In 2011, after Laura Logan was brutally attacked in Tahrir Square, the journalist Nir Rosen said some deeply ugly things on his public Twitter feed. He suggested that the attack was somehow a way for Logan to compete with Anderson Cooper, and said that it would be funny if a similar thing happened to Cooper. His tweets swiftly received broad public attention, prompting widespread outcry and his resignation from his position at NYU. I’ve heard little from him since.
I thought Rosen was a good journalist, at the time, and I thought the incident on the whole was a shame. But I wept no tears for Rosen. What he said was despicable, and as a seasoned, adult journalist speaking in a public forum, he should have known better. Things said in public, on a deliberately, explicitly public forum like a public Twitter feed are subject to public review. If Rosen wanted to express those thoughts privately, he could have set his Twitter feed to private, or contacted people he knew via any manner of private communication. He didn’t. Instead he used a medium that has the deliberate and intrinsic intent of generating publicity and engaging in public dialogue, and because what he said was so ugly and so deserving of legitimate criticism, he has paid a heavy social price.
We are now once again fighting over whether tweets on public Twitter feeds are public. I would say as I’ve always said: that tweets are public is a “this is true” statement, not a “this should be so” statement. Whether or not we think tweets on a public Twitter feed should be available to public review is irrelevant: they are. Anyone with a web browser can see them, and you naturally and necessarily have an audience of however many people follow you. That’s reality. You cannot expect that a medium can be used for public dissemination of your opinions and your work while simultaneously expecting no one to repeat, link to, share, react to, or criticize what you say on that medium. The very idea is unworkable.
But let’s suppose that we set that aside for a minute and agree that people have an expectation of privacy about what the say on Twitter. Doesn’t it necessarily follow, then, that Nir Rosen was terribly wronged? If that is the standard, surely he has an equal claim to that right to Twitter privacy. So to the people saying that it’s inherently wrong to link to tweets, do you think that Nir Rosen enjoyed that same protection? How can the answer possibly be no, given the arguments that people are making?
I have a funny feeling that the answer will in fact be no, from the self-same people who are insisting that public Twitters are private. Which again gets to fact that there appears to be literally no expectation of consistency in principle when it comes to these fights. Just as the notion that men have an obligation to shut up and listen when women talk about feminist issues only applies when it’s certain women speaking, the notion that public Twitter feeds are really private only seems to apply to certain people, and to be based on no meaningful principle whatsoever. Which, aside from the poverty of integrity involved, is a surefire way to lose the people who actually have to be convinced in order to make the world a safer place for women.
The behaviour of allowing oneself more latitude than others is a common human behaviour. For example, I have noticed people get furious about other people stopping under a stopping-prohibited sign to make quick errands, only to do it themselves with the excuse “but I am in a real hurry”. As if the others were not?
In politics, I’ve often noted the behaviour in connection with an analysis of class, gender or other divisions. The idea seems to be that those in power must obey strict rules, but if you are intersectionally disadvantaged, then no rules longer apply – being outright abusive is just a good way to confront your oppressor.
To me, it is just another way of saying “don’t do as I do, do as I say” and “father’s always right”.
Nir Rosen wasn’t “a good journalist”. He is a GREAT journalist, who, unlike professional denounc-ers of quips and private conversations, understands what’s important and what’s froth.
Even if I thought that his comments amount to “froth”– and I don’t– the point is again an is/ought difference. Whether or not he should have been punished the way he was, he should have known, as an experienced journalist, not to share that kind of sentiment in a public forum.
I dunno. You seem to dislike this culture too, this environment: watch what you’re saying! follow the party line! As they used to announce back in the day, Stalin’s times: “A step to the left or step to the right is an escape attempt. The guard will shoot.”
The man made a joke. Not everyone is attuned to this sort of thing. The great ones usually aren’t. So they get shot. More opportunistic survive.
Nir Rosen is a great journalist, that’s undoubtedly true. Probably the best of his generation. Whether he deserved the response to his tweet, meh. I think it was obnoxious and beneath him, a mistake he apologised for and then was punished for. Such is life.
