Misogyny on Twitter, Mansplained
Two days ago, I clicked on the link to an Above the Law article that reported upon a tweet thread a male law professor wrote when he got a Twitter crash course on misogyny in just one afternoon. His single tweet in praise of fellow law professor — superiorly smart, articulate, incisive and steady Pam Karlan — provided him with a barrage of unfettered misogyny, the really disgusting and ugly kind the internet is particularly brilliant at spewing. As all the smart women who’ve been hated on, on Twitter and elsewhere for that matter, could tell him, “Welcome to our lives.”
I mean, starting with the pussy grab tape, haven’t we seen enough yet? Remember when the menacing candidate hulked behind Hillary during the second debate (AND NO MODERATOR STOPPED HIM, FOR FUCK’S SAKE)? The trashing continued: Sally Yates, Maxine Waters, all the way through to Christine Blasey Ford, the Squad, and now Yovanovitch, Hill, and Karlan for a very incomplete list.
So, as true as the professor’s insights are, as much as I should appreciate his sudden awareness and willingness both to speak up on behalf of Karlan and to tell us about this disturbing experience, my personal reaction was the opposite of relieved. I felt enraged again that the way to have vitriol against smart women on the internet validated as true is for it to be mansplained.
It’s not as if we haven’t heard about this phenomenon through women’s accounts. When women speak up now, they do so with awareness of the risks. Dahlia Lithwick writes: “As Sandra Diaz, one of those two undocumented cleaners, explained her decision to finally speak up even though everyone around her warned her not to: “How can you know something so big, how someone — who goes on national television and says something — and you know it’s not true … whether it’s the president or not, you have the responsibility to say no. To pass through this barrier of fear and say no.” Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch described, in real time, at a public Intelligence Committee hearing last month, what it feels like to pass through that same barrier of fear: As Trump tweeted threats at her midhearing, she was asked how she was experiencing it. “It’s very intimidating,” Yovanovitch quietly confessed to the members of the Intelligence Committee. “I can’t speak to what the president is trying to do, but I think the effect is to be intimidating.”
I do realize we need all the help and all the helpers we can get. I respect Professor Primus, who responded admirably, and yet, I’m less inclined to praise him and more inclined to raise the question about how, after so much evidence, we await rescues from knights with shining iPhones. As if there’s a fairy tale ending to these despicable times.
