Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer.
Dawkins himself has stated that his political views are left-leaning. However, many of Dawkins's political statements have created controversy among left-wing and atheist communities. He simultaneously is a supporter for the British Labour Party and Liberal Democrats. He is a strong advocate for socially progressive stances. Additionally, he strongly supports secular policies.
Dawkins is a vocal atheist, anti-theist, and anti-religionist. He criticizes Christianity and Islam in particular, believing both to be negative influences in the world. This has led to frequent debates.
Political affiliation Labour Party Before the mid-2000s, Dawkins usually voted for Labour Party candidates. The party has often been described as social democratic.
In 2009 Dawkins participated in a New Statesman project called "20 ways to save Labour", in which 20 public figures, including Dawkins as well as Germaine Greer and John Pilger, among others gave suggestions about how to make the Labour Party better. Dawkins's contribution was as follows:
Liberal Democrats
Starting in the mid-2000s, Dawkins has also voted and expressed support for the Liberal Democrats. Dawkins spoke at the party's conference in 2009 and publicly expressed his support then. At the conference, Dawkins strongly criticised the English libel laws, and the party revised its policy on the issue at the same conference. Dawkins also called for an alliance of all Liberal Democrats based on an agreement on electoral reform.
Social views
Free expression Dawkins has argued for reform to the English defamation law, arguing that Simon Singh should have the right to criticise scientific claims made by the British Chiropractic Association. In 2009, he said "I and many of my colleagues fear that if Simon loses it will have major implications on the freedom of scientists, researchers and other commentators to engage in robust criticism of scientific and pseudo-scientific work." The Defamation Act 2013 substantially reformed the law.
In 2008, Dawkins pointed out major factual errors in The Atlas of Creation, such as images of fishing lures mislabelled as insects, and subsequently his website was banned in Turkey and Pakistan. Dawkins gave a speech at the 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival where a video link with Salman Rushdie was cancelled due to ongoing controversy over the Rushdie affair. He has given a high appraisal of Nick Cohen's book You Can't Read this Book, arguing that libel laws create a culture of "tacit censorship" in liberal democracies.
In 2009, Dawkins agreed to give a talk at the University of Oklahoma, and the Oklahoma House of Representatives introduced bills attacking him, declaring that his views on evolution are "contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma." In his speech, the professor argued that "what's really offensive is the bizarre idea that a state university should only ever hear opinions that its citizens agree with. If that principle is ever accepted you can kiss goodbye anything that a university stands for. What on earth is a university for if it only reinforces opinions that students and the public already hold?" Dawkins has argued against campaigns by far-left groups on university campuses to have speeches by internationally renowned figures cancelled. In a 2015 interview, Dawkins said "If you only ever get exposed to ideas you agree with, what kind of university would that be?" He has argued against campaigns to block speakers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bill Maher, Maryam Namazie and Germaine Greer.
Dawkins expressed solidarity with Stephen Fry after Irish police investigated Fry over blasphemy allegations. Dawkins quoted his book, The God Delusion in The Irish Times: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Dawkins added that he would be in Ireland on 12 June 2017 and challenged the Irish police to arrest him. Dawkins added in Twitter: "The Irish blasphemy law must go. An embarrassment to the civilised world, it encourages the uncivilised one."
Feminism and women's rights Dawkins has said that feminism is "enormously important" and "a political movement that deserves to be supported". Dawkins also released a joint statement with Ophelia Benson that condemned "death threats, rape threats, attacks on people's appearance, age, race, sex, size, haircut... [and] vulgar epithets." In a passage in The God Delusion, Dawkins wrote about how he wished to mirror the successes of feminism in the atheist movement.
Dawkins has been criticized by feminists and feminist organizations. Several of Dawkins's posts on Twitter were controversial, such as one where he seemed to blame the victims of rape when they are drunk. "If you want to be in a position to testify & jail a man, don't get drunk," he tweeted. Amanda Marcotte, in Salon, criticized Dawkins by saying that "For someone who is a supposed rationalist, Dawkins refused to even acknowledge the basic difference between making the choice to break the law and being the victim of a crime." Dawkins was also the subject of controversy when he tweeted, "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." Marcotte heavily criticized him by saying that "He made a pretty serious logical error... He assumed that the amount of pain that a victim of injustice suffers is directly proportional to the contemporary social norms surrounding it, i.e. if a form of abuse was considered no big deal to most people in a society, the people directly victimized would also feel that way."
