and can handle that himself.

[Crunchy Frog]

50. As far as I know, sexual fondling of children by adults has never been acceptable

in the Western world during the modern era, unlike slavery and racism. I don't think that even Richard Dawkins is old enough to have grown up in Classical Greece, where the standards actually were different. Or maybe there are things that I just don't know about recent British cultural standards, and probably don't want to know.

[skepticscott]

60. Where has Dawkins said

that he thought it was "acceptable"?

[cbayer]

10. Incorrect. He says he knows this particular person did it to others and he doesn't

think any of them were harmed. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't, but he sure can't speak for others.

Pedophilia harms children, period.

[ZombieHorde]

14. He stated it as an opinion about people he personally knows.

I was molested as a child, and I wasn't harmed by it.

[cbayer]

22. I think you are defending the indefensible here, ZH.

There is no such thing as "mild pedophilia". Pedophilia is a crime and an illness. Glad you were able to get through it without significant injury, but I sure would hope you don't defend it.

[Silent3]

45. I was molested too...

...or at least what would be called "molestation" these days happened to me. I'm not excusing it, but I sure as hell wouldn't have wanted to see the older relative involved put through what they'd get put through today, especially considering that at the time (I was about 10) I took the experience as no more than a little game that satisfied some of my own curiosity about the opposite sex.

There seems to be a fear that any and all types of sexual conduct with a child are so hideously, heinously horrible that it somehow becomes "excusing it" if you dare even consider that there a different levels and extremes of it, if you dare suggest that the response should vary for the severity of the offense over a range somewhat broader than the time period the perpetrator is boiled alive before being torn apart by wolves.

I'm sure some people reading this post will even interpret what I said about "no more than a little game" as itself a sign of "damage", being so absolutely certain of the inherent grievous harm of what happened to me that my saying it was "no more than a little game" can only be denial, a clear sign that I must have been terribly damaged, and subsequently "repressed" the "horror" of what happened to me.

It's that kind of thinking that leads to incidents like the McMartin preschool fiasco.

[cbayer]

46. There are lots of people who have been molested and suffer no irreparable harm.

That's not the point at all. The point is that adults who are sexually stimulated by children and touch children sexually are wrong.

A school master is in a position of power. If he touches children's' genitals he is wrong in so many ways I can't even list them.

There is no level at which it is ok. None. That doesn't mean that it is always "hideously, heinously horrible", but it is still wrong.

If a school master in a position of power is known to have touched multiple children in a sexual way, did he finally get to the one that was vulnerable to more than just fondling?

We are not talking about the McMartin fiasco here. We are talking about someone who was the victim and knew of other victims defending the perpetrators.

I wouldn't ever try to interpret your own personal response to this. It's none of my business. But what you right is a slap in the face to those who have been harmed.

And there are many.

[chervilant]

51. Minimizing and denying the consequences

of child sexual abuse are common coping strategies among survivors. Less common, but no less effective are various degrees of dissociation, including multiple personality disorder.

Since the vast majority of us who survive child sexual abuse endure a life sentence of remembering the abuse (and, I have to wonder if your memories of your experience rank with your pleasant childhood memories, or if you consign it to your "meh, shit happens" memory lockbox), I feel compelled to caution you to avoid blaming survivors for their abuse OR their response to their abuse.

BTW, anyone who sexually uses a child deserves full responsibility for such a crime, and a lifetime restriction from access to children.

[Silent3]

53. You see, that's just what I mean

You are so absolutely convinced that what happened to me MUST be a trauma that the only thing you can come up with to explain what I'm saying is that I'm engaged in one of the "common coping strategies" of "minimizing and denying". If I had said I'd been traumatized, you'd accept that at face value, with no elaborate explanation about why that has to be the opposite of the "real" truth.

No. It really, really, really didn't bother me at the time. That's possible, you know. There are more possible outcomes than overt damage and hidden damage.

And where in the world did I even come close in what I've said to "blaming survivors for their abuse OR their response to their abuse"? Is it just a leap of crappy logic on your part that "it didn't bother me" somehow translates to an implied "so if it did bother you, that's your fault"?

[chervilant]

59. Now see, that's just what I DIDN'T do...

I am NOT absolutely convinced of ANYTHING regarding you. I am simply sharing with you the research-supported continuum of responses commonly found among survivors. I DID say that I wondered if you have fond memories of the experience you described, or if it is one of the less savory memories from your childhood. Only you can determine that, and it's a personal experience, no matter what you choose to share.

