I was just gonna post some comments at Feministe, but since I was going to make some Pandagon-related observations, I decided to go ahead and do a whole post here. Lauren is guest-blogging at her old digs and because she apparently misses the great pleasure that is the flame war, she wrote a post asking what’s up with the feminist police lately. Having done similiar things myself, I thought, “By gum, the young lady is trolling her own blog. Good show, ol’ chappette!” Well, the comments stand at 177 right now and Lauren has opened a new thread to talk about the other one. Since I had drifted early after my first few ice-breaking comments on the first post, I was surprised to find out that the flamewar had ended up being about , at least in large part, Hugo’s blog and the repugnant anti-feminists who’ve completely taken over his comments so that feminists like me don’t even bother posting over there anymore.
I find the topic fascinating because Hugo, and to a lesser degree Ampersand, have got a really strange tightrope to walk as the male heads of feminist blogs. Don’t let the anti-feminists come in and shut down threads by trolling? Get accused of censorship. Let them? Get accused of being a bunch of guys chumming it up over the rights you’ll “let” women have. I’ll admit, on both blogs I’ve had the distinct taste in my mouth of the latter many a time, but I think that both Hugo and Ampersand are acting less on male privilege than on basic personality, and they cherish the appearance of open debate. Nonetheless, they probably do feel less threatened by the asshole contigency, because none of these guys is involved in a political movement aimed at hating on them.
Ampersand has been trying to carve out some middle ground for himself by making feminist-only threads, generally when speaking about sexual abuse or other topics where the anti-feminists simply cannot resist picking on those hurt worst by the patriarchy. Hugo has basically accepted his fate as a lightening rod for anti-feminists. This upsets me because I think a lot of the hurt feelings that are flying would probably be helped a lot if there was a male-run feminist blog that actively troll hunted and expunged people who only jump into conversations to derail them. Right now, there’s nothing that comes to mind–a lot of feminist male bloggers have no problem banning rape apologists and other misogynist trolls, but they don’t run blogs that are primarily about gender issues.
As someone who has been pretty damn successful at (finally) running off people who have nothing to add but animosity, I thought I’d offer some advice therefore on a simple, easy way to get rid of your most odious trolls–ban for thread drift. It’s a great rule that attacks your average anti-feminist’s greatest weapon, which is to turn every thread into a forum on his pet issue that causes him to hate on women so much. If I see someone turn more than one or two threads on something else into why he hates child support, he’s out, for instance. I barely have to ban anyone anymore, I’ve found out.
Of course, it helps to have a bunch of commenters who are mean as hell and not afraid to kick ass. The utter lack of civility on Pandagon has turned the comments section into a super civil place. I guess the logic of everyone’s-packing-no-one-commits-crimes does work after all.
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Okay, I admit it. I do like a good flame war.
But that’s totally not what I meant to do with this post. In fact, I am still jaw on the floor surprised that this is what resulted from my offhand snark.
But that’s totally not what I meant to do with this post. In fact, I am still jaw on the floor surprised that this is what resulted from my offhand snark.
But isn’t that the way with blogging,the post you expect to garner a million comments languishes seemingly unread, while the throwaway joke is a runaway hit?
Yes, it was surprising. But it did get rather heated, prompting me to look so deeply into my own navel that I discovered lint from an old Lacoste polo I hadn’t worn in years.
Amanda, thanks for attributing whatever failings exist at my blog in terms of moderation to my personality rather than to a lack of feminist commitment. I do appreciate it. If I can find a way to make mine an appealing place for you to comment without silencing the MRAs, I’ll move heaven and earth to do so,
I will add that you’ve got some longstanding grudges and unresolved conflicts floating around, particularly since you managed to attract comments from people banned from each others blogs (coming from multiple directions) it seems like an inevitable powderkeg, despite attempts to keep the tone light.
But isn’t that the way with blogging,the post you expect to garner a million comments languishes seemingly unread, while the throwaway joke is a runaway hit?
Case in point, Friday Cat Blogging and FRTs.
FRTs?
Friday Random Ten.
The comment thread was … enlightening. I’m still trying to figure out a way to police the threads. Policing for thread drift is probably the fairest thing to do, and did seem to work in the first thread.
If I can find a way to make mine an appealing place for you to comment without silencing the MRAs, I’ll move heaven and earth to do so,
You choose to allow the MRAs to use your blog to advance their odious agenda. In order to do so, you allow your blog to become less welcoming both to feminist women who don’t find joy in rehashing the same stupid arguments over and over again and to those of us who find relentless passive-aggressiveness repellent.
In other words, Hugo, you are making a choice. You choose to value the presence of the MRAs over the presence of the feminists the MRAs drive away. And what’s worse, you hide behind a ostensible reluctance to “silence” the people you claim to abhor in order to try to cover up your choice. Because you, after all, are a nice guy, and nice guys don’t chase people away and bend over backwards to reach consensus with men of bad will, and if a woman dares to criticize that then you meet her with the sharp language you refrain from with the men you theoretically oppose.
And I call bullshit.
You see, Hugo, there are those of us who value the comments and participation of feminist women on our blogs, and to that end, we take control of our own fucking blogs and ban people who enjoy making our other guests unhappy enough to leave. Freedom of speech is not at issue. The people I ban are free to start their own blogs, after all. Banning them is not silencing them: it is a principled refusal to allow them to vandalize my blog, and to drive away the readers and commenters I value. It is a principled refusal to subsidize speech and actions I abhor.
That is my choice. It is an active choice. Your not banning people you claim to abhor, so that the feminist women with whom you claim to sympathize end up leaving, is also a choice. There is a maxim about actions and words and the relative volumes thereof that is relevant here. It is a passive choice, but it is a choice. And all the whining you may direct at people like Amanda for calling you out on it does not change that fact. Nor does it, in the long run, fool anyone. Perhaps excepting yourself.
Go re-read flea’s post of this week, Hugo. You know: the one that everyone linked to. Not all choices involve actual massacres. Not all choices are life or death. Some choices concern mere verbal environmewnts. But flea’s question stands. Do you stand around and hem and haw and say nothing and fret about “silencing” people as your male buddies assault women, or do you throw them the hell out of the place to defend your sisters?
Hugo, are you a Thompson or a Calley?
To me, there are two basic questions here:
1) Is it at all useful to have a comments thread where MRAs, feminists, and people of whatever beliefs can argue with each other freely?
My answer to this is yes. Some MRAs are, no doubt, 100% misogynistic and we’ll never change their minds about women through reasoned debate over the internet. But other MRAs, and people who may not identify as MRAs but may have some sympathy for some MRA arguments, would benefit from reading a feminist’s argument with an MRA. (Not all feminists should welcome MRAs to their blogs, of course, but I don’t see anything wrong if some do.)
Case in point: me. I used to agree with Christina Hoff Sommers and a whole lot of the folks who call themselves “equity feminists.” I used to agree that most feminists were too loud, shrill, and extreme, and I especially bought into an inaccurate picture of radical feminists. Reading arguments between feminists and antifeminists helped me realize that the feminist side was very much in the right. And of course, the feminists might benefit too, because arguing with people who disagree can make you understand your own opinion better.
