Eichy! Welcome back to the wall of Penguin. Glad you enjoyed the article.
My beef isn't with Katie per se, she's an excellent writer and very compelling but that's sort of the point. Mark Larsen, in a comment on this wall, put his finger on what I failed to articulate in this piece. It's not that Katie is wayward in her thinking or incredibly off-base in much of what she writes - it's the lack of dissent. Here's what Mark wrote...
Interesting discussion if it’s fair to compare Jgln here. It’s an asymmetrical comparison, but gender has some asymmetrical problems. Men writing into bro chambers generally have to own being assholes. Women writing into feminist echo chambers can sell themselves as heroes. Dismantling patriarchy, inspiring women and protecting feminism from unwarranted criticism. The worst part is Jgln is a bright, talented writer, surrounded by awful incentives. Her mix of feminism and faux feminist is hard to argue with. But any space that systematically shuts down polite disagreement is destined to become more biased and less feminism.
That in a nutshell is what's wrong with Katie. It's not Katie... in the same way it's not really Andrew Tate.... both are separately symptoms of a wider disconnect. Tate is the sort of symptom that feels like a broken leg... because it's like 'fuck me, something is wrong' - whereas Katie is akin to pins-and-needles. It might be nothing, but it might be something - and if it's something, we should probably do something now.
Annoyingly, Katie has now blocked me... (I hadn't realised before now) but this demonstrates more succinctly what I'm trying to say. If nobody is ever allowed to disagree, if nobody is ever allowed to dissent no matter how carefully they frame their arguments, then the conversation goes nowhere. Katie is an excellent writer, very talented and her growth on Medium has been explosive - but she's been incentivised towards tub-thumping and echo chambers and that's bad news for the wider world.
I'm fast becoming the most unpopular bird on Medium. Still.... that's all part of the fun :o)
