On Monday, the Seattle City Council voted 5 to 4 not to sell a downtown city street to a developer to build a potential sports stadium. (How many stadia do we already have in downtown Seattle? Two. How many of those two did voters reject? One.) All 5 voting no were women, and all 4 voting yes were men.

And you can write the rest of the story yourself.

Seattlish has some details:

[In] play were any number of issues—labor, land use, traffic, competition, taxes, the value of public/private partnerships—many of which received quite a bit of consideration in the months leading up to and during the meeting.

But little of that nuance is present in much of the blowback following the decision. Instead, there’s this:

And then there’s the attorney who emailed all five of them:

As women, I understand that you spend a lot of your time trying to please others (mostly on your knees) but I can only hope that you each find ways to quickly and painfully end yourselves. Each of you should rot in hell for what you took from me yesterday. I hope you enjoy your thirty pieces of silver and know that I will be make donations to your competitors next election cycle. Please don’t misunderstand me. I TRULY pray for nothing but horrible things for each of you moving forward. You have made this world a worse place by whoring yourselves out to the highest bidder. Please Please Please do the honorable thing and end yourselves. Each of you are disgraceful pieces of trash that deserve nothing but horrible outcomes.

The LA Times reported the story.

A bar complaint was filed against Jason Feldman:

Ben Livingston, a longtime Seattle pot advocate, has filed a bar complaint against the attorney who wrote a threatening, misogynistic letter to the five female council members who voted against a street vacation that would have eased the way for a future NBA arena Monday.

…

In his complaint, Livingston writes that Feldman, an attorney in Lynnwood, “is sending abusive email to female elected officials because he is angry over a land use decision. He makes sexual suggestions and repeatedly encourages these woman to commit suicide,” and asks the bar association to discipline Feldman for unethical conduct.

As Seattlish noted earlier, the female council members, who made up the five-vote bloc needed to prevent the street giveaway to wannabe stadium developer Chris Hansen, have been subjected to a barrage of misogynistic insults and threats by sports fans, almost all of them male, angry that women would take their stadium away from them.

But of course it’s not “their” stadium.

The insults, which can be summarized as “You cunt,” “Die,” “Get back in the kitchen,” and “women are subhuman,” may be familiar territory for women who spend a lot of time having opinions on the Internet. But they’re unprecedented in recent memory for the Seattle City Council, and give the council’s five-woman majority an unwanted taste of what happens when female public figures fail to “know their place” — by, say, voting against an arena supported by a large, mobbish clique of male sports fans.

Or by doing anything else. Mobbing women on the internet is just one of those things guys do when they want a laugh.

Heidi Groover at The Stranger talked to Feldman.

I reached Feldman by phone this morning. He refused to confirm that he sent the email and refused to comment except to remind me that the First Amendment exists. “I want you to make sure that you understand the level of scrutiny that is afforded political speech under the First Amendment,” he said, refusing to comment further.

That’s easy enough to Google. What’s not—or wasn’t until it was reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal today—is that this isn’t the first time Feldman has allegedly mistreated women. In September, the state bar recommended that Feldman be suspended from practicing law for two and a half years after a client alleged Feldman sexually assaulted her. The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office did not pursue criminal charges against Feldman in that case, and he is now appealing the bar’s suspension recommendation.

Well I’m sure he did his appeal a lot of good with that email.

Livingston, who filed the complaint, said he was offended by the misogyny and references to suicide in Feldman’s email. “That level of misogyny and hatred has no place in our public discourse,” Livingston said. “I was surprised he was a state-licensed attorney. He has a legal obligation to uphold certain ethical standards and he should know better.”

Livingston added that it’s important to “stand up” for council members who may not have the time to respond to hateful emails. In that same spirit, the National Women’s Political Caucus is circulating a petition of solidarity with the council members. You can sign that here.

I did.