But there’s another question involved here. 2) Do Hugo and Ampersand allow people to insult women posters, make generalizations about women, and generally do stuff that adds nothing to the discussion but just pisses people off?
I have to say that the answer is yes. They do. (Hugo, especially.) And that’s where the trouble, for me, comes in. I realize that moderating blog comments is difficult and it’s hard to know where to draw lines, so I won’t make judgments on his feminist sincerity based on his moderation policy. But I encourage him to re-think it. Civility isn’t just about saying “fuck” or not. It’s also about whether you repeatedly dismiss your opponents’ arguments as mere “political correctness,” or imply that a man’s not a real man if he’s a feminist, or if a poster has a habit of intentionally misreading another poster’s words in order to create strawfeminists.
Umm, where was I whining?
I’ve been called many things, but to have my blog policies compared to the My Lai massacre takes the proverbial cake.
I’m sorry that some folks feel uncomfortable on my blog; I’m trying to do a delicate balancing act as best as I can. I do note that I don’t seem to have a problem participating in threads where I am insulted.
I’m sure that’s not real civility though — just masochism, or male privilege, or something dark and unpleasant. It certainly couldn’t be virtue.
I’ve been called many things, but to have my blog policies compared to the My Lai massacre takes the proverbial cake.
QED.
Hugo, you seem unable to see the difference between feminists who are fighting society to save women’s rights, and MRAs who are society who are trying to force women back into servitude. Why on earth would we have a problem with that as women?
Ginmar (we seem to be traveling from blog to blog to have this chat), I see a huge difference. Read my posts. Which is the better indicator of my feminist credentials — what I say, or what I allow others to say on my blog?
Does the fact that I permit MRAs to comment trump everything that I actually say? Or does it vitiate it to the point that any good I’m accomplishing is ruined by the fact that I am so eager to create a civil dialogue?
It’s what you allow them to say over and over again.There was one thread where men ganged up on an Asian woman to tell her she was wrong about her own experience: where were you? The probelm isn’t that we keep having this conversation: the problem is that you won’t listen.
You cosset MRAs who hate women and you let them spew untruths about women and feminists. I just saw you, Hugo, tell a notorious troll that he’d made an itneresting point. You made no mention of the numerous anti-feminist canards included in his comment.
It’s one of the most encouraging things about the internet that what starts out as seemingly one thing develops into something else entirely–sort of like a Simpsons episode, with all the resultant profanity and name callings and throttlings. I thought Lauren was going in one direction with her comment (I thought it was about sex, silly old menopausal me) and was interested to see where it would lead, but instead it turned in a direction that was a little too in-groupish and got boring. Sort of like a bad Simpsons episode. There is still a creepy fascination, though, with watching people you don’t know very well having bad fights.
After some flamewars a bit over a year ago in which I got flamed by a cluster of posters who were deliberately trying to shut down Alas, and after which Ampersand started posting articles by reactionary right wingers and forbidding criticism, I felt it was too dangerous to continue posting on Alas. Ampersand seemed to keep playing Salvador Allende, inviting Augusto Pinochet into his cabinet, and becoming bewildered why that doesn’t bring peace.
I followed Hugo Schwyzer’s blog for a while, but I found his posts paternalistic and gender essentialist.
As someone who has been pretty damn successful at (finally) running off people who have nothing to add but animosity, I thought I’d offer some advice therefore on a simple, easy way to get rid of your most odious trolls–
Send them to Sadly, No! because we’re constantly wearing out our trolls and having to go get more.
People think I’m kidding. Our commenters wore out two or three Malkinoids today alone, and now we’re broke.
I’m still wondering how Meals Ready to Eat developed the ability to clog weblogs with sexist arguments.
I hate to see people banned, just on principle.
And the idea that we keep bashing our heads against the same stupid ideas, well that’s the society in which we live. We must continue to do so until reason and equality between the sexes, and all people, prevail.
And call me a cockeyed optimist, but I think the trolliest of trolls, while didactically repeating the same talking points over and over, actually absorbs the opposing opinion, to some extent. Those with settled opinions who won’t even talk, are the worse problem. Better to hear from your opponent, to know what you are up against.
“Which is the better indicator of my feminist credentials â€â€? what I say, or what I allow others to say on my blog?”
When what you say it uttered in an “indoor voice” and what they say is at the very least a dull roar, well…
I’m not exactly one to issue “credentials” but, I will say that if I felt like arguing with people like many of those that post regularly at your place, I’d troll slashdot, not hang out on feminist blogs.
In short, you try to create a neutral territory because you think that it’s important. That’s fine by me, I think it has it’s place. But then you also try to to pretend neutral territory is the same as safe space, or even fairness, and it’s neither. Switzerland was neutral in WWII, but their actions during that war hardly epitomizes “fairness.”
After all, what is a better indicator of our true morals, what we say or what we do?
I get that your trying, and I do respect that, but it doesn’t mean that I owe you or Mr. Bad my time. Not that I think that you think that exactly, but your entreaties for us to find common ground with people that continualy make arguments that undermine our own humanity comes pretty damn close at times.
Well, that thread provides at least one good argument for allowing a somewhat loose troll policy: with MRA types around, the flamewars will at least concern something substantial.
I’m still wondering how Meals Ready to Eat developed the ability to clog weblogs with sexist arguments.
not MRE, MRA.
MRE=C-rats, the next generation.
MRA= “men’s rights activist”
as in “boo hoo! courts favor women in custody disputes, and men can be drafted and women can’t! men have it sooo much harder than women, you bitches need to shut up, and abort whenever we say so, because it’s unfair when you have choice and we don’t.”
and a great number of them are trolls, and need to shut the fuck up.
but, this is a bit of a epistemological aside (eheh), but how are we defining “MRA asshat who needs to be banned?” expressing any anti-feminist opinion? how deeply held should it be? I think there’s a bit of a no-win situation. clearly, trolls are fuckers, and should be dealt with in the fuckerest of manners. and most MRA clearly fall into the “troll-fucker” catagory.
but there are such entities as people who have genuine misgivings about feminism, based on misunderstandings, miseducation, or the like. so they will in fact, be recycling the same, tired crap.
which will still piss off feminists, and make them feel not welcome. but banning those that don’t get it, while making those feminists feel welcome, might cause other problems. not everyone who says “abortion is murder, and you feminists hate sex” is dyed in the wool. at least for some, we can repair them, we have the technology.
that said, yeah, I do find myself frequently cringing at alot of what Amp lets Robert get away with. alot. like “Robert being rude to people, then people sending pissed responses at amp made me stop reading Alas daily, as I was convinced a good ‘you’re being a dick, shut the fuck up’ from the administration was all that was needed, and it wasn’t coming.” I’d probably cringe at Hugo too, but to be honest, I don’t get by his blog… um, ever. sorry, Hugo.
Kactus, when I see you admiring a bitch for making fun of harassment, I have to wonder what you think you’re doing.
See, me, I think that debates/flamewars have nothing whatsoever to do with the trolly interlocutor. The trolls will never learn. That’s the way of people. You can’t convince most people of the error of their ways. The reason you keep debating is for the lurkers. (Or, as we called ‘em back at my old Interweb stomping grounds, the teeming millions.)
