#these are boundaries that my friends have set repeatedly and publicly

[carnivorousyandeere]

Genuinely don’t know how to phrase this, but the erosion of boundaries here on tumblr is very concerning. The shit my friends get in their inboxes… like, you do realize we’re all still people behind these screens and pen names, right? 😭

[diazfox]

How do you imagine a more complex sexual awakening for Buck? Cause I also thought Buck's coming out went surprisingly smoothly. For one, I specifically missed how Buck never questioned if his strange conduct in that ep was only about Tommy and not at all about Eddie, and most importantly, no experiences of his have been addressed other than checking out a hot guy's ass

hey anon! i'm coming from a purely storytelling perspective, not pro/anti buddie/bucktommy so yall better not come for me!

i think this trajectory is very on brand for buck. a complex coming out arc is dearly reserved for eddie in my head, i always imagined buck's coming out to be pretty smooth and i think season 7 writers have done a really good job at that!

for all his acting before thinking tendencies, i think there's also a comfort zone buck has built around himself that he doesnt feel the need to step out of.

for starters, i definitely see comphet elements to buck. he stops at mere appreciation (checking out hot guys asses) because he doesnt feel the need to think too deeply about it given that he's very comfortable in his attraction to women already. he attributes these sorts of questionable moments to his strong allyship instead and prides (��️‍🌈?) himself in it. this would explain why he never dwells on moments of doubt because he set those criteria for himself and never revisited them because loving women was satisfying enough.

which is why i think spontaneity is the driving force for his sexual awakening rather than a surface level attraction. tommy kissing him is what allows him to see past his comfort zone and realise that he could expand his options if he wanted to. the eddie vs tommy conflict is never addressed in his head because tommy becomes instantaneously and willingly available and there's no need for him to think or look further.

speaking of, a second example of the comfort zone he has built is with eddie. in comparison to his past relationships and having to overcompensate for others' shortcomings, his relationship with eddie is perfect. he doesn't give room for any other interpretation or extrapolation of this friendship because for once he feels this mutual trust and security he never felt before with others, not even family. it's the fact that even when they do have a conflict, the writers made buck be the one to apologise for not caring enough. this further cements just how entrenched eddie is in their friendship, something buck has been guilty of doing in the past and getting hurt by repeatedly. hence buck doesnt give room for questionable moments to penetrate the platonic boundaries he's set for his and eddie's relationship and instead finds answers within the confines of friendship. he maps his confusion around eddie to guilt about lying to his best friend.

given these interpretations plus the fact that he's often the source of comedic relief, it's understandable why his coming out arc is less complex and more romcom-esque. this is especially important if they are planning a coming out arc for eddie as well, because his is going to be a trainwreck and they would want to cover different bases instead of repeating similar stories.

looking at recent directional choices though, i think there's still room to build complexity through bucktommy. especially since all of tommy's scenes since he's been established as a LI serve no other purpose than to further buck's bisexuality journey (building confidence, publicly coming out). there was no need for him to be written off the bachelor party if they wanted us to properly root for him. he wouldn't have disappointed buck for not dressing up and not being there for the search party, which are perfect opportunities to build an emotional connection between them. i'm especially intrigued by this knowing tim minear through lone star, because you can tell how much he values significant others being there for each other in the most random times (carlos literally follows tk everywhere he goes). if this direction keeps being intentionally pursued, their relationship might end with a purpose too, and perhaps this could turn buck's world upside down?

all i'm desperately hoping for is that this doesn't end in another person abandoning buck... because he's had enough. and I'VE had enough

[vaspider]

So from what I can tell, a bunch of y'all on that fucking transmasc hit list of harassment have never personally experienced the Tumblr Harassment Parade before.

First of all, from someone who has been through this sort of harassment campaign before: I'm sorry this is happening to you. You don't deserve it. It absolutely is harassment.

The good news is: these things end. Right now the amount of attention may feel overwhelming, but please know that this too shall pass. I've been through this type of harassment before. It'll end, and you'll forget the name of the people who were at its center, because they truly are irrelevant.

A little unsolicited advice:

Turn off anon right now. (And really you probably don't need to turn it back on.) Closing your inbox entirely or setting a clear boundary that you will publicly post all asks really helps in minimizing the direct harassment you receive.

Don't engage. It's tempting, I know. As often as you can, don't engage. Anyone who believes the shit they are spewing isn't your friend, and it may hurt if people turn on you during this, but better you find out who's going to throw you under the bus sooner rather than later. (One of the things I've struggled with all my life is listening the first time people tell me who they are.)

If you can stomach it, go and proactively block everyone who's spreading the list. This will minimize your direct harassment.

Likewise, setting your blog so it's not viewable from outside of Tumblr helps, too.

This is not necessarily permanent: you can adjust your settings again once this dies down. Do what makes you feel safe.

And last but most important:

Don't look.

If you need to, ask someone else to watch the situation for you, but don't look at the thread, at the "debate" over who you are and what you stand for. It's being had by people who don't know you and don't care and who are trying to win points in some sort of weird online "mental purity" contest and who -- most importantly -- don't matter to you. Looking deliberately and repeatedly at this kind of stuff written about you is a form of self-harm. Don't do it to yourself. There is nothing -- nothing -- to be gained in it. They aren't saying anything useful or interesting or true, they came into this intending to attack and hurt transmascs and that's not gonna change.

And lastly, get away from this shit. Don't wallow in it. Go play a board game or turn off your phone for a bit and watch birds out your window or walk your dog or... anything. (I took my good camera outside yesterday to take some time away and I'm pretty sure I have some good new pictures of my friend crows and scrub jays.) I find it usually helps me to put my energy into cleaning, cooking or baking. I work off frustration, get away from the hurtful crap some people do, and at the end I have food or a cleaner living space. If nothing else, try changing the sheets on your bed and taking a hot shower, making the hot beverage of your choice and then getting into your comfy clean bed to watch your best comfort movie with your Tumblr notifications turned off. A clean body, a cup of tea, and Star Wars are a good thing. I usually end up taking a nap, which is a great brain reset.

Take from this what you can use and leave what doesn't work for you. Most important of all, please remember that you did nothing to deserve harassment, this is the act of someone who decided to turn their weapons not on the people actually hurting [unknown pronoun] but on their trans siblings. It sucks that they hurt so bad, but it's not your problem or responsibility, and nothing you did means you deserve harassment. It sucks but this really isn't even about us, it's about whatever else is going on in people's lives that they think this is helpful to anyone. It sucks that it's hitting us but it's not about us, not really.

Hang in there and reach out if you need help.

Solidarity, siblings.

[galaxytale]

mmmm…. i have new thoughts about my ex and i’s situation.

i know i have rambled on here in the past about them. often bitterly and angrily. to be honest, those words came from a place of immense hurt and betrayal. a lot of pain and a lot of complex emotions that i needed to vent out and process. and the way i did this previously was… rather embarrassing and harmful and not good for anyone. but it has been a long year, and i have had much to think about. and my brain does not like to process many of these things in a normal way. i often just use this blog as a place to barf out my thoughts at random so i can work out whats going on in my mind. this doesnt excuse it but i hope it allows for some understanding.

its been a long time since my ex and i broke up. and i just… idk didnt know how to deal properly. but i think about them a lot. obviously. what you see is mostly the negatives. the frustrations and the confusions and the residual aches and pains. mostly because these are what im trying best to understand. i want to understand them, i want to understand their perspective. it frustrates me when i cant understand, and it frustrates me more when i feel as if they couldnt understand me or didnt even try. but i still care for them greatly. which is why i get frustrated. i do not think many people understand this. i want to understand why they hurt me. i want to understand how i hurt them. i want to learn and grow. but to do that i also have to experience and process the anger and frustration i felt towards them. this is what you all see when i ramble and rant.

anyway this is the last time im doing this publicly because honestly this is a stupid way to process stuff this and i figured out something way better. also im just. tired of it. im tired of being angry and being hurt. that doesnt mean itll stop but. yall wont be seeing it.

i still hold many of my previous thoughts and criticisms of them. and i still consider many of these valid and fair. and i still deny ever doing many of the things they accused me of because ive spoken with other people about them - people actually involved in the situation(s), and they have supported and corroborated my side of the story as well as my feelings regarding those various situations.

