Laurie Essig has never shied away from controversy. In fact, there have been plenty of words used over the years to describe the professor of gender studies at Middlebury College  —“controversial,” “freethinker,” “threatening to the status quo” — but “shy” isn’t one of them.

Thus, it wasn’t surprising when Essig, who since September has been blogging for Forbes.com in a column called “Love, Inc.” (ostensibly about romance and capitalism), wrote a post about last week’s mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Within hours, Essig was fired and her post, titled “Speaking the Unspeakable in Newtown,” was removed from Forbes‘ website. Evidently, her read on the mass killings in Newtown, Conn. didn’t sit well with Forbes‘ management.

“I thought this was on my ‘beat’ since it was about ‘parentalism’ and also hegemonic masculinity,” Essig writes in an email to Seven Days, “but I guess it made someone up top pretty angry. My editor — I don’t think it was her — said my blog was being ‘sunsetted’ (corporate speak for fired) because I had veered off my beat.”

Essig goes on to explain that “This is just another form of privileging reproductive subjects in our political discourse, not to mention a certain sort of dominant masculinity that is at the center of heteronormativity. But the real issue — obviously — is I was too left wing for Forbes.”

Caroline Howard, Essig’s editor at Forbes, didn’t reply to an email seeking her comment. Mia Carbonell, who oversees corporate communications for Forbes Media would say only that “Forbes does not comment publicly on personnel issues.”

Here is Essig’s original December 17 post. (Reprinted with the author’s permission.)

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Staff Writer Ken Picard is a senior staff writer at Seven Days. A Long Island, N.Y., native who moved to Vermont from Missoula, Mont., he was hired in 2002 as Seven Days’ first staff writer, to help create a news department. Ken has since won numerous...

21 replies on “Middlebury Professor Fired from Forbes Blog for Post on Sandy Hook Shootings”

  2. Wow – the entire nation is talking about guns, violence, and mental illness while Forbes tried to silence Professor Essig for starting a dialogue about one of the root causes – misogyny and our cultural beliefs about masculinity. Yet another example in the history of humanity where those who speak the truth are condemned.

  4. Always nice to see someone fit a tragedy into their personal agenda less than a week after it happens. Thank God for the blogosphere.

  5. I’m guessing the “sunset” was more because she is an overly verbose and rambling loon. The first part of her editorial seemingly is a rant about Obama identifying with the parents of the children… or parents in general. She is seemingly oblivious to the fact that the children died leaving behind THEIR PARENTS. The people Obama was relating to in trying to comfort them and other parents along with non-parents.
    The second part then devolves into the blame game. Men, they are terrible and society makes them into killing monsters through encouraging masculinity. Good grief, you know why it isn’t talked about, because its a disingenious argument.
    Between Mckibben and Essig I’m going to suggest Middlebury College revist their hiring practices.

  6. This post makes obvious points, and ones which I agree with, however the presence of ego in the writing is a turn-off.

  9. She’s hardly verbose and clearly you are upset because she rightly calls out the gender of almost all these shooters. There is a problem with constructing masculinity as all about killing and it is showing up big time in the USA and the knee jerk responses of men to any attempt to talk about it just speaks to the depth of the problem.

  10. There is a clear lack of coherency concerning the point of
    her blog. It is a blog so it is meant to have a bit of free flow of thought but
    considering the gravity of the situation a little more thought should be put
    into the message before posting. Saying that the parents of these children and
    other parents of children that age have a more tangible relation to the loss seems
    quite logical. Others also can and clearly are feeling the depth of this grief.
    It is like a male who recognizes the difficulties of professional women in a
    male dominated world. The male can sympathize but cannot truly understand what
    it means to be in their position. I have no love for Forbes but if the blog
    would have been on point about males dominating mass murders then it seems
    likely that it wouldn’t have resulted in her being fired and could have brought
    up a constructive discussion. The seemingly insensitive tone that parents who
    live daily with children of this age don’t feel this grief more acutely is
    probably the reason for the sunset.

