Statement On Jordan Chariton Situation
(Disclaimer: This post reflects my views only)
For over a week, I’ve been barraged with questions related to the termination of Jordan Chariton from TYT after an allegation of sexual assault. Ordinarily, I’d deplore getting involved in a matter of this kind. But given that I did work in proximity to Jordan — who, it should be said, I always liked on a personal level — I think it’s legitimate to have the expectation that someone in my position would make a public comment, rather than just pretend I’m a disengaged bystander with no thoughts.
The accuser has also said that she is considering pressing charges, and that additional victims may be forthcoming. Obviously I’m in no position to offer a judgment on whether a hypothetical criminal charge is adequately supported by evidence to warrant a conviction. Further, I have no desire to opine on the details of the accuser’s private life. The online rush to dissect her every personal foible and/or sexual proclivity is simply gross. What brings this matter to a level necessitating public comment is that she has publicly alleged sexual assault. Other details, despite having been copiously laid out for all to scrutinize, are not relevant to the core fact that she has made a sexual assault allegation.
Naomi LaChance published a piece earlier this month on the TYT Investigates website arguing that media organizations should be held to a standard of greater transparency when sexual misconduct issues arise. I agree with the thrust of her argument (while not with every aspect of the piece) and as such, feel an element of personal obligation to comment, especially given the gravity of the allegation. I also didn’t enter the world of online journalism and commentary to be hamstrung by PR niceties. Cenk Uygur, in his November 22 statement, echoed that sentiment when he said, “Of course, lawyers want me to read a statement that is on a prompter and carefully crafted and PR-machine behind it and all that — no, I’m telling you as I always do, I wrote down my notes and I’m telling you what happened to the best of my ability.”
The details of the allegedly assaultive encounter became public knowledge when Jordan wrote a Medium post describing the events in great detail — some would say lurid detail. He is entitled, I suppose, to offer up whatever details he wishes for public consumption, but it invited a social media tsunami of amateur detectives issuing their amateur verdicts about the propriety of a particular sexual liaison, declaring who was at fault for what based on limited information, rumor, and innuendo. That — litigating such private details via Twitter broadsides and YouTube rants — seems to me a deeply sick dynamic. While I have no idea what can be done to rectify that dynamic going forward, I do know that it is sick. Striving for maximum transparency is laudable in most circumstances, but… there’s a line.
What I absolutely do not want to do is render an opinion on is the morality of certain types of consensual interpersonal relationships. For instance, I keep hearing that “it’s wrong without exception for a superior to have sex with a subordinate.” I wonder how many fruitful relationships over the course of history would’ve been negated had that always been the standard. If a mentally-competent, adult subordinate has consensual relations with a superior, then it seems to me that’s the business of the two participants. You may personally have an ethical objection to a particular interpersonal dynamic. But that’s a matter for you, and the impulse to impose your preferences on everyone else regardless of circumstance strikes me as oddly imperious.
Human relationships are hugely complicated and I find the rush to decree certain consensual behaviors as inherently condemnable to be misplaced, and born of an unseemly neo-Puritanical streak. Insisting that a behavior cannot be consensual due to a power disparity, even if both mentally-competent adults believe it to be consensual, also makes no coherent sense. Where there is coercion or abuse involved, obviously that’s another issue. But the ethical propriety of consensual relationships is not something that I’m interested in debating or rendering pseudo-authoritative judgment on, given the vast and unknowable range of interpersonal dynamics that exist on Earth. Some humility in that regard, I think, is needed.
The high priests of social media have been running around denouncing Jordan and the accuser for private sexual behavior that they object to for whatever reason. But private proclivities are irrelevant here. The issue is rape, and without the rape component, in my view there would be no compelling need for this to be a public story in the first place. Rape is what’s explicitly been alleged, and as such it’s immensely serious and needs to be treated with extreme sensitivity. Unfortunately, given the nature of social media maelstroms and smear campaigns, the accuser’s allegations have not been treated with the necessary sensitivity. That, in part, stems from Jordan’s decision to publish a Medium post ‘preemptively’ describing her conduct in intensely intimate detail. From there, the floodgates opened, and various people with various degrees of involvement have felt free to weigh in with their own interpretation, and in the course of that have cast aspersion on the accuser. Had the accuser wished to make a public statement, she should’ve been left to her own devices to do so, rather than be effectively coerced into reacting to a Medium post. The point is, the post precipitated a very nasty series of events, doing a disservice to everyone involved — most importantly the accuser.
Whether or not Jordan’s conduct constituted a fireable offense, I believe he was entitled to a fair arbitration process, just like any other worker in any other industry. I’ve not been privy to whatever discussions did or did not take place about such a process.
I’ve said before that I believe the recent structural shift in “norms” surrounding sexual assault and harassment to be salutary. Transferring the “burden of proof,” so to say, toward the abuser and away from the abused is a positive development, and has a good chance of discouraging genuinely harmful behavior in the future. However, there are some significant risks associated with this shift. As Masha Gessen has written, it does seem that a sort of moral panic is afoot; while the shift as a whole is welcome, not surprisingly it also appears to entail an element of overreach. That overreach can be countered by fostering concomitant norms — about the necessity of due process, not rushing to judgment, not reflexively “believing” an accuser solely because you have a political axe to grind, and not sanctimoniously denouncing people for private, consensual sexual behavior, etc. There is no reason why those norms can’t coexist with a norm that newly grants greater credence to accusers — which, again, is welcome and long overdue.
Accordingly, I do not suggest in this circumstance that the person who has leveled a rape accusation should be automatically believed, or that Jordan isn’t entitled to due process (which he most certainly is) or that either of them should be maligned for their private sexual conduct. Rather, my objection is that the accuser’s story was not treated with adequate sensitivity, given the gravity of the claim. That owes to Jordan’s decision to publish a public, ‘preemptive’ Medium post describing intensely intimate behaviors that should’ve been left to her to determine whether to promulgate, and on what timeline. This decision, I believe, was seriously misguided. It doesn’t mean that Jordan is an intrinsically evil person, and I don’t believe his intentions were necessarily malicious. But the outcome was bad.
Those, for now, are my thoughts. This entire situation is unfortunate on multiple levels. It should also be underscored that TYT management had no involvement in my formulation or publication of these thoughts.