however i have come to some realizations that i think allow me to better understand parts of their side of it all.

ive realized some things about myself and how my mind functions that have lead me to other realizations. these realizations include that i misunderstood a lot of things they were trying to get me to do, tools they were trying to get me to employ, things that actually would have been helpful to me had i understood. i see now that in some of the cases they were pushing me on and making me extremely uncomfortable with, that they were genuinely trying to be helpful because they cared. because they were trying to help me just as i was trying to help them.

the problem here is that i was not ready for, and did not understand a lot of the new things being pushed at me. much of what they were trying to get me to engage with were therapy techniques and stuff to learn to cope better. unfortunately due to a lot of previous bad experiences with therapy and such techniques i am extremely adverse to and suspicious of therapy and therapeutic settings/techniques. combined with a lot of new information about myself that i needed time to adjust to and process. a lot of it scared me and i needed them to slow down and be gentler with me in this rather than throwing me in the deep end and expecting me to swim.

i misunderstood a lot of the tools they were trying to offer me - how to use them properly and why. i thought i made this obvious that i didnt understand a lot of it and in fact didnt want to engage with a lot of it outright - even though i was willing to try. the issue is i also needed a good example or instruction of what they wanted from me and… well. they did their best, this i know they tried, but it was not enough for me to understand what they really wanted from me.

i now understand that this is likely why they grew frustrated with me. and this also factors into something that ive come to realize and understand about myself - in fact its one of the things they criticized about me most… ive come to understand the true nature of what the thing i did that they hated most was actually. and ive since worked out a solution to it that actually has been shown to be far more effective and efficient in doing what the thing they were criticizing me about most was doing. this took a lot of work and a long time for me to come to the realization of what it was that i needed to do and how it worked. and i needed to be allowed to make this discovery on my own time, at my own pace to be able to accept it as part of how i work.

unfortunately due to a lot of things, i was also quite terrible to them myself. and i recognize this. i recognized it before - i tried my best to fix my understanding of it but i did not know what i didnt know. i did not know, and did not understand, what i now know and understand. but much of my actions were because i was scared, confused, uncomfortable, and dealing with a whole lot of shit outside of our relationship. and i am genuinely and truly remorseful for what i did. i was remorseful back then, and i still am now. i did some bad things and i know this. i speak of it vaguely here because honestly while im just shouting to the void i still know this is a public blog and theres a chance people will actually read this and frankly. i consider it none of their business unless they were involved. i did lash out at them, and i did treat them unfairly.

however i still feel as if they refuse to acknowledge my point of view in much of this, as well as that they lashed out at me and have refused to acknowledge and apologize for it all. i have never heard them say the words “im sorry” for any of the things i consider the worst things they did to me. much of the time they refused to even acknowledge the fact that a lot of it hurt me despite me outright stating such. they also refused to acknowledge that i had repeatedly tried to assert my own boundaries with them and refused to accept a new boundary when it was drawn.

they did a lot of terrible things to me in return. including things that they, themself, accused me of doing to them initially. i still deny these accusations and consider myself completely innocent (at worst, should my own memory really be that faulty, i consider myself only having caused a huge misunderstanding among friends as well as having accidentally fucking up something that left out important context). i feel this way because they would not produce any evidence to prove to me my own actions that would negate the memories i myself actually have as well as the evidence in support of my side of the case that i have. all they could provide was testimony from a person who would not have had direct access to either side of the conversation that they are alleging happened a certain way. a conversation that i, personally, was half of. a conversation that i spoke with the other half about again, after showing them what i was being accused of, who also verified my recollection of the events.

i feel as if they refuse to even consider my perspective. i felt this way for a good amount of the relationship, and i still feel this way. i feel that they refused to communicate with me and ensure that both of us completely understood the other. i feel that they refused to be considerate of my needs and respectful towards me as a person after a certain point. i feel as if they refused to work to compromise with me on many situations, and i feel that they often tried to demand of me many things that were unreasonable, and that they often moved goalposts or failed to deliver on their end of the deal when i still bent over backwards to do something for them.

however. i do also feel that at some point in time, they did genuinely care for me. and i do feel like i would like to apologize for the new places where i realize i caused them undue stress and frustration.

but i also feel that they would not accept this apology for those parts that i now recognize my own hand in without me accepting and apologizing for the narrative that i know is false. additionally… i do not feel as if they would accept or apologize for any of their own parts in the situation. i still feel theyre likely to reject that they hurt me very very deeply, and badly in return.

as much as i would like to start the conversation of potentially working out the issues and reconnecting as friends… i still feel as if they would view this as an impossibility. because i feel they view me as something of a monster, and not as someone who was under immense amounts of stress and pressure and was very confused and scared for months on end.

i recognize its very likely their feelings echo my own. except for the portion about potentially being friends again… i feel as if this is a forgone conclusion to them that it will not be happening.

all this said…

i also want to say this. in hindsight they were right about the tool they gave to me for one of my specific issues. the one they gave me before the start of it all. the one i was extremely adverse to accepting and trying to adapt to. i did not understand what its actual purpose was for at the time, nor did i understand how they actually meant for me to use it. because of some recent things ive learned about myself, as well as have been able to actually accept, i now understand what they meant. and ill admit that they were right about this one. its really helpful now that i understand what i was supposed to do with it.

they were right and i was wrong. simple as. at least, in regards to this one thing.

[whyhellomynameismary]

I’ve shut off Anons for good. Here’s why (LONG POST BUT IMPORTANT):

If you hadn’t noticed already, I’ve shut off anonymous messages. I’ll probably be shutting off DM’s for a bit, likely temporary, but we’ll see. I’ll answer the anons still in the backlog, but no more from here on out. I’d like there at least to be some consequences for inappropriate questions.

If I choose to open up my DM’s again, try to keep it to questions you don’t want necessarily answered publicly, or just really short interactions. I physically do not have the time anymore to have long conversations with every fan in my DM’s. I’ll be moving to twitter once the series ends anyways.

With the advent of lots of new, very, VERY young fans coming in and finding this blog, I think it’s time to finally set some personal boundaries and give a little bit of information on ways to talk to your fave online content creators. If you’re older, you probably already know this, but it’s probably still worth a read. If you’re a minor, especially skewing on the younger end, this will benefit you the most.

This not only applies to fans of hiimmarymary, but to any sort of online series, like any slenderverse series, online arg, and frankly ANY online creator you like.

When I was a significantly smaller creator a few years ago, when I was 19 and only had a few dozen fans, I was very new to this and wanted to be everybody’s friend, so I tried to go above and beyond with my fan interactions to be nice and sweet to everyone. Now that my fanbase has grown to monumental numbers, I really can’t do that anymore.

A lot of these online fan-creator relationships are largely parasocial, meaning they tend to be mostly one sided. It’s very common with any sort of show/movie/actor/etc. It can get a little muddier when the creator is, say, not a huge star, and there are ways to contact, DM, and talk to them.

I know how some of you guys are feeling. It’s exciting to be able to talk to your favorite creators! I was a young fan of stuff too, and I always got really excited when a creator I loved responded to a message/question, or liked my post about their work. Heck, I was a fan of several big slender man web series when I was 14, and got soooo excited to just be acknowledged when I made a post about how good a new episode was.

But like a lot of these things, there is a line that is all too often crossed:

I can’t be your best friend, I can’t respond constantly to everyone’s messages right when they happen. I know it’s really cool to potentially say to your classmates that you’re good friends with a person on youtube, but that’s not a realistic thing I can do. I am a 22 year old adult woman with a full time job; I frankly feel a bit odd interacting with young fans who are half my age if not younger than that.

Frankly, if you’re really young, you probably shouldn’t be sharing lots of personal details about your life with a much older creator, just in general. There’s a power dynamic there that it pays to be aware of.

On that topic, I’m not going to date you, either. I know you might have a crush, but sending me any sort of overly flirtatious messages will either be ignored or will warrant a block, depending on WHAT it is you send. I have a lot of patience for this kind of behavior since I know it’s the kind of stuff you’ll go back and cringe about later when you’re older, but I’ll say that it isn’t appreciated, for sure. Always remember that if you wouldn’t tell me something in person, maaaaybe you shouldn’t send it to me either.

Don’t take it too personally if I don’t respond to you immediately. I’ll say this honestly; there’s over 80 unanswered questions in my inbox right now. So, it’s likely not you.

