There Are No Girls on the Internet - BONUS: Aaron Coleman and minimizing revenge porn

Episode Date: August 29, 2020

In this week’s episode we spoke to attorney Carrie Goldberg about her fight against revenge porn. In that ep, we briefly mentioned Aaron Coleman, the winner of the Kansas State House of Representatives Democratic primary and his history of revenge porn. In this supplementary ep, Bridget gives a little more information about his case, how it played out, and what it tells us about how society minimizes revenge porn.Listen to Carrie Goldberg’s episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-a-better-internet-with-carrie-goldberg/id1520715907?i=1000489091000Background on Aaron Coleman the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/elections/aaron-coleman-kansas-house.htmlRead more on Coleman’s history of recent abuse: https://gen.medium.com/aaron-colemans-ex-girlfriend-says-his-misogynist-abuse-didn-t-stop-in-middle-school-1c82a836a5d8 Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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844-844-I-Hart. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises. of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was finally. You just understood. That's how personal it got.

Wow. Then after that game seven, Mark keep coming to, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just a heads up, this conversation includes mentions of sex crime and suicide. There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So I wanted to do this episode because I had this great conversation with attorney Carrie Goldberg, who specializes in revenge, porn, and abuse against women, and sexualized violence that plays out online. And we briefly mentioned the situation with Aaron Coleman, who is a 19-year-old part-time dishwasher,

who recently won the Kansas State House of Representatives Democratic primary. And he won, despite the fact that he, had an admitted history of revenge porn against his classmates. And I really saw the way this story played out very much aligned with the way that Carrie Goldberg said these stories tend to play out. And so I wanted to do a quick supplementary episode to break down the situation. Coleman dropped out of the race after all of these allegations really reached a fever pitch online, only to re-enter the race yesterday, yesterday on the day that I'm recording

this, which is Wednesday. So I saw this story really related to the conversation that we had with Carrie Goldberg this week because she really laid out how, as a society, we're so quick to minimize this kind of behavior. And by this kind of behavior, I mean things like revenge porn. I mean things like abuse of women and girls, sexualized violence. We are so quick to say, boys will be boys. This happened when he was so young. Why are you trying to bring up old stuff and ruin this kid's life?

doesn't he deserve to move on? All of these things are really ways that we minimize this very serious crime of revenge porn. I mentioned in the episode Glenn Greenwald, who's a journalist at the Intercept, he himself tweeted and called this behavior, quote, bad middle school bullying. And this is not just bullying. It's a very serious sex crime. Most people, even people who are bullies, don't do this kind of thing. It's not a normal thing.

And so I really saw the way that this story played out. in exactly the way that Carrie Goldberg says these stories often play out, which is part of the reason why I wanted to do this episode. Coleman is actually admitted to the behavior that he's accused of, including revenge porn. It's important to keep in mind that this stuff all happened when he was in middle school. I've seen various reports of what age he was. I've seen 12. I've seen 13. I've seen 14. He first ran for public office when he was 17 years old, and he's now 19.

Aaron does not dispute that he did these things. He himself wrote, I just want to make clear that all of these allegations are both true and occurred only digitally. I denounce these actions and they are the actions of a sick and troubled 14-year-old boy. And even in that statement, I really see the ways that he's minimizing his own behavior, reminding us that they only happened digitally. You know, try telling that to the young women whose lives he disrupted, you know, by things that only happened digitally. Like that's in and of itself kind of a misnomer that things that happen online. and don't impact your real world or your real life.

We know that's not how it works. So even in that statement, I see the ways that he's minimizing his behavior. So what it ended up happening is that he got an intimate photo of a classmate. It's not clear how he got them. This girl says that she did not send them to him. They were not in a romantic relationship. He blackmailed her into sending him more photos, saying that if she refused, he was going to send that photo to all of her friends and family.

And when she didn't send them another photo, he did exactly that. and it really sounds like it really disrupted her life. This is only a sample of the kind of abusive behavior that he's been responsible for. Another girl he harassed for months until she attempted suicide. Aaron told her family, I have moved on. They call the past the past for a reason because that's where you are supposed to leave things. At this point, you shouldn't move on for me. You should move on for yourself.

And that just really doesn't sound like the words of someone who has grown, who has grappled with the severe. and the seriousness of their crimes and what they have done, that sounds like someone who is not capable of doing that yet. Telling the family member of someone that you bullied into a suicide attempt that they should move on for themselves is really, I think, quite telling. It sort of plays into a common misconception

when it comes to abuse that the past is the past. You can just, the perpetrator should be allowed to move on by just saying they've moved on. They don't have to actually make genuine. genuine meaningful amends to the people they've heard. Aaron Coleman has been like a masterclass in how not to issue a public apology. I feel that every time he has talked about this situation in public, I want to pull him aside and say,

maybe you can have someone who actually can talk with a little bit more empathy about the situation, help you with your statement before you just hits in. In one of his first statements, after he dropped out of the race, on Twitter, he said, in all seriousness, feminism hasn't got a chance so long as Donatism remains on the march. The progressive circular firing squad has done more to uphold the status quo that conservatives ever could have dreamed of. In case you don't know what Donatism is, I didn't know what it was either, so don't feel bad. Donatism is this idea that you have to be faultless in order to get ahead.

