Alison Tieman, face of The Honey Badger Brigade and noted Men’s Rights Activist, was banned along with her #GamerGate-affiliated booth from the Calgary Expo. She subsequently released a seemingly heartfelt video discussing the incident. If you need details, there is a fabulous write up of the story with relevant background that can be found here.
While it is difficult to parse through GG’s purposefully muddy, hidden, confusing rhetoric, one thing is for sure: the groups of MRAs, GGers, and others like the HBB are not a random mix of bumbling idiots. In fact, the very fact that so many people still see harassers in the video game industry as young virgin boys raging against the world is a fucking triumph for these groups. As we saw with the screencaps of GG preparing for Anita Sarkeesian to go on The Colbert Report, these groups are anything but reactionary and unorganized. They plan their moves, strike to provoke specific reactions, and use systematic rhetorical appeals.
So where does that leave us with Alison Tieman? If you’ve watched the video, you might be as confused as I am. The video shows a weeping, pleading, hurt woman who believes she has been targeted by advocates for women’s rights because she does not identify as a victim, something women who care about women’s rights do (she says). She claims that fighting sexism in the games industry casts women as victims. By standing up for men’s rights, she is balking the system that keeps women oppressed. She says she didn’t disrupt any panels; she was just “speaking her truth.” She often employs the language of women’s rights activists while defending her actions, part of the reason I just don’t know what to do with this video, with the whole Calgary incidents, and especially with Tieman and the HBB.
I can’t tell if this is a plot by GamerGate to seem more human, or if Tieman really believes what she’s saying. When doing the fundraising for the Calgary booth, Tieman attracted a lot of GamerGate money, over $9000 in fact. She wrote on her site about the purpose for her booth:
In April of this year, the Honey Badgers plan to put on a booth at the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo! We plan to infiltrate nerd culture cunningly disguised as their own. Each of us has been carefully crafting a persona of nerdiness through decades of dedication to comics, science fiction, fantasy, comedy games and other geekery, waiting for this moment, our moment to slip among the unaware. Once there we will start distributing the totalitarian message that nerd and gamer culture is… perfectly wonderful just as it is and should be left alone to go it’s [sic] own way.
That’s it folks.
As men’s issues advocates and defenders of creator’s rights to create unmolested, that’s what we have to say to the nerds and geeks and gamers. You are fantastic as you are, carry on.
Yep, in today’s political climate that’s considered an extremist position. Just letting creative communities create; consumers consume what they want; and gamers get down to the business of vidya without being judged.
So if you share our vision of a world in which nerds and geeks and gamers roam free and unfettered, help us spread that message by throwing a few shekels our way to attend the con.
The idea here is that her and her group planned to spread the message that “games are fine the way they are.” While this sounds lovely, between the lines is the message that those fighting for representation and inclusivity in games need to be silenced, because they’re not really one of “us.”
She claims in her video that she was simply trying to bring the importance of men’s rights to light. However, in other messages, as well as being hinted at above, the purpose of her booth was to disrupt panels in the name of GamerGate (she even talked about needed to be careful about how she registered her booth so as to avoid detection as a GamerGater). If you read the transcript of the panel, you can see that their entire purpose was to disrupt and shut down conversation about women’s issues.
She continually says in her video that we should blame the behavior, not the people of GamerGate. I’m not sure what that means. I’m not sure what simply saying “oh that behavior that just threatened to rape me sucks. Oh well!” does to solve anything. What I find most confusing is her constant assertion that fighting for the rights of women takes something away from men and that it is somehow a norming behavior (ie. asking for equality and fair treatment is an oppressive thing for other women). However, pointing out that the gaming culture fetishizes the woman as damsel doesn’t reassert women’s position as damsels. Ignoring the imbalance and issues here isn’t a position of strength, as Tieman seems to believe. Further, most feminists doing work in games are doing it to make games better through more diversity in storylines, characters, and other aspects of games. While gaters may have grown up seeing themselves as the protagonist and hero, most women had to settle for enjoying games, but not necessarily belonging in games.
