Claire Lehmann's dubious priors.
Pre Quillette, Claire Lehmann attacked and destroyed a male friend who criticised feminism by accusing him of misogyny. Quillette then went on to defend James Damore for exactly the same thing.
A story in pictures with commentary below. The screenshots show the beginning of a discussion about feminism on a small but highly influential academic Facebook forum I created called Darwinian Gender Studies. Claire Lehmann was one of my moderators. One member is very critical of feminism and Claire joins the conversation accusing him, not only of misogyny in this discussion but of being a misogynist personally. This man had been a good friend of Claire’s for years and this attack came out of the blue. This was in 2015, just before she left to launch Quillette. Claire could just have left with everyone’s blessing, instead she went scorched earth. Decide for yourself. That’s what this is for.
Endnotes:
Peter was in a bad mood that day. He’d recently split up with his girlfriend.
This occurred 17th October 2015. Claire had just announced she was setting up Quillette.
Claire had been a member for around five years, I cannot say exactly as she came back after this flounce and deleted alot of her posts. She was one of my moderators for most of that time. Peter too was a moderator and we were all (we believed) great friends. I believe she caused such a drama in DGS as she left in an attempt to destroy it so she would not have to tell people that this was the place that inspired Quillette. Indeed, in a later interview with Jordan Peterson, she was asked where she had been and what her inspirations had been. She lied bu commission, telling Peterson that she’d just been on Twitter.
Peter was devastated by this attack. He withdrew from academia. The DGS forum was a small community with many of the world’s top academics as active members. He has, I think it is accurate to say, never recovered. He had thought Claire a friend before this.
It's fair to say I was pretty heartbroken too. I loved and trusted Claire. She had offered to be my and my son’s sponsor should we move to Australia, as I was trying to escape a toxic relationship at the time…
(I’d deleted the post above as I didn’t want my estranged partner to see it)
…But I loved all my admins. We were a family and I could not throw Peter under the bus. Holding up to that principle has cost me dearly in terms of a career as a writer. I’ve removed personal chatter from the following.
from this, to…
One post that is missing (deleted by Claire I imagine) is one that, with hindsight, I should have seen what was coming. Her then PhD supervisor mentioned “Claire’s hypothesis about feminism being the arena for female intrasexual competition. I jokingly responded, asking if he’d mixed us up because that was my hypothesis. He said no, he hadn’t got us mixed up. I posted an essay in which I'd outlined this hypothesis and said, as magnanimously as possible, that I did not mind anyone picking up my ideas & running with them, but to please not simply erase me from the algorithm. Because I felt I’d dealt with it well, I assumed no hard feelings. Claire dropped her course soon after anyway. Looking back this was supremely naive of me. I want to add here, I was also (or so I thought) friends with Jamie, who was working in a cinema in London at the time. He once told me, “People like us need to stick together.” …It’s all very Prince Myshkin, or maybe in my case, more like Maria. In this sense, I was, and still am, an idiot.
I haven’t checked yet but I think this was around the time of the movie Suffragette and I did notice Claire became quite militant at the time, even changing her Twitter profile blurb to say “pamphleteer”. I’m aspie: massive hard drive, minimal RAM.
What’s especially ironic, is that one of the first things Quillette did was to (rightly) defend James Damore after he lost his job at Google for criticising feminism.
I revealed the screenshots in 2020 on Twitter & Lehmann responded saying she had no regrets and would not hesitate to do the same again.
My personal thoughts/analysis is that this - and whst came after- was an almost perfect example cf covert female intrasexual competition. The actual target was not Peter at all, but me and the forum as a whole. I don’t Claire wanted to have to have to admit that Quillette had an antecendant. This is supported by what she told Jordan Peterson in one of her first interviews with him. I’ve not personally watched it so this is only what I’ve been told which is: Peterson directly asks her where she had been before Quilette & she says something like ‘On Twitter” and then says she doesnt want to talk abour it. This may not count as a direct lie, but it's certainly a violation of one of Peterson's 12 Rules to, “just tell the truth.”
She did take a lot of people with her. People who I'd also thought of as friends, such as Geoff Miller.
Miller was referring to Milo’s hair in the last post.
Quillette remains a great publication that, declaired (sic ;) or not, embodies the ethos of the Darwinian Gender Studies intellectual forum, re free speech and intellectual heterodoxy. An ethos its founding editor does not personally have.
Claire is a good business woman.
On 3rd October 2015 (2 weeks before the above occurred) Claire announced she was launching “a commercial project” which was to become Quillette. Everyone was supportive. For the “many years” (In Claire’s own words) she had been on the forum, I had without reservation had allowed her to promote her Wordpress blog, where she quickly grew influence - which had led to media requests.
I thought we were all on the same team. As an aspie, I’m not a great business person, and I loved that the ideas and ethos of the forum could (see screenshots below) be promoted by her.
A few more interesting screenshots just for fun (and the record) - she seems to have deleted all posts up until March 2014)
FYI: About the Darwinian Gender Studies (DGS) forum.
Fascinating thread.
A sober, objective reading leaves one with the impression that it was Claire and others who immediately became viciously personal, while Peter remained outwardly calm, avoided ad Hominem responses, and offered cogent responses to all of their challenges.
Claire's accusations not only lacked substance; they made her appear emotional and damaged her credibility.
So do you not have a relationship with Claire anymore?
P.S. this seems like it would've been a great forum to be a part off. I recognize people in there that I now regularly enjoy reading/listening to.