I disagree with what seems to be Hugo’s idea of a civil discourse. He (and correct me, Hugo, if I’m wrong) seems to think that civil discourse stems from the airing of all opinions pro, con, and ridiculous, and Truth Will Out. Me, I believe that civil discourse is only possible when the moderators viciously cull assholery from the conversation. Is Shitstain #1 making the same old tired bigotted point? Farewell, Shitstain #1. Has Principled Participant #b objected to this stifling of dissenting voices by the blog-owner? Suck it the fuck up, Principled Participant #b. We’re trying to advance the dialogue here, and Shitstain #1 was surplus to requirements.
The Internet’s a frigging boys’ club anyway, still. Shitstain #1 will have no problem finding some forum somewhere to crow about how his banning from Intelligent Feminist Blog Alpha vindicates his position. Fabulous. Let him. Meanwhile, the participants at Intelligent Feminist Blog Alpha will be able to continue their conversation in an online space where they feel welcome, the lurkers will be able to enjoy that productive conversation free from distracting shitstainery, and the moderator will be able to hum “The Immigrants’ Song” to herself as she metes out satisfying blog-justice. Everybody wins.
Norb:
It’s called evolution … the MRA’s are just bacteria with ambition (or is that the effect of too many MRIs?)
… and the moderator will be able to hum “The Immigrants’ Songâ€Â? to herself as she metes out satisfying blog-justice.
I’m going to get banned for thread drift, but I wanted to tell you, that made me laugh.
I find the topic fascinating because Hugo, and to a lesser degree Ampersand, have got a really strange tightrope to walk as the male heads of feminist blogs. Don’t let the anti-feminists come in and shut down threads by trolling? Get accused of censorship.
Yeah, they will be accused of censorship, and worse, by the anti-feminists who currently find their blogs a friendly, welcoming zone.
The “tightrope” that you point out is the same “tightrope” that all heads of feminist blogs have to walk. It’s just that the women who run feminist blogs have less to lose if they stand up to the anti-feminists, but male heads of feminist blogs will get to lose some of the male privilege they still retain.
Ampersand wants the kudos of being “a feminist” in feminist circles, without actually having to annoy and offend non-feminists and anti-feminists, some of whom are his friends. He wants to stay friends with men who think of women as less than human, so naturally, he can’t afford to be too offensively feminist at them. See Why I am mad at Ampersand of Alas A Blog.
I am not sure what “kudos” you think Ampersand wants or could possibly receive. Is there a salary involved, or prizes? He puts a lot of time and effort into a pretty fair blog. Not perfect, perhaps, but a reader can learn a lot there without even going near the comments where most of the problems seem to be. Now I’m going to get ripped a new asshole I assume, but that is how I feel.
Though I am a feminist, I don’t consider Republic of Dogs a “feminist blog” (because it’s stupid and not really about anything in particular). However, I was wondering if anyone has considered these commenting guidelines by Twisty Faster, proprietor of “I Blame the Patriarchy”. I especially like her quote from Lauren: “My blog, my discretion.” I personally feel that men’s rights advocates are disingenuous, and I wouldn’t feel any more scruples about giving them the boot than I would over banning, say, white supremicists trying to make a pro-eugenics arguement. While I’m interested in discussion and diverse views, the bottom-line truth is that blogs are free, and anyone can get his/her own. Maybe that’s why I’m less-than-enthused about any notion that everyone has some absolute right to comment on mine.
PS, please excuse spelling errors, i’m writing this in a major hurry.
OOOH crap, that was the WRONG WRONG WRONG link. THESE are Twisty’s posting guidelines. That link above is to some retardo picture on my blog. Amanda, if you see this, please edit that…total mistake! Thanks, and sorry.
And that’s fine, cuz in this wonderful blogosphere of ours we all have the freedom to wonder what other people are doing or thinking. Doesn’t mean you’re going to get your curiosity satisfied, though.
Squid: I am not sure what “kudos� you think Ampersand wants or could possibly receive
Kudos: Acclaim or praise for exceptional achievement. Has no connection with “salary” or “prizes”, as you would know if you had looked the word up in the dictionary. (Hint: Google itself makes a pretty fair online dictionary: click on the “definition” link in the top right corner.)
Men who claim to be feminists, who make a fair fist of talking like feminists, frequently receive kudos for being feminists - acclaim or praise for the exceptional achievement of being a male feminist. I judge that Amp likes the kudos, because he gets pretty snippy when it’s pointed out to him that his friendly, supportive behavior towards non- or anti-feminists makes it clear that he is, in fact, no feminist.
And you pretty much just answered my question.
MRA kvetching is like Goliath complaining that it wasn’t a fair fight because David threw the rock first.
his friendly, supportive behavior towards non- or anti-feminists makes it clear that he is, in fact, no feminist.
So, being friends with these people and allowing them to comment completely overrides everything else Amp does and writes?
If you’re not 100% with us, you’re against us? That seems a bit extreme.
That was Hugo’s question as well:
Does the fact that I permit MRAs to comment trump everything that I actually say?
People are not unidimensional.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and even a “notorious troll” can make “an interesting point” now and then.
And while arguing hardliners may not change each others’ opinions, I agree with Lux Fiat that “The reason you keep debating is for the lurkers.” That may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s why there are womens-only fora and feminist-only threads.
These practices have not been without their benefits. Some feminist women do enjoy the debate. And some people who might not go to womens-only spaces have read and gotten an education.
So let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, just because it’s not your cup of tea.
Lis Riba: So, being friends with these people and allowing them to comment completely overrides everything else Amp does and writes?
See the analogy I posted on my blog. Ampersand is friends with people who think of women as not quite human. What does that say about Ampersand’s professions of feminism?
If you’re not 100% with us, you’re against us? That seems a bit extreme.
Could you be friends with someone who looked on you as less than human? No, because even if you thought you were friends with him, he wouldn’t think of you as a friend: you can only be friends with your equals, and an anti-feminist man does not think of women as equals. If Ampersand were at root a feminist, he would not able to endure a “friend” who thinks of women as not quite human. That he finds anti-feminists not merely endurable, but considers them his friends, says that he isn’t a feminist.
If you’re not 100% with us, you’re against us? Isn’t that a bit extreme.
No, the word we’re loooking for here is disingenuous. For example, another statement that would be disingenuous would be boasting about how one is a bad feminist for fighting with strawfeminists over leg shaving or something equally straw-like.
There’s one basic thing about being a feminist: women are human beings. How can one surround one’s self with people who don’t believe that, and further believe that women are evil? Is tolerating racist friends merely a personality quirk? No? A decent person would find that offensive. Being silent allows the racist to believe it’s acceptable. Being silent about sexism does the same thing, and that’s kind of the whole point of being a feminist.
I think there’s a difference between being silent about sexism and willingly having sexist or racist friends.
I don’t hide my disagreements with the MRAs, and I don’t hide my disagreements with my friends who hold strange and objectionable views. I challenge them regularly and they challenge me. But it is possible to say “I think you hold positions that are morally offensive” and in the next breath say “But I’m looking forward to our lunch next Tuesday!”
Let me anticipate the response: “Hugo can afford to be so friendly with racists and sexists because their bile isn’t directed towards him”. As my kids say, “True that.”
