William Costello
responds to a piece by Brandon Sullivan.

Apologies for the belated response to this piece and thank you to Christopher and Anthony for bringing it to my attention. I made the decision to not use any of my Sunday to pay much attention to it as I was busy playing a Gaelic football match. Ironic given the Ian Paisley comparison.

Well…so much for me thinking my article appealed to incels, normies and even feminists alike. It was bound to cop some flak eventually. Nothing like an ad-hominem, guilt by association, straw man ‘critique’ to let me know that I’m doing something right. Although I must say that an ad hominem critique about ‘who I Might have been in the 1980s’ is quite novel.

“I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member” - Groucho Marx.

I suppose to address one of the first guilt by association jabs, had Brandon listened to my appearance on the ‘Just Checking In’ men’s mental health podcast (first of a number of shameless plugs I will use this rebuttal as an opportunity to provide) he would have heard me clarify my stance on A Voice For Men and the wider manosphere. The ‘manosphere’ incidentally is not a monolith and rather contains multitudes of ideological thinking. As such, there are elements of AVFM and the manosphere that I agree with and disagree with. I have not encountered any ‘figure head’ from within the men’s rights community that expects me to have all the same views as them. The reason I don’t classify myself as a Men’s Right’s Activist is because I am not an activist in the same way that someone doing great work for men’s rights like Elizabeth Hobson is. I am just a commentator who is interested in men’s issues and the dynamics between the sexes. It just so happens that this is one of the articles of mine which has garnered most traction. I don’t however consider this association to be a slur. To sum up on this point I will reiterate my closing remarks at the Battle of Ideas 2019, where I spoke about tribal politics (shameless plug number two)

I ended my debate by quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, “Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events and great minds talk about ideas”.

I think it’s indicative of your mind that much of your argument consists of guilt by association slurs.

“Lies, damned lies and statistics!” - Mark Twain

That’s a selective quote about statistics. You criticize my use of ‘selective academic statistics and quotes’. I don’t really know what to say here other than to highlight that this is generally how one goes about making an argument, i.e. backing up your points with wider reading and research that serves as evidence of the ideas you’re expressing. Feel free to critique the validity of any studies referenced or refute them with statistics or quotes of your own.

Much of your ‘critique’ is full of assumptions and speculation about my intent, motivations and stances so can you specifically highlight what you think is a ‘dog whistle’ and to what end? This might be enlightening to readers…most of all me.

I don’t understand why the premise that we (manosphere and wider society) need to do more to support vulnerable men is laughable? Do you not agree?

I care about incels because I feel they are very misrepresented due to the most extreme voices within their community. We quite rightly rail against other minority groups being defined by extremists within their community e.g. the harmful stereotype of Muslims as terrorists, however we are reluctant to do this when regarding incels. In society, we usually try to help or at least have sympathy for the most disenfranchised minority groups but we don't seem to do this when we discuss incels. In response to my article, I have seen people who are usually extremely kind commentators say things like, "life is hard...get over it". I think this is a disservice to the vast majority of incels who do not meet the trivialised caricature description used by most media. This caricature of inceldom can lead to the temptation to dismissively shun incels from polite society but this doesn't help the problems they face and represent.

It’s somewhat disappointing that you didn’t find the article informative or valuable but I recognize it’s a pretty divisive and evocative topic.

However, the response has been extremely positive from incels, normies and even feminists alike.

Thus far the article has led to the following,

  • I was invited on to a men’s mental health podcast to discuss the article and wider gender politics issues.
  • I was invited on to the Incel Project podcast with Naama Kates and my episode has been downloaded over 6k times. Your ‘critique’ will likely lead to more so thanks for that.
  • A female and feminist academic who is writing a book about incels reached out to me and after informal discussions we are now planning to engage in a formal wiki.letter exchange on the topic.
  • I have been invited to record an episode of The Sex & Censorship Youtube channel with Jerry Barnett. 
  • The article has been republished by the academic Psychology blog Psychreg with an invitation to record an episode of their Youtube channel.
  • Psychreg have also invited me to expand on the piece and to rewrite it into a more formal academic style for publication in their academic journal. I plan to explore this when I start my MSc in Evolutionary Psychology next week.
  • I have been invited to speak at the International Conference on Men’s Issues 2020

I think all of this is indicative that you are the outlier in not finding it valuable.