Any sort of inappropriate, invasive, or explicit questions will warrant an immediate block from now on, I’m not going to just delete the message. Don’t be gross.

Also, repeatedly spamming me with lots of messages or questions will likely warrant a warning first, then a block.

Please please please, don’t take it personally if I haven’t answered your question about advice for making a series - I get that question constantly from dozens of people, and I’m holding off on answering them from now on until I figure out a way to answer them all in one go - likely a short video response once the series is done.

For some of you on the younger end of things, parts of this may seem a little harsh, maybe even a little soul-crushing, and I’m sorry for that. But there’s a lot of things that the internet doesn’t inherently teach, and I’m writing this because I wish I had seen it when I was a 13 year old navigating the web and trying to reach out to Youtubers I liked.

Best of luck, loves, thanks for listening.

-k.

[linettiewizowski]

So I saw this one post from someone on their opinion of the love square. And I really wanted to point out a few things but their replies are turned off.... So I'm answering it here anyways.

(This rant is very long, not kidding, if ya feel like reading what's basically a big ass PowerPoint then go right ahead)

- Being a child does NOT give you a pass to stalk, be possessive over, steal from, invade the boundaries, invade the personal space, of someone you have a crush on.

That is wrong. Children should not be allowed to carry on such innapropriate, behavior. No one should.

- Children need guidance and protection. They cannot always learn or handle things on their own....that should be obvious with Marinette and especially Adrien.

Plus-

°I don't think Tom & Sabine ever expected Marinette to be a stalker....so they would never think to teach her otherwise.

- Yes I know she does realize what she's doing is wrong.....but then she just continues anyways. (Or maybe it only seems like she didn't stop because the episodes are out of order? But even then she STILL acts like this in newer episodes so I'm still sticking to what I said.)

°Adrien.......needs to be taken away to a safe & stable household. (Please let Emelie awaken soon, maybe she'll set things straight. Gabriel deserves a divorce & prison.) Even so, Gabriel does recognize such unhealthy behavior. Gabriel also would not at all expect his son to behave so innapropriately. I am purdy sure he thinks Adrien is "perfect." He even calls Adrien "perfection" in one episode. - It would not even cross his mind to teach his son proper etiquette concerning a crush.

>Ahem, Adrien's possessive, territorial, pushy, somewhat obsessive, Jealous, sometimes moody behavior concerning his feelings for Ladybug.

Constantly hitting on her, flirting with her, getting up in her space, when she has repeatedly showed him that she is NOT interested in him. Even when she revealed she had feelings for another boy he kept pushing.

- The episode where he thought he had right to be angry when she "stood him up" when - The way "Chat" said it & the way "Lady" reacted? Lady only saw it as a dinner between friends.....He then went on to set up an obviously romantic candlelight dinner.

- Once again, Ladybug has made it specifically clear, she is not interested.

Lady did not even fully agree to said dinner. She said she had plans.

Adri-Chat asked "If they end early, come join me?" Lady said "We'll see."

- That is not a yes, that is a maybe. He didn't even take HER plans into account, didn't even think "Well maybe her plans didn't end early." He just gets mad. And Lady should not have been made to feel guilty just because Adri-Chat cannot seem to take/understand a no & a maybe.

- Adri-Chat getting jealous when that one artist expressed his crush on Ladybug and going on to cross Lady's boundaries by lying about the reality of his & Lady's relationship.

(Yes I know, that dude was an adult and Lady-Mar actually a teen. But at that point in the show I'm pretty sure no one could guess the age of Lady & Chat (strangely) and like Spooderman no one thought them to be actual children.) Adri-Chat did that without thinking or even asking for Lady's input. Not cool at all.

- Acting all happy, triumphant when they regained their memories in Oblivio and Alya caught a pic of their amnesiac selves kissing.

What Adri-Chat says: "We're meant for eachother Milady, you're the only one who doesn't see it." (Okay sigh, this boy.)

1. That is a totally uncalled for, arrogant and presumptuous thing to say to Ladybug.

2. (Entirerly From Adri-Chat's perspective) Oblivio erases memories right? So Adri-Chat doesn't even consider the erasion of Lady's supposed crush on this other boy. Leading her to fall her HIM yes, but that's not the point.

Neither of them were in their right minds, as they had no memories. From HIS perspective Lady did not remember her crush on this other boy, if she did, she would not have fallen for Chat at the time of the memory erasion.

Adri-Chat does not at all think about that, all the while STILL ignoring her feelings for the other boy. Nope, he thinks this is some kind of encouragement to keep harassing her because "Maybe she'll choose me one day?" A.K.A. "Maybe she'll come around one day?" - (contemplating calling it sexual harassment because the characters of course do not get sexual, it being a kid's show) But his intent is to get her to date him....Hm. It is still harassment though.

>Ahem,hem. Marinette's obsessive, compulsive, possessive, territorial, jealous, fanatical, controlling, a LOT of times single minded, stalker behavior concerning her feelings for Adrien.

°Same drill - Not dating (Even if they were, still wrong just adding in)

°Adrien has not at all made his feelings clear on anyone (from Mari's perspective)

°Has not shown romantic interest in her.

°Adrien is not aware of her behavior at all. Not even when he spots all of the pictures of him in her room does he get it. (Being too naive is a very bad thing Adrien.)

°Marinette sometimes acts as if Adrien belongs to HER and no one else can have him. She goes to great, ridiculous and sometimes extreme heights just to keep girls she sees as rivals away from him.

She goes overboard, embarrasses herself, acts immature & compulsive. Sometimes she gets mean.

°Chloe & Lila being horrible is no excuse for her to treat Adrien like a possession, and also like he isn't an intelligent person who cannot notice obvious/strange things or protect himself.

(The plot is confusing yes, Adrien not noticing Mari is Ladybug, giving Chloe multiple chances/still being her friend, Being sympathetic to Lila.

While ALSO in some cases being close to connecting the dots to Mari being Lady, Condemning Chloe's outrageous behavior even in one instance totally putting his foot down, and being one of the only people to see through Lila's lies and side with/protect Marinette....though not exactly how he should.) Chalk it up to not that great writing = serious plotholes.

Anyways

°Adrien can kiss, hang out with, travel with, talk to and date whoever he wants. Mari has NO right to manipulate situations where he can't do that. I.E Controlling behavior.

°Now, Kagami is not a bad person. (More than Half the fandom's treatment of her is very disappointing.) Yes I know, she can be harsh, standoffish and cold sometimes. But-

°She does not intend to be mean, she does not, nor does she want to bully anyone. She does not bully Marinette. She just wants Marinette to stop being indecisive and flighty because Kagami ALSO likes Adrien (and by the way she was raised) does not think people should be so indecisive & hesitant or they'll miss important chances for them to take in life.

°Kagami does not think Mari is right for Adrien no, but as soon as she thinks Adrien is interested in Mari? She immediately backs off & respects his wishes. She only engages again when Adrien shows interest in her again.

°Then later on in the show she even attempts to make friends with Mari genuinely because she wants to make friends.....(and Mari doesn't understand because of Kagami's awkwardness but is also simultaneously clouded by her feelings for Adrien.) Kagami actually feels hurt when she finds out that Marinette initially didn't like her.

Kagami is a GOOD girl.

°Now, what Marinette did to Kagami in Animaestro before that was very unacceptable.

Temporarily teaming up with Chloe to sabotage/publicly humiliate/embarrass Kagami to "not let her get Adrien" "not let her take Adrien away," mess with Adrien's perception of her.

- Jumping to outrageous conclusions out of paranoia, panic and fear. (My cute child needs to be sat down and sternly talked to about this.)

- Trying to manipulate & take away Adrien's choice to decide whether he wants Kagami or not.

(I think this probably marked the episode where Mari's unhealthy/toxic behavior starts to spiral as new episodes come out. (And these ARE out of order so wth is up with Mari's unhealthy escalation lately?)

- Using Tiki for personal, jealous purposes to humiliate Lila in front of Adrien. Acting so irrational and heated in front of 2 civillains(from her perspective) Mari?

- Invading Adrien's home/room, touching everything, lying on his bed....sniffing his things? 😧 Without his consent just to leave a present....when she could have just left it on the window sill, not barge into his room and NOT act very creepy.

