HOW DO YOU SPEAK ABOUT WOMEN TOGETHER WHEN WOMEN AREN'T LISTENING?

just because you think he seems fine doesn't make it so

I was going to respond to this series of comments from Samuel P. Gardner on the recent Facebook post I made about how trombonist Vanessa Fralick should have never had to do these things she’s had to. Vanessa recently shared her communications with trombone professor Peter Ellefson here on my Substack. That post has 28k views now.

Ryan Erp gave his own account of studying at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music in the comments. He alleges in the comments that Ellefson showed up to college parties drunk, went to strip clubs with students, called women “slam pigs,” and slept with a doctoral student. That’s probably a pretty hard thing to write in public comment, but it is also a significant display of male allyship on Ryan Erp’s part if it’s true.

In response, someone who appears to have gone to IU with Ryan Erp named Samuel P. Gardner calls Ryan Erp a “cuck.” I had to look this word up.

Supporting women, of course, makes you weak and servile. Or supporting women means your wife is sexually unfaithful? I got confused there.

Then Samuel P. Gardner goes on to ask Amanda Stewart (way to talk to a fucking hero, by the way) how well she knows Peter Ellefson, the professor who tried to have a relationship with Vanessa Fralick. Samuel P. Gardner is “also curious” if I know him.

And this is what I want to talk about today. That is why I am writing a whole separate post instead of a simple comment.

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People can behave badly toward women and you can be a man and not see it. You might not see it because going to strip clubs and calling women “slam pigs” is normal to you. Maybe sleeping with students is normal to you also. But even if it’s not, you still might not see it. And I know this is going to be a hard one to believe, but are you ready? Men often behave differently toward and around other men than they do toward women.

It’s like a bunch of white people on a tenure review committee saying there was no racism in a decision to let a Black person go. Well, really? How do they know? How do they know what the environment they created was like for that Black person? Wouldn’t it make more sense to listen to the Black person about the impact of racism?

When I went public in my EEOC charge about the way the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concertmaster, Jonathan Carney, had treated me, even women made similar comments. “I’m a woman and I’ve been alone with him in rooms and he’s been a total professional.” But here’s the thing: your experience and my experience can both be true. People who behave badly toward women don’t behave badly towards all women all the time. That’s how they can keep doing it and remain Big Fancy Men.

If you happen to be privileged by your gender or race or anything else in a particular situation, it shows poor logic to think that because your experience with someone was okay that the victim’s experience is false or otherwise worthy of demeaning when they tell their story.

Samuel P. Gardner sees “a lot of flames being fanned but wonder(s) who actually knows the people involved.” Supporting someone telling their story (with receipts, even) is not fanning flames. Chiming in to say that you observed other chilling, misogynist behaviors is not fanning flames. And whether or not you “know” someone is completely irrelevant to how they’ve behaved to someone who is not you.

How am I supposed to know Peter Ellefson? Should I have been drinking with him? Should I have met him at a strip club? Should I have sat on an all-male faculty with him? Played in Big Fancy Orchestras (that’s where he plays most commonly, he says) with him? Watched him play (only first trombone, he says) at the New York Philharmonic, in his teacher, Joseph Alessi’s, chair? (Joe Alessi gave me a great preemptive block some time ago, when he published his crappy comment he later deleted on “The Article.”)

Maybe a better question to these people is, how well do you know him? How well, Samuel P. Gardner, do you know Peter Ellefson? What has your relationship been like? How do you speak about women together when women aren’t listening? I’m genuinely curious.