By David Futrelle
On Sunday, freelance journalist Talia Jane took to Twitter to report a truly grotesque sexual message she’d gotten from a male colleague whom she later identified as Seattle Times reporter Mike Rosenberg.
Then this all happened:
- Rosenberg suspended his Twitter account at Jane’s request.
- The paper suspended Rosenberg while they looked into the matter.
- Twitter suspended, then unsuspended, Jane’s account over an innocuous tweet because some annoying nitwit got mad at her for reporting the DM, and Twitter’s abuse reporting system is so broken that annoying nitwits can get people suspended over innocuous tweets.
- Australian podcaster Aimee Terese, ostensibly a leftist, attacked Jane in a tweet that somehow managed to be even grosser than Rosenberg’s DM, and my mouth dropped open, leaving my lower jaw suspended in the air. (Figuratively.)
Before we get into #4, let’s go back to the original gross DM, sent at the tail end of a late-night conversation between Rosenberg and Jane, when the Seattle reporter suddenly transitioned from such topics as journalism jobs and the cost of living in Seattle to, well, this:
Rosenberg, who has acknowledged that he did indeed send these messages, claims that that last one was meant for someone else whose picture he was presumably masturbating onto. The out-of-the-blue strangeness of his comment had led some to think he may be telling the truth, but Jane isn’t buying this explanation.
You can find out more details on all this in Jane’s original thread, or in some of the news pieces that have been written about it already.
But I’m just going to move on to Aimee Terese’s tweet, though, because, holy hell, it’s in many ways even grosser than Rosenberg’s DM:
(This tweet has since been deleted; I grabbed the clearest screenshot I could find of it here.)
When someone asked if she really meant what she seemed to be saying, she doubled down:
And then she doubled down again:
Terese even tried to lay out a twisted sort-of Marxist case for … attacking someone with a gross sexual tweet for reporting a gross sexual DM.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am Twitter-friendly with @RivkaGheist and that as far as I can tell she is not in fact “ruling class scum.”)
In other tweets, Terese declared that Jane was “hysterical and cruel,” compared her to an abusive cop, and suggested she was a narcissist because … she once wrote an open letter to her then-employer demanding better pay and working conditions:
Shitting on someone for demanding better pay seems like an odd thing for a supposed Marxist to do, but I guess I don’t understand the finer points of the dialectic.
Terese even doubled down on calling Jane ugly:
Other ostensible leftists jumped into the fray with similar attacks on Jane, including the co-host of the Red Scare podcast:
Writer and podcaster Conner Habib alternated between sarcastic tweets laced with Marxoid jargon and … cum jokes.
Meanwhile, this guy evidently thought that the only thing this discussion needed to make it complete was a meme, er, humorously referencing the Chinese crackdown on students in Tiananmen Square.
Terese retweeted his meme, because of course she did.
It would be one thing if Terese and her pals in this discussion were just some tiny subgrouplet of a subgrouplet on the left.
But in fact they’re part of what seems to be a growing subculture of purported leftists who somehow manage to spend as much time attacking so-called “identity politics” — or IDpol, as they call it — as they do pushing their own reductionist class analysis, which as in this case often turns out to consist of little more than calling people they don’t like “ruling class scum.” They’re a sort of successor to what what was once called the “dirtbag left.”
This subculture now boasts a subreddit of its own — r/stupidpol, with nearly 10,000 subscribers — and it’s gotten celebrity endorsements of sorts from several relatively well-known names like journalist Michael Tracey — formerly of The Young Turks, now an occasional guest on Tucker Carlson’s White Power Hour — and Angela Nagle — a sometime writer for The Baffler and Jacobin whose book on the alt-right has won plaudits from none other than “dapper Nazi” Richard Spencer, who was especially pleased with her extended diatribe against so-caled Tumblrinas.
The Spencer endorsement is no fluke. Given their delight in “triggering” liberals and those on the intersectional left, people like Terese and the whole r/stupidpol crowd bear more than a passing resemblance to the alt-right — so much so that some people describe them as a new variety of NazBol, or National Bolshevism, a sort of mixture of (you guessed it) Nazi-style nationalism and Stalinesque Marxism.
I think (I hope!) that’s overstating it a bit. But these folks are truly the political equivalent of a creepy DM slide.
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They’re not representing any kind of left I want to be a part of, that’s for sure.
@ David *golf clap* Getting called a White “Night” and Cuck Soyboy in one week! Impressive.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that a professional relationship does not welcome discussion or mention of body parts or bodily discharge? It’s not that difficult. If you wouldn’t say it to a guy you work with or your boss, don’t say it to a coworker who is a woman. Could it be an issue of not being able to reconcile “woman” and “professional”? Smells like misogyny to me.
