Racist Idiots Continue To Be Mad That Caitlin Clark Is Not Racist, Part II

A few years ago, I flagged a fun phenomenon afflicting WNBA superstar Caitlin Clark. You see, as a White superstar in a league with many Black players, racist idiots really wanted Caitlin Clark to be racist. And when she declined, they got very mad at her.

This week, as teammate Sophie Cunningham more explicitly positioned herself as the darling of the right-wing grievance crowd, the knives are back out for Caitlin Clark.

It's hilarious how Walsh doesn't even consider the possibility that Clark doesn't think she's been subjected to "anti-white racism." The only explanation for her reticence to name it is that she's a coward. Likewise, it does not strike me as out of character that a fierce competitor like Clark is uninterested in bawling about how hypothetical trans competitors will be just too good for her to handle. But of course Walsh can't comprehend that a woman might actually have a bit of pride in her basketball abilities such that she doesn't fear open competition. Surely Clark must know she's an inferior, right? Right?

What this reminds me of, incidentally, is a story I've told a few times about how certain "allies" react to my account being Jewish at Berkeley. They start with the assumption that Berkeley is an antisemitic hellhole and come ready to lend aid and comfort to a Jew like me who must have suffered terribly during my time there. But to their surprise, I tell them that this wasn't my experience, and while it certainly wasn't an idyllic paradise and I won't speak for anyone else at a huge campus like UC-Berkeley, I generally was quite comfortable as a Jew there. And this response is infuriating, and my would-be "ally" turns on me with a vengeance, convinced that only a spineless, self-hating Jew would refuse to confirm their narrative about pervasive Berkeley antisemitism.

And then they wonder why folks like me don't recognize them as the true allies of the Jews.

Clark is going through the same thing. A bunch of right-wing white knights ride out on her behalf to defend against the terrible mistreatment and oppression she labors under. Clark demurs, indicating that this is not her experience and not a description she identifies with. And then her would-be saviors savage her for her impertinence -- she's a coward, she's spineless, she's a race traitor. No doubt, they will continue to wonder why Clark doesn't view them as her buddies.

Rats Flee Floating Ship

You might have heard the story break that the Heritage Foundation, America's leading right wing "think tank", has just been hit with a rush of high-level resignations across several key programs. The resignations were precipitated by Heritage's president, Kevin Roberts, legitimizing the rise in antisemitism explicit antisemitism even more explicit antisemitism on the mainstream right by ostentatiously defending Tucker Carlson friendly interview with neo-Nazi extremist Nick Fuentes.

(Among those resigning is Josh Blackman, and I have to say, caring about other Jews makes a nice change of pace for him).

The scope of the resignations has understandably led folks to frame the events as "turmoil" at Heritage, and there's no doubt they're losing a lot of big names who have decided that Heritage's increasingly open embrace of open nativism and ethnic supremacy is too much for them. And the natural thing to conclude in the wake of such turmoil and disarray is that Roberts has made a major strategic error; failing to recognize that even now there are some things that are still "too far" for even the most hardened conservative loyalist.

But l disagree with that take. To the contrary, I think Roberts is right. This was no blunder, this was strategy, and Roberts is absolutely going to be vindicated in the end.

Now, obviously, when I say Roberts is right -- he's not morally right. He's morally abominable; his positions, reprehensible. But that goes without saying; if he was morally upstanding, he wouldn't be leading the Heritage Foundation.

No, what I mean is, Roberts is right in his assessment of where the conservative movement is going and what it wants. No matter how august their titles and pedigrees, the people departing are not going to cripple Heritage; they will not dim its star in the least. Heritage will be able to replenish it ranks just fine (it helps that mediocrity is not a barrier to success there), and its influence in the halls of conservative power will not wane.

Roberts has calculated that open embrace of White nationalism and nativism is the ticket to success in the contemporary conservative movement. I think he is right in that wager. It is the same calculation made by J.D. Vance -- a man whose completely venal lack of principles makes him, if nothing else, a useful barometer of how the right-wing winds are blowing -- when he jumps all in on White supremacist bullhorns. Roberts knows full well what young Republicans truly think, and what they truly think is that they hate Jews, think Hitler is underrated, revel in being called racist, believe women should get back in the kitchen, and think anyone who isn't a "heritage American" has no rights the white man is bound to respect. These people -- the new GOP base -- will not follow their elders in fleeing Heritage. To the contrary, they will be even more excited to join forces with it.

This is the Republican Party's present and future, and Roberts is making a calculated decision to get out in front of it. It's not surprise that one of the staffers rising to fill the power vacuum after all this is E.J. Antoni, he of the creepy love affair for an iconic Nazi battleship. Antoni's Nazi fascination is exactly what Roberts is looking for, because it's exactly what contemporary conservatism is looking for. The people who don't like it? They're yesterday's conservatives. Their departures mean nothing.

So I suspect that the Heritage refugees will find that, their years of slavish service to the conservative cause notwithstanding, they are now functional irrelevancies. They're not going to pull a Bill Kristol and have a late-stage redemption arc. They're not going to have meaningful influence or clout in contemporary conservative circles either, as they no doubt fantasize. They'll be nobodies. Some will rage impotently against the dying of the light, some will quietly choose to fade away. Some number will, if past history is any guide, come sheepishly crawling back into the fold -- the fate of many a "NeverTrumper" whose "principled" opposition was actually pure opportunism that sadly misread the prevailing political winds. None of them will do much of anything to alter or even ameliorate the tsunami of racist, nativist, antisemitic, and misogynist antagonism that is the sole driving force of the modern conservative movement.

So yeah -- don't see this as the Heritage Foundation being torn asunder. This is the Heritage Foundation perceiving the new conservative normal -- a normal of unapologetic authoritarianism, atavistic ethnic hatred, gutter racism, smirking antisemitism, and vicious nativism -- and deciding it wants to be at the vanguard.

Anti-DEI's "What About the Men!" Problem

There's a WaPo article going around titled "Trump’s attack on DEI may hurt college men, particularly White men". The basic thrust of it is that women are considerably more likely to apply to (elite) colleges than men, and moreover women have for some time now outperformed men on the "traditional" metrics of collegiate qualification (grades and standardized test scores). Anybody in the know knows that colleges seeking to maintain some measure of gender parity in their admitted classes have put their thumbs on the scale in pursuit of qualified men. But the Trump anti-DEI initiatives nominally prohibit such behavior, meaning that if "meritocratic" admissions policies yield overwhelmingly female classes, well, that's the way it'll have to be.

This headline, unsurprisingly, has yielded no small amount of schadenfreude among liberal observers -- once again, Trump's leopards eat the faces of his loyal supporters. But to that there's been another response from more conservative voices challenging the framing: if Trump's anti-DEI measures "hurt men", then it must mean that the prior pro-DEI measures "hurt women". As a colleague at another school put it after making this point: "Everyone fine with that?"

That was a rhetorical question, of course. But I think answering it earnestly might yield some insight.

Assume we buy the basic premise here: DEI helps men and hurts women; anti-DEI hurts men and helps women. The punch of the Post's article stems, I think, from two following observations:

1. Many conservative initiatives aimed at propping up men who are underperforming on traditional metrics do not, on face, comport with "anti-DEI" principles (and their conservative proponents don't seem to realize this); and
2. Many feminists and women who support DEI initiatives do so notwithstanding the fact that men may be among their primary beneficiaries.

