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comment by johnnyFive
johnnyFive  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Shit like this makes me glad I'm not famous

I appreciate your sharing your experiences. My response is that, like seemingly everyone else in this thread, you're treating this as an either-or, and like there isn't some other way.

    i can't bring myself to spend the energy to sort people out. that's not the moral of the story, but it's the moral i have

This isn't a moral, so don't call it that. You are being more honest about it than most anyone else, but don't try to pretend like this is something good, courageous, or moral. Because it's not.

And ultimately you and everyone else who thinks this way is going to hurt women a lot more than you help them. It feels good and cathartic, and I'm sure it's easy to find plenty of people who will pat you on the back for thinking this way. But "plenty" can be deceptive. This mindset gives so much ammunition to anyone that wants to dismiss the problem while driving away anyone less extreme (like myself), all because everyone would rather continue the circle-jerk about how self-righteous they are than actually fix anything.

My prediction is that one of two things is going to happen. One, we have this cathartic orgy of shaming and accusation, with many of the accusations being true. Then once the high wears off, we'll go back to normal because there has been no underlying cultural change. Anyone who thought it was okay to harass others will be glad they dodged the bullet by not being caught, and it'll be at least as easy as before to justify their actions as before, if not more so. Look at how Gamergate actually made things worse for female gamers in a lot of ways, because what started out as a reasonable question about integrity and ethics in games journalism got blown up by hysterics on both sides.

The second (and this is not necessarily mutually exclusive) is that eventually, there's going to be an accusation that is so egregious that once it falls apart (but after some guy's life is completely destroyed), it will torpedo the credibility of any future accusation. At this point we'll bascially be back to square one, with little to show for it but megabytes of blog posts.

But I think you're right, in that the people shouting about this the loudest are doing it because they're too lazy and selfish to put in the work.

As much as I hate the stupidity of the pro-witch-hunt faction, I hate the hypocrisy more. You can be codescending and proud of your close-mindedness if you want (even if I don't understand either position), but at least have the decency to admit that you're unwilling to do the right thing because you can't be bothered. As someone with a pre-school-aged daughter, this drives me crazy. Because when she comes up, it will be that much harder for her generation to fight for equality because of all the excess baggage ya'll are piling on. The next push for improving women's lot in 20 years or whenever is going to have to spend all this extra energy just to avoid being labelled as the next #meToo.