But this is just the way the internet commentariat ecosystem works now. An endless series of trivial arguments by privileged idiots over irrelevant nonsense. What was once a good idea (people connecting online) has become a vehicle for self promotion and endless dipshittery.
Public tweets can be deleted if the fear is the content will trigger action against the person who tweeted. If the tweet in this situation had been deleted, rather than pointed out as linked to by an article a lot of pain could have been avoided.
What does “action” mean? Consequences for statements? Or physical attack?
The publicness of tweets is not especially relevant for the Jacobin incident. Sarah Kendzior says she received rape threats as a result of the article linking to them. Threats aren’t quite the same thing as public censure for being an asshole (a la Nir Rosen). It’s therefore reasonable for SK to request and even demand that the link be removed. And to be fair, Jacobin was pretty prompt in removing the link.
Sarah then went on to make a large number of gross mischaracterizations of what the Jacobin article said and did; people who liked the Jacobin article got defensive, pointed out the mischaracterizations in sometimes over-the-top language (e.g., “childish”); and then the chorus of (not only) male feminist allies began the attack, among other things, making unfounded allegations that Jacobin and Salon writers themselves sending rape threats!
No one acquitted themselves well. Sarah never corrected the false accusation of threats coming from Jacobin and Salon writers, and Sarah bizarrely misconstrued Stoker’s complaint about Frost’s character being assassinated as a *threat* to assassinate Sarah’s own character. She then supported irrelevant theoretical discussions about the publicness of @replies and offered conspiracy theories that Frost had an axe to grind.
It’s all gross, but one issue trumps everything: given that the link was leading to rape threats, remove it promptly out of empathy a concern for safety. This was mostly done. There is no question that Sarah grossly mischaracterized what happened, and a number of her allies senselessly libeled and attacked reasonable people. On the other hand, the reasonable people, including yourself Freddie, seemed to be very tone deaf about the link and its leading to threats. I find it bizarre that your essay yesterday included the leftist bonafides gesticulations re Stoker (“I think Stoker is terribly wrong about abortion”) and libertarians (“If I wrote out a list of my disagreement with these women, it would take hours to complete”) but failed to include an anti-rape gesticulation like “if the link lead to threats, I absolutely support removing it”. If the pro-Jacobin people made these sorts of disclaimers the controversy likely would not have occurred.
They were not “pretty prompt”– they did it immediately. Without complaint or discussion. As in, the second it was brought to their attention.
Second: I continue to find it bizarre that linking to someone’s own discussion of rape threats made against her is discussed as though it is on the continuum of making rape threats.
Third: if the publicity of that tweet is what the problem is, then this controversy has created the danger! If Jacobin had been allowed to immediately delete the link– which they did– and then it had been let go, there would be no opportunity for more publicity and no opportunity for more threats! You can’t participate in a vast, publicity-generating controversy and then say that the problem was the publicity. That makes no sense. If the goal were to stop publicity, then everyone endlessly writing and tweeting about it are to blame.
Here is what Sarah originally said:
“So in one day, two leftist publications used rape threats to me to belittle me, humiliate me and defame me.”
Which, as written, is a gross mischaracterization. What she should have said is something like
“So in one day, [one] leftist publication, [because of the way I discussed] rape threats, belittle[d] me, humiliate[d] me and defame[d] me.” (leaving aside whether “defame” and so forth are accurate)
I will not in any way condone Sarah’s behavior. I’m reluctant to speculate on why she made so many uncharitable misreadings (of Stoker, no less than Jacobin), allowed her allies to accuse people of making rape threats who had not, or why she felt that she needed to call attention to the issue since, as you point out, it was probably safer to keep this issue a secret, especially as Jacobin was so prompt in addressing her concern.
Whatever you think of the motive for Sarah’s behavior, a necessary rhetorical device when discussing this issue is a concern for her safety, or a performative concern for her safety. I will repeat what I said above: I find it bizarre that, in your original essay, you are more worried that someone might think you’re not a leftist than somewhat might think you’re blithely ignoring rape threats.
