There Are No Girls on the Internet - August 29, 2020


BONUS： Aaron Coleman and minimizing revenge porn

Topics
revenge porn
Building a Better Internet with Carrie Goldberg Big Tech and Their Responses to Black Lives Matter

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

175.97

Word count

3,818

Sentence count

237

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
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00:01:04.500 Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
00:01:10.380 get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,
00:01:15.860 welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone
00:01:21.660 who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week,
00:01:26.180 we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
00:01:29.220 with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
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00:01:41.840 Just a heads up, this conversation includes mentions of sex crime and suicide.
00:01:49.780 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:56.180 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:03.260 So I wanted to do this episode because I had this great conversation with attorney Carrie Goldberg,
00:02:09.000 who specializes in revenge porn and abuse against women and sexualized violence that plays out online.
00:02:15.000 And we briefly mentioned the situation with Aaron Coleman, who is a 19-year-old part-time dishwasher
00:02:21.540 who recently won the Kansas State House of Representatives Democratic primary.
00:02:26.180 And he won despite the fact that he had an admitted history of revenge porn against his classmates.
00:02:33.520 And I really saw the way this story played out very much in line with the way that Carrie Goldberg said these stories tend to play out.
00:02:40.060 And so I wanted to do a quick supplementary episode to break down the situation.
00:02:43.820 Coleman dropped out of the race after all of these allegations really reached a fever pitch online
00:02:51.740 only to re-enter the race yesterday, yesterday on the day that I'm recording this, which is Wednesday.
00:03:00.140 So I saw this story really related to the conversation that we had with Carrie Goldberg
00:03:04.160 this week because she really laid out how, as a society, we're so quick to minimize this kind of
00:03:10.200 behavior. And by this kind of behavior, I mean things like revenge porn. I mean things like
00:03:13.880 abuse of women and girls, sexualized violence. We are so quick to say, boys will be boys.
00:03:22.240 This happened when he was so young. Why are you trying to bring up old stuff and ruin this kid's
00:03:26.840 life? Doesn't he deserve to move on? All of these things are really ways that we minimize this very
00:03:32.320 serious crime of revenge porn. I mentioned in the episode, Glenn Greenwald, who's a journalist at
00:03:37.940 Intercept, he himself tweeted and called this behavior, quote, bad middle school bullying. And
00:03:43.980 this is not just bullying. It's a very serious sex crime. Most people, even people who are bullies,
00:03:50.480 don't do this kind of thing. It's not a normal thing. And so I really saw the way that this story
00:03:56.240 played out in exactly the way that Carrie Goldberg says these stories often play out, which is why
00:04:01.040 part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode. Coleman has actually admitted to the behavior that
00:04:04.900 he's accused of, including revenge porn. It's important to keep in mind that this stuff all
00:04:09.320 happened when he was in middle school. I've seen various reports of what age he was. I've seen 12,
00:04:13.900 I've seen 13, I've seen 14. He first ran for public office when he was 17 years old, and he's
00:04:19.640 now 19. Aaron does not dispute that he did these things. He himself wrote, I just want to make
00:04:26.660 clear that all of these allegations are both true and occurred only digitally. I denounce these
00:04:31.540 actions, and they are the actions of a sick and troubled 14-year-old boy. And even in that
00:04:36.580 statement, I really see the ways that he's minimizing his own behavior, reminding us that
00:04:41.260 they only happened digitally. You know, try telling that to the young women whose lives he
00:04:46.820 disrupted, you know, by things that only happen digitally. Like, that's in and of itself kind of
00:04:52.180 a misnomer that things that happen online don't impact your real world or your real life. We know
00:04:58.320 that's not how it works. So even in that statement, I see the ways that he's minimizing
00:05:02.180 his behavior. So what ended up happening is that he got an intimate photo of a classmate.
00:05:07.740 It's not clear how he got them. This girl says that she did not send them to him. They were not
00:05:11.620 in a romantic relationship. He blackmailed her into sending him more photos, saying that if she
00:05:17.360 refused, he was going to send that photo to all of her friends and family. And when she didn't
00:05:22.200 send him another photo, he did exactly that. And it really sounds like it really disrupted her life.
00:05:28.140 This is only a sample of the kind of abusive behavior that he's been responsible for.
00:05:31.980 Another girl he harassed for months until she attempted suicide.
00:05:36.280 Erin told her family, I have moved on.
00:05:39.000 They call the past the past for a reason, because that's where you are supposed to leave things.
