Democratic Influencer Harry Sisson Gets Canceled For Being A Straight Man

Republican activist and state delegate Sarah Fields posted a viral thread on X holding him accountable for “unacceptable behavior from a manchild with collectively over 2 million followers.” The thread is an exposé of said “manchild behavior” as told by the women involved, who opted to band together through publicly coordinated TikToks reminiscent of the West Elm Caleb scandal of yesteryear. 

As a refresher, that was a publicly coordinated attack by slighted women who discovered a man they matched with on a dating app was secretly playing the field. The allegations against Sisson are no more sinister—they don’t involve non consent or even any actual sexual activity at all. The crime being forensically analyzed here, and I cannot stress this enough, is tragically Gen Z in nature—no sex or seemingly even real contact involved, just an endless vaguely sexual situationship that exists entirely online, painfully dragged out over months.

I read the viral thread. I attentively listened to each woman’s detailed videos recounting their experiences. I read through their receipts. I came away from the situation not just underwhelmed by the allegations Fields thought warranted branding Sisson a “narcissistic abuser” but incredibly disturbed by our current culture. The dating landscape is so bleak, and polarization is so intense that politically motivated attacks from political opponents do all the work of legitimizing baseless character attacks meant not to seek justice for supposed “victims” of flirting but to uncover damning “hypocrisy” that will cause reputation destruction.

Each of these women strikes me as a tragic figure. They’re so steeped in hyper-vigilance about consent, power dynamics, and ethical non-monogamy that their perception of normal heterosexual male behavior has been considerably distorted. Though their representation of their relational grievances with Sisson is grossly exaggerated, I fear this isn’t even an intentional malicious hit-job rather than a case of modern women lacking the language to articulate old-fashioned disappointments with philandering douchebags (if that’s even the case).

A concerning proportion of modern women have infantilized themselves into an anti-agentic framework, where perceived slights aren’t just L’s you ought to take on the chin; they’re crimes or serious moral failings that require public “litigation” via social media. It’s pretty evident that the women lamenting they were led on for nine months by a very casually sexual, exclusively online “relationship” are engaging in a level of self-delusion rivaled only by men who seriously think the stripper really likes them.

They express disbelief that a man who built a platform on respecting and believing women could betray those principles by… being sexually attracted to women? Many seemed genuinely shocked that a young, straight man with a large following wasn’t “above” experiencing sexual desire and appreciating explicit photos that women willingly sent him just because he’s a self-described feminist. Neither the women scorned nor Sisson’s political opponents are getting much mileage out of this moot point. 

Sisson’s flings invoked past irrelevant hardships for no apparent reason, to suggest that he took advantage of them, no matter how distant or unrelated the events. Somehow, they all have some great tragedy lurking over their person like a dark cloud, apparently rendering them incapable of consent. Multiple women cited past, unrelated domestic violence incidents and sexual assaults to suggest he took advantage of them by expressing compassion for their experience and taking an interest in their wellbeing. 

One accuser even cited dealing with depression from a traumatic car accident as evidence he “took advantage of her sadness” by being interested in her sexual photos but having no interest in making her his girlfriend. I was relieved to see I wasn’t the only one incredibly perplexed about the invocation of past sexual assaults and abusive dynamics which genuinely had nothing to do with anything. The implications, one person joked was that “once a woman has been beaten [apologies for the crass language], she’s off the market - forever.”

Each of these women cited in Fields’ viral thread provided receipts or firsthand accounts in which Sisson clearly wasn’t looking for anything serious. Though they say they understood this, they held out for the fantasy of a Snapchatters-to-lovers story. And hey, stranger things have happened. But if you’re still being “led on” after nine months of a man showing no interest in you aside from the occasional nude photo via Snapchat, I think that one’s on you. No matter how dragged out these situationships were, how blatantly his messages fished for photos rather than true intimacy, or the fact there were no intentions of meeting up in person, each woman felt incredibly betrayed when, down the line, he finally committed—to someone else. 

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and scorned they were. Women Sisson had previously exchanged flirtatious messages and photos on Snapchat with began questioning the timeline. Were these online sexual exchanges overlapping with this supposed committed relationship? Women began to question whether they were the only objects of his affection at the time, as he had suggested, or if he was secretly playing the field. 

They started to discover each other through TikTok, comparing timelines and receipts, and discovering they weren’t as exclusive as they had presumed. Righteous anger began to bubble. Feeling betrayed that he broke their trust and, worse, that he turned out to want a serious relationship in the end, just not with them, they exacted revenge via reputation destruction under the guise of “accountability.”

They perhaps also sought retroactive status-seeking by humble bragging about their secret online escapades with a niche internet celebrity important enough to amass millions of followers and interview the former presidents of the United States. Sisson has yet to share his side of the story, though he’s apparently remarked that some women involved are “crazy.” Taking their account of events at face value, the great crime here was a sort of naiveté that led to inferred expectations that were seemingly never agreed to or only passively so, resulting in bruised egos. 

Were these women really under the impression that a guy they sent sporadic nudes to for several months was going to be their happily ever after? It’s unreasonable to adjudicate such a trivial private matter between “lovers” on social media and expect us to see it as anything other than revenge-seeking. But if he did try to pull the wool over their eyes with dishonesty and manipulation, they’re entitled to feel hurt. It’s certainly a step too far to characterize it as abuse or predation, however. The push for his friends and colleagues to denounce him is similarly ridiculous.

Most seemed to agree the scandal was more of a personal grievance than newsworthy. Others joked that Sisson fabricated the entire scandal himself to prove he isn’t gay. This goes back to a navy seal making a bizarre bid for dominance by suggesting if there was no social media, Sisson and his liberal male colleagues would be his concubines. Probably my favorite tangentially related discourse to come out of this scandal is the manosphere’s disbelief that someone like Sisson can get women. 

It flies in the face of their entire dating strategy, which is based entirely around put-on bravado and the insistence that women don’t like kind, compassionate men, despite the fact that kindness was the single most important feature desired in a sexual partner by both men and women in every one of the 37 cultures observed in a global study by David Buss. 

What I’ve gathered from this deeply unserious, deeply uneventful “scandal” is that romance is not something many modern women think is easily accessible. They believe they need to wade through purely sexual online situationships indefinitely until they magically transform into something more. Some online commentators have claimed that defending Sisson is a vindication of misandry or an admission that women need to have low standards for men because their nature is to lie and cheat. 

My counter would be that this wasn't a clear case of maliciously orchestrated deception but a mix of ambiguous flirting, unclear expectations, and a lot of projection from the women involved. As Datepsych points out, this great social ill Sisson is being punished for in the town square is of quite a mild nature and the response is out of proportion to the crime. The slighted women’s righteous anger also reveals an implicit adherence to socially conservative monogamous norms despite their progressive social leanings.

The most charitable reading is that there was a breakdown of expectations either due to self deception or cowardice, but unless we're prepared to revive 18th century era duels to defend women's honor, we all have to accept some level of personal responsibility when these situations unravel. 

Messages from Sisson to one of his most detailed accusers, Carlee, read, “I never lied to you. We were not exclusive, and I made it abundantly clear I didn’t want that, and you said that was fine. I haven’t done anything that wasn’t allowed within the parameters we set. What and why are you screenshotting?” 

​​This message is simultaneously vindicating and damning. On the one hand, it shows he was more upfront than they’re letting on. On the other hand, the way he discusses the “parameters” of their pseudo-relationship in legalese is nauseating. That’s where we are now: negotiating romance in contract-like terms, with screenshots at the ready for future litigation. Welcome to Hell World.