Re Ms. Aimee: Just because someone is on the “Left” or a feminist or economically progressive doesn’t mean they are good people. People who only consider a single axis of oppression generally aren’t. Another blogger I admire is having this issue with well known people in his [philosophical demographic] saying that he’s not a true [group member] because he supports social justice along with underlying belief. The underlying belief says nothing for or against social justice, but when well known and respected members of the community come out against it, it makes the whole community look terrible. Especially when they follow up by harassing anyone who believes in social justice.
Also, am I the only one who thinks the tank meme is darkly appropriate? An individual being crushed by the overwhelming force of reoccurring harassment? Also, the poster is identifying with the tanks/ authoritarianism. At least that is honest.
@Surplus to Requirements: A “tankie” is a derogatory term for an authoritarian socialist or an apologist for same, coined in reference to the Soviet tanks that were sent into Czechoslovakia to crush the liberalising movement known as the Prague Spring. Basically, the kind of arsehole who looks back on the Stalin era with a sense of nostalgia that’s completely unwarranted.
@Surplus to Requirements
To explain my terms first, “cancel culture” is the nasty habit a lot of “woke Twitter” has in declaring ridiculous dealbreakers. Granted, dealbreakers are often a subjective thing, but they don’t offer a lot of room for a genuine change of behaviour and assume that behaviour is innate and immutable.
“CHUD” is a reference to the 1984 horror film C.H.U.D., which was short for “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller”. It’s a nice shorthand to referring to terrible people without fear of using problematic insults.
“Tankies” are typically communists that try to downplay or outright defend the authoritarian regimes of old, namely Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Most self-described communists these days understand how horrific those regimes were and make a point of disavowing the personality cults, reckless industrialization and central planning that defined them. Tankies do not.
I really feel for the lady who is being sexually harassed. I’m on the other end of the spectrum right now where they tell you “well your a pretty girl. What do you expect” with the gross sexual comments and harassment. I hate that it’s treated as either a compliment or a consequence based on how the woman looks. As if a man being sexually aroused by you is the most important thing on the planet.
It might help in understanding the hostility of some on the ostensible left to holding men responsible for predatory behavior to remember that one “victim” of this “witch hunt” is St. Julian of Assange.
Assange is not actually a leftist (this was obvious even before he began working with Putin to elect Trump), but many people on the left have convinced themselves that he is, and a subset of these have come to believe in his infinite goodness and infallibility. Thus, when he was credibly accused of rape, they were forced to choose between two positions: accept that he is not quite the man they thought him to be, or decide that rape is not always bad–it all depends on who is doing it. A depressingly large number of them went with the second choice.
Katamount, here’s a real piece of nitpickery for you: The definition of “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller” for C.H.U.D. comes from the advertising for the 1984 movie, not the movie itself. Within the movie, the initials stand for “Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal.”
This refers to nuclear waste that is dumped in the New York subway system, which causes the homeless people living there to mutate into…well, the chuds.
Not to be confused with
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHUD
(disambiguation page)
C.H.U.D. is also notorious for having one of the best named sequels in film history: C.H.U.D. 2: Bud the Chud. Hence why in some parts of the internet (the podcast Read It and Weep is a fine example) a particularly good part in an otherwise terrible piece of media is called a “Bud the Chud” moment.
As a man, I would think he would know that after you text a woman you’re interested in that she is beautiful, your next step – especially if she didn’t reply – probably should *not* be to tell her you want to cum on her face. Just a suggestion.
@mya
Shieldmaidening maybe?
But the first thing that comes to my mind whenever I see women defend sexist creeps is invariably the “cool girl” monologue from the movie Gone Girl.
…
Where the hell is Scildfreja?!
“Cancel culture” is also close kin to “stan culture”, where the term “stan” comes from a song by Eminem about a creepy and obsessive fan. “Stanning” something or someone is being such a big fan of it that loving it becomes part of your core identity.
Of course, doing that sort of thing is very much psychologically unhealthy, and finding out that someone is actually human rather than a saint archetype to place all your hopes on is a deep shock. The common reaction is exaggerated disgust, and saying that they’re “cancelled” to avoid introspection on why they needed to “stan” someone in the first place. Instead of doing that introspection, they then search for someone else to claim is an angel given human form.
I’d wager that most people caught in this stan/cel cycle go through it somewhere between once a month and once a year.
Turan,
I think a related aspect to this is that some on the left have come to believe that the leftist position is whatever is against the US government. Therefore Russia, despite having a government that is right wing, authoritarian, oligarchal and imperialistic is still good, no matter what they do, because they are hostile to the US. US progressives dislike Putin’s puppet in the White House and have been following the Mueller investigation. Therefore, either Russia is innocent of interfering with the election, or they’re guilty, but helping them do it wasn’t wrong. This is how you get supposed leftists like Michael Tracy or Glenn Greenwald shilling for Trump.