And, you may not realize that you are implicitly "blaming" others who've survived abuse, but when you state that it "really, really, really didn't bother me at the time," the implication seems to be that other survivors might ought to suck it up and get over it.

One of my sisters, who was abused by the same guy who abused me for most of my childhood, said to me, "I didn't let Horace get to me!" The hidden message for me was: "like you did!" But, that's my personal experience.

You seem mighty defensive about your experience, and your perceptions about your experience. Again, how you deal with that is a personal odyssey. However, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON who uses a child for their own sexual gratification should get a pass from consequences for that crime, because the vast majority of survivors have the range of responses that I described herein above (which has caused you to react so defensively).

[Silent3]

61. You're telling me I'm implicitly blaming others...

...and then call me "mighty defensive" when I object to that bullshit? Your skill at implication is not as good as you might think.

[chervilant]

62. Nope, wrong again.

But, I'm not surprised.

[skepticscott]

24. So you're blaming and attacking the victim here?

Not the perpetrators?

[2ndAmForComputers]

33. Yes. Yes he is.

[skepticscott]

34. She

But it's just as reprehensible.

[rug]

35. His words suggest Dawkins is, if not condoning, tolerating the perpetrators.

In a mild manner of course.

[skepticscott]

36. Yes, rather like all of those people raped by priests

"Tolerated" the perpetrators with their decades of silence.

But hey..no worries.you and your cohorts go right ahead and attack the one who was molested.

[rug]

37. You're late with that canard.

Go right ahead and try to defend Dawkins, the victim. Before you do, consider how much of a victim Dawkins cionsiders himself to be.

Go on, now, defend "mild pedophilia".

[skepticscott]

39. The question is

how much of a victim he really was. If you claim that he wasn't much of a victim, then you make his point, and agree with the notion of "mild pedophilia". If you claim he was seriously victimized, then your attack on him becomes even more despicable.

So which is it?

[rug]

40. No, the question is, do you defend the term "mild pedophilia"?

BTW, he claims he wasn't much of a victim, I don't.

I'll give you points for evasion.

[skepticscott]

41. So you're going to keep attacking him

for being a victim of something you consider really horrible, then? And for trying to minimize the trauma of what happened to him, as victims often do?

Nice...but not surprising.

[rug]

42. So you're going to keep defending his view of "mild pedophilia"?

https://www.change.org/petitions/richard-dawkins-retract-your-trivializing-statements-regarding-victims-of-sexual-abuse

Not surprising.

[skepticscott]

63. I doubt you can even give a coherent explanation

of what he meant by "mild pedophilia", let alone justify why that use of the term merits criticism.

And the source you cited seems to take great pride in selectively quoting him and attributing intentions to him that are false. They claim that he trivialized the damage suffered by other victims, when he did no such thing. He talked about whether it was reasonable to condemn people of a previous time by the standards of our time. You may disagree with him on the extent to which it is reasonable to do so, but that's a long way from showing that he claimed all past victims of sexual abuse weren't really victimized that much. He speaks for himself in that respect, and for others with similar experiences, but not everyone.

So go ahead...engage on the facts here, and tell us exactly what Dawkins meant by "mild pedophilia". Then we'll talk.

[rug]

64. Defend it. Go on.

[skepticscott]

65. Where have I defended anything?

Nowhere. Mainly because neither you nor anyone else slathering at the mouth over this can show me anything that needs defending. You just think if you use the words "Dawkins" and "mild pedophilia" in the same sentence enough that something will stick.

You have a chance to discuss this like an adult, or to keep spouting content-free one liners. But if you can't meet the request I gave you, I won't waste my time any further.

[rug]

66. Oh, you don't defend the statement? Good. Now reject it.

And, as far as wasting time, why are you kicking this days later?

[skepticscott]

67. As expected

You can't even give a coherent explanation of what you think Dawkins meant by "mild pedophilia". You're just foaming at the mouth. If you could actually define what you're talking about, then it would be worth discussing, but you've dodged the question twice now, and I'm sure you'll continue to prove my point by doing so again, so I won't waste my time.

When you're ready to have an adult discussion, based on facts, let me know.

[rug]

68. I'm not playing your games. Those are his words and they're patent.

If you are so offended by the richly deserved criticism he's getting, you explain them and then spin them any way you choose.

That, or you can stop whatever weird gyrations you're attempting over this and sign the petition calling him on it.

[libodem]

19. Elton John

Once said something similar and I don't have quotes or links cuz it was a long ago tv interview. But something like his feeling that as a child if an adult had a little 'go around' with him, it would realize a fantasy of sorts.