- Everything she did & said when she thought that Adrien was one of the wax statues.

😮😬😖 Marinette, honey noooooOOOooo.

ALL OF THIS?

Toxic/Unhealthy behavior. It very much is.

Let's not pretend please.

This is not acceptable period. I very much side-eye another's perceptions on the matter when they say "I knew people like this" "They turned out alright."

Oh...did they? Or is this simply what YOU are saying and we, the internet people don't have the full story?

I Kill Bill squint my eyes at the opinions of people who so easily dismiss toxic/unhealthy behavior.

This is not simply a discussion on fictional characters btw, but on the behavior itself ECT. and the fact that this person brought in real people as an example.

(Btw Any teens reading this? Young adults? Please remember to use protection when having sex. Babies are a high stress responsibility that a person who is either still a kid or a very young adult should not be handling or have to handle. "Results may vary" and all that. Another person's experiences aren't guaranteed to be yours and we already have COUNTLESS evidence that having babies while young is NOT a good idea. Please & Thank you.)

In response to a little tidbit in that person's post.) Anyways.

- Being mature while in a relationship is very important. That much is apparent.

In the context of the show for these 2 teens they are in love with one another.

You cannot behave like all of THIS if you wish to maintain a relationship with someone.

This is not grounds for a healthy, safe, respectful relationship.

°Not respecting your friend or spouse, their choices, their boundaries, their space, their being makes you a borderline abusive person.

(Guys c'mon.) If Adrien & Marinette were real people? They would be very creepy, toxic kids. Hell we DO have some very toxic people, even children that act like this in real life. This is a no. All the no.

- Other ships in the show being unhealthy does not in no way invalidate or downplay the fact that Adrien & Marinette's behavior is unhealthy.

- There are many, many, many, many instances of their unhealthy behavior, not "just two." It's insulting that this person treats the fans who point this out as if we are some idiots who do not watch the show and therefore can not call out this obvious lie.

- There being moments where Adrien & Marinette actually behave theirselves for once does not at all erase or invalidate every single one of their toxic moments.

- The show does not do a good job of writing scenes where getting into these characters heads that behaving this way is unacceptable, at all. No character development there.

(Them giving up on persuing eachother at the end of the season does not address the toxic behavior. That is just them being tired of not getting the results that they want from their crushes.)

- It's hard for me to debate as well. Calling the whole ship unhealthy/toxic? In real life, no way josay would this be okay, in the show? Marinette & Adrien at their core ARE good kids. And they DO sometimes realize their mistakes. But it really, truly isn't enough. There is either not much or no consequences to their innapropriate behavior at all.

(You might say Chat Blanc, but that was circumstance because they didn't reveal their identities to each other in full, not consequence for Mari's creepy room invasion, that was separate.)

It's so debatable. These unhealthy behaviors should NOT be encouraged and the Love Square shouldn't be shipped during them.

I'm just gonna say that I hope with all my might that the writers get it into their heads that this is NOT okay to market to children and that they CANNOT expect kids to understand or tell what toxic behavior is or that the innapropriate things Adri & Mari do are okay.

THAT is a large issue above all else here.

(Let's get some major character development please.)

- "Sometimes you have to sacrifice when you love someone."

This sounds way left field and is not at ALL what the fans who protest Adri & Mari's toxic behavior are talking about.

- "I think a lot of the criticism comes from people who just don't understand love. Maybe they've never been in love."

How absolutely patronizing, condescending, presumptuous in itself and very ignorant.

That's not even. How do I respond to that?

Wow.

I am not repeating myself, I already wrote a whole darn essay. My answer to this is all of the above.

And lastly-

"But the love square is FAR from toxic.

Far, far, far from it."

...Hm. Hm Hm. Hm. Yes of course. 😐😐😐

Okey. I think I'm done here. It's literally been an hour gathering my thoughts, typing and editing this. Anybody who actually read all of this, feel free to comment? Note? I dunno, I'm new to Tumblr. Calling comments/replies "notes" is weird to me.

[candle-jacked]

Your post seems pretty one sided? and uhh is actually illegal in most places to say stuff like that about someone publicly....

Good evening, Anon. I want to let you know that I am aware that my ask box is open, even to anonymous asks. So while I know this is probably part of the same game… I see that you are attempting to play your hand with “defamation”. This exact topic, by the way, is the word of the last 48 hours IRL so it’s pretty coincidental that this ask immediately appears after my gif-response.

I will call and raise you.

So, what you’re trying to say is that:

As a person receiving consistent threats and harassment from the same individuals repeatedly over a course of time—which does not exclude the use of a child as a weapon in said active harassment, or the harassment of immediate family in order to make an attempt to communicate with me, which I have already stated, on numerous occasions that I don’t want to talk to them— that I legally cannot:

On an anonymous social platform,

That has not made information public in which reveals either party’s personal identification—

Is, by the way, not a credible source to make or publish a statement to be used by a third-party source with the intention of revealing personal information—

Or has otherwise professionally damaged their reputation or career in which hinders or discredits their ability and/or career,

Share my thoughts and opinions on the bad experiences I’ve had during this whole debacle? That I am legally bound from sharing my personal journey, provided that I do my due diligence to protect all the identities involved, which include my harassers? You’re telling me: that it is illegal for me to do that. On a social media platform. In 2019.

Where abuse is not okay.

Let’s just call it for what it is. Here’s the definition of oppression. For the hell of it, I would like to share the definition of coercion, too. I would like you to read it.

This ask was specifically, by design, sent to me in order to victim shame me (among my other opinions); to encourage a thought process that I shouldn’t say anything about my situation. That I should keep quiet; that perhaps it’s really not all that bad…

Fuck that horseshit.

This is one part of a base foundation formulated for manipulation; to make me question my decision to share my thoughts. To make me question my opinions. To make me reconsider my plight to Tumblr.

This, my friend, is gas lighting. It is used in combination with many manipulation tactics that I, unfortunately, am now use to. Specifically, it’s being used in an attempt to silence me; to make me compliant with a toxic system that, frankly, I won’t be a part of. They have shown their sadistic behavior and have openly admitted to it. They “can’t wait” to destroy me. That’s it. That’s the motive of this whole ordeal. It’s revenge. And the endgame is to see how much of me that they can destroy. 

thank u, next.

Disclaimer: I am not liable for the egos and prides that I just curb stomped in the process of answering this ask. It’s not my fault that they keep coming back here for more of… well, me. I didn’t invite them here. Or anywhere, as a matter of fact. I’ve been minding my own damn business. Just like they should be minding their own.

So to that, I’ve already put myself out there. I have already set clear expectations and limits. There’s just a boundary you don’t cross with me.

This is one of them.

[theconservativebrief]

On Sunday, the New Yorker announced that a live interview with Steve Bannon would be a centerpiece of the magazine’s in-person conference, called the New Yorker Festival, in early October. The backlash was fierce and immediate. As the controversy built and marquee speakers began dropping out of the festival, the magazine’s widely respected editor, David Remnick, disinvited Bannon from the event.

“I thought this through and talked to colleagues — and I’ve reconsidered,” Remnick wrote. “Our writers have interviewed Steve Bannon for the New Yorker before, and if the opportunity presents itself I’ll interview him in a more traditionally journalistic setting as we first discussed, and not on stage.”

Bannon wasted little time in firing back. “The reason for my acceptance [of the NYer Festival] was simple: I would be facing one of the most fearless journalists of his generation,” Bannon said in a statement. “In what I would call a defining moment, David Remnick showed that he was gutless when confronted by the howling mob.”

This might seem like a story you’ve heard before: A controversial speaking invitation is met with a very predictable backlash, leading to a canceled invitation and cries of liberal censorship. But the New Yorker case is particularly interesting. The core questions the incident raises are profound ones: How should journalists think of their jobs in an era when one of America’s governing ideologies is, at root, thinly veiled white nationalism? And how should the media engage with figures who routinely deride them as enemies of the people?

The New Yorker Festival is a moneymaking event. The New Yorker brings in famous and/or interesting people, has them sit on panels with New Yorker journalists, and charges readers who are interested in attending. Several other major publications, including The Atlantic and Vox, host similar events.

