SIO145: Left Critique of #metoo with Aimee Terese

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only, this is episode 145, I'm your host Thomas Smith, and as I told you last week, this sort of a sequel, it's a part two with Aimee Terese, and it was unexpected, so that's why the edit was a little weird last time, but I think you'll see why, this was about an hour of talking about Me Too, interesting It's an interesting and at times kind of heated discussion, I'll say, but I don't want to give away really anything else, I have some thoughts afterward if you'll stay tuned, but with that said, let's get right over to the interview with Aimee Terese on Me Too.

0:01:17 Aimee: Thing that the latter half of what I was going to say, um, perhaps might unseat you or make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but I think it's in a product, it's a productive tension. Um, I do think that sometimes when you, not you personally, but when people are particularly passionate about certain issues, and I often see this from, especially from passionate liberals, is sometimes there's a confusion of the method with the underlying aims. And so, unfortunately, there will often be left critique that looks at something like Me Too and offers really insightful and useful criticism from a left perspective, but far too often people, sort of centre and liberal types, and I'm not saying you do this, but I'm saying it is something that happens quite regularly, they will, um, just assume that any

0:01:26 Thomas: Go ahead, I

0:02:13 Aimee: Criticism of Me Too is one that's fundamentally premised on not an inegalitarian worldview, um, that doesn't take gender issues seriously, they'll assume that, um, you object to the underlying, like, goals of Me To or the underlying principles of it, as opposed to actually offering a productive left criticism. So someone like my friend Heidi Matthews, um, has been making a really principled left critique of Me Too from the very beginning, and in essence the idea is that quite often what happens in these particular moments is, uh, we end up getting quite, um, we ended up getting policy measures that are hastily thought through and have quite reactionary or conservative outcomes, comes and a perfect example of something like that might be something like the FOSTA-SESTA legislation, I don't know how much you know about it, but Um, basically, it's framed as sort of trying, um, to deal with sex trafficking, but what it in fact does, and it was supported across the board,

0:03:06 Thomas: Don't know. Oh, is this about the dark web thingy, or the like? The, yeah, yeah, but

0:03:16 Aimee: Yeah, it just, it puts sex workers in a lot more danger because they're unable to screen clients online. And bear

0:03:22 Thomas: That's okay, hold on, though, that's a very specific thing like,

0:03:26 Aimee: Bear, bear with me. I'm not saying that that's Me Too related, it's it's definitely a specific example, and I'm not saying that in any way, like that that Me Too related necessarily, but there is, um, a really significant trajectory frequently of, um, so Heidi's criticism isn't necessarily of Me Too as such, but more of like a cautionary tale, and saying, hang on, let's be cautious of some of the aspects of the way this is playing out. And let's make sure we keep that in focus and all the rest. It's not one of those, "oh, has Me Too gone too far? Oh, all these men feel like they're being hounded on social media. Oh, boo-hoo for the men." It's not framed that way. But sometimes what happens is when you're particularly passionate about an issue, people can be too quick to shelter themselves, themselves off from, from a productive leftist critique

0:03:27 Thomas: Okay, go ahead, yeah, I sure sure

0:04:18 Aimee: That is not opposed to your fundamental goals and interests which

0:04:19 Thomas: But but can't we just take this on a case by case, okay? Here's, when we're talking about Me Too, for me, I think fundamentally the paradigm we were in, and still largely are in, I think, was not just toward women, and just toward people who, toward anyone who was suffering sexual harassment in the workplace. It was not dealing with that appropriately, in my opinion. And we still are barely.

0:04:37 Aimee: Women which women right, but like which women, I

0:04:49 Thomas: What do you mean, which women? I

0:04:51 Aimee: Mean that one of the central problems of Me Too is that it was giving a particular voice to a particular set of particularly comfortable, affluent women, and it was doing very little to change the structural conditions of most working class women who can not share that, I'm

0:05:09 Thomas: Well, I, yes, and no, like, I, I agree, but that's, that just means Me Too hasn't gone far enough. I'm, well,

0:05:17 Aimee: Not, so, yeah, but I think the problem that a leftist critique says, that actually it's not so much that Me Too hasn't gone far enough or has gone too far, it's actually that the very nature of this particular project and the way this thing is framing issues is one that is inherently unable to achieve the substantive goals that it wants to, that it's an inherent contradiction in the way the problem is being approached and framed. Well,

0:05:39 Thomas: How would you evaluate that I, I what, how would you just decide that's true? I mean, there's a bill that's going to try to protect like well,

0:05:47 Aimee: I mean, it's fundamentally about individual stories, it's not enabling any substantive change in the relationship between workers and capital. Right, like, individual women are vulnerable in the workplace because they need to work for a living to survive, and the majority of women that we heard from were women who are incredibly privileged and incredibly comfortable, and a large number of them had been entirely complicit in a lot of what had been going on for years because it worked for them. Right, like, we saw the stories of Hillary Clinton firing a woman who was being harassed on her team, um, because it was just more convenient for her and keeping that, like, what, what I'm not I

0:06:26 Thomas: No, I read I I read into that, that was misrepresented, but okay, whatever. She didn't fire the woman.

0:06:32 Aimee: Mean, mean, it was and it wasn't, she moved the woman on in like a lateral Sense. So she wasn't, like, she didn't, he was maintained, no, the woman was transferred and and and the thing is history, and there's a lot of data that backs this up, but often a lot of these policies have a sex negative undercurrent, and the way they actually play out when you institute certain policies is they can, can be far more detrimental to women than we often anticipate. And so that's why sometimes a leftist critique can be really productive in making sure that the stated outcomes that we want to achieve from a particular movement are in fact the ones that come to pass. So, for instance, in Australia, in response to Me Too and a particular sex scandal, the Prime Minister instituted what was colloquially referred to as a bonk ban in Parliament, which meant that, like, people, colleagues couldn't be sleeping together,

0:06:36 Thomas: No, she moved the guy. She didn't move the woman. He was not fired, but he was transferred to a different thing. Are you sure?

