Joanna Schroeder resents that passive-aggressive live-tweeter Melissa Stetten is being held up as some sort of model of feminist activism.
This whole thing is a giant clusterf@&k of stupidity*.
Apparently there’s a C-list soap star named Brian who drank some beer and talked to a smart, gorgeous model on a red-eye flight from LA to NYC. Supposedly he talked to her in a way that all too many B- and C-list actors talk to cute women: About being “famous”, about how authentic/talented/spiritual they are, about the famous people they’ve met… And they do all this without reading the social cues given by the woman they’re talking to. In LA we have a word for these guys: Cheesedicks.
Cheesedicks: Guys who are somehow so cheesy and trite that they actually cross into being complete dicks with their obtuse and self-obsessed dialogue.
How do we know about Brian’s alleged Cheesedickery? Because Melissa Stetten live-tweeted it.
No thanks, Brian, the actor sitting next to me on this flight talking about his role with Kurt Russell and his spiritual beliefs.
— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) June 6, 2012
Brian hates closed minded people but loves artists in the industry, and just called this one-sided conversation a “collabo” between us.
— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) June 6, 2012
There’s a lot of that on her Twitter feed, and it’s actually really funny. And yep, it’s classic Cheesedickery.
But here’s where it goes bad:
Yes, this is BRIAN! RT @Pat_Healy: @MelissaStetten Is this him by any chance? imdb.com/name/nm0696169/
— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) June 6, 2012
Now all her Twitter followers (and everyone on the Internet) know who he is. And that he’s married. And that he’s supposed to be sober (she tweets about him taking his Heineken into the bathroom with him).
Suddenly we have a sinking feeling. Brian’s annoying flirting and chatter has become something much, much worse. Suddenly we see someone’s life start to unravel.
And now the media floodgates have lifted and word of Brian’s cheesedickery is global.
People have come out against Stetten, saying she exploited him. Others have come out in support of her, like my own friend and GMP-controversy catalyst, Hugo Schwyzer, in an article on Jezebel:
The reason we should cheer Melissa Stetten isn’t because she’s a young, pretty model who used her snarky wit, her Twitter network, and Virgin America’s inflight Wifi to start an (literally) overnight media sensation. The reason we should cheer her is because she didn’t do what women in her position are “supposed” to do, which is quietly put up with the come-ons of older married dudes in various stages of intoxication. Brian didn’t just disrespect his marriage by slipping off his ring in the airplane lavatory before returning to his seat, he disrespected Melissa by presuming that she was young enough, dumb enough, and C-list-star-struck enough to fall for it. That so many don’t see Presley’s behavior as more than deserving of Stetten’s response says a great deal about what we expect women to endure.
Let me be clear: Brian Presley seems troubled. He may be in the middle of a relapse. He may be having troubles in his marriage. He may also just be a Cheesedick. And his obnoxious one-sided conversation (as characterized by Stetten) should be noted as really gross, and something people simply shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t slip off your wedding ring and tell people you’re not married when you really are. And you should read people’s social cues and just stop bugging them if they’re not reciprocating your conversation.
I agree with all of that.
But it isn’t a zero-sum game… Just because she was a jerk to Tweet it to the public world, doesn’t make him less of a jerk for whatever it is someone would think he’s a jerk for doing (i.e. possible relapse, flirting while married, ignoring social cues).
Stetten could’ve tweeted the events without confirming Brian’s identity publicly. She could’ve written the story up without his last name and had it published somewhere. She’s really funny, and the story is relevant. But my guess is that she confirmed his fame because she wanted the notoriety.
And she knew this would bring notoriety:
Did I just ruin Brian Presley’s life via twitter?
— Melissa Stetten (@MelissaStetten) June 6, 2012
And here’s what bothers me most: The presumption that women are so weak that we should use any tool available to us to stop men from bugging us. She can’t sit up straight, look him in the eye and say, “Please stop talking to me”? She can’t get up and ask for assistance from a flight attendant if her “stop it” didn’t work? Why are women portrayed as being such cowering children that we cannot stop something like this from happening to us? Or at least attempt to stop it?