But my commitment as a Christian is to stay in dialogue with the offensive, the rude, the bigoted, and the misogynist. I do believe change can happen, one person at a time, through public and private civil dialogue. Ultimately, I may just be far more optimistic about the potential for personal transformation, and I intend to be a catalyst in the personal transformation of a great many people. Hubris? Maybe. Evangelical faith? Maybe. But it’s not inherently anti-feminist.
Could you be friends with someone who looked on you as less than human? No, because even if you thought you were friends with him, he wouldn’t think of you as a friend: you can only be friends with your equals, and an anti-feminist man does not think of women as equals.
You said it, Jes.
This is why I cannot even “be friends with” or at this point, even tolerate the RL company of conservative guys, even the ones I used to think of as friends for all my past life as a conservative anti-feminist woman.
And why I won’t date the meo-lib sexist guys, even the “nice” ones I run into who I can at least talk with, after I find out that they think that feminism is as bad as male chauvinism, that women aren’t really discriminated against in the workplace, that everything really *is* equal and we should just stop talking about the past or “exaggerating” the problems we face because most guys aren’t like that and my experiences of decades of sexism at school, at home, at work and out and about are invalid, why I am resolutely and almost certainly permanently single.
Because how can I *engage* with (much less be engaged *to*) someone who does not consider me to be a full person? Who actually *says* and argues and thinks it’s reasonable to - as so many conservative intellectuals do, and have said so *in my presence* - to believe that “women have less being” than men, and engage in all kinds of pretzel-logic sophistry to explain why they’re not really bigots, it’s just that women aren’t as good as men - or we’re good in “different” ways, so it’s fine to shove us out of the spheres we try to enter if we’re too stupid to know our place, ‘equal but separate,” doncha know–
If I know that a man thinks of me as some cross between a servo-droid, a collie dog and a piece of fudge, how can I discuss anything with him except on the most superficial level? Everything he says is tainted with that “yes but you belong segregated, your value is between your legs, nothing you say means as much as the dumbest XY git’s beery drivelings” - and most of them do, as evidenced by the belief that I should be complimented when told that “you’re not like most girls, wow, you’re almost as good as a man at X!”
The only way to be treated as person at all is to unsex yourself, like Lady Macbeth - and that is a very limited and impermanent sort of state, where (as happens to me regularly) the “chivalrous” guys, many of them vets, will apologize for even mentioning, oh, Korean bargirls and massages in Thailand, if they happen to be talking “guy stuff” together without realizing I was in earshot. Because I present as somewhere between “not-woman” and “good girl” (I fix computers, but I’m not very “butch” looking), they feel ashamed for sullying/insulting me with the consciousness that I’m one of those disgusting-but-yummy She-Things, as if I were non-white or gay and heard them talking about “those ___s” and they hastened to assure me that “you’re not like the rest of them”.
And that’s as good as it’s going to get, and better than the usual. The women who present as femmy, and worse yet are openly sexual, talking about their boyfriends or ex-husbands or movie-star fantasy boytoys in the typical Cosmo style, get treated like shit, put down constantly as stupid, as well as slutty/predatory, and having to hear coarse male fantasies directed at them (”all in good fun”), everywhere I’ve worked. And they eat that shit and smile and come back for more, because they’re not feminists, and they don’t know any other way to be.
Maybe - if you excise *all* discussion of anything that pertains to half the human race’s interactions with the other half, yes the male chauvinists make some good points about something once in a while. Nothing says that somone can’t be sexist pig and a good meteorologist, frex.
But why would I, or any woman, want to be around that voluntarily, and obliged to pretend to be happy and content with it? Constantly ignoring piles of steaming elephant dung gets old very quickly, and biting one’s tongue because one is not allowed to point out that there is an elephant in the living room leaving turds everywhere leaves one with a very sore tongue very fast.
Then your committment as an Xtian contradicts whatever committment you have to feminism. You will never succeed with those trolls. Never. You find it gratifying to be all Xtian about it and try and convert them but your gratification matters more to you than the bile they spew and the hatred they vent. You believe people can chagne. That’s nice, but with you coddling them, exactly what reason do they have to do so?
You’ve just revealed that you are more interested in converting your trolls than you are in the principles of feminism. People like Mr. Bad, Gonzo, Tangoman—none of them will change. The only thing that might have some effect on them is bringing the hammer down on their antics, here, there, and everywhere, but with you coddling them, your place will always serve as a place where they can get away with it.
“You’ve just revealed that you are more interested in converting your trolls than you are in the principles of feminism.”
I have no idea why these are mutually exclusive propositions.
Hugo, I think I have an idea of what you’re trying to do, but I really believe there are areas where it’s not possible to debate without stirring up a bunch of very hurtful shit. For example, on my blog I have a “no fat-bashing, no welfare-bashing” policy, and I come straight out and say that if you engage in these actions your comments will be deleted without explanation. I have that right because I am the petty dictator of my own little space. I’m not trying to give a friendly space to people who want to welfare-bash or fat-bash because face it, those folks have the whole wide world as their forum–why do they want to take it to my safe space?
The reason I don’t explicitly come out and say the same thing about women-bashing is because to me it’s automatic–this is a woman’s blog, it is a feminist blog, and if you don’t get that woman-bashing isn’t allowed then you’re an idiot. And also because people usually don’t make knee-jerk woman-bashing statements the way they make knee-jerk fat-bashing or welfare-bashing statements. At least the anti-feminists know they have to go underground a little bit and be a bit more subtle–calling themselves MRAs, for example.
So you are consciously making a choice on your blog. And since I’ve never visited your blog and only know about it through what I’ve read here and in other threads I can’t make a judgement, but it seems you have to accept that you’ve made a choice: in order to be inclusive you have created a space that is unsafe for many. And when the many who find your space unsafe are feminists and feminist-identified men, you’re in a nutshell creating a non-feminist space.
Wow, Ginmar. Making irrelevant personal attacks by dredging up comments made in jest and taking them out of context. That’s so unlike you.
I am a feminist, have been calling myself one since before my Bat Mitzvah.
Nothing about that commitment has ever wavered in the slightest. Just because you and I happen to disagree on certain matters doesn’t give you any right to attack my integrity.
Do you have so little on your plate that you have to pick fights with people in third parties’ blogs?
As far as I know, nobody elected you arbiter of who may and may not call herself a feminist. So, what is with the feminism police lately?
I’m very skeptical of the notion that allowing trolls and kooks to run rampant in one’s comments section will lead to a honest open debate; almost 30 years of Usenet should’ve taught all of us that just doesn’t work. You need to be able to define the debate, lift it to a higher plan than the random screeds of deranged people.
If you let trolls and kooks and sexists define the debate, you will never be able to talk about the subjects that matter, you will always end up having to defend strawfeminism.
If Hugo and/or Ampersand do not know this, they’re naive in the extreme; if they know but don’t care that says a lot about their self-proclaimed feminism.
A stopped clock is right twice a day, and even a “notorious troll� can make “an interesting point� now and then.
yeah, and all the air molecules in a balloon could suddenly all end up in only one half of the balloon, causing it to semi-deflate.
