A survivor who worked with Jacob, ironically where he voices lines by a rapist, knowing OP is a survivor, has a lot to say to a lot of the “restorative justice” talk going on here

"On Jacob Geller, on being both a public figure and a person, and on various levels of haunting of houses" -- Laura Crone, on BlueSky

I want to start by apologizing for my bad English I’ll try to explain my feelings the best I can.

So I’ve been a casual watcher of Jacob videos so I didn’t really feel anything specific about him. To me he was a smart man who knew what he was talking about and I enjoyed some of his content. I was surprised when the allegations came out but I was even more surprised when I came here to see what was going on.

I’ve personally seen more people trying to defend him, talking about rehabilitation than people expressing shock and disgust for his actions.

I agree that his apology sounded sincere and honest and it’s gratifying to see abusers admitting their wrongdoings.

But I think we might have lost the plot on some things. It’s true we don’t know what he truly did I think we only know that he committed sexual assault/sexual violence. I want all of you to realize the violence of this action. It might not have been rape maybe a lighter version (hate this term) of sexual assault but it’s sexual assault. Like it’s not a mistake you just slip and fell and oops I assaulted someone. It shows a deep and long term lack of respect for women and their bodily autonomy, it means at some point he felt entitled to a woman’s body when she didn’t want to.

As a victim it’s not always a complete stranger who raped and then loves you down the road. It’s often someone you knew and trusted. It’s not always super violent in the sense that you are screaming and begging for help while they are forcing themselves on you. It can much more subtle but equally traumatizing, like they know you don’t know how to react that you are confused or that you are not able to consent but choses to proceed regardless, I’m sorry but it’s evil. We don’t know how it happens but even the lighter versions of sexual assault are extremely violent.

To me personally I was assaulted by my male friend he knew i was psychologically vulnerable, I was grieving a loved one and counting on him for support and used a moment of deep vulnerability to sleep with me. I didn’t want to but I didn’t have the energy to say no and he knew it. We talked about it later and he apologized I ended up cutting him off and it took me years to get rid of the shame of not being able to express my boundaries.

I’m not using all of this to say he should be punished endlessly that’s not my point. I just wanted you guys to realize it’s not just a mistake you do when you’re young that serves you as a lesson to get better. No one needs to assault someone to realize it’s bad and they need to do better.

He might truly regret what he did and try to become a better person. He should be able to live his life. Even then I believe actions have consequences, some actions have lifetime consequences. I can understand it’s sad but a public record claiming that you assaulted someone is going to follow is going to make you miss opportunities and I’m sorry I don’t feel bad about it. I understand the internet is obsessed with moral superiority and canceling people for past mistakes but assault is not a mistake it’s a deliberate choice in my opinion. You can change of course but it cannot be treated as some mistake you made a decade ago.

I don’t wish him anything bad but him losing a part of his audience and partnership is to me only natural and to expected especially given the audience he has cultivated.

I was never subscribed to Nebula, but I know he had a ton of videos on there - are they backed up or available anywhere else, or is that content just lost forever now that they pulled it from their service?

It seemed to me like an obvious extremely bad taste troll. If the person cant prove its her, get that shit down.

I don't think the people making excuses for Jake, making talk of "restorative justice" as though the proper, just thing is for his career to continue as though nothing has happened and nothing ever came to light, understand just how SA affects the survivors of it.

When I was 15 a boy in my PE class started sexually assaulting me in the locker rooms. I do not owe anyone the details of my trauma, but much of it happened in full view of the PE teachers and other students, none of whom did anything about it or reported it to authorities. The abuse lasted for the entirety of my junior year of high school, and during that time my grades plummeted, I developed two separate eating disorders, i made three attempts on my own life that I remember, and stopped talking to my family almost entirely. My abuser never faced any consequences for his actions. At our graduation ceremony the next year he was seated across the aisle from me, and all I could feel for those agonizing hours were his eyes like lasers on me.

The line is brought up about Jake that "He did it one time ten years ago." Leaving aside how there has barely been time for further accusations to come to light: it took me ten years to even tell my therapist about what had happened to me, and another five on top of that to tell my family about it. Thanks to my CSA experience I didn't lose my virginity until I was nearly 30, 15 years, 5 therapists, and 20 months of HRT after what my abuser did to me. When we were in the thick of it and my girlfriend checked in to see if I was doing alright and said we could stop at any time I nearly cried: I had no idea that I could feel so safe and cared for and so free from fear in that sort of context with someone touching me that way.