What kind of feminism is that? To me, it seems like the kind that believes in keeping women weak—utilizing passive-aggressive techniques rather than direct intervention to end the behavior when it is actually possible.
Hugo insists that she stood up against what we, as a society, expect women to endure. But did she stand up for it? No. Did she stop this obnoxious behavior so that she wouldn’t have to “endure” it? No. She endured it so that she could exploit it.
GMP colleague and sex-positive feminist Julie Gillis says:
I am not sure anyone should be fair game for mass ridicule. I dislike it even when it’s a politician or major celebrity… Even if it’s absolutely true that he was bothering her, seems like the thing to do would be to get an attendant to help out. This is what I’d teach my child: if someone is bothering you, get a teacher. I would not teach him to tweet about what a jerk the other kid is.”
Is public shaming really the only tool we, as women, have against men who are making us uncomfortable? Certainly in some situations that could be considered the case. But this was on an airplane (and a Virgin one, nonetheless) in the United States where if you say your seat mate is harassing you, you’re gonna be taken seriously.
There are places and times in all women’s lives where our “No” isn’t taken seriously. There are situations wherein a woman truly doesn’t have a voice. Based purely upon what she offered on her Twitter account, it sounds like she didn’t directly attempt to stop his flirting. Maybe she did say “Brian, please stop talking to me” and explained that she wanted to sleep/listen to music/read/sit quietly, etc…
But if she had, why wouldn’t she have live-tweeted that? How, in fact, do even we know that her portrayal of the conversation is accurate?
In a Facebook conversation about Hugo’s piece, someone said this to me:
“I’m annoyed but not surprised that there is a question of her honesty … wow. How do you know she’s NOT lying? He’s done the obvious lying but hey, let’s question her ability to tell the truth. Victim shaming. Keep it up.”
Is this victim-shaming? Me saying that she shouldn’t have publicly outed him for this behavior is shaming her for being the victim? No, I’m not shaming her for having him talk at her. I’m simply saying that she handled this wrong in a situation where she had many options.
Seems to me the term “victim-shaming” should be reserved for individuals who are being told they deserve what they got. I don’t think Stetten deserved to have a Cheesedick spout at her on a red-eye. I just disagree with the passive-aggressive way in which she dealt with the problem.
And I disagree with feminists who believe that women should have the right to say anything they want publicly about any guy who pisses them off simply because the offender is a man.
If, in fact, Brian Presley said and did all the things Stetten says (and I have no reason to doubt her), then he certainly created this situation for himself. But Stetten is no feminist hero for exploiting it.
*Note: We’re all stupid sometimes. Especially me. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore the way we react to things.
About Joanna Schroeder
The argument here seems to reduce to this:
Members of the public have an affirmative obligation to protect the reputations of celebrities who project a public image at odds with their actual personal behavior, and this obligation persists even when we are treated poorly by that person in a way that directly contradicts his public persona.
Much of this post consists of attributing motives to MS, and arguing about the validity of those motives. I don’t see how her motives are relevant; she could have understood herself as fighting the good feminist fight or amusing herself and her friends, I don’t care. The job of protecting the image of the “good sober Christian actor” or whatever fall upon that actor and his PR staff. The rest of us aren’t being paid to protect his public image, and have no positive obligation to do so.
(Obviously, lying to attack the image is not OK; this argument is only relevant if the tweets are truthful; a presumption I’m making in arguendo as is this post).
I’ll ask something similar to what I asked on another blog:
Do babies need to be publically shamed?
http://twitpic.com/8wdtz4
Look, I don’t know how I could make my point any clearer. I have no opinion on, and no interest in, the question of whether Melissa Stratten is a good person or not. I’m profoundly uninterested in some sort of global assessment of her character through a close reading and analysis of her enitre twitterfeed. I thought we were talking about her tweets about Brian Presley. I took this to be a discussion on Stratten’s behavior in this particular case; I’ve no interest in defending or indicting her as a person, because it’s boring and pointless.
