Porn Professor Hugo Schwyzer Comes Clean About His Twitter Meltdown and Life as a Fraud

[Starry Messenger]

Also a former weekly columnist at TheGoodMen project. He cops to being a complete fraud and fake feminist for attention.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/12/porn-professor-hugo-schwyzer-comes-clean-about-his-twitter-meltdown-and-life-as-a-fraud.html

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But on some level you were telling an audience what they wanted to hear knowing that women were reading it and not men?

Exactly. I always wrote for women but wrote in a really backhanded way where it appeared I was writing for men so that it would not appear too presumptuous and instead it would make me look better. And that required presenting myself as the ideal husband, father, and reformed bad boy.

My point is that I was writing for women because I wanted validation from women. The way to get validation from women was to present an idealized picture of what is possible for men.

Even though you weren’t reaching that standard yourself, did you know any men who were? Or was this entirely a fantasy creation?

I think there were guys who tried harder than I did. But no.

You don’t know any who succeeded?

No. I think there may have been a few who’ve come close, but none who succeeded. We can call this fraudulence or hypocrisy. I wasn’t really interested in other men. I taught a course in men and masculinity, and I cited male authors, but the whole way of designing the course was to get women excited about the possibility for male change, that they would then transfer some of that hope onto me. That is what I was doing.

It sort of sounds like talking a good game to get attention from girls. It doesn’t even sound academic.

For me the motivation was not to get these girls into bed. Sex is only the exclamation point on what you really want. What I am addicted to is affirmation and validation from women. That is what I wanted. That is what this whole thing was set up to get. I didn’t need them to want to fuck me. It made no difference to me if they thought of me as a potential boyfriend or a potential father. What mattered to me is that they had me on a pedestal, that they thought about me. That is the honest truth.

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He's also been in the business of destroying the careers of feminists who criticized him, especially Black women.


http://bitchmagazine.org/post/we-need-to-talk-about-feminism-race-and-hugo-schwyzer

We Need to Talk About Hugo, Race, and Feminism

Social Commentary post by Sarah Mirk on August 12, 2013 - 3:37pm; tagged Hugo Schwyzer, Race, white privilege.
Hugo Schwyzer is a narcissistic blowhole. This week, many of the women whom Schwyzer attacked and villified online over the years have successfully pushed the media frenzy around his recent admission that he's a fraud and an abuser into a bigger, more important discussion about the role that race has played in progressive, feminist media's support of Schwyzer over the years.

Take time to read through all the tweets on #solidarityisforwhitewomen, a hashtag started by Mikki Kendall, where people are posting all sorts of insights about how avowed white feminists can ignore and dimiss people of color—including the years of harassment Schwyzer inflicted, but also on other issues like the wage gap and media coverage.

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[Squinch]

1. I am probably just ignorant, but I never heard of this guy.

The interview makes him sound like he's a leading light in feminism.

Is he? Did I just miss something?

[Starry Messenger]

2. I didn't think I was familiar with him either, but if you follow feminist blogs, you've probably

Seen his work. He's been posted at DU over the years too. I'm on my phone, so it would be hard to post a lot of search results.

He's written for mainstream publications too, wrote a book. He wrote a lot at Jezebel, who extended him an umbrella of credibility long after he'd started to be exposed as a problem in feminist circles.

[Squinch]

3. Glad he's outed himself as a fraud, then. Thanks.

[Dash87]

4. Who the heck is this guy?

Is this another "I was a feminist but it was only to get laid!" guy? I have the feeling most of these are fake or done by bored people who were barely "1/8-assed" 'feminists.' It's a boring cliche at this point, usually pushed by people that actually hate feminists and want to make it seem like no real men would be legitimately interested in feminism.

[Starry Messenger]

5. The Atlantic did a feature on his growing controversial role last year.

Exile in Gal-Ville: How a Male Feminist Alienated His Supporters

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/02/exile-in-gal-ville-how-a-male-feminist-alienated-his-supporters/252915/

On December 24, 2011, feminist writer Hugo Schwyzer was banned from participating in Feministe, an influential feminist site. The outrage was sparked by an interview in which Schwyzer discussed his own checkered past, including consensual sex with his students. Underneath the post, Feministe commenters drew attention to an even more astonishing admission -- in a year-old post on Schwyzer's own site -- that in 1998, while intoxicated, he had attempted to kill himself and an ex-girlfriend.

"Why are you giving this animal a platform?" demanded one Feministe commenter. "There are three-and-a-half billion women on this planet with inspiring, thought-provoking stories and insights to share, and you choose instead to promote the self-serving rhetoric of a narcissistic sexual predator."

Oddly enough, this outrage came just days after Schwyzer had proclaimed his solidarity with the feminist movement by withdrawing from an online magazine called The Good Men Project. As its name suggests, the site was built around a simple question -- "What does it mean to be a good man?" -- and Schwyzer had welcomed the opportunity to preach his brand of feminism to a mostly male audience. But on December 14, 2011, the site's founder, Tom Matlack, published a piece called "Being a Dude Is a Good Thing" in which he argued that men and women were fundamentally different, and that women refused to "accept men for who they really are." It wasn't "ethically possible," Schwyzer wrote on his site, "to remain silent while the site with which I am now best associated took an increasingly anti-feminist stance."

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He came up in discussion with a friend of mine in a talk we were having about how people often take the side of an abuser, long after their credibility should have flushed them from the social circle they were invading and bullying.

We've also talked on DU about the role men should play in feminism. This spectacular twitter meltdown has brought the discussion to the blogosphere again.