I am not a genius, I am merely fond of trying to identify patterns of behavior and drawing possible outcomes based on them. So, when I said Professor Feminism’s “retirement” wouldn’t be such, I wasn’t foreseeing the future in some gifted way, I just knew, based on past behaviors of people like him (and his own) that it was a lie. So when I saw a couple of days ago that he was back blogging, it wasn’t even a surprise. It was simply a confirmation that my method of observation was, so far, quite accurate.
His return to blogging wouldn’t merit any kind of commentary from me if it wasn’t for a few observations that, again, in the interest of record keeping, I believe are important. I don’t fancy myself a “historian of feminist blogging” or even an archivist, however, I do have a very keen interest in cultural critique, and more specifically, on cultural critique as it pertains to gender and, even more granularly, as it pertains to People of Color and the socio political frameworks that create these categories. I write from the margins and in the margins because this is where I live and, I insist, what Professor Feminism offers is a vantage point to observe all these intersecting issues.
His new narrative lays exclusively on his status as “disgraced”. His new Twitter bio describes him as such. Here is this man who has fallen from “grace”. Yet, how “disgraced” is a man who has twice as many followers than any of the Women of Color he publicly admitted to attacking for page clicks and because “they were easy targets”? As it’s always been the case, from when I started writing about these topics, I am interested in the culture that enabled him, the culture that, as brownfemipower pointed out, used him as an “attack dog”. So again, how “disgraced” is someone that still, after supposedly “falling from grace” gets several times the attention than any of the people he attacked? Even if it was the case that each and every one of those followers was a “hate follow” (not true), his ideas still get much more amplification and attention than any of the people he used to lie his way into celebrity. Moreover, many of those followers are notable feminists; women who, even in light of the public admissions in regards to his racist misogyny and openly sexist actions, his lack of ethics and his breach of trust that specifically hurt young women, cannot bring themselves to break ties with him. Given his media traction, his narrative of being “disgraced” is a slap on our faces and the fact that he still gets this kind of follow base is testament to the fact that not only the lesson learned from this season’s “scandals” has been lost but it will be subverted and erased to give way to even more media attention, even more high profile discussions.
Further proof that “disgraced” is just a new marketing spin for the same old behaviors is available to any who would care to read his blog. When confronted with criticism on Twitter for his return to blogging after promises to stay away, he publicly shames the woman who spoke up. He exposes her to his acolytes so that she can be shamed for being “ableist” (as if questioning his narrative was off limits). In the next entry, he uses his blog to speak of his mother and how much he is suffering because of the way she takes care of him. Again, he is using women to further whatever “brand” he now wishes to push and using his still very popular platforms to discredit women. Women, his targets are, in one way or another, always women. A self described “disgraced” misogynist is still a misogynist. Given his still strong traction, even among well known feminists, the white supremacist culture that gave him the platform to become his own “brand” still seems to have a place for him.
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