Do you ever have that feeling

…that you’re being followed? Irene Gallo started Twitter-stalking me today. I feel unsafe. I mean, I’m sure she has a perfectly good reason for cyberstalking someone she falsely labeled an unrepentant racist, misogynistic, homophobic neo-Nazi, but still, it is a little… unsettling. To say nothing of unprofessional.

Seriously, Mr. Doherty, you need to do something about Ms Gallo sooner rather than later. Yesterday, she was calling your authors “bad-to-reprehensible” and your customers “racist” and “neo-Nazis”. Today, she’s cyberstalking me. Do you really want to wait and find out what she’ll get up to tomorrow?

UPDATE: Irene Gallo appears to have stopped Twitter-stalking me. Thank you for the love and support you have all provided during this difficult time. I feel like I can breathe again.


The courage of the SJW

I somehow get the impression I’m being Othered. Or something:

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
Saying “I don’t care about race, I just care about funny” & then casting almost exclusively white ppl means you think white ppl are funnier.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
This is very, very simple logic and should not be controversial.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
If you think we live in a meritocracy, then, by extension, you think white men are just naturally better at nearly everything.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@thelindywest Well, they did invent a little thing called “Western Civilization”. And science. And computers too. Among other things.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
@thelindywest Your logic is neither “very, very simple” nor “controversial”. It’s simply wrong.

Lindy West ‏@thelindywest
ew, don’t talk to me @voxday

Rowan Kaiser ‏@RowanKaiser
@thelindywest oh god I’m so sorry this happened to you

papadopoulos ‏@pdlmma
@thelindywest I’m sorry you had this interaction and will contribute to a fund for exfoliating scrubs

What amuses me is that Lindy West once asked what made women easy targets. The two-part answer to her question lies in her own actions. One, women often say really stupid and ignorant things in public. So do men, of course, but second and more importantly, women who do so are often genuinely surprised, and not infrequently, more than a little upset, whenever anyone points out that they just said something really stupid and ignorant in public. That is practically the definition of a soft and easy target.

It’s not that hard to avoid being an easy target. First, say something intelligent that is actually defensible. Second, be prepared to defend what you said.

Of course, you can also run away, cry for sympathy, and retreat to a safe space where no one will ever criticize anything you say. That’s an option too. A safe space where the only enemy that will confront you is orange-and-yellow Oreos. SPOILER ALERT: the Oreos lose.


Moshe Feder doubles down… twice

The Associate Editor of Tor Books doubled-down on Facebook:

I’ll be happy to say right now, here on my _personal_ FB page, speaking for myself and not Tor, that I agree with Irene that Vox Day can be fairly described as a neo-Nazi.
Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

It’s a very strange to accuse a self-declared Zionist who edits and publishes Israeli authors of being a neo-Nazi, but then, these are the same people who insist that Brad Torgersen is racist despite his marriage to a black woman. Mr. Feder then proceeded to double down again:

The approval of Tom Doherty’s statement from those with Puppy sympathies or at least tolerance, and the disapproval of it by those — like most of my friends — whom the Puppies would dismiss as Social Justice Warriors or CHORFs, is hardly surprising. It must be accounted a tactical victory for those who chose Irene Gallo as a target and put Tor in the position of feeling it had to respond. This has gone well beyond the usual purely rhetorical combat of fan feuds to threatening someone’s career status because of their personal opinion. It’s dirty pool in my eyes and sets a terrible precedent.

There’s been plenty of heated commentary in the aftermath yesterday and today, often pretty wild-eyed, some condemning Irene and calling for her to be fired, others condemning Tom and Tor as sexist for singling her out while Patrick and I went unmentioned. In response, I’d like to suggest a calm consideration of proportionality and a return to the practical realities of this year’s Hugo Awards.

As far as I can tell, Irene didn’t start her personal blog page intending to malign any Puppies, either Sad or Rabid. Rather, she responded in a spontaneous, unpremeditated way to a request for an explanation about the Hugo controversy, in the process accurately describing Theodore Beale as a neo-Nazi. Since her answer to the query was so brief, the Sad Puppies were mentioned in close proximity to that description, which understandably left them very uncomfortable. (Eric Flint’s analysis concluding that this was all a deliberate subtle ploy on Irene’s part to use guilt by association against them gives her too much credit. Like many visual artists, she is a spontaneous writer and not a calculating one.)

