I was incredibly naïve when I made the spreadsheet. I was naïve because I did not understand the forces that would make the document go viral. I was naïve because I thought that the document would not be made public, and when it became clear that it would be, I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did....
In the weeks after the spreadsheet was exposed, my life changed dramatically.... This escalated when I learned Katie Roiphe would be publishing my name in a forthcoming piece in Harper’s magazine. In early December, Roiphe had emailed me to ask if I wanted to comment for a Harper’s story she was writing on the “feminist moment.” She did not say that she knew I had created the spreadsheet. I declined and heard nothing more from Roiphe or Harper’s until I received an email from a fact checker with questions about Roiphe’s piece. “Katie identifies you as a woman widely believed to be one of the creators of the Shitty Men in Media List,” the fact checker wrote. “Were you involved in creating the list? If not, how would you respond to this allegation?” The next day, a controversy ensued on Twitter after Roiphe’s intention to reveal my identity was made public. People who opposed the decision by Harper’s speculated about what would happen to me as a result of being identified. They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed. The outrage made it seem inevitable that my identity would be exposed even before the Roiphe piece ran. All of this was terrifying. I still don’t know what kind of future awaits me now that I’ve stopped hiding....
January 11, 2018
"In October, I created a Google spreadsheet called 'Shitty Media Men' that collected a range of rumors and allegations of sexual misconduct, much of it violent, by men in magazines and publishing."
Writes Moira Donegan at The Cut, motivated by what seems to have been an impending outing by Harper's Magazine.
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Why’d she make the list and give it to someone? By the way, who the hell os she anyway? Moreover, who gives a shit?
....and now Moira Donegan knows how the shitty media men felt when the “document” went viral.
'Shitty Media Men'
That's a cute sassy irreverent title.
forces that would make the document go viral
Sinister, invisible "forces", not people.
LOL! I am betting that if she hadn’t put names in the spreadsheet, her name would be safe too. Why not write a book like “Media Confidential”? Maybe make it a roman a clef. Let other people come up with the names.
Sorry, not sorry, shitty little woman.
Rage against Katie Roiphe
"I spread a bunch of rumors, and now people know it was me."
Poor baby!
She is writing about the magazine industry and still can write this:
"I was naïve because I thought that the focus would be on the behavior described in the document, rather than on the document itself. It is hard to believe, in retrospect, that I really thought this. But I did...."
Does she not read magazines?
Or did she think they only did that kind of thing to the People Who Deserve It?
- james james
Consequences, it's just not smart to not consider the consequences. A wiser and more calculating liberal is growing before our eyes, in real time.
Shorter Moira: I loved being an edgy and sassy feminist by creating the spreadsheet. Hear me roar. Then, through no fault of my own I suffered consequences. Now I am naive and weak. Hear me squeak.
The best defense is a good offense. She should defend what she wrote or apologize to people she defamed.
I love the name Moira.
Afraid of being stalked or assaulted? Doubtful. Afraid of getting her ass sued off? Oh, yeah.
Kind of reminds me of a former co-worker who composed an email ranting about her supervisor, and then sent it to . . . her supervisor.
Only on a much larger scale.
So this is her way of saying "Ooopsie!"
Yes hear me roar, now oh woe is poor little me, someone protect me, shitty male I expect is who she is thinking should come run to her aid.
We’ve been trying since the 60’s to build a consequence free society and all we’ve managed to do is spread things out a little.
It can make you spend hours dissecting the psychology of the kind of men who do not think about your interiority much at all
I'm no psychiatrist, but I suspect that many of these monsters understand the interiority of their victims more than one may imagine. Causing fear may be what gets them off. I think sometimes there's an assumption that evil people don't understand the pain they're causing, which may not be the case.
Annie C
I like the name Moira too, but it must mean "idiot" in Gaelic. Harper's editors and the writer say they were never going to mention Moira's identity in the article without her approval. Not to mention all the writers' who protested the rumor that Harper's would. Moira "outed" herself.