0:07:36 Aimee: Like, short of people who are already, like, married or whatever, like, you can't be having inter-office relationships. So, on the surface, that may seem like a reasonable decision, but actually there's a whole bunch of feminist scholars and researchers that put out a whole punch of information, a whole bench of, like, historiographical studies, that suggest when you do that, it actually harms women and women's advancement in the workplace, and there's a whole lot of data that actually backs that up. So, on the surface it seems like a policy that is going to be attending to a particular problem, but if we are truly committed to the particular goals, it's worth being critical of our particular approach to make sure it actually achieves those. That's all that's all it is, okay, cool, cool, well,

0:08:19 Thomas: There's nothing that we disagree about here I think that But I would say that, that I wanted to highlight, though, though, was that, if the reason, so we started this off by, by talking about whether, do, do leftists, or do people who are, are advancing social causes like, maybe Me To, do they have an inability to hear valid criticism? I think, is where you are, started this up with.

0:08:44 Aimee: It's like, some do some, don't you know, it's hard to

0:08:45 Thomas: Yeah, no, I know. But but what I'm saying is, there's also, and along with that, you talked about, just to try to recap where we are, like, you talked about who are coming at it from a, from a genuine place of left leaning criticism, will be lumped in with, like, sexists who want to to stop it. And yes, that can happen, but also, I, I think it can be warranted sometimes, because there are a lot of wolves in sheep's clothing who do this, who, like, are anti Me Too, but then who latch on to the, I

0:08:47 Aimee: Yeah, critique, yeah, well, so when you say when you said warranted, do you mean like you can understand why it happens, or do you meet like, justified?

0:09:28 Thomas: Would say what I mean is what I, what I'm, what, I guess what I would would say is suspicion is warranted. Like, yeah, that's what I mean.

0:09:29 Aimee: Oh, I totally agree, there's so many of those contrarian fuckers, like, for instance, Christina Hoff Summers and all those wankers, like Dave Rubin, perfect example, they frame themselves as being, yeah, yeah, no, they're just contrarian shit lords, and, and so, if, if what you're getting is a lot of them, um, it can be really, really, really easy to, um, not

0:09:40 Thomas: Yes. Yes, they hide under behind like, oh, no, I'm totally cool that except I'm against all of it. Yeah.

0:09:57 Thomas: But I also want to sorry, I also Want to address what you're saying about, you know, it's a certain privilege set of women who've benefited and it hasn't trickled down that kind of thing. Like I what

0:10:07 Aimee: So much, but, but I, it's not so mucho that hasn't trickled down, is that I would fundamentally reject that framing, that that something like Me Too was ever concerned with, or exploring of, um, the stories of disadvantaged people, certainly

0:10:14 Thomas: Framing? I think it absolutely was. I mean, no, I just disagree. I fundamentally disagree that Time's Up and the organizations I interviewed, Samantha Corbin is someone I had on where they're trying to get legislation that will help restaurant workers. I think that's a big place where the power imbalance, like there's plenty happening that is going to help.

0:10:43 Aimee: Some of that Some Of that. Is starting to head in that direction. I would agree, like I'm not dismissing any of that, but I just think the fundamental thing of like telling your personal story, in particularly in online spaces, there are some women whose stories are persuasive to us, and they are the type of women who fit in a normative box that we are empathetic towards, like we saw. Almost No, I'm

0:11:08 Thomas: Well, Who are you saying? With? We, I mean, I, I, you know, I hosted those stories on the, yeah, but

0:11:11 Aimee: Not talking about you when I say we, I mean, we as a society, collectively, are more receptive to stories when they are told by some people as opposed to others, so, for instance, Tarana Burke, who started using that term over a decade ago, is a working class woman of color doing the activism on the ground, and it was not until, um, you know, a white Hollywood actress utilized that particular term that we collectively paid attention. And to pretend that that dynamic has disappeared because a large number of women are using a particular hashtag is, to me, a misunderstanding of what's actually taking place where

0:11:13 Thomas: Sure, but I think we, there have also yeah, right, yeah, I agree, well, It's not pretending that it doesn't exist, it's, but, but it's also, when we started this conversation as a leftist criticism, Me Too, or whatever, that's not, again, that's "Me Too has gone too far." And that's what I want to distinguish, because there's that, right, but that's what a lot of the criticism is. What I was trying to do is, yes, but

0:12:04 Aimee: I never was framing it that way, yeah, I totally agree, and that's a bullshit frame, and I get why people like yourself and other people would be really defensive, because there's so many shit words coming along, doing that, that, that, I get while your back is up, but at the same, same time, I think it's critically important to, um, be, uh, whilst, you know, vigilant about your fraudulent ones, like Kristina of Summers, like the Factual Feminist, etc., um, and you do need to guard against that type of fuckery, um, but I think, in much the same way as we were saying about Seth Andrews, like, um, if you want a robust movement on society, or collectivity of any kind, even just an organization, even just like a bridge club, right, you need, um, to be able to communicate, and you need to be unable to handle disagreement and criticism internally, um, as well

0:12:17 Thomas: There's one more thing that I, sure, that's

0:12:57 Aimee: As defending yourself against illegitimate bad faith criticism from fuckwits. And I think sometimes what happens is that liberals will be uh unwilling to contend with the productive leftist critique because they're so uh beaten down trying to defend against the Christine of Summers of this world. And whilst I understand that inclination and I understand where it comes from, um, I think, um, cautious not to necessarily do that is something that I think is quite important. That's all, uh,

0:13:29 Thomas: Fine. There's just one more thing I'm trying to get out, which is that there is a universal quality to what Me Too is doing that is helping all women. And it's this. It's that as a society, we were not, and it's mainly men, but also everybody, we Were not properly weighting the testimony of women, the personal testimony of all women, it doesn't matter what kind of privilege we just were not systematically, we were in a paradigm where we were, if a woman, society, all society, if in conversation, if in any sort of workplace, could I finish what I'm saying at least about it?

If any sort of workplace, if there was ever some sort of testimony, some sort of personal statement about, hey, this person, this man, this whoever made me feel uncomfortable, this person did this, we were in a place where it's, do you have physical evidence? Do you have pictures? Do you whatever? And even if even if hypothetically the only women we were listening to were like white privileged women, it's still there's still an element. And while I recognize the shortcomings of that, and I'm not saying there are none, there's still an element of shifting the awareness of what how we should be waiting that evidence, no matter who brings it up. You know, like no matter who's telling their story.

0:13:53 Aimee: Who's we I just can't buy that, like that sure, yeah,

0:14:52 Thomas: And that's a good, that's all I'm trying to get at.

