The League of Not Extraordinary and Not So Gentle Men
February 14, 2019 4:57 PM   Subscribe

In 2009, a secret Facebook group called the Ligue du LOL (The League of LOL), led by young French male journalists, started harassing fellow journalists, writers, bloggers and activists - predominantly targeting women and minorities (also NYT), disrupting the lives and ruining the careers of their victims through barrages of sexist, racist and homophobic insults, pornographic montages, prank calls, and Twitter-coordinated attacks, online and IRL. The existence of the group was revealed last week, resulting in a flood of heartbreaking testimonies (megathread on r/feminisme (in French)), and in an intense bout of soul-searching in the progressive French media: not only the victims had been ignored before last week, but most of the Ligue members are now prominent journalists in major left-wing publications.

Several of the Ligue members have been fired or forced to quit their job, including the Ligue's founder, Vincent Glad, a journalist working for the left-wing newspaper Libération, who had been quite vocal in the past two months in his support of the "Yellow Vests" movement. Glad's "Langue de Pute" (Whore Tongue) Twitter account was for instance particularly aggressive against a certain female blogger, and consisted in tweet after tweet of horrid, crude, sexist insults. Similar groups have since been revealed to have existed at Vice France and HuffPost France.
posted by elgilito (62 comments total) 65 users marked this as a favorite
 
So let me get this straight. This is a coordinated group of progressive journalists who are attacking, harassing, and ruining the careers of women and minorities for laughs? Are you fucking kidding me?
posted by Autumnheart at 5:09 PM on February 14, 2019 [62 favorites]


Wait. Young, “progressive” men, at multiple news organizations, created groups for the purpose of harassing women and minorities independently of each other?

It’s the idea of this concurrent evolution that is particularly terrifying. That the hatred is really so prevalent that these secret groups sprouted up like mushrooms, because that toxic shit is everywhere.

What the actual fuck? and I have to wonder about the US left wing media.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:16 PM on February 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


I've seen no evidence anywhere that left wing guys (or artsy guys, or sensitive guys, or guys who love their moms, or whatever) are any less likely to be gross sexist cretins than right wing guys. Whatever makes a dude awful or not awful to women does not seem to have anything to do with their politics.
posted by prize bull octorok at 5:19 PM on February 14, 2019 [129 favorites]


No, but actually forming a professional organization across companies for harassment campaigns is really taking it to another level.
posted by Autumnheart at 5:24 PM on February 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


So having RTFA it’s...worse. Sustained abuse and gaslighting for a decade from a group so large and influential it was impossible to avoid them. Hundreds of victims, some presumably driven out of their careers, many more living in fear of being targeted.

These men should be in prison.
posted by schadenfrau at 5:24 PM on February 14, 2019 [80 favorites]


Holy FUCK.

There’s an often-repeated citation in French from a well-loved comedian: “On peut rire de tout.” (One can laugh about anything.) This is trotted out any time a person wants to make an off-color joke, or wants to defend something in bad taste.

(Except the full quote is “On peut rire de tout, mais pas avec n’importe qui.” One can laugh about anything, but not with just anybody. Lots of people forget this caveat. And does it matter, anyway, in the age of public-facing Twitter?)

French people really really love this concept, but I do believe a reckoning is on its way. Just like #metoo is having some effect, and the legislation against harassment has resulted in at least one high-profile fine, the French are realizing that they’re going to have to have to abandon a long-held “value.” Tant mieux.
posted by Liesl at 5:34 PM on February 14, 2019 [14 favorites]


She described an inner circle of LOL League members surrounded by "cool girls" in French media who protected them and helped them pretend to be liberal and progressive in public.

Stabbed in the back by the left and by other women.
posted by pracowity at 5:50 PM on February 14, 2019 [21 favorites]


Jesus this is horrifying.

Having lived in France for eight years, and having interacted in all-male groups on many occasions, one can say there is definitely a level of chauvinisme that pops up, that can be irritatingly passé and groan-inducing.

But what this article describes is beyond the pale. It’s a cultivated social and career nightmare for those targeted.

