So what if you've been publicly shamed?
My disappointing reunion with Jon Ronson
I very publicly fell out with Jon Ronson a number of years ago when he criticised me for sharing a photograph of a hulking 53-year-old trans-identified man sharing a sports team with some college girls. Jon was more outraged by my sharing the photograph than he was concerned for the girls in it, and said something along the lines of “You were never interested in sport when I knew you, Graham.”
I was shocked at his callousness and the insinuation his words carried and I subsequently never missed a chance to expose his woolly thinking on the matter. Recently he got in touch and said he wanted to “make things better” by doing a piece on how we fell out. I was delighted, apologised for the many mean things I said about him, and we had two long (over three hours) interviews by Zoom.
I didn’t notice at first, but Jon seemed unmoved by my stories of the various forms of harassment to which I’d been subjected. He was energised only when cross-examining me on my use of the word ‘grooming’. He seemed to think that because Twitter punished me for this, some sort of justice had been served. (To be clear, I still stand by my use of that word whenever I have used it).
By the end of the interviews, I realised I was still none the wiser over where he stood on certain matters that are absolutely central to this debate. He was *still* more concerned about the bloke on the basketball team than he was about any of the girls, for instance. They were, it seemed to me, completely invisible to him. So I followed up our chats by asking him several questions over email.
For some reason, he simply refuses to answer these simple questions. Because of this, I no longer believe that he entered into the conversation in good faith. I think he just wanted to shut me up.
I do not think these are unreasonable questions. I genuinely did what to know his feelings on them. But he has in common with many in this debate a complete inability to face the effect these fashionable positions have on women and girls. I think he doesn’t answer because he knows it would jeopardise his career, a career built on one book in particular ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed’, which makes his silence on the shaming of JK Rowling, myself and others, particularly craven.
Anyway, here are some of the questions I’ve asked to which I have yet received no response.
Is Alex Drummond, who identifies as a woman, a man or a woman? (My view: He’s clearly a man. I also believe that Jon knows this)
Can a man be a lesbian? (My view: no, that’s clearly homophobic)
Why do you reject the investigations into homophobic parents bringing their children to the Tavistock to be 'fixed'? (When I mentioned the story to Jon, he waved it away as if the idea was ridiculous) Why do you think 35 psychotherapists have left the Tavistock in three years?
Should men be on lesbian dating apps? (My view: Absolutely not) Is ‘Terri’ here a woman? (My view: Obviously not, and again, I think Jon knows it.)
Finally, I sent him this shocking testimony by a psychotherapist in which she said “It’s very hard to sit with a 13-year-old who is crying their eyes out fully believing that the vast majority of people don’t care if they live or die, and that JK Rowling and all her supporters hate her, its hard not to say ‘no its not true, I promise you, please don’t worry’. They believe everything they read online, and are so vulnerable…who isn’t at that age?…I’ve been thinking maybe a small bit down the line I’ll be in a position to ‘come out’ in my main workplace and suffer the consequences. If the referrals keep coming as they are it’s a good possibility.”
I added "Just look at how frightened she is and how careful she has to be. The stakes couldn't be higher-we're talking about the long-term physical and mental health of these children and this woman cannot speak her mind because she knows if she does her life will be destroyed through industrialised Internet shaming. And white men, more than any other group, benefit the most from it.”
I thought I could leverage our 20-year friendship for Jon to be straight with me but as that failed, I’m going public. If you ever do feel you can answer these questions, Jon, or any of the others I’ve asked, please let me know and I’ll publish them without commentary.
I hoped you taped the conversation you had with him, Graham.
I am unsurprised at him being disingenous. I knew of him solely because he falsely represented himself as an expert on Dr Robert Hare's psychopathy test. (Dr Hare is the one who said Ronson falsely reperesented himself).
At roughly the time this was happening, I was learning about psychopathy myself, and watching lots of videos, which is how I stumbled across his. A psychologist I had been to see for PTSD related to a car accident had asked me to read the book Without Conscience, Psychopaths Among Us. He believed a "friend" of mine might well be a psychopath. Usually psychologists will not agree to the definition "psychopath" preferring narcissistic personality disorder, which has the same basic traits.
Psychologists generally prefer not to believe someone is absolutely unfixable and untreatable, as psychopaths basically are. They offer attempts to engage with and treat people diagnosed with NPD, which is why you won't often hear a psychologist discuss psychopathy. The truth is, trying to treat people without empathy, shame, guilt, or love just trains them how to better psychopaths.
Anyway, I was lucky, as it just happened to be James David Haynes' (the psychologist I visited) area of interest at this time. I wish I had read the book about two years (or twenty years) previously, would have saved me a lot of trouble with my psychopathic "friend" and made some sense of some things going on in the world.
I am not associated with Dr Hare or his work in any way, but highly recommend everyone reads the book.
Seriously, if you haven't read it, you don't understand psychopaths, even if you think you do. Please, do read it.
It could explain a lot about the current situation women find themselves in. That is not to say all transologists are psychopaths, but that it only takes a few with power to cause absolute havoc and destroy progress.
https://www.booktopia.com.au/without-conscience-dr-robert-d-hare/book/9781572304512.html
Ronson took the work of an educated scientist and rode his coat tails to make claims that were untrue in order to sell himself as a psychopath expert. Dr Hare says he is not. His "talk" on the subject was one of the last TED talks I subjected myself to, because I realised at that point that anybody could and did say anything they liked in TED talks and they may present themselves as authorities but they often are not. In this "talk", which was grandstanding nonsense in my opinion for the most part, he tries to downplay the reality of and concern of psychopaths amongst us. Having read the book and followed up with further reading, I could clearly see that Ronson's claims could not be true, regarding his expertise and ability to diagnose psychopaths. Only trained mental health practitioners with years of expertise are even allowed to attempt this. He did a workshop on it.
Of course I am not claiming this about Ronson, but it has been pointed out that people who would be diagnosed as psychopaths themselves often make a point of trying to dismiss, downplay or make a joke out of the dangers of psychopaths. They minimise their behaviours and appeal to neurotypical people's sense of empathy to thwart any attempts to reign in the harm psychopaths cause.
This is Dr Robert Hare, an actual expert who has spent his life studying psychopaths and who devised his psychopathy test, speaking up about Ronson's behaviour here: http://www.hare.org/comments/comment3.pdf
So, I remain unsurprised that he downplays the issue of harms caused by people with low empathy.
Jon won't give up his schtick. He doesn't want to be thought of as judgemental in any way. He keeps his mind so open, he forgets about the importance of boundaries. Any stance on this, or any other issues, would damage his standing as a professional receptacle for the weird and outlandish.