0:14:52 Aimee: There's a particular yeah, there's a particular philosopher, her name's Miranda Fricker, and she invented, about 10 years ago, this notion of, um, epistemic injustice, and, um, so earlier, when I talked about certain communities not having access to a particular vernacular, that's an issue of epistemic injustice, right? So demanding that they be knowledgeable about something they don't have access to is doing an injustice upon them. And similarly, there's one form of epistemic injustice, is known as testimonial injustice, which is wherein we will hear testimony from particular speakers and not accord it the, um, the weight that it, that it warrants, right, and that is a form of epistemic injustice, um, and yeah, so, I, I absolutely agree, um, but, but particularly as a woman, um, and as actually, like, I haven't told a me story, Me Too story, to anyone but a couple of my closest friends, but fuck it, I'll do it since I'm here now.

0:15:28 Thomas: Right.

0:15:37 Thomas: We totally agree on that.

0:15:59 Thomas: Oh,

0:15:59 Aimee: Like, something that I think been of particular concern to someone like Heidi and myself is that sometimes when we make blanket understandings of what women could or couldn't do, or the capacities of the particular agency of women, can sometimes be compromised through a really blanket framing of things that sort of renders women in positions of necessarily being disempowered. And I'm not saying you did that, but what I am saying is there has, has been something of an aspect of that in certain aspects of Me Too discourse. And Me Too discourse is really broad, right? So I'm not holding you to some of the shittier takes that are out there, right.

0:15:59 Thomas: Sure.

0:16:45 Aimee: I'm doing that at all. But like, for instance, here's my Me Too story. I had an ongoing problem with the boss about, what is it, 2018, so it was about four and a half, five years ago, where he was, I worked in a boutique, there were just the two of us, um, and occasionally we would employ, like, temporary extra staff, but it was just me and him most of the time, and I had an ongoing problem with sexual harassment in the workplace, um, and initially they were just like stupid things, like putting up, like, you know, like, like the really 1980s classic traditional examples of putting up, like, um, titty photos in the break room, like stuff like that, that, like, you know, I shouldn't have to put up with that in the workplace, and it is really disconcerting.

And so initially, with some of the smaller things, I sort of wrote him a letter and said, hey, this is, you know, I feel when you, because, like, and at the time I had a chat with my dad, and he was like, I think that's, he was like, it's really worth doing, but I think something you also need to reckon with, Aimee, is that, um, this

0:17:44 Aimee: May or may not be something that continues to happen, and a question you probably want to ask yourself is, like, how many attempts to educate, um, are you going to to put up with, and at what point will you say this isn't working for me anymore?

And, you know, occasionally it hit on me and be like a little bit too creepy and a little bit too flirty, but whatever, I really enjoyed the job, like, I genuinely, he was an alright guy, and I loved the gig, I loved all my customers, it was really, like, I really liked it.

Anyway, point being, about a few months later, um, he, we had a carpenter, um, mutual friend who would come and sort of do odd jobs around the store, to, like, remodel things and, like, do shop fitting and stuff, anyway, um, he, um, had to forward me a message that my boss had sent him, asking him to do some work around this store, um, in advance of a particular, we were doing like an art opening one night, after hours, and he'd asked him to come and do some carpentry in relation to that. And he was, and he also said, like, um, you know, if you can get it done, done by then, Aimee said she'd give you her body for the night, right, which is so

0:18:51 Thomas: Really inappropriate. Yeah.

0:18:52 Aimee: Fucking ridiculous for your boss to be saying to a third party, like, completely inappropriate, and, like, the potential trajectory of how that could play out, if, if the, the guy, and, you know, I don't want to say anyone's names, that if the carpenter guy had been more of a creep and took something like that even vaguely seriously, you know, you can imagine, like, there we are, on the Friday night, having a few drinks, like, like after hours at the art opening, and somehow thinking that in some way he was entitled or had been given permission to, like, whatever with me, like, that's a fucked up thing to do and say, right, um, and I was gut-wrenching, having to realize that that was a turning point, like, I couldn't keep working there for that reason, but, like, I really liked my job, I didn't even think my boss was a bad guy.

He was a fucking idiot, right? Like a clueless moron for thinking that that is okay thing to do, because it's not. But it was a really tough call, because I didn't want to leave my job, but I ultimately did. And I am fortunate enough, in that over the last 30 years, there has been relentless activism and reform and legal cases that have really set the table and really empowered someone like myself to be able to then come into my boss and say, what you did wasn't cool, you owe me

0:18:55 Thomas: Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:12 Aimee: A great deal of superannuation that you haven't been paying. I don't want to take this further, but we do have an Equal Opportunity Commission in Australia, and if I'm forced to, I will take this further, which is sort of, that's an external body that now exists due to a whole bunch of reforms that also helps me feel empowered enough to command a certain degree of agency in that environment.

Um, and so ultimately I got him to, I, you know, I got him to write me a brilliant reference, because I had been an amazing employee, and I'd also said I won't go public with this, but I want to be damn sure that if anyone's calling you for a reference, um, you're going to be backing up the fact that I was a great employee, because I was, and I got him to pay me a whole bunch of the superannuation and didn't let it go any further than that. Now, I recognize as sexual harassment scenarios go, um, it was pretty minor league, right?

Like, I was never felt in any physical threat. I never felt like, um, like I, you know, I, um, was living, uh, with my dad at the time, so it wasn't like, you know, have to keep working there to keep a roof if over my head, or that. So there are a bunch of structural factors that meant I was perhaps more empowered than certain other women in other situations, but I also think that sometimes the framing of Me Too, um, misunderstands and misrepresents the degree of agency and the degree of structural and

0:21:44 Aimee: Social change that has actually happened prior to Me Too. And I think sometimes, like what we've had on many occasions historically is these big watershed moments, I think sometimes it's tempting to invest them with a lot more than perhaps is necessarily true, right? So, for instance, in my story, of the most strong and supportive factors, um, was my dad, and I grew up in a household where, like, the idea that sexual harassment was acceptable is fucking preposterous. And, you know, sure, I'm fortunate enough to have been really, like, you know, privileged in my upbringing, but, like, certainly in no workplace I've worked at, in no classroom I've been in, no university campus I've be on, do, like, has harassment been an acceptable thing.