Really glad to see this exposed and the people responsible held accountable. And yeah, for those that engaged in pernicious harassment and undermining of careers, there should definitely be civil and criminal consequences.
posted by darkstar at 5:57 PM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


Guys, if you're not out there actively making it clear that this kind of behavior is unacceptable every time it happens in front of you--and it is happening in front of you, don't pretend it's not--you're complicit.
posted by praemunire at 5:57 PM on February 14, 2019 [73 favorites]


liberté, égalité and, uh... um. uh
posted by mwhybark at 5:59 PM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


Oh geez. The main guy, Vincent Glad, has a wall of text (in two images) tweet explaining/apologizing for this. My French is not great, so perhaps someone else can give a more thorough reading. But to me, it reads like a lot of the mealy-mouthed bullshit you'd expect: "we made fun of everyone, men and women", "we only wanted to troll people not harass them", etc... There's a section in there about how they thought all this feminist talk about "patriarchy" and "rape culture" and "mansplaining" was ridiculous so that's why they were mocking it. But of course now he's mortified by his past behavior and he's sincerely sorry and blah blah blah. His tweet certainly appears to deserve the ratioing it's getting (currently at 1.8K comments vs. 922 likes).
posted by mhum at 6:01 PM on February 14, 2019 [1 favorite]


It sure would be a shame if all those guys were replaced by women now.
posted by pracowity at 6:05 PM on February 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


Patriarchy and White Supremacy are a helluva drug. Here's to kicking the habit...
posted by nikoniko at 6:07 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


This happened to me.
By what group, for what reason, I don't even know, but I live in a large Canadian city and used to have a successful part time art career that is no more. I was harassed and trolled on all of my online accounts, inluding this one, most of my online accounts were hacked into, I was approached in public multiple times and harassed, even with my kids, yelled at and had my photo/video taken, items were taken from yard multiple times and then some returned in strange ways, sometimes months later, people would park outside my home in the front or my back driveway blaring music and screaming out parts of the lyrics... the list goes on and on. It was non stop for years. And then, to top it all off, my close friends and family members, for whatever reason, wouldn't believe me that it was happening, wouldn't even look at the thousands of screenshots of evidence i had, and tried to have me involuntarily diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and have my children removed from my care. I was forced medicated on anti psychotics and forced to attend a full time psychiatric program. I had a full stress breakdown and was diagnosed with c-ptsd.
This happened to me. And it fucking sucked.
posted by OnefortheLast at 6:17 PM on February 14, 2019 [106 favorites]


so this predates GamerGate by about five years

GamerGate was bad enough that it led to Trump's election

and this has been going for longer, and it sounds far, far worse

no wonder Marie Le Pen nearly won the election
posted by Merus at 6:18 PM on February 14, 2019 [10 favorites]


Part of Glad's "apology":

"We had grown up with the idea that equality was more or less achieved and that the only feminist fight left to win was about the question of salaries. A simple question of parameters and not at all something systematic. The feminist discourse then liberating itself seemed ridiculous. I didn't understand at the beginning these new words that were appearing: "patriarchy," "rape culture," "mansplaining"... I made fun of it like I made fun of everything. Today I'm horrified to see a tweet of mine from 2013 where I made fun of "rape culture." I'm ashamed."

Hey, my dude, the word "patriarchy" was not invented in 2009. The phrase "rape culture" was not invented in 2009. (Mid-to-late-80s, as far as I can figure out.) The flames-on-the-side-of-my-face part of this, to me, is the notion that it's the fault of feminists if men who have been trying very hard not to pay attention to anyone besides themselves are suddenly confronted with these weird new concepts that women have to deal with their whole lives. And to think that one's self-absorption, one's lack of curiosity - for a journalist! - constitutes any kind of a reasonable explanation for thinking that feminist discourse was ridiculous!

However, the replies to the tweet are giving me life:

"There's only one thing left for you to do: change your career."

"You need @ecolemajor, apparently, to teach you how not to be a harasser of women and a pathetic little man."

"Hello, I'm trying to save my job, please believe I'm sincere" - YEAH, SURE."

"I didn't understand" - just how stupid do you think people are?"
posted by Jeanne at 6:30 PM on February 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


This is a coordinated group of progressive journalists who are attacking, harassing, and ruining the careers of women and minorities for laughs?

I'm not at all surprised. A bunch of GamerGaters claimed to be Leftist, as did notorious harder and sexual abuser Zak Smith.