As a trans person I have found a litmus test that works great for divining who is secretly awful. It was once very complicated, but I think I’ve streamlined it pretty well.
Step 1. For each time that person complains about “idpol” or “identity politics,” they get 1 point.
Step 2. Finally, tally your points from all previous steps and categorize the person as follows:
0 points: probably fine
1 point: concern
>2 points: this is not a person I want to be around or talk to, ever.
Of COURSE she’s a Bernie bro.
@kupo
I know that a lot of the Bernie bros aren’t honest actors so trying to figure out the logic in their support of Bernie isn’t really a thing we can do, but I still have to wonder: Do they realize that Bernie is in fact 77 (and will turn 78 this year)? If he were to, somehow, get elected in 2020 he would be 79 at the time of the inauguration and would have to survive a job that turned a youthful senator Obama into a prematurely greyed elder statesman in less than four years.
So far as I can tell, the only difference between Terese and Elam is what kind of psuedo-philosophical gibberish they use to dress up their reactionary views.
OT, but just something I found amusing in my Toronto explorations. I rarely have reason to go to Toronto’s West End (Etobicoke) after the passing of my grandparents who lived there all their lives. But as I was renewing my library card (up yours, Doug), I noticed they have free passes for city-run museums, so I picked one up and used it at Montgomery’s Inn Museum at Dundas West and Islington, and I just found the Village of Islington to be incredibly charming. In addition to maintaining the historic Inn, it also maintains no less than 18 murals depicting life in Islington going back to its founding. That alone is something that frankly every neighbourhood should be doing, but there were two that stuck out for me.
One was this one, which depicts Hurricane Hazel, which hit Toronto in 1954 and came down hardest in Islington and Weston, where the residential area was built in the low-lying Humber River Valley.
http://www.villageofislington.com.vsd46.korax.net/img_murals/1364246270_Islington_15HurricaneHazel.jpg
The other was this one, which depicts the construction of the Islington United (Methodist) Church:
http://www.villageofislington.com.vsd46.korax.net/img_murals/1366128524_Islington_12rider.jpg
The former offered a reminder of the stakes involved in climate change. All it takes is another flood of the creeks and rivers that flow through Toronto to make all of our lives miserable, and it needn’t be delivered by hurricane.
But the latter was instructive for a couple reasons. One is that it’s easy to forget just how much big cities have grown. Islington Village was on the far outskirts of Toronto and Montgomery’s Inn made an excellent stop-off point for those that were traveling from the west to do business in Old Toronto. What took me an hour to get to by subway would take easily 2-3 hours by foot or by horseback. And that’s in summer. I can only imagine a riding preacher braving blizzards across the Humber River to preach in the surrounding townships.
But the other thing it told me was just how much sectarian strife was a fact of life in Toronto for a lot of its history. Toronto is known as “Methodist Rome” because it was a hotbed of Methodism, and it shaped a lot of our city’s institutions along with the Orange Order. In fact, the second floor of Montgomery’s Inn hosted Grand Orange Lodge meetings, and the museum has restored the Assembly Room to how it would look, complete with portraits of Victoria and William III. By 1844, six of the ten Toronto aldermen were Orangemen and the Toronto Police (the oldest police department in North America) were used almost exclusively to fight the sectarian grievances between the Orangemen and their Irish Catholic foes to the point they were so corrupt the whole force was fired in 1859.
The reason I bring all this up is that I’m always confused about what these so-called “Western values” are that xenophobes bang on about. You and I know it’s just pure bigotry, but they seem to have some image of English-speaking Canada as some kind of nice white picket fence place until all these immigrants came with their various religions and sectarian grievances. Well, I got news for anybody who thinks that, the last Orangeman to be Toronto’s Mayor was only defeated in 1954, within the lifetimes of many Toronto residents. It’s not ancient history. The various feuds between Methodists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Catholics defined this city for most of its existence. Are those the “Western values” they’d like to return to? Because that’s what they were and I really wish more people were aware of it before they started banging on about how a handful of Syrian migrants are causing all our problems. That’s what George Brown said about the Catholics.
I really hate to act the “grammar police”, but this screed has absolutely no meaning.
*reads the comments on this thread*
Huh. Not much in the way of incoming troll-ery. Almost disappointed. Almost.
What is the deal with the Tiananmen photo/meme?
Are they suggesting that female professionals facing down sexual harassment carries the same risks as pro-democracy activists facing down tanks?
I don’t necessarily disagree, but that can’t be the message their trying to convey…is it?
My asshole-to-English translator spat out, “Women who report sexual harassment are the real oppressors. Prudes, all of them.”
Would it be fair to say that Aimee Terese is an ideological sister to TERFs?
@Mish – Thank you! 🙂
Getting back on topic, I continue to boggle at this whole mess and the messy thinking behind it.