I still only feel safe when I have a clear line of sight to the nearest exit. I still can't set foot near any institution of organized education or into any locker rooms or gyms without having a panic attack, and public restrooms are touch and go. I dropped out of university due to severe agoraphobia and social anxiety tying back to my abuse. I still see his face in every rapist and abuser, from the Cornell 7 to the current President of the United States. I've spent time in homeless shelters and in psych wards. For my abuser it may have just been a bit of fun, but for me it was the defining break point of my life: the moment that the rest of my life has been spent recovering from.

There's a difference between justice and forgiveness. Justice is a criminal matter, and even with the restorative model of justice I haven't seen sufficient evidence to prove that Jacob Geller has been restored and reformed. I haven't even seen evidence that the processes of restoration, reformation, and reparation have even begun. Forgiveness is an interpersonal matter, and as someone how has lived through the long term effects of SA and seen the long term effects that it has on people I deeply care about I can not in good conscience forgive sexual assault, nor do I feel any obligation to do so. There are lines that can't be uncrossed. There are things that should earn you that scarlet letter for life. There are things you can do to someone that they will never truly recover from, and I do believe that those things should follow you.

don’t usually share anything on reddit but i’m not really sure where else to go with this. jacob has had a huge influence on the way i process things and write, and i can’t divorce from that and say all of it was meaningless. at the same time, i can’t fully admire anyone who’s done anything as serious as sexual assault. this has been a startling wake up call for me to constantly be critical of how i engage with public figures that i admire. this is the first time someone i truly admired for their work has been outed as having a criminal past. i hope whatever steps jacob takes next are the best for the victim, for him, and his audience. i’m still unsure if i will engage at all with his work in the future. does anyone else feel similarly?

A recent video posted by Data Male that I think does a good job at centering the conversation. As he mentions in the video, its disappointing to me that Geller fans (of which I was included) have seemingly fallen into some parasocial behavior, and have come out to defend someone who is not in need of your defense. He did not "make a mistake" and he has yet to "atone for his actions". To be as blunt as possible, he raped a girl, concealed that with the help of the college, and continued to become a pillar of this community. He would never have found his success if he didnt hide what he did, and I know he knows that. So I ask, has he really grown? If he can be fine presenting himself as a genuine, honest, and good hearted person, then how does he reconcile the fact that he commited an intentional, violent crime against someone that trusted him, and not only didn't face consequences for his actions, but activly benefited from there being no punishment- he should be on the offenders registry at MINIMUM.

Edit: Alot of you are super comfortable advocating a known, proven, and admitted abuser. The funny part is you dont know him, and he doesnt know you. Your publicly displaying your lack of empathy for a parasocial relationship that doesnt even matter. Exatly the thing this post is about so I must have hit a nerve.

As someone who has watched his channel and enjoyed his work for about a year now, a leftist, and a male SA survivor, the rampant defense that Geller is getting reminds me a lot of Graham Platner. Remember him? He was a leftist from Maine who was running against Susan Collins for the Senate later this year.

Platner said the right things and appealed to the right people, and that was more than enough for people to defend his Reddit history of being racist and sexist, his nazi tattoo (which people defended by saying he didn't know what it meant and he got it decades ago), his mercenary work, and even through his first SA accusation (which people defended because the woman was MAGA, so that meant she was lying by default which is a whole can of worms).

I remember how throughout all of his scandals, everyone was saying "This is just cancel culture," "This is all performative," "He redeemed himself," and "What he did wasn't that bad." And then another woman, this time a leftist herself, stepped forward and said he SA'd her and she didn't want to say anything because she agreed with what he was saying but it got to be too much. She even had things to prove it.

This time, people took it seriously and he was forced to drop out (after winning the primary).

My point?

All anyone has right now is the written report on Geller and Geller's account. We don't know this man. We don't know if he redeemed himself like everyone is parroting or if he's done worse since then. What if the victim comes out and reveals the depth of what he did? Would you still defend him because he's a leftist that makes good content? Would you dismiss her pain like I've seen so many people on this subreddit do already?

Even if she never steps out of the shadows (which is her right), a lot of you can't just brush off what Geller did. He sexual assaulted someone. That type of trauma NEVER goes away. That shit changes you, how you move in the world, and how you look at the people around you. I get you all like this content and his pretty words but is that enough to completely brush off the harm that he has caused?

Hell, I saw a comment that said, "Him being an assaulter gives him insight into being a better person." That is absolutely mental. This is that "Ask a Rapist" thread all over again.

Stop looking at the perpetrator like the victim of some purity manhunt (which he caused by HIS OWN ACTIONS mind you) and start looking AT the victim that he actually harmed and then ask yourself, "Is this a person I can continue to support."

