This essay is from January 2012. For my thoughts on Schwyzer as of August 2013, see the final update at the end of the post.
• • •
As regular readers of this site know, professor and blogger Hugo Schwyzer has been the subject of mounting criticism from feminist activists in recent weeks.
To date, the controversy has centered on Schwyzer’s history of gross personal misconduct and on the content of his writing. (Schwyzer’s disclosure last year of a 1998 attempt to kill his girlfriend and himself sparked the current clamor, drawing new scrutiny to his earlier admissions of sexual activity with his students and to various troubling statements he’d made.)
In his defense, Schwyzer and his supporters regularly contrast his reckless past with his sober present, couching their arguments in the language of forgiveness and redemption. Schwyzer’s bad acts are behind him, they say, and the controversies over his current writings are properly understood as debates within feminism, debates among friends and allies.
To fully understand why so many remain so hostile to Schwyzer, though, we need to look beyond his past misdeeds and his problematic writing, and examine the ethics of his recent public acts.
A week ago Healthy is the New Skinny, an organization Schwyzer helped to establish in 2010, announced that they had decided “to end all ties” with him. In a statement, the group declared that Schwyzer had not fully informed them of his past when he became involved with their work. Similarly, the sex education organization Scarleteen recently announced that they would be removing several pieces Schwyzer had written for them from their website.
This weekend I asked Scarleteen executive director Heather Corinna whether Schwyzer had made the group aware of his past before coming on board with them. She said that he had not.
When Schwyzer was approached to write for Scarleteen in 2009 he knew that he had for years engaged in sexual activity with his students. He knew that he had a personal history of domestic violence. But he withheld these facts from Scarleteen — a group that provides sex education and crisis counseling to young people — and in so doing deprived the organization of the chance to make an informed decision as to whether to be affiliated with him.
The question of which elements of his past a person like Schwyzer is obligated to divulge to a group like Scarleteen is a thorny one, and if he had simply concealed facts from them that he had similarly concealed from the rest of the world, the ethics of his choice could perhaps be debated.
But when Schwyzer started writing for Scarleteen his history of sexual misconduct with students was, though unknown to them, a matter of public record. He had first admitted those relationships online in 2005, and had written about them extensively since. And when he later described the attempted murder of his girlfriend in a blogpost, he again chose not to notify them.
Schwyzer’s failure to reveal such potentially explosive information was an act of appalling recklessness. As a small non-profit working in the field of teen sexuality, Scarleteen relies on fragile networks of financial and institutional support — support that is precarious in the best of circumstances. (As a group co-founded by Schwyzer himself, Healthy is the New Skinny was compromised even further by their association with his name.) By acting the way he did, Schwyzer put feminist organizations, organizations he has championed, at serious risk.
I’ve previously discussed the fact that Schwyzer has quietly taken steps to scrub from his blog statements that pose difficulties for the rehabilitation of his reputation. I’ve suggested that his behavior has needlessly exacerbated the damage the current controversy has done to feminist communities. And the ugly revelations just don’t seem to stop.
This is the third blogpost I’ve written about Schwyzer. I expect it’ll be the last. I have no interest in condemnation for condemnation’s sake. But because Schwyzer’s best writings and best acts have moved so many people, I do think it’s important to be clear that this isn’t just about whether a person can be redeemed. It’s not just about the role of men in feminism. It’s not just about folks not liking some of what he has to say.
It’s about the fact that he continues to behave recklessly and dishonestly. It’s about the damage he’s done, in the very recent past, to causes and principles that he claims to value. It’s about the fact that despite his promise to withdraw from feminist spaces, the harm he’s doing to feminist institutions is ongoing.
That’s a problem. And it’s not going away.
Note | In an email to me, Heather Corinna said she regrets not vetting Schwyzer more thoroughly before he started writing for Scarleteen. The organization has long had policies in place requiring disclosure of relevant past conduct by those volunteers who do direct service work with Scarleteen’s clients, and the group is now extending those policies to cover guest writers on their website.