Sexism and racism is orthogonal to the Left - Right line. If your main thing is class vs class, then sexism and racism can be dismissed as unimportant. Which is just one of the menu excuses misogynists use.
posted by happyroach at 6:36 PM on February 14, 2019 [37 favorites]


not only the victims had been ignored before last week, but most of the Ligue members are now prominent journalists in major left-wing publications

Well quelle fucking surprise.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:39 PM on February 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


Absolutely not surprised either. One only needs to look at the treatment of female candidates by so many "progressive" men to know how far their supposed ideals go. And of course it's worse if they're minority.
posted by Anonymous at 6:41 PM on February 14, 2019


This is truly awful and completely fucked up. Regarding other people on the left secretly doing this shit, wasn’t there a left-leaning journalist who was exposed as a supporter of Milo Yiannopoulos? He would send emails pitching women to harass, etc.

I have the feeling this is an extremely common thing in different circles. A not-so-secret secret. Vile.
posted by defenestration at 6:49 PM on February 14, 2019 [6 favorites]


Left wing white men secretly attacking white women and people of color? Quelle, as my mother used to say, surprise.

A friend of mine was just telling me the other night about how there are a bunch of marxists on Twitter who target left women who do sex work (like my friend does) because of some garbage reasoning about how sex workers are all rich and "pimp themselves out" which means they're pimps which means they're oppressors.

This is actually just an excuse for a bunch of people with hang-ups about women and sex to go on the attack, and it's not even marxism, but it's sure gross and demoralizing.
posted by Frowner at 7:09 PM on February 14, 2019 [22 favorites]


It's been my observation, from well before the Berniebro was a thing, that a whole lot of men who declare themselves to be Left object to *which* white men run the world, but they agree that white men should run the world.
posted by tavella at 7:10 PM on February 14, 2019 [80 favorites]


It's been my observation, from well before the Berniebro was a thing, that a whole lot of men who declare themselves to be Left object to *which* white men run the world, but they agree that white men should run the world.

More, a lot of them are only "left" because they believe that when the left wins, they will run the world.

You know that there's a secret (not anymore) online group for TERFs in the media, organized around Jesse Singal who writes all those horrible articles? That's substantially women and probably somewhat less vicious, but definitely the same general thing.
posted by Frowner at 7:16 PM on February 14, 2019 [32 favorites]


I encountered the term "brocialist" around 2005 or maybe a bit later, and it's sadly never been irrelevant.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:22 PM on February 14, 2019 [19 favorites]


Don't forget the manarchists!
posted by Frowner at 7:24 PM on February 14, 2019 [15 favorites]


The problem with the tip of the ice-berg is that everyone is so eager to put the ice behind us that they ignore the berg.

Think of how many times this criminal hate gang could have been caught if people (police, managers, agents, etc) had listened to their victims.

painful as it is to read about, these house cleanings must continue and the perps must be punished. These are not outliers, these are the visible tip of a much bigger berg that must be destroyed so that stops wrecking peoples lives.
posted by Anchorite_of_Palgrave at 7:26 PM on February 14, 2019 [16 favorites]


If this is what happens with French leftists I shudder to think what other secret bully clubs must be going on in other countries...
posted by haemanu at 7:28 PM on February 14, 2019


I was harassed and trolled on all of my online accounts, inluding this one

I'm sorry, what? You were harassed and trolled on MetaFilter?
posted by dobbs at 8:32 PM on February 14, 2019 [4 favorites]


The only surprise is that this particular group has been discovered, exposed, discussed.
posted by panhopticon at 8:58 PM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


Jeez, as a left leaning cis-white dude, the only thing I've ever wanted is for good people who are empathetic to other people to have a shot at running things (me excepted because I would suck at it).

People are weird and they kinda suck until they know you. I'm trying to understand the motive behind this - beyond misogyny - or is it that simple? (Most people who know you - like as a person - won't, I believe, engage in this sort of crap. It's when you're "known" as an entity/other that it becomes really easy to be awful)
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:18 PM on February 14, 2019


You'll never get to the stage of being "liked as a person" if they refuse to engage with you as a person, which is the fundamental issue that Others face.
posted by chiquitita at 9:32 PM on February 14, 2019 [37 favorites]


by OnefortheLast, I hear you, and I believe you. I had to drop and or change all my social media because of GG.

And dobbs, yes, I had to stop using a MeFi account I’d had since about 2001. Not because of any Mefites, for the record. Up with that, the mods would not have tolerated. But I didn’t want ggrs continuing to be able to follow me, and I still wanted to be part of a community I’ve been a part of for almost twenty years. Hence, I started using an old sockpuppet acct that I think I bought as part of a joke thread a decade ago.

