Richard Dawkins lied about the Algerian boxer, then lied about Facebook censoring him
The self-described champion of critical thinking spent the past few days spreading conspiracy theories
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UPDATE (Aug. 15): Richard Dawkins has now admitted he got it wrong. More at the bottom of this post.
On Friday, bestselling atheist author Richard Dawkins claimed that his Facebook page had been shut down all because of a tweet he made condemning the female boxer who has been wrongly described by many on the right as male.
None of that made any sense at the time—and now there’s proof that Dawkins was spreading a lie.
It may be too late, though, since right-wing conspiracy theorists have broadcast that misinformation to their massive audiences.
All of this began over a week ago after Dawkins shared an article while claiming that “two men, masquerading as women” were allowed to box in the Olympics against “real women.”
One of those boxers was Imane Khelif, an Algerian who later went on to earn the gold medal.
If you haven’t followed this controversy, Khelif was accused of having XY chromosomes and therefore not being a “real” woman. The problem with that argument is that Khelif was assigned female at birth and identifies as a woman today. She’s not trans. She’s not intersex. She was never anything except female. The International Olympic Committee said Khelif and the other boxer met their eligibility criteria. Beyond all that, it’s ludicrous to think an openly trans person could even exist in Algeria, where LGBTQ rights are non-existent, much less represent them at a global competition. In fact, there are no trans athletes at this year’s Olympics (though they might be eligible under certain circumstances).
The controversy emerged after stories spread about how the two boxers were eliminated from the International Boxing Association’s World Championships last year after the IBA’s Russian president said they failed a gender eligibility test due to “XY chromosomes.” Those claims, however, were never backed up by any evidence and (oh, hey, what a coincidence) Khelif’s disqualification at that event helped boost the prospects of a Russian athlete. It’s telling that the IBA didn’t disqualify Khelif until after she had beaten that Russian opponent.
The allegation that Khelif was a “male punching a female in the name of sport,” as J.K. Rowling insisted, had no basis in reality.
Yet Dawkins not only spread that lie—spread Russian propaganda, really—he went on to mock the very idea of trans people competing in any sports.
Sadly, none of this is very surprising. Dawkins has been spreading transphobic ideas for some time now. But the shit didn’t hit the fan until Friday, when he said his Facebook account had been deleted because of his posts:
(Just to be clear, Dawkins is literally wrong when he says Khelif is a “genetically male” boxer and that her supposed XY chromosomes are “undisputed.” That allegation is very much in dispute and Dawkins is just straight-up lying about it.)
That tweet got plenty of traction after it was amplified by a chorus of bigots, including Elon Musk (“Wow”), who later wrote, “Facebook aka “Meta” can never be trusted.”
Dawkins’ claim never made any sense, though.
Why would Facebook punish him for something he posted on Twitter? Those are two different companies. They have different moderation rules.
Why would Facebook punish him for bigotry that is routinely shared on Facebook? Evangelist Franklin Graham, just to name one example, has said far more hateful things about transgender people, far more frequently. His page remains up and running. If you want to find bigotry on Facebook, you won’t have to look far. It’s everywhere. There’s just no way Dawkins would be punished this severely for this reason.
Why would Facebook delete a page without explanation? I’ve been penalized for various things I’ve posted in the past, but Facebook always tells me what the problem is (whether or not I agree with it) to prevent me from doing it again. They also send warnings before a page is deleted.
So what the hell happened?
Well, Dawkins’ tweet (about Facebook) has now been deleted without explanation.
His Facebook page is back up and running.
And here’s the kicker: Dani Lever, Public Affairs & Communications Director at Meta (which owns Facebook), says there was no censorship issue at all. Dawkins’ page just got hacked and the company shut it down until Dawkins could verify the page was his.
This is not what happened. Dawkins’ account appears to have been compromised, or hacked, so we took action to secure the account and prevent wrong usage of the page. That step was taken on July 30th. His last post was on July 25th, before the Olympics even started, and was not even topical to boxing. This action had nothing to do with any content Mr. Dawkins posted, and we are in the process of restoring the page as soon as it is secured. While we were focused on securing the page, we regret that we weren’t able to communicate this to the account holder more promptly.
In a separate response directly to Dawkins, she added, “The removal of your Page was a precautionary measure due to indications of potential compromise, not due to any issues with the content you posted.”
There are many, many reasons to be critical of Meta, but that explanation makes a lot of sense. It tracks with everything that happened. Indeed, Dawkins tweeted on August 2 about this very thing:
No, it was not something he said. He’s blaming censorship when the answer probably boils down to an old guy forgetting his password after someone else got access to his page.
As of this writing though, Dawkins hasn’t apologized for spreading misinformation about the boxer or for furthering a conspiracy theory about why his Facebook page was removed. If he thinks deleting the tweet will prevent the spread of the lie, guess what? The damage has already been done.
All this from a guy whose entire persona is championing reason and rational thinking.
I’ve said this before, but it’s appalling that the Center For Inquiry continues its affiliation with him.
UPDATE: On August 14, Dawkins posted an article admitting that he got the Facebook accusation wrong.
On August 10th , I received an e-mail from an official at Facebook, saying he was looking into the question. He sent me a second e-mail the same day giving a full explanation. Facebook’s records showed, he explained, that one of the admins with access to my account had been hacked as long ago as June 22nd, and the hacker added “a flurry of unauthorized admins”. Their subsequent behaviour alerted Facebook, who closed the account down while they worked on the problem. My Facebook account was restored on August 11th , and I am very grateful.
He says “I deeply regret” making a “false suspicion of Facebook’s motives.”
That might be fine—a warning to double check before possibly spreading misinformation to your 3 million+ followers on X/Twitter—but when it comes to the boxing match, Dawkins is still clinging to his lie:
I am sorry to say we jumped to the wrong conclusion: might it have some connection with my contemporaneous stand against genetically male boxers fighting women in the Olympics?
I repeat: A “genetically male” boxer was not fighting women in the Olympics. Dawkins is still lying about that and he refuses to own up to it.
There are a few things where I just can’t understand the level of vitriol. The hatred (I do think that is the right word) of Hillary Clinton in 2016 is one. I had conversations with relatives who were just short of frothing at the mouth as they expressed their animosity toward her. And the hatred directed toward transfolk is another. I can grok that some people are bothered by it and I think I understand their (stupid) reasons. But some people are, again, almost frothing at the mouth about something that quite literally affects them not one bit. I don’t get that.
How the fuck does a once respected biologist get biology so wrong?