Update | A friend just pointed me to a January 17 video interview, posted online this afternoon, in which Schwyzer made the following remarks:
“I wrote many pieces for Scarleteen.com, a well-known, wonderful site that teaches young people about sex ed — I think it’s the best sex ed site for teens there is. Scarleteen dissociated itself from me, and actually took down many of the pieces that I’d written, acknowledging that the pieces themselves were valuable, but that my past so thoroughly compromised those pieces that they could not stand behind them.”
I asked Heather Corinna about this, since it was my impression that he’d only written a handful of pieces for them over a period of years, and she said my impression was essentially correct. He’d written two posts for their website and contributed content to two more. (They took one of those four pieces down before the current scandal broke, after deciding it didn’t meet their needs.)
Schwyzer was never a regular volunteer at Scarleteen. He never did direct service work for them. He wrote three or four pieces for them. That’s it.
And because of that marginal relationship, they have been the target of some anger and confusion in recent weeks, from clients and friends with legitimate questions about how they wound up affiliated with a man with a history of domestic violence and sexual predation. And how does that man respond? By exaggerating the extent of his relationship with them. By wrapping himself in their mantle. By pulling them close at a moment when to do so can only compound the trouble he’s already caused.
Oh, and what did Scarleteen actually say when they took down his stuff? They said this:
“Previously unknown information about this writer and his history has recently been made available to Scarleteen, information and history with which we have very serious conflicts. For the benefit of the safe environment we always aim to create for our users, and in accordance with the ethics and practices of our organization as a whole, we no longer wish to be associated with him or his work, which is why his contribution here was removed. He had contributed to two other pieces, one of which was removed, and the other of which is down while we create a new piece instead. We apologize for the loss of content any of our readers found of value, and intend to make up for that loss with new content.”
Second Update | Much more here. And on the subject of ongoing harm, here’s a discussion of Schwyzer’s habit of following women who mention on Twitter that he makes them uncomfortable, and even favoriting the tweets in which they do so.
• • •
August 2, 2013 Update | Two weeks ago Schwyzer announced his intention to withdraw from the internet and from public life. That announcement was followed by a string of blogposts and media interviews that as of yesterday were ongoing.
Others have said most of what needs to be said about the current spectacle, but given the focus of this post, I did want to update it to note a couple of things.
Schwyzer’s overarching narrative, as I mentioned above, has long been one of sin and redemption. In the bad old days, the story goes, he abused drugs and alcohol, slept with his students, and mistreated his wives, but then he got sober, and put all that behind him. Framing his story in this way allowed him to be confessional in his writing without ever being self-critical — the “self” that he laid bare in his most intimate pieces was a self that he no longer identified with, no longer felt represented by. It also allowed him to characterize his critics as motivated by a refusal to let the past be the past, as insisting on holding the new good Hugo responsible for the actions of the bad old one.
That false framing was why I gave this post the title I gave it, and why I took pains in another post to draw lines of connection between his past and his present. But it turns out that the framing was false in another way that I was at the time unaware of.
In his most recent blogpost, Schwyzer admitted to conducting “multiple affairs” in recent months, including one with a woman he identified by name. That he engaged in those affairs doesn’t itself concern me — they’re not relevant to Schwyzer’s public life. What is relevant, though, is that during and after the affairs he was writing at length to excoriate other men for exactly the conduct he was himself engaged in.
In a representative column published in May of this year, Schwyzer declared that the “one tangible thing that men can do to help end sexism — and create a healthier culture in which young people come of age— [is] to stop chasing after women young enough to be their biological daughters.” When older men date younger women, he insisted, they are “eroticizing…a pre-feminist fantasy of a partner who is endlessly starry-eyed and appreciative” and in so doing betraying those women and the feminist movement. The peg on which he hung that column was Johnny Depp, who, at the age of 50, had just started dating actress Amber Heard, a 27-year-old “who wasn’t yet born when he made his film debut.”
When he wrote those words, Schwyzer was having an affair with a woman the same age as Heard.
Schwyzer is 46.
In another recent column, Schwyzer insisted — as he has consistently when discussing the subject — that his past affairs with students were confined to women who “were only a few years younger than me (and in one instance, three years older),” but in his latest blogpost — an excerpt from a planned memoir — he reveals that one of his students was eighteen at the time of their affair. He was then in his early thirties.