The thing is, thousands of women have had to do this sort of thing. Thousands gave up communities, friends, social media, jobs, all so some men could get their rocks off. This behavior is based in the same behavior that lets men rape women, it’s raw aggression with sexual satisfaction. It makes their fucking dicks rock hard to know they’ve made a woman cry. And it makes them so angry when a woman doesn’t. Oh, how dare she emasculate him by not doing what he wants, she must be destroyed!

Every single one of these men should be summarily dismissed from their jobs, and must be prosecuted for their terrorism. Their assets should be seized to compensate their victims, and frankly it is only my overall objection to the death penalty that stops me from suggesting they should be run up on stakes and left as examples.

These men ruined women’s lives. The lives of those women’s families. The culture that would have benefited from those women’s contributions. They are terrorists and should be treated like terrorists.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:48 PM on February 14, 2019 [77 favorites]


I've seen no evidence anywhere that left wing guys (or artsy guys, or sensitive guys, or guys who love their moms, or whatever) are any less likely to be gross sexist cretins than right wing guys. Whatever makes a dude awful or not awful to women does not seem to have anything to do with their politics. [44 favorites +]

I don't know what practical or moral difference it makes for the manifest problems within the left whether or not the right is worse, but because claims like the above are often made in these discussions, it's maybe worth pointing out that it's not, generally speaking, empirically true that sexism rates on the left are similar to those on the right. The prevalence of sexism on the right is much higher than on the left, at least in the US, and probably in most developed democracies. There are tons of studies (just to choose two almost at random) showing that both hostile and "benevolent" sexism are strongly correlated with ideology. Again, none of this has any bearing on this especially misogynist group, or on the very real problem of sexism and misogyny within the left -- and my apologies if anyone reads this as a "but actually" or derail -- but speaking as someone who sometimes works in this general area, it does seem worth a brief clarification given how many favorites statements like the one above often generate.
posted by chortly at 9:48 PM on February 14, 2019 [9 favorites]


As a closeted trans woman, working in an overwhelmingly male field, and virtually woman-free division of my employer, surrounded by self-identified "progressive", "liberal", "open-minded" men, this surprises me not one tiny fuck
posted by allium cepa at 9:52 PM on February 14, 2019 [34 favorites]


I'm trying to understand the motive behind this - beyond misogyny - or is it that simple?

There's a thing where guys who are very much not consciously misogynistic separate Normal Women from Feminists - they have wives and girlfriends and sisters who don't complain about sexism, which upholds their belief that equality between men and women already pretty much exists. So when feminists complain about sexism - how could it be real sexism if their sisters and wives and girlfriends don't experience it? They must be bitter about how their lives are going, and looking for outside factors to blame it on.

(Maybe the women they know personally are afraid of being honest about their own experiences with sexism; maybe they're responding to social pressures against talking about sexism with men; maybe they feel shame, especially about sexual harassment or assault; maybe they don't recognize their own experiences as being rooted in sexism).

I think part of the recent cultural shift around feminism is that feminist women are talking with the men in their lives about it. At least, anecdotally, this seems to be more the case than 10 or 15 years ago. And some men find that really threatening, in the same way that a lot of white people feel really threatened when their black friends remind them that racism is a thing.
posted by Jeanne at 9:53 PM on February 14, 2019 [46 favorites]


I'm trying to understand the motive behind this - beyond misogyny - or is it that simple?

I believe the motive of any kind of person who does this is simply, "because I can, I will."
Power and privigle corrupts the weak.
posted by OnefortheLast at 9:56 PM on February 14, 2019 [3 favorites]



These men ruined women’s lives. The lives of those women’s families. The culture that would have benefited from those women’s contributions. They are terrorists and should be treated like terrorists.


They are cowards full stop.
Not a single one of the men who, for example, smashed my garage windows or lit "dumpster fire" garbage bags on my deck on fire, bot a single one of the men who had 4 psych workers and cops barge through my door with tazers ready to take down the "dangerous crazy bitch on drugs" only to have those people aplogize to me profusely a few minutes later, not a single one of those "terrorist" fucking cowards ever once spoke to me to my face in person. I still don't know what the hell their problem with me is, other than perhaps I'm a mixed race woman with an opinion that somehow wounded their fragile male ego? Idfk. Idfc.

Either way, I refuse to say they destroyed my life. I refuse to be a victim.

