An Open Letter to Hugo Schwyzer

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From one cis hetero white man to another: Shut the fuck up.

I realize none of this is likely to make much of a difference to you, because you’re not about accountability or criticism. No, not you Hugo. But you’re hurting people. You are being an abuser. You are verbally abusing women of color, and then you apologize and cry about your mental illness and “go away”…but you come back. I think you will always come back so long as you feel like you can get away with it. Because I think you like to feel important. It seems that negative attention is almost as good as positive for you, and maybe there’s that inner abuser that’s really the core of who you are Hugo. Maybe the “real’” Hugo isn’t the man who writes about consent, but is instead the man who tried to kill his girlfriend. I think maybe that is the real you. I think maybe you used your mainstream white handsomeness and your abuser’s facility at bullshit to talk your way into spaces where you could victimize on a grand scale.

None of what I’m saying is new. It’s been said thousands of times. You just have to hope that the people who say it are the ones that you and the people who choose to support you can and will marginalize. You are half-smart, and you know just enough about feminism and social justice to get that slimy little wedge into feminist spaces. Then you wallow around crushing anyone who doesn’t serve your purposes.

This is far from my best writing, Hugo. But I don’t know if you deserve my best. I’m writing this because you make me angry. Because I became a feminist because of people like you – no, stop patting yourself on the back. I became a feminist because of slimy creeps who hurt people. I became a feminist because of callow pieces of human garbage who victimize and destroy and get away with it because they are smiling “nice guys” who say the right things when they get in trouble.

Hugo Schwyzer, I became a feminist to stop people like you. You are the walking, talking incarnation of patriarchy and you just need to shut the fuck up.