But all this aside, if Tieman’s video was the contentious thing, I think we could have a debate. Her ideas are so very wrong, and so outside of the realm of reality that it would be hard, but if we solely look at that video, there is nothing threatening or systematically damaging (in a long term way) about it. Thus, I believe a conversation could be had. The problem is that she identifies with and takes money from a group that has been proven over and over that its sole purpose is to keep women out of the gaming industry through threats, harassment, and orchestrated, systematic abuse. Another problem is that she went into the con with the purpose of shutting down conversations, and then she made this video decrying the fact that she was shut down. You can’t choose to be part of an oppressive group and then claim to be harassed for it. Well, you can, but I can’t imagine you would get much or any support from outside that group. I’m sorry if Tieman thinks she is the victim of women’s rights activists, but she isn’t any more of a victim than a member of the KKK is the victim of a black person’s outrage. Women didn’t choose to be women; they didn’t choose to be underrepresented in the tech industry; they didn’t choose to be harassed and threatened. Women form groups to fight againsts systems of oppression and discrimination that are systematically in place. Gaters choose to be gaters. Tieman casts herself as a victim in one breath, while claiming women’s rights activists cast all women as victims in another, all while having expressly stated that she wanted to shut other people (women) down. She even mentions that this is the first time she has felt silenced and harassed. That sucks, but that’s what all of us who choose not to identify with hate groups have to face every day. It’s awful. And that’s what those people she interrupted and disrupted were attempting to talk about.
While Tieman’s crocodile tears had me momentarily filled with empathy, the truth is that she purposefully, knowingly, and deliberately joined a women’s hate group, disguised her intention to get a booth at the con, and then sabotaged panels and discussions on women’s rights. Tieman: I’m sorry if your feelings got hurt in the process, but you can’t choose to be part of a hate group and then be surprised or cry “free speech” when you violate the codes of conduct you agreed to. What did you think was going to happen? That’s what confuses me the most about this, and also makes me wonder if this is all planted gater evidence to make them seem human. This isn’t a game for us, as perhaps it was for Tieman until she felt the backlash of the community. This is our worlds, our lives, and our community we are fighting for.
At the heart of this, as well as other movements aligned with #GamerGate, is a mixture of raw, misplaced emotion and complex rhetorical strategy. Some people in GG are downright fucking devious. Tieman had over 25 complaints of harassment filed against her at the con, yet she is able to seamlessly step into the victim role (further complicated by her analysis that women’s rights movements only work to put women into victim roles). HBB has now claimed that they may be suing the Calgary Expo over the expulsion.
Not surprisingly, HBB has also started accepting donations to their legal fund. They have raised over $22,000 as of today. They have 647 supporters. I mention this to bring a sense of realization to those in the gaming community who may see Tieman and her band of merry MRAs as harmless: they are anything but. This group has done something that we all need to take very seriously:
- HBB purposefully disguised their intent to “infiltrate” the Calgary expo to disrupt panels on women’s rights.
- HBB raised funds to go to Calgary Expo, which were hugely padded by GG supporters.
- HBB behaved at the Expo in a manner they knew was inappropriate and against contract, but did it without threatening death or rape, the usual tactics of MRAs and GG.
- They got evicted, as they knew they would.
- Tieman made a heartfelt video, positioning her as a victim to a wide audience.
- Step 6: PROFIT.
In the end, I am curious to see just how fucking muddled this all becomes. As long as people are willing to donate cash, however, Tieman and others will be there to clean up. Am I against people exploiting hateful people and hate groups to get money? Surely not. But as groups like this continue to be bankrolled, I am extremely nervous at just how many other people will see this vitriolic, hateful, fucked up community as a goldmine. Will this bring a sense of encouragement to people like Tieman and other GGers? I don’t know. But I worry that the support, the media attention, and the money will make GGers believe they are justified.
9 thoughts on “From Persecutor to Victim: On the Rhetoric of MRAs, GG, and Alison Tieman”
Personally, I think you’re attributing a bit too much planning to Tieman, GamerGate, etc. Speaking as someone who got grouped into GamerGate after some feminist criticisms of Zoe Quinn, people labeled as “GamerGaters” get a LOT of harassment – even vivid death threats and rape threats are pretty much the norm, and not just among popular people. While I’m no major supporter of all Tieman’s views, she’s more visible than I am so I have no doubt there was a LOT of vitriol directed toward her, and I suspect getting kicked out of Calgary Expo was probably the last straw that broke her.