This is hypocrisy, of course, and lying. But it’s something more than that, too. Schwyzer’s ideological commitments were constantly changing. (He was pro-life, then pro-choice; against porn, then for it.) What he offered in lieu of consistency was a personal narrative, a story about who he was and is. His tale of redemption was simultaneously his raison d’etre as a writer and his defense against his ever-growing list of antagonists.
But feminism never came easy to Hugo Schwyzer. He never found it congenial. It was always a struggle, an act of self-denial, a matter of making himself into a new and better person by force of will. When he described male feminism as a “cold pool” in which “none of us can fully immerse ourselves forever” it struck me as both profoundly revealing and profoundly sad.
It’s not an accident that Schwyzer found so many enemies in both the world of feminism and the world of Men’s Rights, and it’s not a matter of “if everyone is criticizing you, you must be doing something right,” either. Feminists saw a falseness in his writing on feminism, and MRAs saw a falseness in his writing on men. What he was telling other people to do, he could never do himself. And rather than explore that — rather than try publicly or privately to make sense of the impulse to righteously insist on the necessity of following an ever-changing code that he himself could not follow — he kept pounding the drum, disguising his muddled, untenable aspirations as hard-won, clear-eyed wisdom.
I wish him well. I hope he finds a path through his current troubles. And for his sake as well as everyone else’s, I hope he finds a way to just be quiet for a while.
45 comments
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January 23, 2012 at 2:16 pm
mediahoundongmp
He’s also editing his stories again – but this time on YouTube – The “Cliché Cyber Theatre” know no ends. Version 3 is in play!
It’s comical how he just edits and hopes no-one notices. If in doubt run to theology and act confessional!
January 23, 2012 at 2:33 pm
Perverted Justice
Now there is a 4 part video interview where he redefines feminism to center men in it, where he says that “he tried to kill his ex girlfriend and many see this as an act of domestic violence” and he qualifies the campaign against him as people telling him he is “a snake in the feminist Garden of Eden”.
The link to the videos can be found here:
http://femtheologian.com/hugo-schwyzer-on-responding-to-critics-and-moving-forward
They are priceless.
January 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm
mediahoundongmp
I have to say the new edits of past realities are Illuminating. Such an Unreliable Narrator!
It’s also fascinating the part about discussing what critics have said – and it’s so interesting just how many criticisms did not get addressed – very selective.
Anyone who has been watching his Cliché Cyber Theatre unfold can see all the edits, and even where he has edited new lines in to cover over concerns.
Given his past Misandrist comments about men, and his penchant for such negative and stereotypical views of men – well – it is shocking to think what he would have been saying if he actually didn’t like men and didn’t supposedly now think that his feminism is all about Equality! If you look real close you can also see the formation flying elephants through the window!
Evidently now that he has lost one congregation his next step is the church of Hugo! He has a degree in history – so that means he has to be qualified in theology, doesn’t it! P^)
January 23, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Ginmar Rienne
Oh, God, misandry. That’s what MRAs howl when anybody dares point out the actual facts.
January 23, 2012 at 5:02 pm
mediahoundongmp
Sorry Ginmar – I don’t do MRA! P^)
So when I use the word Misandry, it comes from a basis of syntactical and semiotic analysis.
Facts are not the issue – but always using negative and stereotypical narratives about men is. It is not a fact that all men are like little boys – but It is a trope that recurs repeatedly in the Misandrist language of those who have issues with negative images and representations of men.
If it was done using similar language on racial grounds it would be called Racism. When it’s done on gender grounds with negation of men the correct and factual term is Misandry.
Unfortunately, just as some lack the capacity to recognise their own intellectual processes as racists, the same does apply to those who are sexist and suffer from gender polarity intellectual challenges which manifest as Misandry .
They even respond to trigger words with Thought Terminating Clichés.