These kinds of events are, by their very nature, difficult to manage. They need to be attractive to audiences, which means booking interesting and/or controversial speakers. The events need the speakers to show up, which often means paying them, and they might not want to walk into the lion’s den of an adversarial interview in front of a live audience.

At the same time, the interviews themselves can’t betray the core journalistic mission of the publication — they can’t somehow do reporting and brand promotion at the same time. That means the journalists on stage shouldn’t (in theory) just suck up to the speakers and sing their praises — though that’s all too often what happens — but rather should respectfully challenge their ideas and arguments.

This was the spirit in which the Bannon speech was arranged. Initially, the idea was to have Bannon on a podcast, but Remnick realized that a sit-down with Bannon would be an interesting addition to the festival. He openly advertised that he would be challenging the former White House senior strategist on stage.

“I have every intention of asking him difficult questions and engaging in a serious and even combative conversation,” Remnick told the New York Times on Sunday. “The audience itself, by its presence, puts a certain pressure on a conversation that an interview alone doesn’t do.”

Remnick’s comments did little to quell the controversy. Prominent festival panelists, like the director Judd Apatow and actor Jim Carrey, threatened to back out if Bannon appeared. New Yorker writer Adam Davidson tweeted on Monday that Remnick had spent “all day today on the phone with writers and staffers telling him he’s wrong.” Kathryn Schulz, a Pulitzer Prize–winning staff writer, publicly called for readers to email Remnick and tell him to disinvite Bannon:

The reasoning behind the backlash was straightforward. Bannon is not just an interesting person in American public life; he is, and long has been, an ideologue who has devoted his life to furthering a particularly noxious strain of right-wing populism.

While editor-in-chief of Breitbart, he claimed that he wanted the site to be “the platform for the alt-right.” He elevated Milo Yiannopoulos, making him a top writer and the editor of Breitbart’s tech section, regularly stoked fears about Muslim and Latino immigration, and published a piece titled “5 Devastating Facts about Black-on-Black Crime.”

In the White House, Bannon was most infamous for writing the initial draft of the travel ban — an extremely sweeping document that threw American airports into chaos and was repeatedly struck down in court as discriminatory. His current project is building an organization in Europe, melodramatically called “The Movement,” designed to bolster Europe’s xenophobic far-right parties in advance of the 2019 European parliament election.

“Let them call you racists,” Bannon told Europe’s far-right National Front in one speech. “Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.”

For these reasons, the dissenting New Yorker staffers argued, Bannon is not someone who deserves a spot on at the New Yorker Festival. Bannon’s worldview won’t be defeated by a tough New Yorker interview, and pretending that he is intellectually deserving of one works to normalize the indefensible.

“I don’t think an advocate for ISIS would have been invited to the Festival. I don’t think a literal Klansman would’ve,” Osita Nwanevu, another New Yorker staff writer, tweeted. “But Bannon was, reflecting an implicit judgement that what Bannon believes lies on the acceptable side of some unspecified but clearly real moral boundary.”

A version of this argument carried the day. In his statement explaining his decision to rescind Bannon’s invite, Remnick said that a live interview at a festival was different than an interview for a print piece in the magazine (which the New Yorker has done before). He stood by the idea of interviewing Bannon, casting it as a valuable exercise for the historical record, but had been persuaded by his own staffers that this was the wrong venue.

Some New Yorker writers publicly disagreed with Remnick’s final decision. Lawrence Wright and Malcolm Gladwell, arguably the publication’s two most famous working writers, sent out dissenting tweets:

Journalism is about hearing opposing views. I regret that this event is not taking place.

New Yorker Festival Pulls Steve Bannon as Headliner Following High-Profile Dropouts, via @nytimes https://t.co/8KoYDZvR71

— Lawrence Wright (@lawrence_wright) September 4, 2018

Huh. Call me old-fashioned. But I would have thought that the point of a festival of ideas was to expose the audience to ideas. If you only invite your friends over, it’s called a dinner party. https://t.co/VwkL4zOrbX

— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) September 4, 2018

Joe McCarthy was done in when he was confronted by someone with intelligence and guts, before a live audience. Sometimes a platform is actually a gallows.

— Malcolm Gladwell (@Gladwell) September 4, 2018

Set aside the questionable history in Gladwell’s tweet — it’s not clear that “have you no sense of decency?” actually took down Sen. McCarthy — and you get to the crux of the issue. The question isn’t whether Bannon is odious, but rather how journalists ought to interact with an odious person who has, in fact, played a major role in significant political events.

The Gladwell/Wright view is that Bannon needs to be heard and challenged in order for people to be able to understand the world around them. Ignoring him is tantamount to sticking one’s head in the sand; journalists need to expose all important views, even repugnant ones, and hope that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

It’s a legitimate way of approaching this particular moment in political time. You can’t ignore that the president of the United States is a practitioner of Bannon-style populism, or that it’s widely popular around the European continent. You need to engage where these people are coming from in order to grasp the direction of American and European politics, something I’ve tried to do extensively in my own work. Journalism requires interviewing people to understand their views, even if you think those views are wrong or even offensive.

However, that is not an argument for including Bannon at this particular event, which exists in a strange space between traditional journalism and public relations. Just because it’s good to understand right-wing populism generically does not mean that you should feature one of its proponents in a place of honor at a conference.

Seems @NewYorker lost sight of key distinction between warily hearing out and scrutinizing @SteveKBannon’s views, and celebrating him as a Festival headliner. Like an honorary degree or distinguished lectureship, latter implies a measure of acclaimhttps://t.co/cwvYLhJZtx

— Suzanne Nossel (@SuzanneNossel) September 4, 2018

On this point, I believe that the critics of the Bannon invite have the upper hand — for reasons that I think the New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb put best.

“I’ve been very critical of ‘normalizing’ the obscene. I’ve also argued that it is sometimes necessary to engage odious, even dangerous figures as a means of exposing them,” Cobb writes. “Interviewing Bannon would’ve been the former but on principle [Remnick] sought to do the latter.”

There are lots of different conferences every year, and all of them are faced with difficult decisions about who to invite and who not to invite. Understanding why this one generated so much outrage and conversation — it was all journalism and politics Twitter could talk about on Monday night — requires understanding some broader issues about journalism in the Trump era.

Part of the reason this generated so much interest is the New Yorker’s audience, which represents a very particular kind of liberalism: educated, upper-class, and proud of its intellectual sophistication. A recent Pew Research Center survey of 32 different large news sources and programs found that the New Yorker had the most left-leaning audience of them all. To subscribe to the New Yorker, or to read it on public transit, is to make a statement about who you are and what you believe. For someone like Bannon to be included in that space respectfully could seem, to that audience, like a kind of violation.

The New Yorker has been my holy grail for the whole of my writing life. There is no publishing credit I want more. I was writing an essay for them (online) about one of my favorite TV shows, but I just pulled it because I just… I cannot wrap my mind around this Bannon thing.

— roxane gay (@rgay) September 3, 2018

But more broadly, journalists have been forced into a lose-lose position by an administration and political movement that have cast them as the enemy.

Around the time of Trump’s inauguration, Bannon gave a revealing interview to the New York Times — in which he told the media establishment to “keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”

“The media here is the opposition party,” Bannon said. “They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States.”

This notion has reflected the way that the White House and the broader Republican establishment have treated the “fake news” media during the Trump administration. Bannon, per his statement, went into this event seeing it as a kind of joust; Remnick went in seeing it as an opportunity to hold a powerful proponent of a bigoted ideology accountable.

Whatever happened on that festival stage would likely have been a clash that would help Bannon and Trump paint the media as intrinsically hostile to their cause. Engaging with Trumpism, even in good faith, can further their anti-media narrative. So too does disinviting Bannon from the festival.

1) Steve Bannon is reprehensible.

2) The New Yorker knew this.

3) It did not have to invite him.

4) But when it uninvited him, it caved to outrage mobs.

5) The heckler’s veto is more dangerous than Bannon’s presence on that stage.

— David French (@DavidAFrench) September 4, 2018

And yet, when the country is being run by reprehensible people, the answer for journalists can’t be to simply ignore them or refuse to interview them. As a result, even the most establishmentarian reporters are being forced to become more oppositional in this era. Around the time that the news of Bannon’s disinvitation broke on Monday evening, NBC’s Chuck Todd published a piece in the Atlantic arguing that journalists need to “fight back” against the attacks coming from the White House and Fox News anchors.