You’ve got your mind set on me

Another quote to grate on you. This time an adapted lyric from the George Harrison song. I think your criticism of my Twitter feed gets more to the crux of why I think your argument is in bad faith. It seems you have decided everything you need to know about me already and would rather argue against a straw man version of me built upon your assumptions about who I am rather than engage with any of my ideas or see me as an individual with a collection of different views.

I’m not going to play your ugly game of identity politics, rather I’ll set the record straight on certain aspects of what you’ve said that I think could be misleading to readers.

Ultimately, I quite like my Twitter feed and would encourage anyone to follow me @CostelloWilliam to make their own mind up about my content.

My twitter consists of a huge variety of content including aesthetically beautiful Gaelic football pitches, anecdotes about my own life, articles I find interesting, sometimes Irish republican sentiment and more often than not it’s just funny memes and GIFs.

You could have linked to any of my tweets that you found problematic, but you neglected to do so, why is that? Where are the ‘calls to arms’ you describe? That’s quite the accusation to level at someone. I regularly tweet about the dangers of Islamism and the importance of separating critic of ideas and ideology from bigotry against Muslim people. As an atheist I often tweet out content that is critical of all religions…including Islam. As a free speech absolutist, I have tweeted out about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the bigotry of low expectations many seem to apply in making excuses for these Islamist attacks.

I think the fact that you’ve tried to use the pinned tweet with Pepe the frog imagery as evidence of some nefarious intent on my behalf is extremely telling of your goals and lack of rigor in ‘investigating me’. The pinned tweet is a link to this very article you’re ‘critiquing’. The Pepe/Joker frog meme logo was one I used for my article and I think it’s quite artistic and fitting. The sad/lonely pepe frog is certainly synonymous with the centrality of ‘shitposting’ to life in the online incel community. The joker element to the image is an allusion to the moral panic about how many incel attacks were going to happen in response to the release of the Joker movie…as it happens this ‘terrorist wave’ never manifested. Islamist terrorist responses to cartoons are in fact more likely than an incel terrorist attack in response to a comic book movie.

To summarise on this point, your characterization of me couldn’t be more wrong and in the short time that I’ve been writing, I have covered topics such as identity politics, polyamory, the ‘Karen phenomenon’ and Nick Sandmann. I am currently planning on writing a piece about how gaelic football can be an amazing vehicle to combat racism as it goes. Not what you would have assumed I imagine?

“I disagree with what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it.”

In relation to your objection to the publication of my piece, well firstly you obviously did think it was worth the time and effort but you haven’t offered much of a critique or refutation so much as a personal attack. You haven’t actually engaged with any ideas in the piece. Your gripe seems to be with me or rather who you think I am or worse again, who you think I might have been had I been born in the 1980s. You also take issue with the publishers over whether the piece should have been published or not. The publishers (and others) obviously thought it had merit, you’re free to disagree and say so. My article was published (here and in various other outlets) and so was yours. I must give credit to the publication for creating fertile ground here for the genuine exchange of diverse ideas. I think they have justified their decision in the following comments and I’m happy to let them speak for themselves. I also admire their conviction and fortification in defending their decision and in drawing my attention to your screed here.

I do however want to address one additional piece of criticism from ‘Lucy’ the comments that I feel ties in with the overarching free speech & platforming theme of the debate that has been happening in the comments.

It’s Pepe the frog. It’s the weaponisation of liberal principles of discourse by the Right. Got to hand it to them – they’ve moved the Overton window in a way we might have thought unimaginable a decade ago. When we give their ideas a platform in true liberal Voltairean spirit we are obediently dancing to their tune; fearing the spectre of an accusation of hypocrisy that never especially seems to trouble them. So, perhaps we should stand for something other than simply letting everyone speak. And Costello’s ideas have dark implications that can be traced directly to the soil of overt manosphere misogyny that clearly nurtured them; not least the idea of sex itself as a commodity to which men have the right of “access”, and a predictable but distressing demand of further emotional labour from women to solve the issue.