I suspect Tieman is like most of the people I’ve met in GG: someone who has faced legitimate harassment and misrepresentation and can’t get taken seriously. There’s a really bad thing going on in feminism right now where it’s okay to misrepresent people and make off-the-wall, unconfirmed accusations against them as long as they’re “bad”, and that’s something we really need to fight against. Even in this article, you say things like “exaggerated Calgary Expo icon (with Sarkeesian’s signature hoop earrings)”. Have you ever looked at the Calgary Expo icon? She actually has those earrings. Yet, through blood-red tinted glasses you accidentally turn it into a GamerGater’s attack on Sarkeesian.
This is the kind of thing I think really needs to stop. Disagreeing with people like Tieman is fine – I disagree with her on a lot of things too. But it should be disagreement based on actual things the person believes, and that they can confirm actually believing in, not off-the-wall accusations about evil schemes or jokes about decades-long infiltration plots being taken out of context and spun as serious. That just enforces a culture where the people with social power (typically men) have the power to decide what women “actually” believe, and that’s bullshit I want to part in.
If you disagree with Tieman, at least have the decency to talk to her. Listen-and-believe her experiences, let her clarify things she conveyed poorly, and show her that feminism isn’t the patriarchy sockpuppet she thinks it is.
From your comment, it seems like you are having an argument with someone else, not me or this article. Yes she has those earrings; I wrote that she has those earrings. I don’t see your point. It’s not an exaggeration because she has the earrings? What? The image was a play on Sarkeesian and Tieman; I took it straight from the artist’s twitter.
How is anything I wrote blood-red tinted glasses? I approached this issue pretty openly, looking at facts and my own confused feelings about the whole situation. Nothing I looked at was “off the wall.” I looked at pieces of evidence from her own website and from GG posts and websites. I took things she said and wrote and examined them in a larger context.
Tieman put out a video. I, and any one else who wants to, is allowed to respond. A video is not a chat room. She chose a medium that did not invite feedback or participation. I’ve responded respectfully, not attacking anyone but looking at pieces of evidence and rhetorical strategy. If you have a beef with how feminists work, take it elsewhere. Because the things you’re claiming in no way correspond to this post.
Ack, I apologize if I misconstrued your message! With the “blood-red lenses” remark, I admit I might have been trying to read between the lines a little, which is never a good practice. In places, though, I do feel like the rhetoric you used warranted such reading, or crossed a line beyond “respectful response”.
Like, in the very first paragraph, you describe her video as “seemingly heartfelt”. Why “seemingly”? I mean, I understand that such a statement is technically true, but it’s kind of like if someone said I was “allegedly asexual”. True, it might qualify as an allegation since they only have my word for it, but wording it that way still implies I might be deceiving them. The way you suggest right off the bat that Tieman might be faking emotions for sympathy strikes me as no better than the misogynists that levy such claims at people like Zoe Quinn.
The same goes for the note about the earrings. In the context of your article, “an exaggerated Calgary Expo icon (with Sarkeesian’s signature hoop earrings)” implies that the artist added the earrings after the fact to villainize the logo. As a reader, I can’t see a reason why you would bring up the earrings like that otherwise. This is further implied by your note about it being “exaggerated” – if not the earrings, what is exaggerated about it? The artist made it look uglier, but “exaggeration” entails taking an existing characteristic and making it stronger.
Overall, a lot of the claims just come across to me as not being in good faith. Like, you say she admits this is “the first time she’s felt silenced and harassed”, but she says the exact opposite in her video; her actual statement is that this the first time the comic community has made her feel like a victim. You cite her statement about decades-long-undercover-infiltration as though it was serious, even though it’s clearly just making fun of the idea that women like her can’t be geeks. Even the ease with which you conclude she disrupted and attempted to shut down a panel doesn’t sit well with me – in that transcript, she only speaks at two points in the panel, and she asks (and receives) permission from the panelists both times. Her position is a weird one (“more men need to be seen as victims so we stop conflating victimhood and femininity), but it was still definitely on-point to the topic at hand.