Hope that clears it up for you! P^)
January 24, 2012 at 4:59 pm
tigtog
It is of course fascinating that feminists, who generally hold that individual men should be accountable for individual actions (rather than being systematically excused by stereotypes all summing up to but that’s just how men are!(so what can you do?) justifications) are the ones who get told that they are misandrists.
I’d agree that some of the statements from Hugo that I’ve seen quoted around the place do seem to rely on stereotyping all men as always wanting to do whatever Hugo is criticising. Gender roles/expectations/assumptions are based in these stereotypes of course, but that’s exactly what anyone who calls themselves a feminist should be critically querying, not regurgitating and amplifying.
January 24, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Ginmar Rienne
Thanks, don’t patronize me. Men are the most powerful group in the world. What you call misandry most women would die to have to deal with—–more pay for less work, more prestige for less effort, constant self affirmation, incredible amounts of power, being the default for ‘human’ and so on. What you left out of your mansplaination is how those so-called negative stereotypes serve to keep the bar low for men so as to ensure they get praised whenever they succeed in doing something that they don’t have to, and that those stereotypes also serve to warn women that we can’t hope for anything better. I’ve heard the same argument made about those schlubby hubby commercials that so many MRAs love to whine about.
Negative images of men are often accompanied by screeds that blame this all on women, particularly TV commercials, which feature many a schlubby lazy hubby doing stupid things—while his beautiful wife all but orgasms and says, “Boy will be boys!” Yeah. My fantasy is not about cleaning up endlessly for some dude who thinks he deserves to lay around and be waited on while he whines about how badly other men portray him on TV. Those commercials and complaints also tell men that they deserve to be loved and served no matter what. Yet they’re produced by other men to the almost complete exclusion of women. I’ve yet to see, as well, anybody who complained about misandry ever complaining about misogyny. Gee, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Angus, I’d appreciate if you sent those posts of Schwyzer’s that you saved along to me. Can you see my email in my info? Welll, here it is. ginmarie at gmail dot com. Thanks.
January 24, 2012 at 5:44 pm
Angus Johnston
Yeah, Tig. I’ve had the sense for a while of Schwyzer as a man at odds with himself, and as a guy who tends toward a really simplistic critical analysis of masculinity.
“Misandrist” isn’t a word I’d have picked to describe him myself, but if I squint I can certainly see it.
January 24, 2012 at 6:33 pm
Hari B
Thanks for going the next step in naming the problem for what it is, in present time, Angus. All it took for me was seeing 2 words in his account of the almost-murder-suicide incident, to see him for what he is: ‘desperately hot’ sex–words written in the *present*, indicating the *present* mindset of a narcissistic if not completely sociopathic creep. To Hugo it wasn’t a ‘confession’, and it had nothing to do with honestly owning mistakes as part of his ‘recovery’. It was a drama to capitalize upon– it needed to be titillating, pornified.
His use of those words is sickening. Much more sickening still was the fact that he gave so much detail about that day as to further violate the womyn he decided he should to kill for her fragility, by making her potentially recognizable to others.
People need to know that it’s who he is, and what he does, today, that is the problem. I appreciate your work in making his creepiness so clear.
January 24, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Cara
It was a drama to capitalize upon– it needed to be titillating, pornified.
Exactly.
I half wonder if that’s why so many of those women supporting him can’t see it…maybe it’s *ugh* like some trashy novel to them.
January 24, 2012 at 9:20 pm
Why do some feminist spaces tolerate male abusers?
[…] addressing body image issues in teen women and the beauty and fashion industries. Schwyzer did not fully inform either organization of his […]
January 25, 2012 at 8:35 am
Hari B
Thanks for the link to a most excellent piece on this topic.
I think, though, that the more core question is: why do some feminist spaces tolerate men’s leadership at all?
Not that I object to men-allies of feminists. And it could be good if the leader-types would reserve that to leading men where feminism (and their own liberation from the privilege/oppression paradigm) is concerned. That, I wouldn’t know for sure as a womyn–also, not as a feminist whose primary concern is womyn’s lives–but I can see the possibility.
I just think that feminism will move forward most effectively by keeping it womyn centered and leaving men’s leadership out of it entirely. Hopefully this debacle can make that more clear to all.
