[WELCOME!, readers of The Other McCain.]
Radical feminist Sara Alcid, who virtually no one had ever heard of until Robert Stacy McCain wrote about her today (here), has taken to Twitter to complain that she has been victimized by a conservative writing an “entire article” on her.
But she takes comfort in the fact that her victimization “merely proves [the] importance of #feminism.”
Her reasoning appears to be:
If no one criticizes feminism, then it’s important because everyone agrees with it.
If someone criticizes feminism, then it’s important because not everyone agrees with it (so the battle against the patriarchy must go on).
In response to each of her tweets, Badger Pundit chimed in with this thought:
@SaraAlcid — Yes: Mr. McCain has victimized you by not agreeing with you. I expand on that more here: http://bit.ly/19pcp83. @RSMcCain
Apparently not confident in her ability to get the better of this argument, shortly thereafter Ms. Alcid protected her Twitter account, so that now only her like-minded friends can read it — and so that no one else can read the criticism of her set forth in replies to her tweets.
But McCain doesn’t censor competing views. A pro-and-con debate on the issues raised by his post is available in the comments section here (about 100 comments already).
Update (8/13): At 7;19 a.m. Eastern time, McCain posted another “entire article” on her (THE HORROR!), focused on her decision to protect her Twitter account, “so that no one who disagrees with her can see her messages.” Thus Ms. Alcid has managed to make herself the latest victim of “The Streisand Effect.”
In a late-breaking development, Ms. Alcid has switched back to a public Twitter account, so she is now back to engaging in unprotected text. (As of 9:45 a.m. Eastern time).
Update 2 (8/13): As of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, Ms. Alcid and her fellow travelers have been using Twitter to rehash their view that Ms. Alcid was victimized via McCain’s criticism of her publicly expressed positions on controversial matters — and they’re looking into ways of having McCain’s work censored, possibly with the help of the FBI! Here’s a collection of tweets (just in case they disappear in the near future) — all bolding added:
Thank you for your words of support, @rbraceysherman @RepealHydeArtPr! It’s absolutely insane how far they’ll go to try to silence us.
— Sara Alcid (@SaraAlcid) August 13, 2013
@rbraceysherman @SaraAlcid @RepealHydeArtPr ugh! bullying is unacceptable. looking into what we can do. have you reported it?
— Steph Herold (@StephHerold) August 13, 2013
@rbraceysherman thank you 🙂 others suggested reporting the post to domain host b/c it contains personal information. Think it’s worth it?
— Sara Alcid (@SaraAlcid) August 13, 2013
@SaraAlcid I think so. @StephHerold any words of advice?
— Renee Bracey Sherman (@rbraceysherman) August 13, 2013
@rbraceysherman @SaraAlcid I agree. I also send everything to the FBI because you just never know.
— Steph Herold (@StephHerold) August 13, 2013
@StephHerold @SaraAlcid That’s a good idea! Especially since several of them are doing it.
— Renee Bracey Sherman (@rbraceysherman) August 13, 2013
@StephHerold @rbraceysherman @RepealHydeArtPr Thanks, Steph. Will email you in a few. Walking back to office–needed emergency fancy coffee.
— Sara Alcid (@SaraAlcid) August 13, 2013
@SaraAlcid @StephHerold @RepealHydeArtPr I hope fancy coffee is helping. Remember self care in messes like these.
— Renee Bracey Sherman (@rbraceysherman) August 13, 2013
@SaraAlcid @StephHerold @RepealHydeArtPr To be an optimist, the only reason this is happening is because you’re doing amazing fuckin’ work!
— Renee Bracey Sherman (@rbraceysherman) August 13, 2013
Update 3 (8/13): McCain has posted this comment on his blog (11:43 a.m.), succinctly summarizing why Ms. Alcid and her cohort feel such outrage:
They live inside a bubble where everyone agrees with them, and so when a 25-year-old idiot with 700 Twitter followers decides she’s going to condemn a professional journalist with 20,000 Twitter followers, the resulting mismatch is a hate crime.
It cannot be (they think to themselves) that their views are controversial, and that there are articulate people who disagree with them. No one in their Women’s Studies departments warned them about this.
Update 4 (8/13): Escalating what is at stake here even more than one might imagine her capable of, Ms. Alcid now likens being criticized by McCain to RAPE, tweeting that she is: “Shocked by how closely people’s reactions to me being harassed online echoes rape culture narratives ‘Don’t provoke him — be safe.'”
Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) responds: “You’re not being ‘harassed.’ You’re being mocked, hilariously, and there’s a difference.”
Update 5 (8/13): At 3:30 p.m., Ali Akbar, one of McCain’s business partners, pushed back at the radical feminists who have claimed McCain has libeled and harassed Ms. Alcid, and who have threatened to try to disrupt their operations through reports to their hosting company, and even to the FBI. His post is highly informative as well as entertaining. A taste (with some of the more colorful language omitted):
Do these troublemakers not realize McCain’s journalistic importance? Did they not read the work of intellectual art that was “No Love for the Godless“? Did they miss the epic smack-down that was McCain giving deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt his first reply after 15 months of cyber-harassment? Why are these fools underestimating our own wordsmith Robert Stacy McCain?
They label him a racist — one of my best friends — a racist!
They label him a sexist — a man who spoke at a women’s event at CPAC, a family man with endless devotion for his loving wife, a man who is raising funds for an abused female immigrant!
These poor ignorant fools.
McCain is a working journalist. With over 27 years of experience under his belt and numerous awards, McCain knows his way around libel laws and has the editorial judgement in determining what is news and what is not news.