Irene has never been known for her diplomacy — I say that as someone who’s knocked heads with her more than once on work-related matters — but I think the reaction to her off-the-cuff statement is more extreme and over-the-top than the statement itself. After all, in the end, it was just one person’s opinion, readily ignorable by those who differ with it. (In fact, it went unnoticed for _weeks_ until someone decided to weaponize it.) It’s _trivial_ compared to Brad and Larry’s premeditated, organized effort to violate a social compact of 60 years standing. If you want to express outrage, that’s where it should properly be applied.
Moshe Feder, Associate Editor, Tor Books

We don’t approve of Mr. Doherty’s statement. We consider it to have been woefully insufficient. And Mr. Feder just happened to leave out the minor fact that Irene Gallo attacked Tor’s customers and described the works written by Tor authors as “bad-to-reprehensible”. The important thing to Mr. Feder, apparently, is repeating and trying to justify the “neo-Nazi” libel of a well-known libertarian.

As for setting a “terrible precedent”, that is downright absurd. Gallo’s firing will not be anything close to a precedent. The SJWs set these ground rules and we have already seen many examples of people losing their jobs for everything from a six-year-old political donation to a single Facebook comment, examples as recent as yesterday.

The principal of North Miami Senior High School has lost his job over his Facebook comment defending the Texas police officer caught on video pushing a teen girl to the ground in an incident at a community pool.

“Miami-Dade County Public Schools employees are held to a higher standard, and by School Board policy, are required to conduct themselves, both personally and professionally, in a manner that represents the school district’s core values.”

In light of these additional provocations by a Tor Books employee, I sent an email to Tom Doherty, Publisher at Tor Books, requesting that he deal directly with the public misbehavior of his Associate Publisher and his Associate Editor. I trust that he will address the situation in a professional and decisive manner.

It should be obvious, at this point, that I am far from the only individual being attacked by his employee,s and that the unpleasantries are not going to end until those employees are held fully accountable for their ludicrously unprofessional actions.

Darrell Schweitzer 
The Puppies are entitled to their literary opinions and tastes, but to my mind any of them who do not repudiate Vox Day are neo-Nazis by association. You are responsible for who you associate with or take as an ally.

Guilt by association. That’s new. Given that precisely zero Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies have repudiated me, apparently we’re supposed to believe that you’re all neo-Nazis too. Meanwhile, SJWs force a Nobel laureate to resign over a single comment:

    A Nobel laureate has resigned from his position as honorary professor at a UK university after he made comments about the “trouble with girls” in science. University College London (UCL) said Sir Tim Hunt – a Royal Society fellow – had resigned from his position within its faculty of life sciences.

    He told a conference that women in labs “cry” when criticised and “fall in love” with male counterparts.

    He told the BBC he “did mean” the remarks but was “really sorry”.

    A statement from the university read: “UCL can confirm that Sir Tim Hunt FRS has resigned from his position as honorary professor with the UCL faculty of life sciences following comments he made about women in science at the World Conference of Science Journalists on 9 June.

    “UCL was the first university in England to admit women students on equal terms to men, and the university believes that this outcome is compatible with our commitment to gender equality.”  


Reddit is dead

Roosh absolutely called this one after Pao was appointed CEO. Ruled by SJWs, Reddit is a dead site walking:

When failed discrimination plaintiff Ellen Pao was appointed CEO of Reddit last January, many predicted that it would herald a new age of censorship on the link-sharing and discussion site. Those predictions appear to have come true, as a number of communities on the site (known as “subreddits”) have just been unilaterally shut down.

The sudden move resulted in the removal of one popular subreddit, /r/fatpeoplehate, which until its closure was the 13th-most active community on Reddit. The subreddit was dedicated to mocking fat people and the “fat acceptance” movement, although it was not known for engaging in any off-site harassment. Other Redditors have cited the subreddit as an important source of motivation to maintain a healthier lifestyle.

The crackdown came after a week of censorship on Reddit, including the mass deletions of links to media stories and even satirical cartoons concerning CEO Ellen Pao. There was also a bizarre incident in which a moderator of a gaming community demanded a user write a 500-word essay on trans acceptance before being unbanned. The user’s crime was using the word “trap”: a common, but not derogatory, term of Internet slang to describe crossdressers. Despite protestations from transwomen who said they were not offended, the moderator refused to relent.

There are early indications that the Reddit admins may have finally crossed the Rubicon on the road to alienating their user base. User activity on their main competitor, Voat.co had been rising steadily since social media censorship became an issue during the #GamerGate controversy, but in the past few hours their figures have skyrocketed.  At the time of writing, there are over 3,700 active users on Voat’s alternative to /r/fatpeoplehate —almost double its number of subscribers.