January 25, 2012 at 10:11 am
Hugo Schwyzer: Male Feminist/ Lightning Rod « Sex with Timaree
(Note: This link is to an interview with Schwyzer by a supporter, and as Hari pointed out, some folks might not want to click on that unknowingly. Now you know.)
[…] on this interview), he has been taking fire from a number of directions, garnering everything from thousands of hate letters and tweets to a Facebook group whose sole purpose is taking him down. The controversy has caused […]
January 25, 2012 at 10:49 am
Cara
I think, though, that the more core question is: why do some feminist spaces tolerate men’s leadership at all?
I’ve been asking that from the beginning. The rooster-in-the-henhouse thing gets really old in any circumstance, but it’s particularly galling in feminist spaces.
And who decided this guy was a “leader” in the first place? Maybe it’s just the narcissism–someone who wasn’t so self-aggrandizing wouldn’t feel free to embellish, like he exaggerated his involvement with Scarleteen.
January 25, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Hari B
Angus, just wondering…have you checked out the sex with timaree link? If so, and you approve of it, maybe you could mark the post with a trigger-warning? I would NOT have followed it if I’d known it contained fairly happy blatherings about, complete with headshots of, HS. I didn’t listen to timaree’s interview w/HS, linked on the post. Hard enough to talk about him at all, but I’ve made a decision to do so for the much the same reasons you have. I totally do not want to read his work, or quotes of him by fans, nuh uh, none of that for me, I’m nauseated enough by all this as it is.
thanks for considering this request–
January 25, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Angus Johnston
Hari, Cari:
I had a whole long post on the question of male feminst leaders, but after typing it out I realized that it came down to these two questions:
1. Are there any men who have ever been of any use to feminism who have considered themselves feminist leaders?
2. Is there anyone other than Hugo Schwyzer who ever thought of Schwyzer as a feminist leader?
The answers are “no” and “no,” right? I’m pretty sure they’re “no” and “no.”
January 25, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Angus Johnston
PS: I added a note to the link, Hari. Thanks.
January 25, 2012 at 6:00 pm
mediahoundongmp
“As of yesterday -due to a legal injunction- this interview is the last one in which he tells the story of his pre-sobriety days.”
Evidently, some have heard enough to be worried, and need protection – even long after the events.
Hmmmm! A gagging order to protect other parties? And some thought it was all just blogging and telling a good story! P^/
January 25, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Cara
Hari, Cari:
Ha!
1. Are there any men who have ever been of any use to feminism who have considered themselves feminist leaders?
2. Is there anyone other than Hugo Schwyzer who ever thought of Schwyzer as a feminist leader?
I think there are plenty of pro-feminist men who are good examples of how to be allies, often because they DON’T decide they should be showing the girls how it’s done. And actually I think there are people who think Hugo’s a leader, namely the naive kids he’s spoon-fed his self-aggrandizing version of feminist theory. Oh, and the chorus girls.
January 26, 2012 at 8:17 am
Hari B
Angus–thanks for adding the trigger-warning to that link, much appreciated.
And thanks for posing the 2 questions which, I agree, are what it boils to. I agree that the answers are unconditionally, “no” and “no”.
January 26, 2012 at 11:07 am
Hari B
“boils down to”, my bad.
January 31, 2012 at 8:06 am
Tuesday Teasers: Stuff I’ve Been Reading [#4] - The Pursuit of Harpyness
[…] Johnston @ Student Activism | Hugo Schwyzer is Still Doing Harm. I’ve mostly been watching this conversation unfold from the sidelines, since I was never […]
February 9, 2012 at 2:09 pm
Hugo Schwyzer’s Phony Feminism « Chateau Heartiste
[…] fertility women with little baggage. After all, he’s gotta cover his ass for past, uh… indiscretions. As Bill Clinton understood, nothing distracts feminist attention from one’s own very […]
February 10, 2012 at 7:17 pm
Robert
@Angus…I was going to respond angrily to the writer above named ginmar rienne because I disagree with just about every word of her angry little misandrist rant…but since I am not a regular reader of your blog I decided to read your comments policy first…well, seems to me she just broke about every rule you have written there as her rant is full of anti male insults, snottiness and a general lack of respect….if I was to counter her I would only be able to do so by being equally mean spirited and angry, and that would certainly break your blog rules because frankly, someone who thinks the way she does, does not deserve any respect.