You’re contributing to a pattern of rhetorical escalation that becomes a form of deep dishonesty. Of course, I’m opposed to rape threats. What I find utterly bizarre is how you allow moral responsibility for rape threats to fall on people who might, completely unintentionally– by your own admission, completely unintentionally– contribute to publicity that might cause some pathetic human being to issue a rape threat. How can anyone possibly live under that kind of standard? Literally any attention to a woman or her writing might provoke some piece of shit to make a rape threat. Any linking could potentially subject anyone to that kind of threat! How do we live that way? And why are you so eager to allow those bad actors to poison our ability to talk to each other?
If you want my honest opinion, this kind of social-justice behavior will collapse under its own weight. It will alienate potential allies and more and more feminist allies will come to see the rhetoric of people like Sarah as inflammatory and dishonest.
That said, I don’t follow your specific argument here. There is a commonplace idea in the feminist community that discussing rape threats online leads to more rape threats. One of the laws of privilege-checking is that being a man I am in a poor epistemic position to evaluate this proposition so I ought to take it for granted. So it’s not just “any linking” as you say; rather calling attention to the discussion of rape-threats in a less safe context (Jacobin) is specifically the problem.
I do agree with you that Frost’s link certainly unintentionally lead to threats. And I agree Jacobin promptly removed the link when it was brought to their attention.
Here is my theory, though. If you’re not engaging with the right issues (“Twitter is public”, “Any linking could…”) you’re going to fail to convince people. If like, Stoker, you start defending Frost’s piece while ignoring why people were actually complaining about it (the link), you’ll be misconstrued as defending the part people are complaining about. The same applies to you. If you seem more concerned about “good faith” arguing than about personal safety, you lose an important segment of your readers…
I’ll ask again: if merely discussing rape threats online leads to more rape threats, why are the people who are bringing attention to these threats through writing tweets, blog posts, and assorted other media attacking Frost and Jacobin not exactly as culpable? Why are you not culpable, for bringing attention to those threats in this space?
“Why are the people who are bringing attention to these threats through writing tweets, blog posts, and assorted other media attacking Frost and Jacobin not exactly as culpable?”
I really don’t want to be evasive here. I feel like this is a practical problem and you’re turning it into a theoretical one. Did the jacobin article lead to threats? She says yes. Does the other attention lead to threats? She says no by implication. Am I in a position to evaluate the truth of these statements?
But if you’re acknowledging that not all attention brings threats, and that indeed you personally only can tell which brings threats after the fact, how can anyone possibly live under that standard? How can it possibly exist as a standard at all?
I very much appreciate that you’re trying to be reasonable. But you’re holding onto a standard of behavior that human beings cannot meet. Not “shouldn’t try to meet.” But cannot meet. Cannot possibly. Because it is based on a purely consequentialist viewpoint: whether or not someone makes a rape threat in response to someone else’s perfectly legitimate statements. That is not workable as an actual guide to behavior. At all. And it is absolutely perverse– totally, incredibly, perverse– to suggest that everyone has to worry about whether what they say or link to online could possibly result in someone making a link threat. It is the definition of a “letting the terrorists win” approach to free discourse. I just don’t think you’re really thinking this standard through.
“how can anyone possibly live under that standard?”
There seems to have been a convention to emerge in online feminism which is to not link to personal accounts of sexual violence without asking permission. Even then, it is sometimes done without names or online identifiers so it can’t be googled. I think it is possible to follow this convention… A weaker version might be link or name and remove if there is a complaint (which happened here). Again, I think the scope of this online norm is more limited than you suppose. It isn’t some weird ex post facto consequentialist assigning of blame.
The bigger question in my mind is whether, following these conventions, it is possible for reasonable and vigorous feminist self-criticism to exist (a la Frost’s main thesis). Will such criticism inevitably be condemned in the strongest terms as heterodox, as encouraging misogyny and rape culture, if such rules as specified above are followed?
I’ll let you have the last word on this.
“one of the laws of privilege-checking”
States make laws. The natural world has certain physical laws. But I have never heard of the “the laws of privilege-checking.”
You need to spend more time on social justice warrior discussion boards. You will hear endless fine tuned discussions worthy of medieval theologians (and as based in reality)
“given that the link was leading to rape threats, ”
This is what’s been confusing me about this whole episode. Where did Jacobin acquire this readership? How many people even read the damned thing? Isn’t it, like, Freddie and a half dozen folks in a coffee shop? As opposed to Sarah Kendzior’s Twitter feed, which I just looked up and she’s got 25,000 followers?
