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=1000489091000
Background on Aaron Coleman the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/us/elections/aaron-coleman-kansas-house.html
Read 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
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Just a heads up. This conversation includes mentions of sex crime and suicide. There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. 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 carry 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 nineteen 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 released all the way this story played out very much a line 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 were 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 was 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 Carry Goldberg says these stories often play out, which is why 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 born. 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 twelve, I've seen thirteen, I've seen fourteen. Um he first ran for public office when he was seventeen years old, and he's now nineteen. 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 denounced these actions, and they are the actions of a sick and troubled fourteen year old boy. And even in that statement, I really see the ways that he's minimizing his own behavior, reminding us that the own he happened digitally. You know, Try telling that to the young women whose lives he just disrupted, you know, by things that only happened digitally. Like that's in and of itself kind of a kind of a misnomer that things that happen online 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 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 arressed for months until she attempted suicide. Aaron told her family, I have moved on. They called 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 severity 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 have moved on. They don't have to actually make genuine, meaningful amends to their to the people they've heard. Aaron Coleman has been like a master class in how not to issue a public apology. I feel that every time he has talked about this s nation 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 it 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 Donnatism 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 donnatism 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 and 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 journalists Sager and Jetty talked about Coleman on his new show after Coleman resigned from the race reached past the headline, like you said, a nineteen year old with a minimum wage job want to serve as an elective 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 engage in when they were literally twelve years old just seems ridic he list to me, and yet I haven't seen any real reckoning around the 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 as Amend's. 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's the one who chose to run for public office at seventeen and at nineteen, 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 nineteen have to show that they are mature enough to be able to hold public office. You're 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's 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 have 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 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 meeting a journalists who really shouldn't 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 to 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 Carry 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, uh, it comes from a working class background. Greenwald writes, if we say we want more candidates from working class and poverished families running for political office, as we should do, we make allowances for the fact that deprived child hoods often produce averegent behavior as a child that are not common among those from more privileged backgrounds. And that, to me is just anybody who comes from a 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 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 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 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. Greenwald 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 thirty minute video interview with Coleman on his website, The Intercept. Here's a little clip. The fact that has such a passionate platform shows I've I've changed. I was in middle school. I would grab my past actions and I hope to continually leaned 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 I'm I'm the only Democrat on the ballot. So in that Glenn Greenwald interview, one of the questions that Greenwald asked him is what are what's the evidence that you've 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 stop when he was fourteen. He didn't have allegations when he was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. 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, you know, fourteen, when he got older. Now he's a changed man at nineteen. 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 that we know this this is how abuse works. People who study this, people like Carrie 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 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 ruining crime that it is, roorid is going to say it was a one time mistake. But that's 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're 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 base 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 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 be aavier did stop when he was fourteen, 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, that he's not going to try to put more anti choice laws in the books the way that his opponent surely would. It just doesn't feel right to me. It almost feels like this 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 flip I had 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, you know, 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? It's a story that you followed. What are your thoughts? You can hit us up at hello at tangodi dot 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 tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridgetad. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michaelmato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. 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