Preface: This post contains glancing discussion of Max Pitruzella, who has been credibly accused by multiple people of horrifying sexual assault and violence. It contains no new information, but stay clear if you don’t want his name in your ears.
Friend of the Ballroom Jerry Almonte has been around documenting the obscure, complicated, troubled corner of American art that is the national Lindy Hop scene for more than two decades now. When he went around soliciting nominations for the best Lindy Hop videos of the 21st century, my immediate response was: “Why, Jerry, would you ever subject yourself to what will become a discussion about every issue imaginable except for the videos? Why would you open yourself up to criticism from a bunch of people who will not contribute, and will then criticize you after the fact? Don’t you understand what the internet is? Are you trying to raise my blood pressure? Why!?”
Jerry hates me passionately, so he did it anyway, and I’m sad to say I was right. Inviting comment on the internet is not for the faint of heart, and sane people/people of goodwill had to watch as righteous folks who hadn’t bothered to nominate any videos insisted that the wrong videos had been nominated. When Jerry extended the nomination period so that the righteous might chime in, the righteous declined, preferring rather to be seen objecting than to contribute meaningfully to anything ever. This is, in my experience, the nature of the righteous. It is condemnation enough to say that these people are most often found on the internet and that it is their proper home. Little else need be said about folks who thrive on reactive debunking.
Another set of people used Jerry’s invitation as an opportunity to object to one video in particular, a multi-couple contest in which Max Pitruzella danced–a man who has been repeatedly and very credibly accused of sexual violence. This is trickier. The video was nominated in spite, not because, of the man’s performance–which seems to me to match his loathsome character–and was prefaced by the usual caveats. But one is not surprised that some people didn’t want to see anything that contained footage of this man.
The actual conversation that ensued, however, left me deeply disappointed in the Lindy Hop community and deeply concerned that we have abdicated any responsibility to think through an issue in favor of a preference for howling displays of pompous hieratic certainty. Here’s an example (I’ve blacked out names because I’m not trying to trash people; I’m trying to highlight a kind of discourse I find obscene):
This screed is particularly offensive to me not because everything in it is wrong–quite a lot of it is technically right–but because, while Jerry is very clearly the cause of this invective, very little of it is in response to what Jerry actually did. It lumps him in with a bunch of hideous perspectives that he would never countenance, confidently trashes those perspectives, and leaves the casual reader with the assumption that Jerry is operating some kind of dance rapist rehabilitation media firm.
This is a common rhetorical move in activist-adjacent circles now. You assert a connection between what someone has actually done and a constellation of other behaviors the average person would rightly find reprehensible. You then speak out with great boldness and condescending internet imperatives (“Don’t be a fuckwit,” “GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER”) against that constellation of behaviors while garnering support and applause. The actual argument made by your victim is irrelevant, because an unquestioned link between it and the worst things possible has been established.
This manner of proceeding is lazy, destructive, and dishonest. It has the further deficit of laundering spite and falsehood by imposing a veneer of straight talk and hard truths on nonsense. The “cis man” bit was truly odd. It seems unlikely that the exhibition of a woman (cis or otherwise) interested in sharing or viewing this video would change the author’s position, nor do I suspect that the author checked the gender identities of the people who nominated the video. The author is assuming all of this, because, in this conversation, they have a theory of the world that is true by definition and a script ready to impose for any occasion.
As it happens, I have chatted over the years with the person who wrote this, and I like them. I do not believe that the lazy, trashy, totalizing response they have written here represents them or their gender, nor do I believe it invalidates all of their other ideas. I am, however, quite confident that here the author is doing Jerry a severe injustice in an attempt to score points against something that isn’t actually happening. I felt a familiar chill reading this, and it took me a minute to figure out why. The posture of certainty and the confidence in the right that allows the author to beat on Jerry with whatever stick is closest to hand reminds me of the psychotic religious training of my youth. This is the practice and logic of fundamentalism warmed over and appropriated by the left. I am uncomfortable with the number of people I know and care about who are now in engaging in this kind of language.
Here’s another example. As misguided critiques piled up on Jerry’s facebook page Wandering and Pondering, I took the opportunity to observe that it wasn’t quite fair that he should take all the hits on this when a bunch of us had nominated the video. He was, at most, guilty of an editorial lapse, whereas the rest of us were–in the terms of this argument–guilty of intentionally platforming a rapist. I was in earnest, but I was also wryly attempting to point out that the people criticizing Jerry didn’t really seem to know precisely what was going on.