In January 2016, Dawkins tweeted a link to a cartoon caricature of feminists and Islamists. Dawkins later deleted the tweet when he realized it mocked real people. Organizers of the 2016 Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism unilaterally declared his tweet "very offensive" and disinvited him without speaking to him. They later spoke to Dawkins on the phone, and apologised for disinviting him, and re-invited him.
"Elevatorgate"
Dawkins was denounced for his comments about a video blog post by atheist blogger and writer Rebecca Watson. The scandal resulting from his comments was called "Elevatorgate". The controversy started at an atheist convention in Dublin, where Rebecca Watson spoke about feminism and the atheist movement. That night, when Watson was in an elevator, she was propositioned by a man, who said "Don't take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?" Watson found this extremely inappropriate, and afterwards, she made a video blog saying "guys, don't do that." The comments exploded with divisive opinions, and PZ Myers reacted on his blog Pharyngula. On that post, Dawkins made the following comment in the form of a fictitious letter to a Muslim woman complaining of misogyny:
Dawkins was criticized by atheists and others for his remarks. David Allen Green in New Statesman wrote that "One of the many problems here is that Rebecca didn't use her video to downplay the plight of Muslim women from the perspective of an American woman... Just because there is severe misogyny in one context doesn't remove the need to deal rationally and helpfully with its lesser manifestation in other contexts." PZ Myers responded by writing, "This isn't slightly bad. It's very bad. Atheist men are alienating the people we want to work with us on the very same problems... that you cited in your comment."
Dawkins tried to clarify his argument, but this elicited several more negative responses:
Watson herself issued the following boycott of Dawkins as a response to his posts:
As part of a reaction to the controversy, Skepchick writers wrote open letters to Dawkins explaining why they believed his comments were offensive and misguided.
LGBT issues Dawkins strongly argues for a genetic basis for homosexuality and postulates that the gene was preserved through various social and cultural processes. Dawkins has also stated that homosexuality does not conflict with the evolutionary principle. In a talk at Kennesaw State University, he said that "[Evolution] is the explanation for why we exist. It is not something to guide our lives in our own society. [...] What we need is a truly anti-Darwinian society—anti-Darwinian in the sense that we do not wish to live in a society where... the strongest suppress the weak... I want to live in a society where we take care of the sick, take care of the weak, take care of the oppressed."
In a 2015 tweet, he stated "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". In a 2021 tweet, he stated "In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. 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". For the latter tweet, his "Humanist of the Year" title was revoked by the American Humanist Association. Robby Soave of Reason magazine criticized the retraction, saying that "The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal." After receiving criticism for the tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "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."
Dawkins endorsed and recommended The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity, a book by Debra Soh which puts forth gender-critical views. In a podcast with Helen Joyce, author of the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, Dawkins said that "sex really is binary" and argued that children are becoming transgender under pressure from their teachers and peers.
In 2024, Dawkins co-authored an op-ed in The Boston Globe with physicist Alan Sokal criticizing the use of the terminology "sex assigned at birth" instead of "sex" by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dawkins and Sokal argued that sex is an "objective biological reality" that "is determined at conception and is then observed at birth," rather than assigned by a medical professional. Calling this "social constructionism gone amok," Dawkins and Sokal argued further that "distort[ing] the scientific facts in the service of a social cause" risks undermining trust in medical institutions.
During the 2024 Summer Olympics, Richard Dawkins faced backlash after a tweet in which he falsely referred to two cis-female boxers as "two men, masquerading as women". The statement was widely criticised for being transphobic and contributing to the spread of misinformation. (Both boxers were assigned female at birth and both have always identified as female.)
Abortion Dawkins has expressed pro-choice views. Dawkins made a heavily criticized tweet where he stated that it would be immoral not to abort a fetus who had Down syndrome. The Down's Syndrome Association issued a response by saying that "At the Down's syndrome Association, we do not believe Down's syndrome in itself should be a reason for termination, however, we realize that families must make their own choice." Dawkins later apologized.
Animal rights