And so even that statement, I think, is really bullshit because why blame feminists for you having to resign for your own behavior? You know? So that statement was not great. His statement about moving on was also not great. When Glenn Greenwald asked him, you know, what he had done to make amends? His first thing was that he said that he had had a really hard life and that he thought that society should be doing more to help his victims, not just him.

When you do something wrong that is this heinous and this serious, you really have to really know how to practice actual. empathy, an actual, like making an actual apology. And it's not just saying, well, you feminists win, okay? Like, that's not an apology. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of people defended Coleman. Some even made it seem like Coleman was the victim because his critics were unfairly bringing up something from his past. Here's how journalist Sager and Jetty talked about Coleman on his new show after Coleman resigned from the race. Reads past the headline, like you said, a 19-year-old with a minimum wage job, want to serve as an elected representative, is like,

fine, if you guys are going to treat me this way, why should I even participate? I mean, the national norms around calling somebody out for behavior that they engaged in when they were literally 12 years old just seems ridiculous to me. And yet I haven't seen any real reckoning around this said. And again, that speaks to the exact same thing that Carrie Goldberg talked about in that interview, which is that as a society, we are very quick to just say, You know, he's made his amends. Boys will be boys. It's not that big of a deal.

He should be able to get on with his life. And a lot of people defended him by saying that it's unfair, that he should be accountable for things that he did in middle school since now he's grown up and gotten older and all of that. And ordinarily, I would say that someone who commits a crime when they're very young, like, they shouldn't go to jail or be tried as an adult for things they did when they were young. But we're not talking about whether or not Coleman should go to jail. we're talking about whether he is fit for public office.

And he is the one who chose to run for public office at 17 and at 19. Perhaps that he had put a little bit more of time and distance between the time that he was a young man who was doing these crimes and the time when he was running for office, it would be easier to believe that he actually has grown. But it's only been, you know, four or five years, right? Like already people who are 19 have to show that they are mature enough. to be able to hold public office. It's already a pretty high bar.

If just four or five years ago you were, you know, harassing and abusing your classmates, it really does add another notch against you. And again, I think that something that Carrie Goldberg speaks to in that interview is our willingness to just uncritically accept an abuser at their word that they have moved on, that they have changed, that they, you know, that they're a different person. And I think that that's a real mistake. I think that as a society, we need to, if someone who has committed this kind of heinous act tries to tell us that they've moved on, they've grown, we need to see some sort of meaningful

demonstration of that and not just uncritically accept that that is the case. And I have to say, I saw a lot of folks on the left, a lot of folks in the media, journalists who really should know better, just accepting and pushing this narrative that he's grown, he's moved on, he's made amends without really taking a minute to ask What has he done to show that he's made amends? What has he done to illustrate this kind of growth? What is he, has he made, how do his, how do his victims feel, right? Like, we didn't really see that conversation playing out.

What we saw was people just uncritically accepting that he has changed and moved on. So one of the supporters that we bring up in that episode with Kerry Goldberg is Glenn Greenwald, who was really pushing this narrative that, you know, this was just, quote, bad middle school bullying and that he's, you know, it's in the past. and he's moved on and made amends. I found this one quote from Greenwald to be particularly insulting talking about the fact that Coleman is, you know, comes from a working class background.

Greenwald writes, if we say we want more candidates from working class and impoverished families running for political office as we should, do we make allowances for the fact that deprived childhoods often produce aberrant behavior as a child that are not common among those

for more privileged backgrounds? And that to me is just anybody who comes from a work working class background should be so insulted because there are plenty of people who come from working class backgrounds who don't do this kind of thing. Revenge porn is not a hallmark of a working class background. People who grow up in working class families, that's not a hallmark of, you know, that's not like part of their culture, right? Like, and pretending that it is is so disingenuous and honestly insulting. Like I think that trying to imply that people from working class

backgrounds all do this kind of thing is just beyond the pale because it's not true, right? Plenty of people grow up with hardship. Plenty of people have really hard lives. Most people don't seek out these complex revenge porn schemes that involve blackmail. That's not common behavior. And the more that we say that behavior is common and the more that we say that behavior is acceptable, the less we will be able to talk about it as the heinous, serious crime that it really is. Rainwald said that we needed to have the, quote, full picture of who Coleman is before judging his fitness for public office.