The piece is remarkable not because of the sentiments, which are commonly heard among liberal and left journalists, but because of the source. Chuck Todd is a straight-laced political reporter, host of NBC’s venerable Sunday interview show Meet the Press. Todd is as establishment as they come, a frequent target of ire from liberals on social media. And here he is saying that reporters need to take a more confrontational attitude towards conservatives — particularly when thinking about who deserves a platform.

“I’m not advocating for a more activist press in the political sense, but for a more aggressive one,” Todd writes. “That means having a lower tolerance for talking points, and a greater willingness to speak plain truths. It means not allowing ourselves to be spun, and not giving guests or sources a platform to spin our readers and viewers, even if that angers them. Access isn’t journalism’s holy grail — facts are.”

This is the double-bind journalists find themselves in. If you report on Trump, Bannon, and their fellow travelers the same way that you’d cover any previous administration, you risk normalizing the white identity politics and disdain for democratic norms at the heart of the Trumpist project. But if you treat them differently, more worthy of scorn or heightened scrutiny, you come to embody the adversarial role the president has slotted you into.

Original Source -> The Steve Bannon-New Yorker controversy, explained

via The Conservative Brief

[mikedelicbrownage-blog]

Long-term harassment of a sex worker

I have technically known Mike since I was about 20, because that’s when I joined Twitter, and my friends were Weird Twitter/Left people. I barely talked to him then but we DMed sometimes. He would message me a disproportionate number of messages to my actual replies, and I got the sense that he was a creep, but nothing beyond that. The only interaction I remember from that time, ironically enough, is when I asked him to proofread a draft of an essay I later published, about the ways I was sexually harassed, abused, and exploited as a female teenager in the art world. So he knew about my experiences of harassment, stalking, rape, and CSA, among others. He also knew that I had been pushed into sex work. 

This sets the context for how he ultimately fetishized me and violated my boundaries repeatedly. It didn’t matter that he actually knew my history of trauma. It didn’t matter to him when I reminded him of that history and asked him to stop sexualizing me, and to stop sexualizing my work. 

I will include screenshots here which represent some of my most violating experiences with Mike. Back in January, he began ‘roleplaying’ with the Twitter account my partner and I set up for work, without our consent or even our knowledge until long after it started. This was accompanied by him spamming us, individually and collectively, with unwanted sexual advances. It came to a head when he not only publicly claimed to be in a ‘kink relationship’ with me, but also implied to his followers that I was in high school, based on a single joke I had made. 

I was alerted to this post after it had been posted. I immediately told Mike to publicly tweet that I was not his girlfriend, and that I (and my fiance) were not in a relationship with him. He tweeted a ‘retraction’ which stayed very much within his sexual fantasy: 

Finding this tweet led to the discover of many, many others, about myself (named in them), and the ‘collective’ (as in my partner and myself, a lesbian couple). It made me incredibly sick. Shortly thereafter, we confronted Mike, who told us we were victimizing him by rejecting his advances, and we cut off contact. 

Months later, on the back of seeing other call-out posts against Mike, and other women coming forward about their victimization, I confronted Mike in a private group DM to which we were both added. I actually had no intention of confronting him at first, and tried to ignore him; I only did confront him because he replied, disparagingly, to a joke tweet I made at someone else in the DM. Mike made some disgusting and violating comment about how I wanted to fuck him. It made me mad, so I said this (clearly sarcastic): 

To which he replied: 

I wouldn’t say I gave Mike a true ‘sex work’ experience for free, but this exchange is important because he acknowledges, in a very ugly and twisted way, the fact that he violated me and took something from me. This exchange prompted him to launch a days-long, public harassment campaign against myself and my partner, referring to us - who were never in a relationship with him, and previously asked him to stop referring to us as in a ‘kink relationship’ with him (per the above) - as his ‘exes,’ and posting, over and over again, about how sexually desirable he is, and how we just want to fuck him. His intent to degrade us was unmistakable. Here are just a few examples from the hundreds of tweets available on his TL:

These tweets have a few things in common. All use distinctively misogynistic language (’maenads,’ ‘bitches,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘jealous’). All of them are sexualizing (e.g. ’i fuckin like mean bitches’), demonstrating how disingenuous Mike’s attempt to frame himself as the victim truly is. All, also, contain false allegations, seeking to discredit me. I am a ‘jealous ex’; I ‘attacked’ his GF (another 22-year-old sex worker he interacts with through Twitter), when the exchange happened between her and an established Twitter account run by a man. He equates my confronting him in a private DM, in which I shared no actual details of what transpired between us, to ‘revenge porn.’ 

They all serve the narrative he is desperately - through literally thousands of tweets - trying to cultivate, to deflect from the fact that he abused me and many, many other women. 

[usnewsaggregator-blog]

Leon Wieseltier: A Reckoning

New Post has been published on http://usnewsaggregator.com/leon-wieseltier-a-reckoning/

Leon Wieseltier: A Reckoning

It was never an “open secret” among me and my then-colleagues that Leon Wieseltier, the longtime literary czar of The New Republic, behaved inappropriately with women in the workplace. It was simply out in the open. This week, Wieseltier’s previously forthcoming culture magazine was suspended, and Wieseltier publicly apologized for past misconduct. Multiple women have complained of sexual harassment they say occurred during much of his three-decade reign at The New Republic. (Emerson Collective, which owns a majority stake in The Atlantic, was the financial backer of the now-scrapped publication. Wieseltier was also a contributing editor at The Atlantic until today, when Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief, announced in a note to staffers that the magazine is severing its ties with him.)

I spent 12 years at The New Republic, starting in 1999 at age 28—a relatively long tour at a publication where young staffers often left after only a few years in its poorly paid trenches. During that time, Leon and I were more or less friends, as were our spouses. (My husband also worked as an editor at the magazine for years.) Leon and I attended one another’s weddings, I went to his wife’s baby shower, he would come to my office to chat, and I would occasionally grab drinks with him after work. All of which may sound slightly odd now—but will sound much odder as I go along.

Related Story

The ‘Harvey Effect’ Takes Down Leon Wieseltier’s Magazine

As a result, I have perhaps more “Leon stories” than some of my former colleagues, well over a dozen of whom I have been talking with as the accusations have boiled over into the public sphere. Everyone’s experience was unique, of course. But many—and what has been eye-opening is just how many there are—share striking similarities. And on one point, almost everyone seems to agree: With Leon, things were complicated.

When a young woman started work at The New Republic, she would be swept into Leon’s glittering welcome wagon. Maybe it would be lunch at one of his favorite haunts (The Palm, back in his heyday) or a cozy chat (and maybe a sip of bourbon) in his office. The venue shifted, but the purpose was constant: to gauge the newest member of the family’s potential as a playmate.

For Leon, women fell on a spectrum ranging from Humorless Prig to Game Girl, based on how much of his sexual banter, innuendo, and advances she would put up with. Once he figured out where to place you, all else flowed from there. “He was good at figuring out which things he could say to which people—knowing where you could push somebody’s limits,” recalls Rachel Morris, an executive editor at HuffPost who was TNR’s managing editor, then an executive editor, from 2010 to 2014.

My own Leon test took place after a party that The New Republic was hosting in New York City shortly after I came aboard. Afterward, Leon was eager to show me the hotel where he was staying (it had some connection to old New York literary types), so he invited me to its bar for a drink. When we arrived, however, he decreed the bar too crowded and insisted we go up to his room and order room service. (If I recall correctly, champagne—a Leon favorite.) There, I spent an awkward hour or so with his name-dropping (at one point, he answered the phone, then shared with me that Tina Brown wanted him to come have drinks with her and David Bowie); grilling me about my personal life (even then I was living with my husband-to-be); and relishing my obvious discomfort at the situation.

A common refrain I’ve heard as women have been dragged back into their memories: Whatever else he was aiming for, Leon delighted in making young women sexually uncomfortable.

That night in Leon’s room, I made clear I was in a serious relationship. And after our drink, I headed back to my hotel unscathed, if weirded out. But I also had shown that I was willing to hang out with Leon in intimate settings, drink with him, and laugh at his naughty stories. And so the parameters of our relationship were set.

