I was a huge fan of yours until about 24 hours ago, when I read about the allegations of sexual harassment leveled against you that resulted in you being fired from Polygon. The McElroys, Chris Plant, Russ Frushtick, and you are staples in my home, almost a part of the family. It's a weird fame, the type that you all have, because your appeal is based so heavily on who you are--your personalities. So more than with other types of fame, knowing your work makes me feel like I know you personally, even though we've never met. And I liked you. A lot. Which is why this is so upsetting.
From your statement, I'm optimistic that you're honestly engaging in some soul-searching right now, and I appreciate that, I really do. As a woman, I can honestly say that the end of your statement was gratifying to read, because sadly the truth is that most men in your position would not offer even half of what you did. But don't get complacent and pat yourself on the back too much, because that's a pretty low bar.
I'm going to try to be patient here, because I know from experience that if I were one of the women you harassed, I would simply tell you to stop feeling sorry for yourself. But my hurt and anger at this situation are entirely a sympathetic response to the women involved because similar things have happened to me. Similar things have happened to every woman you know, which is why every woman on the internet seems to have an opinion about you right now.
So here's the problem. You categorized your behavior as "flirting." It wasn't. And right now you are the poster boy for GG MRAs in their efforts to show how absurd these silly progressive social strictures can be. "Nick Robinson Fired from Polygon for Flirting on Social Media" is the top Google news result for "Nick Robinson Polygon." Do you get what that headline is doing? How it's building on your inability to call what you did harassment in order to cast doubt on women's testimony in general? If you are really searching for a way to start making amends, start there. Try to correct that narrative. That would be huge.
But the hurdle here is that I don't believe you think it was harassment. Because you thought it was flirting. And maybe it was. To you. And no, I'm not basing this assumption, that the women did not receive it as flirtation, on hearsay about what was actually contained in those DMs. I'm basing it off of what I know and understand about being a woman in certain spaces, from my long experience of being a woman who has occupied many different spaces.
So let's talk about Twitter. Twitter can bring out the best and the worst displays in human behavior, just like any forum on the internet. But it occupies a particular place in the world of online harassment. The vastly public nature of it, as well as the anonymity and brevity with which things are expressed through it, make it ripe territory for bullying and intimidation. And it has been used against women in this regard since it's rise as the platform-of-choice for social media.
And here's the thing. You should know this. Or at the very least, women that you met through your work at Polygon had every reason to expect that you did. Until recently, you worked at a website that came out strong in support of the women targeted for attack by GG. Women who were attacked primarily through Twitter. By means of doxxing, rape and death threats, and coordinated assaults, the women interested in video games, and especially those interested in making the gaming world more open to them, were stripped of their sense of personal--physical--safety.
That is what Twitter is to women. An opportunity to speak in a public forum yes, but one that carries with it great personal risk, especially if said woman makes a habit of challenging men and male structures with their words. That is not a risk that men, especially straight white men, like yourself, undergo when writing 140 characters off-the-cuff. So while for you, there may be no difference between how you engage with women on Tinder, versus how you engage with them on Twitter, and you may therefore believe that your messages were evidence of "flirtation," can you see how a woman on Twitter might not experience it as such?
So let's go back to the Polygon brand, which seemed to signal a break with the boys' club tradition of most gaming sites. Again, being tied to Polygon granted you the benefits of that brand when meeting female fans, and female gaming industry professionals. In addition, the nature of the media you produced for Polygon made viewers and readers feel that they knew you, fair or not. All of those assumptions would lead a reasonable woman to expect that you had an appreciation for the power differential between a man engaging on Twitter, and a woman engaging on Twitter. And you betrayed that trust by crossing a line.
Much like many fans of yours upon hearing of these allegations, myself included, the women you contacted on DM most certainly felt disillusioned with the type of person they anticipated you would be. On Twitter, that's a very alarming situation for a woman to find herself in--not knowing the type of man they are speaking with, not knowing how dangerous it is for them to turn you down, or even for them to accept--and while most would probably assume you wouldn't doxx them, or post the pics they might send you without their consent, they also probably thought you wouldn't DM them with requests for nudes, either. Do you get how those "flirtations" might not feel like flirtation?
You were right to point out the power differential involved in being a games journalist with a popular platform, and propositioning women who work in that industry, or engage in it as fans of your work. That's another level to this. But start with the basics. Start with the power dynamics of being a man in an obscenely sexist culture, propositioning women in a public sphere that has been used countless times to demean and attack them. Requests don't feel like requests a lot of the time. The circumstances can change ever-so-slightly, and suddenly it feels like a demand.
The patriarchy isn't your fault. But how you benefit from it is your responsibility. Because those benefits come at the cost of women's ability to safely and comfortably exist as whole human beings in public spaces. On Twitter, our lives could be threatened, we could be forced to relocate, change jobs, take out restraining orders, just for offending the wrong guy. You may know that you're not that guy, but we don't. All we know is how you treat us, and if your first act of "flirtation" is one that places us in a precarious position, we at best know that you are oblivious to how that makes us feel.
The MRA voices are screaming hypocrisy at me right now in my head because you're the one who lost his job because of what women said about you on the internet. But note how I said "the wrong guy" above. Just one. That's all it takes for the troops to mobilize and the fire to rain down. It took many more accounts than that to lose you your job, yet one statement from you and the narrative is yours to set. So set it straight. Be brave and don't try to protect yourself. Trust me, it's the Internet. There are more people ready and willing to protect you than the women you harmed.
I would sincerely prefer that you grow and be better than that you suffer and grow bitter. Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this. It's a hard thing when you are stripped of the benefit of the doubt, and it can feel like a never ending struggle to get it back. Be patient. Struggle.
Sincerely,
A good good feminist girl.
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