* * *McCain has a vested stake in Pundit Syndication, he runs this popular blog — one of the few monetized blogs on the right, and he leads more than 60 writers over at ViralRead.com as Editor-in-Chief. See, we have to go to bat for him. But more than that, we want to go to bat for him.
* * *We’ll willing to spend money defending his work, so . . . bring it.
It’s why earlier this afternoon upon hearing of attacks from fringe-feminists, I tweeted to Sara Alcid: “I’m the Publisher and managing partner of the company, Pundit Syndication LLC of @rsmccain’s blog. Contact me if you have a prob . . . otherwise pls be advised, if you make false reports in attempt to stifle rights of journalists, we’ll pursue u legally.”
Commentator “RS” added this sharp challenge to Ms. Alcid, et al., putting their claims of harassment in perspective:
To Sara Alcid, her friends and interested parties:
Have you ever lost your home due to harassment, threats and cyberstalking? McCain has. Last year, he committed an act of journalism and reported on a convicted domestic bomber and accused pedophile, Brett Kimberlin. What has ensued is 15 months of true harassment; he had to flee with his wife and kids to an undisclosed location to feel some degree of safety.
Have you lost your job because of harassment and threats to your employer? Ask Aaron Walker at allergic2bull.blogspot.com. It happened to him and to his wife. Walker is a lawyer and a blogger who, pro bono, came to the aid of another of Kimberlin’s targets.
Please be serious. You view yourselves as revolutionaries who want to change the social construct. Fine. Then expect criticism and don’t try to shut it down. And don’t claim bullying and harassment when you don’t like what others say.
Update 6 (8/13): In what is probably his best post of the series, at 5 p.m. McCain posted an extensive analysis of the bizarre position apparently held by Alcid and her cohort that the expression of disagreement with the views of radical feminists constitutes actionable “harassment” that justifies the “victims” going to the FBI for protection.
It seems these radical feminists only feel comfortable in an academic environment which all too often does label as “hate speech” the expression of disagreement with radical leftists, as Harvey Silverglate (@HASilverglate) and Greg Lukianoff (@GLukianoff) have been documenting for years (for example, here). Welcome to the real world, Ms. Alcid.
Update 7 (8/13): McCain supplied some useful additional context in a 5:22 p.m. comment (links have been added for readers’ convenience):
What stuns me about this whole thing is how they lose track of the sequence of events:
1. Feminists hold “SlutWalk,” an event that attracts publicity by being deliberately provocative.
2. I get assigned to cover the event, and do so in my customary sarcastic manner.
3. Sara Alcid denounces my description as “disgusting,” Tweeting this denunciation to my attention.
4. My understandable reaction is: “Who is Sara Alcid?” So I take some time to research the answer to that question, and publish the answer on my blog — in my customary sarcastic manner — with Sara’s Twitter handle in the headline, to make sure she doesn’t miss my reply.
5. This makes me a “creep,” a “stalker” and a “harasser” because . . . . well, because feminism.
Exactly how Sara Alcid thinks she can claim victimhood in this sequence, I don’t know. Perhaps I have an unfair advantage, because I didn’t go to an elite school like Bryn Mawr with $42,000-a-year tuition, and therefore I am not mentally disabled by a perverted ideology.
[…] Sara Alcid has now unprotected her Twitter account and, as Badger Pundit chronicles, her friends are telling her to report me to the FBI, because disagreeing with a feminist — “How dare you!” — is obviously some […]
Just too many over-educated blithering frantic idiots out there. “Fancy coffee” as an antidote? I may buy some M&Ms.
Wait. I object! This post objectifies and discriminates a whole class of women. You, sir, are engaging in sweeping verboten stereotypes and generalizations!
Sir, I plead in defense that these radical feminists are the ones who have hoisted themselves on their own petard (the phrase coined by Shakespeare to describe a would-be bomber being blown up by his or her own bomb) — all I’ve done is survey the damage.
Kudos for all your trenchant comments on McCain’s blog & on Ms. Alcid’s twitter feed.
A solid 6.
[…] back to a Queer Feminist is a now evidently a hate crime or something, and Badger Pundit chronicles how my reply to a “reproductive justice” activist made Sara Alc… Disagreement is hate, because […]
Jayzuz what crybabies feminists are. Either you’re a strong woman or you run crying to Daddy (the “patriarchy”) and your circlejerk (“safe space”) when you don’t get your way and someone hurts your precious little feefees. You cannot be strong and be a perpetual victim at the same time.
Quote: “she is now back to engaging in unprotected text” One word response: BRAVO! Many words: This has to be the best quote yet this year. Excellent wordsmithing. Loved it.
I gots a dumb question.
Wouldn’t running to the FBI be analogous to running to daddy?
“daddy, the mean old man is making fun of me!”
Smash the patriarchy until we can’t stand the heat.
I suppose by going to the FBI she’s just doing what she was taught in school – to them it’s the real world version of complaining to the admin about the “hate” crime of having your feelings hurt by those evil heteronormative patriarchal misogynists.
I suspect that if she has indeed reported it to the FBI, someone there is having a good laugh.
[…] back to a Queer Feminist is a now evidently a hate crime or something, and Badger Pundit chronicles how my reply to a “reproductive justice” activist made Sara Alcid a her…Disagreement is hate, […]
[…] Last week, previously unknown radical feminist Sarah Alcid of the leftist Reproductive Health Technologies Project (an organization so secretive it declines to identify its supporters) came to wide public attention for her ill-considered Twitter attack on a well-established conservative journalist, Robert Stacy McCain — and her subsequent claim, and those of her friends, that by writing about her in response, McCain was “stalking” and “harassing” her. […]