You may not have understood Tieman’s statements about “blame the behavior, not the people”, but I honestly feel like your article actually demonstrates them well. From the very start, the way you construe her messages revolves around her association with GamerGate. You assume her emotional displays are fabricated, since GamerGate schemes things out. Her joke about infiltration was legitimate, because that’s the sort of thing GamerGate would actually do. She got kicked out of the expo, but she deserved it because she had the gall to support GamerGate in a place that was against it.
Take a step back and look at that. You’re accusing a woman of faking emotional pain for donations, you’re taking her jokes out-of-context in an attempt to villainize her, and you’re saying she has no place in your culture if she doesn’t share your views. These are the *exact behaviors* that made people label GamerGate a misogynistic hate group. You’re doing them all, but it doesn’t strike you as “wrong” because you attribute wrongness to the people, not the behavior.
I know, I might be misconstruing this, and I apologize. Speaking as one popular feminist writer to another, though, what you’re supporting here comes across to me more like… “feministism”.
It seems more concerned about the empowerment of feminists than the empowerment of women.
I’ll try and take your points one by one here, but it seems we may just differ fundamentally on what it means to respond substantively and thoughtfully, as well as what counts as evidence and what it means to be inflammatory.
1. I said seemingly because I can’t possibly know what’s in Tieman’s mind. “Seemingly” wasn’t a slight, it was simply how I reacted when I saw the video. Like, “holy shit this seems genuine.” After reading the blogs about Tieman, I was surprised by the video and her emotional response, and that’s what the “seemingly” conveys. Not “allegedly,” but yeah, seems genuine.
2. I didn’t say the earrings were exaggerated. What is exaggerated is the Sarkeesian character taping the Tieman character’s mouth shut and holding her up by the hair. I think we could both agree Sarkeesian has never taped Tieman’s mouth shut, thus it’s exaggerated.
3. Blaming the behavior not the people is a nice way of avoiding responsibility for your actions. I simply disagree that we should not blame people for their actions. Otherwise we could all do what we want and say, “oh hey, it’s ok I punched someone. That’s a behavior, not who I am.” Particularly when someone creates a public video to talk about her experience, as Tieman did, I am allowed to respond respectfully. I didn’t threaten to kill her or say she is ruining the world. I made connections between her rhetoric and actions and fundraising.
4. You cannot equate every person who calls out corruption, inappropriate behavior, or unethical actions with GamerGate. I see that being a new trend– each feminist who exposes the unethical behavior of a figurehead of GG or other movement is accused of being just like GGers. They are not the same; how I’m talking about and responding to Tieman is not the same as what has happened to Sarkeesian. That is a silly argument that only has shock value but doesn’t hold up beyond that. All contexts are not created equal. You can’t boil contextually-based occurrences down to generalities that you attribute and then apply generalities however you want to. The world doesn’t work that way. I’m talking in specifics. Saying my response here is anything even close to GG is ridiculous. The world is not equal, nor is it a meritocracy. We are never divorced from our contexts and histories. The world is fucking messy and complicated.
5. Perhaps you disagree, but being a feminist, supporting women, supporting multiple viewpoints, working toward more equality for all people to me means that sometimes you have to call out unethical and damaging behavior, movements, and yes, even people. These may be women; but criticizing one woman doesn’t equate to not fighting for women’s rights and equality. Disagreeing with Tieman, questioning her motives, and drawing connections you may disagree with doesn’t make me less of a feminist. I think Tieman, many MRAs, GG, and so forth are damaging to women. Thus, I wrote a response to talk about it. Do you have to agree with EVERY woman to support women? Do you need to empower EVERY women to support women? I don’t think so. I support ethical behavior, movements, and people that I believe have positive motives and actions. This isn’t Tieman. I don’t believe her motives or behavior are ethical, useful, or anything other than damaging for women.
At any rate, I appreciate your thoughtful response, despite the fact that we seem to fundamentally disagree.