When it comes right down to it, a notorious troll is going to derail more potentionally interesting threads than make good points, he’s going to make the entire blog a more hostile enviroment for other commenters, and he’s going to drive away potential commenters, lurkers and readers, and as the whole point of trolling is to provoke a reaction and draw attention to the troll, engaging him in an attempt to change him will not work because he has not come to be persuaded, or to have a debate but to seek attention.
I thought everyone knew that?
Oh, so it’s a joke now? I keep losing track. First it’s an apology, then it was a boast, now it’s a joke. You boast about how you tilt with feminists, how you’re better than them, so I was under the impresssion that you were the feminism police, what with boasting about how different you are from those strawfeminists who are sexually repressed and hairy-legged. As for what you call yourself, I have as much faith in that as I do in your ‘I didn’t mean to cause you harm’ apology. Funny how that’s gotten famous as Greg Haidl’s insincere swan song. While he hasn’t yet been caught boasting about his exploits, you have. All of which is a diversion: the disingenuousness with which you deploy the phrase “100% for or against.” Funny, no one used that. Could it be another strawfeminist?
Disingenuousness is an intereseting thing to discuss in this context. For example, the charge that one has to be 100% with someone is a dishonest reading of something that is not quantifiable, but qualifiable only. Putting it as “100% for me or against me” harkens back to the gunslinger phrases of GWB, and is frequently used to try and suggesst that one’s opponent has his simple-minded absolutist viewpoints. Those feminists! They’re such rigid thinkers! Why, they find it reprehensible when woman-haters are allowed to post strawfeminist screeds that have long since been refuted and repeatedly at that. Why, those strawfeminist positions—that women are lying bitches who just want to trap, beat, and kill men—-they’re not a denial of the humanity of women at all! They’re just more examples of rigid feminist thinking. Where, oh where, is the crusader against those hairy-legged horrors, those knights of NOW, those BDSM-bashers, where can we find a heroine who will tilt against those strawfeminists?
Huh. I seem to remember that Christina Hoff Summers calls herself a feminist. It’s very popular.
Can I just double check this with you hugo, I noticed you said Hell, maybe you’re right. My commitment to being a “gentlemanâ€Â? (inoffensive, gracious, and unflappable) sometimes does trump my ideological commitments. More to work on, I suppose! in the feministe thread and I was wondering if you were using the term “gentleman” in a hip, ironic fashion, or whether you do honestly consider yourself to be a feminist gentleman?
I intend to be a catalyst in the personal transformation of a great many people.
Good thing the struggle against sexism is all about your destiny.
I guess that’s why there’s no “Gospel Of Negative Marginal Utility”
Yes, Mildred, I honestly consider myself to be a “feminist gentleman”. And no, I don’t think it’s an oxymoron. I’ve posted on the issue a whole buncha times at my place.
Why is the onus (apparently) on feminists to convert the heathen, at neverending cost to ourselves? Even on Usenet there’s a presumption in at least one (moribund) feminist newsgroup that posters will do their effing homework so that the same disingenuous questions don’t always get asked again and again.
Sometimes I’m reminded of one of my ex’s comments about her local tenure committee: “They’re all going to die sooner than we are.” (Not so true with the troll, of which more keep getting bred up, but still.)
Even on Usenet there’s a presumption in at least one (moribund) feminist newsgroup that posters will do their effing homework so that the same disingenuous questions don’t always get asked again and again.
Yes, soc.feminism was moderated (maybe somebody should look to that for moderation guidelines) while alt.feminism was open to everybody.
Likewise, there are multiple feminist blogs, some of which are women-only spaces, some feminist-only with heavy moderation, some prohibit MREs, some more open to them. There are blogs with single posters, group blogs, and LJ communities where anyone can sign in and post.
Everyone can choose the blog(s) that best suits hirself, whether somebody wants to wrestle with heathens or not.
paul:
Because the feminists get it. And we want to leave the world a better place for our sons and daughters. It’s a dirty job, and Amanda’s gotta do it. And you and me, too.
I intend to be a catalyst in the personal transformation of a great many people.
Good thing the struggle against sexism is all about your destiny.
You know, I find this really disheartening. I get that it’s irritating as a feminist, and as a woman, to have the onus put on us to constantly have to point out to some guy why it’s sexist to say/think/do _______. It’s hard enough to deal with it in real life, with one’s family, with one’s friends, with the person you met at happy hour last night. I have times when I need feminist-only spaces, and I get upset when what I perceive as a feminist-only online space is invaded by unwelcome a**holes.
But I’ve always taken it as a bedrock principle that people who are serious about social justice, and find themselves on the privileged side of the equation, have a moral responsibility to call other privileged members of their group on their behavior. I think men who talk about how they’re not sexist, but make no effort to talk to and educate other men about sexism, are talking the talk but not walking the walk. In that context, I think either Hugo or Amp simply banning men who are sexist would be almost a cop-out. It sure as heck is not women’s responsibility to educate those guys. But I think it’s understandable and right that Hugo should see it as his responsibility.
Which is why I think that was a pretty cheap shot, Chris.
Ginmar:
I fail to see how “winning converts” is counter to the goals of feminism. In fact, it’s a complete and utter non sequitur. Feminism being, y’know, an ideology and all.
I would be a pro-lifer if it weren’t for regular reading of Amanda’s blog. And while no-one could ever accuse her of coddling, it was clear that she understood feminism to be a collection of true statements about the world whose truth any rational creature could understand if thwonked over the head a sufficient number of times. (Not everyone on the internet is much of a rational creature, but.)
Quite frankly, in all my days, I’ve failed to come across a single actually existing, as opposed to anecdotal, strawfeminist - that is, aside from you. You make bizarre pronouncements regarding ideological purity, propose troll-and-flame-free discussion as your cause while contributing nothing but personal attacks, even to the most clearly good-faith of commenters, and make accusations that are rather supremely disingenuous, as with the repeated claims that several good-faith and unambiguously feminist commenters “feel superior to feminists.”
Which is the better indicator of my feminist credentials � what I say, or what I allow others to say on my blog?
You mean, “Which is the better indicator of my feminist credentials? What I say, or what I do? The supportive space I demand, or the supportive space I actually provide?”
Funny how that’s gotten famous as Greg Haidl’s insincere swan song. While he hasn’t yet been caught boasting about his exploits, you have.
This was pretty fucking trollish.
Piny, I’m guessing that where you and I differ (and I imagine Hugo and perhaps Amp too, at least from how I’ve interpreted their comments), is that I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable to have men responsible for creating a supportive space for women. I think women can create those spaces for ourselves, thankyouverymuch.
I mean, it makes me think of some guy who reads some feminist books in college, gets really excited, and wants to start a CR group for the women on campus. I appreciate the intent, dude, but I’d appreciate it a lot more if you focused your intentions on raising the consciousness of fellow men, so I don’t have to keep doing it.
I know other women and other feminists may disagree about where a man’s place in the movement is. But I don’t understand how people are taking issue with men stepping up to the plate and creating a forum where they at least try to argue with the anti-feminist men. (One could perhaps take issue with whether they step in and call out other men *enough*, but not whether they should have those forums at all.) Yes, sometimes it’s uncomfortable as a woman to watch those conversations take place. Yes, it makes me want to throw my monitor across my office sometimes, because the things the MRAs say make so frustrated. Part of the value of having men do that work is that they can keep engaging LONG past the point I would have given up and written the guy off. And maybe they will be effective.