And I recognize that that's not universal, but I also think sometimes, like, pretending that these things are flattened and apply at all times to all people across a particular board, that's just not true. Like, if, if, if you're in a workplace five years ago, you, you didn't think sexual harassment was true, right? And I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes these of things have pernicious effects, right? So something about the particular narratives and myths that were perpetrated during the Me Too moment are actually ones that can have quite pernicious impacts.

0:23:22 Aimee: So, for example, historically in America, the notion of believing women is not one that hasn't occurred, it's just that it's occurred selectively. So historically, um, brutal lynching and violence was visited upon African-American men, um, on the pretext of believing white women, right? And, like, right now the largest number of people who experience sexual assault and sexual abuse are actually black men in prison, right? But African-American men don't fit a particular narrative in terms of sexual assault victims. And I think sometimes in these particular moments, in these discourses, what we do is come to implicitly endorse certain conceptions of things that are actually just not factually backed up. And the problem then is when the culture changes in certain ways, it it still creates myths about what is what is the right way and what is is the wrong way, what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, and what what we expect is a reliable source, and what is not the way we perceive of sexual assault as a phenomenon, like, is when it's mistaken, our, um, collective dealing with those issues suffers as a result. That's all, that's what I want to say. Sorry.

0:23:41 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:24:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I, no,

0:24:49 Aimee: I know there's a lot there, but I just yeah well

0:24:51 Thomas: No. That's okay. I want, I think, basically, I don't think I disagree with any of what you said. And so I'm curious why I just, I guess I'm curious if you want to try to explain the framing of it. It sounded as though you started this as a disagreement of some kind, and I don't know where that would be. Like, let me just say,

0:25:09 Aimee: What I'm trying to say is, like, the productive tension of leftist critique is one that will relentlessly call a particular set of narratives into question, and I think there was a lot about the Me Too discourse that was, um, unwilling to call certain notions into question. So, for example, the Aziz Ansari story was was it was blatantly not one of, in any legal sense, it was not one of any kind of sexual assault no, no, no, it was not one, if any kind, sexual assault, it also, however I can totally bear with me a sec but

0:25:32 Thomas: Let's talk about that. Okay. Uh, he, if he put her, hold on. If he put Her head into his crotch several times, that is sexual assault, but okay, go on. If he physically took her head and put it into his crotch, which I think was some of the alleged facts, I mean, it's, you might want to say, okay, he thought he had some sort of consent, but that could easily border sexual assault, but go ahead.

0:25:57 Aimee: Okay let me clarify the way

0:26:11 Thomas: Of

0:26:11 Aimee: That consent is defined under the law in the United States is not one of, it is implicit and it is contextual. And I am not saying that, like, because she didn't resist therefore she wanted it, I'm not saying that at all. And I'mnot even saying that this girl was in any way lying, and I do think it's a very real issue if we're in a particular situation where women feel inclined to want to say, or say yes to something, or not feel feel empowered to say no to something when it's not what they want.

But I think, frankly, it was really clear throughout the framing of that story that the girl in particular didn't necessarily know what she wanted. She may have wanted to go up, and maybe like do a bit more with him when she, when they arrived after dinner, right? But then increasingly, like, her enthusiasm to be there started to change, right? And there can be a real, like, consent is a legal fiction that is designed to attempt to model the, like, to lay a particular framework onto reality that helps us delineate between good sex, as in, like, and and sex that the law considers problematic, um, but it's imperfect, right? Like, I

0:27:32 Aimee: I don't want to speak to any of your sexual experiences, but I know with the sexual experiences that I've had, like, there's very much like a push pull, and there are moments where, like, like, you're not sure what you want, and you're not sure, like, what the other person wants. And there's never any particular moment where you explicitly say, okay, like, I'm consenting to doing all of these particular things with you from now. Like, and even if there was, like, the whole idea of consent is such that it's meant to be ongoing. So saying what you won in advance, like, doesn't preclude you then changing your mind, et cetera. And so I think having a really productive conversation about what consent is and what it necessarily means is one that was very much smacked down by a lot of people in relation to Me Too. So, for example, something

0:27:32 Thomas: Course yeah what do you mean, because I would

0:28:26 Aimee: Like, well, this paradigm of affirmative consent is one that is really, really loaded, and it's not uncontested. And a lot of people, sort of, both on the left and liberals too, like, like, they misunderstand this notion of affirmative consent, as though by, like, endorsing this idea of affirmative consent, it's some kind of panacea that will actually, like, solve certain problems. And that's just not necessarily the case. So, again, like, that left critique just wants to question the framing and the methodology of the particular goals or values that a moment or a discourse seeks to serve, and just wants to relentlessly, like, sure that they're

0:28:26 Thomas: I would interpret that story of yeah

0:29:15 Aimee: Well suited to their own stated aims, if that makes sense. Well,

0:29:22 Thomas: It does um, but I, I also, I, I guess it's unclear, again, like, what where is the disagreement, if any. And, and I, I think with something like Aziz, as being raised as a male in the culture I'm raised in, I certainly would not have necessarily known about affirmative consent in a way that I think should be an expectation now. That's one thing that I think is a very good byproduct of the Aziz Ansari conversation. And a lot of Me Too conversation, which is it.

0:30:01 Aimee: I fundamentally disagree there, because you're assuming affirmative consent is an unmitigated good thing, um

0:30:07 Thomas: I don't have to assume it's an unmitigated good. I just have to assume that it's better than the previous paradigm of if someone doesn't say no, then everything is fine. Can we agree on that? At least you do?

0:30:19 Aimee: Uh well, I mean, not necessarily, right and see the problem the reason why is again, these particular discourses are often ones of the people who are substantively in power at any particular moment, and they often, often treat very poorly people who are outside particular paradigms. So, um, a large portion of like the BDSM community have run up against certain limits, um, in relation to this, and often what happens is that these particular legal principles like, like

0:30:23 Thomas: Really? Okay, well, let's talk about that.

0:30:56 Thomas: No,

0:30:56 Aimee: I said like you're so. So, for instance, but what they do, bear with me, particular ideas run up against the limitations of their efficacy or their appropriateness when they are tested by outlier cases. Like a totally normative middle of the road case is never going to be the one that tests this framework in ways that reveal its limitations. But for example, if we are saying that, um, any sexual encounter that doesn't, um, explicitly incorporate like an affirmative consent model is one that is necessarily like outside the bounds of legality, it

0:30:56 Thomas: Forget legal. I'm not talking about legal. I'm talking about, it's not,

0:31:38 Aimee: Is one that is deviant it is that we deem criminal, then what necessarily happens is there's a whole bunch of sexual practices that do not and cannot meet that affirmative consent model because it was never appropriately conceived in ways that would allow their particular sexual practices to fall under it and in that way we then create

0:31:38 Thomas: Not what I said, but it's not what is not.

