She created a document to warn women of sexual harassers. It's haunted her ever since.
She created a document to warn women of sexual harassers. Its haunted her ever since.
by Margaret Sullivan April 22
Moira Donegan readily admits that she didnt know what was coming last fall when she briefly posted a crowdsourced document identifying dozens of men in the publishing industry who reportedly had sexually harassed or assaulted women. I was naive, the former New Republic staffer told me by email last week. Donegan, who is 28, intended the shareable spreadsheet titled Sh---y Media Men to be circulated privately as a warning system among a fairly small group of women. It would be a digital version of the way a woman might advise her friends to stay away from someone because hes a creep, or far worse.
Almost immediately, it went viral, and after only 12 hours, Donegan took it down. But in the digital age, it lived on.So did the repercussions.Some of the prominent men it identified were fired or disciplined after their employers did internal investigations. Among them: literary critic Leon Wieseltier at the Atlantic and Lorin Stein, editor of the Paris Review. (Wieseltier apologized; Stein acknowledged disrespectful behavior.)
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Donegan explained, months ago, her original intention. The anonymous, crowd-sourced document was a first attempt at solving what has seemed like an intractable problem: how women can protect ourselves from sexual harassment and assault, Donegan in January wrote in the Cut, an online subset of New York. She identified herself as the creator of the spreadsheet in that piece because she had reason to believe, after receiving questions from a magazine fact-checker, that Roiphes piece was going to name her. (Roiphe has contested that.) In her exchange with me, Donegan further explained her reasoning: Existing reporting channels too often serve to protect the accused, disappear complaints, and further punish women for coming forward.
Was the spreadsheet unfair to the named men when the contributing women wanted anonymity? Has the whole thing gone too far? Ill put myself squarely on Team Donegan. Yes, she was naive about keeping her document circulating quietly as a warning mechanism. But her intentions were righteous and her fears well-founded about what often happens to women who report their truths. I know of no cases in which men were disciplined solely because of their appearance on the spreadsheet. If it forced employers to look into long-standing situations and take action, so be it. If it caused a great many men to be put on guard and hence more respectful in their dealings with female colleagues thats all to the good.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/she-created-a-document-to-warn-women-of-sexual-harassers-its-haunted-her-ever-since/2018/04/20/a39f9fa8-44a0-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?utm_term=.c3c5c536b8de
armadillo17
(7 posts)She is the quintessential fake feminist. She is one of these execrable double dippers; I.e. she calls herself a feminist and has cashed in on the popularity of feminism to her own material benefit; while pandering to the right by systematically bashing every popular feminist initiative for the past 35 years. Whether it be pay equity, reproductive choice, the battles against harassment, the fight against slut shaming or for equality in employment, Ropihe has found an excuse to tear it down. When you read the piece in Harpers, which btw most of the other contributors abominated, it is clear what Roiphes agenda is, namely an impassioned defense of Lorin Stein, whom of course she knows personally and whom she has profited from working with. So, you know, so what if he craps on other women? She has always been a nauseating turncoat and traitor to feminism, along with her partner in slime, Christina Hoff Sommers.