pained complicity in the texts exchanged between Manafort’s daughters

[sciatrix]

Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort’s Hacked Texts - Los Angeles Review of Books

A characteristic arc of the #MeToo-era story is that it begins in innocence, travels through serial abuses of power, and finally (and most importantly) ends. My relationship with the abuser is over. I left him. I left that professional situation. I realized I was being abused. I went to therapy. It’s over. It’s done. I never saw him again. These are stories of survival, escape, resolution, and catharsis.

Life rarely works so neatly, however. The cultural predominance of such narratives can be attributed to a willingness of people to speak only once they are safely finished with a professional or personal relationship. We lack ways to unravel the intricate complicities negotiated when experiencing or witnessing ongoing abusive behavior in the family, in the workplace, among our social networks.

A friend of mine sent me this long and thoughtful article, on allegations I had not seen regarding Paul Manafort pressuring his wife to participate in dubiously consensual semi-private cuck scenes with multiple black men hired to participate. (The allegations are from the hack of their daughter Andrea's texts, deriving mostly but not entirely from conversations with her sister.)

Even if US Politics isn't your current thing, though, I think the piece is interesting as a broader discussion of the way that media handles (and has in the past handled) sexual assault allegations, coercion allegations, and allegations of sexual misconduct--and it does grapple with how to handle things like this allegation, which happened a) without the participation or endorsement of the victim, b) comes along with very racially charged asides that inform the accused's political behavior, c) would have cost the victim much to bring up, including loss of face and possibly loss of livelihood, and d) has been almost startlingly untouched for months despite the scandalous nature of it. What's the media's role and responsibility when things like this come up?

As a total aside, I am also fascinated by the convention of rendering texts rather like lines of poetry, both in the blockquoted presentation of larger conversations and quotations of a few texts at a time.

Comments

[notasupervillain]

I don't know much about this as an issue for the public or politics. But I've had friends who are abused and friends who are abusers. So I've got a take.

I think someone who knows about abuse has to responsibilities, to the victim and to the community. To the victim, part of the responsiblity is to avoid taking away their agency. If they choose to stay, or participate, or whatever they need to do, I can't be the reason they stop. And while I won't sacrifice my own well-being, I'll do what I can to support the person living the life they choose. I won't shame them for staying. Abuse works by shame and isolation. I don't want to add to that. I don't think it would help an abused person get out.

Now, if Manafort was doing this to other women, the responsiblity would change. Or if anyone in the world didn't know what a POS he was and could be taken advantage of by him for the first time. In that case, there's a need to protect the community. I don't see that either of those apply here, but maybe I'm being naive.

That's how I approach the situations in my own life, anyway.

[sciatrix]

I am in three to four minds about all of this myself, but if I was going to argue in response...

Well, okay. The specific thing Manafort was pressuring his wife into is also a really racist implementation of kink; there's a long history of that kind of sexual and racial politics on the part of white men tying directly to things like lynching and control of "their" women and so forth. So knowing that he is into this scenario hard enough to be pushing his wife as an unwilling (to any extent) participant in it says some extremely bad things about his character and informs his positions on racially influenced aspects of his professional work as a campaigner and politician.

What this gets into is that it is also obviously racist enough to potentially sway or put off people who might otherwise be going "well, but did he mean it?" because it's so egregious a scenario of him, yes, meaning it. It's also something that informs his character on a deeper moral level than focusing purely on his governmental accomplishments, and something that can't be washed away as easily as "intent". Does the knowledge that someone engages in private abuse inform the judgement we apply to their public actions? Because for the powerful, I think that the range of people who could be taken advantage of by him suddenly widens considerably, and the ability to share the information in a timely way to everyone affected likewise diminishes.

[notasupervillain]

I don't actually mind the racist part of it. As someone who hopefully has a decent track-record of opposing racism, I firmly believe that we can't choose our kinks. And if done in a safe, sane and consentual way, I don't care what you do. (NB some things cannot be done in a safe, sane, consentual way, and if someone has one of those kinks, I have a lot of pity for them.) If you're into watching a black guy bang your partner, it might say thinks about the society that was wired into your psyche when you were young enough to form predictions. I don't think that means you can't be woke.

Manafort coerced someone into fulfilling his kink. That's very different, and that's not cool at all. But I'd be just as opposed to it if his kink was blowjobs.

[hellofriendsiminthedark]

I'm saving this in a new tab to give proper attention to it later, but thank you for sharing! This seems like it will be a particularly good read, and I hope it will touch upon some of the issues that I already have with the #metoo movement (which largely relate back to the flaws already inherent with global, widespread, mainstream, sound bite, technologically-based movements).

[staranise]

I mean, to some degree, it's Paul Manafort, the torturer's lobbyist; he hasn't got much more face to lose.

On the other hand... WHAT THE FUCK. I'll check back in with you when I've picked up the bits of my brain from where the explosion sent them.

[lokifan]

This is a great piece - I came back to the tab at great length, glad I did. And yeah, the fact that no one's cut ties makes it complicated and also important (even as it's weird to discuss these dynamics when we learnt them through hacking, and it's not like the Manafort women committed crimes like Paul.) Because that's what so often happens, and is so little discussed.