Known for edgy content
Least surprising news ever: Vice is another hotbed of sexism. No, really?!
One woman said she was riding a Ferris wheel at Coney Island after a company event when a co-worker suddenly took her hand and put it on his crotch. Another said she felt pressured into a sexual relationship with an executive and was fired after she rejected him.
A third said that a co-worker grabbed her face and tried to kiss her, and she used her umbrella to fend him off.
These women did not work among older men at a hidebound company. They worked at Vice, an insurgent force in news and entertainment known for edgy content that aims for millennial audiences on HBO and its own TV network.
Wut? Is Emily Steel kidding? The “edgy” ones are the worst. The “edgy” ones think pushing women around is an important part of being “edgy.” (I think that’s what Al Franken was doing – not so much copping a feel as performing copping a feel, as part of his persona.) The “edgy” ones think women are the enemy of “edgy” and that cool rebellious dudes have to overturn all that Puritan shit about not grabbing people who haven’t asked to be grabbed…except not actually people of course, just women.
But as Vice Media has built itself from a fringe Canadian magazine into a nearly $6 billion global media company, its boundary-pushing culture created a workplace that was degrading and uncomfortable for women, current and former employees say.
Of course it did. So many men think of women as standing for “boundary” while they stand for boundary-pushing. Pushing boundaries is more of a guy thing, it doesn’t have that estrogen vibe.
The settlements and the many episodes of harassment the women described depict a top-down ethos of male entitlement at Vice, where women said they felt like just another party favor at an organization where partying often was an extension of the job.
What stands out about the women’s accounts — in the wake of a public reckoning over sexual assault and harassment by mostly older men — is that the allegations involve men in their 20s, 30s and 40s who came of age long after workplace harassment was not only taboo but outlawed.
That might have surprised me around 2010 or so, but since then? No. We’ve seen far too much of the “edgy” bro culture to be surprised now. The fact that sexual harassment is taboo and outlawed is just all the more reason to push that boundary, mofo.
“The misogyny might look different than you would have expected it to in the 1950s, but it was still there, it was still ingrained,” said Kayla Ruble, a journalist who worked at Vice from 2014 to 2016. “This is a wakeup call.”
Wakeup call number 475,823,659.
“Heyyy we’re just sex positive over here, what’s with all this kink shaming??”
Yer old-fashioned gentlemanly chivalrous types would behave better than edgy hipsters.
At no time would this have surprised me. I have been working around millennials ever since the millennials were old enough to go to school, and have not been impressed that they have done so much to be more tolerant. I think they are better at reporting themselves tolerant, but actually performing it? Not in my experience. In fact, almost all the young men I know have mansplained me, have belittled the experience of women, have trotted out nonsense about women’s brains, or have just ignored or demeaned women.
The thing is, we’ve been focused on big names that are sexual predators. It takes quite some time to become that big a name. Now that we’re starting to broaden out, we realize that the problem is deeper and wider and more vile than we ever realized.
My 20-something nephew has become an absolute MRA on automatic pilot, constantly spouting nonsense and gibberish; he has now unfriended most of his female relatives on Facebook because they refuse to cater to his nastiness and “admit” what losers they are. The sad thing is he has felt it necessary to unfriend only ONE of his male relatives – my son. While I am delighted how my son turned out, it simply reinforces why I wanted to get out of my family so badly. Each generation of the family has gotten more conservative, more racist, more misogynistic, and more anti-intellectual. I guess I’m an atavism.
Argh, what a nightmare. I’m sorry.
Good call about Franken, at least as far as that photo of boob-grabbing went.
The thing is, Al Franken’s Al Franken persona was supposed to be an obnoxious, self-centered jerk. His audience was expected to realize that. The sorts of men who enact sexual “edginess” in both comedy and real life expect admiration for it, because, as you say, Ophelia, they think they’re being cool and rebellious. Mommy ain’t tellin THIS bad boy what he can’t do, no ma’am.
It’s too bad women are generally too small to safely fight back. It would be cool and rebellious and push quite a few boundaries if manhandled women kicked a few sets right up the inguinal canal.
“I’ll show you edgy!”
Oh hey, who else was reminded of Richard Carrier by this piece?
Our culture rewards snakes. Financially and sexually.