The nerve of Jon Ronson

[RoyalCorgi]

Jon Ronson has an interview in the Sunday Times (sorry, no share token) about why the culture wars will soon burn out:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/jon-ronson-interview-the-culture-wars-will-burn-out-soon-8gsj9wrj0

This is a man who failed to stand up for women who were being bullied on social media and being banned from Twitter for standing up for women's rights. He fell out with Graham Linehan over Linehan's support for women's sex-based rights. Far from being a dispassionate observer of the culture wars, he has actively chosen a side - the wrong side.

He does really want to be liked.

A few years ago he would take a strong line on issues that were important to him on social media but not anymore.

As pp said, he's talked about his mental health issues before and I think confrontation and not being in control is a big part of this.

Which might sound strange from an investigative journalist, but his friendly, curious, nonjudgmental persona is a big part of why people talk to him.

Also, he records waaaaay more than airs and the editing of the episodes and heavy use of voiceover gives him very precise control of the narrative.

I don't think I could really guess what his personal views of the stuff like prisons, sport etc is but unfortunately like Neil Gaiman et al the lack of personal skin in the game makes it easy to handwave.

He is pleased the most recent episode hasn't made waves.
I don't know. On the one hand, he has seen first-hand what happened to people who were publicly shamed. On the other, he wants to stay neutral and protect his career and family - which I can and do understand.
Yet, what constitutes free speech and the emergence of cancel culture are a huge part of these culture wars and even if you are interested in origin stories of three decades ago, it doesn't adequately reflect the vitriol happening now and nor was it told warts and all.
David Baddiel's documentary this week on social media's downside was engaging.

He spoke at how angry the gender debate had become but didn't point out that all the angry clips he played were of TRAs shouting and harassing women. Women don't shout abuse at and harass trans conferences and meetings. We believe more in free speech and people being allowed to express different opinions. Intersectional feminism started well but was then used as a way to berate women for not being kind enough and not putting others first and that included transwomen and feminism was back where it started with everyone having to know their place on the privilege hierarchy

He seems to have absolutely no empathy for how natal women feel.

Yet another bloke telling women how to think.

That episode was a bit meh. There was some interesting stuff in it, and if I didn't know anything about it it i would have found it v interesting. But it was shallow and I still don't think ronson understands this well.

It makes me wonder if it's a similarly shallow snapshot in all of these programmes.

Culture Wars are often complex and have many inputs. For each Culture War Ronson takes one strand and one or two individuals, and presents a very narrow interpretation of what happened to create the Culture War and what it's about.

In the case of yesterday's programme, Ronson created a version of the trans Culture War in which it originated in the fight against racism leading to an expanded set of rights and now there are all these Second Wave feminists who are angry about more rights for more people.

He does this to create his own narrative which suppresses inconvenient facts in order to appeal to a particular audience. In the case of yesterday's programme, it doesn't take much imagination to see what kind of story he was intending to get across.

He spoke at how angry the gender debate had become but didn't point out that all the angry clips he played were of TRAs shouting and harassing women.

That is a mad way to frame it considering his programme is literally about Michfest. Michfest is ground zero of TRAs showing up at women's gatherings to shout at and harass them.

The "debate" hasn't got angrier. The "debate" has got bigger. The number of angry shouty males harassing women for having boundaries has got much larger, but the Camp Trans protestors weren't less bad than the ones screaming at women and rattling windows outside women's meetings today. They were exactly the same type of person.

Now that I've put it like that - same degree of anger but a lot more males are displaying it - a disturbing question occurs. Is genderism, as an ideology, causing males to become the type of angry misogynist who stands outside women's gatherings and bangs on the window to harass and intimidate the women inside?

If one of the Michfest organisers had murdered two Camp-Trans attendees and their son, I suspect it would be an important part of this narrative, but Ronson and others don't mention the killing of Michfest attendees Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed and their son Benny Diambu-Wright by Camp-Trans organiser Dana Rivers.
I wonder why not.

Today's episode was about a lost soul, Isaac Kappy, drawn into QAnon conspiracy theories, how it led to his death, and then how then how his death itself became incorporated into the conspiracy theory.

It was an interesting but depressing listen. I can get my head around how some conspiracy theories might appeal to people but how anyone would choose to go for the QAnon one mystifies me.

Now on Radio 4 is the bonus episode where Jon Ronson recaps the series with Louis Theroux. Let's see what they have to say when they get to the out of whack episode about gender identity ideology.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015vfz

The gender identity ideology episode was left in the orphanage and not allowed to come out to meet the (re)visitors.