00:05:43.160 At this point, you shouldn't move on for me.
00:05:46.080 You should move on for yourself.
00:05:48.340 And that just really doesn't sound like the words of someone who has grown,
00:05:52.400 who has grappled with the severity and the seriousness of their crimes and what they have
00:05:57.340 done, that sounds like someone who is not capable of doing that yet. Telling the family member of
00:06:04.080 someone that you bullied into a suicide attempt that they should move on for themselves is really,
00:06:10.200 I think, quite telling. It sort of plays into a common misconception when it comes to abuse
00:06:16.500 that the past is the past. You can just, the perpetrator should be allowed to move on by
00:06:21.960 just saying they've moved on. They don't have to actually make genuine, meaningful amends to
00:06:26.440 the people they've hurt. Aaron Coleman has been like a master class in how not to issue a public
00:06:38.420 apology. I feel that every time he has talked about this situation in public, I want to pull
00:06:44.400 him aside and say, maybe you can have someone who actually can talk with a little bit more empathy
00:06:50.520 about the situation, help you with your statement before you just hit 10. In one of his first
00:06:55.120 statements after he dropped out of the race on Twitter, he said, in all seriousness, feminism
00:07:00.120 hasn't got a chance so long as Donatism remains on the march. The progressive circular firing squad
00:07:05.720 has done more to uphold the status quo that conservatives ever could have dreamed of. In case
00:07:10.460 you don't know what Donatism is, I didn't know what it was either. So don't feel bad. Donatism
00:07:14.000 is this idea that you have to be faultless in order to get ahead. And so even that statement,
00:07:18.400 I think is really bullshit because why blame feminists for you having to resign for your own 1.00
00:07:24.740 behavior? You know? So that statement was not great. His statement about moving on was also 1.00
00:07:33.460 not great. When Glenn Greenwald asked him, you know, what he had done to make amends, his first
00:07:38.640 thing was that he said that he had had a really hard life and that he thought that society should
00:07:43.060 doing more to help his victims, not just him. When you do something wrong that is this heinous
00:07:49.940 and this serious, you really have to really know how to practice actual empathy and actual,
00:07:59.460 like, making an actual apology. And it's not just saying, well, you feminists win, okay? Like, 0.95
00:08:05.540 that's not an apology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of people defended Coleman. Some even
00:08:11.380 even made it seem like Coleman was the victim because his critics were unfairly bringing up
00:08:15.620 something from his past. Here's how journalist Sagar Njeti talked about Coleman on his news show
00:08:21.240 after Coleman resigned from the race. Reads past the headline, like you said, a 19-year-old with
00:08:26.340 a minimum wage job, want to serve as an elected representative, is like, fine, if you guys are
00:08:31.000 going to treat me this way, why should I even participate? I mean, the national norms around
00:08:36.020 calling somebody out for behavior they engaged in when they were literally 12 years old just
00:08:40.780 seems ridiculous to me. And yet I haven't seen any real reckoning around this, Ed.
00:08:45.360 And again, that speaks to the exact same thing that Kerry Goldberg talked about in that interview,
00:08:49.760 which is that as a society, we are very quick to just say, you know, he's made his amends.
00:08:57.740 Boys will be boys. It's not that big of a deal. He should be able to get on with his life.
00:09:02.160 And a lot of people defended him by saying that it's unfair that he should be accountable for
00:09:07.120 things that he did in middle school, since now he's grown up and gotten older and all of that.
00:09:11.800 And ordinarily, I would say that someone who commits a crime when they're very young,
00:09:16.080 like they shouldn't go to jail or be tried as an adult for things they did when they were young.
00:09:20.240 But we're not talking about whether or not Coleman should go to jail. We're talking about
00:09:24.560 whether he is fit for public office. And he's the one who chose to run for public office
00:09:29.020 at 17 and at 19. Perhaps that he had put a little bit more of time and distance between
00:09:35.460 the time that he was a young man who was doing these crimes and the time when he was running
00:09:40.840 for office, it would be easier to believe that he actually has grown, but it's only
00:09:45.680 been, you know, four or five years, right?
00:09:48.060 Like, already people who are 19 have to show that they are mature enough to be able to
00:09:54.640 hold public office.
00:09:55.700 It's already a pretty high bar.
00:09:57.260 If just four or five years ago you were, you know, harassing and abusing your classmates,
00:10:04.260 It really does add another notch against you.
00:10:06.880 And again, I think that something that Kerry Goldberg speaks to in that interview is our
00:10:10.500 willingness to just uncritically accept an abuser at their word that they have moved
00:10:15.860 on, that they have changed, that they, you know, that they're a different person.
00:10:20.840 And I think that that's a real mistake.
00:10:22.980 I think that as a society, we need to, if someone who has committed this kind of heinous
