Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
(
)
Date: April 09, 2021 01:22AM
There's some drama going on over on reddit over New Name Noah. It started on Tik Tok, a new video app that's a cross between twitter and YouTube. I'm the only one I've seen on reddit who is willing to make original posts asking people to give Mike Norton some credit and ask for proof that he has engaged in predatory behavior before they assume him to be a predator of women and not just some socially awkward Aspie, but we live in progressive times where asking for evidence from an accuser is considered man-splaining.
John Dehlin followed me. At first I was excited that maybe he'd like to hear me out. He slipped into my DMs but only to ask me if I was somebody he knew. I said no, but we've met before and I'm a huge fan. He didn't answer. I listened to his latest episode, Unlearning Mormon Misogyny, and I felt not just condescended to but punched. Cuz as I said, I'm the only one I have seen still asking for people to go look at the evidence for themselves and get a whiff of what actually happened in the tone and order that it happened in. So when John defers to one of his guests who has no expertise in anything who says, and I quote, "A lot of the time victim blaming really comes in the form of 'well what was the conversation like before he sent the unsolicited pic' or 'how were you dressed' -- 'were you flirting with them?' -- these questions trying to get to the bottom of it, I think that they're trying to be, I don't know, clever and like look for proof, which I can understand on some level but when it comes to things like this, This isn't a court of law. We don't need this airtight evidence. This isn't CSI. We need to listen..."
IDK, maybe that's not directed at me personally, but I was definitely part of the list of guys asking for evidence who prompted the statement. I wanted to know if the pic was unsolicited and if it even had a dick in it. Mike posted the damn thing on his Instagram to show everyone that it is not what this woman says it is, and I have to say it's massively underwhelming and Instagram won't be taking it down for obscenity. Doesn't John Dehlin have a doctorate in psychology now? The episode didn't get into anything about crime statistics on sexual harassment and rape or why men and women think so differently or how we approach the dating game with such different ideas. No, just, you're all misogynists, believe women ya dodos, here are some pod-casters and all of Mike's accusers save Jessica Justice. Really, John? You fucking coward.
No one even knows how this thing started. To make a long story short, New Name Noah mispronounced Kwaku's name. A lot of people did. American Anglophones are not familiar with the name, so they tend to anglicize it. RFM mispronounced the name. Those people were informed that Kwaku is a common name in North Africa, and mispronouncing it is racist, so most people shaped up right quick, but NNN was feisty in keeping with his personality until he finally gave in. Kwaku is that black college student who did those TITS shows for FAIRmormon. He's kind of an asshole, so IDK why people made his name the most important takeaway from everything going down late last year. We had FAIR greenlighting absolute smut and slander and the drama reached its peak when John Dehlin and Jeremy Runnells got what looked like death threats, although the hosts of TITS swore it was just a meme for laughs to superimpose John's and Jeremy's heads on Nazi characters in a gif who then have their brains beaten out. But anyhow, there were a bunch of Tik Tok creators, Maggie being the chief ringleader, who felt it necessary to go after NNN for this, and he wouldn't apologize to them. So they found out he had sent an exposed photo of himself to an egirl who goes by the name Jessica Justice, and from what Mike says they were using that photo as leverage to make him apologize for Kwaku's name. It's Quay-koo, not Quack-oo, ya white supremacist. It became this whole thing on tik tok and slowly started to spill over onto reddit. Another woman named Sarah, who also appears in the Mormon Stories interview, came forward and shared screenshots of some untoward advances that NNN had made on her on her Instagram photos, and she posted her story to reddit. I would not have phrased those pick up lines in the way that Mike apparently did, but after speaking directly to Mike, a lot of the context was left out from what I gather she didn't even tell him to buzz off once. I think they shared a facetime call even on Valentine's Day of all days and she still failed to tell him how uncomfortable and unsafe he made her feel, which I don't think was his intent. The best I'm getting from anybody on reddit about why it's still ok to cancel Mike over this is that he supposed to be able to read her mind and know how he is making her feel. She sat on her feelings until she heard about the Jessica Justice stuff, and then she came forward to add her 2 cents to the pot to force Mike to repent or force him out of the community if he woudn't.
All these things together felt like Mike's big cancellation, his MeToo moment. Only, from what I was able to gather, this is it. It's this egirl saying Mike's dick pic was not welcome, and this other girl saying his pick up lines were raunchy and his fame made her feel too unsafe to tell him to go away. There's an assumption that there are many many more, but I think they're just referring to people that Mike has been rude to over the years, especially over the Kwaku stuff. Maybe there's a whole lot more to this, but I'm not seeing it. No one is giving me more to go on or even pointing to where it may be found; they're just doubling down on gender commie rhetoric that women have been oppressed long enough and it's time to believe women cuz not a single woman in all of history has ever make stuff up or made a big deal out of nothing to get back at a man for spurning her.