February 11, 2012 at 1:32 am
Cara
Robert, refusing to genuflect when one addresses a male person is not “misandrist”. In fact, there’s no such thing. There’s “‘misogyny” and “misanthropy”.
“Misandry”, as Ginmar pointed out, is a made-up word used by men who have no other source of pride to cling to (so to speak) than their outie genitalia.
February 12, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Bill
I am now a 40-something year old man, who is currently single. I had a female co-worker chase after me who is slightly over ten years my junior and as flattering as it was, I also felt like an outdated dinosaur compared to her. Even though I keep myself fit and active and told I look younger, the number of years between us was a psychological issue for me. I came across Hugo Schwyzer article on older men and younger women, and honestly all it did was left me initially feeling like the “creepy” perv he kept bashing. But half way into reading it, it was apparently how twisted and sick his comparisons were of a man of 40 being called “old” and him being interested in a younger women, somehow being thrown in the pile with pedophiles pursuing 14 year old girls and commenting about their breasts! Sick. I concluded that Hugo Schwyzer must have demons in his closet and perhaps projecting his “creepy old man” fetishes for teenage girls on any dynamic involving younger women and older men. A May-December relationship between consenting adults, regardless of age difference, is not the equivalent of looking for “jailbait” as Hugo Schwyzer asserts. This is the problem I have had since college with many feminist and gender studies professors: they mix into the pot of true pathologies, such as rape and pedophilia, normal behaviors in an obvious attempt to make them seem as likewise pathologies. Hugo Schwyzer asserts that biology has nothing to do with younger women seeking older men and it is all cultural. This is not true, any more than to say culture does not influence our norms either, but to deny biology is just foolish. At the end, I saw this co-worker as a dynamic and independent woman wanting a partner that she saw a potential relationship with stemming from our positive work interactions. My initial resistance and age-anxities faded as I totally feel in love with her and immediately transferred myself out of the department so no conflict of interests would either arise or be aimed against either of us. We’re getting married and I would not trade her for any Sultan’s life of all the harem girls of the world. No Mr. Hugo Schwyzer, real men seek real women, despite age-difference; not girls. Stop projecting your dark cynical obvious inner demons and issues onto the world and the men and women that live in it.
February 15, 2012 at 10:43 am
Cara
Feminism isn’t against love or sex. Most feminists are simply against men using institutional power to screw women, like professors sleeping with their students.
Jeez. Drives me NUTS the way the word “feminism” is insecure men’s worry jar. Feminism has exactly nothing to do with Schwyzer’s creepiness.
February 16, 2012 at 12:10 am
Twanna
You sound angry and confuse Cara. Neither young men or women care about “feminism,” which devolved from a legitimate social issue of advancing the rights of women to now a catch-all term from insecure women who at best have accomplished nothing more than mediocre levels typical of most men, but somehow becomes elevated to a lofty status for no other reason than being female. This is without fail the mindset of an older woman or one thoroughly lacking in self-development. Most women, thankfully, are intelligent to know they are in many ways far better off than most men and in the same struggling world that men live in and don’t point the finger at men as the “fertile dumping ground” and Camile Paglia once said for all the frustrated, failures, and projected insecurities of failed females (and typically white racist ones at that).
February 21, 2012 at 1:12 pm
On Hugo Schwyzer: Accountability, not silencing dissent | Are Women Human?
[…] addressing body image issues in teen women and the beauty and fashion industries. Schwyzer did not fully inform either organization of his […]
February 26, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Cara
You sound considerably “confuse” Twanna, by a great many things. And off topic. Again, feminists don’t have a problem with men or sex, just with men who think their penises make them the center of the universe.