Then he should quit billing his blog that way, no? Amp and Hugo both argue that their blogs are hospitable, that they are supportive places. It’s not, “Come here if you want to beat up on an anti-feminist troll.”
Which is why I think that was a pretty cheap shot, Chris.
Fair point, AB. God knows it wouldn’t be the first one I’ve taken.
But I do see a huge difference between the dynamic you describe - and I agree with your placing the burdeen of education on the shoulders of men 100 percent - and what the reality is that some of us are actually reacting to.
There are some of us guys who are feminist-oriented yet don’t ban sexist men from our blogs. But there’s a difference between trying to influence men who happen to hold beliefs about gender we find wrongheaded, and letting men post in bad faith long enough to drive away the people we claim to advocate for.
Maybe this is my own baggage. To the degree that I do so successfully, I stand up for women, and try to persuade other men to do so, partly because it’s the right thing to do, partly because it makes me feel good to do so, and partly because the things I’m against piss me off. This is the same reason I’m involved in other activist issues as well.
And again, maybe this is just my own experience coloring my perception, but in three decades of activism, I have heard not a few activists claim grandiose intent the way Hugo did. To a man - the gender specificity there almost completely accurate - they have been far more interested in their own role in the work than in the work’s goals.
And no activist is immune from that. I struggle with that all the time myself. A lot of people do. And a lot of us don’t, and we make grandiose, self-involved statements like the one I reacted to.
I work in the environmental field, mostly. There are people who have taken it upon themselves, in the name of persuading those who oppose environmentalists to be kinder to the planet, to engage in dialogue with the loggers and polluters and those who support them. Oftentimes, such people become further and further removed from the environmentalists they advocate for. They begin to speak the language of the corporations. They concede “good points” to the corporations, who concede nothing they value. Environmental activists offer criticism and these “consensus builders” shrug it off, point out the importance of the work they’re doing in building bridges to the polluters.
And then there are those activists, Paul Hawken coming to mind, who concede nothing yet persuade corporations to amend their ways. If a company shows little interest in change, the Hawkens of the world spend their energy where it will be more effective. And they respond to crticism from their environmental colleagues by listening to it.
We in the field tend to think of the second group as effective, admirable activists. We think of the first as “sell-outs.” There is a useful field mark by which one can distinguish between the two groups. It is the first group that talks in grandiose terms about its intentions to influence as many people as possible. The second group talks about trying to work where it will do the most good.
Hugo, I’m not going to tell you you are doing things the wrong way, or that I think any of this is easy to figure out, because I don’t, but if I may?
You seem to want to create a space where civil discourse can change people’s minds. I think that’s possible, but I think it’s much less likely to happen when it’s people that are on the exact opposite sides of the spectrum that are doing all the talking. As Echidne wrote recently, feminist bloggers, and those of use who comment on feminist sites get a warped view of how many extremely sexist people are really out there because feminist blogs are a lightening rod for mysoginists. It sounds to me that what you would really like is a more balanced conversation where “moderates” are part of the conversation as well. Unfortunately, that ain’t going to happen because all those “middle of the road” people don’t care enough to read feminist blogs. So what you get are feminists fighting with people who question the whole fundamental idea of feminism. Since we have to deal with this shit everyday, and already know that such people rarely listen to us, that’s hardly encourages feminists like me to be regular commenters at your blog. Personally, I think you’d get conversations more like the type you seem to be aiming for if you used your male privilege to try to get male progressive bloggers to pay attention to feminism - aside from bashing it or giving it the occasional nod that is.
“Let me anticipate the response: “Hugo can afford to be so friendly with racists and sexists because their bile isn’t directed towards himâ€Â?. As my kids say, “True that.â€Â?
But my commitment as a Christian is to stay in dialogue with the offensive, the rude, the bigoted, and the misogynist.”
Which is all fine and dandy - but you do realize that we can’t and acknowledge that it’s usually a waste of our time trying to do so, right? Since we are talking about who comments on your blog and why, we aren’t just talking about who you hang out with, we are talking about the fact that you are pretty much asking us to be friends with people whose bile is directed towards us. You don’t just want to be able to friends with both of us, you expect us all to be able to hang out together. Is it no wonder that we often decline the invitation?
And while I’ve already acknowldeged that the balance of the conversation isn’t entirely within your control, you do also understand why it’s automatic to start to wonder about someone who lets the “middle road’ of the conversation drift away from solidly within “feminism is good, but the movement has faults”? It’s rather like wondering if the friend who insists on the gang still doing stuff together, even though another “friend” hurt you, really cares about you as much as he/she says. Sometimes the answer is just that no ones perfect, but sometimesit’s not, and either way the realtionship is rarely healthy.
Theogon, I don’t know what your probelm is, but it’s simple: you cannot convert trolls. Period. The guys that hate women and believe that women love abortions? Why bother? Furthermore, they say the same shit over and over again and it’s all hateful. It’s all directed at women, and these guys say, they’re honing their debating skills. Well, hell, this shit has been around forty years. Why haven’t these guys thought some answers up already? Funny thing is, feminist spaces don’t coddle trolls and you get a lot more done. You want to waste your time coddling guys who will nver change, that’s fine. Just don’t call it a feminist space.
As to your attack on me, well, that’s just bullshit. If you want to tolerate people who fling strawfeminists around, hey, more power to you. But I call them like I see them.
Trollish, Piny? It was also accurate. Sorry if the truth hurts, but there it is. I don’t pretend. It would appear you prefer the company of those who do.
epistemology:
Of course we want to leave the world a better place. But there are lots of ways to do that, and we try to allocate our resources where they’ll do the most good. I think there’s a good argument (not necessarily airtight) that spending time trying to teach trolls, even if for the benefit of lurkers, takes time and energy that could be used for other things, and shuts out completely the people who are allergic to trolls. Even if the trolls were trainable, endlessly repeating Introduction to Feminism means that the Intermediate and Advanced discussions tend not to get held. (They also tend not to get held when every issue that’s still problematic is an opening for the bozos to crow about how even feminists are abandoning their principles, much as every gap in the fossil record is a trophy for creationist wackaloons.)
Back when soc.feminism had more traffic, people used to occasionally discuss the merits of, in effect. soc.feminism.101, where the FAQs could be hashed out time and again, while real discussions took place elsewhere. I wonder if you could have a blog that served a similar purpose (crewed by gosh knows who, but at least the trolls would signify their trollhood by refusing to be diverted there).
(And then in the very dawn times, there was the soc.women experiment, where male posters were asked to see if they could STFU for a single month, just to see what such a space would be like…)
Trollish, Piny? It was also accurate. Sorry if the truth hurts, but there it is. I don’t pretend. It would appear you prefer the company of those who do.
Ginmar, you just compared another feminist woman to an unrepentant gang rapist. And on one score, the gang rapist came out ahead. That’s not fucking accurate. That’s being a fucking asshole. If you had done it on one of my comments threads, you’d be banned.
And as to the rest, what the fuck ever. I don’t care if you’re offended by my offense. I don’t care if my criticism has caused you to put me in your enemies column. It was a horrible, horrible, anti-feminist thing to say, full stop.
