By David Futrelle
Australian podcaster and putative leftist Aimee Terese has annoyed a lot of people on Twitter with her bizarre attack on freelance journalist Talia Jane for going public with the gross DM she’d gotten from a male journalist, suggesting to Jane that she was so ugly that she should feel flattered that anyone would even “contemplate ejaculating on [her face].”
No, really.
Turns out that Terese is not quite as thick-skinned as she expects her targets to be, and she was evidently herself annoyed by the post I wrote yesterday about her anti-Talia-Jane tweetstorm.
First, she responded with a flurry of buzzwords:
I have no idea what she’s going on about either.
Then, perhaps realizing that calling someone excessively “discursive” was not quite the killing rhetorical blow she had hoped it would be, she tried again:
Now this tweet I understand, because I have seen so many different variations of these, er, arguments used against me by so many Men’s Rights Activists over the years.
I’m a White Knight? I’ve certainly heard that before.
And apparently when I’m not white knighting women I am “step[ping] on the necks of dissenting women” like Terese. Never mind that I only wrote about her because she viciously attacked a women for reporting apparent sexual harassment; clearly I’m being the hateful one here.
This, again, is the same sort of nonsense I’ve heard from MRAs every time I’m said anything critical about antifeminist women — often with a bogus “gatcha” attached: You say you’re a feminist, yet here you are criticizing a woman!
Fans of Cassie Jaye, the director of the Red Pill documentary, widely panned by feminists as a whitewash of the misogynistic Men’s Rights movement, tend to be the most enthusiastic about this particular rhetorical strategy. They also like to conflate writing about someone on a blog with harassment — just as Terese turned “mentioning someone in a blog post” into “stepping on someone’s neck.”
Once wound up, Cassie Jaye fans — her white knights? — just can’t seem to stop. Last month, one of her admirers on Twitter demanded to know “how many lies about Cassie Jaye have you posted this morning?” At that point i hadn’t written a word about her for nearly two years.
Terese doesn’t just ape the rhetorical tricks of the MRAs; she also seems to agree with them about certain things. Or at least to agree with Jordan Peterson, something of an idol for many MRAs. Last year, as Terese reminded me yesterday, she took issue with my suggestion that incel forums, breeding grounds for violence and misery, should be shut down if possible.
Her solution to the incel problem? Aside from vague talk about ending capitalist alienation by ending capitalism itself, this is the only specific suggestion she offered:
Now, I don’t think she’s literally suggesting that every incel in the world be awarded an “attractive, eligible” Palestinian woman of his own; she later clarified that she had offered this suggestion “not as an answer in itself, but more as an example of creative thinking.”
But this “creative thinking” isn’t really so creative after all; it sounds an awful lot like Jordan Peterson’s “enforced monogamy” and/or economist Robert Hanson’s “sex redistribution,” ersatz “solutions” to “sexual inequality” that would require imposing some sort of sexual tyranny on the women of the world, some of whom would have to be cajoled or threatened or coerced into having sex with the sort of guy who thinks shooting up a mall is an appropriate response to not being able to get laid.
If you’re a socialist who sounds this much like an MRA, you really need to start rethinking your socialism.
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When I read the things this woman tweets, I’m picturing her comments being said by Serena Joy, but wearing one of those mass-produced Che Guevara T-shirts instead of her state-mandated blue dress.
Aimee’s ranting has a distinct overtone of “look at MEEEEEE!!!!! Talk about MEEEEEEE!!!”
As for your feminism being “entirely discursive”… well, “discursive” means “relating to discourse”, sooo I’m not seeing her point. It’s a ‘blog. It’s SUPPOSED to relate to discourse.
The bit about “marrying [incels] off to “Palestinian women”, on the other hand, REEKS of someone who genuinely agrees with that strategy. That or someone who really doesn’t think of Palestinian women as human beings.
And for the LOVE OF PETE, would you leave Cassie Jay ALONE!?!?!?!?!? You just wrote about her AGAIN, and the last time was only 2017!!!
I give her a week before she starts suggesting Stalin wasn’t as bad as people think.
And have you noticed that for all her talk, she directly benefits from a capitalist system in several different ways? Perhaps she should stop trying to dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools if she wants to be taken seriously.
Oh, and as for my “creative thinking” on the incel problem: give them at least a full month of hard labor, it’ll force them to think about something other than themselves.
That word. I do not think it means what she thinks it means.
Idealism is not “discursive”.
Theoretically, it’s possible to have discourse about idealism, but nothing in idealism is inherently discursive so this is not evidence of discursiveness and could never be!
Good/bad dichotomies are not “discursive”.
Theoretically, it’s possible to have discourse about such dichotomies, but nothing in good/bad dichotomies is inherently discursive so this is not evidence of discursiveness and could never be!
Free floating feelings are not “discursive”.
Moreover, they cannot possibly be discursive: discourse requires that you put those feelings into specific words. Once they are specifically described, they are no longer “free floating”.
Silence cannot possibly be discursive. Even assuming that this is a fair characterization of David’s views, this would prove that David’s work is anti-discursive.
It’s like the longer she talks, the less coherent she becomes.
Although I suppose that presupposes there to be at least some coherence when she first starts speaking on a topic. That premise might not be justified.