April 16, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Grace does not preclude accountability: apologizing for my unwitting support of Hugo Schwyzer | Elizabeth Esther
[…] quick Google search will show you how some organizations have recently cut ties with Schwyzer because he was not forthright about his past: ie., sleeping […]
May 29, 2012 at 11:33 pm
Kim
I have always found male feminists like Hugo Hugo Schwyzer creepy. Why would any self-respecting adult attempt to ingratiate him or herself with a group that is openly and unabashedly hostile to them? Moreover, who couldn’t see that they would quickly turn on him.
May 29, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Kim
Gosh Cara, you sound pretty bitter about men and life.
June 18, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Men, Feminism, Race, Movements and the Cult of Hugo Schwyzer: The F Word Interview with Ernesto Aguilar | Feminist Current
[…] Hugo Schwyzer is Still Doing Harm […]
May 7, 2013 at 7:13 pm
Sophie Dee
I believe in Santa. Oh that, and that most feminists were abused by their dads. Sucks, but Anna Freud was right. . .
August 2, 2013 at 12:11 pm
oldfeminist
He’s a Narcissist. Everything else flows from that. He thought being a feminist would enhance his status, so he “became” a feminist. But everything centers around him. When challenged, he reinvents the past, pretends to be sorry, or blows it all up.
August 2, 2013 at 11:28 pm
10 thoughts on violence, mental illness, and solidarity with survivors
[…] that’s raised questions about how to talk about the mental health or illness of someone who’s perpetrated and is still doing harm. I don’t want to rehash the details, but I have a few thoughts about some of the arguments […]
August 13, 2013 at 10:25 pm
aitchcs
Now I see on different blogs, people are using this Hugo meltdown to criticize and condemn ALL feminists and feminism in general. Thanks a lot dude. Yes, he is still doing harm.
August 14, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Bad-Ass Women Call Out Feminism's Failures - This Week in Blackness
[…] her effort in response to a specific oversight: white mainstream feminist publications enabled the abuse of several writers, mostly women of color, by “white male feminist” Hugo Schwyzer, whom […]
August 15, 2013 at 6:16 pm
in which white-supremacist patriarchy undermines community | Adventures as a Secular Pagan
[…] two online communities I’ve been following for a long time erupted in controversy. In both cases, the cause of controversy was incredibly misogynist behavior by male community […]
September 3, 2013 at 5:15 pm
dave
hugo schwyzer was always a sociopath. I recall my days at PCC and it was well known that Schwyzer was getting it on with female students, majority of whom were between 18-20. We used to watch him work during AGS meetings since he was an advisor. He would scope out the girls and gravitate toward specific types. Sociopath behavior. He would openly brag about his nipple piercings and penis piercing at that time. the guy always talked about sex in a way that he tried to make harmless and academic. but, it was odd. off putting. People bought into his act. All this stuff coming out now is no surprise because he had exhibited all the tendencies long ago. people acting surprised now are the ones who had bought into his act. This guy is an example of how dangerous someone who looks, acts and speaks the way he does can be. the dangerous people never look like some brown skinned muslim or a black male or even a hispanic male. the danger is the the clean cut, educated white male
December 24, 2013 at 1:05 am
Bad-Ass Women Call Out Feminism’s Failures | VALID
[…] her effort in response to a specific oversight: white mainstream feminist publications enabled the abuse of several writers, mostly women of color, by “white male feminist” Hugo Schwyzer, whom […]
January 3, 2014 at 4:33 pm
Bad-Ass Women Call Out Feminism’s Failures | TWiB! MEDIA, LLC
[…] her effort in response to a specific oversight: white mainstream feminist publications enabled the abuse of several writers, mostly women of color, by “white male feminist” Hugo Schwyzer, whom […]
October 31, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Are All Male Feminists Sex Predators, Paedophiles, and Rapists? | Living in Anglo-America
[…] Hugo Schwyzer is Still Doing Harm […]
November 1, 2014 at 1:26 pm
When Men on the Left Refuse to See Their Sexism | Muslim Reverie
[…] himself as a “male feminist,” yet doesn’t see the harm he causes when dismissing his history of engaging in sexual relations with students or writing about how he almost murdered his ex-girlfriend and then made himself the […]