On 31 July, a Twitter user tweeted out a thread about historian and ex-journalist Eisen Teo, highlighting his past conviction for raping a minor and calling for others to unfollow him and to stop giving him a platform. Teo responded quickly, posting a letter from his attorneys calling for the Twitter user to take her tweets down and refrain from tweeting about him in the future.
His argument was that he had already completed his sentence in prison and should not be further punished for his crime by losing the platform that he had built over the past few years after he was released from prison. The letter railed against his perceived “cancellation”, emphasizing that past offenders are discriminated against and arguing that the series of tweets similarly discriminate against him, especially when he already feels guilty.
The thing is, serving his 18 months in prison or his feeling guilty doesn’t just wipe out his offence like that. He doesn’t magically stop being a rapist. He will have to carry that label with him for the rest of his life, and the Twitter user was simply highlighting what was already public knowledge. From what I understand, his legal case is… shaky at best. It’s not slander if it’s verifiably true and very easily Googled. But that’s not the main point here.
Yes, I believe in second chances. I don’t think he should be thrown into prison for the rest of his life with no hope of being released. But there’s a very big gulf between “not in prison” and his current position, where he has a sizable platform (3000 followers on Twitter, for instance) and has even published a book in the past year.
Why is it that powerful people love playing the victim? What’s infuriating is that his crime involved him taking advantage of his position to groom and rape a minor; he clearly has not taken time to reflect on the power he wields as a slight discomfort has sent him scurrying back to exploiting power dynamics again, taking advantage of his position and privilege to intimidate the Twitter user to take down their tweets. To put out a letter from his lawyers that claims to not be “any attempt to intimidate” that, furthermore, ends with a threat of “further action” if the tweets were not deleted reeks of someone who knows very well the privilege he has in his current position and how to wield it to keep himself in that position. The supposed guilt that he’s tortured by isn’t particularly apparent here either.
His lawyers’ letter also brought up the idea of “cancel culture” and how it has gone too far. It’s a cruel, deliberate misunderstanding of “cancellation” — Teo, through his lawyers, presented it as a baseless attack on his newfound credibility, an affront toward his attempts at becoming a better person. Personally, I find his crime very hard to forgive because I find that grooming and raping a minor is… not just a small mistake one makes, but a very deliberate series of actions. But that’s just me. Whether he can return to life in the public sphere is not for me to decide; more crucially, it’s not for him to decide either. He has every right to attempt to return to life in the public sphere, but he has no right to decide for anyone whether the public accepts him or demand forgiveness. The Twitter user in question was simply raising awareness of his past conviction for people to judge — it’s very understandable that many people would want to have this crucial piece of background information before they decide if they want to continue interacting with and propping up his platform on Twitter. The call to deplatform him is not akin to stripping him of his rights — it’s fair and very valid that there are many people who feel unsafe with his continued existence in spaces like Twitter.
Why is it always people in positions of power who complain about “cancel culture” and not having a platform, from the tone-deaf Harper’s letter that was published a couple weeks back to Xiaxue complaining about advertisers withdrawing after her racist and xenophobic views were criticized? He should not be in the center of the narrative here. What about survivors of sexual assault who have had to remove themselves from such spaces exactly because convicted rapists like Teo are still active in such spaces, with a significant platform to boot?
Besides, cancel culture definitely isn’t working the way detractors like to strawman it to look like — a veritable brigade of Teo’s supporters emerged on Twitter after he posted the lawyers’ letter, fluffing his ego while going after anyone who expressed distaste at his actions. No one’s trying to ruin his life. If he loses the platform he has built these past few years, it’s because he RAPED A MINOR so that’s really on him. I couldn’t care less about him. I’m more concerned with how this is but the latest example of powerful people trying to not be held accountable for their wrongs, and a true reckoning might be further away than I hoped.