Why do you think an entirely unrelated tweet about a baby she found annoying is useful information in a discussion about whether a positive obligation to protect the public image of celebrities exists?
It shows her contempt for other people’s privacy. She sees nothing wrong with tweeting a picture of a baby without the parents’ permission. She shows no discernment of private vs. public. (she also started tweeting before she knew the guy was a celebrity).
As well, she shows no regard for Presley’s q
wife, who is being humiliated for no reason.
But it would only be relevant if, logically, person A failed to properly respect the privacy of others in case B, then the same must logically be true in cases C, D, and E. This obviously doesn’t hold.
I want to know why you think members of the public have a positive obligation to withhold factual information in order to protect the non-accurate public persona of celebrities. Melissa Stetten’s various misdeeds have nothing to do with this.
Good grief, we’re not talking John Travolta sexually harassing an employee, we’re talking a minor celebrity obnoxiously coming on to a stranger. What Stetten did is relatively minor in the grand scheme of things, but it was obnoxious as well.
She had no idea he was a celebrity when she started tweeting. She simply thought that his boorish behavior gave her the right to violate his privacy even when he was sleeping. Her other tweets show that she doesn’t value other people’s privacy.
we’re not talking John Travolta sexually harassing an employee, we’re talking a minor celebrity obnoxiously coming on to a stranger.
You’re right, I suppose, to point out that in the grand scheme of things, his behavior was not as bad as certain other people’s behaviors. What you haven’t done–but need to do to successfully make your point–is explain why you, I or anyone else has a positive obligation to help Brian Presley protect his (apparently rather misleading) PR strategy. I don’t understand why anyone not paid to do PR should have an obligation in this regard, and while you’ve changed the subject many times, you’ve never bothered to explain what motivates your belief that such an obligation exists either.
Maybe some of us are worried that someone can say some harmful stuff, publicly humiliate someone without much more proof than a picture of the guy sleeping and that can seriously affect a persons marriage, etc?
The obligation is the same obligation that one has to respect the privacy of anyone else provided they haven’t committed any crime. It’s called tact.
Brian Presley does not lose his privacy the moment he identifies himself a am actor. Nobody needs to be “on” 24 hours a day, or deserves to have their reputation ruined on the loosest of evidence. (I am not saying she made it up; I am saying she jumped to a lot of conclusions).
In the old days of journalism, reporter never reported on the private lives of public figures unless it had actual news value. Some call that hypocritical, but in many cases it was just tact.
You have provided no reason why Brian Presley’s alleged philandering and attemps to chat up a model are newsworthy.
The reason her other tweets are relevant is that they show Stetten’s contempt for other peoples privacy. Perhaps *her* PR people should have a talk with her.
djw, I couldn’t agree with you more. Excellent points.
The obligation is the same obligation that one has to respect the privacy of anyone else provided they haven’t committed any crime.
I don’t believe for a minute you’d apply this evaluative standard to behavior consistently.
Say, for example, I learn that my best friend’s spouse has quit his job, and spends his days at drunken orgies instead. By your standard, I it would be wrong for me to tell my best friend about this, because hey, it’s not illegal!
Did she tell Presley’s wife? Did she confront Presley with his behavior? No. She aired this publicly with no real evidence or confirmation. There’s a big difference between confronting an adulterer (again, she had no proof) and broadcasting her beliefs about his alleged philandering.
“no real evidence”
What does this phrase mean to you? Direct eyewitness testimony is a pretty standard, straightforward from of evidence. Should she be under oath before she tells the story?
Seriously, once you do something to a person, it’s their story. You no longer have an expectation that the story is controlled the way you’d prefer.