Instead, I thank them for renewing my faith in the legal, justice and social system that had my back through it all.
I thank them for, in one fell swoop, allowing me to identify and eliminate every last fake friend and toxic family member permanently out of my life.
I thank them for teaching me and my children all about online safety and getting all of our faces out of a screen and back into real life together and for strengthening my relationships with my kids.
I thank them for the thick skin, the confidence to face the world even when they're tweeting my every fucking move publically and making fun of what I'm wearing and what I'm doing.
I thank them for teaching me how to get out of bed every single day and show up for my job even when I feel like I can't.
I thank them for helping me identify people like them and avoid them fully.
I thank them for redirecting my life purpose to doing good for the world.
I thank them for all of the strangers we've had in our lives because of them, showing us compassion and care beyond what I could ever imagine possible.
I thank them for teaching me how to advocate for myself and my family, to stick up for myself, and to never be complacent or silent again.
They didn't destroy me or my life. They tried, but turns out that cowardly weak men can't actually accomplish much even in mob form.
posted by OnefortheLast at 10:14 PM on February 14, 2019 [58 favorites]


Allium - I'm sorry that you're in that shitty of a situation, it's completely unfair.

+Jeanne, OnefortheLast - I guess, maybe that's why I don't get it. I had my bio-father bolt on my family before I was 1. My stepdad died when I was 8. My grandfather may have been a tough old New Englander, but I was surrounded by a take no prisoners feminine attitude in literally every other member of my family. It's never occurred to me to think "eh, she can't do this".

In a weird number of ways, I'm so prototypical American male - love some football, am engineer, love to work with hands and drink beer (and make my own), but all this weird shitty attitude, I don't think I've ever really had (which I bet there are some in my life who would dispute because who has a perfect memory of the offense/hurt you'vegiven)
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:14 PM on February 14, 2019 [2 favorites]


How many of these "progressive" assholes, once fired, will walk across the street to a right wing outlet and convert to publishing screeds about male persecution?
posted by benzenedream at 10:29 PM on February 14, 2019 [24 favorites]


OnefortheLast, thank you for sharing here. I am glad you see the silver lining. I feel such despair about the power of misogyny, and appreciate your perspective on it weeding out the bad. I hope the harassment is past for good.

Dobbs, there is misogyny on Metafilter every single day. (That doesn’t negate all the good things about this space and the hard, good work the mods do, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t comments that get through from men doubting, talking over, or belittling marginalized people.) More notably, there are also non-members lurking who are here to hate read and harass marginalized people posting on this site. Responding with incredulity when a member talks about their harassment that extends to their contributions to this site is beyond tone deaf. Nothing stops non-members (or members who don’t care if they get banned for their behavior) from taking content here and using it elsewhere to harass and demean.

I am amazed when anyone not a white cis guy is not anonymous on Metafilter, honestly. I share a shitload of personal details here but I try not to connect too many dots. I have a Twitter with a fake male avatar, fake name, Tutanota email address used for nothing else. Similar with Facebook which I only signed up for recently so I could connect with my volunteer work in a private group and I don’t post anything otherwise. I still have no illusions about whether someone could harm me with the breadcrumbs I leave. Even writing this comment is frustratingly scary.

Everything I do online and out in the world involves risk assessment and management. Stories like this about the leftist journalists ruining lives are not surprising and are just one more data point to add to the pile of how fragile a peaceful life can be when it comes how far some men will go to keep marginalized people down.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 10:59 PM on February 14, 2019 [35 favorites]


When people see things about the world and their lives that aren't what they should be, sometimes they have the strength to step up and try to change their own lives for the better and challenge the powerful people and systems that harm us.

But sometimes they are cowards, too weak to point the finger at themselves or someone more powerful than they are, and instead scapegoat people who are less powerful than they are. Scapegoating works. The way drugs and alcohol and entertainment works. It sometimes makes you feel better. But it doesn't make your life better or the world better.

These men are cowards who chose to make the world worse so they could occasionally feel a little better instead of actually working to make the world better. These fools robbed all of us of the fruit of those people's careers and got so very little in return.

(Yeah, some got jobs that should have gone to a more deserving person whose career they derailed, but many didn't even get that, and who knows how many good opportunities and jobs were lost or never created because of all the good people hounded out of the profession?)
posted by straight at 12:24 AM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


Sexism and racism is orthogonal to the Left - Right line.

Except that, as any good horror writer will tell you, it's more of a brutal, sadistic shock when it's coming from inside the house. Wouldn't surprise me if part of the "LOL" aspect was in pretending to commiserate with and/or actively gaslighting close colleagues you were secretly victimizing.