He did a pretty fawning 30-minute video interview with Coleman on his website, The Intercept. Here's a little clip. The fact that I have such a compassionate platform shows I've changed. I was in middle school. I regret my past actions. And I hope to continually learn from them as I grow into the person I hope to be. I know I've made mistakes. But there's a reason I'm the only Democrat on the ballot.

So in that Glenn Greenwald interview, one of the questions that Greenwald asks him is, what are, what's the evidence that you have moved on that you've grown? And he answers that if he had not moved on, wouldn't there be more allegations? The allegations stopped at middle school. I didn't have, he says that he didn't continue to have allegations against him in high school when he was, you know, the allegations stopped when he was 14. He didn't have allegations when he was 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. but we know that is not how these things work. In that Carrie Goldberg interview, it is so clear to me that this kind of heinous sex crime, this kind of abuse doesn't just happen in a vacuum.

It is very unusual for it to be a one-time thing. It is more often than not a pattern of abusive behavior against women. And that's exactly how this played out. Coleman says that his abusive behavior stopped when he was 14, when he got older, now he's a changed man at 19. One of his ex-girlfriends did an interview with The Intercept this week saying that Coleman physically attacked her, including slapping her and choking her just this past December. So that completely tracks with what we know about abusers, that it's not typically just a one-time

thing or a, quote, mistake. It typically is a pattern of abusive behavior. And the fact that we know this is how abuse works, people who study this, people like Kerry Goldberg, who know how this works and see it day in and day out have been very clear that this is how this works. And yet, so many people who supported him, people like Glenn Greenwald, just accept that this was a one-time, quote, mistake.

Revenge porn is not a youthful indiscretion, and it's not something normal that people do. It is a very serious and heinous crime. And if we don't talk about it as the serious, heinous, life-ro ruining crime that it is, Roy is going to say it was a one-time mistake. But that's not how these things work. So some of the supporters are saying that people are trying to cancel him.

People are saying that he, you know, shouldn't be in public life. I don't feel like that's what people are saying at all. I feel like people are saying that if you are the kind of person who admits to this kind of heinous crime, that it is completely reasonable to scrutinize your fitness for public office. You are not entitled to have a job in the House of Representatives representing your state. That is not something that is your birthright. And to act as if that is ruining his life, it's just not true. Nobody owes you a job.

He is more than welcome to, you know, continue his life. It doesn't mean that he has to be holding public office, holding a position of trust in the community. So that's the situation. My take on all of this is that revenge porn and misogynistic abuse is not normal middle school bad behavior, nor is it a class issue. and it is entirely reasonable that Coleman should face scrutiny for this kind of behavior if he's trying to get a position that involves public trust. People who are talking about this are not trying to ruin his life. It's not something that was so far in the past that it's not fair to even bring up.

It's completely reasonable to bring up. And that would all be true even if this behavior did stop when he was 14. But we know that's not how abusers typically work. And his ex-girlfriend says that he was abusive to her, just, you know, this past December. It's overall, it's a really bad situation because his opponent is anti-choice. It is not a really good candidate. But women really shouldn't have to choose between an abuser and someone who wants to control

our bodies. And the way that Coleman has continuously reminded people that he's pro-choice, pro-choice, and he's not going to try to put more anti-choice laws on the books the way that his opponent surely would. It just doesn't feel right to me. It almost feels like this sort of gotcha for women voters to be like, well, Do you want me, the person who abuses women, or this guy who's going to control your body? And that's not a fair choice for women voters.

And the way that he talks about being pro-choice, it makes it seem like abortion rights are a gift that he's giving women voters. Jill Flipavik really put it well on Twitter. She writes, it's almost like these guys see basic human rights for women as a gift to be bestowed and met with great gratitude and not, well, basic rights. And truly, this should not be our choice, right? We should not have to choose between two different kinds of creeps in the election. This is America. We should have unlimited numbers of creeps to choose from. Just kidding.

So that's my take. But honestly, it's a complicated situation. And I really want to know, what do you all think? You know, what are your thoughts on this story? Is this a story that you followed? What are your thoughts? You can hit us up at hello at tangoiti.com and we would love to hear what you think. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?

You can reach us at hello at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel

help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Wife is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic

champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One. founding partner of IHeart women's sports. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast, Point Game,

the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season, and I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was finally. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that Game 7, Marquis keep coming to him. He's like, you know I love you, dog. You know it's all love.

This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app. or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's DeSanti Plummer from Fud Around and Find Out. This week, Aizy Fud and I sat down with Step and Curry. Step talks pressure, confidence, and what it really takes to stay great. There's different categories, I guess,

so I'm like conditioning, shooting drills where you try to simulate kind of games. Look at her face. We have a love-hate relationship with those because you know you're getting something out of it. You don't look forward to those days. Listen to Fud Around and Find out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.

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