0:31:55 Thomas: I see. I just think, can I at least clarify? Cause we're going down, I think an improper, it'S not productive because I don't, if, if you're defining affirmative consent as always a verbal, yes, yes. Yes. Thing. Then that's not how I view it. My view of affirmative consent is it's, it's just shifting the burden from, did they say no to shifting it to, are you good to go on this? Are you getting indicators that the other person is into this? And I just don't see BDSM relationships as even that difficult of a challenge for this, because if you are in a consensual BDSM relationship, you know that you have that consent. And it's, it's good.

0:31:58 Aimee: Right would there, but hang on but the law doesn't know that, and in fact, when these things are tested, certain types of people become criminalized, and that is, if, if your particular sexual practice is one that the state and the law will deem criminal, the type of people who are prepared to engage in that are necessarily the type of people who are prepared to break a law. It is necessarily a more dangerous prospect for you to have to exist in an anarchist type paradigm, rather than one where our law is comfortable enough to actually accommodate it, right? The idea of consent as this, right, but What I'm saying is, for example, in Canada, where affirmative consent has been the norm in the federal criminal code for the since about 2009, there have been a series of cases that have very much challenged this.

So, for instance, there was a couple who had consented to a particular type of erotic asphyxiation as part of their sexual practice, and the law then found that in fact there was no affirmative of consent, because, uh, in order to consent to something you have to have capacity, and when you are, um, asphyxiated to a certain degree, you lose capacity to consent, and therefore, no matter the fact that previously you'd consented, it was no longer consensual.

And so that is criminalizing an act between two people who have very much endorsed it and wanted to participate in it. And what I'm saying is that when we insist that a certain

0:33:14 Thomas: First, the law hasn't changed, though. The lot like, I

0:34:15 Aimee: Conception of something is sufficient, when in fact it is not, it has peripheral effects to the particular communities and marginalized people that a lot of left liberals purport to want to, to take to be compassionate towards in their approach. And what I'm saying is, when we endorse, like, hegemonic notions of what things are, when in fact the reality is much more complicated, the reality is that the majority of victims of sexual assault are black men, and that historically believing all women has actually had really pernicious effects in certain environments, and what I'm saying is things are much more gritty, and we need to be cautious about over generalizing and endorsing certain narratives because they actually have detrimental effects on the flip side. That's, that's all I'm saying. That's all that a critique would say. That's what critical legal studies does, right? Well,

0:35:06 Thomas: Think it is. Yeah, That's fine. I'm not, I, and again, I think, I think you've done a couple things that, that are, I guess, I don't know, a little frustrating here. One, I already said, I don't think that you don't have to believe affirmative consent is an unmitigated good. But I really, really struggle if what you're trying to say is that because there are edge cases with BDSM that might challenge some of these notions, that therefore affirmative consent as a whole is not any better than a previous paradigm where, as long as you didn't get a no, you're good. Like, how could you say that's true? I don't understand.

0:35:44 Aimee: Well, Significantly, like the extent to which affirmative consent is able to, first off, it's actually a lot more difficult to achieve convictions under an affirmative consent model. So just, like, from the data itself in terms of achieving stated goals of wanting to achieve a more just society, sexual sexual assault is less, okay, well, if you're just talking about consciousness raising, then that's fine, but I think to, um, separate out issues of sexual harassment and sexual assault from the legal and social context in which they operate is largely meaningless. Like, like, like, if we're not talking about the dynamic interplay between the law and the society in which it operates, and the ramifications and co-evolution of the two, um, like, I mean, the fact that sexual

0:36:04 Thomas: Can I say I also said earlier that I'm not talking about law. I'm trying to talk about society and how we are engaging in relationships, possibly,

0:36:46 Aimee: Harassment is even a phrase emerged from feminist legal scholars like Katherine McKinnon, like it was some of these radical feminists who even invented the notion of sexual harassment prior to the 1980s. That wasn't even, like, um, a mental model that we had, right? Like, these things are not separable, but

0:37:01 Thomas: That that's fine. I was talking about a discussion of consent in everyday relationships. We switched

0:37:10 Aimee: I thought we were talking about Me Too. Oh,

0:37:13 Thomas: To talking about affirmative consent, so I was focusing on that conversation, and I was saying in that paradigm, in that conversation I believe that affirmative consent is a better model than what we previously had, and it doesn't have to be an unmitigated good. If we want to talk about sexual harassment, we can, and also I just want to further say that when it comes to Aziz Ansari, I think it's perfectly acceptable in my mind to have a view that what he did was wrong, but I wouldn't want him legally punished for it.

0:37:46 Aimee: Okay, at least we agree on that, like, I fundamentally think he was like a complete fucking gronk, and I also think that, like, it is very worthy, um, at least to look at the particular public posture he was striking with his, um, Master of None series, and his book, which I'd read a little while prior to that, um, and, and to basically point out, like, hey, this person is building a particular brand off of um, a particular approach, and like, in his personal capacity he's not living up to that, but I also think that, um, thought that the way that story was written was quite damaging to women, and I thought a lot of the response really helped to illustrate that, yes, because for example, there was a huge number of takes online that framed that particular issue as being, it is understandable that she couldn't say no due to violence against women, because women are so afraid of men who will often be violent towards them in response to rejection, therefore that she could not say no, and so that is a problem.

My issue with that is that, that if women are fundamentally so afraid of men that they can't say no, you've taken an extraordinary amount of agency away from women collectively, and you've also undermined the idea that they can in fact say yes.