And hey bros, maybe next time we're itching to throw in a "not all men herp derp," think about how this went on for years involving hundreds of people until one asshole had a tiny bit of conscience but not even, kind of sounds like he just got bored and figured he'd have more lulz cryptically revealing the conspiracy. If that many dudes can conspire and the entire body of male journalism look the other way, that is effectively "all men." It's like herd immunity, except herd shittiness instead.
posted by xigxag at 12:31 AM on February 15, 2019 [34 favorites]


drewbage1847 -

I'm ok. My skin's pretty thick. What it means is that I don't trust most of my peers with respect to their opinions about women (which sucks hard at recruitment time) and I don't trust the way they treat the women in their lives. And I grind my teeth at the garbage I know that they, as parents, are dumping in their kids' heads.

In my work life, I do try to call out the most egregious examples but the sexism and misogyny is pervasive. It's systemic. Which makes it much harder to fight or even get people to admit to, as is talked about by other posters in more detail and with more eloquence than I'll manage here.

But at some point I expect to be out. And I'm pretty sure I'll be changing teams.
posted by allium cepa at 2:17 AM on February 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


Thanks for sharing this. The Guardian also has a good piece.
posted by eirias at 2:35 AM on February 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


It's the third time in 8 years that the French left has been shaken by issues that they should theoretically handle much better than right-wingers, but don't. Frankly, they're running out of excuses.

The first time was the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair (2011), when it turned out that this popular socialist politician and presidential hopeful was probably a rapist and in any case a typical missing step: lots of people in media and political circles knew about his proclivities, which, in addition to harassing and assaulting women, involved partying with brothel owners and not-fully-consenting-escorts, but everyone kept it on the hush-hush for decades because [reasons]. One of Vincent Glad's harassing tweets uses the name of one victim of DSK to insult his own prey ("TristaneBanoniser"): it's hard to take his apologies seriously after that.

The second wake-up call was the Denis Baupin affair (2016). It's quite remarkable because it involves a politician of the French Green party, EELV, which claims to be at the forefront of gender equality. Baupin, using like Strauss-Kahn the pretense of libertinage, is also an off-the-shelf missing step, used to cornering (sometimes physically) female party members to pressure them into sex. The mind-boggling thing is that Baupin is married to the former leader of the Greens, Emmanuelle Cosse, a woman with impressive progressive credentials (she used to lead Act-Up Paris among other things) and who is still supporting him for [reasons]. The shit hit the fan in March 2016 when Baupin tweeted a photo of himself and other men wearing lipstick to protest against sexual assaults against women (the "Put your red on" campaign), at which point 14 of Baupin's victims went WTF DUDE and started speaking out about assaults going back as far as 1998. Baupin is trying to sue his accusers though it's not working too well for him now.
posted by elgilito at 2:53 AM on February 15, 2019 [23 favorites]


So it took me a little while to get through the French Wikipedia article but is the framing that these are mainly "leftists" as we now think of them (out of the mainstream, socialists, "Bernie bros") and not actually more like mainstream liberals maybe not editorializing on the part of the FPP?

The most explicit quote about political orientation comes near the bottom: d’une part, et leurs orientations politiques : « Aucun journaliste de Minute, du Figaro ou de Famille Chrétienne dans la Ligue du LOL. Uniquement des gens du camp progressiste.» To me this just says they weren't writers for more explicitly right-wing publications. IIRC the association of 'progressiste' in French is closer to just being in opposition to conservativism than explicitly socialist. The liberals having a field day in this thread might want to think about where the call is coming from.
posted by Space Coyote at 3:12 AM on February 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


I remember a discussion of a video (maybe here?) where somebody said something to the effect that as soon as they saw the beard on that one guy, they knew he was going to be a good guy. Sure enough, he expressed a suitably progressive opinion. I thought to myself, "Of course he expressed that opinion; it's part of the uniform. But how does he actually treat people?"

I didn't say that, because for all I know that particular guy treated everybody well and there was no reason for me to dump on him in particular. But it's a thing, the public expression of correct opinion alongside hypocritical behaviour, it's a thing everywhere.

It's why I'm ambivalent about blanket condemnations of people with wrong opinions. I've known evangelical Christians who have horrid opinions but treat everybody with equal respect and caring, and I've known progressives who have perfect opinions but treat the people they claim to support like these journalists did.