Both of these observations deserve a deeper dive.

Start with the first. Again, it is an open secret that colleges have been putting their thumbs on the scale to help bring in more male applicants and matriculants. Sometimes their rationales are pure sexism -- Chris Rufo, for instance, admitted that many of his "reforms" at the New College were expressly designed to reduce the number of women who enrolled (comments which, I'll repeat, really should be smoking gun evidence of sex discrimination in the event of a lawsuit). More broadly, there is a cottage industry of conservative pundits pushing the line that society discriminates against men, is structured to disadvantage men, does not adequately value the contributions of men, and these injustices are what explains men's seeming underperformance. The "thumb on the scale" is actually a mechanism to compensate for these deeper inequalities. 

Now, sometimes these accounts are, as in the Rufo case, simple misogyny. But I don't want to say it's always wrong to look at gendered barriers men might face and think of ways to counteract or ameliorate them. The problem, though, is that these narratives of male disenfranchisement and the earnest efforts to reverse them are no different in form from the "DEI" logic conservatives claim to abhor -- problematizing disparities in outcomes that, on a superficial level, appear explainable by "merit" and instead treating the disparity itself as a problem needing remediation. A few weeks ago, I saw a Facebook post where the University of Chicago announced that all the EiCs of its law journals were women. An alum replied angrily that this outcome must be the product of DEI and "wokeness", because statistically what are the odds that women would occupy all the top journal roles? I snickered at this, because her jeremiad was actually a cry for proportional representation; the hitherto conservative boogeyman roundly mocked when it is used to demonstrate bias against women or minorities. But of course when it's men who fall on the wrong side of the line, then statistical underrepresentation is smoking gun proof of a Capital-P Problem. The inconsistency is glaring.

So the first observation really does just boil down to sexism -- though sometimes with a few extra steps. What of the second? The logic that, if you're giving a leg up to men for scarce admissions slots there are some marginal women who would be admitted but now will not be, certainly has purchase. And so one could understand if women, or feminist advocates, reacted strongly against such programs as tantamount to sex discrimination against women. Yet observationally, this doesn't seem to be the case. Some women, no doubt, oppose these initiatives, but it does not seem like women or feminists by and large are opposed to collegiate initiatives aimed at propping up the number of male students in attendance. What do we derive from that?

It seems that, contra the bald assertion that DEI programs must inherently be understood as injuring the class that is not the direct beneficiary, in at least some cases the overrepresented group does not perceive such programs as harmful or injurious to their interests. Perhaps they, too, take on a broader view of how colleges ought to assess "merit" than just grades and test scores. Perhaps they think the various programs targeted at men genuinely are ameliorating gendered blind spots in who and what we value as a society. Or perhaps they simply don't prefer to attend colleges that are overwhelmingly homogenous, even (or especially) when they're the in-group (one can certainly understand why at least some women -- at least those enrolling in coeducational institutions -- might not prefer a university student body that's 66%+ female). Whatever the reason, it seems that many women do not see the issue the way conservatives believe they should (or must).

Here, I'm reminded of a post I wrote in 2018 about Gail Heriot, who was arguing that feminists should oppose the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Heriot's contention was that feminists support many sex-conscious programs, but the ERA -- if interpreted in parallel with the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to demand a "sex-blind" constitution -- would strike most of these programs down. From this, she saw only two possibilities: either feminists don't actually support the ERA, or they don't actually care if these sex-conscious programs survive. I pointed out that Heriot seemed to entirely miss Door #3: feminists don't understand the meaning of "equality" in the ERA's text to preclude all sex-conscious programs. If the same people who support the ERA also support sex-conscious initiatives, that's strong evidence that the apparent public meaning of the ERA's "equality" language is not sex-blindness. Yet Heriot seemingly just could not process that the people might understand "equality" different from the prevailing conservative ideological predilections -- a pretty searing indictment of originalism in practice, when you think about it.

So to answer my colleague's question earnestly: while no, not everyone is "fine" with colleges making conscious efforts to try and bring in more men, many people are, including many women and many feminist advocates. They are fine with it for many reasons, ranging from their own desire to attend schools that are relatively sex-balanced, to an earnest belief that there might be certain gendered barriers to men (or certain men) pursuing higher education that a college can justly try to mitigate. I'm not saying this view is necessarily correct, but we have to take seriously that it seems to be one many people hold, even if it doesn't comport with a particular, conservative vision of how we all "should" understand equality, meritocracy, and the virtues or vices of "DEI" programs.

The Conservative Experiment at New College is Failing on Easy Mode

I'll admit: when Ron DeSantis and Christopher Rufo announced their intention to convert the New College of Florida into a conservative indoctrination camp, I thought they might succeed. Not just in the enshrining conservative orthodoxy part, but in doing so while maintaining or increasing New College's numbers along traditional metrics of academic excellence.

Simply put, the New College is a small place (fewer than 700 students). And so my logic was straight-forward: are there 700 young conservatives with reasonably good test scores who are eager to devote their college experience to a crusade in owning the libs? Probably! Especially given the largesse that undoubtedly would be funneled to them by the DeSantis administration in support! And given the high profile of DeSantis' and Rufo's machinations, it would be easy to attract that sort of young right-wing zealot to the New College campus. Any right-wing culture warrior who would find this sort of endeavor appealing no doubt would have heard of the New College and what's being done there, and would quickly put it at the top of their application list.

The problem, I thought, was always going to be one of scalability. Sure there may be 700 such students who could make the New College experiment into a "success". But are there 10,000? 100,000? The factors which would make the New College experiment work could not be replicated across the education sector as a whole. Try this at the University of Florida and you'd just have the academic wrecking ball of mass faculty departures and an enraged student body, and nothing to show for it. So my prediction would be that some of the "cream of the crop" currently going to Liberty or Patrick Henry might redirect themselves to the New College, thus giving a false impression that there was untapped demand for the product Rufo was selling, and then we'd have to explain that redistributing the small set of baby conservative crusaders is not actually evidence of a plan that can work at scale.

But it turns out I was still giving Rufo and DeSantis too much credit. Because the early returns are in, and while they've certainly done a number in terms of destroying the New College's academic reputation and standing (over a third of the faculty have departed, alongside dozens of transferring students), the new crop of students coming in are actually less impressive than those the college attracted before the takeover.

Rufo speaks a lot about academic excellence and the virtues of a classical liberal education. But as Steven Walker of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in a damning July story, the incoming class recruited by the new administration has lower average grades, SAT scores and ACT scores than last year’s class. “Much of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school’s $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships,” wrote Walker.

With all the publicity, and all the conservative cheerleading, and all the momentum of the right's latest culture war, the New College couldn't even attract a few hundred talented right-wing youth to create the impression of a successful reform? Hilarious.

And it gets better. Rufo defends the recruitment of underperforming athletes on the grounds that -- wait for it -- there are too many ladies at the New College.