The person I was addressing mistook this as an expression of remorse on my part:
At this point it will be useful to remind the few readers who are still with me of what Jerry actually did. Finding that the video of the 2006 Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown “Liberation” finals, which has 10 million views on youtube, was receiving more votes in its category than any other, he duly put it in his lineup after making special mention that it included, amongst 9 other people, a man whom all of us should abhor. He linked to victims’ accounts. None of this lionizes Max Pitruzzella and none of it expresses the slightest desire to rehabilitate him or even the slightest regard for his dancing. It is a simple acknowledgement that one of the most watched Lindy Hop videos of all time–which is publicly available and often near the top of any google search for “Lindy Hop”–is in fact worthy of consideration in any kind of “best of” list, particularly when everyone has been voting for it.
There are reasonable terms on which one could disagree with the video’s inclusion, but that inclusion in no way indicates some rot at the core of American Lindy Hop leadership. It indicates a difference in opinion. It is concerning that discussion about such things cannot take place in any but the most catastrophizing terms. When everything one disagrees with needs to be spun up into a world historical wrong perpetrated agains the most vulnerable in order to gain a hearing, something has gone off track in our thinking.
Not everything justifies extreme treatment or anything close to it. The insistence on pretending that every moral stance is obvious makes people take stupid positions. All of us listen to music and take in art made by wicked and violent people. Throw a dart at a member of the jazz band of your choice, google the person it landed on, and see what happens. All of us engage in moral parsing to negotiate our way through the world. Some of the most outspoken people I know on the internet work for companies bent on destroying society and the environment for a temporary profit. All of this is fair game for criticism and discussion. None of it is obvious, and pretending that it is leads in the end to exhausted cynicism.
I am fine with the removal of this video. I am not fine with how it happened or the assumptions that many of us watching let go unchecked. A reasonable person might contend that I have no business speaking about any of this, because I am not a rape victim, which is true. I sure as hell do know what it’s like, however, to watch people praise and elevate media in which your abuser appears, because it has been happening to me in this project. I responded to the person in my second example with the following, which I will quote at length, because I like what I’ve written and stand by it (again, I have edited out names, because I’m not trying to pick on people):
…sorry, I think I was a little ambiguous above, and implied some kind of repentance, which is not quite the case. I am in favor of deference to the feelings of others in these matters. If you’re going to insist on something that could reasonably hurt someone, you better have a damn good reason. That’s not the case here, so off with the video.
Otherwise, this whole thing is vexing on a number of levels. I am disappointed by strident people who can’t be bothered to pay close enough attention to determine where to direct their anger (this is not the case with you–you quoted me). I’m grossed out by the people who nominated this and then stayed very quiet while Jerry got treated like he scoured the internet for rapists to promote. To change your mind is fine. To apologize is fine. To take responsibility in some other way or to argue the point is fine. To be cowed by the mere loudness of the gale of moral certainty is base.
Perhaps that is ungenerous–some of my fellow nominators may simply be unsure of how they now feel, which is a decent and human position. I wish more people were willing to express it.
I’m mortified at the bad faith conflation of arguments on behalf of the other dancers in the video with an argument for rehabilitating Max (one of the most worthless and destructive men in Lindy Hop), an argument no one in the conversation is making. There is no sense, and less justice, in rounding people up to rape apologists when they are not, in any sense, apologizing for rape. I acknowledge that I’m pulling criticisms from a couple of different pages rather than responding exclusively to you. I made the mistake of looking around…when you wrote, “I am glad this particular decision is taken, but it looks like the tip of an iceberg,” you put your finger on why I find all of this misguided. I know Jerry well, and one of the darkly comic aspects of this discussion is that I’ve watched him, for the better part of two decades, consistently put himself forward on behalf of any piece of justice you care to name. I was around when women exposed Max for what he is. Jerry was working for an event, quietly and insistently striving to make sure that Max and his weird little fascist buddies were banned for good. This at a time when a good many people (people now graced by vocal and retroactive certainty) were hemming and hawing.
