this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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I have a couple of Dawkins's books, on atheism and evolution, both solid works.
Learning that he's a TERF with GPT psychosis/ELIZA effect is wild.
He is a bigot and he sucks, if this is where his brain is at take EVERYTHING he has said with a grain of salt. There are far better athiests to listen to than Dawkins. He hates women, people of color, trans people, but the computer likes him so its a woman now.
Yea super disappointing - not only did his books help me really formulate my thoughts on religion, but his Selfish Gene got me an A in my animal behavior class.
Its like an even more disappointing JK Rowling, since you know he should be able to understand and not be insane.
But, I guess Linus Pauling should have also known vitamins weren't the literal superfruit to cure all disease.
I think calling him a TERF is actually giving him too much credit because it implies that he is some sort of feminist (albeit one with a narrow view of femininity) and he isn't even that. He's just a bigot.
No TERF is a feminist. It's just in the name. Like how North Korea calls it'self "Democratic", and the Nazis called themselves "Socialist".
I understand that in a general sense, but it doesn't make sense to call literally every anti-trans person a 'TERF' when we already have a name for what that is.
Why not? English is full of synonyms. It doesn't matter whether you think it "makes sense". Why waste the effort attacking word choice when you knew exactly what they were trying to communicate?
Linguistic prescriptivism is nonsense, you personally not liking how a word is used does not make that usage incorrect.
Except that the word TERF is an acronym that literally includes the word "feminist". Typically TERFs are women who specifically exclude trans women from women focused organizations and activities. It is a specific thing that does NOT adequately represent what Dawkins is. It is not Linguistic prescriptivism to understand what words mean, even if you are too stupid to understand it.
What you're describing there is an etymological fallacy, a surprisingly literal one at that. By that logic the word "literal" should only refer to written text since it originated from the Latin word for letter, as in alphabet characters. Words' meanings are defined by how they're used, you're complaining about how the word is being used, and you claim anyone using it doesn't understand the meaning of the word. That is prescriptivism.
This might be the dumbest shit I have read today. Congratulations on that. Maybe just spend this energy not saying stupid shit in the first place?
A feminist is someone that believes women and men are or should be intellectual and legal equals.
That the newest waves tackle gender questions does not negate that basic truth, unless you want to explain to the likes of Wallstonecraft that your personal ego and the shifting understandings demand she longer counts as a feminist.
Time to evolve that bookshelf.