Rather than reviving some traditional model of academic excellence, then, it looks as though New College leaders are simply trying to replace a culture they find politically hostile with one meant to be more congenial. The end of gender studies and the special treatment given to incoming athletes are part of the same project, masculinizing a place that had been heavily feminist, artsy and queer. When I spoke to Rufo last weekend, he offered several explanations for New College’s new emphasis on sports, including the classical idea that a healthy body sustains a healthy mind. But an important part of the investment in athletics, he said, is that it is a way to make New College more male and, by extension, less left wing.

In the past, about two-thirds of New College’s students were women. “This is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems,” said Rufo. Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into “what many have called a social justice ghetto.” The new leadership, he said, is “rebalancing the ratio of students” in the hopes of ultimately achieving gender parity.

But gender parity is not necessarily compatible with a pure academic meritocracy, which Rufo claims to prize. Women are outpacing men in education in many parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Hungary, nearly 55 percent of university students are women, leading the government to warn about the “feminization” of higher education. Selective American colleges tend to have more female than male applicants; to maintain something approaching a gender balance, some have adopted lower standards for men. In other words, it often takes deliberate intervention — one might call it affirmative action — to create a student body in which women don’t predominate. New College isn’t jettisoning gender ideology. It’s just adopting a different one.

Oh buddy, I hope upon hope someone sues the New College for sex discrimination based on these passages. 

It's entirely appropriate to call Rufo's endeavors an affirmative action program for men. And while the SFFA opinion is about race-based affirmative action, even before that case conservative lower courts had been reflexively applying their affirmative action skepticism to sex-based programs (for example, in Vitolo v. Guzman, the 6th Circuit struck down preferences for women in COVID relief programs using essentially identical analysis to why it struck down race-based preferences). The logic of SFFA should, if fairly applied (I know, I know: that's one hell of a caveat), cover a case like this as well.

But even absent SFFA, the sex discrimination here is worse than a standard affirmative action case. Not only does the quoted language from Rufo suggest that the New College's decisions were taken "because of, not in spite of", the effect they'd have on women, they also demonstrate that explicit hostility to women -- a belief that too many women leads to "a social justice ghetto" and creates "cultural problems" -- was a motivating factor in the decision. This is far more powerful evidence of discriminatory intent than one would find in, say, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology case (where race-neutral changes to admissions policies were alleged to be motivated by discriminatory animus against Asians). Even defenders of affirmative action have never agreed that an affirmative action program could be justified by disdain for the overrepresented class. And one would struggle to find a more overt admission of misogynistic motivations than what one has here -- all in the service of further degrading the New College's academic quality in service of an ideological indoctrination effort.

There's still time for Rufo to, er, "right ship". If you dump enough money and resources into the New College, it will attract students no matter how bad its academic reputation gets. A lavishly funded subsidy program for right-wing kids really should be able to find an audience even if it's being run by incompetents.

But for now, this is just delightfully embarrassing. What a joke.

UPDATE: I believe it's paywalled, but this article has a lot more detail on the utter chaos that's overtaken the New College as it prepares for the next academic year.

When The Worst Person You Know is the Victim of Unjustifiable Cruelty

There's a lot of making fun of Bethany Mandel right now. On the whole, it is entirely deserved. I've partaken myself. I have no particular sympathy for the idea that she deserves kid-glove treatment when she bombs on live television. She's a public figure who made a high-profile screw up in her effort to promote greater histrionic racist fearmongering. She can take her lumps.

That said, in all such matters there are things that should be out-of-bounds. Attacking her for being an observant Jew would seemingly be one. Attacking her for being the victim of sexual abuse is an obvious second. And yet. In the course of a larger bid to give Mandel "some more of that sweet sweet publicity she so craves," Paul Campos includes a passage that I think is clearly one of horrific, unjustifiable cruelty no matter who the target is.

.... Bethany has been pumping out lots of Orthodox babies at an impressive rate: six is the current count I believe (Her father was Jewish, her mother was Catholic, and she converted to Orthodox Judaism when she married Seth. During the conversion process, her rabbi used a hidden camera to film her while she prepared for the ritual baths Orthodox women are required to take to wash away all those cooties).

I thought about just ignoring this -- it's not my blog, I have no connection to Campos, and I certainly have no interest in white knighting for Bethany Mandel. But really, this is gross, and it needs to be called out as gross without letting it pass. In context of an entire blog post dedicated to making fun of Mandel, bringing in the fact that she was the victim of terrible abuse by a trusted spiritual advisor is entirely gratuitous and cruel. It is not presented in any way that suggests this fact is different from all the other facts Campos musters regarding why Mandel is worthy of contempt.  To the contrary, it is presented as yet another reason to mock and look down on Mandel, as part of a broader (and also appalling) narrative of contempt geared at Orthodox Jews. We should never treat sexual abuse that way. Never. No matter who the victim is. Nor should we tolerate this sort of antipathy at any religious community -- again, no matter who the target is.

So yeah. There are so many great reasons to look poorly on Bethany Mandel. She offers new ones virtually everyday. Given that bounty of options, if you decide to pick out that she was the victim of sexual exploitation as part of your bouquet, that says some truly shocking things about your character far more than hers. Don't do this.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXII: Women Attending College

You might have heard the (latest) terrible news from Afghanistan, where the Taliban has enacted a ban on women attending college.

Now, I say "terrible news". But if you're Tyler Russell -- a White supremacist sporting an "America First" cap (ironic, given that he's Canadian!) -- you call it a "step in the right direction." Why? Since women only attend college because they're being "tricked by Jews".

Female education: a Jewish plot! Once again, our enemies sometimes seem to say far nicer things about us than our friends do!

(Dear readers: not only did my wife go to college, that's where I met her! Does that make me an apex trickster?)

Are States Allowed to Murder Pregnant Women? Views Differ!

One of the Biden Administration's responses to the Dobbs decision was to issue an interpretation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that basically says doctors have to provide necessary medical care to pregnant persons in emergency situations -- including abortion care, if that is necessary to protect the mother's life or health. Since EMTALA is a federal law, it would preempt state laws which purport to prohibit abortion care in those circumstances.

Consequently, various red states have sued to vindicate their sovereign entitlement to require by law that hospitalized pregnant patients be left to die even when their life could easily be saved by surgical intervention. Two courts, one in Texas and the other in Idaho, have now opined on the Biden executive order. They've split in their decision -- the former striking down the new guidance, the latter upholding it and preempting Idaho law to the extent it conflicts with the guidance.

The belief that Dobbs would remove the judiciary from the thicket of deciding abortion cases was always a mirage (if it was believed at all). It just changes what courts will have to decide. Right now, they're deciding whether states are allowed to require, under pain of criminal penalty, that pregnant women and girls be maimed or killed when their bodies and lives could be easily saved. And as we're seeing, on that novel legal question, "views differ". Such is the burden of having a uterus in the post-Dobbs world.

Making Non-Oppressive Speech Unspeakable

I have a thought (sketched below), which I'm curious as to your views. Specifically, is this thought an at all interesting or novel thought (obviously even if it is either/both it would still need to be fleshed out in much more detail/rigor)? So please read the below and let me know if I'm on to anything.