I have been knee deep in these disasters for most of my adult working life. I have been physically and legally threatened by people I’ve kicked out. I have gone to court with women to seek restraining orders. I have been harassed by two men through multiple channels for years, because I removed them from our community. I have consulted with multiple organizations on codes of conduct and with multiple events on specific abusers. My business partner and I have poured effort and money into this for years. Like many others, I have lost friends, opportunities, and vast tracts of time fighting abusers and assaulters in the Lindy Hop scene. That’s your job if you run these spaces, and in a lot of ways it’s an honor. But it’s also a stone cold bummer when people on the internet use reductive and not-at-all obvious metrics like this to render judgement from afar.
What I just described is the reality of the iceberg you reference. The majority (though not all) of the community leaders still standing in the American Lindy Hop scene are standing because they have been beat to shit in these battles, and they can display their wounds on request. I know that people can easily slide into a ritualized habit of debunking and problematizing, as the procedure is accorded automatic respect. It’s a bad habit, and needs to be addressed in this community.
I abhor the insistence on a categorical rule in these matters. It feels virtuous, and it is not. It forces people into absurd contradictions and indefensible positions and leaves them stranded there.
e.g. For Christ’s sake–and I can’t believe I have to point this out–there is another notorious abuser in this lineup–mine. She’s in both the Silver Shadows videos and in the Mad Dog video. I actually nominated the latter. Her behavior is public knowledge to many of the people viewing and nominating this stuff, and she has been positively mentioned in the comments. This person tortured me for years; embezzled $50,000; put me on the hook for her tax fraud; framed our employee for her own theft of cash; stole from at least one other dance organization; slandered and belittled any woman she perceived as a threat to her attention in the community; and, when I objected to having a child before we put our financial house in order, sounded her friends about the feasibility of sabotaging birth control. I was saved from suicide by the discovery of her crimes, which gave me a hint of a way out.
If you’d like a link to my public discussion of this, I will furnish one.
The point of this long digression is to say 1) that I’m disinclined to credit the seriousness of an approach which treats the removal of a video in which Max appears as a high moral imperative while passing entirely over the woman who abused and terrorized me and this community for years and 2) it is very obvious to me that not all victims require or would even desire a blanket ban on any video in which their abuser appears–I know this because I am a victim and do not require or desire it. For my part, I think the videos she is in are important in the modern history of Lindy Hop (such as it is), and I would not feel comfortable suppressing them.
No one else she injured is required to feel the same way, but, when I take a position on these things I’m not just some dude talking out of his ass.
Anyway, I am more than willing to forego videos with this rapist in them out of simple consideration. I object, in the deepest sense, to blanket prohibitions of any kind in these matters or to the suggestion that disagreement with a particular group’s orthodox commitment to those prohibitions is a sign of problematic icebergs, complicity with rape culture, etc. Much of the conversation I watched unfold smacks of what happens when activism and advocacy sour into secular religion.
I encourage you and some of the other folks who jumped at this so quickly to reconsider. I don’t doubt the decency of your motivations, but I do think that you’re falling into an untenable trap, which will lead that you on a regrettable internal affairs snipe hunt. Beset as we all are with abominations and unspeakable horrors, there’s little sense in mistaking our natural friends for villains.
The response to this was silence. It didn’t surprise me, but it did disappoint me. My interlocutor was happy enough to step forward boldly and express a blanket criticism of people they knew nothing about using the standard slate of tortured buzzwords. When I responded with details, personal experience, and argument, they said nothing. This complete lack of depth, I think, characterizes most of the passionate writing one encounters in these situations.
I’ve written all of this to vent my spleen a bit, sure. But I’ve also written it because I know I’m not alone in thinking that the response to Jerry was histrionic, misdirected, and irresponsible, and that he is owed an apology, or at least does not deserve to have the callousness and stupidity some of these people attributed to him hung around his neck. I know I’m not alone, because people who don’t want to be yelled at by self-appointed arbiters online keep telling me how much they disliked those ghastly proceedings. They should have the courage to pipe up.
More importantly, while I advised against Jerry’s insane project, I think it has real value and interest. This collection of the most popular performances in 21st century Lindy Hop may say any number of things about us (Where are all the black people? Can Frida possibly be this good? Would I trust any of these people to borrow my car? What happened to regional styles?), and some of it may not be entirely comfortable. But it is surely worth a long look. Most people right now are too busy covering their left flank to put any effort into a real project. Jerry is not, and we need more people like that. Go check it out and vote.
The Nearly Inspired Version 