Amy Schumer has made feminism part of her public persona. So why is she blocking feminists on Twitter?
Amy Schumer has made feminism part of her public persona. So why is she blocking feminists on Twitter? Ms. magazine via Wikimedia Commons

Nothing reveals the jerks among us like high-profile allegations of gendered violence. This is what happened over the weekend following news that comedian Aaron Glaser had been banned from New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade theater following allegations of sexual assault from multiple female comedians.

As if that situation wasn’t horrible enough, Kurt Metzger, erstwhile writer for Inside Amy Schumer, latched onto the allegations on social media, and decided to spend plenty of time disparaging rape victims and the people who support them, and generally embodying every “Actually” comment I’ve ever heard a rape apologist use.

Let me be clear: We can have an adult conversation about the delicate balance of listening to victims with respect and compassion while also corroborating allegations and allowing alleged perpetrators a chance to refute those allegations—

Oh, wait, sorry, that’s something journalists covering rape cases need to do. Not the Encyclopedia Browns of gotcha anti-feminism.

What I find most disturbing about Metzger’s ongoing tirade is his apparent disappointment at not being given the details of the alleged assaults:

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“We don’t even get a story.” That’s weird phrasing, isn’t it? It’s one thing to say that corroborating evidence is needed. But it’s another to feel entitled to the details of someone else’s trauma, especially when Metzger is not a journalist or a prosecutor or a police officer or other person vested in Getting to the Bottom of This, but in fact a person whose behavior suggests a shocking level of disdain and disrespect for women. This reads less to me like empathy and a lot more like what might be most charitably called schadenfreude.

Many women comedians and writers took to Twitter to speak out against Metzger, with some encouraging Amy Schumer to fire him from his job as a writer on her TV show.

It seems Schumer responded by blocking many of the accounts these pleas came from and telling people to stop asking her about Metzger. She finally posted this tweet:

…and told Charlie Rose that Metzger is a valuable person to have in the writer’s room:

She also seemed to imply that her show had been canceled. It has not.

I do not envy Amy Schumer right now, although it’s worth pointing out that what she’s facing—finding out that someone you’ve been friends with has likely treated women horribly—is not an aberration but a common enough occurrence if you’re a person with feminist values in a world that rarely adheres to them. Yeah, it’s hard! This is tricky! But I don’t find her half-assed, latecoming apology all that convincing, and her suggestion that people stop asking her about Metzger is even worse—given Metzger’s inflammatory comments, she’s clearly telling the wrong people to be quiet.

Amy Schumer is often upheld as a sort of feminist icon, and this situation shows exactly how bad an idea it is to affix ideology to a celebrity. Schumer may identify as a feminist, but treating her as The Feminist is only going to result in disappointment when we’re reminded that she’s a flawed human who at one point told casually racist rape jokes in her act and has kept Metzger in her retinue, despite reports of his misogyny that have been around for years. It’s unfair to expect perfection from Schumer, but given that she’s spoken out against sexual assault and made feminism such a part of her public persona, her discordant, reticent response to actual harassment shouldn’t be beyond criticism.

5 replies on “I Love You, Amy Schumer, But You’re Wrong”

  1. I listened to Kurt talk about this for over an hour on a podcast today. He apologized for the way he phrased his comments but I have to say I agree with his actual message which he admits he did a huge disservice to in the way he tweeted. That message is that it isn’t appropriate for someone to be blackballed from their career because of one person making an anonymous accusation. The guy who was blackballed was told nothing specific about the accusation, how is he supposed to defend himself if he didn’t do anything when all that the UCB is willing to say to him is 1 or more woman accused you of rape. If he did it he should be in jail, if this is some vindictive spurned lover she shouldn’t be able to ruin his life without any recourse for him.

  2. Econoline you sound like you’re using rationality and therefore should be blackballed yourself! Good day sir! I said good day!

  3. The guy is a dick. He deserves nothing. His apologies are garbage. At his core, he is frightened but unrepentantly shitty.

    Megan! I took a bad stab at satire on twitter and got blocked. Sorry about that, it’s hot and I’m drunk and not very funny.

  4. @spaceman it is kind of weird to me that partly because his comments seem to have been taken out of context and partly because he is famous people almost seem more pitchforky at Kurt who has never been accused of any impropriety with a woman than they would be at an actual rapist. One thing is for sure anyone who doesn’t get why a single anonymous accusation should not be allowed to ruin someone’s life has never been falsely accused of something.

  5. I read all of Metzger’s archived posts to make sure nothing was taken out of context. And while his actual point was there (“let’s not immediately burn someone at the stake ’til more substantial info are established”), it’s buried in giants piles of self-indulgent anger bullshit and language easily interpreted as anti-woman/anti-victim.

    Glaser, as the accused, is entitled to learn more about the accusations. Metzger can just fuck off – or at least learn how to better communicate his thinking to a large audience. I mean, he’s a writer, right? Shouldn’t he be better at that?

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