She’s like one of the mean girls from those really bad teen movies that get upset that the uglier girl she bullies has the gull to stand up for herself. Like really sugar, if you can’t take criticism about your disgusting behavior maybe keep that mouth of yours shut and sit on your hands.
@ Crip Dyke:
Very well analyzed!!
@ Lainy:
YOO ROCK!!
@ Anonymous:
I’m noticing a number of women feminist ‘bloggers and, particularly yootoobers suddenly “coming to their senses” and beginning to write anti-feminist tripe. I can’t help but wonder if the “sense” they’re coming to is a sense of how the weblogosphere and especially the yootoobosphere reward their work — based on clicks, followers, and subscribers — which right-wing content seems to get a lot more of.
Aimee’s twitter-tantrum also focuses on another right-wing passion, answering an argument with insult. Whether Talia Jane should be grateful for the possibility of having her face c** upon is, first, not related to the discussion, and second, not for Aimee Therese to say.
Though it’s not the case in all dialog, I notice that leftists respond with evidence MUCH MORE OFTEN than rightists. Righties usually attack the physical attributes of their opponent, or attack the perceived education level, or (worst of ALL!!!) attack their sexuality.
Perhaps the right is loathe to use evidence because… evidence never supports their position…??? NAH, it’s because “anyone who studies a problem is an elitist intellectual, and elitist intellectuals can’t be trusted!!”
I have a co-worker who’s a bit like this. She uses words incorrectly, is very defensive if you ask for clarification, and is very invested in being seen as Important. Dear FSM, is she invested in being seen as important.
I will rejoice the day she leaves the company. In my better moments, I wish she would realize how much unnecessary aggravation she spreads around and would fix herself. It’s hard work to get to those better moments sometimes.
I don’t understand that sort of person at all. I mean, I recognize the behavior, and understand the consequences, but I don’t see why anybody would choose to be that way. (Assuming it is a choice and not some other factor.)
Christ, it sounds like freshers’ week at the student union!
Shooting at a school in Denver.
Again….
I’m fucking running out of thoughts and prayers….
Vile person is all I can say about her. If people like that show up in the leftists spaces I hang around, they are usually kicked out very quickly (so are brocialists and violent assholes btw.).
Still, it shows that we have to keep our nest clean at all times. Bigger tents mean more place for clowns
“Which is why he’s spent almost a decade writing a blog about those exact subjects… hey, wait a minute…”
Seriously, David, always remember that there a lot of people who appreciate everything you’ve done with WHTM and your other writings.
P.S. I checked out Aimee Terese’s Twitter feed (no, David hasn’t “silenced” her yet), and she’s going further right with every post. When some asked her “You don’t find it weird that your reply guys are basically incels?”, she responded that “being lonely isn’t a crime, it’s an existential fact of life under shitty, alienating neoliberalism.” (If all incels were guilty of was “being lonely”, a lot of dead people would still be alive.) She’s also promoting a podcast about how Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren are “politically far more alike than ppl suspect!” She’s headed for the center of the horseshoe at full speed.
Ban me again if you want, i had it coming, but let this comment through. Please.
This new horror in Denver was multiple assailants with semiautomatic pistols,
most likely with many pre loaded magazines. This is an entirely different threat profile than a single individual, with a long pump action shotgun, that the authorities are alerted to.
Such sad news. Awful. Just awful.
@Weird (and tired of trumplings) Eddie,
Are we sure she was referring to just Palestinian women there, and not just women as a whole? Either way, it still wouldn’t be a solution to the problem of incel violence, since they only count the so-called HB8-10’s as ‘true women’. The guys who are ‘stuck’ with the 7’s and below are very likely to not only get mad about being cheated of ‘their due’ to a beautiful woman, but go on yet another shooting rampage to avenge this insult to their honor. And put society back to square one on how to stop the rampages again.
@Anonymous
What you sound like
Also following up a “lol she probably likes Stalin” with a suggestion to send people to do hard labour is a little on the nose…
Aimee’s writing style reminds me of that immortal quote by W. C. Fields, ” If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
So many five dollar words just to make a messy literary salad.
Liberal maximalism is liberalism with lots of knick-knacks, throw pillows and overstuffed furniture. Hope this clears things up.
Well, her tweets sure is a great way to expand my vocabulary despite being devoid of any intellectual content. Of course I could achieve the same results by reading the dictionary.
@kobun37:
My favorite WC Fields quote goes something like,
And don’t forget how skewed their scale is, either. It’s not like 20% of women would score an 8 or higher; it’s probably more like 0.02%
So she’s a… bracialist?
“material based strategy”… so she’s literally calling women material goods? And she’s supposed to be an anti-capitalist feminist?
Fucking hell what a grody bastard. Fake comrades get outta tha commune.
Uh… We live in a capitalist system that requires us to engage with the exploitative mechanisms of capitalism in order to survive. Needing to earn money in order to, you know, eat, doesn’t mean that one can’t be in favor of transitioning to a better system.
Don’t get me wrong, Aimee is wrong in many, many other ways, but being a part of a system which is impossible to opt out of isn’t one of them.
@David F.
Gaylordio Felchero says that you are
Is this true?