I recently reread Rae Langton's legendary "Speech Acts and Unspeakable Acts" article, and it got me thinking about a case I'm not sure has been fully discussed (related to but also different from what Langton is talking about): one where structural oppression (misogyny, racism, antisemitism) causes an illocutionary misfire by making it impossible (or at least far more difficult) to express an "innocent" thought (one that, in of itself, presents a legitimate argument that does not depend on or appeal to misogyny, racism, antisemitism, etc.) without it actually being misogynistic/racist/antisemitic/what have you.

Some examples to illustrate the problem:

(a) Tim is a defense attorney, representing a client who is charged with sexual assault. He client admits that he had sexual contact with the accuser, but insists that she expressly consented and that she's falsely accusing him now. Tim wants to make this defense, without in any way imputing that women generally lie about sexual assault or that the accuser is lying because she's a woman. Nonetheless, he knows that making this argument will, despite his best efforts, be heard by many as making such a claim; and worse, he knows his defense is more likely to be taken up by a jury precisely because it "appeals" (again, in spite of his own intentions) to this misogyny.

(b) Paula is a politician. She believes that most social ills on the planet -- from Colombia to Colorado to Gaza to Georgia -- are attributable a global class of ultra-rich capitalists, who promote a system that profits them while immiserating others. By "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" she does not in any way mean Jews; she does not argue that Jews are especially likely to be part of this class or that this class has any particular connection to Jews. Nonetheless, she knows that talking about the "global class of ultra-rich capitalists" will be heard by many to talking about Jews (especially when, as will be periodically be the case, when the proximate subject of her ire does happen to be Jewish), and worse, she knows that her political pitch is more likely to be taken up by the public precisely because it "appeals" to this antisemitism.

In both cases, Tim and Paula have an intention regarding what they want their speech to do (or more accurately, not do) -- they want it to not subordinate women/Jews, make accusations against women/Jews, denigrate women/Jews, and so on. In both cases, their speech plausibly will defy their intent and "do" what it's supposed to not do anyway. In both cases, it would be difficult if not impossible to avoid having the speech taken up in the way they do not desire (note that merely disclaiming -- "Just to be clear, when I make this argument I am not talking about 'women'/'Jews'" -- probably wouldn't work: if anything, it sounds like protesting-too-much; it may make the problem worse). In both cases, all of this happens despite the fact that we could not say that the actual intended thought (this accuser is being untruthful; there are rich people who bolster a global unjust system) is one that should be out-of-bounds per se. And in both cases, the unavoidable-undesired misfire actually aids in the direct desired end result -- the unintended misogyny makes it more likely the jury will conclude that this woman was lying about her claim; the unintended antisemitism makes it more likely that the citizenry will believe that the global system is controlled by an elite global ultra-wealthy class.

Notice how this problem eludes some normal attempts to resolve it. We already mentioned that one can't just disclaim the bad intent. Here are a few more possible resolutions that I don't think work: 

(a) Sometimes people dismiss cases like what I'm talking about by claiming, in essence, that because there's no bad intent and because the literal content is innocent, any inference of misogyny/antisemitism is invented or made in bad faith -- "you're just hearing things that aren't there." But that's not quite right -- while it's true that the inference of bad intent may be mistaken, the listeners are in fact hearing something real -- they're aware of and identifying the likely reasons for the idea being taken up by the audience. That's not invented! Likewise, telling the putatively aggrieved group to grow a thicker skin misses the mark -- the problem isn't really with how *they* understand the speech, but with how the speech is taken up in society writ large; their negative reaction is based on accurately identifying the illocutionary misfire that's in process. Even if the speaker was trying not to say anything about Jews, and even if the Jews agreed that the speaker was indeed not trying to speak of Jews, neither of those facts would do anything to affect whether non-Jews were taking up the speech to be about Jews. 

(b) On the other side, we can't reduce the problem to being "unintentionally" misogynist/antisemitic. The problem runs deeper -- it's that certain innocent ideas which it may well be *important* to express become impossible to express without triggering the misogyny/antisemitism problem. It becomes "unspeakable" to critique an international elite of ultra-rich individuals without attacking Jews. One hears glimmers of this in the frustration some people have surrounding "trope" discourse -- *everything* is a trope, they say, and this ends up indiscriminately capturing innocent arguments. And they're right! But they're wrong to infer that this is because of bad faith or seeing things that aren't there. It rather suggests that the ubiquity of structural oppression renders legitimate arguments in certain domains unspeakable insofar as they are intended to be spoken sans a hook with the oppression. Which seems like a serious problem. 

(c) Sometimes people frame this serious problem by saying something like "claims of racism/misogyny/antisemitism" are silencing. But that isn't actually what's happening here -- it's not the claim but the reality of racism/misogyny/antisemitism that's doing the "silencing" (that is, by converting the "innocent" statement so that, against the speaker's intention, it is publicly understood to mean something else and the speaker's actual thought becomes unexpressable). One thing misogyny does is that it makes it so that certain (typically negative) talk that is not meant to be about women-as-a-class is publicly understood to be -- and is accepted as -- indeed about women-as-a-class. It is because there are powerful misogynist narratives about women lying about sexual assault that an attempt to specifically claim this-woman-Jane-Smith-is-lying-about-this-incident unavoidably becomes imbricated with the broader misogynistic narrative, whether the speaker wants it to or not (and whether Jane Smith the individual IS being untruthful about this incident or not).

So: am I thinking a remotely interesting thought here?

Bots and Nots in the Sanders Sib Community

Twitter protestations notwithstanding, I find it wholly plausible that Russian bots masquerading as Bernie supporters are the culprits behind some of the toxic online abuse that goes out under the pro-Bernie flag.

And contra some, I don't think that this means that the Russians are "backing Sanders" in any meaningful respect. This is a chaos play -- it's a way of sowing division; there's no implied commitment to any underlying policy preference. When Russian trolls simultaneously promoted both pro- and anti-Muslim rights rallies, it was not because they couldn't decide which side of the issue they fell on. The chaos was, and is, the point (although Sanders' backers could stand to reflect as to why his campaign represents such an alluring vector for sowing mistrust).

However. Being a Democrat who is under the age of 35, I know plenty of Bernie Sanders supporters. The majority of them are normal, pleasant people who are supporting their preferred candidate in normal, pleasant ways.

But I've certainly seen a contingent -- not a majority, but a vocal one -- of the Sanders supporters I know who do endorse or at least excuse the sort of abusive behavior and toxic conspiracy-mongering that Sanders himself has long repudiated. I know this culture is real, and not just a case of bots, because I see people who I know are real partake in it.

The recent story of the Bernie Sanders staffer whose private Twitter account was brimming with vicious, brutal, often misogynistic attacks on rival candidates provides a case in point. This was disgusting behavior, and the Sanders campaign to its credit immediately canned the staffer once it went public.

But many of Bernie's supporters, instead of taking the easy route of "wow, this was terrible stuff -- I'm glad he was fired!", instead elected to pile on the reporter for covering the story at all. The preferred objection -- and I saw this from multiple people who I know are real flesh-and-blood humans -- is that because the account was a private one, the staffer's remarks could not be harassment.

