All posts tagged "Mary Elizabeth Williams"

Mary Elizabeth Williams has a great defense up of the new internet meme that puts John Pike, that cop who was photographed calmly---chillingly---pepper spraying innocent, non-violent protesters at UC Davis while they sat rather helplessly on the ground hurting no one. Pike is now being photoshopped into an endless array of situations, re-imagined as a man with a can dousing the entire world in pepper spray. 

[rebelmouse-image 24750137 original_size="280x429" expand=1]So, Mary Elizabeth Williams has called me hysterical and claimed I'm ruining feminism with my supposed irrationality because, on Twitter, I criticized a piece she wrote about her pediatrician accidentally giving her daughter the first dose of HPV instead of the scheduled meningitis shot.  When a cascade of people attacked me, I defended my point of view, both that the heavy drama surrounding this was unnecessary and, far more importantly, that Williams' choice to treat the HPV shot as somehow separate and more fraught than every other vaccine fed a very dangerous narrative about this vaccine, and she should have been more responsible.  Her response minimized and distorted her original piece, and overplayed my reaction, in my opinion.  But let's take my objections one at a time, for clarity's sake.