Loving the blue on blue engagements we're seeing.
Anyone see that DiFi is blaming a "bad cold" on her stupid release of the transcripts? But according to some here, she's brilliant and brave. LOL.
You have a surprising number of Katie Roiphe blogposts.
Evidence of a vast left-wing media conspiracy?
Indeed Mac. Stupidity in media, who'da thunk it?
Monsters?
"They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed"
I predict that she will not be credibly threatened, or stalked, raped, or killed. This is not the world of The Handmaid's Tale. It is so very far from the world of The Handmaid's Tale that unproven accusations of mere boorish behavior on the part of a male will cost him his job.
"I was naïve because I thought that the document would not be made public..."
Two people can keep a secret, if...
Feminine naivety privilege.
When a woman uses it she expects compassion.
When a man uses it, no such exemption exists.
She's better hope no one on the list was put there falsely or she is going to be absolutely screwed in a lawsuit.
Now ask her how she feels about James Damore.
The machine is still on, Moira! is still used once a month in my circles. It's still a thing...
Note the underlying assumption that led to the creation of "Shitty Media Men." That's that there aren't any decent men in the major media—well-connected men of integrity to which these women could appeal for assistance. The major media has two only types of males:
1. "Shitty" sexual predators
2. Spineless cowards.
That is why this is seen as a problem these women have to deal on their own and in such desperate ways.
I discuss those sex-tinged issues in a book I wrote for hospital staff. The context is different, but the problems are similar. Hospitalized women, particularly if young and pretty, can be victims too.
--Michael W. Perry, author of Embarrass Less: A Practical Guide for Doctors, Nurses, Students and Hospitals
And Bang, the door slams shut.
If she thought that these men she listed were dangerous, just wait till she learns how ugly the left can be when you become a problem to them.
If she was smart, and I don't think she is, she would find the terrible, awful, nasty and mean alt-right guys ready, willing, even eager to run to her defence.
Back in the day, when I worked in mental health, one of the questions you'd ask during an assessment was, "What does this mean: 'People who live in glass houses should not throw stones'?"
She must have skipped that class.
Dunno. Seemed like a good idea. I am happy that a lot of men got listed there, some of them multiple times, and then got their careers destroyed as a result.
There's a caveat, of course: obviously anyone with a brain understands that being listed there means nothing in itself; it's uncorroborated anonymous testimony and has zero credibility. The point of the list should have been to allow women [I'm using the words "women" and "men" to mean victims and perpetrators, though of course anyone with a brain and a heart understands that it can be any genders] to see that many other women were posting about a particular man, and thereby to feel safe themselves posting, and maybe putting together a case against that man. Those are ones whose careers should have been destroyed.
Unfortunately, people with a brain don't run things anymore.
It's hard for me to see that people who got unfairly destroyed have a tort against this woman, any more than they'd have a complaint against craigslist when something false is posted there. Their complaint should be against the people who libeled them in the post, if they can find them, and against the idiots who reacted by firing them, etc.
I do think her disclaimer should have been firmer; a "grain of salt" isn't enough.
I am going to create a spreadsheet with the names of women in media who are rumored to have engaged in sexual misbehavior. I will then anonymously distribute it to a few dozen men who work in media. I hope that they don't pass it on or track it back to me!
Consequences: They aren't just for white men anymore.
If she was smart, and I don't think she is, she would find the terrible, awful, nasty and mean alt-right guys ready, willing, even eager to run to her defence.
Not anymore.
As they say in the inner cities, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. If you want to be able to slime people with no consequences, well, there are always consequences.
@Mac McConnell, based on the women named Moira that I’ve known through the years I suspect your hypothesis is correct; “Moira” is Gaelic for “idiot.”
MikeR I am sure that A) some big legal guns are going to disagree with you on that and B) that you'll be proven dramatically wrong.
The real consequences will be to her career.
Violence is extremely unlikely.
A bit of fantasy that.