The lesson that conservatives and even liberals have to learn is that there can be no toleration for SJWs. There can be no support for SJW organizations and institutions. Their entryists must be guarded against. The prideful, self-centered declaration that you are above all cultural war and will nobly go down to graceful defeat rather than dirty yourself by choosing a side doesn’t mean that you have higher ideals and standards, it means that you are observably stupid and self-defeating.

Fence-sitting doesn’t make you a better person. Especially when the fence is in the process of being knocked down by SJW bulldozers.


Yes, but…

A File 770 SJW frets that we won’t be satisfied with Gallo’s resignation:

And “Tor employs people who openly call their authors and their customers Nazis” will be written into the anti-SJW litany to be recited with all the other sins of the enemy as part of the Puppy creed as often as possible, along with others like “John Scalzi was mean to VD” and “They call us wrongfans having wrongfun” and “SWIRSKY!” No matter what happens as an outcome for Gallo, which is why it infuriates me even more that they are trying so hard to get her fired. They would wreck her life and dance in the wreckage and go right on complaining what an awful hive of SJW-ness Tor is.

Well, that all depends on how many SJWs Mr. Doherty and/or Macmillan have the good sense to stop inflicting on science fiction. But (and this is the relevant point), thousands of current customers attacked by Ms Gallo won’t stop buying their books. If Gallo was a fry cook or a sales clerk, she’d be gone already. You don’t show that kind of disrespect and hatred for your customers and keep your job. You simply don’t.

I am under no illusion that anyone at Tor or Macmillan like me or wish to do me any favors. But I do assume that they are capable of doing basic math and grasping the lesson of Fox News. Of course, if they instead decide that they want to play the role of CNN and sell only to the left one-third of the population, well, that is certainly their prerogative.

UPDATE: Mr. Doherty, you clearly have a very serious problem at Tor Books. You need to resolve it. Now.

I am not only not “a neo-Nazi”, but I cannot “fairly be described” as
one. I am, as it happens, one of the Internet’s leading libertarians. One has to be remarkably stupid, or shamelessly dishonest, to claim that a well-known libertarian is a National Socialist of any kind.


Peter Grant issues a second warning

Does Tor really want war to the knife? Peter Grant counsels action:

I’ve been . . . not astonished, really, because I’ve seen it all before, but . . . taken aback, at least, by the depth of ignorance, prejudice and blind, religious-fervor-style ‘group-think’ displayed by many of those arguing in favor of Ms. Irene Gallo’s comments that precipitated the crisis concerning Tor….

Those tactics are not going to work in this case.  I’ve had enough.  So have many other people. Ms. Gallo’s words were the last straw for us, as I explained in my earlier posts.  They’re merely the latest example of a long-standing pattern of behavior by senior employees at Tor.  I’m not joking about my response, either.  I’m willing to give Tor a few days – a week at most – to rectify the situation and deal with all those involved, not just Ms. Gallo.  If the company fails to do so, I will call for a boycott of its products and publications . . . and I won’t do so alone.  I’ve consulted with a large number of fellow authors and other individuals about this over the past few days.  There are some influential figures involved, as Tor may soon find out to its cost.

If that happens, some readers may be surprised to learn how widespread is the anger and bitterness that has built up during the past few months and years concerning the individuals I’ve identified at Tor.  Their conduct and attitudes have become inseparably intertwined in the minds of many – including myself – with the conduct and attitudes of their employer.  We don’t believe they can be separated.  It’s for Tor to prove us wrong . . . but I suspect that’s not about to happen, because to my mind – our minds – Tor really is standing behind them, despite Mr. Doherty’s attempts to distinguish between the company and its senior staff.

I truly hope it doesn’t come to a boycott . . . but if it does, so be it.  We no longer have anything to lose by acting.  Tor, on the other hand, risks losing everything by not acting.  I say that as a former director of companies, with post-graduate business education and a good understanding of the financial pressures on Tor and companies like it.  (Yes, individuals at ‘some companies’ do talk about such things to outsiders, particularly when they’re also angry over what’s happening internally.  The numbers are . . . interesting.)

Your move, Tor . . . for a short time.  I truly hope you make the right one before it’s too late.