As for the bulk of my Leon experience, it was pretty standard: He made constant comments about my looks and clothes—including the time he left a CD on my desk as a gift, along with a thank-you note for the mini-skirt I was wearing that day. I don’t think I ever wore a skirt to the office again.

I was not the only one receiving such fashion critiques. “I remember one time I was wearing a black shift-like dress and black tights,” recalls Amanda Silverman, an editor at Mother Jones who did two stints at The New Republic between 2008 and 2014. “A male colleague, who was a friend of mine, teased me that I looked like I was going to a funeral. Leon overheard the conversation and said, ‘The only problem with that dress is that it’s not tight enough.’” Hillary Kelly, a contributor to Glamour magazine who worked at The New Republic from 2009 to 2014, adds, “More than once, before a function outside the office, he’d tell me to ‘wear something tight’ and then wink or smile.”

One of Leon’s favorite topics of discussion was his sexual history. I was far from the only staffer with whom he shared graphic tales of his lovers and sexploits from his wilder days. (By the time I came along, Leon was with his now-wife.) “Unsolicited, he told me a long, detailed story about how magnificent his long-ago girlfriend’s breasts were,” says Kelly.

Leon also ribbed me about my sex life, which was more than a little awkward once my husband-to-be joined the staff. And while my partner’s presence kept Leon in check in some ways, it also gave him another avenue of teasing. He repeatedly suggested that, before I officially got hitched, he and I needed to go out on a proper date so I could slip into something super sexy and we could paint the town red. (Never happened.)

Of course, any sort of sexy talk would do. Seyward Darby, the executive editor of The Atavist Magazine, who held a couple of different editorial positions at The New Republic between 2008 and 2011, recalls a 2009 column Leon wrote on circumcision, its place in Jewish culture, and its effects (or lack thereof) on male pleasure. Leon sent her the document, titled “foreskin,” and then went into her office to watch her read it: “When I told him that the word ‘foreskin’ as a document title had raised my eyebrows, he said sarcastically, ‘Oh, report me to HR!’ Then he left. In the same timeframe, he gave a fellow female colleague ‘a book of portraits of Jesus with hard-ons.’ He told her to ‘take it home and really have fun with it tonight.’”

Eliza Gray, a freelance writer, had a similar experience in 2010, early in her tenure as a reporter-researcher at The New Republic: “Leon suggested I come see him so we could fact-check his column together, which is strange, since the process doesn’t require in-person communication. The piece must have mentioned something about art or beauty, because he picked up an art book and showed me a picture of a naked male marble sculpture and asked me, ‘Isn’t that the most erotic picture you have ever seen?’ It was a long time ago, but I do remember feeling the kind of heightened vigilance one feels when speaking in front of a crowd, or walking on a dark street at night. I think he enjoyed using the sexual subject matter to make me feel uncomfortable.”

Then there was the touching. Leon is a famously “touchy” guy. He doles out kisses—on cheeks, lips, foreheads—and dispenses hugs and grabs shoulders and pats legs. His friends (myself included) came to think little of it. But it made many women on staff exceedingly uncomfortable.

“Leon kissed me on the lips under the guise of congratulating me on a life event,” recalls Katherine Marsh, a writer of children’s books who was managing editor and deputy editor at The New Republic from 2005 to 2009. “I have been hugged and even cheek-kissed by plenty of male colleagues but this raised my alarm bells. I told several family members at the time because it creeped me out. I felt uncomfortable around him for pretty much the rest of my time at TNR. I remember warning a new female colleague, Britt Peterson, not to be in a room alone with him.”

Marin Cogan, a freelance writer who was a reporter-researcher and assistant editor at the magazine from 2007 to 2009, notes, “Last week, I put ‘Leon kissed me’ into the search bar of my email, and to my surprise, four incidents popped up. I’d completely buried it. In all of these incidents”—none were on the mouth, Cogan clarifies—“I told coworkers, and we all just treated it as an awkward but not uncommon fact of working at TNR.”

“Leon would take every opportunity he could to touch me, including kissing me on the face when I did tasks for him,” recalls Kelly. “He was notorious for the forehead kiss, which involved putting his hands on either side of your face so you were stuck inside. It was, ‘Very good job, little girl. This is your reward.’”

And, of course, there were those occasions when Leon would push even those boundaries. On a couple of occasions, after a few drinks, he hit me with an abrupt, decidedly non-platonic kiss. (Yes, a hint of tongue was involved in those cases.) This did not happen often and was a move just comic enough he could brush it off as a half-joke.

Decidedly not a joke was what happened to Sarah Wildman, a writer at Vox who worked at The New Republic from 1999 to 2003: “One night most of the staff went out. Leon cornered me by the bathroom and kissed me. I clapped my hand over my mouth and he said, ‘I’ve always known you’d do that.’ I felt terrible afterwards.”

Another classic Leon move: More than once, when he and I were out for drinks, he would pass along a mundane bit of office gossip, suggest it was a great secret, and tell me that if I ever revealed it to anyone, he’d “tell people we’re fucking.” He framed it as a joke, but it was a joke-as-threat.

Which brings us to the awkwardness of Leon Stories. As woman after woman has stressed, Leon’s was not a Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes type of predation. No one I spoke with was ever physically afraid of him. Yes, some feared his ability to make their lives miserable and ruin their futures. (No one ever doubted his ability to do this.) Leon had a reputation for turning hard on those who displeased him. Upon joining The New Republic, most people knew (or quickly learned) not to get on Leon’s bad side. Bad Leon could be scary, no matter where you fell on the org chart.

As a close intimate of the magazine’s owner, not to mention a quasi-celebrity himself who hobnobbed with the likes of Barbra Streisand and Kirk Douglas, Leon was the most powerful person at the magazine—regardless of who was the top editor at any given moment.

“It felt like Leon could make or break my career,” says Kelly. “Seeing how he treated people he had once worked with and had a falling out with—the way he could just turn off the kind and generous person he could be—it could be terrifying. I lived in horror of alienating or upsetting him in some way.”

“When he was suggestive with me,​ I laughed it off, made it a joke,” says Sacha Zimmerman, a senior editor at The Atlantic who held a range of jobs at The New Republic from 2001 to 2014. “Any other reaction sure seemed like a quick way to get ostracized at TNR.”

“I didn’t feel like there was ever any recourse for his behavior because he was treated as a powerful, even untouchable, person, certainly more important and indispensable than me,” says Marsh. “I was managing editor—one of the senior-most women on staff—and I felt as if I couldn’t protect myself, let alone younger women.”

At the same time, many women longed to be in what one called “the sunlight” of Good Leon. Complicating matters, the owner of the magazine during my tenure, Martin Peretz, had a reputation as a scorching sexist (a tale for another day), and the magazine was seen as something of a boys’ club. Leon always presented himself as a champion of women, which in many cases he was: He helped some women fine-tune pieces, he introduced them to famous and powerful people, he helped them find jobs a step up the career ladder.

“Leon was the one who ​gave me a column,” says Zimmerman. “He advised me; he ​helped me get a new job. He was important to me—and he was also unquestionably inappropriate with women.”

“Like many women, I fell in a trap of being demeaned by him and yet finding myself looking to him for assistance,” says Marsh. “Several years after the incident, I emailed to ask him for career help. I feel quite ashamed of this now.”

“I owe a great deal to his support and his mentorship,” says the book critic and author Ruth Franklin, who held multiple editorial positions, including as Leon’s associate literary editor, from 1999 to 2014. “It was no secret that Leon regularly acted inappropriately with many women on staff, including me, but his actions were largely overlooked because he wielded enormous power and because he was often charming, funny, and brilliant. Regardless of what he intended, numerous women found his actions and remarks patronizing, insulting, or damaging.”

As a senior political writer, I didn’t look to Leon for mentoring. Even so, I wanted to stay in his good graces—not merely because I feared Bad Leon, but because Good Leon could be, yes, incomparably charming, funny, and brilliant. I rationalized that I could “handle” the rest and that his low-level lechery was simply the cost.

Should I have slugged him at some point? Probably. More responsibly, I should have lodged a formal complaint. At the very least, I should have had the sense not to accept Leon’s invitations for post-work drinks. But I was ever so much more tolerant and conflict-averse then than I am now, and life is full of regrets.