0:37:48 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:38:24 Thomas: And I, damaging, to women what was damaging to women well,

0:39:21 Aimee: Like, if women fundamentally cannot reject particular advances due to fear, um, how do we then suggest that they can endorse and engage with particular advances, because surely that fear operates like, either it's there, it's not, but secondly, but

0:39:38 Thomas: I think that I I understand what you're saying, but can I respond to that, which is okay

0:39:45 Aimee: The one one other thing is that, also, that there's a whole bunch of queer theory that, that emerged in the 90s that sought to shake up those gendered assumptions of, like, the male aggressor, the female like compliant one. So she's the one saying yes, he's the one's making the advances. Like a whole bunch of that theory sought to shake up those gender assumptions, and unfortunately, with a lot of Me Too discourse, it was actually reinforcing really conservative framing of men and women and sex and relationships and engagements, and, and that is a problem for someone who is progressive, like me, and for someone who's actually aware of the literature that suggests that this framing is actually not good for women in many ways, it has a lot of pernicious effects. It's like, that's all

0:40:36 Thomas: Um, couple things. So if you're saying that the way the story was done was harmful toward women, I, I think that's a weird thing to say, because I think that her sharing her story was her sharing her story. It's weird to say. I mean, if you want to say that the way people took it and ran with it might be harmful to women, but like, right,

0:40:53 Aimee: I'm not saying this story per se, but what I'm saying is what the story revealed, and what a lot of the responses to the story revealed, were the limitations of significant portions of Me Too discourse to, um, actually embody, um, a progressive and egalitarian conception of gender and gender roles. It was lapsing back into very conservative understandings of sex and gender. Just

0:41:21 Thomas: But can't you, I mean, I think we can acknowledge that, we can knowledge that we don't need to cleanly fit into these categories, and we often don't, while still acknowledging that there are a lot of people who do. And this discussion of, and it doesn't, you don't even have to put gender on it, but this discussion, if there is someone who, who is seeking sexual, whatever, sexual encounter, sexual, seeking sex, essentially, from somebody, the, that discussion served to say for me, can I, can I?

0:41:50 Aimee: Communicating communicating really mixed messages, right? Yeah,

0:41:53 Thomas: Yeah, let me, let me finish what I'm saying. What the way that, that I think that that conversation helps and is not harmful to women is that if it increases awareness that you need to be mindful of those dynamics. If someone was trying to make a blanket statement of women can't say no because they're always too scared, then yeah, obviously that's not always the case. But I don't think you have to deal in these extremes. I think you can say, being aware of that dynamic, that sometimes women might be a little too scared to forcefully say no because of other concerns, being mindful of that, and using that knowledge to say, okay, let me check myself.

0:42:40 Thomas: Is this person really into it? Is this, can I just ask a question? Hey, are you into this? Are you, whatever, you know, like that is useful. That is an un, right.

0:42:48 Aimee: Like, he's a fucking moron, with really lacking in some really basic social skills. I

0:42:53 Thomas: Right. And, and to say, put a final thing on it, but I believe that conversation was, did society good insofar as it made people aware of that and would make people who might not have otherwise been aware of it say, oh shoot, have I ever been in that situation? Crap. Have I, and I read pieces where there were, that were, it was men who talked about the fact that, wow, I didn't realize before that I might have been in this situation. I might have been, you know, doing things that were not cool with women because I didn't really check in, and I just think that's a good thing. And I don't, yeah,

0:43:27 Aimee: Think that may very well be the case and is so I think that's a beautiful and important thing um but I do still take significant issue with the framing there because this was um a very comfortable well-off woman who had met Aziz when she was actually like a date of someone else at an incredibly affluent um in an incredibly affluent environment she went to the party it went to his place and was sort of like there's so much about the way the story that was the way this story was written that um very much distracted from whatever like potential relevant parts right that it's so thoroughly clouded the issue and and more importantly like

0:44:09 Thomas: No, I agree. Well, I don't know if it thoroughly did, but like, don't you think you're losing the forest for the trees a little bit? Like, I just feel like what I'm hearing is legitimate left criticism, which I agree with you on. Like, I'm hearing legitimate left criticism of some of these things, but I feel like you're weighting that. In my opinion, it feels like you're weighting that so heavily so as to completely overrule

0:44:16 Aimee: Okay here's the thing like when when if she wasn't into it can you tell me why it is that she just didn't say like I'm actually not so into this, I might head off, because what I will tell you is there were repeated occasions when her signals, when her communications were clear to Aziz, he pulled back. And I think that it is, I, what happened there was a situation of really egregious miscommunication on

0:44:36 Thomas: Any progress.

0:45:07 Thomas: Right.

0:45:08 Aimee: Both of their parts and what I take issue with is um like miscommunication on the part of two, like communication is a two-way thing it's not just a one-way think like the onus to imply that the oneness is just on one party is again reiterating a fundamentally conservative, conservative perspective that there is an unequal power disparity there because she's a woman and as someone who doesn't believe that and believes that men and women are fundamentally equal, I object to that framing because what happened there was two parties were fundamentally miscommunicating with each other, that was a dynamic process of miscommunication between the two of them, and to place the onus on one party and not the other when

0:45:17 Thomas: Sure.

0:45:27 Thomas: I agree. Yeah.

0:46:03 Thomas: No,

0:46:03 Aimee: In fact it was miscommunication across the board is to do a disservice to actual instances of sexual assault and it is to to do this service to all women by framing it as though women are unable to to communicate and they need to be, as though women are never the ones making the advances. It just plays into really a bunch of historical and Victorian conceptions of sexuality and I don't think that it is advantageous in its own right.

I think that certainly as a result of that particular story, um particular um men and particular corners of media etc had what could potentially be a productive conversation in response to it, but that's not the same thing as um saying that in its own right it was an appropriate um to approach it. Like, there is literally no reason why at any point she didn't leave or didn't say I'm actually not so into this, and as a woman who really enjoys hanging out with men and like the dynamic relations associated with that, I don't want to live in a world where women are presumed to be unable to communicate, um, communicate with with men properly, and that women like need to be pandered to, um, or unable to, um, I'm sort of losing

0:47:40 Aimee: Track of what I was trying to communicate

0:47:40 Thomas: I hear what you're saying. Yeah. No, I hear what you're saying, I hear what you're saying. And, you know, I feel like I kind of want to just leave it said and not, you know, respond. I think.

0:47:41 Aimee: Yeah I think so um I like, after this, I might send you um maybe some of the more insightful approaches to it because I'm missing, missing a whole bunch here and it may come across the wrong way so

0:47:49 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:47:59 Thomas: No, that's okay. I, yeah. No that's okay. So we're totally out of time. I think I'm actually going to have to do two parts of this because I just, I can't, I get this all out today, but it's good because I didn't know that, you know, and honestly that's one of the reasons why I've been so keen on getting you on is because I really find you to be an incredible thinker and somebody that I was sure was going to be brilliant on whatever topic. And I didn't anticipate, anticipate that we would be having this me too discussion.