  11. I can’t say I agree with much of what she says, and it has the feel of something written in the heat of the moment, which I can attest isn’t wise… thanks to a long history of heated remarks on my own part.
    I can sympathize with much of what shes says, and certainly agree that American ideas of masculinity affect our levels of violence. But much of what she says seems hyper-sensitive and easy to dispute.
    I don’t have kids, but what Obama said about parents never even registered as exclusionary to me; instead, I instantly sympathized with traumatized and worried parents when I heard his speech.
    And I can’t help but think… perhaps because of the appendage between my legs, or perhaps just because it’s a rational thought… that limiting access to guns and bullets will do more to halt gun deaths than a million conversations about manhood ever will.
    Seems silly to fire her over this. But it’s not some brilliant and irrefutable piece either.

  12. I am aware that men are more violent. That’s obvious. It’s the unfortunate truth of nature.
    But it still takes a GOOD man to stop an EVIL man. Violence sometimes won’t stop unless violence is met with an equal or greater opposing force. I am sorry if the world just now figured this out.
    The answer, as the enlightened strive for, is and always has been the journey and charge of all members of humankind to seek, learn, and teach the art and way of peace. This cannot be a discriminatory quest! All people must be brought up from birth to love peace and hate evil. This is battle, the war…that has been waged at great cost since the beginning.
    If you look at yourself and examine carefully…can you truly say that you have loved more than hated? Because if you hate anyone … ANYONE…than you are depositing power into the storage banks of violence, evil, perversion, and death.
    I hope these words change your life.

  13. Professor Essig is wrong when she states that “every single one of these mass shootings has been committed by a man.” Did she forget about Amy Bishop? Or did she ignore her because it doesn’t support her world view that only men perpetrate mass killings?
    Furthermore, her assertion about what “President Obama was suggesting” is presumptuous at best. An unbiased interpretation would be; a parent can more easily identify with the shock of the loss of a child because they have children. Not that non-parents are less able to feel the pain and horror of the events.
    The supercilious tone of her article isn’t going to convince anyone that Essig has anything worthwhile to add the debate. What a shame that she is choosing to be outraged by all the wrong things with regards to this horrific act.

  14. Aside from the fact that, sum total, I didn’t really understand it (and I’m a Ph.d. candidate), I do find it very discouraging that no one is allowed to state the obvious: violence in our society is predominantly a problem of maleness. NOT EXCLUSIVELY, yes, I know. But just look at who fills up the prisons, starts and fights wars, commits domestic violence and so forth. These are facts, no? And if you are offended by my mentioning them, why? I can say guns are a problem but I can’t say that the dominant form of masculinity is a problem? Why? As much as this is a guns and mental health problem (and it is both), it is also a male problem. But I can’t say it.

  15. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
    This guy legged it out of the Colorado theatre leaving his soon-to-be (d’aawww!) fiance and two kids behind. They were helped to safety by a complete (ly awesome) stranger. Not all biological parents fit our cultural script. 3160 views tho? I’ve seen cat-nip ads get more publicity.
    So why is parenthood so often the focal point of these issues? Speaking as a guy who has had his ass handed to him several times over for being mouthy: Why is the fact men think violence is a solution seen as so ‘natural’ that it can’t be problematized?

  16. Don’t really get what angle she’s trying to work, she’s just gotta accept that Man is the superior being and move on.

  17. POTUS is a parent who was comforting parents so he spoke about parents and losing children. He was not writing a scholarly paper about gender roles. This woman is a caricature of a feminist IMO.
    Yes, we have to look at the fact that this type of crime is committed by men. We also need to study women like Marie Noe who murdered 8 of her children in their cribs.
    I am the FemiNazi. This woman is tone deaf, abrasive, and got a needed asswhupping.

  19. Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme (born October 22, 1948) is an American member of the Manson Family.

  20. It’s a human problem. duh.
    It’s not like males are some small minority that can be assimilated or changed.

  21. Bravo for your courage Laurie Essig! With no thought to your own safety you selflessly helped us to put into perspective the massacre of children by a deranged gunman (Is it a coincidence they are never called gun-people?) and to speak the forbidden truth that MEN ARE MORE VIOLENT THAN WOMEN and be rewarded by suffering the merciless wrath of the Patriarchal Hegemony! Isn’t the obvious solution to conscript men to Women’s Studies classes until at the very least they become angry bisexuals?

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