Hi all, sending this out tonight rather than tomorrow morning, because I want us all to be able to go one damn day without talking about this.
My friends, I am tired.
I really don’t want to write, yet again, about Graham Platner and all the ways he’s revealed himself to be problematic, starting with an inexplicably forgiven Nazi tattoo and ending with the inevitable sexual assault allegations. And yet, the conversation, once again, dominated political discourse yesterday, so I feel compelled to keep talking about it. Believe me, I’d much rather be writing about this week’s House of Dragon episode or my recent dive into Dungeon Crawler Carl or literally anything else on the planet. Writing about the news is not for the faint of heart during Trump II: Electric Bugaloo.
And yet, if women don’t keep screaming about the rape culture we tread water in every day, the stories go ignored. Most of the fawning profiles of Platner came from big-ish media outlets, and most of the criticism and gesturing at multiple red flags came from women writing independent newsletters or blogs. That’s a problem.
Early yesterday evening, Platner announced that he “intends” to drop out of the Maine Senate race, after a reported attempt to hold the entire state party captive by insisting he have a say in who would replace him on the ballot. As expected, Platner took no responsibility for his own actions, claiming instead that “they,” presumably meaning establishment Democrats, want to take “everything” from “us.”
And herein lies the reason so many women were put off by Platner’s responses to the allegations against him: He never took responsibility for a single thing.
Saying he was “a bad boyfriend” is not the same as saying he regrets using physical violence against his past partners. Saying he “didn’t know” his tattoo was a Nazi Totenkopf is not the same thing as saying “I regret having this symbol of pain inked onto my body.” And claiming every allegation against him was somehow not his fault but was being inflicted upon him by “them” is not the attitude of an honest or honorable person. It was always hard to take Platner’s “I’ve grown!” claims seriously. Growth requires reflection and change. Platner gave no evidence of either.
But the bigger problem, as I see it, is how much of the media of “the left,” however you define it, is dominated by men who appear to have no understanding of sexual abuse or intimate partner violence, but do have a pretty hefty sexist streak that they either aren’t aware of or don’t care to remedy.
I want to take a second here to give MS Now’s Symone Sanders the floor, because she summed up the problem with how Platner was recruited and vetted perfectly.
The Platner bandwagon was quickly jumped on by the dudes over at Pod Save America — whom I have criticized before for their myopic and male-centric view of the world — Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks (bleh), the guys of Zeteo (this one broke my heart), and many of the Bernie Bros, including Sanders himself. I like Bernie Sanders, but he’s not great on policy outside of labor, including issues that disproportionately affect women, people of color, and the LGBTQIA community. Most, if not all, of the major left-wing outlets hyping up Platner are fronted by men, if not made up of men entirely.
(At some point, we should probably also discuss that Dan Moraff, the man behind Platner’s recruitment, has recently been accused of unethical behavior by a journalist.)
That’s probably why, when women started raising the alarm about the common theme among many of Platner’s accusers, we were not only roundly dismissed but also accused of being “establishment Dems” who hate progressives, or, worse, AIPAC shills. I am neither, but I saw Graham Platner coming a mile away, and so did many, many other women. And let me be clear, I loved Graham Platner’s purported politics — it was Platner himself I was wary of.
As recently as yesterday, a whole bunch of these “progressive” men were still in hysterics over Platner’s downfall. Men are so dramatic. A brief sampling:
I believe this is what the kids call “crashing out.”
As for the guys at Zeteo (you broke my heart, Mehdi Hasan!), they’re lying low and pretending this wasn’t them.
There’s a reason that newsrooms are better when they’re diverse. I have, more than once, been prevented by a colleague from publishing a terrible take on something I thought I understood. Diversity makes us all better. Differing backgrounds, experiences, and worldviews are what allow reporters and columnists to write meaningful pieces that explore nuance and offer insight into complex ideas. But try telling a certain kind of white man that he’s not an expert on everything. See how that goes.
While working in sports, I often complained that men should not be the ones reporting on allegations of violence against women by athletes, or at least not opining on their veracity. I was once forced to sit at my anchor desk, mic muted, while I listened to four male sports talk radio hosts debate whether or not sexual harassment is “that big of a deal” for women. It never occurred to them to ask the only woman in the room. And why would it? For women, the threat of sexual violence sits on our shoulders daily. Many men, it seems, rarely give it a second thought.
(Let me pause here to clarify that men can be and are victims of sexual and intimate partner violence, too.)
It is a monumental problem for the left that our media is dominated by overconfident white men. The same is true, of course, for the right, but they don’t claim to be “progressives” or allies. Feminists are constantly telling each other, “If your feminism doesn’t include sex workers/mothers/Black women/trans women, etc., it’s not true feminism.” The same is true of progressivism.
True progressives know when to step aside and listen to those with lived experiences, and should seek to give everyone a seat at the table. Ideally, they also know when to shut up and stay in their own lane. If your version of progressivism means ignoring someone else’s pain because it contradicts your narrative or interferes with what you hope to achieve, it’s not true progressivism, which is meant to dismantle systems of oppression. That means the oppression of all, not just those whom the dominant group deems worthy.
I suspect many of the Platner defenders are screeching from the rooftops about their candidate being railroaded because they are too embarrassed to admit their takes were sexist and wrong. Imagine, though, if any of those men had spoken to a woman who could have told them things like, “Actually, saying you need a massage is not an invitation to be raped,” or “Lots of women who aren’t part of the Democratic establishment or AIPAC find Platner to be problematic,” or “Did you know that sexism is often intertwined with white nationalism?” or even, “If a guy in a bar said the kinds of things to me Platner put on Reddit, I would run in the other direction.” Sadly, it doesn’t appear that most of these men have many women in their newsrooms or group chats, and maybe not even in their lives. So many hot takes could have been prevented.
The worst part of all of it is that sexual assault is being treated as an irritating inconvenience that brings down good men, if not an outright weapon to torpedo a man’s meteoric rise. Globally, one in three women has experienced sexual or physical violence at some time in their life. Too often, that violence is at the hands of an intimate partner. Rape is still commonly used as a weapon during wartime. Even knowing the prevalence of sexual assault in our world, most sexual assault victims still choose to remain silent. According to RAINN, 98 percent of rapists walk free.
Rape is not simply an inconvenience to be ignored; it is a tool of mass destruction.
Now that Platner is out of the race, I’m hopeful that Maine voters will get behind one of the many candidates out there who possess admirable politics, like progressive Andrea LaFlamme, who also supports Medicare For All, believes in reproductive freedom, and demands an end to the genocide in Gaza.
But I won’t spend a second regretting Platner’s fall, or the red faces of the men who backed him.
The High Note
Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.
Please enjoy this video if Jon Batiste hears Green Day’s Holiday for the first time:
Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.