Did he actually make a sexual come on to her? Her tweets show no direct advance, just some prattle about religion. He did not touch her, or as far as I can tell even make an explicit comment about her. The only evidence of philandering is lying about being married, which is purely circumstantial evidence.
But any reporter would tell you that a single eyewitness account is not enough. At the very least she owed it to Presley’s wife not to use his name.
And again, she shows a complete lack of regard for anyone’s privacy, even an infant’s. All things being equal, id rather be on a plane with Presley than Stetten.
In any case, the “outing” of a complete stranger as a potential philanderer.
Funny…I took this argument to be “members of the public have an affirmative duty not to publicly shame other members of the public for engaging in mildly boorish behavior when they have less harmful means of confronting and defusing the situation.”
But hey, what do I know? I only construct and analyze arguments professionally.
It’s (un)funny how many people are DESPERATE to keep a clean white hat on this obviously low class snob.
Give attractive women everywhere a break. Ignore them…
Simple problems, simple solutions…
Or the other option is talk it to death. How’s that working out?
Did she ask him to leave her alone at any point? He may have been under the delusional impression she was enjoying the conversation. Harassment is illegal but talking to/flirting with someone in a “cheesy fashion” in a public place isn’t illegal, if the person has made no indication whatsoever they don’t want the conversation. Nonverbal cues and “vibes” don’t count, you don’t know for sure whether people will get them or what they will get from them, thats the whole passive aggressive thing. I actually have a mental condition where I don’t notice nonverbal cues. I feel like some feminists want a world where guys that try to hit on them who are attractive to them are fine but other guys are basically criminals for the crime of being unattractive bad conversationalists etc. How is not that terribly sexist in its own way. Think about all the drunk frat boys who say things like I hate fat chicks you hate. Certain feminists have come to the conclusion they hate unattractive men and don’t have to suffer their existence. He was married of course, I was speaking about the generalities here and not this specific Presley, so maybe he deserves to be embarrassed for his behavior but in front of the whole world, the Internet is a dangerous beast. I like the post two jerks don’t make a right. I don’t think I like either of the individuals, a self absorbed bore and a self absorbed catty stuck up model, probably also a bore.
The only reason this bothers me is because it’s a double standard. Can you imagine the reaction “Melissa” would have gotten if she’d been a man being annoyed by a minor female celebrity? I doubt male-Melissa would have been called “empowered” or a hero, or anything like that.
The fact of the matter is we live in a society where anything a woman chooses to do to a man is considered justified. Consider what the reaction to female-Brian’s hitting on someone as a “married woman” Would she have been called a sleazebag for trying to step out on her husband? Likely not. No, the likely narrative would have been that her husband was somehow deficient in some way. That “he” probably did something to deserve being cheated on.
Based purely upon what she offered on her Twitter account, it sounds like she didn’t directly attempt to stop his flirting. Maybe she did say “Brian, please stop talking to me” and explained that she wanted to sleep/listen to music/read/sit quietly, etc…
But if she had, why wouldn’t she have live-tweeted that?
Did you try asking her?
A peculiarity of the male-female dance is that women use their looks to attract men.
The lack of empathy of this woman becomes clear when we think about a man in an airplane seat next to a woman tweeting about how fat and stupid she looks. With pictures, just like this woman sent pictures of the sleeping man.
It’s within his “rights” to embarrass the woman based on her looks, just like it’s within this woman’s rights to critique every word he says with the general public.
The people who think this is right simply lack any empathy at all – for men, because if the situation were reversed, there would be a huge cry that men have to be more sensitive.
Good point. As always, the gender-swapping test reveals the truth of the situation.
Scenario: Male model is hit on by semifamous actress who is married and drinking; the guy tweets his mockery of her behavior and includes confirmation that she’s married and attempting to cheat, thus helping to wreck her personal life. Society’s reaction? Predictably, the man would be condemned as an insensitive coward (with Mr. Schwyzer doubtless leading the charge).