Indeed, what I am regretting most is having thought only about how I could or could not “handle” Leon. I did not think in terms of how uncomfortable he may have been making the more junior women on staff. Listening to their stories now breaks my heart, especially as so many of them are feeling guilt-ridden and “complicit.” (How many times have I heard that word this week?) They blame themselves for rolling their eyes instead of loudly saying, “Stop”; for not having been stronger or braver; for not standing up for themselves and demanding more respect because, well, with Leon it was … complicated.

Stop beating yourself up, ladies. These things are always complicated. But they are not your fault. They never were.

Original Article:

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The Sexual Assault Allegations against Knight Landesman—What We Know So Far

Photo by Gonzalo Marroquin/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Image

Knight Landesman, an art-world gatekeeper and longtime co-publisher of the influential trade publication Artforum, resigned on Wednesday, just one day after artnet News writer Rachel Corbett first reported allegations of sexual harassment made by several women and men against him.

The resignation came the same day former Artforum employee Amanda Schmitt filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York against Landesman and her former employer, alleging that Landesman sexually harassed her for years while the magazine’s executives did little, despite being aware of his behavior, according to the complaint.

The 27-page complaint includes allegations from eight other women, who, though not plaintiffs in the case, said that Landesman harassed them as well. Since the suit was filed Wednesday, more women have come forward to artnet News to recount their own experiences with Landesman, a figure the New York Times described as “a pillar of the international art scene, a man-about-town known from the galleries of Manhattan to the Art Basel fair in Switzerland for his primary-colored suits and deep connections in the industry.”

The allegations against Landesman include public groping, lewd emails, and requests for kisses and backrubs, as well as professional retaliation when his advances were rebuffed. “Landesman engages in unlawful sexual harassment and retaliation, preying upon young women and using Artforum’s power within the industry as leverage to empower himself and harm and silence others,” the complaint said.

In response to inquiries from artnet News, Artforum posted an official statement on its website on Tuesday, noting “we required that Mr. Landesman attend therapy, and took companywide steps to address any workplace transgressions” and describing Schmitt’s claim for damages as an “attempt to exploit a relationship that she herself worked hard to create and maintain.” It has since announced that it will form a task force of women at the magazine to investigate working conditions at the publication.

“In the past days, we have met with our staff and they have told us that Knight Landesman engaged in unacceptable behavior and caused a hostile work environment,” Artforum said in a statement posted on its website on Wednesday. “We will do everything in our ability to bring our workplace in line with our editorial mission, and we will use this opportunity to transform Artforum into a place of transparency, equity, and with zero tolerance for sexual harassment of any kind.”

Michelle Kuo, the publication’s editor-in-chief for over seven years, resigned last week. “I resigned because I felt that, in light of the troubling allegations surrounding one of our publishers, I could no longer serve as a public representative of Artforum,” she wrote in a statement provided to ARTnews. “Though I may continue to advise the magazine through its transition, my final date as an employee at the magazine was [Thursday].”

Schmitt’s Lawsuit

Schmitt’s suit charges that Landesman and Artforum violated New York City’s Human Rights Law, and is seeking $500,000 in damages, among other relief. The court documents provide a precise and and public accounting of Landesman’s harassment of her and several other women. The complaint charges that “unwelcome sexual attention” from Landesman began shortly after Schmitt joined Artforum in 2009, when she was 21 years old, as a circulation assistant—her first real job. Landesman summoned Schmitt to his office after she was hired, asking her a series of personal questions while “touching her, uninvited, on her hips, shoulders, buttocks, hands, and neck.”

“Because Schmitt was so young and had never worked in an office before,” the complaint reads, “she was uncertain how to fight back and uneducated about how to do so.” Landesman continued his unwanted physical contact even as she repeatedly rejected his advances. Landesman also sent lewd messages to Schmitt, which continued after she left the publication, including rebukes for unreciprocated sexual advances. One message, sent in the summer of 2013, asked if Schmitt was “ready to make it a bit physical,” according to the complaint.

The unwanted sexual advances sometimes followed important professional invitations from Landesman, the complaint charged. In one incident from March 2013, Landesman invited Schmitt to an Artforum dinner attended by influential members of the art world. There, the complaint reads, he proceeded to touch her “without consent in this public setting, degrading her in front of potential clients and employers.”

Landesman later sent an email giving Schmitt a “B- on your delivery to me,” adding that “I obviously haven’t fully explained to you in a way that you can absorb and resonates [sic] exactly what I am trying to say.” The message is signed “A Kiss.”

Court documents include another email sent in 2013 while Schmitt was searching for a new job, Landesman asked, “are you making yourself climax Amanda? How often? Or I can’t ask that inside your boundaries?” According to the complaint, Landesman continued to harass Schmitt even after she explicitly asked him to stop sending her messages.

“I fully recognize that I have tested certain boundaries, which I am working hard to correct,” Landesman said to artnet News in an email ahead of the publication of its story Tuesday. “I have never willfully or intentionally harmed anyone. However, I am fully engaged in seeking help to insure that my behavior with both friends and colleagues is above reproach in the future.”

More Women Come Forward

Other women in the complaint described a similar pattern of harassment. In one account included in the document, Landesman asked Elisabeth McAvoy, a 22-year-old Artforum employee who was sharing a bedroom with her sister, why she didn’t move so that her sister could masturbate herself to sleep. Another woman’s account said Landesman publicly humiliated her at a dinner in late 2012 after she did not give him the backrubs he requested.

In an account from May of 2016, Landesman promised to introduce writer Valerie Werder to her idol, art critic Chris Kraus, at an art industry gala if Werder would “stand by his side all night,” according to the complaint. After asking Werder a series of sexually explicit questions, including “whether her boyfriend was satisfying her,” he introduced her to Kraus, the complaint states.

“After making the introduction [Landesman] grabbed her buttocks and squeezed them the entire time that Werder was speaking to Ms. Kraus, one of her professional idols and the person she most wanted to meet at the event,” reads the complaint, which adds that after Landesman subsequently set up a lunch between Werder, Kraus, and himself, he sent Werder an email reading “A lunch! And after I beat you a little on you[r] ass.”

“While their stories suggest a pattern of harassment, it remains unclear if they can be considered as corroborating evidence since some of the accusers never worked for Mr. Landesman,” according to the New York Times.

Another account in artnet News shows how the consistency and seeming acceptance of Landesman’s behavior had the effect of minimizing it. Landesman invited curator Zoe Larkins, who was interested in writing for Artforum, to a surprise meeting at what turned out to be his empty apartment where he “kissed the back of my neck and my back,” she told artnet News. “I knew his behavior was inappropriate, but I assumed, because his reputation for such behavior was so well known and, it seemed, accepted, that it wasn’t more than that.”

Artforum’s Response

In June of 2016, Schmitt met with Artforum co-publishers Charles Guarino and Danielle McConnell, showing them messages that Landesman sent, according to the complaint. “Though he professed to be horrified, Guarino admitted that Schmitt’s complaint was not the first he had heard of Landesman sexually harassing young women,” the document reads.

The complaint said that Guarino and McConnell promised action, and denied none of her allegations. Guarino said that he would work to ensure “whatever may have transpired never happens again,” according to an email filed with the suit. Despite the promise, Schmitt’s complaint details continued harassment from Landesman, including one incident in which he interrupted a public dinner she was having with her boyfriend, an artist and a Bard College faculty member (who is also a regular Artforum contributor), proceeding to “defame, demean, and humiliate her.”

In June of this year, Schmitt hired an attorney who sent a letter to Artforum and Landesman, demanding that Landesman cease the harassment. The letter asked both the publication and Landesman to make a donation to a charity supporting women in the workplace, and that they pay her legal and therapy bills and institute structural changes to ensure nothing similar occurs in the future, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, while negotiations proceed, “Artforum held a mandatory meeting with all of its New York employees in which it stated that it was likely to soon be the subject of a lawsuit based on Landesman’s behavior. In this meeting, Artforum falsely told its employees that the potential plaintiff’s (i.e., Schmitt’s) claims were ‘unjust’ and that she had had a ‘consensual and non physical’ relationship with Landesman.”

The current suit was indeed filed after negotiations broke down over what the complaint calls the two parties’ “refusal” to make the donation and their insistence that Schmitt not speak publicly.

But, the complaint said, “Schmitt refused to be silenced.”

—Isaac Kaplan

from Artsy News