There are, to be sure, indications in the article that the staffer also might have been anonymously responsible for other instances of insults and invective that were made through public channels. But leave that aside. The "it's not harassment if it's a private channel" would be a pedantic objection under the best of circumstances -- yes, it's true that Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren themselves weren't in a position to see the tweets, but nobody is under any illusions as to how "private" messages of abuse circulated to campaign backers the vast majority of whose accounts are not private contributes to a culture of abuse and maltreatment.

It is normal, and not strange, for internet harassment campaigns to begin with and by nurtured by conversations on sites and fora where the vast majority of posts are not intended to be and likely never will be seen by the putative target. The reason that these conversations on reddit or 4chan or wherever nonetheless matter isn't because the objects of their hatred could theoretically read them. It's because of what they precipitate out -- "private" conversations where edgelording and abuse and brinksmanship are encouraged and cheered on become the fermentation ground from which the "public" harassment springs. Eventually, someone takes it both seriously and literally.

And even if none of that were the case, the apologia still boils down to "he was only privately spreading misogynistic abuse (to 4,000 of his closest friends)." Is that really the hill people want to die on?

It was frankly shocking how many real-life people I know who, when confronted with objectively atrocious, grotesque, hateful behavior by a Sanders staffer, responded by trying to pooh-pooh the importance of the issue because technically it wasn't "harassment". On that note, while the article juxtaposes the staffer's behavior with Sanders' condemnation of online harassment and clearly considers the two to be part of the same family (which they are), it generally describes the posts as "toxic" or "abuse". The second paragraph is indicative:

But the private Twitter account of a newly promoted campaign staffer indicates that despite his condemnation of online harassment, at least some of the Vermont senator’s most toxic support is coming from inside the house.

Perhaps it is fair to say that the article is implying that the staffer's behavior is also harassment. But the nitpicking effort to reframe the issue as about the technical distinction between "harassment" versus purely private abuse -- as if that debate, even if it were resolved against the reporter, would reveal the greater evil here -- was terrible, if illustrating, to witness. It reflects not just the abusive culture itself, but the wider circle wherein the abuse is apologized for, denied, minimized, or viewed as a smear -- a form of toxicity that, if not as visceral as the direct offenders, nonetheless is a necessary auxiliary to it.

Not every Sanders supporter is a "Sanders Sib". The vast majority are normal, reasonable people who support Sanders in normal, reasonable ways. But the fact of the matter is that -- augmented by bots or not -- the cadre that has earned the Sanders Sib label has largely come by its toxic reputation honestly. They're not being framed. They're not being held to unreasonable standards. They have their reputation because of what they -- flesh and blood humans -- do, and tolerate, and excuse. I know it's not bots, because I've seen it from people who I know in real life.

It won't stop me from voting for Sanders if he is the nominee in November (among other reasons, even if I didn't care about substantive policy at all and my criteria for voting was solely "which candidate has the most toxic base of internet support", Sanders still would be orders of magnitude better than Trump). But I'm not going to pretend like reality isn't there.

Karlie Kloss is not her Brother-in-Law

*Project Runway spoilers*

For the past few years, my nickel description of Karlie Kloss -- Heidi Klum's replacement on Project Runway -- has been "she's a supermodel who married one of the good Kushners". Karlie's husband is Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law to you-know-who. But unlike her brother, Joshua is a public-and-proud Democrat, and Karlie too has not been shy about her progressive values. And Jared and his father were apparently real assholes to Karlie when she started dated Josh (I know, who would have guessed?).

This all shifted from "interesting trivia" to "very relevant" last night thanks to a comment by one designer on the most recent episode of Project Runway.

The challenge was to design a look for Karlie Kloss to wear to a fashion gala in Paris. Designer Tyler created a look that was ... not that. It looked old -- not "classic", just out-of-date. When it walked the runway, Jill and I remarked that it was not for Paris ... but maybe for the Kushners ("it looks like something Ivanka would wear", Jill said, not intending it as a compliment).

We thought we were being very snarky. But when Tyler ended up on the bottom and listened to the judges berating him that Karlie wouldn't wear this to Paris or Martha's Vineyard or anywhere else, he couldn't help himself. "Not even to dinner with the Kushners?", he said with a smirk.

Now, Jill and I did basically say exactly that too -- but we meant it to underscore how badly Tyler missed the mark in the challenge (which was not "dress Karlie Kloss to look like her obnoxious in-laws"). But Tyler clearly meant it, not quite as a defense, but as a jab -- a defensive clapback at Karlie for having the temerity to (fairly) criticize his look. It was a jaw-dropping moment, and after getting over the initial shock Kloss handled it with professionalism (which is to say, she proceeded to explain in exquisite and cutting detail why Tyler's look was garbage). Tyler ended up being eliminated, and for the record it was entirely deserved based solely on the merits. His look was terrible, he had struggled all season-long, and this wasn't the first time his mouth seemed to outpace his skills.

Tyler did apologize at the end of the episode. But there is a very popular take around the internet that he said nothing wrong. This reaction is typical:

The reaction shots show how how easy it must have been for all those fashion labels to go Nazi. This level of accountability is scandalous? https://t.co/Hm8nQb3EIN

— Corey Pein 😃🤑😐😩💀 (@coreypein) January 4, 2020

The idea is that Tyler was actually a bold truth-sayer, holding Karlie to account for ... what exactly? Her brother-in-law's politics? Why? She doesn't share them. She's never defended them. She's never given the slightest hint she's sympathetic to them. She's her own woman, with her own views (as, for that matter, is Joshua Kushner, who is of course not his brother either). Yet of course, that doesn't matter in the slightest, because misogyny. And it sickens me to see how many people seem to think they're boldly speaking truth-to-power when they reduce a woman to her male relatives.

Karlie Kloss is not her in-laws. She is her own person. If she herself has done wrong, call her out for that. But who her relatives are is not her wrong, and if you think smugly reminding Karlie Kloss that she's related to the Trump family as some sort of gotcha is anything other than a dick move you're telling on yourself far more than you are on her.

What To Do With The Two Truths About Kamala Harris

Ever since Kamala Harris prematurely ended her once-promising presidential bid, I've seen a host of progressive takes making roughly the same claim about two simultaneous "truths":

1. There are plenty of legitimate reasons not to have preferred Senator Harris as one's number one candidate; and
2. Senator Harris was held to a higher and more unforgiving standard because of her race and sex.

And indeed, both of these things are true. Obviously, people are allowed to have policy beliefs that align with other candidates more than Senator Harris. And equally obviously, racism, misogyny, and misogynoir also factor in to how people weigh various issues and commitments in assessing the different candidates, as well as in governing how people move along the spectrum of "not my speed, but that's okay" to "she-devil COP!"

But what I haven't seen is a lot of people taking the next step, and asking what we do with these two truths.

This isn't, after all, just a Kamala Harris problem. These truths will emerge in any circumstance where we believe that unjust social prejudice is systemic and ingrained, such that it will manifest not just in fits of irrational hatred but also in "normal politics". An important implication of viewing racism and sexism as systemic is that it will still exert force -- often considerable force -- in political and policy disputes where there are perfectly valid reasons to take a variety of different positions. So the remedy can't be "don't oppose Kamala Harris" (there are legitimate reasons not to support her!), but neither can the existence of legitimate reasons to oppose Kamala Harris be taken as decisively falsifying any influence of racism and/or sexism.