The notion that I am far right or even right wing doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. There is so much about me that would make me unwelcome on the far right. I am a free speech absolutist, sexual expression and sex work advocate and have expressed sympathetic views to polyamory. I am pro immigration and an immigrant who lives with a mixed race immigrant. I voted Yes in the same sex marriage and Repeal the 8th referendums in Ireland. I spend a lot of time socializing in the gay village district of Birmingham. I was a remainer and have positive views towards post work utopian worlds of super abundance and universal basic income. Seeing as my Twitter content is the subject of such speculation I am conducting a Twitter poll about how people would characterise my political leanings. At the time of writing the results are,

  • Far Left: 8.3%
  • Centre Left: 50%
  • Centre Right: 41.7%
  • Far Right 0%

I also, for entertainment value, decided to take the political compass quiz. My answers placed me firmly in the Left Libertarian quadrant.

More specifically, I don’t quite agree with viewing sex as a mere commodity, however, there absolutely has always been a transactional nature to sex. This topic is well explored in this Quillette article, ‘The Price of Sex’. However, I go to explicit lengths in my article to stress that I absolutely do not think that men should have the ‘right of access’ to sex. Here is a direct quote from my article:

However, to have sympathy for incels does not equate to advocating women be ‘given to them’ as their entitlement… Every time I discuss incels with any semblance of sympathy, I am met with a chorus of, ‘‘boo hoo, woe is me, poor men, they’re not entitled to sex or women you know!” This is of course true. I am not and have never at any point suggested that women should be made lower their standards to reduce the plight of the incel.

It's grating to be described as one of 'them' purely for writing an article Because I don't want the issue hijacked by nefarious actors on the far right, which is precisely what happens when we resign this conversation to the dark corners of the internet and label anyone discussing it as far right. I thought/think I can bring a new level of sensitivity and sophistication to a topic that I think sorely needs it. If you feel I haven’t brought sufficient sensitivity or sophistication then fair enough, I am open to critique. However, we shouldn’t keep the issue completely off the table or label someone as far right because they think it needs discussion.

“It was acceptable in the 80’s” - Calvin Harris

The speculation about who I might have been in the 1980s is truly bizarre. I was born on October 29th 1989. A few days later they took down the Berlin Wall … what does that mean? Given your speculative nature I’m sure you can conjure up some significance to this fact.

Your assumption that I treat people as monoliths couldn’t be more misplaced. I have written in depth about the corrosive nature of identity politics and how it goes against universalist and enlightenment values of individualism. I believe in the philosophy of Maajid Nawaz, “no idea above scrutiny and no person beneath dignity”. If I do have a gripe with ‘woke’ ideology, it is that it divides people along identity lines of immutable characteristics and distracts from class divides which have a real impact on their lives. In that we might even agree more than we disagree.

My piece doesn’t mention woke, cancellation or BLM. It certainly does not mention Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn so again you’re setting up a straw man for yourself to argue against.

My piece doesn’t directly mention feminism but it does refer to feminism with one Frank Furedi quote. Is there something about Frank Furedi that makes me guilty by association too? My piece also references feminist journalist Louise Perry who is quite an outspoken feminist and the work of Dr. Francesca Minerva who I understand also identifies as a feminist. If you or other interested readers want to hear my views on the range of sporadic topics you can read or listen to more of my work e.g. I do discuss feminism in a debate at Goldsmith’s University last year.

All of this is indicative that it is in fact you that is the one that sees people as monoliths because you assume a full suite of my other political views because of one. You make 2+2=5 and run with it. You’re arguing into the ether about a version of me that doesn’t exist outside of your incorrect assumptions. Quite honestly it’s very weak and in really bad faith.

You haven’t done your homework and it shows.


William Costello is an Irish writer studying Evolutionary Psychology at Brunel University London. William has debated publicly at Universities around the UK about feminism and gender/identity politics. William writes opinion pieces for various publications and you can follow his work on Twitter: @CostelloWilliam and Medium.

A Response To My First Hatchet Job

William Costello
responds to a piece by Brandon Sullivan.

Apologies for the belated response to this piece and thank you to Christopher and Anthony for bringing it to my attention. I made the decision to not use any of my Sunday to pay much attention to it as I was busy playing a Gaelic football match. Ironic given the Ian Paisley comparison.