Likewise, I appreciate you taking the time to respond. It can be really hard to get a dialogue like this going, and I hope you don’t mind me continuing it a bit further (mostly since I realize, looking back, I could’ve done a lot better explaining what I meant).
Case in point: the hoop earrings. What I was trying to say is that the drawing isn’t a picture of Sarkeesian, it’s the Calgary Expo mascot. If you look up pictures of the Calgary Expo mascot, she actually has hoop earrings, hence why the artist drew her as such. The way you assume it to be a Sarkeesian caricature feels like it is coming purely from a perception that everyone associated with GamerGate demonizes Sarkeesian. In turn, this assumption makes you assume the picture is a drawing of Sarkeesian, adding further evidence to the belief.
I still really disagree about your usage of “seemingly”, but that’s more as a writer than as any sort of activist. Try calling a trans person “seemingly female” or “seemingly male” to their face and see how well they take it. It’s not going to be interpreted as a praise of how well they pass, but as a way to purposely avoid saying they *are* male/female. If Tieman’s video legitimately struck you as genuine, the best way to put it would’ve been calling it a “heartfelt video” with no qualifier. It would save a word and keep people like me from misinterpreting it as an underhanded suggestion that she may be faking emotions. Especially positioned at the beginning like that, it makes it hard to interpret the article as being particularly charitable toward Tieman.
I do agree with what you’re saying about people being held accountable for their actions; I apologize if I didn’t make that clear. But rather, I feel like there are very few points in the article where you are actually calling Tieman out on account of her actions. The very first negative claim you make about her is that by “standing up for men’s rights, she is balking the system that keeps women oppressed”, and later on you say that the problem with her isn’t anything expressed in her video, but that she “identifies with and takes money from a group that has been proven over and over that its sole purpose is to keep women out of the gaming industry”. The bulk of these claims are based off her self-identity rather than any specific actions she has committed. I mean, if her only contribution to GamerGate is taking their money, I daresay she’s done more damage to them than you have.
When the article does bring up claims against her specific actions, their justification feels very shaky. Like, you claim that she was actively trying to disrupt and derail a panel about women’s issues, but like I said, in that transcript she only speaks twice (and with permission), and the things she says are specifically *about* the empowerment of women. Similarly, the idea that she committed some ethical violation by registering in “stealth mode” doesn’t seem well-supported. I mean, I’m using an alias right now, but it’s not because I’m afraid I couldn’t post here otherwise – it’s because if I used my real name these comments would likely get swamped with people viciously picking apart every nuance of your article. A few years back I basically destroyed a lesser-known writer’s career by criticizing them publicly, and I don’t want to risk subjecting you to that. When Tieman says that she registered under her real name to keep outside parties from hassling the organizers, I can understand that. After all, she DID manage to get the registration name changed before conbadges were printed, all without problem or objection.
As such, when I draw parallels between your rhetoric and GamerGate’s, it’s not on the basis that you’re both calling out corruption. Rather, it’s because your reasoning feels very loosely justified, in line with GamerGate’s “don’t trust her, she’s a feminist”. You decry Tieman for the people who look up to her more than you decry her actual views, which I think is a shame because many of them strike me as almost radically feminist. I mean, in her video she actually says that she became a Men’s Rights Activist because she wanted to steward and take responsibility for another group; essentially, she wants to be in control of these men, and she does a good enough job that they don’t object. If anything, the ease with which she can gain respect and express fundamentally feminist ideas in groups that “hate women and feminism” is an argument against those very claims. Yet, that all gets reduced to “she’s GamerGate, so she’s bad”.
Like the earrings in the drawing, it feels like a lot of the opinions you attribute to her stem more from your perceptions of GamerGate/MRAs than things she actually expressed. You accuse her of wanting to silence people who advocate inclusivity in games, accuse her of calling it oppressive to ask for equal treatment, and say she knowingly joined a hate group, all without much basis in her actual expressed views. To use your own phrasing, it feels like an argument with a completely different person. So many of your statements pivot on her self-identity that I’m left wondering what you would think of her if she said all the same things but called herself a feminist.