Both were acting like jerks. Both deserve to be ignored.
This C-List public figure inserted himself into this other C-List public figure’s life on a public plane through his flirting and other behavior, not through simply Existing While Unfuckable, and in doing so he made himself her problem. If the genders were reversed then it wouldn’t be his job to protect her from herself either. Of course in that case nobody would have suggested as much, especially since she’s a conventionally attractive, younger female model who the public loves to see put in her place.
So, a woman is allowed to protect herself from sexual harassment if, and only if,
a) people who were not there and do not know the circumstances judge it to be the correct way of protecting herself, which – surprise! – it never is, because the people who are judging from a distance always have a better solution to ‘what she *should* have done’.
AND
b) it does not harm a man. Especially the actual man who did the harassing. But not harming men is IMPORTANT.
Thank you for protecting rape-culture, Ms. Schroeder!
Well put. It’s pretty rich that a website allegedly devoted to what it means to be a good man is so energetically devoted to chastising women who dare to publicly criticize men behaving badly…
Protecting rape culture? Are you serious?
Maybe, just maybe, people are annoyed at her for publically humiliating a man WITHOUT PROOF. Would you like it if someone posted a bunch of tweets detailing bad behaviour and attempting to cheat on your partner without a shred of evidence?
I’ll flip it around then to believe what he says (that nothign happened) and she lied about it because she was annoyed at him leaving open his window. You’re support of her is protecting beingacoldheartedbitchfornoreason culture.
Fact is all we have are 2 eyewitness accounts that differ, so why automatically believe one over the other? Why are you assuming he sexually harassed her when he claims not to have?
That’s a fairly broad definition of sexual harrassment. When she started tweeting, it seemed to be merely a matter of annoyance, not harrassment. And pretty much everything she describes rises to the level of obnoxious rather than actual harrassment. And was he harrassing her when he was sleeping?
But take gender out of it. Consider the example of Alec Baldwin’s tweets about various customer service people who have annoyed them, in at least one case giving identifying chracteristics (name, where the person works). in that situation, the worker has no recourse to say their own side of the story without enduring the wrath of their superiors. And, of course, Baldwin has many followers.
In this sitatuion, there are so many ways she could have registered her disgust without naming Presley. And that has nothing to do with him being a celebrity, it’s just tact.
And was that baby sexually harrassing Stetten?
Explain to me exactly how secretly tweeting their conversation actually stopped him?
Passive-aggressive stunts like this I expect from a 22 year old. But to laud that behavior as some act of protecting herself? It doesn’t make sense.
I might hear an argument that she created a world where men might better understand that talking to women you don’t know may make them uncomfortable, or that you might get exposed for obnoxious behavior. I might entertain that her stunt may have done some good that way.
But protecting herself? From Presley? On that plane?? Bullshit. It doesn’t even make sense.
Wait. I’m assuming you mean “protecting herself” means stopping the bothersome behavior.
But I can’t figure out any way that her Tweeting protected her.
He didn’t know the twitter behaviour was going on until after the plane landed, so no, she wasn’t trying to stop his behaviour. The OP reminds me of slutwalkers who take it a bit extreme in protecting themselves. OP, I don’t think anyone here would be bothered IF she had told him no, asked for help on the plane from stewardesses, etc but when it’s using twitter to humiliate him without him knowing, that’s not a method to try stop his bad behaviour at the time. At best it might be an attempt to get jackasses around the world to stop but I doubt it. It also puts you at risk of a libel lawsuit!
b) it does not harm a man. Especially the actual man who did the harassing. But not harming men is IMPORTANT.
Now I don’t recall Joanna being gender specific (in fact I think she’s addressed that in the comments already). Way to insert it.
But like Joanna asks exactly what part of revealing someone’s full identity and posting pictures of them while they are sleep is “protection”?
Oh and since you want to bring gender into it I have a hard time believing that if this were gender reversed the conversation could take place without use of the word creep.