Well…so much for me thinking my article appealed to incels, normies and even feminists alike. It was bound to cop some flak eventually. Nothing like an ad-hominem, guilt by association, straw man ‘critique’ to let me know that I’m doing something right. Although I must say that an ad hominem critique about ‘who I Might have been in the 1980s’ is quite novel.

“I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member” - Groucho Marx.

I suppose to address one of the first guilt by association jabs, had Brandon listened to my appearance on the ‘Just Checking In’ men’s mental health podcast (first of a number of shameless plugs I will use this rebuttal as an opportunity to provide) he would have heard me clarify my stance on A Voice For Men and the wider manosphere. The ‘manosphere’ incidentally is not a monolith and rather contains multitudes of ideological thinking. As such, there are elements of AVFM and the manosphere that I agree with and disagree with. I have not encountered any ‘figure head’ from within the men’s rights community that expects me to have all the same views as them. The reason I don’t classify myself as a Men’s Right’s Activist is because I am not an activist in the same way that someone doing great work for men’s rights like Elizabeth Hobson is. I am just a commentator who is interested in men’s issues and the dynamics between the sexes. It just so happens that this is one of the articles of mine which has garnered most traction. I don’t however consider this association to be a slur. To sum up on this point I will reiterate my closing remarks at the Battle of Ideas 2019, where I spoke about tribal politics (shameless plug number two)

I ended my debate by quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, “Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events and great minds talk about ideas”.

I think it’s indicative of your mind that much of your argument consists of guilt by association slurs.

“Lies, damned lies and statistics!” - Mark Twain

That’s a selective quote about statistics. You criticize my use of ‘selective academic statistics and quotes’. I don’t really know what to say here other than to highlight that this is generally how one goes about making an argument, i.e. backing up your points with wider reading and research that serves as evidence of the ideas you’re expressing. Feel free to critique the validity of any studies referenced or refute them with statistics or quotes of your own.

Much of your ‘critique’ is full of assumptions and speculation about my intent, motivations and stances so can you specifically highlight what you think is a ‘dog whistle’ and to what end? This might be enlightening to readers…most of all me.

I don’t understand why the premise that we (manosphere and wider society) need to do more to support vulnerable men is laughable? Do you not agree?

I care about incels because I feel they are very misrepresented due to the most extreme voices within their community. We quite rightly rail against other minority groups being defined by extremists within their community e.g. the harmful stereotype of Muslims as terrorists, however we are reluctant to do this when regarding incels. In society, we usually try to help or at least have sympathy for the most disenfranchised minority groups but we don't seem to do this when we discuss incels. In response to my article, I have seen people who are usually extremely kind commentators say things like, "life is hard...get over it". I think this is a disservice to the vast majority of incels who do not meet the trivialised caricature description used by most media. This caricature of inceldom can lead to the temptation to dismissively shun incels from polite society but this doesn't help the problems they face and represent.

It’s somewhat disappointing that you didn’t find the article informative or valuable but I recognize it’s a pretty divisive and evocative topic.

However, the response has been extremely positive from incels, normies and even feminists alike.

Thus far the article has led to the following,

  • I was invited on to a men’s mental health podcast to discuss the article and wider gender politics issues.
  • I was invited on to the Incel Project podcast with Naama Kates and my episode has been downloaded over 6k times. Your ‘critique’ will likely lead to more so thanks for that.
  • A female and feminist academic who is writing a book about incels reached out to me and after informal discussions we are now planning to engage in a formal wiki.letter exchange on the topic.
  • I have been invited to record an episode of The Sex & Censorship Youtube channel with Jerry Barnett. 
  • The article has been republished by the academic Psychology blog Psychreg with an invitation to record an episode of their Youtube channel.
  • Psychreg have also invited me to expand on the piece and to rewrite it into a more formal academic style for publication in their academic journal. I plan to explore this when I start my MSc in Evolutionary Psychology next week.
  • I have been invited to speak at the International Conference on Men’s Issues 2020

I think all of this is indicative that you are the outlier in not finding it valuable.