As for whether or not feminism should empower all women or just some, I can understand your position but I think it is something I do fundamentally disagree on. The way I see it, feminism is about the empowerment of ALL women: pretty, ugly, smart, dumb, have a dick, or even are a dick. That doesn’t mean giving them automatic credibility, but it does mean recognizing that there are culturally ingrained ideas about how women should be treated that we need to consciously stand against. In particular, women are more likely to have their emotions viewed as a manipulation tactic, be disallowed from joking statements lest they be taken seriously, and be berated for showing power over others, all of which your article seemingly exemplifies. When you limit feminism’s empowerment to some women, I see it as essentially weaponizing patriarchy against the ones you dislike. If they don’t hold the right beliefs, then things that would traditionally be called out as gendered microaggressions are seen as perfectly permissible.
I do apologize if this reply seems overly critical. But speaking as one activist to another, I think it’s important to bear in mind that you have a greater reason to try and understand people like Tieman than people like Tieman have to try and understand you. In Alexa rating, income, and so on, Tieman’s organization is significantly larger than yours. To understand and be able to communicate with them or people who agree with them would be a huge advantage for you and your causes, whereas her making an effort to understand you would convey little benefit.
I’ve never been fond of that modern idea that anyone who believes in gender equality is a “feminist”. As far as I’m concerned, a feminist is someone who actively works to spread feminist ideas, and anyone who wears the label without doing that is just dead weight. Given the content of the article, I think it would be very beneficial for you and our cause to reach out to Tieman directly and try to resolve your feelings/misunderstandings with her, perhaps even going on to share the unedited conversation. GamerGate people are usually really easy to get in contact with, and I’m sure she’d relish the opportunity to defend herself without having to single you out publicly and directly.
And if you look up the Calgary Expo mascot, the earrings are less prominent than in artist renderings post-Tieman, when they look more like Sarkeesian’s. That isn’t the point, however; the point is that anyone can read a symbol or image as they want, and you can agree or disagree. When the artists are playing with a variety of themes and touchstones, like the controversial Joker/Barbara Gordon cover, they invite such interpretations. You don’t have to agree; you can interpret differently, and we can discuss it and then go on our merry.
I think the reason why the transcript seems to many to demonstrate an attempt to derail the panel is that panels don’t usually work that way. Are panel participants going to say, when someone in the audience speaks up and asks to field a question, “No, sit down; that’s not your job?” They’d be in the right, technically, but also slaughtered. If Tieman wants to be on a panel, she should submit a panel. That’s my interpretation. I definitely read the transcript, and the audio recording, such as it is, as derailing and inappropriate; people are not there to hear Tieman, but the panelists. As she says herself in drawing the comic she wants to see, she should also submit the panel she wants to attend. That’s how these things work.
But in the end, while we can discuss, we have different interpretations. In mine, I don’t see critique of Tieman’s actions as taking away her power; certainly, she has a platform and an audience, and she seems to be doing something with it. I don’t agree with her take on things, but my disagreement doesn’t diminish her power. I’m not sure I follow that aspect of your argument here. I should not criticize her because she’s a woman and I should blatantly support all women? I mean, not to be hyperbolic, but no. I won’t blindly support all anything, whether we share a gender identity or a movement or anything else. I appreciate the work Anita Sarkeesian does, but I criticize it, too, when I think it falls short. Does that make me anti-feminist, or a thinking person? I would say the latter.
As for all this about audience and cause and reach… I’m not really sure where you’re going with that. We’re not here to build a massive platform or even to gain a necessarily wider audience. I don’t think any of us expect that and certainly we are not seeking e-celeb status (who wants that baggage?). We’re academics. Academics are by nature not usually in the spotlight, except for a spare few, and they’re welcome to it. We are just here in our spot, doing our thing; you are free to read it and and engage or not, but we expect nothing more. If she makes more money than we do? Uh, well, good for her… most people make more money than academics. Business as usual, and not really relevant to any discussion, including this one.
