This Week in Cancel Culture

It has been suggested that “cancel culture” won’t end until it comes for enough liberals, though I am doubtful. In any case, it is bemusing to see that the latest victim of cancel culture is the aggressively atheist and hyper-Darwinian Richard Dawkins, who has had his “Humanist of the Year Award” from 1996 rescinded by the American Humanist Association.

Why, you ask? Here’s the AHA statement:

Regrettably, Richard Dawkins has over the past several years accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups, an approach antithetical to humanist values. His latest statement implies that the identities of transgender individuals are fraudulent, while also simultaneously attacking Black identity as one that can be assumed when convenient. His subsequent attempts at clarification are inadequate and convey neither sensitivity nor sincerity.

Consequently, the AHA Board has concluded that Richard Dawkins is no longer deserving of being honored by the AHA, and has voted to withdraw, effective immediately, the 1996 Humanist of the Year award.

Here’s how The Guardian—hardly an anti-leftist source—reports on what Dawkins said to get his prestigious award rescinded by the august AHA:

On Monday, it announced that it was withdrawing the award, referring to a tweet sent by Dawkins earlier this month, in which he compared trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the civil rights activist who posed as a black woman for years.

“In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black,” wrote Dawson on Twitter. “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.” [See below.]

Dawkins later responded to criticism, writing: “I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic ‘Discuss’ question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue.”

In 2015, Dawkins also wrote: “Is trans woman a woman? Purely semantic. If you define by chromosomes, no. If by self-identification, yes. I call her “she” out of courtesy.”

He forgot to say “Orange man bad!”

The irony here is that the American Humanist Association says it stands for “science” above all. Just not when it comes to biology apparently.

Of course, Dawkins has also said mean things about Islam, so he’s a twofer in the PC-offending sweepstakes. But the Humanists seem to be overlooking this.

I’ve never had any use for the guy, and thus it is fun watching a gang of pretentious pecksniffs going off on one of their own.

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