Huh, interesting. Wu’s Medium post (the article you linked to) does paint Wu as a victim. The basics for anyone who doesn’t want to read it:
[ul]
[li]- Naomi Wu is a native of mainland China, and still lives there.[/li][li]- Wu considers herself to be a big nerd and makes, basically, cool tech videos of her Maker projects, which she posts to YouTube via an illegal VPN from her home in China, as YouTube itself is blocked in China.[/li][li]- Vice media approached Wu to do a news story about her, or about women in China in tech (sorry, fuzzy details)[/li][li]- Wu agreed to be interviewed, and explicitly asked the editor to leave out any details of her sex life and relationships. She said the culture and government in China could pose a problem to her safety and well-being if some details were exposed. The Vice editor agreed to protect her privacy and acknowledged the difference between Chinese and western freedoms. [/li][li]- The interviewer spent 3 days with Wu in China.[/li][li]- When the interviewer returned from China, they began asking Wu about her personal relationships and sex life, in response to rumors being spread on 4Chan. From what I can tell, the accusations were that she was merely a face for a white guy technician and she had no tech skills of her own.[/li][li]- Wu was pissed about this, wanting Vice to avoid asking her who she slept with and how a woman can do tech in China. She says that interracial relationships are a no-no in mainland China, and so is a feminist perspective. Answering these questions - that she had asked them to avoid - could make big trouble for her in China. She also points out that these are things male DIYers are not asked.[/li][li]- Wu plead some more with an editor-in-chief at Vice to no avail. In retaliation, she added his name and address to, what she says, a small, quick, blip in a DIY video she released, effectively “doxxing” him.[/li][li]- Vice got her YouTube channel shut down over this, and her Patreon account and removed her source of income. [/li][li]- Sarah Jeong, who is friends with the aforementioned editor-in-chief and works for Vice, posted on Twitter about this controversy “There’s a ton of white men telling me that there’s a cultural sensitivity issue here or that it’s dangerous (lol) to have a white husband. I did a sanity check with a woman who’s a Chinese national. It’s not far off from Korean culture: this is a non-issue, y’all are gullible”[/li][li]- Wu is like “WTF? What do you know? Are you serious?” And then I guess she wrote that Medium piece.[/li][/ul]
It’s kind of a long road to get to Sarah Jeong but ultimately it does show a level of haughtiness and insensitivity. And unprofessionalism that you don’t want to see in the NYT.
There’s actually two interesting Twitter threads to check out if you want to see Jeong’s perspective (this is the thread where she wrote what I quoted above) and the opinion of a third party, Jackie Luo.
I dunno if this is exactly the one and only thing people should be talking about with regards to Sarah Jeong. I think we can put all of her “transgressions” together to form an opinion. But it is an interesting story nonetheless.