Obviously, this is a question I've pondered for awhile, since it roughly corresponds to how I think the antisemitism-Israel relationship works (there are perfectly valid reasons to dislike many things Israel does, and also Israel gets held to a more exacting and unforgiving standard because of its Jewish character). And there too, the answer can neither be "never oppose Israeli policies", nor can it be "because there are legitimate bases to oppose Israeli policies, antisemitism isn't an issue." The uncomfortable truth is that antisemitism still operates even in the arena of legitimate opposition to Israeli conduct, and by the same token the fact that antisemitism still operates in that arena doesn't in itself delegitimize the validity of opposing Israeli actions.

Boiled down this way, the problem is even thornier than many have let on: under conditions of ingrained, systemic racism and sexism, there is probably no way to have a discourse about Kamala Harris that is not affected by racism and sexism. There's two trade-offs here: the one I already mentioned, where Harris opponents can't say "there's no racism or misogyny at work here, we have legitimate reasons for our views"; but also another one where Harris proponents can't say "in any case where we can say racism or misogyny is doing work, that case is per se delegitimated."

Why can't the latter claim work? Because one implication of viewing racism and misogyny as pervasive social forces is that there isn't a way to extract a "pure" discussion of her that is innocent of them. They'll always be there. Which means -- since again, the conclusion can't be "everyone is obligated to support Kamala Harris" -- we have to figure out what it means to ethically participate in a political discourse about prominent Black women in conditions where racism and misogyny simply will be present. People are not taking that problem seriously enough, because they retain a fantasy whereby via either sufficient cognizance or self-discipline we can neutralize the effects of racism and misogyny and drop them from our analysis. If that's not possible, and the racism and misogyny must always factor in even as they don't control, we're in far more discomforting terrain.

The Bachelor's Roundup

Today is a big week.

It is my last week as an unmarried man. This coming Sunday, September 2nd, 2018, I will be married. 9/2/18 -- it's very mathematical, and mathematical around the number "18" too, which is nicely auspicious.

Jill has been out of town since Wednesday -- she says on a work trip, though I think she's just having a second bachelorette party. She gets back late tonight, and then we both fly to Minnesota together on Thursday.

So ... this might be a light posting week. Or not! I'm unpredictable.

* * *

The Washington Post has a long article on the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina and the unique neither-fish-nor-fowl status they have under federal Indian law. I had a case that tangentially connected to the Lumbee when I was at Covington, so I actually was familiar with their situation -- and this article does a good job providing additional depth.

There is little doubt in my mind that, if Trump goes down, his hardcore followers will blame the Jews.

A fascinating -- if chilling -- essay by Cass Sunstein on how ordinary Germans experienced the rise of Nazism. The takeaway is that, for them, things still always felt "ordinary". They went camping, they hung out with friends, they made jokes. We have a very wrong idea of the phenomenology of authoritarianism -- at least for those persons not directly targeted for suppression.

David Hirsh goes into detail to explain what should be obvious: why Jeremy Corbyn dismissing "Zionists" as people who have "lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives," and yet "don’t understand English irony" is antisemitic. It leverages specifically antisemitic tropes, and it does so in a way that's only sensible if one is leveraging those tropes (the idea of "Zionists" retaining status as perpetual aliens who remain unassimilable outsiders no matter how long they live in their "host" countries is incoherent without supervening on "Zionist as Jew").

Who could have guessed that, if the fringe group Jewish Voice for Labour put on a forum on antisemitism, it would become a forum for antisemitism? Everyone, that's who!

Regarding the French Open's ban on Serena Williams wearing a "catsuit", it's simultaneously amazing and not at all amazing that misogynoir so easily trumps the truckloads of money and attention Williams -- one of the biggest stars in global sports -- brings to women's tennis.

ADL Publishes New Report Linking Misogyny and White Supremacy

The ADL has a new report out examining the intersections between misogyny and White supremacy. The content isn't necessarily groundbreaking, at least for those in the academic space, and the conception of "misogyny" is limited to a relatively narrow set of violent extremists (contrast the more expansive exploration in Kate Manne's Down Girl).

But that said, I think it is still a worthwhile read and an important milestone to see this linkage explicitly identified by a "mainstream" civil rights group. Hopefully, it will spur more attention to this toxic interaction (one obvious area for growth -- the observation by many feminists that expressed misogynist attitudes seem highly correlated with mass shootings).

Don't Take My Word For It: Listen To Natalie Portman

I have a new column in Haaretz on Natalie Portman's refusal to share a platform with Bibi Netanyahu at the Genesis Prize ceremony, while simultaneously disavowing support for BDS.

The radical, cutting, never-before-heard thesis is that "We should listen to Natalie Portman when she says that her refusal to share a platform with Bibi Netanyahu does not mean she supports BDS."

If that doesn't seem all that radical to you, you perhaps haven't encountered men on the internet when a woman expresses an opinion. Because it seems like everyone -- pro- and anti-BDS alike -- is racing to tell (Harvard-educated, deeply invested in Israel) Natalie Portman that she actually doesn't understand the content of her own political position.

Two Standards of Opinion-Columnist Selection

Conservative writer Kevin Williamson, late of the National Review, has been hired by the Atlantic. This is proving controversial, possibly because he's conservative, or possibly because he compared a Black teenager to a primate and suggested women who have abortions should be hanged. Who can say?

In reality, the anxiety over Williamson's hiring is revealing a fissure in how we think opinion-column space should be distributed. We might think of two different rationales for why a magazine should publish a particular opinion columnist or column -- a reflective rationale and a legitimation rationale.

Under the reflective view, opinion columns should roughly mirror -- reflect -- the opinions that exist in the wider public around politics. We should have conservative columnists because many people are conservative, and it's important that the readership be exposed to that common view. Note that this makes no claim about whether this perspective is a good one, only that it's a common one.

Under the legitimation view, by contrast, opinion columnists should be chosen because the editors conclude that their views are affirmatively worth considering. This almost certainly falls short of requiring agreeing with the views -- I can think of many opinions I don't share but which I nonetheless think are worth wrestling with -- but it does represent some commentary on quality. Often (not always), the legitimation rationale for hiring a columnist cuts in the opposite direction from the reflective view -- as in the claim that so-and-so's perspective is one "you don't hear often" or is "novel and original" (though these are not in themselves reasons for publishing someone unless they're also paired with the ideas actually being decent. A string of gibberish isn't heard often in august editorial sections, but that doesn't mean it should be published).

One problem that's partially being illuminated by the Williamson hiring is that we're not sure what purpose we want opinion section editors to adopt. Some of the critics of Williamson's hiring note that, as a Never-Trump Republican, he's actually not reflective of conservative ideology as it's currently practiced -- wouldn't ideological diversity better be served by hiring an avowed Trump defender? But of course one can feel the anxiety in that sentence even as it's written -- do we really want the views of avid Trump supporters (Muslim ban, "shithole countries", and all) gracing more prominent media outlets? No, because we think it would legitimate them.

