Former New York AG Eric Schneiderman is the latest in a long line of male feminists to be exposed for serial sexual misconduct. Oh, and a female feminist too. Ezra Levenveen explains why feminists love him and why they should be worried about him.
00:03:27.340Now, as his prominence as a voice against sexual misconduct has risen, so too has the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters.
00:03:38.520They accuse Schneiderman of having subjected them to non-consensual physical violence.
00:03:43.380All have been reluctant to speak out, fearing reprisal.
00:03:45.880But two of the women, Michelle Manning-Bearish and Tanya Selvaratnam, have talked to the New Yorker on the record because they feel that doing so could protect other women.
00:03:55.700They allege that he repeatedly hit them, often after drinking, frequently in bed, and never with their consent.
00:04:02.900Manning-Bearish and Selvaratnam categorized the abuse he inflicted on them as assault.
00:04:08.100They did not report their allegations to the police at the time, but both say they eventually sought medical attention after having been slapped hard across the ear and face and also choked.
00:04:19.460Selvaratnam says that Schneiderman warned her he could have her followed and her phones tapped.
00:04:25.900And both say that he threatened to kill them if they broke up with him.
00:04:31.960These are prominent, credible, successful women.
00:04:33.920They are not suing and they are not trying to shake him down.
00:04:36.460They are not like Stormy Daniels, they are not milking the celebrity, they are not cashing in.
00:04:41.200They are just fed up by the extreme hypocrisy and so are two more women who are still too afraid to go public in their own name.
00:04:49.900A third romantic, former romantic partner of Schneiderman's told Manning-Bearish and Selvaratnam that he also repeatedly subjected her to non-consensual physical violence.
00:04:59.800But she told them that she is too frightened of him to come forward.
00:05:03.700The New Yorker has independently vetted the accounts that they gave of her allegations.
00:05:08.800A fourth woman, an attorney who has held prominent positions in the New York legal community, says that Schneiderman made an advance toward her.
00:05:16.200When she rebuffed him, he slapped her across the face with such force that it left a mark that lingered the next day.
00:05:24.180She recalls screaming in surprise and pain and beginning to cry and says that she felt frightened.
00:05:30.640She is asked to remain unidentified but shared a photograph of the injury with the New Yorker.
00:05:37.260Is there any male feminist who is not an abuser?
00:05:41.920Seriously, actually, I think it's the other way around.
00:05:43.480Is there any abuser who hasn't yet figured out that it's smart to call yourself a male feminist?
00:05:49.560I don't think that Gian Gomeschi started off as a male feminist and became an abuser.
00:05:54.680I think he gamed the system and decided to be a feminist as cover and for access to women.
00:06:00.420I think that's the case for these liberal Democrat feminists.
00:06:02.800They figured out being a liberal Democrat feminist was the place to be, like a molester deciding to join Boy Scouts or to sign up to work for the TSA to grope people at an airport.
00:06:14.980If you doubt my theory, listen to what some of the victim's friends told her, again from the story.
00:06:21.820After the former girlfriend ended the relationship, she told several friends about the abuse.
00:06:25.940A number of them advised her to keep the story to herself, arguing that Schneiderman was too valuable a politician for the Democrats to lose.
00:07:12.940Do you doubt Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy and Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein and all the rest of them said exactly the same thing?
00:08:16.980She recalls sometimes he'd tell me to call him master and he'd slap me until I did.
00:08:27.260Selvaratnam, who was born in Sri Lanka, has dark skin and she recalls that he started calling me his brown slave and demanding that I repeat that I was his property.
00:08:38.040So he's racist, he has slave master fantasies, he beats women, he makes them call him master.
00:08:46.880This was in the story in The New Yorker that was public, but Bill de Blasio still didn't want to comment because it was a political ally of his.
00:08:55.820Well, this morning, here's the CNN story.
00:08:59.440So this is more than 12 hours after the original.
00:09:01.420Well, the shocking downfall of Eric Schneiderman won't help Trump for long.
00:09:08.140I'm sorry, what does this have to do with Trump, you kooks?
00:09:13.340I mean, yes, of course, Schneiderman was an anti-Trump extremist, of course.
00:09:40.080I mean, you know that if a politician is in a scandal and they don't tell you his party affiliation in the headline, you know he's a Democrat.
00:09:47.780It's just the iron law of the media party.
00:09:50.380But now let me tell you a story from Canada, because I said I had a story about a female feminist, too.
00:09:55.500This one, Christine Moore, an NDP member of parliament from Quebec.
00:10:03.300Moore keeps complaining about sexual harassment wherever she goes.
00:10:06.780She was into Me Too before it was a thing.
00:10:09.200Except it seems to be a bit fuzzy with her.
00:10:28.720She's powerful in a way, with access to much more power.
00:10:31.840But she kept getting into girl trouble, would you call it?
00:10:36.680Here's a Toronto Star article about an NDP member of parliament who had sex with a liberal member of parliament named Massimo Passetti.
00:10:44.340And then after the fact said she didn't like it very much, it wasn't explicitly consensual, and got that MP, that liberal MP, that man, kicked out of parliament.
00:10:56.660I'm going to read a fair bit of this story because it's just so insane.