The Evil Legion of Evil has not yet called for a boycott by the many Tor customers attacked by Ms Gallo. It has, after all, only been two days since the management at Tor Books learned about her attack on them. But the one thing they must understand is that an apology is not enough. We expect a resignation.

Sooner or later, Ms Gallo will resign. It’s only a question of how much damage Tor Books, and perhaps more importantly, Macmillan, are willing to take first.

Meanwhile, John C. Wright clarifies a previous statement:

A reader asked what I meant when I said, that as a matter of formality, Irene Gallo’s pro forma and possibly insincere apology for her pro-forma and possibly insincerely insult satisfied my sense of honor.

It is difficult for me to explain something that is second nature to me, which is alien to the modern world at every point. In the military, the soldier is obligated to salute the uniform wore by officers of higher rank, not the man wearing it, and the man wearing it is obligated to behave as the uniform requires. The salute satisfies the formality.

An apology satisfies the demand for apology; if the person proffer it did so with deceptive intent, God Almighty, who sees and knows the hearts of the sinners, will punish the falsehood with penalties nightmarish, vehement, absolute, and infinite, that my heart quails to contemplate them. I cannot burn a disembodied soul in hell forever, and neither can I read minds and hearts. Hence, I am not in a position judge the sincerity of an apology, nor do I have the least desire to do so.

Honor is an external thing, a matter of form. If the form is satisfied, honor is satisfied. Refusing an apology on the grounds of it insincerity is a privilege reserved to women.

In the case of Irene Gallo, I do not need any further words from her, nor does she owe me anything more. I look forward to working with whomever Mr Doherty hires to replace her.


The rules of the game

VFM 0007 illustrates why the Supreme Dark Lord does not leave the philosophizing to his minions:

I’m not entirely at ease with this. It doesn’t seem just to demand that she be fired for her personal opinions. Would someone explain how it is, please?

The rules of the game of Cultural War, as defined by the SJWs, is that when a member of the other side is foolish enough to overstep the current PR bounds, their employment is a legitimate target. See: Brandon Eich. Or see: every attempt to DISQUALIFY and expel and blackball and disassociate me for the last ten years. Remember that a single tweeted link to a measured response to a vile personal attack was all it took justify the SFWA witch hunt against me, a witch hunt in which Tor Books Senior Editor and Manager of Science Fiction Patrick Nielsen Hayden not only participated, but co-orchestrated. Note the dates below.

John Scalzi @scalzi
I just renewed my @sfwa membership!
2:18 PM – 14 Aug 2013

P Nielsen Hayden ‏@pnh Aug 14
@scalzi So did I! What a coincidence! @sfwa

If a CEO can lose his job for donating to a successful political campaign in the past, an Associate Publisher can, and should, lose her job for attacking her publishing house’s own authors and customers. That is not only just, it is entirely fair play. It doesn’t matter if Gallo apologizes or not. Eich apologized even though he did nothing wrong and he was still pressured into resigning.

Gallo issued an unapology under pressure from her employer and she will probably end up issuing another one before she eventually resigns. Unless, of course. Mr. Doherty or someone higher up the chain finally does what should have been done yesterday and fires her. If someone at Castalia House were ever to attack our authors or customers in that way, they wouldn’t even be given the chance to apologize. They would be fired on the spot. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly out the door. The fact that neither Mr. Doherty nor Mr. Patrick Nielsen Hayden saw fit to fire Ms Gallo for cause speaks volumes about where their priorities are.

Those priorities, of course, are their prerogative. Unlike Tor Books, everyone at Castalia House, from our volunteers to our Publisher, respects and values our authors. We value every single one of them, even those with whom we inevitably disagree on one issue or another. We value our customers as well, and as those who have had the occasional problem with getting their books delivered know, we go out of our way to take care of them even if the problem is on their end.

The idea of actually attacking them is the polar opposite of our attitude towards our customers. Without our customers, we not only don’t exist, we have no reason to exist. Tor Books appears to have forgotten that.

Stephen Ashby is nevertheless dubious:

You expect a resignation? I can see why you want one, but I don’t see what would lead you to expect it. Personally I expect Tor will simply pretend the matter is dealt with, and if you don’t accept that then they will claim you’re the one being unreasonable.

Absolutely. I expect one because I don’t believe Tom Doherty or Patrick Nielsen Hayden are entirely stupid. If they don’t accept her resignation soon, then I expect Macmillan, who I don’t believe to be stupid in any way, shape, or form, to not only fire Gallo but also remove those executives who have been derelict in their management duties.

