“I echo my mother’s words: maybe the guy’s a scumbag, but I wouldn’t call him a rapist.”
“To publicly humiliate and shun and incriminate someone to the point his career and public life is [sic] over, you better have more evidence than this.”
- Elizabeth Ellen, An Open Letter to the Internet, Hobart, October 3th, 2014
Dear Committee Overseeing Behavior on the Internet,
It was recently brought to my attention that a male person accused of rape and abuse but not charged or convicted is a Scumbag, not a Rapist. A Rapist being defined as one who forces himself on a woman against her will, and a Scumbag being defined as one who either admits to manipulating and abusing women, or sometimes coerces women into sex using methods that might, by some people, be considered a form of sexual assault, but, of course, grey area, and all that bullshit, maybe she only dissuaded him and didn’t explicitly say “No.”
It was also brought to my attention that Scumbags should not be subjected to any form of career-ending criticism on the internet, which is a place where people express their opinions and theories and other impulsive things. Rapists, certainly, should have their careers shredded. But this is too steep a punishment for Scumbags, especially on the internet.
With this in mind, I believe it’s essential that we, the internet community, establish appropriate punishments for Scumbags with reduced impacts on careers and reputations. I submit the following proposals for consideration:
1. Death of Reputation by Standard Mail
In this scenario, the Scumbag’s reputation would be tarnished – but only by snail mail. News of the Scumbag’s bad behavior would take 2-3 days to reach any domestic interested parties, 5-7 for internationals. This form of punishment would reduce the Scumbag’s exposure to comment sections and retweets by making it more difficult for interested parties to share their thoughts instantly. Around 10% of the letters would get lost, resulting in complete ignorance. Slowly, the interval between letters would increase until interest in the Scumbag’s indiscretions dwindled. Scumbag may then resume life as if nothing ever happened.
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Modeled after events in the film of the same name, this method effectively erases any memory of the Scumbag’s career from the minds of interested parties, as well as the Scumbag. The Scumbag’s career is over, but sensations of loss and humiliation are eliminated. The Scumbag may go on to live a normal life without the admiration of others. The drawbacks of this method include a high rate of recidivism and a dependency on technology that does not exist. Funds for research and development must be raised, possibly through a Kickstarter.
3. Honey and Coconuting, followed by Kickball Stoning (if necessary)
Given that Scumbags are not witches, a punishment less severe is in order. Witches were sometimes tarred and feathered — a form of torture that could result in second-degree burns — for their beliefs. The mixture was very difficult to remove without peeling away layers of skin. Unlike tar, honey is sometimes used as a sweetener. Coconut shavings are a common dessert ingredient! Certainly humiliating, honey and coconuting does not threaten a Scumbag’s career, nor does it inflict significant physical harm. In the event that the punishment does not work, and the Scumbag resumes behaving badly, he will be forced to stand for a period of time at the center of New York City, where anyone can peg him in the face with a kickball.
As the committee can probably see, these alternative punishments are utterly ridiculous. So let me propose an alternative to the alternative. Let me break from this satire and point out to the committee that the punishment for rape is actually prison — though it’s seldom enforced — and that the punishment for being a Scumbag is, and has always been, less severe: you don’t go to jail, but your career and reputation suffer.
I’ve been deeply troubled by the events of the past week in the alt-lit community. A niche icon, ; an editor and writer, Stephen Tully Dierks, has been accused of rape by three women. Sherl and a fourth writer, , a sex offender, and a predator, simply based on the kinds of liberties i [sic]have taken with others desires, bodies, and lives.” This group of men has now been written about on the internet to the point where the top search results (1-10 ) for their names include articles or blog posts related to these allegations. Their names are, for the time being, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, muddied.
Dirt on the 1st page of Google Search results can inflict permanent damage on a reputation, and perhaps this is why Elizabeth Ellen, and others who laud her Hobart essay on social media, . Ellen and company are wrong, though. When you are, or behave like, a Scumbag, your career and reputation can come under duress. The latter will certainly be threatened, and how you deal with this threat might determine whether the former can be salvaged. But to participate, to shun, to shame, to humiliate, to express displeasure, to publish and inform, isn’t going too far with too little evidence, as Ellen claims. It’s just far enough. Men behaving badly do not get to watch their reputations go bumper bowling off into the sunset.
Furthermore, this call for what is essentially a form of self-censorship sends a terrible message to all men: you can get away with bad behavior. You can be a Scumbag. We won’t be too hard on you. No one will say anything mean unless you see a courtroom and are found guilty. Are these the kind of male writers — or male anybodies — that we want to develop with our influence?
In her excellent
Pretending that active consent is ambiguous and confusing and difficult to obtain is a pernicious lie that has no basis in reality. It is abundantly clear when someone is eager and ready to sleep with you.
Yes, Mallory. These are the men we need more of, men who don’t want to have sex unless it’s abundantly clear the person is eager and ready to participate, who realize that this is, in fact, the whole point of sex: to reach a singular certainty of purpose with another person. If that sounds too precious, throw in some handcuffs and rope. I’m not talking about gentle sex. . I’m talking about the possibility that we can teach men that sex — good sex — is not a transaction, where one party asks for something, and the other party decides whether to provide it, but an act that takes two eager participants.
Of both her instances of “near-rape” Ortberg says: “I should not have had to do it either time. The first time I said No, the first time I turned my head away, the first time I crossed my arms over my chest and walked away, the first time I said ‘What are you doing?’, the first time I displayed a clear and obvious distaste for what was being done to me rather than with me should have been enough.”
To the men who act otherwise — the Scumbags — I have only one thing to say: I see no problem solemnly watching as your careers and reputations catch fire. I take no pleasure in it. I wish you had made better decisions. But that fire is necessary, for without it there would be no smoke, and the next man needs the smoke. He needs to see it rising above the woods and know better.