0:48:02 Aimee: Yeah no worries yeah yeah I didn't anticipate the me too either but we went there

0:48:31 Thomas: So to try to round this out, I think there's plenty more we could say. And if you want to send me what you, what you said, the, the some of the reading, I'm always always happy to read that um I would say just as a final statement for me, I just think that like, I, I see what you're saying, and I think left, leftist critique, like left coming from the left critique of these things is fine, um, and I think there's more, a lot more I wanted to say as regards the uh the like uh inmate sexual assault, because I think that it's it's totally valid but I I put that in a different category of problem, like we need to fix the hell out of that, like it's awful, we need to fix it, but it's a different, it's a different category of problem than what we're talking about and yeah

0:48:40 Aimee: Yeah yeah and and where I would push back and say whilst it's a different category and a different phenomena um these a lot of the the um what in the in the scholarship are referred to as like rape myths um which is sort of these like archetypical archetypal understandings of like the good victim and the perpetrator like the way we conceive of these things um collectively we don't um particular myths and narratives and framings um have dramatic impact um the way that we socially think about things and it it isn't um when we reiterate certain discourses and certain narratives they're not just cordoned off to when we look at issue a they have um flow and effects when we think about all manner of different issues is what I would say to that but I understand the impulse to be like Like, hang on, that's kind of like a whataboutism to some degree.

0:50:05 Thomas: Well it is and it's Some, it's, it's MRA apologetics to, like, I literally have been across this, you know, I was gonna say table, but, what, a cyber table of people who are like oh but did you know the majority of victims are men and it's like well okay if you count in me yeah

0:50:14 Aimee: Like, see, that is the thing. No, no, I fundamentally get the repugnance of that impulse. And incidentally, and again, slightly personal story, but like for me growing up, actually, my mom was really both physically and emotionally abusive. And what we dealt with in the legal system, well, a lot of the problems associated with these particular narratives, but to my mind, like the answer to that, like, so for instance, if the victim is male and the perpetrator is female, you're often not believed and the police like won't take you particularly seriously and all the rest. And I understand why that has happened, um, and but but I certainly think that like, um, mistaking this that as being indicative of a broader structure or problem that like men are oppressed or you know that violence against men or discrimination against men in the legal system is you know a substantive problem, that's fucking preposterous right and my brand of feminism is one, one that doesn't pit men and women against each other in this like zero-sum battle.

0:50:22 Thomas: Mm-hmm right Right, right,

0:51:28 Aimee: It is one of liberating all of us from gender expectations. And that is something that I think is critically important. And I think the way of doing that is with a really radical progressive feminism, not with any of that men's rights crap or any of that form of apologetics, because feminism properly construed is an ideology and a discourse that will liberate everyone from gender roles and and misunderstandings and all the rest so I'm fully with you on that like I have no time for that like MRA horse

0:51:28 Thomas: Right. Totally agree. Yeah.

0:52:01 Aimee: Shit like yeah I so I think the similarity is perhaps superficial at best but I understand that inclination

0:52:01 Thomas: Well, okay. Yeah, yeah, not sort of. Yeah I okay. Well that may be a conversation for a later date. Way out of time. But So Aimee, make sure to tell people if they want to find you, find your show, where should they go? So,

0:52:09 Aimee: Yeah cool oh cool so um you can You can find me on Twitter at Aimee, A-I-M-E-E, Terese, T-E‑R‑E‑S‑E. Or you can have a listen to our Far Left podcast, see if it doesn't challenge you too much. So that's Dead Pundits, so Dead Pundits Society. So, Yeah, give us a follow. Um, and yeah, um, Dead Pundits on Twitter is at Dead Pundits, so pretty easy to find me.

0:52:44 Thomas: Excellent.

0:52:54 Thomas: Great. And thanks again so much for coming on. This was really fascinating. I think there's a lot more that we could talk about. Maybe we can some of the response to this and do some more reading and make sure to send me anything you want. And maybe we could...

0:53:06 Aimee: Yeah. See how it goes. I may come along and slay some more sacred cows.

0:53:11 Thomas: Yeah, no, it was really fun. I appreciate it and I enjoy it.

0:53:15 Aimee: Likewise.

0:53:15 Thomas: Thank you so much. Thank you for coming.

0:53:16 Aimee: And I think that it's a really a productive tension, I think. Like

0:53:19 Thomas: No, I agree.

0:53:45 Thomas: There you have it, and thanks again, to Aimee and I definitely want to leave most of all of what she said as kind of where it was, um, but there's just a couple things I've got to say, and mainly, the main thing I have to clear up is that example of Hillary Clinton that she brought up early on, frankly, I have, I just think that was a totally nonsense argument to make. Let me explain. So how people treated Hillary on this issue was so unfair that I actually almost did an episode on it. This was a... back in January 2018, so January of this year when this kind of blew up, and I just think it was so unbelievably unjust that I, again, I almost did an episode on it, but I didn't, so I remembered it, uh, but it's been, you know, six months or whatever, so when she brought it up, I just, I wasn't, I didn't have the details fresh on my mind, but, I have to clear this up.

0:54:36 Thomas: First things first, Aimee brought that up as like an example of when Me Too can be bad for women, and that is just absolute nonsense. So, the thing in question with Hillary happened in 2008. Link Hillary statement, but I want to just say a few things. It happened in 2008. So before the whole Me Too phenomenon of this past few, I don't know, this past year or whatever it would be.

And the idea that this has any implications on Me Too is just wrong because already it's before that. And not only that, when you read her reasoning, I mean, you might disagree with how she handled it, but it would be holding her to an insane standard to say that she needed to do better than really people were even currently doing now in the wake of Me Too, but 10 years ago.

She had two employees, and a woman was touched inappropriately by a male employee, and the big criticism is that, oh, she didn't fire him, she moved the girl, so that's what the straw man is, which sounds pretty bad on his face, but when you read what actually happened, she took it seriously, she coordinated with the woman, she gave the woman a bit of an upgrade and changed who she would be reporting to, and she demoted the guy, docked his pay, made sure he wouldn't be around the woman again, but she, then this is the part, feel free to disagree with it if you want, but again, again, this is 10 years ago, and keep in mind what standard we should be holding people to even now, much less 10 years ago. She said she wanted to find a way to not have him lose his job.