The further away one is from the cultural battle in SF/F, the more totally inexcusable Gallo’s behavior appears. Especially from the purely corporate perspective. Not only was Ms Gallo’s attitude and statement in direct conflict with the Macmillan Code of Conduct, it is is direct conflict with one of the most basic rules of business: cherish your customers and treat them with care and respect.

Many of us are waiting to see how Tor is going to respond. If Mr. Doherty thinks his initial statement is sufficient to conclude the matter, he is woefully mistaken. If no further action is forthcoming I expect that more than a few people, myself included, will be publicly endorsing the boycott for which some writers and SF readers have already called.

Mr. Doherty, with the greatest possible respect to you as an individual:  until Tor publicly dissociates itself from the outrageous positions taken by the individuals I have named (all of them), publicly rebukes those concerned, and takes steps to make sure that no such statements are ever again made by senior members of the company, I shall be unable to believe any assurances that their views are not those of Tor.  Actions speak louder than words – and so does the absence of actions.  All Tor has offered is words.  It’s time for actions.  What is Tor going to, not say, but DO about the situation? – because unless and until it does the right thing, others are going to do what they believe to be necessary and appropriate under the circumstances.

There is very little time left to address these issues before this situation gets out of control.  For the sake of all of us in the SF/F community, I hope Tor uses it wisely.

You can leave your own comments on Mr. Doherty’s statement at Tor.com. And speaking of management duties… Malwyn? It appears #7 wants further instruction in the art of proper minionhood.


An unapology, unaccepted

Tom Doherty, Publisher of Tor Books, disavows Irene Gallo’s views, but does absolutely nothing to resolve the situation.

Last month, Irene Gallo, a member of Tor’s staff, posted comments about
two groups of science fiction writers, Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies,
and about the quality of some of the 2015 Hugo Award nominees, on her
personal Facebook page. Ms. Gallo is identified on her page as working
for Tor. She did not make it clear that her comments were hers alone.
They do not reflect Tor’s views or mine. She has since clarified that
her personal views are just that and apologized to anyone her comments
may have hurt or offended….

Tor employees, including Ms. Gallo, have been reminded that they are
required to clarify when they are speaking for Tor and when they are
speaking for themselves. We apologize for any confusion Ms. Gallo’s
comments may have caused. Let me reiterate: the views expressed by Ms.
Gallo are not those of Tor as an organization and are not my own views. 
Rest assured, Tor remains committed to bringing readers the finest in
science fiction – on a broad range of topics, from a broad range of
authors.

D. Jason Fleming points out that Irene Gallo, Associate Publisher of Tor.com and Creative Director of Tor Books, didn’t actually apologize and is clearly of the same mind still.

She does
not apologize for impugning the characters of a very large number of
people. She does not apologize for impugning authors who work for her
employer, in particular. She does not apologize for her immaturity in
prancing about demonstrating that she’s not part of a tribe she hates.
She does not apologize for her bigotry in any way, shape, or form.

She only apologizes for the feelings of people who might have been hurt by what she said.

What she said, then, must still stand.

 So what did she actually say?

I don’t know about the rest of the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies she called right-wing extremists and neo-nazis, or the authors she described as writing “bad-to-reprehensible works”, or everyone she called “unrepentantly racist, misogynist, and homophobic”, but as for me, I’m not hurt. So why is she apologizing for nonexistent events she hypothesizes rather than her rank unprofessionalism, her shameless bigotry, and her unprovoked attack on the right two-thirds of SF/Fdom? Especially when she still hasn’t informed us whose works are bad and whose are reprehensible.

I don’t want an apology. I don’t expect an apology.

I expect a resignation.


A Sisyphean task

A File 770 commenter attempts to counteract a common SJW lie:

Pluviann on June 7, 2015 at 3:02 am said:
OK, I usually lurk, but I see people constantly saying that Beale supports acid attacks on women. The original quote for this is from Pharyngula where Beale says:

[F]emale independence is strongly correlated with a whole host of social ills. Using the utilitarian metric favored by most atheists, a few acid-burned faces is a small price to pay for lasting marriages, stable families, legitimate children, low levels of debt, strong currencies, affordable housing, homogenous populations, low levels of crime, and demographic stability. If PZ has turned against utilitarianism or the concept of the collective welfare trumping the interests of the individual, I should be fascinated to hear it.

Beale is not saying: ‘I support acid attacks’.

