Kos has certainly been guilty of a lack of empathy, but is that a crime? If only all the packets that have been switched to excoriate him and bemoan his insensitivity had been instead used to track down the supposedly "anonymous" men who've made Serra's life hell. Wouldn't better lessons be learned if there were pictures online of those guys being packed off to prison for a few years (or decades, if they made the threats in the U.S.)?
The older I get, the less I believe in redemption and the more contempt I have for "regrets" and "apologies."
Conversely an apology from Kos, a recognition that he didn't understand, might have been accepted because he was so blatantly, factually wrong. We know he has little ideological sympathy for minority rights but, by trashing Sierra's experience, and by extention, all women's experience on the web, he effectively sided with those who'd attacked her. His non-apology simply compounded rather that error.
ps Some of Sierra's attackers have been reported to the police. It remains despicable that so many "progressives" were more concerned about their prerogatives than about how ideas of widening democratic debate on the web have been stifled by the behaviour of a few. Their silence is educational.
I share Steven D's disappointment that so many A & B list bloggers wouldn't step up. I remember a couple of years back when wise guys (hi Kevin) were effectively saying "women aren't capable of/temperamentally inclined to writing about politics cos we don't see them on political blogs". Now that canard has been well and truly trashed, surely the next step should be, "how do we stop the next generation of female democratic thinkers from learning that silence is the safest option ?" Kos's disdain hurts this process keep to the Fen Causeway