This is one of those areas where sensitivity requires giving Sarah the benefit of the doubt. She repeated her claim several times that Jacobin’s link lead to more threats.
She also implied several times that those threats came from people affiliated with Jacobin and Salon. Which is just totally unfair and uncalled for.
I’m perfectly willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, but I continue to be puzzled about how people think through these things.
The unstated premise here is, “talking about a rape threat leads to more rape threats.” Assume that for a moment. If for some reason you wanted to generate more rape threats would you talk about it on Jacobin or Twitter? In fact, think of any undesirable human behavior; where’s the first place on the internet you’d go looking for it?
I’ve only know of SK since Sunday, and since then I’ve seen her repeatedly and clearly lie online about fact-checkable things. So I don’t give her the benefit of the doubt about getting more rape threats either.
Jacobin did give her the benefit of the doubt. She asked for the link to be removed, and Jacob promptly removed the link. Does “sensitivity” also “require” getting tarred and feathered? Do it “require” being accused of making rape threats?
“I’ve seen her repeatedly and clearly lie online about fact-checkable things.”
Could you give a couple of examples?
This is all just part of the circle jerk that surrounds Aaron Bady isn’t it. Two separate articles that criticize Aaron Bady, and Sarah leaps in with bizarre attacks.
The original article was good. I recommend that people read it. Ironically this whole episode helps validate the point she was trying to make.
It should be pointed out that, as this was cranking into full outrage mode, Aaron made a comment via twitter that SK probably should’ve mentioned that Jacobin apologized immediately and unreservedly.
This was enough to brand Aaron an enemy. SK jumped dead in his shit over this. I don’t even understand why. Then, of course, others did. That’s how this works. SK commiserated with Graeber that the latter was right about Bady all along. Aaron then took a twitter break.
It’s absolutely demoralizing. You cannot fix this strain of weirdness in the left.
christ
There’s this story (certainly apocryphal) about the Algerian jihadis during the Algerian Civil War in the 90s in which the rebels ended up, at the end, being contained in one building. That’s all that was left. They’d killed or exiled everyone else for crimes against the revolution or Islam.
Oh stop *sniff sniff . My heart is breaking now. The inventor of the earnest Twitter mob stinkpiece has been driven offline, because his performance of anti-sexism was found unpersuasive by its new arbiters. I may cry. I hope he’s not gone for long!
To me this is actually a very positive sign. This shit has gotten so bad, it’s now even consuming its most skillful and beloved practitioners. Twitter lefties have a choice — reign this shit in — or just enjoy the horror show as Twitter darwinism produces ever stronger and more vicious wielders of social capital and bad faith until everyone with brains and ethics is finally driven off completely. We’re practically there.
I agree with you. This has finally shown the American leftist twitter to be the cesspit it is. These morons have been a drain on the rest of the decent worlds patience for long enough. Should bad choices and drinking not prevent me to live long enough to see the complete collapse of the american postgrad with a twitter account phenomenon, then Ill be a happy man.
Well, Aaron (who infuriates me with shit like his ridiculous “there is no satire” piece even as I find him engaging most of the time) was quite contrite and doing his ritual flagellation in TNI yesterday. All rooted in how nothing is actually public and co-option of the tragedy of the commons. You know the sort of thing.
But I’m shedding no tears. I hope it was an object lesson in how nobody’s safe from the firing squad. I doubt it, though.
By the way, we hit the “racism is the real motivator” part of bingo last night.
Yeah, this went from “I’m upset because you linked to my tweet” to “I’m being attacked because of my brave work on behalf of POC” in remarkable time. Kendzior’s level of self-seriousness (“My work: on labor exploitation, state corruption, racial discrimination, media bias and more. It will continue.” “But when you see a black feminist getting shit, fight for her like you’ve fought for me. That’s what counts.” And thank you everyone else who has stood by me in a very difficult time.”) would be hilarious if so many other people weren’t being so earnestly encouraging about it.