00:10:28.360 act tries to tell us that they've moved on, they've grown, we need to see some sort of
00:10:32.700 meaningful demonstration of that and not just uncritically accept that that is the case.
00:10:37.920 And I have to say, I saw a lot of folks on the left, a lot of folks in the media,
00:10:42.340 journalists who really should know better, just accepting and pushing this narrative that he's
00:10:46.760 grown, he's moved on, he's made amends without really taking a minute to ask, what has he done
00:10:51.740 to show that he's made amends? What has he done to illustrate this kind of growth? How do his
00:10:58.200 victims feel, right? Like, we didn't really see that conversation playing out. What we saw was
00:11:03.000 people just uncritically accepting that he has changed and moved on. So one of the supporters
00:11:07.980 that we bring up in that episode with Kerry Goldberg is Glenn Greenwald, who was really
00:11:13.240 pushing this narrative that, you know, this was just, quote, bad middle school bullying and that
00:11:19.180 he's, you know, it's in the past and he's moved on and made amends. I found this one quote from
00:11:24.040 Greenwald to be particularly insulting, talking about the fact that Coleman is, you know, comes
00:11:29.720 from a working class background. Greenwald writes, if we say we want more candidates from working
00:11:35.140 class and impoverished families running for political office, as we should, do we make 0.92
00:11:39.640 allowances for the fact that deprived childhoods often produce aberrant behavior as a child that
00:11:44.640 are not common among those from more privileged backgrounds? And that to me is just anybody who
00:11:50.140 comes from a working class background should be so insulted because there are plenty of people 0.67
00:11:54.480 who come from working class backgrounds who don't do this kind of thing. Revenge porn is not a
00:12:00.960 hallmark of a working class background. People who grow up in working class families, that's not a
00:12:07.600 hallmark of, you know, that's not like part of their culture, right? Like, and pretending that 0.99
00:12:11.680 it is, is so disingenuous and honestly insulting. Like, I think that trying to imply that people
00:12:18.040 from working class backgrounds
00:12:19.240 all do this kind of thing 1.00
00:12:20.620 is just beyond the pale
00:12:22.780 because this is not true, right?
00:12:24.340 Plenty of people grow up with hardship.
00:12:26.140 Plenty of people have really hard lives.
00:12:27.920 Most people don't seek out
00:12:30.960 these complex revenge porn schemes
00:12:35.340 that involve blackmail.
00:12:36.760 That's not common behavior.
00:12:38.200 And the more that we say
00:12:39.700 that behavior is common
00:12:40.880 and the more that we say
00:12:41.680 that behavior is acceptable,
00:12:43.020 the less we will be able
00:12:44.720 to talk about it
00:12:45.580 as the heinous, serious crime
00:12:47.640 that it really is.
00:12:52.340 Rainwald said that we needed to have the, quote,
00:12:54.020 full picture of who Coleman is
00:12:55.720 before judging his fitness for public office.
00:12:58.120 He did a pretty fawning 30-minute video interview
00:13:00.920 with Coleman on his website, The Intercept.
00:13:02.980 Here's a little clip.
00:13:04.220 The fact that I have such a compassionate platform
00:13:06.880 shows I've changed.
00:13:08.780 I was in middle school.
00:13:09.760 I regret my past actions,
00:13:11.720 and I hope to continually learn from them
00:13:13.240 as I grow into the person I hope to be.
00:13:15.900 I know I've made mistakes.
00:13:17.640 But there's a reason I'm the only Democrat on the ballot.
00:13:21.000 So in that Glenn Greenwald interview, one of the questions that Greenwald asks him is, what's the evidence that you have moved on that you've grown?
00:13:28.800 And he answers that if he had not moved on, wouldn't there be more allegations?
00:13:34.780 The allegations stopped at middle school.
00:13:37.380 He says that he didn't continue to have allegations against him in high school when he was, you know, the allegations stopped when he was 14.
00:13:43.580 He didn't have allegations when he was 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
00:13:47.980 But we know that is not how these things work.
00:13:52.100 In that Kerry Goldberg interview, it is so clear to me that this kind of heinous sex
00:13:58.160 crime, this kind of abuse doesn't just happen in a vacuum.
00:14:00.960 It is very unusual for it to be a one-time thing. 1.00
00:14:03.860 It is more often than not a pattern of abusive behavior against women.
00:14:08.640 And that's exactly how this played out.
00:14:11.040 So, Coleman says that his abusive behavior stopped when he was, you know, 14, when he got older.
00:14:18.900 Now he's a changed man at 19.
00:14:21.000 One of his ex-girlfriends did an interview with The Intercept this week saying that Coleman physically attacked her, including slapping her and choking her, just this past December.
00:14:31.200 So, that completely tracks with what we know about abusers, that it's not typically just a one-time thing or a, quote, mistake.
00:14:39.340 it typically is a pattern of abusive behavior.
00:14:42.960 And the fact that we know this, this is how abuse works,
00:14:46.420 people who study this, people like Kerry Goldberg,
00:14:48.560 who know how this works and see it day in and day out,
00:14:51.200 have been very clear that this is how this works.
