In the vacuum of feminism
Alexandra Brodsky on online Platner apologia
During the whole Graham Platner meltdown last week, I really missed the feminist internet. I took it for granted during the 2010s: the thriving ecosystem of independent feminist publications, some complementary corporate verticals, and a nonstop, rich, vicious conversation on Twitter. A handful of stars left explicitly feminist sites for bigger platforms with broader audiences. Combined, we — I used to write and edit for Feministing — reached a lot of people, shaping left and liberal discourse, including on matters of sexual violence.
That’s all dead now. There’s a longer story to tell here, but the short version is that Feministing and nearly all of our peer publications have shuttered. Those that remain, like Jezebel, are shells of their former selves. (As of my writing, Jezebel’s most prominent list of articles on its home page is made up of years-old pieces “resurrected from the Jezebel catacombs.”) Much of the fall of the feminist internet is rightly attributed to the general demise of digital media. But it has happened at the same time as a broader anti-feminist backlash in the wake of #MeToo and the rise of an unapologetically misogynistic New Right. And it has also coincided with Twitter, which I still cannot bring myself to call X, turning into an absolute hell site under Elon Musk, who has invited harassment onto the platform and driven out feminists, including (for the most part) me. As I touched on at a Drift panel in March, we’re now in a real drought of public feminist thought, even when it comes to topics that cry out for gender analysis, like Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
Back to Platner. Two women have now accused the Maine Senate candidate of sexual abuse, including rape. I believe them, as do a lot of people. But also, man, has the internet been stupid and sexist this past week, including and perhaps especially on the left. To give a couple of high profile examples: Drop Site News cofounder Ryan Grim bemoaned that Politico left out of its reporting on the rape allegation that Platner’s victim had, earlier that night, texted him that she “needed a glute massage” — as though the text constituted consent to his breaking into her house against her explicit wishes and raping her. Mourning the end of the Platner campaign, Matt Stoller and Glenn Greenwald dismissed the allegations variously as unsupported by evidence (untrue), a “tiny bit of scandal or controversy,” and insufficiently vetted by the legal system, as though no one were allowed to believe a woman until a cop or court does. (On that last point: I have a book recommendation. Also, ACAB except for rape?) Michael Tracey insisted that a woman who doesn’t fight back hasn’t been raped, which is one of the oldest and most idiotic rape myths our world has invented. Chris Wright, the author of Class War, Then and Now, described the former mercenary as a “courageous, even heroic, pioneer” because of his anti-war convictions, “whatever happened one night five years ago when he was blackout drunk.” Can’t let a little whoopsy rape get in the way of hero worshipping our way toward class war.
This is all idiotic. Yet these views echoed around the internet — the same internet that used to be a lot more feminist. The sexist lefty man is a tale as old as time, and these are a particularly sordid set of characters. But I really believe that this response has been more misogynistic and less informed than it would have been a decade ago when feminist analysis was in the water. As I remember it, back then the left at least pretended to believe that rape was bad, that it mattered personally and politically, and that feminist reformers were more right about sexual violence than the seventeenth-century British jurists who codified rape myths.
I won’t overstate the matter. I don’t think this nadir in online feminist analysis is the sole cause of the Platner apologia. But we shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a contributing factor. A lot of zoomers have grown up without readily accessible feminist analysis in the places they look for news and commentary. Without regular reminders, a lot of people who once knew better appear to have forgotten what was once common sense.
Alexandra Brodsky is a lawyer and the author of Sexual Justice.
Read Brodsky and other Drift contributors on the state of feminism today in Issue Six.
“Steered by the Reactionary” | What To Do About Feminism
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Presumably there is still demand for online feminist-led discourse. What prevents it from thriving on sites such as subtac or BlueSky?