Beale is saying: ‘Stupid atheists claim to believe in utilitarian ethics, but they are clearly too stupid to follow their own ethics to their logical conclusions, if they did then they would support acid attacks.’

This is a classic example of Beale’s well known rhetorical slipperiness, but I think it’s worth being clear when you quote him. Why say that he believes in acid attacks which is not true, when, from the same quote, you can say that he believes female independence is correlated with high crime or expensive housing? If you say that he supports acid throwing when he doesn’t then you just give him ideological fodder. He can say: ‘See, those silly SJWs are spreading lies about me and don’t understand my position on anything.’

Pluviann is correct of course. Except that I can do rather more than that. I can point out that the evil SJWs always lie and I can prove it by pointing out that they are lying about me again by knowingly misrepresenting my statements and opinions.

In answer to Pluviann’s question, the reason that the SJWs keep lying about this is because accurately representing my statements will not suffice to stoke the outrage they are hoping to inspire. They don’t want to honestly debate the long-term consequences of pro-feminist social policies, they simply want to drum up enough support to shout me down and disqualify me in order to minimize my intellectual influence.

As I have repeatedly said, I do not support acid attacks. I do not support honor killings. I do not support the Taliban’s attack on Malala Yousafzai. Anyone who claims that I support any of those things, or supported any of them at any time in the past, is lying, for the obvious reason that I am neither an atheist nor a utilitarian.

This comment also amused me for reasons that will soon become clear:

Stefan Mitev on June 7, 2015 at 7:43 am said:
Does anyone on the Puppies seriously expect anyone at Tor to listen to them at all after they spent the last few months (and in TB’s case, years) insulting the company, its employees and some of its main authors and accusing them of fixing the Hugos? LOL.

No, we don’t expect anyone at Tor to listen. But we suspect there are those at Pan Macmillan who will.

This comment was considerably more on point:

AV on June 7, 2015 at 7:56 am said:
Disgusting comments by Irene Gallo. Where is your professionalism? Why are you attacking customers and authors of your own publishing house? This is the third bigwig at Tor who took a cheap shot at their own authors and customers. Does anyone there have any common sense? Where the hell is Tom?

It does appear that the inmates are running the Tor asylum of late. They certainly appear to have a creative approach to customer relations.


This is no way to cure a gay man

You have to admire Milo’s dedication to investigative journalism. Talk about suffering for your job! He reviews Mattress Girl’s latest attempt to extend her 15 minutes of fame so we don’t have to see what cannot be unseen:

In preparing for this review, my researcher had to watch Emma Sulkowicz, a.k.a. “Mattress Girl,” perform fellatio on an overweight man eleven times. He tells me that he is now seriously considering homosexuality….  Naturally, Sulkowicz has become a feminist icon. But the activists and bloggers who supported her will be feeling a little uneasier this week, after she peeled back a few more layers on her own deep psychological dysfunction and apparently limitless ego by resorting to that age-old remedy for waning stardom: the sex tape. . . .

It’s telling, I think, that in Sulkowicz’s purported college dorm room there are no books. She has the same lack of interest in aesthetics as she does in intellectual enrichment: both in her choice of sexual partner (apparently satisfactory member notwithstanding) and the grim, bare walls with which she surrounds herself. Though I expect the austerity of her room reflects her barren emotional interior really rather well. You can tell “dad bods” are in fashion because both of the people in this video have one. But you do at least have to give an actress credit for doing nude scenes with a man who has larger breasts than she does. Sulkowicz’s size queendom apparently extends to love handles and leave the viewer sympathetic to the travails of her infamous mattress.

It’s revealing of her vanity that she insists on being filmed from four angles. Every crevasse of her unappealing naked body must be considered. Her congressional interlocutor is a gruesome sight in three dimensions, chosen, probably, to make young Emma look thinner. Which doesn’t work, I’m sorry to say.

All in all, it’s a tawdry, miserable encounter that tells us nothing about sexual assault or sex itself but quite a bit about the quasi-demonic inner workings of one Emma Sulkowicz.

My chief takeaway from all this? DO NOT ACCEPT AN INTERNSHIP AT BREITBART. You might end up working for Milo and who knows what depths of degradation and horror that may involve plumbing.

Also, Mattress Girl may singlehandedly have accomplished what legions of church leaders, upstanding citizens, priests, and moral scolds could not do, and killed Internet pornography. I hear Mercedes Carrera was so scarred by watching the tape that she has retreated to a nunnery and is seriously considering vows.