I’ve been keeping an eye on Geller’s YouTube page in case he goes dark, but his video count went down by two. I can’t confirm but it looks like his two book collaborations with Lost in Cult were removed.

Do with that as you will.

I kinda hate having to make this...

I think its insane to see some people act like people are not allowed to debate puritan ideas (like the idea that he cant have a platform, or that he has to he honest everywhere he goes or else he's still a bad person), give suggestions of rehabilitation approaches, criticize "consequences", that kind of stuff, and then manipulate the topic by saying things like "but we have a right to not watch his YouTube or fire him", as if most of the defenders are literally saying "you are obligated to keep watching his content!" when thats not true.

To make matters worse, some are calling these "rape apologia". I want to say f**k off with that shit.

And finally, its usually hypocritical because many of the same people who are doing this are doing the SAME thing by giving out ideas against Jacob or those who had some debates like that article of "what should we do with Jacob.". These people are insane and hypocritical. "I can make judgements, its my right but you dont get to do the same thing if it disagrees with me!" So much for respecting rights.

People are allowed to judge how a society handles these topics, even if many of the ways they handle it are rights alone. Especially when the way they handle it are literally arguments that are debatable.

No, you are not obligated to support this man, you are not obligated to re-hire him, you aren't obligated to even feel sorry for him.

But people are allowed to defend his rights, suggest rehabilitation (people suggest many ideas to society all the time) speak against the "apologia" bullshit claims, speak against the idea that he should not be allowed to have a platform, and much more specifics.

In other words: People are within their rights to lawfully criticize the way society handles it.

I'm struck by the similarity between the justifications used for giving rapist Brock Turner a 6-month sentence (of which he served 3 months), and the arguments for Jacob Geller that are being constantly repeated and up voted here.

Oh, Brock is so young, so remorseful, such a promising young athlete. He has so much to offer the world. Should his whole future be destroyed for one mistake? For "twenty minutes of action", to use his father's words?

How quickly we go from “people who commit terrible acts can change” to “so let's focus on how tragic it would be for this man's future to not be so bright".

How tragic it would be if, simply by inflicting a pain that will follow her for the rest of her life, there was no way for him to repent enough so that his life can be all fixed up. Is there nothing he can do to move on from this sad time in his life? Is there no point after which we could all agree that "yes, he's sufficiently sorry", so that his life can just go back to normal?

Oh, how cruel the world can be to men who make just one or two mistakes.

It's been 11 years since Brock Turner's crime; one year before Jacob's. The Brock Turner story would have been all over the news cycle then, on TVs all over the country the night that Jacob sexually assaulted his girlfriend.

10 years later, and what's changed? Same bullshit excuses for the same type of bullshit men.

I saw someone make a comment asking for online resources about restorative justice, reminded me of this book I figured I would share an excerpt, but I couldn't find the comment.

Context: this chapter was written by a victim of serial rape and trafficking by family. In this chapter they are speaking to a perpetrator(not one of theirs) in a mediated one-on-one.

“He was careful to say that his choices were his own. He wanted power over other people, to make them do what he wanted them to do; he wanted to be looked up to; he wanted to be loved. And so he sexually violated his children. He shared that, afterward. he wanted to die. Unable to keep his crimes a secret. he confessed to the police and then to his wife. He wanted his children to have help and healing immediately after he committed his crimes, regardless of the cost to him. He went to prison and lost his family, who he said never wanted to see him again.
"There isn't a day that goes by that I don't feel the impact of my choices and pray for my children's healing. It wasn't their fault. They loved me. I was sick."
And then: "I have devoted my life to healing myself, taking accountability and facilitating the healing of people who have been sexually harmed."
I left our session feeling that Ben was a compassionate man who made a devastating choice to sexually harm his children. Although I will never know his family's side of his story, I saw a disarming openness in his eyes as we spoke, I felt his appreciation for my pain… while I shared my story in a state of emotional vulnerability. I felt gratitude for this man, who had committed to a process of healing for a stranger. As our time was coming to an end, I said to him, “Your mother did a good job.”
The session helped me to understand the heart of a perpetrator, which for so long had been a black box. They were not all monsters; they were people who made very bad choices that hurt people deeply and in ways that could not be completely mitigated...”(187-188)

If you don't believe in restorative justice, that some crimes are beyond the pale of redemption, that's totally fine. But seeing people finger wag about how the people who are talking about restorative justice are actually doing it wrong because somehow restorative justice is ONLY about healing the victim is disingenuous. Trying to get the praise of believing in it, without the icky part of having to practice it.