But if Williamson can't be defended as a reflective hire -- and a #NeverTrump Republican by definition isn't reflective (if even a fifth of American conservatives were of this ilk, Hillary Clinton wins in a landslide) -- he has to be justified based on legitimation. Yet it's really hard to justify him along that metric either. Certainly, the usual bromides about hearing "alternative points of view" won't do on their own. We need to know why "hang one quarter of American women" is the sort of keen social insight that is worthwhile on it's own right -- not simply as a "different" view but as an independently justifiable one.

So what do we want? The reflective case has one thing going for it, and that's that it would represent an honest portrayal of the state of conservative argumentation in America today -- which doesn't even carry Williamson's patina of #NeverTrump-ism. Yet going that route would have to mean consciously abandoning any legitimation justification for their publication -- and most editors don't really want to write that out of their job description. The fetishization of an objectively tiny branch of contemporary conservatism -- acting as if it is of more than trivial social influence -- is I think primarily grounded on how they let us deny what is before our eyes.

Seth Mandel suggests that one reason conservatives are skeptical of this reaction to Williamson is that -- even though some of the criticisms of him hold water in isolation -- it seems to happen to every conservative who joins a mainstream media outlet (cf. Bret Stephens). But the problem is that, given the state of conservatism today, an attempt to find a remotely representative yet not-terrible conservative voice will start to look like an error theory: it's possible in concept to imagine a representative conservative argument worthy of legitimation, but in practice none of them will qualify. Given where conservatism's center of gravity is right now, even if you step a standard deviation off the middle of the bell-curve, you're still likely to encounter at goodly chunk of the (again, wholly mainstream) conservative pathologies -- like "execute women" (Williamson) or "science is a hoax" (Stephens).  But there's no reason -- at least once we stop grading conservatives on a curve -- why "I don't like Trump, but global warming is made up" should be thought to count as a good argument.

The sad fact is, the mean, median, and modal conservative argument in American politics today is not some deeply Burkean reflection on the need for cautious change and considered ponderings about the continuing legacy of racism coupled with healthy respect for historical American traditions. It is deep-set, gutter-level racism and xenophobia of the sort which gleefully catapults a know-nothing slur-tossing conspiracy theorist to the Oval Office and continues to enthusiastically back him to this very day. That's not fringe, that's central. We might be able to justify printing such views on the grounds that it's important to be crystal clear about what American conservatives actually believe. But if that's the rationale, there's no reason why editors should try to gussie them up to make them seem more considered and legitimate than they are on their own merits.

Egregious Professor Roundup

I got an email from an academic in Italy addressed to "Egregious Professor David Schraub." Apparently, that's a common issue because "egregio" has a meaning closer to "excellent" in Italian. Nonetheless, I kind of want to change my Twitter handle to "Egregious Professor."

* * *

This is a from last year, but Jacob Levy gives a qualified defense of "safe spaces" in the academic context that is really fantastic, and well-worth a read.

Fifteen Jewish extremists arrested in Israel for threatening Arabs, including the notorious Bentzi Gopstein.

The Montana Republican Party is the sort of place where, if you bodyslam a reporter, you'll have to fend off criticism -- from those who say you should have shot him.

Kevin Williamson has an interesting piece on the pathologies of poor White communities. I don't necessarily endorse it, but it is a rare example of someone taking the way we talk about poor Black communities and earnestly applying those same standards to Trump-backing Whites.

Bezalel Smotrich is a dick in every single possible aspect, so his remarks on the "me too" campaign are entirely on-brand.

Remember how I said "Not Knowing "Zio" is a Slur is an Indictment, Not a Defense"? Yeah, same thing applies to not knowing that portraying George Soros as tentacle-monster encircling the globe is antisemitic.

The Many Voices of Silence

One of the more vexing questions raised by the recent flurry of sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein was why, if "everybody knew", nobody spoke up? Why did people -- colleagues, victims, friends, press -- stay silent for so long? Is it right to blame them (all of them? some of them? which ones?) for not talking? Why?

On this subject, I'd like to share a story (I might have written about it before, though if so I can't find it) from when I was in college.

I was working a summer job at a law firm. Two of my closest friends from that summer -- also college students, both women -- worked together in the mail room; I worked by myself in another wing of the office. What that meant was that we didn't really see each other during working hours, but we did eat lunch together pretty much every day.

About a week before the end of the summer, in our daily lunch walk, one of them said she wanted to ask me something personal. She said that she thought she was being sexually harassed by her supervisor, and she wanted to know what I thought she should do about it. Should she say anything? Should she report it? The summer was about to end anyway; maybe she should just ride it out.

The "thought" part is important, because part of the conversation was her being unsure whether what was happening was sexual harassment. She seemed to be consistently talking herself into and out of her own position on the matter. She'd say things that to my mind clearly sounded like harassment, but when I'd concur in the assessment she'd second-guess herself and start redescribing the events more as if he was just sort of a generically lousy boss. Then eventually she'd reach the end of the pendulum and return back to it being harassment. She went back-and-forth in that vein for awhile, and never really settled on a conclusion.

I'm not really sure why she thought I'd have any unique insight. I wasn't any older than them, and had no particular experience in the area. The best advice I could give -- and to this day I don't know if it was good advice -- was that if she felt like it was sexual harassment she should report it, and if she felt like the guy was simply a bad supervisor she should wait out the week and leave.

Meanwhile, the second friend -- who also worked in the mailroom and to whom I periodically was turning to for clarification -- was making gestures and facial expressions to the effect of "I want absolutely no part in this." I could tell this all was bothering her as well, but she was firmly on the "don't say anything, don't do anything" side. I asked her why.

She told a story of being harassed at her middle school. And there was no "thought" there: she was being groped in the halls, people were tearing off her blouse, it was truly sickening behavior. And what did she do? She did complain. She and her parents went to the principal, told him what was going on, and demanded he put a stop to it.

The result? Nothing happened.

Well, not "nothing". The principal wasn't happy to have this thrust on her plate, and so now the administration started retaliating against her for complaining. Her entire position at the school became untenable. So she transferred to a different school -- one less convenient and less academically prestigious.

The moral she learned was "don't complain about sexual harassment." Hence, she made clear, she would neither confirm, nor deny, nor participate in any way in any conversation about any sexual harassment she or her friend may or may not have experienced in the mail room.

I'm not entirely sure how this story ended, but I don't think anybody ended up saying anything to the powers-that-be. Why not? Well, I didn't in part because I don't think either of them wanted me to, in part because I didn't know what I should say, and in part because I didn't view it as my place to speak (particularly given Friend #2's vivid description of the potential consequences for them if I talked). I imagine Friend #2 didn't talk because of the "lessons" she learned the last time she tried to fight back against harassment. And if Friend #1 didn't talk, it might have been because she was afraid the same might happen to her, or because she ultimately wasn't confident in her own credibility as a complainant, or because the end was in sight and she just wanted to put things behind her.

There are all sorts of reasons for all sorts of silence. One of my personal mentors, Martha Nussbaum -- surely one of the most powerful (in all senses of the term) women in the world today -- spoke incisively about why she never reported her sexual assault and why, even now, she continues to think it was and would continue to be useless to have done so. Silence can be complicity, and sometimes it's nothing more than that. But sometimes it is much more than that. Silence is the function of an entire network of power in which everybody feels alone, everybody feels powerless, everybody feels like they can't make a difference and that the only thing that will be gained from speaking up is hurting those who deserve it least.

