A few weeks ago, after the Harvey Weinstein allegations hit, some girls in the media industry put together a Google Doc with names of guys who have been accused of sexual harassment and what have you. It was distributed to other girls in the media industry, who could anonymously edit the document. They were instructed to not send the list to any men and to not flip out if any of their friends were on it.
The list was an incredibly dumb idea (2018 update: man named by ‘Shitty Media Men’ list sues its creator, Moira Donegan, for $1.5 million), and it was only a matter of time before someone from the alt-right got their hands on it. As of the other day, it’s been circulating on Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, and probably elsewhere on the Internets.
Example page from the ‘Shitty Media Men’ Google Doc.
The media on the other hand has hardly reported on it, lest someone sues, and also, we’ve learned, because they’re willing to excuse rape if the perp is one of their friends.
Below is a list of my favorite allegations from the list. I’m not naming any names either, because lord knows I have enough problems.
With all due respect, past and present, and with a huge disclaimer that these are anonymous allegations on the internet and not necessarily true…
1. “Creepy AF in the DMs”
Of the 70 or so men on this list, seemingly half of them are accused of sending creepy DMs. Which raises the question: Is there a way for a man to DM a woman and not be considered creepy?
I wonder if some of these guys, especially the ones who aren’t accused of anything other than creepy DMs, said anything at all sexual, or if women just don’t like the idea that they can be contacted directly by men whom they aren’t attracted to.
Remember that time a woman posted a video of herself being harassed on the street and it was all just black guys saying hello and god bless you?
2. “Takes credit for ideas of women of color”
Here’s another one that doesn’t quite rise to the level of sexual assault, but I’ll admit to having chuckled a bit when I read it, even though I don’t approve of men (in this case a white man, a pioneering “mp3 blogger”) taking credit for the ideas of women of color.
The fact that he’s accused of stealing ideas from women of color specifically suggests that it would be okay if he stole ideas from white women, or that he purposely targets women of color, maybe because he’s trying to corner the market on articles about “natural” hair styling ideas and how black men are the white men of the black community.
3. “Showed up uninvited to private apartment, refused to leave when asked”
Maybe the single most humorous allegation on the list, aside from the fact that it’s wrong to assault women, this guy is accused of crashing a party in a private residence — as if he were Bill Murray, refusing to leave, stripping entirely naked and forcibly cuddling someone. This brother must have been on PCP (which often causes you to get naked in public)!
Note that I don’t mean brother in the Christian sense of the term. This was a black guy, a former writer for New York magazine and ESPN’s Grantland.
And he’s not the only black guy on the list. In fact, seemingly every prominent black male writer at a white-interest publication whose name isn’t Ta-Nehisi Coates is on this list, along with disproportionate numbers of Asians and Hispanics. (I’m suddenly reminded of the dreaded Mike Yanagita.)
I wonder if this is because media is filled with the kind of women who view any interaction with a non-white man as a sort of assault, not unlike the girl who characterized black men saying hi to her in the street as harassment.
4. “Inappropriate communication with female writers under guise of ‘editing'”
Where’s the color coordination?
The dead giveaway here should have been the fact that the guy offered editing, when few, if any publications these days edit their articles, other than a cursory scan for political correctness and crafting a headline using a WordPress SEO plugin.
This guy, who sounds like a legit menace, has been accused of all manner of workplace impropriety, including nonconsensual lovemaking (arguably the worst crime that can be committed), but some of these guys don’t seem to be guilty of anything other than trying to holler at their coworkers. Trying to put their bid in, so to speak.
A few guys are accused of inviting female coworkers on “weird lunch dates,” while at least one guy, a Hispanic, who’s accused of pulling out a weapon on a woman, started his own sort of mentorship program.
5. “Assumes perpetual sexual availability after a hookup”
If this guy, who writes for Pitchfork (lol), hadn’t been accused of a number of other things, some of them fairly horrific, I could almost see how he could make this mistake. If a girl has had sex with you once, what’s there to say that she won’t have sex with you again?
It might take some convincing, but it’s definitely a possibility. I mean, we already know that she fucks.
Tragically, if a girl were to try to report him to the police for the kinds of things he’s been accused of, he could probably get out of it by arguing that he’s already had consensual sex with the alleged victim, who’s also sent him nude photos of herself. His wife, with whom he’s said to be in an “open relationship,” can back him up on this.