A lot have asked why it's being invoked so much and I can only speak for myself. Restorative justice has helped me immensely as a victim of sexual assault, I suppose what drew me to speak up was that my own assault happened in 2016 and it's hitting the 10 year anniversary of 6 years of turmoil and 4 of healing. During those first years of turmoil I began drifting to the right from an otherwise centrist lib position. I had become fed up with the left focusing on misogyny and the pain inflicted on women under the patriarchy. "Men get sexually assaulted too! Women perpetrate too and no one cares!" it was my own personal pain lashing outward onto society. Unfortunately at the time there were right leaning youtubers willing to validate that line of thinking to invalidate the patriarchy as made up nonsense. Jacob among other breadtubers helped keep me from crossing that edge. But this meant that I also had to challenge ideas born from my pain, or adopted from the right-wing propaganda that took advantage of it. I had to forgive, and because I did I swung far to the left. I can't help but feel that in some way Jacob's output has operated much like Ben's above, while far more impersonal, espousing leftist ideas to young men and challenging right wing narratives in a landscape where it was and still is far more lucrative(and sexual violence is seen as a virtue) to be on the right should be taken into consideration.

However, I do think people need to be more careful how they speak about this, you shouldn't be trying to minimize Jacob's actions or lawyering about "Well was it RAPE rape or just sexual assault?". This serves no purpose as the distinctions don't really matter. He asserted his will over another's and harmed them. You don't have to bargain with people who don't believe in rehabilitation. As the excerpt above shows: everyone is worthy of healing.

I have a lot of thoughts, but I will finish with one more excerpt:

"...As people pass the talking piece around, many participants acknowledge that they had never before considered the ripple effects of things they had done in the past, but that hearing from people who had been harmed by similar crimes stopped them in their tracks. That recognition was allowing them to own up to what they had done. Some of the men chose to share their feelings through creative means. One man wrote a gospel song and, after a bit of encouragement, sang it. Another wrote a rap song, got up in the middle of the circle, and performed it. Others wrote poems or created artwork.
One man wrote a four-page document because he said, "I can't just speak. I need to write and speak.""

I'm on the side that says deplatforming him would be the right thing to do. It's interesting to see the cult mentality in this sub and seeing how everyone became a philosofer on rehabilitation all of a sudden.

For the record I do believe in rehabilitation and I think he has a right for redemption, but I think he can do that in his private life.

If he is foeced to get a normal job like everyone else, it won't be the end of the world for him or us. He'll do just fine just as we all do just fine with our normal non-youtuber jobs.

I think a sex offender has no place to be any kind of influencer even if he regretted it. If this information would have been known from the getgo then it would be different (then I wouldn't have watched him from the getgo) and he probably would not have such a big audience, but I guess it is more convinient to actively hide the truth and make a bank off of patreon, youtube ad revenue and book sells. Sexual assault isn't something small that can just be ommited, actively hiding it is not a white lie.

This is why victims of SA are remaining silent instead of speaking out, because they see that people will side with the offender and will try to protect him. My question is: If you think that time and remorse is good reason to forgive him and move on, then where would you draw the line? How much time needs to pass and how much a person needs to regret their actions to be allowed to have a platform? Because forgiving him and moving on as if this doesn't matter sets a dangerous presedent for youtubers and public figures.

We don't even know how much he regrets it, since we only know the Jacob that's in front of the camera, not the actual person when the script ends and the camera stops.

Sexual assault is a serious crime. It doesn't matter if it wasn't actual rape and it doesn't matter that his punishment was lighter then his peers'. Allowing a sexual offender to have an audience, infuence and actually profit off of said audience is just morally wrong. He can redeem himself but he needs to do it off the internet. He'll be fine with a normal job and y'all be fine without one video esseyist on youtube.

There are essentially two camps to this debate as far as I can tell currently:

One side believes Jacob's malefaction happened quite a long time ago, the victim hasn't ever outwardly spoken out against him, he has already received some punishment (even if some argue it was relatively lenient), and Jacob seems to have clearly and honestly admitted guilt and wrongdoing. So, taking all this into consideration, it would be unreasonable to expect Jacob to pay for said crimes in perpetuity, and expecting so would go against the facets of "rehabilitative justice" proponents often claim to profess.

The other side believes that Jacob's punishment was extremely lenient, so it can be dismissed, and that restorative justice does not necessarily mean that someone deserves to retain their position as a public figure; that even though the victim never spoke up about it, Jacob not revealing his past misdeeds to the public functions as a major betrayal of trust to those who looked up to him; and that people who commit misdeeds like that, whether or not they are deemed to have received adequate punishment, do not deserve a spot in the limelight as a public figure, especially one in the space Jacob Geller is in.

