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A literally incredible turn of events in the Jonathan Majors case.
His accuser, no doubt taking note from her many predecessors, had attempted a tamed rewrite of her accusations, reducing battery and restraint to Majors having “pushed her into a taxi” and “pulled her middle finger.”
Predictably, the NYPD soon thereafter uncovered solid evidence that she was, in fact, not only the perpetrator of the abuse, but a kleptomaniac to boot, taking souvenirs from Majors’ apartment after he had enjoyed her
services as a (ahem) “dancer”* movement coaching.One wonders if, among the few patches of the populace where the light of this truth will break through, there might be a few unexpected corners noticing (weaponized term intentionally deployed) this cascade of catty copyists. But the chances of even a hundred more such cases causing so much as a hint of open skepticism in the Dominant Cultural Ideology? Methinks the lady doth be wonderful too much.
*@ecgtheow rightly points out that this is the rare tabloid case where The New York Times is obligated to use a favorite euphemism for its literal definition.
I had a conversation about the Majors accusations a few months ago, with some hyper-progressive and movie-obsessed friends. One of them, a black guy who recently broke into Hollywood himself by landing a decent-sized role on a new TV series, seemed utterly shattered by the situation. (I’ll call him Desmond from here on in.) He is strongly invested in the success and public image of black male celebrities, and though he can generally be counted on to ostentatiously take the wokest imaginable position on any given topic, he seemed to be feigning exasperation as a way to avoid having to express a definitive opinion on the veracity of the accusations. Meanwhile, my other friends - one female, and one physically male but spiritually an AWFL in every way - took Majors’ guilt as an absolute given, and were utterly stunned when I expressed even the slightest amount of doubt. (As you all can probably imagine, I generally do not reveal even a microscopic fraction of my actual worldview to any of my IRL friends.)
I brought up several recent examples of accusations, made against notable public figures, which had turned out to be totally fabricated by vindictive, insane, and/or greedy women. I drew special attention to the case of a star college athlete, with whom all of us are familiar, who, right after being drafted into the NFL, had his career completely exploded by a rape accusation which later turned out to be false. Of course, all three of them had piled on invective at that man when the accusations came out, certain he was guilty and gleefully celebrating his downfall. I reminded them of this, and also lamented that Marvel had so quickly jumped the gun on distancing themselves from Majors, given that they had previously erred in prematurely jettisoning James Gunn as a result of flimsy and overblown accusations made during a period of social hysteria.
Desmond seemed quietly relieved to have been presented with an “out” to be able to safely express some level of skepticism toward the accusations, while the two goodwhites were adamant about pushing ahead with certainty about Majors’ guilt. They gave me some paper-thin justifications for why the Majors situation is different from the examples I’d brought up. The progressive coalition has done a ton of work, in the decades since the OJ Simpson trial, to desperately paper over the faultlines between the sensibilities of black men - who are naturally inclined to treat criminal allegations against prominent black male celebrities with severe skepticism - and those of white female liberals - who are deeply invested in the narrative of pervasive sexual impropriety committed by (racially-unspecified) powerful men.
Interestingly, this same faultline around the issue of whether or not to believe accusations against black male celebrities exists on the Dissident Right. Many DR commenters were eager to point-and-laugh at yet another apparent example of black male sexual misbehavior; other commenters pushed back, expressing doubts of the “bitches always be lyin’” variety. Personally, I fell into the latter camp; I’ve just seen too many of these sexual misconduct/abuse allegations against rich and powerful men turn out to be nonsense. The fact that Majors is black could credibly be used to slightly adjust one’s priors toward assuming his guilt, but I just didn’t feel that it was remotely enough to overcome my instinctive mistrust toward these kinds of situations.
I am interested to see what kind of interesting discourse will take place in progressive spaces now that the accusations appear to have been debunked. Will there be articles titled “America needs to have an uncomfortable conversation about why we were so ready to believe Jonathan Majors, a black man, was guilty” competing with articles about how “Why is America so ready to let Jonathan Majors, a rich male sexual abuser off the hook?” Whose umbrage will be taken more seriously? Will anyone learn anything at all from this?
This comment made me realize that we really are moving to a world where, in order to decide whether some action is bad or not, you have to first figure out whether the victim is "good" or "bad". I noticed this a while back in prominent hacking cases. If the victim was sympathetic to the current political fashions, it's a horrible crime. If the victim, for any reason at all, might not be the most shining example of idealism, at best indifference, at worst "fuck 'em". For example, the discussion around the Ashley Madison hack wasn't, "Hacking is bad, end of story." It was, "Ha! Fuckin' cheaters get hacked. Plus, some of them were government employees, so extra fuck 'em!" "...Uh, hello! Some good, brave, possible minorities, might have good reasons to use a site like Ashley Madison. Maybe hacking is not so good." And so on.
There is likely some amount of pre-judging the alleged perpetrator, too, but I first noticed it in hacking crimes with mostly faceless/unknown perpetrators.
I guess, weirdly, I had previously thought, "Hacking/digital stuff is still a new area; we don't have developed norms yet; given that, there's going to be more 'who, whom' than normal, but once we flesh out some norms, we should head toward more consistency." And now, I, uh, probably think that less. Not sure it makes me more conflict theory-y, but at the very least, I feel more inclined to think that many other people are, in a deeply rooted way, more conflict theory-y than I had previously hoped.
Again, re: Ashley Madison, I'm both "hacking personal and private details is bad" and "wanting to play away if you're married/partnered, serves you right slimeball". If you want to be young, free and single and ready to mingle, get divorced or work it out with your spouse that you're opening your marriage. Trying to eat your cake and have it is the worst of both worlds. It's going to come out eventually, or your mistress/sugar baby will want to take things official and you'll either have a messy divorce or dump the side-piece and then she'll go to some social media site to cry over how she wasted years on your dumb ass.
Everyone is missing the best part of the Ashley Madison hack. There is effectively 0 chance of a married man initiating an affair with a woman on Ashley Madison as there are effectively 0 actual women on the site.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ashley-madison-almost-no-women-2015-8
The article links to two Gizmodo articles that go into more detail. The short version is there is a 333-1 male/female ratio of the accounts, and the majority of the female accounts are bots or are controlled by Ashley Madison staff.
"Ashley Madison is a site where tens of millions of men write mail, chat, and spend money for women who aren't there."
That's what makes the Schadenfreude even tastier. They're well-off enough to spend money looking to cheat with 'high class' young women, and they're being swindled. But they have no moral leg to stand on: wannabe cheaters being cheated by cheaters is poetic justice.
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Same with most of online dating. Completely cancerous gender ratio and thats before the well is poisoned by bots and bad actors.
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The destruction of universalism by postmodernism and class warfare (and its proxies) has some pretty huge downsides for society.
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