Perspective: Did he just harass you or are you imagining it? You might be a victim of 'crasslighting.'
By Monica Hesse Monica Hesse Style reporter Email Bio Follow Columnist May 9 at 9:00 AM As #MeToo stories go, Talia Jane’s latest was depressingly typical. Earlier this week, the Brooklyn-based writer was exchanging direct messages on Twitter with a male journalist. After ostensibly offering career advice, he abruptly pivoted: “Anyway, you’re so beautiful,” he typed. And then: “Anyway you are hilarious.
I’m not naming the man, but Jane did, after some deliberation. She publicly shared images of their exchange to her followers on Twitter, and then revealed his identity: Turns out he’s a well-known Seattle Times reporter. Jane also shared her take on his “that wasn’t intended for you” excuse: “Feigning oopsie is pretty typical in sexual harassment,” she wrote.“When I was 19 a manager in his 40s asked me out on a date and told me if I said no . . . he’d sack me,” one woman wrote.
When I called Jane on Tuesday, she told me his subsequent messages — “If I were you, I would kill me” he wrote, before begging that he needed to protect his marriage — frustrated her as much as the original messages. She sensed that he expected her to reassure him that she would stay silent, and that it wasn’t a big deal.
One friend told me about receiving unwanted naked pictures from an acquaintance who later said his phone had been hacked. She doubted it — the words accompanying the photos sounded like his usual texts — but tamped down suspicions. Then, more naked pictures. Re-hacked, he insisted.Another acquaintance talked about a professional associate who regularly sent texts containing the word “foreskin,” and then blamed auto-correct.
When I first sought out examples of crasslighing, one social media correspondent heatedly pointed out that texts accidentally go to the wrong people all the time. And that’s absolutely true. I once sent a flirty email to a colleague confirming vacation plans — a message meant for my husband.
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