Nobody puts a fucking umlaut over an 'i'!!!
When I began working in magazines as a new college graduate in 2013
Why are we allowing children to have such outsized influence?
I'm trying to RTFA, I really am, but I can't get past all the Is. I, I, I, me, me me. I realize that's what it's for, but it's still annoying.
When will people realize that if data is (are for you British) collected it will be abused. No matter what. Spreadsheets, nude selfies, anything; it will be abused. Moral: Don't collect it.
I guess this wee girl is learning the hard way what we were all told by our wise parents: Never put anything in writing, no matter how anonymous you think you are, that you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times.
(I routinely break this rule here at Althouse, but I'm a nobody, not a millennial who's been in the industry for nine minutes who just shit the bed she sleeps in.)
Women must never be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything. Ever.
It's a dieresis. Naïve. Without it you get what a not very bright boss once said, about naïveté, we have to get rid of our knavette.
Or poop vs poöp.
Apparently Katie Roiphe (the author of the Harper's piece) is getting savaged on Twitter by feminists for the mere possibility of outing the creator of the list. Evidently in actuality she wasn't even intending to reveal the name, but that didn't matter to the #metoo mob I guess.
"MikeR I am sure that A) some big legal guns are going to disagree with you on that and B) that you'll be proven dramatically wrong." Quite possible. IANAL. I'm throwing in my .0002c worth: I think the lady is right in thinking that this is a useful way for a bunch of isolated individually helpless people to find out if they can form clusters of similar cases to defend themselves and punish their abusers. I don't see how else it could have been done, and it needed doing.
She should have been way heavier on the caveats. But modern liberals don't think that way, till it's too late.
Jake said...
Why’d she make the list and give it to someone?
This was the very first comment and the first thing that came to my mind as well.
She is not trustworthy. Fits right in.
Next.
The Revolution *always* eats its young.
Always.
Someone who makes and circulates a list naming names really should not complain about her name being named as the namer.
You still need a like button.
This story is a blockbuster screenplay in the making. Curious if Hollywood realizes the potential...
This story is a blockbuster screenplay in the making.
Bridget Jones' Shit List
Why’d she make the list and give it to someone?
Because she has the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old girl.
"The machine is still on, Moira."
You will have to Google it, on my phone.
@Tcrosse,
Bridget Jones' Shit List
"Bennie, Bennie, this is Fred. How the hell are ya, buddy? How's the family? Listen, Bennie, I know we haven't talked in a while, but have I got a concept for ya, & I'm lookin' for your support here. Hear me out, Bennie, hear me out. You know that Moira Whatsername bimbo & her on-line list of perves like our mutual buddy, the Big H? Well, here is it, B. my man, here it is:
Bridget Jones' Shit List
So, waddya think? Waddya think?"
Why'd she make this list and give it to someone?
Why else make a list of this sort unless to have others read it - for fun or profit.
Creating the spread sheet was not unlike making a weapon of mass destruction from various chemicals you find in the grocery store.
You have to ask yourself: "What am I going to do with this WMD when I'm finished."
If the answer is to deploy it, then you should be willing to die for the cause.
All these naive lefties think we should take them seriously. I'll never forget how Polly Toynbee of the Guardian fell for the Nigerian scam...
I'm reminded of the old witticism: "I know how wars start. Politicians lie to newspapers, and they believe what they read."
So she didn't think her sh*tty little spreadsheet would be taken THAT seriously... and now she's afraid that her authorship of it will be taken seriously?
I recommend reading the piece. It's well-written, and answers these questions about why she did what she did. I find it refreshing that she took the time to provide detailed information about what happened here. It's not just spin, it's a decent essay that sheds some light on the larger debate.
I wish more people would provide honest information about their own views, assumptions, and mistakes. That kind of first-hand information can lead to improved understanding.
Jeering at one another only makes things worse.
Stalked or raped? Really? I would wager her main worry is getting sued for defamation and libel.
Sarah Rolph,
So what?
