Given that CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is a prominent and trusted member of the anti-Trump partisan squad, some liberals have dared to defend him after co-workers caught him allegedly masturbating during a company Zoom call — but #MeToo activist Rose McGowan has told them all to think before they speak.
In a tweet on Tuesday, McGowan said that if a conservative or even a liberal woman were caught masturbating on Zoom call, they would be “burned at the stake.”
“Can you all imagine if a conservative woman was caught masturbating on an [sic] @zoom meeting like #MeToobin? If it had been a liberal woman? If it had been a WOC [woman of color]? … [D]o you think there’d be liberal ‘intellectuals’ rising to defend her? She’d be burned at the stake,” McGowan tweeted.
McGowan was responding to a tweet from Adrienne Lawrence of The Young Turks, who said, “With #MeTooBin trending, I have a few thoughts: 1. Masturbating at work is neither normal nor acceptable — it’s sexual harassment. 2. Individuals who engage in sexual harassment should suffer professional consequences. 3. These Toobin defenders are telling on themselves.”
Can you all imagine if a conservative woman was caught masturbating on an @zoom meeting like #MeToobin? If it had been a liberal woman? If it had been a WOC? @AdrienneLaw do you think there’d be liberal ‘intellectuals’ rising to defend her? She’d be burned at the stake. https://t.co/MoTkmOF70T
— Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) October 20, 2020
Various media personalities have either tacitly defended Toobin by acting like he was unfairly sidelined or sharply defended him by characterizing the backlash as a result of society’s prudishness. Writing at New York Daily News, Jonathan Zimmerman argued that the scandal was really about “our collective unease with masturbation.”
So let’s suppose Jeffrey Toobin had been caught on camera having sex with a partner instead of touching himself. Would he be the most mocked man in the United States right now?
Of course not. And, putting aside Toobin’s history of bad sexual judgment, that’s what this pseudo-scandal is really about: our collective unease with masturbation. We Americans love to talk — and talk, and talk — about sex. But there’s one topic that remains taboo, and Toobin is paying the price for it.
Unless you live on another planet, you already know the outline of this grim tale. On Monday, the New Yorker suspended Toobin — one of its best-known authors — after he was seen masturbating during a Zoom work call. In an interview with Vice magazine, Toobin said he didn’t realize his video was on.
CNN host Brian Stelter seemed to suggest that Jeffrey Toobin was unfairly “sidelined” after the New Yorker suspended him for reportedly masturbating on a company Zoom call. In a tweet on Monday, Stelter characterized Toobin’s undoing as a deeply unfortunate circumstance in light of the current election, as if a beloved member of the “Never Trump” team had been benched before the big game.
“Jeffrey Toobin has been sidelined at a pivotal moment in the run-up to the presidential election,” tweeted Stelter. “The reason: He exposed himself during a Zoom call with New Yorker colleagues in what he says was an accident.”
Toobin said that he believed the video camera was off at the time of the incident.
“I made an embarrassingly stupid mistake, believing I was off-camera. I apologize to my wife, family, friends and co-workers,” he said in a statement to Vice. “I believed I was not visible on Zoom. I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video.”
Related: CNN’s Brian Stelter: Jeffrey Toobin ‘Sidelined At A Pivotal Moment’ During Election