In my most recent post, I criticized Madison Cawthorn severely. I said, and I quote:
Madison Cawthorn is a jerk
Cawthorn’s behavior is gross
His behavior is atrocious,
The prejudiced behavior of his peers can never justify his own bad choices,
I encourage everyone to strongly condemn his assaultive behavior, loudly and often. There’s no excuse for it.
among other things. Yet I was accused of making excuses for Cawthorn’s behavior.
Most of y’all are missing the point. When people have criticized Cawthorn lately, in the specific context I made the subject of the last post, people have been asserting this his behavior is the result of being secretly gay, or not so secretly impotent, and thus entirely unmasculine, a failure as a man.
I was trying to articulate a wish that our entire community would do better than that, and so I did not point out any one particular person or comment, but I originally wrote a version of this over one Wonkette where these types of comments were being made:
There were more, including quite a few focussing on his supposed secret gayness and not so secretly flaccid penis.
The point here is intersectionality, people. Just because he’s a white, rich boy doesn’t mean he’s immune to ableism. And even if you don’t give a fuck about Cawthorn, there’s the splash damage you cause by assuming people wouldn’t be acting badly if they were straight, or were more masculine, or could get laid.
I said repeatedly that Cawthorn’s behavior has no excuses and should be criticized. I also said I would focus my criticism away from one single aspect of his bad behavior, his tendency to talk about sex a little too much, a little too loud, a little too publicly. This smacks of defensiveness, yes, but to be perfectly frank, I don’t expect people to have this conversation competently or appropriately, so I don’t want to have that conversation anymore. Too many people have used this as an excuse to call him sexually incompetent or gay, and there are more harmful choices to critique anyway.
There are many problems with Madison Cawthorn, but I don’t give a fuck whether or not he’s gay, and I don’t give a fuck whether his dick gets hard. Not only that, but when people focus on these things they only make ableism worse.
It’s not me making excuses for Cawthorn’s bad behavior. It’s the people who are saying it’s all because he’s a limp dick, cowardly faggot, whether they put it that bluntly or put effort into trying to be clever while saying it. I have said over and over, including in my last post, that there’s no excuse for his bad behavior and that we should criticize it. Criticize away. But the people who think that it’s okay to call him a sexually incompetent nancy boy are also causing problems here, and those problems must also be addressed.
People on Wonkette understood what I was talking about just fine, but maybe that’s because instead of me mentioning the sexual criticisms of Cawthorn (which I did, but which people seemed not to read) they actually saw the toxic crap that was being written. Even if no one spoke up against it, maybe there was already a question in the back of their minds that made the more gentle approach I used in my last post more effective in that context.
This is an intersectional world, and Cawthorn, like all of us, is an intersectional person. As I said, he’s a jerk, but he’s a complicated jerk. Blame the fuck out of Cawthorn for his bad behavior, but if you can’t do that without being homophobic, sex phobic, and ableist, maybe just shut the fuck up until you can learn to do better because spreading that shit on the walls isn’t actually helping.
Sadly, yes, really. Have you not noticed other cases on FtB which basically amount to “they’re the baddies, so you can say whatever you like about them”?
I feel like it’s mostly a case of “didn’t actually read article for comprehension before expressing how the existence of such an article made me feel.”
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Yeah… the problem is, whether it was meant to or not, that it did kind of come off as blaming his disability for his behavior. And that’s pretty darn problematic in itself.
I spent too much of my adolescense being traumatized by my younger brother — theft/destruction of property (including multiple pairs of glasses), near-daily efforts to physically harm me — with my parents brushing it off with, “just let it go, FAS makes him not understand consequences.” (He does, in fact, understand consequences. My parents never really imposed any… on him..)
So, no. Cawthorn’s disability does not excuse or even explain his behavior, and it ought to have severe consequences. Otherwise, we’re engaging in the softer bigotry of lowered expectations.
So where have I said he’s not responsible for his choices? And where did I say he should not have consequences for them?
And do you even acknowledge that in the original post the headline called him a jerk, and I specifically said
Because I think there’s a bigotry of lowered expectations if I tell my friends that it’s okay to call people gay and impotent and unmanly when the real problem isn’t their queerness or impotence or their masculinity, but their evil.
I expect my friends not to be ableist. Period. There’s plenty to kick Cawthorn’s ass about, so please stop defending the people who called him a dickless faggot and the entire idea that if we don’t call him a dickless faggot that we’re somehow not holding him accountable.
His actions can be evil and he can be criticized for and held accountable for his actions and at the same time calling him a dickless faggot can be wrong.
All of these things can be true at the same time. His evil does not excuse others’ ableism.
I have slightly lower expectations. I expect my friends to try not to be ableist, and when it’s pointed out to them that something that they’re doing IS ableist (sexist, racist, whatever) then their immediate response is to apologise and not do it again, and certainly not double down and defend it.
I see two types of people who regularly post here on FtB (those that are allowed to continue to do so…). What I’d call “real” SJWs – the people who will exhibit the behaviour I described above. People, in short, who actually believe and live intersectional inclusion, or whatever you want to call it. And then there are people who do a good impression of those people, but who every now and then let the mask slip and are revealed to be people who just want a fight and happen to have picked THIS side.
I’d like to think I come into the first category, but I’m reflecting and wondering whether I’m in the second. I don’t think so. /shrug/
FWIW, I read your original post and entirely agreed with your point.
As a sexually incompetent nancy boy myself, I have to say it does grate when people use those things as insults for awful people.
@sonofrojblake
Fair.
And probably more accurate.
@3 — WMDKitty
Every act of reading is a collaboration between what the author brings to the table and what the reader brings to the table. So when an author says “I am not saying X. I am not saying X. I am not saying X. I am saying Y.” and the reader says “Really, this came off as you saying X,” then perhaps it isn’t the author’s problem.