Noted feminist author and professor Katie Roiphe lashed out at “Twitter feminists” who attacked her for a Harper’s magazine essay on the #MeToo movement before it had even been published.
“Before the magazine article had even been published, thousands of people took to Twitter, furious at me for rumors about what might be in the piece,” Roiphe said in an essay aired on “CBS Sunday Morning.” “Total strangers called me ‘a garbage person,’ ‘a ghoul,’ ‘human scum.’”
She compared these preemptive critics to George Orwell’s “thought police,” arguing that, “If we as a culture are going to sort through the very tangled question of what constitutes an abuse of male power, we need to be able to hear — really hear — lots of different opinions.”
Roiphe said that she shares many of the goals of the MeToo movement but said it raised questions that may not be so cut-and-dried as the number and nature of the accusations has grown.
“Is asking a woman for her phone number an abuse of power? Does the distinction between sleazy behavior and a criminal act matter? Is it OK to try people in the press?” she asked. “Lots of good and reasonable people will disagree about the answers to these questions.”
As she did in her Harper’s essay, Roiphe provocatively suggested that some feminists may be making a blood sport of the movement to bring down male wrongdoers — and at the expense of women like herself who share the overall goals but not necessarily all of the particulars.
She also suggested that some of these online critics have become downright “Trumpian” in their approach.
“If we are calling other women ‘human scum’ because they have ideas or politics that are different from ours, are we any different from Trump supporters tweeting ‘lock her up’ at Hillary Clinton?” she asked. “With their politics of personal destruction — the hate and nastiness and name-calling — are these Twitter feminists any less bullying than the people we say we oppose.”
Watch her response to critics above.