Everyone has cogent and thoughtful rationalizations for the things they do.
However morally, what she did was loan a loaded gun to some minors but also added the 'now don't shoot anyone with it' level of parental level of irresponsibility.
While I am sure Norah O'Donnell found the list very useful to improve her career prospects, I still think it was a morally shitt...questionable thing to do.
And if she is going to make that hard call all by herself, possibly ruining hundreds of lives, well, she needs to pull her big girl panties up and take ownership of exactly what she did.
She wants the self inflicted back pats but none of the also very rational, cogent, legal and well earned CRITICISM for the shit...questionable thing she did.
Tell you what? Why don't we post her picture. We can caption it with her name, what she did, but we will add the caveat 'but don't do anything mean to her'.
That is the exact same level of responsibility she showed and her defenders are similarly...questionable.
I had to go to 4chan to see the actual spreadsheet (now I have to take a shower). I didn't peruse the list I just wanted to see if it had a column showing political party/affiliation. Sadly, it does not. If the list is still a work in progress maybe someone could add that column and start filling it in.
Maybe men in media should start a shared spreadsheet that describes where each prominent woman in media falls on the hot-crazy matrix. I am sure Jessica Valenti would be fine with that.
Having trouble in River City. Cherchez LaFemme.
Welcome to the post-morality world created by Woodrow Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Carter, Clinton (both halves) and Obama, lassie.
I'm certain that the situation at the top in the media was terrible for women but that doesn't justify being as low-down mean as possible in one's own small way and then whining like a girl about the largely imaginary blowback.
80% of the incidents on the list are lies.
Prove me wrong.
I recall an incident at the University of Oregon, in which posters were hung around campus depicting women as punching bags. The feminazis demanded an investigation, and the Kampus Keystones got right on it. Then two of the female idiots in a Womyn's Studies course stood up in class and told everyone that they had hung the posters, which were supposed to be anti-war (go figure). One of their Powerful Sisters turned them in to the Keystones, who were not impressed with the antiwar business. They had got their man, even if he had turned out to be a couple of girls, and they dragged them in for interrogation. There was talk of criminal charges and expulsion. The feminazis then screamed and howled and generally made fools of themselves to the extent possible -- this was before pussy hats -- about how the Keystones were oppressing these innocent maidens whose scalps they had been demanding the previous day. There was much agonized debate, accusations of racism were deployed (the Keysone-In-Chief was black, natch), and it looked like horrible consequences must ensue for all concerned. Then it was June, everyone went away for the Summer, and nothing more was heard of the whole wretched episode.
Sady Doyle, a writer for Elle, branded Roiphe ‘pro-rape’, which really just means evil, witch-like. A writer for feminist mag Bustle wondered if ‘Katie Roiphe’ is a ‘pseudonym shared by a group of 65-year-old men’, because any woman who disagrees with us correct feminists must be a man really, right? Just as any black person who votes Republican or Conservative is a ‘coconut’.
Having trouble in River City. Cherchez LaFemme.
Good Advice!
I played a minor role in this affair. I was in a band, and frequently hung posters, and said as much in a Letter to the Editor regarding various draconian proposals that were being discussed as possible solutions to the appalling problem of free speech on a college campus. As a result, I was awakened one morning by an extremely short, red-headed woman in a Sheriff's Deputy uniform standing on my doorstep. She had been assigned as an investigator to the Kampus Keystones (they were toy cops, and couldn't operate off campus) and had been sent to track me down and determine what sort of posters I was hanging. I showed her the one I was working on, which used a still from a porn video of a man in diapers, standing with his hands tied over his head in someone's garage. I had put "Bound For Glory!" in large letters across the top, and strategically placed the dates and locations of some upcoming gigs over the lawnmower in the background. I din't think the mower fit in with the larger concept. She congratulated me on my talents, and went on her way. I don't think she was altogether on board with the poster inquisition.