For some reason Radio 4's PM got him on yesterday to 'explain' America's anti-abortion movement. Apparently it's feminists fault, because we picketed an obscure anti-abortion film, and it snowballed from there. If only we'd stayed at home, eh, ladies?

Jon Ronson is the Jeremy Clarkson of cod pseudo-psychology. Among the many other awful and stupid things he’s said, he also made some awful comments about women in porn. Apparently he’s visited porn sets and all the women seem really happy and as long as everyone seems happy he can’t see a problem with it.

He’s a cretin.

Jon Ronson is the Jeremy Clarkson of cod pseudo-psychology. Among the many other awful and stupid things he’s said, he also made some awful comments about women in porn. Apparently he’s visited porn sets and all the women seem really happy and as long as everyone seems happy he can’t see a problem with it.

He’s a cretin.

Jon Ronson is the Jeremy Clarkson of cod pseudo-psychology. Among the many other awful and stupid things he’s said, he also made some awful comments about women in porn. Apparently he’s visited porn sets and all the women seem really happy and as long as everyone seems happy he can’t see a problem with it.

He’s a cretin

Rather than reminding me of Jeremy Clarkson, Ronson reminds me of Louis Theroux, and in particular how easily Theroux was deceived by Jimmy Savile, when he was best placed to expose him and gain a global scoop.

I always imagine Ronson with an elderly relative who is trying to teach Ronson how to use Google and the Internet in general, for the umpteenth time. Ronson makes little effort it seems to do any proper research on a subject and comes terribly unstuck about it regularly.

His 'Many Different Lives' podcast about Mitchfest stunningly forgot to mention that one of the key trans protesters - Dana Rivers who objected to lesbians having their own music festival, murdered Patricia Wright and Charlotte Reed who had regularly attended Mitchfest, a married lesbian couple, and their 19-year old son, just a few months after Mitchfest gave up. Whether that was an intentional omission on Ronson's part or an indicator that Ronson struggles with performing research isn't clear. It does though cast doubt on his ability to write top-quality work.

I think that's a bit unfair. I heard Ronson's interview yesterday as well as the original Radio 4 programme that he was talking about. His argument was that the anti-abortion film by the father-and-son Christian evangelists set the new anti-abortion movement in train, and the whole thing was given impetus by feminists protesting outside the screenings. Now I've a feeling the whole story might be a bit more complex than that but you can see why feminist protests would be counter-productive: newspapers reported on them, alerting people to the existence of the screenings, thus drawing bigger audiences and more protests, and before long you have a full-on culture war going. I think it's a valuable lesson: much better to ignore people and events you disapprove of rather than draw attention to them.

So we should all wheesht then? When does an anti women movement leave obscurity and become big enough that its safe to stop ignoring it?

His approach of "I've identified the source of all that happened" and then pointing to the things that interested him most reminds me of a poundshop Adam Curtis.

That's a fair point. I think that if the anti-abortion film had been ignored early on it might have died a death of its own accord. Just think of how Life of Brian benefited from the angry mobs and the column inches in newspapers. Or the various controversial ads that have given a product so much publicity. By the same token, I often feel that if we all just ignored Owen Jones, he would eventually fade into insignificance.

Obviously at the point a movement is doing real harm, then you have to fight back against it. But a film being shown to a handful of zealous Christian evangelists isn't actually hurting anyone.

Ha!

I'm sorry but that's an insult to Jeremy Clarkson.

Jon Ronson is a whiney voiced mansplainer who used to write interesting and erudite articles for the Guardian back when it was a good newspaper.

Waking up the thread to mention that Jon is interviewed on the latest edition of Meghan Daum's Unspeakable podcast. Meghan's GC (I highly recommend her podcast with Sarah Haider "A Special Place in Hell' for conversations about feminism, gender, impact of porn etc. ) and tries to interrogate him on it.

Jon's obviously uncomfortable taking about the issue and this episode of the Things Fall Apart podcast, and tries to get out of it but Meghan doesn't let him. They talk about social contagion & children and she outlines a lot of the stats to him etc. He says he doesn't have a "take" on it, I'm not sure I really believe him. He's friends with quite a lot of GCs like Katie Herzog and I suspect leans towards that point of view but wants to appear to be in the centre.

He just doesn't want to stand up for anyone lest he be cancelled like Glinner.

None of them do.

Once their paymasters finally turn he will be all over it. They all will.

Follow the money.

Glinner said Ronson reached out to him to try and patch things up. But after a while he realised it was just a fishing expedition on Ronson's part.