Yeah, whatever. I didn’t compare a feminist to a gang rapist: I compared a gang rapist to someone who boasts about all the strawfeminists she defeats who also uses insincere apologies to cover their ass. It’s a disgusting dodge, and whoever does it being dishonest.
Yeah, whatever. I didn’t compare a feminist to a gang rapist: I compared a gang rapist to someone who boasts about all the strawfeminists she defeats who also uses insincere apologies to cover their ass.
Riiiiight. You didn’t compare the one to the other! You compared the other to the one! You were complaining about Haidl’s behavior, not hers!
It’s a disgusting dodge, and whoever does it being dishonest.
And also apparently sticking lit cigarettes into unconscious women. You wanna know what I think is disgusting?
I frankly don’t care, Piny. I don’t like people who claim to be feminists while boasting about how they’re so better than those hairy-legged straw feminists. If she’s a feminst, so is Christina Hoff Summers. How much insincerity is present in the apology of a rapist who raped an unconscious girl and then said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you?” A little? A lot? How do you measure it? You’d think people would be smart enough to avoid using that phrase when they so obviously don’t mean it. There’s an immense amount of insncerity in that phrase, especially when it’s described as a joke. Sorry, I’m not in the mood to coddle people who’ve boasted about how much they despise feminists. You go right ahead, though.
Ginmar, this is not about coddling. Complain about her dishonesty with my blessing. This is different. When you compare her conduct to Greg Haidl’s conduct, and when you invoke his name in reference to this situation, you are trivializing rape.
There’s a need for agitation and propaganda, for winning the unconvinced to a point of view. So, I can understand wanting to engage some people who express sexist points of view, if you think you can actually change their minds.
The MRA movement, however, is composed of people who are politically committed to sexism. Many MRAs are flirting with outright fascism, with arguments for obliterating women’s rights and overthrowing governments to do so.
Such people have committed themselves to being our enemies. It’s not just a waste of time to argue with them; as they represent a material threat to our safety, it’s unethical to offer them a space to organize themselves. Treating them as reasonable people with whom one can have a friendly lunch is outright disgusting.
FoolishOwl - flushing the underlying bigotry into the open and engaging it for what it is seems to me a very worthwhile effort. I suspect that the typical blog has a reader/commenter ratio of at least 10:1, so arguments that bounce off a troll may well influence the less vocal readers. It’s not obviously so, but I know I’ve had my mind changed by discussions on the net in which I did not participate. I’ve seen very productive engagement of MRAs on Pandagon, Feministing, and Feministe (the main feminist blogs I read), none of which convinced the MRA being engaged, but which raised good points that would at least plant the seeds of doubt in the minds of readers who might otherwise take the MRA arguments at face value.
Here’s a thought: give each other a pass and dialogue with this a-hole.
I’ve posted on the issue a whole buncha times at my place.
And you pointed out that you were hoving to the ahistorical, patriarchy supporting arthurian style myth of masculine behavior as defined by the supposed behavior of upperclass white slave owning misogynists from a hundred years hence that exists as a way to cover up the fact that those misogynistic upperclass white slave owners’ actual rules of gentlemanly conduct involved nothing more good or honest than when you were allowed to beat your wife and rape your servents, right?
Feminist men are already more manly than non-feminist men, why not drop that pointless little baggage handling “gentle” and just call yourself a man? Or would that not leave you seperate from other men? Is that distance neccesary for some reason?
Also you seem to have fallen into a very common trap regarding trolls, where you treat politeness as more important than say, honesty or not being a giant thread derailing asshole.
Whenever you set rules in a set system, in this instance a public internet forum, you create pressures which select for certain types of behaviour, in this case carcey trolls who’ll gladly Other, insult and disparage women as a gender within the limits of your preset standards of “politeness” specifically to get a reaction and then they’ll cry, when finally called on this behavior, “Why’re you picking on me? What’m I supposed to have done?”, and oh look, your forum is filled to the brim with carceys and assholes who derail every comment thread arguing points that have already been argued a hundred times before.
And of course, as long as you treat women and the male trolls equally, well that’s equity of treatment right? except men are already more equal than women in society at large, so they go to a feminst forum and lo and behold, the people who’s sole existence in the forum is obviously centered toawrds doing their best to piss feminists off and get a reaction out of them, and to destroy any chance any actual honest commenter has of having an intelligent conversation while they do it, are treated as equals to the feminists.
You’re forgetting that passive aggressive emotional manipulation is a favorite tool of the patriarchy, something that women deal with day in day out, there’s the “nice guy” at work, or maybe we’ve somehow found ourselves in relationships with them, or maybe they’re that freind of a friend that none of our freinds actually like, but they pull out so many cheap little emotional tricks that no one has the heart to shun them fully.
Now when women, who’ve experienced this all day, in situations they cannot always evade or get away from because this emotional manipulation that tries to take away autonomy over even their most private feelings, because women should only feel what men want them to feel obviously (you familiar with “smile!” assholes?), is everywhere, and when they are in a feminist forum moderated by a feminist they expect some form of action to be taken that doesn’t allow this sort of male dominiation to be given equal footing to the other feminists, just like they’d expect slut shaming and rank misogyny to be put a stop to on a feminist run blog.
Now while you may consider it your christian duty to engage with trolls with arguements to persuade and such like, what you are in fact doing is A) creating yet another enviroment where women cannot escape the emotional manipulation of the patriarchy and B) feeding a troll.
There are more tentacles of the patriarchy than are dreamt of in your philosophy hugo, and while I have neither the power nor the incination to force you to change what you do with your blogand comments section, but every male feminist has a certain amount of power given to them by the patriarchy that they have the obligation as a feminist, and as a moral human being, to use in what ever manner they have available to them to fight the patriarchy, and you hugo, and ampersand and the other male feminist bloggers have the power to make their blogs places where patriarchal asswipes are not allowed to continue the steady drip drip dripping opression of male domination, AND indulge in the occasional troll bashing if the fancy takes you, because sometime it’s fun especially when you wipe the floor with a more regularly repeated line or two.
Hmm… Does permitting trolls to run roughshod on his blog make Hugo a bad feminist? I don’t think so. It’s one choice in terms of presentation out of many.
Does permitting trolls to run roughshod on his blog ruin the discussion of his posts? I don’t know. I don’t read him. But if i did, I’d guess that’s his call to make I reckon. There’re tonna other blogs for feminist discussion, and unless you’re really hot for his blogging, you’re not missing much by the abscence of quality discussion over there.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.
Problem is, male feminists get an advantage that female feminists do not; they get assumed to be more legitimate. It’s an odd function of bigotry that the people victimized by it and arguably the most expert in what it does are deemed to be unreliable to comment on it.
And Piny, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. Any time someone uses that, “I didn’t mean to harm you” it’s bullshit. Period. I don’t tolerate it from anybody.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.
PIG!!!!!1!1!
Problem is, male feminists get an advantage that female feminists do not; they get assumed to be more legitimate. It’s an odd function of bigotry that the people victimized by it and arguably the most expert in what it does are deemed to be unreliable to comment on it.