Just to sum up for everyone: Linking to a tweet that references rape threats is a serious offense, because the tweeter might get more rape threats (this is such a bizarre stance for a journalist to take), but turning the (already rectified) situation into a controversy that sucks in dozens of other people and generates hundreds more tweets makes total sense.
Are these guys really on the left? Okay Graeber is, despite the fact that he seems to be a toxic individual. But SK’s politics seem to be straight liberal, and she even has strong connections to Freedom House (read CIA). I don’t really understand Aaron Bady’s politics. The rest of the people involved seem to be privileged liberals, who use victim politics to assuage guilt (I’m guessing – otherwise I really don’t get it), or avoid class politics, or something.
Unfortunately I think the old commies were right. This is what happens when you avoid class politics, when you don’t engage with real working class movements and when you don’t have a theory of power, politics and change. Jacobin and Dissent are at least trying to change this, and both are trying to engage with union radicals. There is stuff going on within working class latino and black communities, even it’s ignored by the soi-distant twitter socialists. But the graduate/post-graduate elite seem to be at best useless, at worst toxic.
Also, what was the other article criticizing Aaron?
http://mattbruenig.com/2014/06/08/opportunistic-misreads/
Not as mental, but she dishonestly responded to an article that was also attacking something that Aaron Bady had written. At this point I wouldn’t believe anything that she wrote, including her journalism.
Coincidence? Maybe, but it is amazing how much of this kind of online bullshit revolves around him.
I’m an outsider to this whole thing, but just from looking at the various Twitter trails, it’s pretty clear that SK’s army of supporters is either pathologically dishonest or really unusually stupid.
They appear to be a horrible collection of human beings.
Random points:
* Aaron Bady on the linking: http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/notallpublic-heartburn-twitter/
Shorter him: just because it’s legal to link doesn’t mean you should. I’d add that you don’t have to be bell hooks to have seen the difference between Rosen’s and Kendzior’s situations.
* Megan Erickson has been attributed with being the only Jacobin editor to defend the linking, but all I can see is her making the same point you did about the offending paragraph, and likewise calling bullshit (if harshly).
*I’m a bit puzzled by the characterization of political fratricide. I realize it’s a phenomenon, but in this case aside from Graeber I don’t really see a lot of lefty bonafides on the part of the people you cite as dishonest, and I don’t recognize most of the poo-flingers, though that could be my failing. Doug Henwood’s FB comments usually have more examples of obnoxiousness than are currently on display, and what’s there is equivocal at most.
It mostly seems to be privileged liberals, or academic ‘socialists’. SK has links to Freedom House, so pretty sure she’s not on any left that I recognize. I don’t really understand what Aaron Bady’s politics are, save posturing for his followers. David Graeber is unhinged. His online meltdowns are both regular and pathetic.
PS – I don’t always agree with you, but thanks for being an axis of sanity in this.
As if to add a terrible postscript to this, Newsweek published a correspondence with Megan Erickson in which she describes her assault. And… just look at this.
https://twitter.com/sarahjeong/status/476517459571142656
Read it. All of it. That is such intellectual dishonesty it’s breathtaking. The whole point, the whole kick off to this thing was that you always always always ask a woman if they want even an oblique reference mentioned in publication. And, while the legal advice about libel threats is well-taken (everyone at or affiliated with Jacobin needs to follow Bhaskar’s lead and shut up right now, no matter how much it pains them), the idea was that the RIGHT way to order the world was that the deference to women’s mentions of violence against them trumps all other considerations.
I can’t believe Newsweek published that. I can’t believe this response to them doing so. And, now, I’ve deleted my twitter. Disgusting.
Just because I’m slightly lost in this bewildering affair, could someone please confirm for me that the SK tweet which Frost originally linked to was the one from May 22 where SK uses the word “Brocialist.” Is that correct?
Yay, another post from Freddie about Twitter…All the better to come across as an aloof outsider, seeing as you never tweet. Like I h8 the medium as well, my response is not using it. There are plenty like me, a hefty majority of the world’s population in fact. But I guess your grand, self-appointed task as unpaid proctologist of the left wing of the US elite demands persistent exposure…
In this case, your liberal roots are showing and then some. You are expecting us to implicitly allow equation between someone sharing a tweet about their experiences on the receiving end of rape culture (threats not actual attacks, for now, but still a traumatic experience), and someone making a joke out of a journalist getting raped.