Put another way, the condemnations of those who "knew" and said nothing often act as if the problem was just lack of character virtue -- if people cared more, then they wouldn't remain silent. This, to my estimation, dramatically understates the cultural forces which encourage and demand silence at every turn. The forces are not -- or are not just -- threats of reprisal. They're also bonds of trust ("you promised you wouldn't say anything if I confided"), norms of role ("it's not your place to do this for me"), and desires for lost privacy ("I just don't want this to become the center of my life"). When I hear about something that "everybody knows" but nobody says, my assumption isn't that "everybody" is a callous monster. I assume that there is something deeper going on.

When it comes to sexual assault, silence occurs in isolation, while resistance comes in groups. This is why one woman catching Weinstein bragging about sexual assault on a wiretap set up by the NYPD didn't bring Weinstein down, but many women telling a reporter (who lacks guns, or handcuffs, or prison threats) causes a cascade. Taken alone, we can't imagine how our speaking up could possibly make a difference -- it will only bring trouble. They stay silent because if they speak up:

• They'll be threatened ("you'll never work in this town again"); and/or
• They'll be ignored ("she's just seeking attention"); and/or
• They'll be mocked ("what makes you so special that you think Harvey Weinstein would make eyes at you?"); and/or
• They'll be shamed ("what did you think you were getting into, going to a meeting with him alone?"); and/or
• They'll be discredited ("Weinstein is a public figure; if he was a predator there's no way he could've kept it a secret for so long.").

And after all that heartache? Weinstein remains untouched, but the accuser has to live with the knowledge that her accusation meant nothing.

But when enough people refuse to cooperate, that massive array of power, which felt like it was an impregnable fortress, starts to topple like dominos. The people who could end your career in Hollywood now need to rush to show they're not beholden to a tainted figure like Harvey Weinstein. The "attention" oddly dissipates because it's spread across so many victims. The mockery falls flat because it is evident that Weinstein was a serial assailant. The shame doesn't stick because so many verify how he got so many women in a vulnerable position.

But the thing is, it's difficult to make that jump from being relatively alone to relatively in a community. It requires a lot of things, and courage is certainly one of them. But again, I don't think the problem is simply one of bad hearts. It's about bad culture. And I don't expect things to change much until that culture is unwound.

It Was Never About Free Speech

Milo's been dropped from Simon & Schuster, as well as CPAC, after clips came out showing him defending pedophilia.

This is long overdue, but it also is brutal to all the defenses given for inviting Milo onto these forums (and others -- looking at you Bill Maher) in the first place. Not because all the awful things Milo had said before made it predictable that he'd also have said this particular awful thing. Rather, the issue is that the decision to now say "too far" gives lie to standard apologia the right has been giving for trotting Milo out -- that of "free speech."

It was striking that virtually none of Milo's inviters would actually come out and endorse the content of his screeds. When asked why he was being brought to Berkeley or the public press or wherever, the answer was always "freedom of speech!" "Don't silence him!" "Hear his perspective!" Now let's be clear: "free speech" is quite relevant once Milo has been invited to give a talk or a speech. Specifically, it takes certain remedies off the table -- government can't ban the speech, private actors can't violently disrupt it, and so on. There are other remedies that "free speech" very much doesn't take off the table -- nonviolent protest, for instance, much less vitriolic criticism. Free speech represents important values, and I strive to defend them even when the subject is an awful little troll like Milo.

But while "free speech" can tell us something about how to respond to an invited speaker, it can't tell us anything about who to invite. That decision has to be made on the basis of a different set of values -- values that roughly translate to "this person has a perspective worth hearing."

And herein lies the problem. The decision to now disinvite Milo demonstrates that conservatives (and Simon & Schuster) are entirely able to make adjudications regarding the sorts of statements and advocacies which they think are worthwhile and "in-bounds" in public discourse. For instance, we now know that pedophilia is out. But we also now know that all the other things Milo had said -- the horrific racism, the blatant misogyny, the unapologetic harassment, the vicious transphobia, the nasty assault on immigrants -- all of that was in.

Milo wasn't invited to speak because of some unadorned desire to vindicate "free speech". He was invited because the people who invited him thought those perspectives, specifically, were worthwhile. Pedophilia no, racism yes. Pedophilia no, misogyny yes. They looked at the former and said "too far", which means they also looked at the latter and said "fine."

That's an evaluative appraisal that has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It speaks to the inviters' other values. And we are entirely justified in drawing conclusions about the character and the moral worth of the people who hold such values. It does not speak well.

Could Misogyny, Of All Things, Finally Destroy Donald Trump?

In our latest spin of the "outrageous Trump remarks" wheel, we landed on misogyny. Specifically, comments Trump made during taping for Access Hollywood where he graphically talked about sexually assaulting women:

During the lewd conversation captured by a microphone Trump was wearing on his lapel, Trump recounts how he tried to "fuck" an unidentified married woman before bragging that he is "automatically attracted to beautiful (women)" and just starts "kissing them." The conversation came just months after Trump married his third and current wife, Melania.

He also said: "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything ... Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."

How lovely. But this has stood out in that it has seemed to generate a particularly ferocious condemnation from Trump's fellow Republicans. Paul Ryan, set to campaign side-by-side with Trump for the first time, withdrew his invitation and declared himself "sickened". Reince Priebus was far more blunt than I've ever seen him: "no woman should ever be described in these terms or talked about in this manner. Ever." Jon Huntsman went from endorsing Trump to demanding that he drop out. Even Trump gave a non-apology-apology of the "I apologize if anyone was offended" variety (Jeb Bush: "no apology can excuse away Donald Trump's reprehensible comments degrading women.").

And while the comments themselves really cannot honestly surprise anyone, the reaction to them is a bit striking. Liberals have certainly noticed, and been quite wry -- "oh, it was okay to call Mexicans rapists, and to suggest banning all Muslims, and to fan a resurgent conservative anti-Semitism -- but this was the step too far?" Indeed, while there have been other moments where Trump has said outrageous things and political commentators have declared him dead, only for him to emerge stronger than before (think the John McCain "captured" comments), this feels different -- he is the Republican standard-bearer, there is no deluding oneself that by condemning Trump one can simply switch support to another conservative.

Honestly, it is hard to explain. And I'd be very curious to hear what someone like Kate Manne -- who has written very incisively on the role of misogyny in this election and in our society -- thinks of this development. Right now -- improbable as it may be -- it looks like Trump's misogyny might have finally closed the door on his candidacy. There's almost -- almost -- a sense in which it is heartening (though I won't pop any champagne until November 9).

The Allure of the Alphas

There's a trope among a certain wing of Nice Guys cum MRA types, that describes who women are attracted to. "Sure, women say they're interested in nice, smart guys, but it's all a lie. Ever notice how all the girls hang off the meathead high school quarterback and not the class nerd? That's because women are attracted to the alphas. It's evolution, man. They just can't resist the allure of power, even when it's in the hands of a some rich idiot jock who doesn't respect them and is clearly just using them for his own ends. It's like moths to a flame. Their little lady-brains are so primitive."

And then they laugh and laugh, and attend a Donald Trump rally.