There is all sorts of levels of trauma associated with abuse depending on the age, mental development, stage, sex, of the child. That coupled with who the molester is to the child. Lots of things make it more or less devastating to a child. Some kids are damaged just from having someone stare at them with the wrong intent. It doesn't even take a touch.

How the situation is handled is also a step were it can be either more traumatic or the beginning of recovering. Overreacting and freaking out can't be helpful for the child. Making them feel stained with some taint of sin and shame because of the parental shock and disgust.
What do you think?

[rug]

21. I'm not going to minimize it.

Imagine what my fan club would say!

[libodem]

25. It is a very tough subject to discuss rationally

Because emotions run so rampant over this issue. I hate to see someone I respect be on the 'wrong'side of an issue. But it is interesting to see another side. Maybe keeping religion and sin out of the equation might make it less emotional and traumatic in the aftermath? Who knows.

[rug]

28. I do agree that it's a sensitive subject.

What it is not is a political football.

[Politicalboi]

27. If it's not a problem

They why does he still remember it. Molesting children should be about as memorable as getting your first ice cream cone in his eyes.

[shenmue]

29. What a guy

[Starboard Tack]

30. Oh dear Dicky, Dicky, Dicky! Looks like you came a real cropper this time.

I guess having his dicky diddled by a master during assembly was less offensive than singing "All things bright and beautiful..."

[Trillo]

31. Why is he speaking for others? "any of us"? NT

[MisterP]

56. the same reason hundreds of shitheads converged around not-Ground Zero in 2010

Islamophobia whips up hatred and allows for lucrative warfare, power, and secrecy
same reason they passed that law in France: nobody was actually being oppressed by SEEING a headscarf or turban, but since it put Le Pen's idea of conformity into question it had to go (same thing happened with Catalan, Occitan, Breton and other unclean tongues)

[hrmjustin]

32. What is mild pedophilia? Sounds creepy.

[cbayer]

38. It is beyond creepy. He has also made excuses for the heinous crimes of the RCC.

He compares what has happened to them to the Salem witch trials.

[backscatter712]

43. And again, it helps to take these kinds of remarks in context.

Not all pedophilic incidents are the same. Sure, they're inappropriate, abusive, and disgusting, but there's degrees. There's the single incident of fondling, which Dawkins apparently went through, and moved past, and there's Sandusky-style child rapes, which are damned horrible, and that Dawkins would also condemn as damned horrible.

And let's put this in the context of The God Delusion, where Dawkins discusses a woman who had an incident of child molestation, which she considered to be something she can and did move past, and then had an incident of emotional abuse when she faced the death of a 7-year-old friend, then had a Catholic priest tell her that her friend was in Hell because she was a Protestant.

From The God Delusion, on pages 356-357 in my copy.

Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as 'yucky' while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest - but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares.

I'm thinking this is what Dawkins meant, though he could have worded it better.

[muriel_volestrangler]

44. The interview, and a short excerpt from the autobiography:

He says he’s pleased how things have changed on the harassment front in the past 40 years. But on other occasions when that shifting moral zeitgeist rears its head – as boys, including him, are molested or beaten at his various boarding schools, for instance – he fails to be outraged. One master at his public school, Oundle, he writes, “was prone to fall in love with the prettier boys. He never, as far as we knew, went any further than to put an arm around them in class and make suggestive remarks, but nowadays that would probably be enough to land him in terrible trouble with the police – and tabloid-inflamed vigilantes.”

Is he guilty of rationalising bad stuff just because it’s past? “I am very conscious that you can’t condemn people of an earlier era by the standards of ours. Just as we don’t look back at the 18th and 19th centuries and condemn people for racism in the same way as we would condemn a modern person for racism, I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild paedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today.”

The mention of paedophilia inevitably brings us to the recent run of arrests of old white men accused of child sex abuse, starting with Jimmy Savile. Has the moral zeitgeist been shifting at their expense? “I think we should acknowledge it. That’s one point… But the other point is that because the most notorious cases of paedophilia involve rape and even murder, and because we attach the label ‘paedophilia’ to the same things when they’re just mild touching up, we must beware of lumping all paedophiles into the same bracket.”
...