The rage against Katie Roiphe exposes feminism’s hatred of women
"We are now starting to see that #MeToo is not a pro-woman movement at all. It is a highly politicised campaign driven by, and benefiting, well-connected women in culture and the media, who must maintain their alleged victim status at all costs because it is leverage for them in terms both of their career and their moral authority in public discussion. This is why they respond with such unforgiving, misogynistic fury to any woman who questions them – because these women, these upstarts, these difficult creatures, threaten to unravel the victim politics that is so beneficial to a narrow but influential strata of society today. And so these women must be silenced, cast out, written off as ‘damaged’ and not worth listening to; let’s just be grateful that the asylums such free-thinking women would once have been dumped in no longer exist."
“You’re so vain, you probly think this movie’s about you.”
Subtitle (Why am I so attracted to a life full of shitty men?)
Are sexual offenses really that pervasive and blatant? I would think all of these scandals overdone, but, then again, I would never have thought Charley Rose was a predator.......Hollywood is its own place, but I would have thought the people in media would be as well behaved as people in insurance or banking. Maybe not. Do women in other professions have similar stories to tell about the men they work with. Some of this stuff is really over the top.
Shitty, shitty bo bitty
Banana fana fo fitty
Fe fi mo mitty
Shitty !
In the beginning, I only wanted to create a place for women to share their stories of harassment and assault without being needlessly discredited or judged. The hope was to create an alternate avenue to report this kind of behavior and warn others without fear of retaliation. (emphasis added)
I understand the impulse, and even sympathise with it to some extent. If you make a complaint about someone else's behaviour within an organisation, then they probably have to decide whether your complaint is true or not, and then decide what to do about it (i.e. do they have to discipline your target? Is there a bigger problem they need to investigate). And that process -- assuming the people involved take their jobs and their responsibilities seriously -- necessarily leads to them asking you questions about your allegation, looking for confirming and disconfirming evidence, and possibly deciding that your allegations aren't credible. And of course, your name is out there, and if your target has been given a fair opportunity to defend himself and confront his accusers (not necessarily the norm for internal investigations, mind), he's going to know his accuser was you, and other people are probably going to know as well.
A rigorous system for dealing with allegations of sexual harassment operates as a strong, strong disincentive against speaking up. In many cases, that's a good thing -- people shouldn't be making false allegations. But it does mean that on the margin there may be true allegations that people aren't going to bring forward.
I think a "safe space" for these kinds of allegations is perverse -- people shouldn't be actively encouraged to make allegations with a cloyingly supportive environment which studiously avoids challenging any allegation in any way. There are people (women and men) who will respond to those incentives in predictable fashion -- by embellishing their experiences to gain sympathy and sometimes just making stuff up.
But we have anonymous whistleblower hotlines for a reason -- so that people who are legitimately afraid of retaliation have a means of communicating information to people who ought to do something about it. Of course, anyone who's dealt with whistleblower allegations knows that a priori the credibility of any particular whistleblower allegation is low. So I'd guess it's the same here. This isn't quite the same (the point of the list was evidently to allow women to protect themselves by avoiding situations with these men -- the classic self-help solution that nowadays is blasted as victim-blaming) but any system where people are encouraged to make claims that will be protected from any critical scrutiny is going to accumulate a fair amount of rubbish.
It's a hit list of allegations, that should be delivered to the authorities, which will ideally place both the accused and accusers at risk.
Great find, FullMoon; thanks for the share. O'Neill is watching the same movie I am.
"I sympathize with the desire to be careful, even as all available information suggests that false allegations are rare."
You have to wonder, how did she suppose that this cloud-sourced document she was enabling would be protected from abuse? For example, how long could it possibly exist before men (actual men, not lesbians on hormones) found out about it? And what was supposed to keep them from adding to it? Their testicles? This wasn't "Believe All Women", this was "Believe Everything".
"In the weeks after the spreadsheet was exposed, my life changed dramatically. I lost friends: some who thought I had been overzealous, others who thought I had not been zealous enough. I lost my job, too. The fear of being exposed, and of the harassment that will inevitably follow, has dominated my life since. I’ve learned that protecting women is a position that comes with few protections itself."