Which is better, in the cases where you only get one? Of course we want people to have kind opinions and kind behaviour, but sometimes you get only one. Is it better that the progressive public opinions of these men helped set a progressive tone for society and ultimately led to their own undoing? Or would it have been better if they had worse public opinions but never waged these campaigns of harassment?

(And did they help set a progressive tone for society in the end, or will the ultimate effect be more like that on evangelical Christianity of Jimmy Swaggart being found with prostitutes?)
posted by clawsoon at 3:16 AM on February 15, 2019 [10 favorites]


Space Coyote, it seems to me the people in this thread who know about French politics ARE calling these guys progressive. And "it's not OUR problem" is exactly how this shit is perpetuated.
posted by Anonymous at 3:40 AM on February 15, 2019


I'm just saying that it seems to be the problem of everyone to the left of Le Pen so beard phrenology is ducking a finger pointing back at a wide swath of the journalism industry.
posted by Space Coyote at 5:02 AM on February 15, 2019


Guys, if you're not out there actively making it clear that this kind of behavior is unacceptable every time it happens in front of you--and it is happening in front of you, don't pretend it's not--you're complicit.

Alternatively you could be known as "the next target".

These people are dyed-in-the-wool bullies and unless you deal with them from a position of overwhelming strength you’re going to get steamrolled.

So yeah, speaking up every time it happens is a bad idea. If you’re going to do something, do it on a large enough scale that the bullies are forced to revert to the little boys they are.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:50 AM on February 15, 2019 [1 favorite]


as soon as they saw the beard on that one guy, they knew he was going to be a good guy

uh, hoo boy, how to say this...

From this lesbian's vantage point, this seems to be one of those things women cling to when they still (either because of orientation, fear of pissing off the patriarchy, or whatever) date men. It's absurd on its face, but its one of the absurdities women who date men need to believe to stay sane.

There seems to be a LOT of shit women put up with from men because they feel they have to, not just because of the threat of violence, but because that's just...as good as it's gonna get.

Like this pattern? Of dude who checks a bunch of nominal boxes, but still has some behavioral red flags, or slips up, or whatever? A lot of times with their partner or with women who are close to them (but who they're not fucking) those things all seem, individually, minor. And the reaction is, ok, well, he's trying, he's not all the way there, but he's "one of the good ones" because he says he believes the right things, so...he must be trying, right?

No. He probably isn't trying, actually, not anymore than he absolutely has to. He's not actually doing any work; he's figured out the bare minimum. And those slip ups that reveal his instinctive reactions to women, or his dating habits (early 20s women forever? hmm), or -- and I swear to God I saw this in multiple guys -- the way his shoulders scrunched up angrily when women in the group were like, "oh my God, have you read Cat Person yet?" That's the real him.

And, I mean, I've done this too, with male friends. The last one lasted until this summer. And it's not like my life was entwined with the guy; it's not like I'd invested in a future with him. It's not like a bunch of intimate memories would be forever changed once I acknowledged who he was. And it still took an over-the-top obvious incident for me to be like, "oh, yeah, this is a ticking time bomb," and cut the dude out of my life. I'm still freaked out by how much he knows about me, because you never know if they're going to go full crazy.

It's hard because it's so common, is what I'm saying, and making an honest assessment of the men in your life, for a lot of women, would mean having no more men in their lives. And for some women that's not an option. So they make excuses. Excuses that they might even believe, half the time, because they need to.
posted by schadenfrau at 7:01 AM on February 15, 2019 [38 favorites]


I worked in gaming and still have a foot in it and by this point the “loud and outspoken progressive feminist dude that turns out to be a rapist/harasser/abuser” happens about once a month. I wish this was still surprising but now when I see a loud and outspoken feminist dude I have to wonder what they’re up to when they’re not power posing on Twitter.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 7:13 AM on February 15, 2019 [24 favorites]


> Think of how many times this criminal hate gang could have been caught if people (police, managers, agents, etc) had listened to their victims.

French laws against harassment and hate-speech are stronger than the US, and French police do take complaints of seriously. However, a perennial problem has been that the dominant social media platforms are based in the US, and French law enforcement has gotten no cooperation from US companies or US law enforcement in investigating illegal activity on their platforms. It seems like the Ligue du LOL were smart enough to organize on Facebook using fake identities, where they'd be beyond the reach of French law enforcement trying identify the people behind the accounts.