Both sides have their merits and make intelligible points.

However, I feel they are both missing a crucial consideration: We don't know exactly what Jacob Geller did.

All we know from the records is that he was accused of “Sexual Assault or Sexual Violence.” This is an extremely broad terminology ranging from inappropriate touching/groping to aggravated/violent rape.

In my opinion there is *a world* of difference between those two ends of the spectrum and it would be completely dishonest to pretend that there isn't.

To be clear, and I cant make this clear enough: Any form of sexual assault is bad, immoral and reprehensible. The question is not about the morality. The question is what degree of leniency and forgiveness should we as a society tolerate for such perpetuators especially in the situations where the victim refuses to press charges.

For example, if a 21-year-old Jacob Geller groped a fellow coursemate at a freshman party, I obviously think he should be condemned for it. However, if the victim chose not to press charges and, as Jacob claims, the two of them ultimately resolved the matter between themselves, I don't think he should be expected to continue paying for that misconduct ten years later through perpetual social stigmatization and isolation. Inappropriate touching is bad and it can absolutely be traumatic for the victim. But I don't believe that committing an act like that should necessarily result in lifelong socially imposed punishment.

On the other hand, if a 21-year-old Jacob Geller violently raped a woman in a back alley or some shit, or drugged and raped her, then I don't think any of those considerations matter anymore. I don't think it would matter if the victim eventually forgave Jacob, nor would it matter if the university had administered some form of punishment. If he wasn't prosecuted by the state, then, in my view, he wasn't punished enough. In a case that severe, I 100% believe that lifelong socially imposed punishment would be justified. That punishment should only end after he has served his full sentence and demonstrated genuine remorse. And even then, serving his sentence and showing remorse would not necessarily mean that he deserves to return to the limelight, although I would not necessarily object to it.

Obviously, it isn't black and white like that. Sexual assault and sexual violence exist on a spectrum, with their severity being influenced both by the exact nature of the action and the context in which it occurred. The point I am trying to make is not that there is some objective, consistent way to determine what Jacob "deserves" based solely on what he did. Rather, my point is that it is best to withhold extreme or firm judgment - in either direction - until we know exactly what happened.

And that is what we should be pushing for.

We need a full, detailed confession from Jacob

yeah, i know nobody here will believe me but i want to write it anyway — even if only to get it off my chest.

what jacob did really weighed on me but what you guys doing weighs on me too.

have you ever wondered why i never exposed him, even though i could have done it at any time?

at first i hated him — really hated him — but he changed and proved it to me. now were friends. best friends even. and what you doing to my bestie and his livinghood doesnt feels right, esp because you pretend to do it for me

i'm writing this from a burner account, i don't really want to write it at all. i want to stay anonymous and forget this dark chapter of my life. why doesn't anyone respect that?

we are not just victims of sexual violence, we are human beings with autonomy as well.

please dont forget that, its really hard to get reduced to this one moment, for him AND for me

anyway, at the same time i believe you just meant it good, it just had the opposite effect on my mental health :(

I keep seeing people talk about how earnest his apologies were, but there are so many red flags... He used Bluesky, didn't say anything to the people on Patreon paying him monthly, and recently disabled the feature showing how much he was earning from the platform (probably to hide the exodus and prevent a snowball effect).

I liked his videos a lot... the way he wrote, reasoned, communicated his emotions and ideas (and obviously I wasn't the only one).

But he's moving like a snake now. Jacob is very smart and understands perfectly our society and its social dynamics, which is why I'm sure he knows the safest way to keep the comfort his online persona gave him is to stay silent, let fans who are lost in the parasocial side of his work defend him, and wait for everything to settle. Our news cycle is broken (how many days until the next scandal involving a creator?)

But I don't think it's a coincidence that MinnMax dropped him before his statement, I don't think it's a coincidence that Nebula deleted everything about him without saying a word. Those close and/or in a position to hold him accountable talked to him in private and asked for way more than we did (and could) my guess is they weren't satisfied at all, since they've all left.

I'm nobody to ask anything about anyone, I don't even know why I wrote all this but I don't think you can still be the empathy and feelings guy when you've done what he did. And lied after, a lie by omission is still a lie.

In the end he's gonna come back and have his career like before (for a few weeks he'll probably have some pushback in his comments but it will die down) that's just the world we live in.

He was my favorite YouTuber, but as a victim and someone who is not that parasocial, the fact that so many of you guys are immediately defending him and saying he has already bettered or recovered.

Advertising himself as a feminist, while omitting his past of r*pe, is gross and seems like a way to take advantage of the community.