Perhaps some kind of Spock-minded, emotion-devoid formalist could declare “Yes, those are two things which are exactly the same!” But let’s return to the bar: if you overhear some loud mouth there cracking horrible rape jokes, which reveal a worrying underlying ethos that probably shapes their work in some prominent institution, I’d say you’re in one position. If you overhear a heart-to-heart, perhaps one being staged in an unwise choice of booth (in that you can hear it!) about someone’s experience with being sexually attacked, then decide to broadcast it…You’re in another position.
I’d say it’s beneath you to try this kind of glib reduction, but idk anymore. I really can’t see how you expected this one to sail.
People are claiming that public Twitter feeds are in fact private. I am demonstrating that they don’t actually apply that thinking consistently. You’re confirming that fact.
See, the way principles work is, either they supply equally, or they aren’t principles.
The principle here is ‘treat people talking about their experiences on the receiving end of rape culture with sensitivity.’
This doesn’t cover Nir Rosen because he was cracking a joke at the expense of someone who was raped.
That is most assuredly NOT the principle that has been repeatedly and angrily asserted by the people you are siding with. They have insisted that public tweets are private communication. That’s the conversation. If you want to have some other, individual conversation, have it some place else.
Well there’s a post in this very thread where Aaron Bady argues pretty much what I’m saying. If there are loads of examples of ‘the people I’m siding with’, present some. Not everyone is as diligent a twitter reader as you seem to be.
You get that I wrote a whole post, the one you’re commenting on, about the specific discussion I’m referencing, right?
I think you’re exaggerating the number of appeals to the public/private Twitter distinctions. Bady’s blog post is clearly doing leftist repentance. His distinction between legal and ethical is so beside the point as to be absurd.
Sarah linked to a blog article (lost the link) that talked about levels of obscurity in online forums and their implied levels of privacy. Which is true from a “what kind of expectation do you have about who will see what you are writing?” point of view.
But this issue was always a side-show, a kind of theoretical rationalization for a specific complaint: “please remove this link to my personal account of a rape threat because it is leading to more rape threats.” Jacobin responded quickly and politely. But, to parody your essay Freddie, some people are responding “it’s a free country, I can link to whatever I want to, twitter is in the public record period.” I really feel like this last is a poorer defense than “holy shit you guys are misreading Frost”.
So who made a joke about someone getting raped? Who are you talking about?
Twitter is a public medium. I’d have sympathy if the person was relatively unsophisticated, but this is someone whose thesis was about online social networks.
Things I also learned. She has strong connections to Freedom House, or as we used to call them – the CIA.
“You are expecting us to implicitly allow equation between someone sharing a tweet about their experiences on the receiving end of rape culture (threats not actual attacks, for now, but still a traumatic experience), and someone making a joke out of a journalist getting raped.”
OK, so Frost wrote: “And I just don’t think the diminutive label of ‘bro’ should be used to describe more insidious sexism, let alone violent aggression like rape threats.” And in the original version, I guess somewhere in that sentence was a hyperlink to a May 22 tweet by Kendzior where Kendzior uses the word “Brocialist.” I’d quote Kendzior’s actual tweet — in fact it would be very clarifying to do so — but apparently this would be adding to her trauma, so sure I won’t quote the tweet.
But if you want to go back and look at that tweet, I think you’ll see that it’s not signaled in the tweet itself that Kendzior was indeed “sharing a tweet about [her] experiences on the receiving end of rape culture” (quoting you now). Frost had no way of knowing that this was what Kendzior was actually doing; the editors at Jacobin had no way of knowing this.
Anyway, once Kendzior voiced her alarm at being linked to, the Jacobin people actually acted in very good faith. They diligently removed the link. They could have stubbornly kept the link on “principal” or whatever, but instead they were totally decent about it. And this is where the story should have ended. I’d even say that no one had done anything wrong at this point. Some here are claiming that the editors at Jacobin “fucked up” by letting that hyperlink through in the first place, but given the actual phrasing and content of Kendzior’s May 22 tweet, it’s hard to see how they were supposed to know that that tweet was connected to a traumatic experience Kendzior was having. The universe does not exist to read Kendzior’s mind.
