The many accusations of women’s oppression will look meek compared to what happened in New Atheism. Being a new movement (or as what others point out, a new religion), sexism in atheism is not widely mentioned. But when it happened, it happened.

In my past hub, I mentioned certain cases of sexism in the New Atheism movement. This article you are reading will dig even further on such cases. And let’s begin to the well-known leader of atheism known as Richard Dawkins.

Thanks to his infamous Muslima letter, he lost the love of the left and the respect of his fellow atheists. It all started one evening, in an incident known as the Elevatorgate.

Rebecca Watson, the founder of the website Skepchick shared in her vlog an experience she got at a conference. At 4 in a morning, she got an invitation from a man that followed her in the elevator, asking her for a coffee in his hotel room. The experience made her uncomfortable and she suggested in her vlog that people should not do the same.

Initially it went peacefully, until Watson received a number of alarming comments and emails. As what PZ Myers (a fellow atheist) said in his blog post, these are evidence of sexism in atheism. Then Richard Dawkins butted in with the comment of his own. He composed this Dear Muslima letter, which accused Watson of overreacting and comparing her experience to the women forced to don the Burqa. And below is the copy of his rants:

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.

The backlash it caused divided the atheist community, with people taking sides. Dawkins did make an apology over the incident, three years after the incident. But that’s just one of the many sexism problems the movement is facing.