Back at Chafyn Grove I would watch games of squash from the gallery, waiting for the game to end so I could slip down and practise by myself. One day – I must have been about 11 – there was a master in the gallery with me. He pulled me onto his knee and put his hand inside my shorts. He did no more than have a little feel, but it was extremely disagreeable (the cremasteric reflex is not painful, but in a skin-crawling, creepy way it is almost worse than painful) as well as embarrassing. As soon as I could wriggle off his lap, I ran to tell my friends, many of whom had had the same experience with him. I don’t think he did any of us any lasting damage, but some years later he killed himself. The atmosphere at morning prayers told us that something was up even before [the headmaster] Gallows made his grim announcement, and one of the woman teachers was crying. Many years later in Oxford, a large bishop sat next to me at high table in New College. I recognised his name. He had been the (ah me, much smaller then) curate at St Mark’s church, to which Chafyn Grove marched in crocodile for matins every Sunday, and he was evidently in touch with the gossip. He told me that the same woman teacher had been hopelessly in love with the paedophile master who had killed himself. None of us had ever guessed.

http://www.richarddawkins.net/news_articles/2013/9/7/the-world-according-to-richard-dawkins-the-times#

I don't think his "different standards" claim holds water. If, 60 years ago, a teacher putting his hand down the shorts of a boy had become known, it still would have been held to be an outrage - it is not like caning, which was accepted. And he "doesn't think" the others suffered damage, but he really has no way of knowing that - I doubt he kept up with all them (and he knows 'many' of his friends suffered it too - he doesn't know how many boys that he didn't know well also did, or if some kept quiet because more had happened), or that they would all have opened up to him at all stages of their life for him to know it never affected them.

Yes, I think he is guilty of making excuses. The Roman Catholic church has tried it, and it doesn't work - there really wasn't a point where it was OK for authority figures, whether teachers or priests, to grope children sexually.

[LostOne4Ever]

47. I am not going to excuse his comments

Last edited Thu Sep 12, 2013, 01:25 PM - Edit history (1)

They were out of line.

However, I have to note that he was a victim of abuse himself; and I can't help but wonder if his marginalization of his experience might be due to stockholm syndrome. If so then he might be more traumatized by what happened than what he thinks.

Of course im not a shrink, but I can't help but wonder.

[Crunchy Frog]

48. Richard Dawkins has been losing it for awhile.

He has a history of minimalizing and trivializing concerns about sexual assault. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/07/05/richard-dawkins-and-male-privilege/

It sounds like he's continuing to try to dig himself into an even deeper hole.

[carolinayellowdog]

52. what he's steadily losing is his reputation, current and posthumous

For years I've been an enthusiastic admirer of memetics, but have reluctantly accepted that very bad people can come up with some very good ideas. Whatever it is in Dawkins that makes him want to act out the worst traits of a hateful cult leader is undoing his reputation (my opinion, YMMV) for everything he did on the creative side of the ledger. This has been increasing over time, which makes me think the longer he lives the more his reputation will suffer.

As an author, I've been treated extremely well in publications and books from various outlets associated with organized Skepticism. Also treated abominably, for decades, by several varieties of true believers in Woo. So from that evidence I'd think maybe this Skeptic milieu would be a safe place to meet people, discuss my research which has been along the debunking line. (But gentle). And yet... something tells me their conferences would be as nightmarish as a Moonie or Scientology fest, as in I'd be plagued by nightmares afterwards about all the creepy weirdos.

I know there are some constellations of toxic personalities that one can find on both sides of the believer/unbeliever divide. To see Dawkins thronged and applauded by his admirers would be as absolutely sickening, as to attend some fundie conference and see them get worked up by a hatemongering ranter against the unbelievers. My position is basically "I don't know what I believe, and don't care what you believe" so all this fascination with the Wrong Beliefs of others and the need to Defeat Error is equally obnoxious from any direction.

[Crunchy Frog]

54. If you want to know about some of the issues with their conferences

you should look up "elevatorgate" and "Rebecca Watson". Apparently these conferences have been hotbeds of sexism and sexual harassment. There are now rape accusations surfacing about some prominent members of the skeptic community, most particularly Michael Shermer. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/08/08/what-do-you-do-when-someone-pulls-the-pin-and-hands-you-a-grenade/

I personally don't care what someone does or doesn't believe in as long as they treat people decently and don't try to shove their beliefs down other's throats. It sounds like there's some real dysfunction in the skeptic/atheist communities though, especially where gender is concerned.

[okasha]

57. The money line:

Men who behave inappropriately sexually never think they are doing anything wrong.

And a great many other men will agree with them, minimize the effect on the victims, and vigorously deny that anything at all blame-worthy happened, whether they're Roman cardinals or Oxford dons.

[cbayer]

55. +1