Glenn Greenwald calls it “special pleading,” the sudden recognition and concern for a wrong when it touches you or yours.

The objections voiced by Roiphe to this list are ones that have been expressed by many genuine supporters of the #MeToo movement: namely, the accusations it contains are unvetted and unverified; anyone can add accusations on the list while remaining completely anonymous; and because the list purportedly was intended never to be published (a claim Roiphe questions), those accused of misconduct may never know that they’ve been accused and, in all events, have no ability to challenge or dispute the accusations made against them, ones which could nonetheless severely harm their reputations or even destroy their careers. Roiphe’s objection to the list is, in essence, one of due process: It enables people to be punished with no evidence of guilt, no guarantor of reliability, nor any meaningful opportunity to contest the accusations.

But, as Greenwald notes, with some amazement, Katie Roiphe’s attempt at analogy to a make-believe list of Muslims reveals her special pleading. The list is real, called the “no fly list,” and she doesn’t even know it exists. How sincere could she be about due process? 

Roiphe’s long Harper’s article may well be special pleading, but that neither blunts its content nor distinguishes her from an even longer line of people seizing upon due process when it serves their interest, and abandoning, if not rejecting, it when it does not.

Being the anti-politically correct feminist, because announcing one’s feminist cred is mandatory, even if inadequate to legitimize one’s opinion, Roiphe offers some anecdotal communications she’s received from women who have been silenced by their fear of the mob. It includes such things as:

I think “believe all women” is silly. Women are unreliable narrators also. I understand how hard it is to come forward, but I just don’t buy it. It’s a sentimental view of women. . . . I think there is more regretted consent than anyone is willing to say out loud.

I have never felt sexually harassed. I said this to someone the other day, and she said, “I am sure you are wrong.”

I think #MeToo is a potentially valuable tool that is degraded when women appropriate it to encompass things like “creepy DMs” or “weird lunch ‘dates.’” And I do not think touching a woman’s back justifies a front page in the New York Times and the total annihilation of someone’s career.

Roiphe’s purpose was to show that not all women are victims. Not all women are outraged. But the ones who aren’t are afraid of saying so for fear of the backlash on social media. Just as some women have gone on about the attacks they’ve endured from men for their feminism, these women were silenced by the fear of attack from women for failing to be adequately outraged.

Much as Greenwald may be right that this isn’t a principled concern with due process, but rather vindication of the interests of moderate feminists against their more radical and oppressive sisters.

It would be one thing if collapsing the continuum of bad behaviors happened only in moments of overshoot recognized by everyone. But I am afraid that this collapse is an explicit part of this new ideology.

As much as this may be mere special pleading, this is hardly a new phenomenon. Is anyone shocked that people come to recognize due process when it’s their ox being gored? Is it you? Your loved one? Your ideology? A fairness wave washes over you, opening your eyes to propriety of due process. What about my voice? What about my opportunity to defend? What about my right to challenge, to question, to doubt, to demand proof?

And as night follows day, Michelle Goldberg responds to Roiphe in her New York Times column:

Some of the sentiments Roiphe describes are similar to things I’ve said in private conversations myself. I understand the hesitation to say them publicly, because it’s unpleasant to be jeered at on the internet by self-righteous young people. But Roiphe, like the Trump rally-goers, makes a category error in conflating criticism — even harsh, ugly criticism — with oppression. The social justice left is often accused of putting feelings over facts. But its critics, in many cases, are just as unwilling to distinguish feeling silenced from actually being silenced.

Aside from likening her enemy to Trump rally-goers, because everyone who strays from the orthodoxy voted for Trump, Goldberg’s belly-flop is every bit as disingenuous as it seems, her bit of special pleading. Apparently, she has the capacity to distinguish “feeling silenced” from “actually being silenced,” but only pulls it out when it serves her cause.*

Greenwald, whether you agree with him or not on any given issue, has demonstrated a principled concern for due process, regardless of which team gets its benefit at any given time. His point, that the epiphany arises only when it touches your world, has long been a truism. Much as Roiphe’s exposition on the excesses of the #MeToo mob may strike home on the damage being done to due process, she hasn’t earned the right to be a due process hero. That doesn’t make her wrong, if only in this instance, but she gets no more credit than she’s due.

More disconcerting is the realization that Goldberg can figure out the error of her ways when it suits her, but doesn’t care. She’ll pull out logic to attack Roiphe, but then abandons it the moment it no longer serves her cause.

This is important to remember, because social media can obscure the power dynamics of the offline world. It’s democratizing up to a point, for good and ill — it can give a platform to traditionally marginalized people, and allows all of us to be judged and insulted by masses of strangers. But influence on Twitter doesn’t necessarily translate to influence elsewhere.

The irony is that #MeToo is nothing but a twitter hashtag, and it’s cost quite a few men their jobs without benefit of due process. For those of us whose concern for due process is principled, that fundamental procedural fairness is due everyone, good or bad, male or female (and everything in between), black, white, brown and blue, the gambit played invariably seems to rely on the contention that “heads, I win, tails, you lose.”

Glenn Greenwald is right that this is merely special pleading. As it’s always been. People only discover the virtue of due process when it touches them. Otherwise, they have no use for it as it only gets in the way of achieving their goals.

*To her credit, at least she can muster the argument, even if hypocritical. Too many believe too passionately to realize their posturing is irrational and their screaming names at the heretics makes them the hysterics they insist they’re not.