Medium Silences Women As A Rule

A few weeks ago now I had a relatively typical online interaction with a man who was super upset that I didn’t allow a racist joke on my public Facebook page to go un-opposed. He harassed me first on Facebook, then through the submissions platform for my journal Drunken Boat, and then by trying to get me into some kind of trouble with my board. This happens so often it hardly seemed worth writing about, but in fact that is exactly why it was worth writing about.

So I did. I wrote about the interaction. I analyzed the shifts in my harasser’s tone, which follows a trajectory so predictable I wonder if there’s a male-fragility handbook somewhere: from dismissive “I was just kidding, geez” (aka the “women are sooooo sensitive” argument), to wounded “how could you possibly think I meant what I said!” (aka gaslighting), to bullying (calling me “rude” and “aloof” and “childish” and “entitled” when I didn’t back down), to straight-up harassment (trying to get in touch with other people at my journal saying that I was impersonating the Editor-In-Chief), and then finally to re-writing the narrative entirely (in this case painting me as the racist and him as the person trying to smooth things over).

I though the analysis was interesting, and thought since I was going to have to deal with it anyway (in terms of emotional and psychological impact these things are not without cost, no matter how frequent and absurd they are) I might as well get something useful out of it. A kind of teaching tool. My (amazing cis white male) husband even wrote a follow-up “How To Not Be This Guy On The Internet” post that we were going to post a few days ago.

But then Medium stepped in, no surprise, on the side of the harasser.

Email 1

Medium: Your post violates Medium’s rules. We don’t let you post “private communications between private individuals” without the permission of the involved individuals, or private contact information.

In other words, you need permission from your abuser or harasser to post about their abuse or harassment. A super effective way of prohibiting people (again, mostly women) from taking one of the most effective actions against abuse and harassment: speaking publicly about their experiences. Even though we’re constantly being asked to prove our experiences of harassment, even though we’re constantly questioned about our own conduct.

One of the reasons public speech is so important for oppressed peoples in any situation, but especially for women in situations of misogyny, is that it helps other women in similar situations realize that they are not alone, and that they do not have to put up with the harassment. In numbers we have strength, and if enough women resist being the silent victims of harassment, we can enact change. We’ve seen this work in legal contexts with domestic violence laws and rape laws being first enacted and then enforced more regularly (though there is still work to be done). If we take domestic violence as a (very good) example, women in abusive relationships are often isolated from any community that could give support and provide assistance, dismissed or silenced when they speak out about it, shamed, policed, and ignored in every and any way possible.

From “it’s not appropriate to talk about this here” to “I don’t believe you” women are very very used to all of these silencing tactics. But what they have in common is the basic desire to protect the man, the abuser or harasser, without regard for the woman. That is essentially what this Medium policy does.

My response: 
“I do have several questions. First, his email address is public, it’s available on his website which is a public website and it’s the first result when you search for his name, which he used to comment on my public Facebook thread. So I don’t think that including his name, link to his personal website, or email address should be considered posting “non-public contact information.”

Second, I read the Medium rules carefully, and I think there is a problem in the way this is framed. It seems to me the intent of the rules is to prohibit the publication of correspondence that had a reasonable expectation of privacy, for example correspondence between intimate partners. But when a stranger starts emailing me, I don’t believe they have any expectation of privacy in those correspondences. Though thankfully it was not the case in this experience, if I had received, for example, rape or death threats and wanted to write about that experience (all too common) would that still be considered protected? If so, I think there’s a big problem with how these rules are framed.

Speaking out publicly in the face of abusive behavior is one extremely effective means of resisting and educating about violence against marginalized groups (women, most commonly). When women or people of color are told that they must prioritize the reputation of the person harassing them over their right to their own lived experiences, that is a big problem. I would ask that my right to my experience, and to write about it in an analytical way, not be infringed upon by policies that seem skewed toward protecting those doing the harassing in this case.

Thanks, 
Erica”

Email 2

Medium (paraphrasing): Our rules are meant to protect everyone. [Everyone, in this case, being the persons doing the harassing but not the persons being harassed, as I point out. Everyone, yet again, is a primarily male designation.] We don’t allow personal attacks. [Of course, nothing in my original analysis is a personal attack, or an attack of any kind personal or otherwise. It’s simply a critical interpretation of the interaction. The only personal attacks are the ones I quotes from my harasser to me.] We can’t judge who is right or who is telling the truth. [This is a classic tactic — the “both sides are equal” tactic, but ultimately one of absolute derailment. In fact, there is no claim being made, truthful or otherwise, in the entire post. It is framed as an interpretation of the interaction, and the “truth” of it is in the screenshots of the correspondence, the very factual evidence that is being censored per this communication!] This prevents harassment and keeps everything civil. [Oh, I could go on at length about how using the idea of ‘civility’ in the face of abuse, harassment, or oppression furthers the conditions that allow for that harassment to happen in the first place. But let me just point out the irony of applying a policy that is meant to prevent harassment on a post about being harassed to silence the person being harassed.]

I don’t respond, and instead cross-post the full, uncensored article to my blog for archival purposes. I decide to leave it in a censored version on Medium, in part because of the hundreds of messages I’d received in the week or so since posting it thanking me for my bravery and courage in speaking out against this kind of behavior. (Emails, tweets, PMs on Facebook, comments on Facebook, and on the article itself — and literally all but a handful were messages of thanks and support from other women and men who all to often face this kind of abuse.) In the censored version I say which parts have been censored and link to the article on my blog.

Email 3

Medium (again, paraphrasing): We looked at your edits and they’re not enough. You can’t link to the uncensored version of the article either.

My response: “OK, I’ve further removed text from the analysis to comply with this.”

Email 4

Medium (again, paraphrasing): It’s still not enough.

At this point, there’s really nothing else I can remove and still have the article make sense at all. As a case analysis, it relies on the availability of the unedited initial interactions in order to make sense. Paraphrasing doesn’t cut it because the analysis is about the actual words, the language being used, as well as the intent and content.

So my response:

“Hi,

Is this still Gerald? I don’t think the emails do violate the rules, because the first several were sent to a public submissions platform, not an individual or a private communication method. I have those forwarded to my email from the submissions platform, but they are publicly viewable by anyone who goes into our submissions platform.

I can’t imagine an interpretation of the “correspondence between individuals” that includes literally anything that comes into an email address — newsletters, forum notifications, etc. are certainly not correspondence between individuals, and have no expectation of privacy. Could you clarify then, how these public correspondences are in violation?

Thanks,
Erica”

That was 3 days ago. My compliant and censored article is still unavailable on Medium, and I have yet to receive any follow up from anyone at Medium.