00:14:53.180 And yet, so many people who supported him, people like Glenn Greenwald,
00:14:57.260 just accept that this was a one-time, quote, mistake.
00:15:05.080 Revenge porn is not a youthful indiscretion.
00:15:08.180 And it's not something normal that people do.
00:15:11.300 It is a very serious and heinous crime.
00:15:13.640 And if we don't talk about it as the serious, heinous, life-ruining crime that it is,
00:15:18.780 we're just going to say it was a one-time mistake.
00:15:21.900 But that's not how these things work.
00:15:23.680 So some of his supporters are saying that people are trying to cancel him.
00:15:27.540 People are saying that he, you know, shouldn't be in public life.
00:15:31.500 I don't feel like that's what people are saying at all.
00:15:33.360 I feel like people are saying that if you are the kind of person who admits to this kind of heinous crime, that it is completely reasonable to scrutinize your fitness for public office.
00:15:46.880 You are not entitled to have a job in the House of Representatives representing your state.
00:15:52.000 That is not something that is your birthright.
00:15:54.340 And to act as if that is ruining his life is just not true.
00:15:58.160 Nobody owes you a job.
00:15:59.960 He is more than welcome to, you know, continue his life.
00:16:04.700 That doesn't mean that he has to be holding public office, holding a position of trust in the community.
00:16:10.360 So that's the situation.
00:16:12.200 My take on all of this is that revenge porn and misogynistic abuse is not normal middle school bad behavior, nor is it a class issue.
00:16:20.380 And it is entirely reasonable that Coleman should face scrutiny for this kind of behavior if he's trying to get a position that involves public trust.
00:16:28.980 People who are talking about this are not trying to ruin his life.
00:16:32.340 It's not something that was so far in the past that it's not fair to even bring up.
00:16:37.440 It's completely reasonable to bring up.
00:16:39.120 And that would all be true even if this behavior did stop when he was 14.
00:16:43.780 But we know that's not how abusers typically work.
00:16:47.120 And his ex-girlfriend says that he was abusive to her just, you know, this past December.
00:16:52.620 Overall, it's a really bad situation because his opponent is anti-choice.
00:16:56.700 It is not a really good candidate. 0.92
00:16:58.500 But women really shouldn't have to choose between an abuser and someone who wants to control our bodies.
00:17:02.960 And the way that Coleman has continuously reminded people that he's pro-choice, pro-choice,
00:17:08.460 that he's not going to try to put more anti-choice laws in the books the way that his opponent surely would,
00:17:13.260 it just doesn't feel right to me. 0.59
00:17:14.500 It almost feels like this sort of gotcha for women voters to be like, 0.92
00:17:19.280 well, do you want me, the person who abuses women, or this guy who's going to control your body? 1.00
00:17:24.260 And that's not a fair choice for women voters.
00:17:26.420 And the way that he talks about being pro-choice, it makes it seem like abortion rights are a gift that he's giving women voters.
00:17:32.800 Jill Flippovic really put it well on Twitter.
00:17:34.340 She writes, it's almost like these guys see basic human rights for women as a gift to be bestowed and met with great gratitude and not, well, basic rights.
00:17:45.280 And truly, this should not be our choice, right?
00:17:48.940 We should not have to choose between two different kinds of creeps, you know, in the election.
00:17:54.360 This is America.
00:17:55.380 We should have unlimited numbers of creeps to choose from.
00:17:57.780 Just kidding.
00:17:59.240 So that's my take.
00:18:00.540 But honestly, it's a complicated situation.
00:18:02.780 And I really want to know, what do you all think?
00:18:05.120 You know, what are your thoughts on this story?
00:18:06.540 Is this a story that you followed?
00:18:08.340 What are your thoughts?
00:18:09.380 You can hit us up at hello at tangody.com.
00:18:11.880 And we would love to hear what you think.
00:18:15.640 Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?
00:18:18.900 You can reach us at hello at tangody.com.
00:18:21.300 You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com.
00:18:24.760 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.
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00:18:30.220 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
00:18:32.280 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
00:18:34.900 Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
00:18:36.900 I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
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00:18:42.300 For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:18:54.120 I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
00:19:07.200 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. Every
00:19:13.200 week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,
00:19:18.600 and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:19:24.120 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:19:37.940 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:19:46.260 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
00:19:49.720 with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:19:54.500 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:19:56.280 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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