page_title: Rebecca Watson
section_title: "Elevatorgate"
hierarchical_section_title: Rebecca Watson / Career / "Elevatorgate"
caption_attribution_description: English: A portrait of Rebecca Watson at NECSS 2011
context_page_description: Rebecca Watson is an American blogger and podcast host. She is the founder of the blog Skepchick and former co-host of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast. She also previously co-hosted the Little Atoms podcast.
context_section_description: The controversy that came to be known as "Elevatorgate" originated with a video Watson made following the June 2011 World Atheist Convention in Dublin, where Watson spoke on a panel, which also included biologist Richard Dawkins, about her experience of being sexualized within the atheist movement on account of her gender. According to Watson, several members of the panel and audience later gathered for drinks in the hotel bar, which Watson left at around 4 a.m., saying she was going to bed. In a vlog posted following her return from the trip, she described how a man from the group, whom she had not spoken to before, followed her into an elevator and, once inside, asked her to go back to his room for coffee. Watson said this proposition being made in the confined space of an elevator made her "incredibly uncomfortable" and advised, "guys, don't do that". She went on to say: 
  I was a single woman, in a foreign country, at 4 a.m., in a hotel elevator with you—just you—and don't invite me back to your hotel room, right after I have finished talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner.
  A negative response by the online atheist community to Watson's account of the elevator incident, which was a brief part of a longer video about other topics, soon spread across several websites, including Reddit, and became highly polarized and heated. Writer and biologist PZ Myers wrote a post on his blog Pharyngula about the incident, and the debate steadily grew to include the overall status of women within the secular movement, with most of the movements's prominent figures offering their opinion on whether the elevator incident was sexual harassment. Scholar of religion Stephen LeDrew writes that this discussion attracted "a continuing vitriolic backlash", with commenters online labeling women who spoke up on the subject as "feminazis" and other misogynistic slurs. Watson experienced death threats, with commenters on her blog saying in graphic terms that she should be raped and murdered.
  The controversy attracted mainstream media attention when Dawkins joined the debate. Writing in the comments section of Pharyngula, he satirized the supposed indifference of Western feminists to the plight of oppressed Muslim women:
  Dear Muslima
  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 you aren't 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 Skep 'chick', and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. 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
  After there were a number of comments criticizing Dawkins, he went on to explain that, in his view, Watson had not suffered any injury, comparing Watson's experience with the annoyance one might feel while riding an elevator with someone chewing gum.
  Several commentators argued that this showed Dawkins' insensitivity to gender-related issues such as sexual violence. LeDrew writes that "For the first time since the New Atheism had risen to prominence, [Dawkins] found himself under attack by many of those who had viewed him as a respected leader". David Allen Green criticized Dawkins for dismissing lesser wrongs because bigger wrongs exist. Steven Tomlins and Lori G. Beaman argue that the incident highlights a schism within atheism over the role of feminism, some saying it should take a prominent place in the movement and others calling it divisive.
  Watson said of Dawkins, "to have my conc
caption: Watson speaking at NECSS 2011
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