Fox enters new henhouse, creepy creepers creep
Hey, everybody, remember my previous posts about Hugo Schwyzer and his bizarrely high level of acceptance among self-described feminists? Remember how I said that leftist Christians need to have more discussion about how to deal with repentant domestic and sexual abusers? Well, the latter may have begun. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's in response to Hugo getting up to his old tricks in a new venue. As discussed by Sarah over the Moon and Dianne Anderson, Relevant, which styles itself a "progressive Christian" magazine (although Sarah and assorted commenters have some things to say about how progressive Relevant is here and here), published an article by Hugo on--What else?--feminine beauty and sexuality. Readers who were aware of his history posted about their concerns on Relevant's facebook, only to have their posts deleted. Thus began one of the disheartening internet don't-call-it-a-fights of 2012, featuring the Relevant staff vs. Dianne, Sarah, Elizabeth Ester who describes herself as "shaken up" and "blindsided" after learning about the attempted murder, and Fred Clark who so far appears to be the only male blogger who gets it.
Sadly, the comments-- even at Fred's blog, which usually has a higher-than-normal proportion of thoughtful commenters-- include a lot of really wordy defenses of the idea that the most important thing in any situation that involves sexual abuse or partner violence is that nobody should say anything mean about the perpetrator. Some patterns I've noticed include the following:
1) I'm a recovering addict, and Hugo's a recovering addict! If you're holding his past against him, then you must hold my past against me and want to hate, punish, and exclude all addicts! Even though this is not about addiction but about sexual exploitation and attempted murder. I'm sorry, I've got to say that again: ATTEMPTED MURDER!
2) Summary of multiple comments left under what appear to be the real names of male/masculine-identifying Anglophones: "I do not know anything about Hugo's past and have not bothered to read your links (possibly not even the entirety of your post), but my opinion is that you should forgive Hugo and stop judging him." These guys certainly do speak for themselves.
3) You don't know this individual! How dare you judge him? Well, the point is that some people know him all too well.
4) We are all sinners! We all have things in our pasts that we regret! How can you say this guy is any worse than you or me or any of the people who might be triggered by him? This is another type of response that completely misses the point, which is not about deciding who is the most morally reprehensible but about keeping past and potential abuse victims safe. Also, there seem to be a lot of people who don't distinguish between the admittedly hurtful but decidedly non-lethal misbehavior to which all humans are susceptible and TRYING TO MURDER HIS GIRLFRIEND.
Then, not being content with messing things up on the Christian subculture front, Hugo had to go and write another article for Jezebel (no link because UGH). This one is about how women need to understand that it hurts men's feelings when women describe a man as "creepy." You know what? I wish I could ignore these gross articles that Hugo writes for Jezebel, but I can't get over how they are all based on this concept: Men do stuff. Women don't like that stuff and talk about how said stuff makes them feel uncomfortable, fear for their safety, or suspect that the men they want to date secretly hate them. Hugo swoops in to tell the women that they've got it all wrong-- men are really doing that stuff for some purportedly less disgusting reason than the reason that women consider obvious. Women just don't KNOW. Therefore, Hugo will explain to the women why the stuff they don't like is not so bad and what's really bad is how men are made to feel guilty for doing that stuff. Now you girls run along and learn to put up with that stuff you don't like-- or do you want to be mean to the men and make them feel bad? I haven't dared to look at the Jezebel comments, but I've heard there are men over there moaning about how calling a man a creep is equivalent to calling a woman a slut or a whore. Obviously, these men must have jumped over from the parallel universe where calling a man a creep is a way to dismiss everything he has ever done or said in his life and sometimes an all-clear signal that anyone who wants to can rape him and get away with it. Meanwhile, in this universe, Hugo's continued insistence on writing these things is downright creepy in light of his past as an abuser.
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