Kind of like being the person who started "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day", right? Except the FBI hasn't told her to assume a new identity if she doesn't want to be killed.
I dislike that the word naive has so regularly become an escape term that functions more as an accusation: "unscrupulous others have done something nefarious that decent people would never dream anyone could do." Yes dear, your only fault was being too high-minded.
Sarah Rolph said...
I recommend reading the piece
She's wasted enough of my time with her imbecilic movement as is. If she wanted to explain herself she should've used her 15 minutes more wisely.
"Who's being naive now, Kay?"
“... even as all available information suggests that false allegations are rare."
I’m pretty sure that’s a lie.
It's not hard to unmask a rumor-monger if you have a list of suspects. Make up a juicy rumor, share it with each person on the list, changing key details each time, and see which version makes it into the spreadsheet. This is a common trick to catch spies, leakers, and whistle-blowers.
“... even as all available information suggests that false allegations are rare^."
Just like the women's equal pay issue and campus rapes....
Some things are just so very, very obvious* that they can not,must not, be examined.
^ Undefined term, of course.
* in all cases where obvious = useful.
It's a dieresis. Naïve.
Thank you. I stand corrected.
Now show me how to do that in Morse code, and I'll REALLY be impressed.
Wait, this was anonymous, right? All the inputs were made without verification of the people involved and a lot of them were...ahem...over the top.
Just a brief question: How do you know that some of the posters weren't men?
The 'fake' part doesn't even need to be addressed. I once visited a this marriage blog and in it there was a 90 page HUGE very popular thread where this pastor guy had an innocent little wife who had a brief one time affair...and she was pregnant and they needed to wait for the birth to do a DNA test and what should he do about it?
The responses were EPIC! Sympathy, recriminations, and this person posted religiously, sometimes 3 times a day.
And of course, it was fake.
The thread was closed. There are some people who have far too much time on their hands.
Some of them put up nooses, or paint swastikas to 'start conversations' (lie)
So this 'rare false claims'.
Hmm!
Moira was just ASKING to get raped.
"The Revolution *always* eats its young.
Always."
Are you referring to the reign of terror that swept the 13 original US states in the early 19th century?
even as all available information suggests that false allegations are rare
Yes, it would seem that the only time allegations are ever false is when made against powerful Democrats.
It is a bizarre little contretemps really.
There is a certain difficulty in working up sympathetic feelings for any party involved.
Its a small disturbance in hell, where some minor imp has collected, from its fellows, a catalog of particular sorts of sins ascribed to more senior demons.
It it only me or does Moira Donegan remind anyone else of Madame Defarge?
Moira was just ASKING to get raped.
Masochism is a sexual orientation. No Judgment.
Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead. - Ben Franklin
She puts the spreadsheet on Google Docs, invites a bunch of people to add to it, and she doesn't expect it to leak out? Sure, maybe she's naive, maybe she's stupid, or maybe she thinks we're naive.
She has no qualms about putting up a document that names men as sex offenders on the basis of any random person's say-so, no evidence required. She's totally indignant that her name will be exposed as the creator of the document that she admits to creating. Sounds fair.
They feared that I would be threatened, stalked, raped, or killed.
People adopt extremist beliefs in the hope doing so will help change society. But the clearest effect is to render them incapable of functioning in it.
Laying aside the intent or content of the memo; I'd have questions about the medium itself.
She chose to use a Google Sheet in the cloud to compose the document, rather than something stored locally like an Excel spreadsheet. The ONLY reason to use a Google Sheet or a Google Doc is to facilitate _SHARING_ the document. From the beginning, she PLANNED to release this broadly. (That, or perhaps she's just an idiot when it comes to technology.)
If I use a Google Doc or a Google Sheet, I already know - by that decision! - that I'm going to share it with somebody, and more likely several somebodies.
unlike the men in her document, she is provably guilty.
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