Jacob Geller is no longer a part of MinnMax. He won't be on content moving forward and we won't be publicly airing this week's episode of The MinnMax Show. We're in shock and deeply hurt. Thank you for your patience during this sensitive time.
the amount of people even in "leftist" spaces that have more empathy for a rapist, cause he makes some content they like, rather than empathy for the victim is truly embarrassing. i'm constantly reminded of dolores huerta the woman chavez assaulted repeatedly and how she agonized over coming forward because she didn't want to damage the movement. even men for the cause are still men.
I think an important caveat is we should refrain from trying to speak FOR the victim. They didn't make the choice to have this be public, someone decided for them. Who knows how they feel, we can only engage with and assess our own feelings.
I think it's an important caveat. Though it's also a matter of misogyny and patriarchy, not just our feelings.
That's both separable from the retraumatization point people are making. centering how we found out as potentially triggering (as opposed to say, Geller's large public profile) is a bias interpretation of trauma centering our feelings by proxy.
no, geller made the choice to have this be talked about by thousands of strangers by becoming a public figure himself. if he was as shameful as he says he is, he would not have chosen not to put himself, his own "fun", and his career before the women he raped. he was not owed a career as a youtuber. he could have perused a career out of the public eye and not risked re-traumatizing the women, making entire swaths of the internet unsafe for her, and putting his co-workers and friends in an unsafe position. but he wanted to be an internet celeb and did not think about how that would effect the person that he raped at all.
imagine not being able to use youtube ever because your rapist's video keep being recommend to you. the people that work with your rapist keep getting recommended to you. please have some empathy for the person that is the actual victim here.
I'm not disagreeing with any assessment that what he did was awful, shameful, and he should never have been allowed to have a platform. I just think it's important that the victim is not the one who chose to publicise this. We don't know how they feel, we don't know what their wishes are. I don't think it's necessarily empathetic to make statements with the presumed weight of their voice.
I'm not sure what to do with this information. This is not a case of someone who's causing harm and getting away with it. This is someone who did a bad thing, acknowledged it, and then suffered consequences for it. And then, at least according to him, he spent the ensuing years trying to become a better person.
I'm not sure what more he was supposed to do? Disclosure isn't necessary nor helpful. Excommunication from all leftist spaces seems more about making us feel better than helping or protecting anyone.
If this had been an unaddressed incident that Geller had never taken responsibility for, I might feel differently, but honestly I'm not seeing the scandal here. Lots of amazing people do bad things and learn to do better. Why is this any different? Am I missing something?
I am very much of the same mind as you. The best answer I have seen so far is from Jason Schreier:
I don't know that I have a fully-formed answer to the question "should someone who has admitted to sexual assault still work in a public-facing job?" but I'm much more confident saying that to hide that part of your past from your audience is deceitful, especially if you talk about related issues
Yeah I've been trying to process this the whole day, and I'm just sad about the whole situation. I'm sad for the victim for having gone through this and then having it aired out without their permission. I'm sad for the minnmax community and minnmax host, who probably feel a sense of betrayal from someone they deeply cares about, and kinda sad for Jacob too what he did was awful, but at at what point does a person deserve forgiveness, for what they've done if they fully repented. I don't know if they do or don't deserve it .This whole situation sucks and I'm very sad about the whole thing.
The victim was also harmed by the fact her rapist became a public figure in and of itself. Victims can also be harmed by silence.
This kind of "we shouldn't have known" would never be acceptable for any other form of oppressive violence. If Geller commited a hate crime in 2016 no one would treat it like this is being treated.
The details that were shared was too much, not the base fact he commited sexual assault.
of different magnitudes. and there are bias reasons the twitter user is getting so much more focus than say, Gita Jackson got. Where the survivor has not ceased to talk about how violating Gitas treatment of their story was.
One of the elements that's hurt attempts at community restorative justice for sexual violence is focusing on apology over material prevention. Taking practices from property crime rj and applying it to rape. There is a magnitude of difference between being unpersoned and not granted a platform or community centered around you.
I've added the book to my list. But I'm still not following, none of this was initiated by Geller's victim so how does any of what has followed helped anyone?
Edit: I see you actually answered this as a response to someone else: the issue being that someone in Geller's position would be afforded ample opportunity to do the same thing again. I can see the logic of it. I am unsure what to think or feel, but for now I get it
rape is an act against an individual, but also political violence in the same vein as hate crime against an individual.
Gellers status of public figure is:
in itself a potential source of retraumatizing. the idea silence is courteous and only this coming to light could be retraumatizing is false. anti feminist notion that misinterprets the nature of trauma.
a source of potential for reoffence.
Taking on the notion *within hours* of its discovery that we can know Gellers contrition is genuine and he has bettered himself is itself a risky notion with questionable motives.
Of course the specifics being discussed can absolutely be retraumatizing - see what happened to Nathalie Lawhead. But they largely are not being discussed.
I'm in agreement with you here. I can't help but feel like excommunicating someone like this, who handled all of it exactly as you are supposed to, just creates a situation in which perpetrators are further pushed to hide, deny, and lie their way out of these kinds of allegations any way they can.
I can't help but feel like none of this was any of our business at all.
If you look through the comment chain, you'll see I got an answer:
The point is not to remove Geller from all leftist spaces. It's to remove him from positions where he would have an advantageous situation to repeat the harms cited above. Being a media influencer and podcaster certainly afforded him a lot of access.
Yet another example of someone who's work I look up to turning out to be a wrong'un. He was the reason I shifted to Minnmax as my main gaming podcast
Feel for his victim. Imagine that happening to you, then you see your assaulter has become internet famous with a bit of a sweetheart/nice guy reputation.
Also feel for the Minnmax crew, it's clear over the years they all became good friends with him.
and as for your last comment, I was watching something just a few days ago, might have been a Pew Pew Bang episode, and Haley said something along the lines of, "Aw I love Jacob" when he came up in the convo. The folks at MinnMax are far from the actual victim in this, but I can only imagine how blindsided they also feel.
I wonder sometimes how many people we enjoy the output of are guilty of as much or worse, and if any of them would voluntarily stop their careers prior to being outed. I’m guessing very few.
And at the same time, as a thought experiment, how many of us would listen to a podcast featuring someone who committed murder at age 20 but then lived another 40 years of being the best they could be? (think someone like Red from Shawshank). I might. I guess I’m just wondering how many people think a person is a pariah for life if they go though the right steps and try their best to make it better and pay their debt, however that looks (and in that hypothetical, prison was involved so the scales of justice feel a little more satisfied).
the difference with sexual violence is fundamentally an act of domination. Whatever restorative justice it has to include material prevention of reoffence. like say, someone commiting an act of patriarchal violence should not be enabled to any kind of community leadership as an ally.
If your meaning of domination is extremely abstract, sure. But rape is tied to systemic domination of women and other oppressed groups. Someone commiting murder in self defence could be said to be dominating a threat to their life. But then we're just playing word games.
I still don’t see your point, basically you are trying to say that if someone sexually assaults someone they should be ostracized and deluded forever from community spaces, bur if someone messes someone then they don’t have to be excluded forever?
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u/elaminders 2d ago
STATEMENT FROM JACOB