You’ve got your mind set on me

Another quote to grate on you. This time an adapted lyric from the George Harrison song. I think your criticism of my Twitter feed gets more to the crux of why I think your argument is in bad faith. It seems you have decided everything you need to know about me already and would rather argue against a straw man version of me built upon your assumptions about who I am rather than engage with any of my ideas or see me as an individual with a collection of different views.

I’m not going to play your ugly game of identity politics, rather I’ll set the record straight on certain aspects of what you’ve said that I think could be misleading to readers.

Ultimately, I quite like my Twitter feed and would encourage anyone to follow me @CostelloWilliam to make their own mind up about my content.

My twitter consists of a huge variety of content including aesthetically beautiful Gaelic football pitches, anecdotes about my own life, articles I find interesting, sometimes Irish republican sentiment and more often than not it’s just funny memes and GIFs.

You could have linked to any of my tweets that you found problematic, but you neglected to do so, why is that? Where are the ‘calls to arms’ you describe? That’s quite the accusation to level at someone. I regularly tweet about the dangers of Islamism and the importance of separating critic of ideas and ideology from bigotry against Muslim people. As an atheist I often tweet out content that is critical of all religions…including Islam. As a free speech absolutist, I have tweeted out about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the bigotry of low expectations many seem to apply in making excuses for these Islamist attacks.

I think the fact that you’ve tried to use the pinned tweet with Pepe the frog imagery as evidence of some nefarious intent on my behalf is extremely telling of your goals and lack of rigor in ‘investigating me’. The pinned tweet is a link to this very article you’re ‘critiquing’. The Pepe/Joker frog meme logo was one I used for my article and I think it’s quite artistic and fitting. The sad/lonely pepe frog is certainly synonymous with the centrality of ‘shitposting’ to life in the online incel community. The joker element to the image is an allusion to the moral panic about how many incel attacks were going to happen in response to the release of the Joker movie…as it happens this ‘terrorist wave’ never manifested. Islamist terrorist responses to cartoons are in fact more likely than an incel terrorist attack in response to a comic book movie.

To summarise on this point, your characterization of me couldn’t be more wrong and in the short time that I’ve been writing, I have covered topics such as identity politics, polyamory, the ‘Karen phenomenon’ and Nick Sandmann. I am currently planning on writing a piece about how gaelic football can be an amazing vehicle to combat racism as it goes. Not what you would have assumed I imagine?

“I disagree with what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it.”

In relation to your objection to the publication of my piece, well firstly you obviously did think it was worth the time and effort but you haven’t offered much of a critique or refutation so much as a personal attack. You haven’t actually engaged with any ideas in the piece. Your gripe seems to be with me or rather who you think I am or worse again, who you think I might have been had I been born in the 1980s. You also take issue with the publishers over whether the piece should have been published or not. The publishers (and others) obviously thought it had merit, you’re free to disagree and say so. My article was published (here and in various other outlets) and so was yours. I must give credit to the publication for creating fertile ground here for the genuine exchange of diverse ideas. I think they have justified their decision in the following comments and I’m happy to let them speak for themselves. I also admire their conviction and fortification in defending their decision and in drawing my attention to your screed here.

I do however want to address one additional piece of criticism from ‘Lucy’ the comments that I feel ties in with the overarching free speech & platforming theme of the debate that has been happening in the comments.

It’s Pepe the frog. It’s the weaponisation of liberal principles of discourse by the Right. Got to hand it to them – they’ve moved the Overton window in a way we might have thought unimaginable a decade ago. When we give their ideas a platform in true liberal Voltairean spirit we are obediently dancing to their tune; fearing the spectre of an accusation of hypocrisy that never especially seems to trouble them. So, perhaps we should stand for something other than simply letting everyone speak. And Costello’s ideas have dark implications that can be traced directly to the soil of overt manosphere misogyny that clearly nurtured them; not least the idea of sex itself as a commodity to which men have the right of “access”, and a predictable but distressing demand of further emotional labour from women to solve the issue.