0:56:16 Thomas: And again, disagree with it if you want, but to say that that's anything to do with Me Too going too far or something is nonsense. She said the woman thrived where she was. She's still on good terms. She said the woman verified everything she wrote in this thing that I'm going to link you and is cool with it and how she went about it. And so, I mean, looking at it from that angle, it really is different than the straw man version. And the worst thing about this, the most frustrating thing about this to me was the New York Times, like, broke this story. They broke this story. Hillary Clinton in 2008 didn't fire someone, even though she took measures. Actually, 2007, it looks like it was. 2007 or 2008 campaign is why I was confused.

0:57:04 Thomas: And the New York Times writes this scathing article, meanwhile, they had just made the decision not to fire Glenn Thrush, a reporter who had multiple instances of sexual harassment claims against him, after MeToo, so they were writing this article holding Hillary Clinton in 2007 to a higher standard than they were holding themselves in 2018, and it was just such a perfect example of this impossible standard that we did and still hold Hillary Clinton to, in my opinion. And I just think that that was nonsense to bring up. Apologies, Aimee, that I should have had this, all this at the time. But that's what I think. Feel free to respond to me if you want, or we can talk at a later date. I'm happy to have you back on.

0:57:50 Thomas: A couple other things, I really dislike when people do this thing of the people getting sexually abused the most are black men in prisons, and I think I just clarified in my mind a little bit why that's so frustrating, and and I just want to add it because it might be helpful. The problem with that is not that they're not being believed, the problem with prison rape is not at all that victims come forward and say I've been raped and then society doesn't believe them. We very much, society knows that this happens in prison. It's portrayed all the time. It's even joked about in a disgusting way. They all know. We all know this goes on. We believe the victims. We just don't seem to care. We seem to be mostly fine with it.

0:58:36 Thomas: So when we talk about believing victims and how, well, most of the victims are actually black men in prison, like that, it's just a category error, it is not the same thing, it's actually completely irrelevant to the Me Too discussion, to be honest with you. Now, it's a very worthwhile discussion, but it's different thing. It's under the category of people seem to think prison ought to be hell, so they're just kind of okay with it. And that's awful. I'm not minimizing it at all. It's just a different category of thing and has no bearing, in my opinion, on Me Too or anything like that. I guess to summarize, when I say, yeah, we need to believe women more and we need to believe victims more, and someone says, well, what about all these victims that are actually black men in prison? They're not women. My answer again is, well we do believe them and it's a separate category problem and you're just using what about, whataboutery, essentially.

0:59:27 Thomas: And finally, the legal point on Canada and BDSM, I think this is once again, in my opinion, I said it even at the time, I this is losing the forest for the trees, I looked that up, and yeah, it seems as though there's a little bit of legal gray area where people are a little worried that if you physically can't say no, then it can't be consensual, so if you lose consciousness or you're in a position where you can't withdraw consent, then by law, that's not legal, and that's, it's an interesting challenge.

I think it in no way invalidates yes means yes type consent for many reasons. One, we're talking about Canada, and two, this hasn't been prosecuted, so you would need someone to actually prosecute you, and the reason it was in the news was because of this Jian Ghomeshi guy, and in that case, the victim was saying, no, he didn't have my consent, so that's entirely different from, like, two people are engaging in consensual behavior and then the state, like busts down the door and says, no, I'm sorry, you can't do this. That's just not really going to happen because you have to have someone press charges.

Like you have a reason that the state would even care. And this has not been prosecuted since like before the internet according to this Vice article, so again, it might be a particular niche challenge and that's why I'm not saying like it's

1:01:00 Thomas: It's not zero, it's not nothing, but it in no way to me, I think it's again, it's more whataboutery, it's more using an extreme example to try to discount how much better affirmative consent is as a model then no means no. And by the way, no means no has plenty of ways that it fails on this count as well. I mean, if we were strictly going with no means no, that means if you come across someone who's passed out, you're good to have sex with them. And nobody believes that's true. I would sincerely hope nobody believes that's true, but that's, that is a logical inconsistency within no means no, but we recognize that it's not particularly hard to solve. You just use some common sense. And I think the same would go for yes means yes. I think there are reasonable ways you can have consent within BDSM.

1:01:48 Thomas: However, I think it's also important to be aware of the fact that if you put your, if you're doing some, some sex stuff, some BDSM, and you're going to put someone in a situation where they can't change their mind, that's a dangerous situation. And you ought to be very careful if you're literally putting someone in some kind of position where they cannot indicate in any way that they're still into it. I mean, I'm not saying everyone should be arrested if that ever happens, but it is something you really should be careful about. For safety purposes, you got to make sure someone is able to continue to indicate that it's okay with them. So yeah, I don't find those three things very compelling, I just had to, I had to point that out.

1:02:35 Thomas: I think that there are some good criticisms in there, I'll leave the rest up to you guys to kind of sort out and see what you think. I'm very curious for your comments, but I, all in all, if I were to summarize, I think there's some good critique, but a lot of misplaced framing of the problems, like overstating the problems of Me Too, but But that's my impression, and I'm open to talking more with Aimee, and indeed, interacting with all you guys, and you know what, next week's gotta be a voicemail episode, in fact, I think I'll even be late now that I think about it, because I think the way the days fall, that might be technically a July episode, uh-oh, I already messed up, but then, oh well, next is voicemails, I was thinking of it as the end of the month.

Month. So, this would be a great time to phone in, and let me know what you think about this particular episode, and anything else for the month, I think it'll be, again, a good idea to do this on the regular, and then I can kind of keep in touch with you guys, and interact, so I'm looking forward to that.

1:03:31 Thomas: Thank you so much for listening, thanks again to Aimee, sorry I did some of this after you were gone, I just really wanted to set some factual records straight, and if you'd like to, you know, respond, let me know, and we can do something, jump on, whatever. But thank you for listening. Thank you, Aimee. Thank you to patrons at SeriousPod.com support and Patreon.com Serious Pod. You guys got a bonus episode about Facebook drama and Seth Andrews and Dan Broadbent and that kind of stuff. I hope you enjoyed it. I got some good feedback on that. And you got this episode a little early and hopefully there will be more coming your way very soon as a thank you for supporting the show because it would not exist without you. Alright, have a great weekend and see you soon.