So, once the link was removed, the whole issue should have gone away. But it didn’t. Instead the entire Jacobin crowd now finds itself accused of defending rape culture. Things have gotten witchhunty — and that’s the part that’s very wrong.
“So who made a joke about someone getting raped? Who are you talking about?”
Nir Rosen.
‘But if you want to go back and look at that tweet, I think you’ll see that it’s not signaled in the tweet itself that Kendzior was indeed “sharing a tweet about [her] experiences on the receiving end of rape culture” (quoting you now). Frost had no way of knowing that this was what Kendzior was actually doing; the editors at Jacobin had no way of knowing this.’
OK, I’ve now looked at the tweet. Tbh having known a few women writers, and read personal accounts from more, I just tend to assume that any particular woman has encountered internet death/rape threats.
As for why Jacobin are still in the firing line, the attitude of their editors has been pretty vigorous wagon circling, and various unforgiving (twitter) offensives. See for example the deluge of tweets from Conor Fitzpatrick at someone seemingly only tangentially involved.
Also there has been something of a ‘pile on’ by Corey Robin, Doug Henwood, and the dude who runs this blog (who in all honesty I reckon would have done well to listen to Sady Doyle wrt feminism.) This includes Doug Henwood making a frankly paranoid sounding tweet in response to one of the Jacobin’s star writers (and a rarity for a left mag, or in fact any other mag: an out sex worker), darkly claiming that this was a ‘victory’ for Kendzior (who has stated she just wishes to be left out of this).
Maybe this is a little more than a few twitter-dwellers picking on Whacky Jacky for no good reason?
To describe Corey Robin as “piling on” in this case is bizarre and untrue.
“As for why Jacobin are still in the firing line, the attitude of their editors has been pretty vigorous wagon circling, and various unforgiving (twitter) offensives.”
They immediately– immediately– deleted the link as soon as they were made aware of it, and immediately apologized.
“(who has stated she just wishes to be left out of this)”
Which is totally undermined by the constancy with which she has returned to the topic over and over and over again.
If you think that arguing that people should tell the truth is piling on, then you’re simply indicative of a broken culture yourself.
One thing I don’t understand because I stepped away from twitter at the wrong time — Newsweek published the libel threat. Who asked them to remove it? Why did they ask to remove it? I thought the letter was a fairly effective rebuttal of Rusty…
Rusty’s original summary of Frost’s article (“it’s hard to interpret any way other than explicit support for the person sending Kendzior rape threats”) is so obviously wrong I just cannot understand why he stuck by his guns and said it was still his opinion. Firstly, no one except a lunatic or extremist would explicitly support someone sending rape threats. Maybe someone might to it tacitly if they were an asshole. But the idea that a marxist feminist woman writer would do even that seems pretty unlikely. So he ought to go back and see where he misunderstood. And he obviously misunderstood, since Frost effectively redefines brocialist as a socialist who likes sports and doesn’t send rape threats… I would fire Rusty if I were his boss.
The basis for the removal request is that the writer mentions her past sexual assault in it. That was not redacted or altered in any way.
When this entire thing is based on always asking women before such a thing is mentioned, it’s completely dishonest for Rusty to do that. Completely. He’s expressing support for SK on that basis on twitter. The twitter mob is expressing support for SK on that basis. Megan is afforded no such protection.
See my post above. The same people who are hopping mad over Amber’s link are driving themselves into the worst mental contortions in order to avoid making the publication and/or non-redaction of that email worthy of no comment. SK acknowledges it but parses it in the worst of terms, like (paraphrasing) “even rape apologists don’t deserve that”.
Odious turd Joshua Foust was the one who said that it was explicitly Jacobin and Salon writers sending the rape threats.
He just retracted that bit.
https://twitter.com/joshuafoust/status/476814164661633025
I mean, the damage is done. The furor is finally starting to die down. People have unsubbed from Jacobin. The Ericksons, specifically, have been put through hell.
Probably exactly the right time to do that if the entire point was to settle scores.