The notion that I am far right or even right wing doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. There is so much about me that would make me unwelcome on the far right. I am a free speech absolutist, sexual expression and sex work advocate and have expressed sympathetic views to polyamory. I am pro immigration and an immigrant who lives with a mixed race immigrant. I voted Yes in the same sex marriage and Repeal the 8th referendums in Ireland. I spend a lot of time socializing in the gay village district of Birmingham. I was a remainer and have positive views towards post work utopian worlds of super abundance and universal basic income. Seeing as my Twitter content is the subject of such speculation I am conducting a Twitter poll about how people would characterise my political leanings. At the time of writing the results are,

  • Far Left: 8.3%
  • Centre Left: 50%
  • Centre Right: 41.7%
  • Far Right 0%

I also, for entertainment value, decided to take the political compass quiz. My answers placed me firmly in the Left Libertarian quadrant.

More specifically, I don’t quite agree with viewing sex as a mere commodity, however, there absolutely has always been a transactional nature to sex. This topic is well explored in this Quillette article, ‘The Price of Sex’. However, I go to explicit lengths in my article to stress that I absolutely do not think that men should have the ‘right of access’ to sex. Here is a direct quote from my article:

However, to have sympathy for incels does not equate to advocating women be ‘given to them’ as their entitlement… Every time I discuss incels with any semblance of sympathy, I am met with a chorus of, ‘‘boo hoo, woe is me, poor men, they’re not entitled to sex or women you know!” This is of course true. I am not and have never at any point suggested that women should be made lower their standards to reduce the plight of the incel.

It's grating to be described as one of 'them' purely for writing an article Because I don't want the issue hijacked by nefarious actors on the far right, which is precisely what happens when we resign this conversation to the dark corners of the internet and label anyone discussing it as far right. I thought/think I can bring a new level of sensitivity and sophistication to a topic that I think sorely needs it. If you feel I haven’t brought sufficient sensitivity or sophistication then fair enough, I am open to critique. However, we shouldn’t keep the issue completely off the table or label someone as far right because they think it needs discussion.

“It was acceptable in the 80’s” - Calvin Harris

The speculation about who I might have been in the 1980s is truly bizarre. I was born on October 29th 1989. A few days later they took down the Berlin Wall … what does that mean? Given your speculative nature I’m sure you can conjure up some significance to this fact.

Your assumption that I treat people as monoliths couldn’t be more misplaced. I have written in depth about the corrosive nature of identity politics and how it goes against universalist and enlightenment values of individualism. I believe in the philosophy of Maajid Nawaz, “no idea above scrutiny and no person beneath dignity”. If I do have a gripe with ‘woke’ ideology, it is that it divides people along identity lines of immutable characteristics and distracts from class divides which have a real impact on their lives. In that we might even agree more than we disagree.

My piece doesn’t mention woke, cancellation or BLM. It certainly does not mention Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn so again you’re setting up a straw man for yourself to argue against.

My piece doesn’t directly mention feminism but it does refer to feminism with one Frank Furedi quote. Is there something about Frank Furedi that makes me guilty by association too? My piece also references feminist journalist Louise Perry who is quite an outspoken feminist and the work of Dr. Francesca Minerva who I understand also identifies as a feminist. If you or other interested readers want to hear my views on the range of sporadic topics you can read or listen to more of my work e.g. I do discuss feminism in a debate at Goldsmith’s University last year.

All of this is indicative that it is in fact you that is the one that sees people as monoliths because you assume a full suite of my other political views because of one. You make 2+2=5 and run with it. You’re arguing into the ether about a version of me that doesn’t exist outside of your incorrect assumptions. Quite honestly it’s very weak and in really bad faith.

You haven’t done your homework and it shows.


William Costello is an Irish writer studying Evolutionary Psychology at Brunel University London. William has debated publicly at Universities around the UK about feminism and gender/identity politics. William writes opinion pieces for various publications and you can follow his work on Twitter: @CostelloWilliam and Medium.

2 comments:

  1. By this point TPQ policy should be pretty clear.

    If you wish to have your comment published do not use the "Unknown" pseudonym.

    Use whatever other handle you choose so long as it does not clash with any other user.

    If you cannot access the site other than via Unknown then sign off your comment with some name other than Unknown and retain the same handle each time you comment

    ReplyDelete
  2. William - thanks for responding. From the page views there seems to be quite a lot of interest in both your and Brandon's perspectives. TPQ is pleased to have hosted both.

    ReplyDelete