Richard Dawkins: "â€œDate rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse."

Prominent atheist and academic Richard Dawkins has found himself in the middle of a Twitter firestorm after claiming that some types of rape are “worse” than others.

On Tuesday, the God Delusion author tweeted to his 987,000 followers that “mild date rape” is not as bad as being raped by a stranger at knifepoint, and that anyone who thinks the comparison is an endorsement of date rape should “go away and learn how to think”.

Date rape is bad. Stranger rape at knifepoint is worse. If you think that's an endorsement of date rape, go away and learn how to think. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014

In a preceding tweet, Dawkins attempted to lay the groundwork for his argument by differentiating between “mild pedophilia” [sic] and “violent pedophilia” – framing the controversial statements as a lesson in language and logic.


If you prefer to think date rape is worse than knifepoint, simply reverse my syllogism. To say Y is worse than X is not an endorsement of Y. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014

The backlash on Dawkins’ comments was powerful and swift. Some twitter users accused the 73-year-old of being “a danger to women”, others urging him to “go away and learn compassion”.

Shami Chakrabarti, a spokesperson from The End Violence Against Women Coalition, told The Telegraph that his words were “not merely ignorant but extremely offensive”. “I know there are men of a certain generation who just clunk around on this subject but it’s really not good enough. It sends a very bad signal."

Chakrabarti added: "Language is important. Even great minds need editing. There are very clever people who are experts in their own subject and write books, but when they write books they are edited. Some very clever people who ought to know better occasionally let themselves down online and on Twitter in particular."

Dawkins, however, refused to back down, hitting back at critics with a disgruntled tweet: “’Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse.’ Is it really so hard to understand that that doesn’t constitute endorsement of either?”

"Mild date rape is bad. Violent date rape is worse." Is it really so hard to understand that that doesn't constitute endorsement of either? — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014

It wasn’t until several hours later that he eventually conceded there could be exceptions to his generalisations about rape:

Yes, I can imagine circumstances where rape by a friend is worse than by a stranger. The logic remains. It doesn't imply approval of either. — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 29, 2014

Women’s rights activists responded by the highlighting the inappropriateness of ranking different kinds of rape. As Jody Woodward, a spokesman for East London Rape Crisis points out, “Rape itself is a violent act regardless of whether any physical force is used. For survivors there is no hierarchy as to what constitutes ‘better’ or ‘worse’ rape. Rape is rape; there is no such thing as mild rape.”

In a subsequent post on his blog, Dawkins continued to defend the merit of his hypothesis. Apparently surprised by the negative reaction on social media, he called the incident a "bizarre twitter storm":

"It seemed barely plausible that such an obvious point needed making, but the subsequent tsunami ... of agonised attacks, not only on Twitter but in some blogs and even some newspapers, actually demonstrated the opposite."

Referencing his own experience as a child sexual assault survivor, Dawkins maintained that an objective comparison of the trauma of sexual assault can - and should - be drawn:

"I should of course have said RELATIVELY mild. Obviously I don’t think any pedophilia is mild in an absolute sense. But I presume most victims would agree that being touched by an adult hand (though very unpleasant, as I know from my own childhood experience) is RELATIVELY speaking not SO unpleasant as being violently penetrated by an adult penis.

"I was only talking logic, with no desire to make light of the seriousness of any kind of rape or any kind of pedophilia"

But and as the ensuing social media outrage shows, speaking about sexual assault in absolute terms is likely to land one -- however skilled in the construction of syllogisms -- in hot water. After all, it is not only offensive, but extremely naive, to neatly quantify the physical and emotional trauma of rape.