Thanks for the reply. I can see where you’re coming from on the earrings and panel disruption, though I still feel like it contributes to an overall feeling of bias in the article where everything Tieman or her associates do is given the most malicious interpretation possible. Tieman speaking at that length in a public panel may have been usual for that sort of panel, but I give her credit for at least stopping when asked (a criteria I personally use when labeling stuff like stalking). I admit I might be a little biased when it comes to that panel, as I’ve been in situations where people have made a casual remark about feminism and I’ve done the same thing. “I belong to this group, and I can explain that a little”. It’s unorthodox, perhaps, but in most cases ultimately appreciated.
I don’t mind people criticizing Tieman and I think she is definitely worth criticing in some regards, but I feel that far too much of the criticism here is based on her identity. While like you said, personal interpretations may vary, the logical jumps here between “this is what she identifies as” and “this is what she believes” seem rather undefended, and many of the statements made about her intentions are exact things I have seen decried as misogynistic when said about women who identify as feminists. If you are going to say things this similar to the claims GamerGate has made about women, they NEED to come with stronger justification than is presented here. As is, it falls flat and makes it seem like the claims are rooted purely in bias.
On the topic of reach, I concede I may be the one utterly biased there as an academic-turned-celebrity. I guess my own personal transformation on that stemmed from the realization that academia was often disconnected from the people disseminating it. It wasn’t enough for me to be knowledgeable and educated in an ivory tower when celebrities were down below deciding what people actually believed. I had to get dirty, forget how to think like an academician, and learn to communicate with the masses, because otherwise they’d be controlled by those I disagreed with.
I cannot say if Layne is right or wrong in her article, but I can say she is unconvincing. Pieces like this are the kind of thing that makes my job harder, as people will bring it up as justification when they speculate ulterior motives behind women’s harassment claims or “read between the lines” on some feminist’s statement. While you might not be an “e-celeb”, you’re still presenting public pieces to a general audience and have to be careful that your effect is positive and not negative. Nobody is going to read this article and agree with you unless they already agreed with you, but I expect at least one person out there read it and became your opponent.
It’s why I really stand by this idea that she needs to reach out to people like Tieman and figure out where these disagreements lie, not write empty speculative pieces that seem rooted in bias. People are going to see this, and they may come to support or oppose you and I based on its content. Stuff like this needs to be killer and on-point, understanding Tieman like a map, hitting her claims and behaviors with specificity, and scrubbed of any lines that could be refuted by a reader’s personal experiences. You’re not in college doing this for a grade; your success or failure will, however slightly, decide what people think of feminism as a cause and how myself and others are treated in real life.
Ok, my remarks will be brief, and will be my last. I admire the notion that feminism is about freedom and support/empowerment of every single woman. However, in practice, it doesn’t always work that way. On this thread, for example, you are not empowering or supporting me, and I am a woman, thus you would not fit your definition of feminist. Further, I find it incredibly un-feminist and disturbing that you destroyed someone’s career.
You are obviously trying to threaten me into agreeing with you. I feel very sorry for you that you feel so threatened by my post that you need to respond that way. I stand by my post being fact-based and not full of insults, threats, or anything like that. You may disagree with my conclusions, want me to go about it another way, or anything else. That’s fine. But I will not respond to someone who is threatening to “destroy” my career. I will not be intimidated or bullied by you. Your thinly veiled threats will not keep me from calling out unethical behavior as I see it, even when that behavior is done by a woman. This is my last post on the matter.
I’m not threatening you, and I apologize if it came across that way. Rather, I am stating that there are reasons someone would use an alias other than trying to get somewhere they shouldn’t be. When I harmed this other writer’s career, it wasn’t intentional- it happened because I was new to fame and didn’t understand that my criticisms of him would carry further than anything he could say himself.
Having reach is very dangerous, and that’s part of the reason I think it’s very important to talk to people like Tieman directly and privately before writing about them or speculating about their motivations. Any time a public back-and-forth happens, it’s happening at major risk to the smaller party. Here, the smaller party is you, so it’s not like Tieman can publicly reply to this without risking damage to your reputation. She might have the right to do so, but I doubt she’d be willing, meaning an entire article of speculation about her and her motives will likely remain pure speculation.
None the less, I do thank you for your time. Even if we couldn’t find common ground, it was refreshing to share thoughts without the spectacle that usually comes with it.