A Woman’s Life Is Worth More Than a Burger
The domestic abuse behind a viral essay shows how badly we need women and survivors to tell these stories instead
Feminism is, among other things, a battle to define what constitutes relevant information. Last week, that battle was thrown into harsh relief when a report from the Willamette Week revealed that Steve Stanich — the subject of a viral essay by award-winning food critic Kevin Alexander who claimed his glowing review is what “killed” Stanich’s family burger joint — had choked his wife, who managed the restaurant, in front of their child and repeatedly violated the terms of his probation afterward, including at least one more instance of “offensive contact.” Stanich also tried to steal her dog.
As the Willamette Week notes, Stanich’s criminal history was public record, and in writing about him, Alexander only needed to look up the relevant court records to find that Stanich had pleaded no contest to “misdemeanor harassment.” Even worse, it appears that Alexander actually knew at least part of this history and deliberately chose to keep it secret at Stanich’s request: “He asked me not to reveal the details of [the] story,” Alexander wrote in his original essay, “but I can say that there were personal problems, the type of serious things that can happen with any…