Get an Ipernity account and stay off Facebook and Twitter if you want to avoid harassment is an option that that can work for a lot French people who just use social media to stay in touch with friends and family and share photos, but it probably isn't a viable option for most journalists. It's our laws and our law enforcement, and these assholes knowledge of how to exploit that that provided them with the space to attack other French people with impunity.
posted by nangar at 7:27 AM on February 15, 2019 [8 favorites]


Now I'm imagining all the old jokes about Baptists being repurposed for progressives. Q: If you invite your progressive friend on a fishing trip, how do you stop him from making racist and sexist jokes the whole time? A: Invite two of your progressive friends.
posted by clawsoon at 7:47 AM on February 15, 2019 [17 favorites]


Dobbs, there is misogyny on Metafilter every single day.

No doubt. Hopefully, I don't contribute to it. However, sexism and misogyny and other hatreds are not the same as deliberate, targeted bullying, harassment, and trolling of a specific person, which is what I was asking about.

Responding with incredulity when a member talks about their harassment that extends to their contributions to this site is beyond tone deaf.

Surprise and curiosity are not incredulity.
posted by dobbs at 12:30 PM on February 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


For me, dobbs, I'm not surprised at someone saying trolls used this site as part of a harassment campaign. If someone knows your username, they don't have to be a mefite to find comments or posts made by someone to use against them, and it's pretty simple to pay $5 if you really want to fuck with someone. People go to extreme lengths to torture women and other marginalized groups online to shut us up, and in the context of what OnefortheLast was describing where it turned to people intimidating them in their home then why wouldn't someone going to those lengths track someone down here?

Maybe I am misunderstanding your intent behind: I'm sorry, what? You were harassed and trolled on MetaFilter?
as asking for proof. Were you? Did you believe it happened? And if not, I think further questioning makes more sense via the contact form to ask one of the mods about things like this happening in the background that we don't see, rather than asking someone in this thread to talk about details of something that I assume is better left vague for safety reasons.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 2:47 PM on February 15, 2019 [5 favorites]


Mod note: I'm gonna pop in and put a button on this in any case; mod-side we take issues of harassment on- and off-site very seriously, but it's also something that is very fraught to make a point of public discussion and speculation and I'll ask folks to let it be entirely there at this point. Folks with specific concerns about this stuff should reach us at the contact form.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:52 PM on February 15, 2019 [9 favorites]


A New Statesman piece on it by Marie Le Conte (who on twitter had the story the "single most depressing thing I've ever had to work on [. . .] everything is bad bye")
posted by mark k at 8:10 PM on February 15, 2019 [3 favorites]


*flips table en français* (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

This somehow doesn't surprise me at all and yet---and yet, I still didn't expect this. xigxag said it well above: it's scarier coming from "inside the house". I have a few male friends who I trust to have conversations about sexism and racism; I have more which I don't feel safe bringing these topics to. I learned a long time ago (quite painfully) that those aren't conversations that everyone can handle.

Thanks, elgilito, for bringing this to my attention; this is the first I've heard of it.
posted by invokeuse at 8:41 PM on February 15, 2019 [4 favorites]


Jesus Christ, mark k, the shit that Marie Le Conte chronicle s in that article ...

One woman, a feminist blogger named Daria Marx, faced rape threats, death threats, threats of being doxxed. It got so she was wary of taking public transportation and couldn't sleep; on the rare occasions when she was able to get some rest, she'd wake up in the middle of the night and reflexively go to her phone to see the rank rancid putrefying shit that had come in since the last time she'd checked.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK the perpetrators of this SHIT.
posted by virago at 10:59 PM on February 15, 2019 [10 favorites]


For some, the trolling was both online and offline; Capucine Piot was in her early twenties when she joined media circles in Paris, and was one of the many people harassed on Twitter by LdL. At the same time, she unwittingly dated one of them for a short while; he told her afterwards that he had HIV and might have passed it onto her. Another lie, obviously. [emphasis added]

That is mind-blowing, the scale of casual, sociopathic evil on display here. There's not even the (paper-thin at this point) excuse of "just seemed like words on a screen" for this.
posted by skoosh at 7:23 AM on February 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


Yeah this is very clearly about punishing women and keeping them in their place (which is somewhere subservient to and not competitive with men). That is political. This is, and was, in every sense of the word, a terrorist campaign.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:42 AM on February 18, 2019 [4 favorites]


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