Of course sexual harassment happens all the time, but why? Is it because men are all predators or is it because the sexes don't think the same way about courtship? It is now common knowledge that Mike is a predator, but no one looked into this before they just decided that. No one is telling even as much as I just told you guys. It seems like everyone is just scared to contradict a MeToo accusation, even just to put it in a tone commiserate with the gravity of what happened, because that's a regressive thing to do and the community will turn on you if you dare.
Mike has been kind to me, and he's been part of this community since I joined it. He's used questionable tactics to go after the church, but I don't care. The church dicked me over. I still haven't been able to have a rational conversation with my family about why I think what I think. My father, who was in my home stake's presidency at the time, canceled my recommend the day after I told him, so I couldn't go see some of my best friends or my brother getting married in the temple. At least someone is fighting this bullshit. At least someone is filming what they do in that building. At least someone posts his number all over social media so that suicidal people can call him. Has Mike just been doing all of this to get into people's pants? There's no evidence of that. No one accusing him of anything has said any such thing, but that's what a lot of people seem to think now because the OG posts were vague and no one was allowed to question them.
I posted something trying to aggregate the evidence. It wasn't the best, but it was something. It was getting upvotes, and the mods took it down. It was the only thing on reddit trying to get to the bottom of all this drama. The only goddamned thing. I feel like I'm the only one who gives a shit about watching a man get communal treatment commiserate with the gravity of his crimes, which are exactly none in this case. This is just drama, grade AA high school drama from the juvenile land of Tik Tok, and now on top the reddit mods censoring me, John has slapped his big stupid seal of approval on this whole thing by refusing to challenge these women even a little, even a little. I've never seen such fucking cowardice in my life. I don't need to see these women roasted or anything. Just push back to any degree to make sure that you're not being taken for a ride or that they haven't overlooked something obvious that may explain the situation better. Or at least tell the story from their point of view and tell the story from Mike's point of view and let listeners decide. What the hell even was this episode?
I re-listened to New Name Noah's Mormon Stories interview, and it is clear John was always jumpy about having anything to do with Mike, so this is how John washes his hands of the whole thing and protects the Mormon Stories brand. He can do that if he wants: it's his brand. But this episode could have been so much than it was. What it was a bunch of ladies with expertise in nothing except being ladies having a round table circle jerk about how they feel about men generally while a PhD who could contribute valuable expertise to the conversation or at least occasionally speak up for why men are the way they are and what some of these stereotypical situations feel like from both sides opines about how straight white cisgender straight men have done enough damage and it's time to believe women. In other words, he rolled up his diploma and shoved it up his ass and nodded in agreement the whole time. Who does this win over, John? Every man knows that agreeing with his woman while you are in the way with her is the quickest path to avoid contention, but it's not always worth it. Sometimes you gotta say, way a minute, Mike isn't a predator, he's only guilty of at most what so many of these other asshats have done while trying to pick up girls online. Maybe that was John splitting the baby. Maybe not letting Mike's accusers roast him by name was his grand compromise. We'll just passive-aggressively reflect this back on all men and scold them all for their failures to be good men (even though every dick-weilding human I saw in the comments of the original Sarah post on reddit was nodding in agreement with her, coming after me and others for daring to want to pause and back up and get a grip, or biting their tongues), and not once address the elephant in the room.
I thought this community was filled with the most rational people in the world. I'm so disappointed. NNN was defending us from the TITS assholes, and we've stabbed him in the back over some real hair-brained bullshit and told ourselves we had to, because he was a dangerous man who was about to pounce on innocents at any moment. NO, you stupid fucking people, he's been through a bad break up and he's in mourning and he's trying to hook up with people in his depression, and we did this to him even after all he's risked for us. What is wrong with everyone? Since when do we believe the word of any accuser and just not look into it out of "respect for the victims." Fuck this shit. No.
I've been reaching out to Mike and talking with him. I'm watching him real in and out of depression. I think he's gonna be ok, but he went to facebook jail a couple days ago, and he wasn't responding to my messages, and I was afraid that...
Just, oh my god. If he harms himself over all of this, is he still the predator here? Are his crimes that grave? Could people be overreacting to all of this out of this new culty political dogma that rational thinking is not ok in a MeToo situation? Do I need to screenshot the horrid shit that has been said to me about my biological sex and post in on Tik Tok with that dumb "oh no no no no" song playing in the background in order for people to believe that sexism is a two-lane highway?
I don't like where this is headed. I don't mean equality and justice for women who are victims of sexual assault, that I do want. What I mean is the way that John was culturally pressured into hosting this radfem tirade against his own sex and somehow failing to use it to at least add to the conversation something beyond some pro tips that sending dick pics to women who didn't ask is bad. This episode seemed more for the women out there who after watching a few people defend a "predator" (even though most people didn't) don't think the exmo community is a safe space anymore.