I recognize that. I just don’t really care what Hugo does with his blog. Someone upthread called his writing paternalistic. That’s pretty apt. Whole lotta wise man on the mountain over there. But is he clinging to some sort of male privilege, by not privileging feminist discussion at the expense of luna-babble? I think there’s there a stronger case that go fug yourself is misogynist.
And by the way, Chris, why do you hate men?
I wouldn’t care what he did with his blog if he stopped calling it feminist. Fact is, feminists cannot post there because he values his male trolls more than he does feminist posters.
Well, I’ve issued what may be my final thoughts on this subject for a while here:
http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/03/ive_been_thinki.html
Problem is, male feminists get an advantage that female feminists do not; they get assumed to be more legitimate.
yeah, you know what? fuck you. people come up with all sorts of reasons to be dismissive of political opinions. and Male Feminists get “You’re just doing it to get laid, you aren’t a REAL feminist.”
you know, from people like you. seeing as you’ve denied “feminist” as a title to, what 2, 3 people on this thread alone?
I also don’t seem to recall it being a man they put up on the talking head shows when they want a feminist voice. ever. they’ll put up fake-o “equity feminists” before they let men do it.
and you know what? I’m fucking fine with that. Because in a political movement focused on equality, autonomy, and rights for women, obviously women get to be up front. and there is a lot of bias where men’s politics get taken more seriously, in economic policy, racial politics, enviromental politics. but feminism isn’t the same thing.
If you think they could stand to be MORE feminist, that’s fine. if you think they’ve got inconsistancies they need to address, that’s fine too. but unless you crawled inside their skull and know what they’re thinking, you don’t get to say what they really believe.
If Hugo says he’s a feminist, it’s more than likely because he genuinely believes that women are equal to men, and should be, and that work must be done to achieve that status quo. trolls running rampant doesn’t change that part. but it might mean his behavior is inconsistant with his beliefs, and that needs to be addressed. but you aren’t the pope of feminism, you don’t get to excommunicate anyone.
but you aren’t the pope of feminism, you don’t get to excommunicate anyone.
Hey, who made you the god of feminism? you don’t get to decide if I’m the pope of feminism, the fact that I lack the nerve to trapan a vagina shaped hole in my head to keep with the whole deeply freudian head gear theme of doubleplus popitude makes me not the feminist pope.
“Judge them by their fruit” seems like a fair standard to apply in this situation karpad, and by that standard hugo is not a very good feminist man, because a good feminist man does not allow himself to accept any male privelage, including but not limited too the privelage of being able to ignore the patriarchy or treat it as a hyperthetical abstract who’s points can calmly be debated in a spirit of detached objectivity. Yes that means it’s harder for a man than a woman to be a feminist, guess who’s fault that is?
Also, if we don’t chew hugo out for the way he creates a commenting enviroment that selects for misogynistic trolls, then how are we not hypocrites when we hold whatshisface responsible for the repugnant comments at LGF?
It’s like mocking computer programmers, if you put them on the “no mocking” list, you certainly cannot mock furries.
A line has to be drawn somewhere, so if you can’t take hugo to task for what the sorry state of his blog’s comment section says about his feminist integrity you can’t mock furries, and a world without furry mocking is a world without baby pandas playing in the snow.
Karpad, thank you.
I’m still not clear, R. Mildred, where the pronouncements about the “good feminist man” are coming from. I understand why you might feel that way, but if there’s a handbook with prescribed and proscribed behavior for pro-feminist men, then I’d really like to see it. I may have been absent the day it was distributed.
A good feminist man does not allow himself to accept any male privilege? Any? That’s a brutal rule. To be anti-globalization do you have to not allow yourself to accept any first-world privilege?
We all benefit from unsought and accidental privileges, and we should be sheepish about them (or hold back from using them, or use them as ethically as possible) rather than thinking they’re deserved, but I don’t know about “not accepting any.”
No one would mistake ginmar for a diplomat, but she has few equals when it comes to identifying bullshit, and cutting through it like a chainsaw. Y’all are not going to die from being critized on the Internet, and if you can take a deep breath and consider what she’s saying, you might be surprised.
And Piny, we’re going to have to agree to disagree. Any time someone uses that, “I didn’t mean to harm you� it’s bullshit. Period. I don’t tolerate it from anybody.
…Yeah, first we’re going to have to settle the apparent disagreement on what I said. I respect your refusal to tolerate bullshit, and, like I said, do not have a problem with you speaking up when you encounter it. I’ll repeat: this is not about coddling, this is not about calling people out, this is not about strong language or uncompromising language. This is about comparing that woman to Haidl. If you had compared her to Hitler, I would also have complained.
oh, I’m on board with calling Hugo a lousy feminist man. you judge by the fruits, but the standard you use is based on their words.
If someone says “I’m Catholic” you then get to judge how good a catholic they are, but you don’t get to say they AREN’T catholic. They’ve picked their ideology, how well they live up to it is another issue.
so if someone says “I’m feminist” you can say “you’re suck. anti-abortion and rape apologetics, regular use of anti-female slurs, and an unironic call to repeal the 19th amendment?”
in fact, in such an extreme example, I’d probably be up for saying “you aren’t feminist, you’re just using the word” but if your strongest counterexample is “he doesn’t tell MRA trolls to go cram a freeper in it when they post in his comments” you only get a reading on his method, not his ideology.
Yeah, the day I compare Hitler to anybody but Milosovic and so on is the day after my lobotomy. Any time I see someone use that phrase it marks them. That’s all there is to it. When it comes from somebody who deliberately attacked me and played the victim, then boasted about how it made her such a rebel, yeah, well, oops, excuse me for thinking it’s the height of something I don’t even have the vocab for.
[…] I read the recent threads over at Feministe and Pandagon, and all I can think is that […]
Grooming a few good “ethical” trolls is an under-appreciated blog art. You want to cultivate one or two who are just excitable enough to amuse the real guests, and yet intelligent enough to go at least a round or two with a visitor who’s spoiling for a fight. They can’t be the kind who just randomly make shit up or start making threats when they get angry. They have to be trusted to stay on topic. They tend to be real male privilege types, so you can’t push them too far, or they get really ugly, especially the “ethical” ones. But, like feral dogs, they become remarkably devoted if you throw them a few scraps here and them to reward good behavior.
If someone says “I’m Catholic� you then get to judge how good a catholic they are, but you don’t get to say they AREN’T catholic.
If someone goes around claiming to be a Communist, all the while accumulating as much property as they possibly can and destroying all the laws that protect the rights of workers and limit the powers of the wealthy owner classes, and does nothing whatsoever except yip that Oh yes they ARE TOO a Communist, when someone points out that they are indistinguishable from the Capitalists surrounding them, then by what possible definition are they in any way shape or form a Communist, except in so far as I am a flying purple people eater because I say so?
And, actually, picking “Catholic” is a bad idea, since there is this little thing called “excommunication” and plenty of people have been told that they weren’t really Catholics by the people running the shop throughout history, they were heresiarchs and schismatics, not to mention all the people who were never baptized. To the extent that there’s a difference between a formal organization with membership requirements and standards, (some of which may change depending on the organizational concensus over time) this is exactly the problem of self-definition, with slightly more clarity, that a movement has as its adherents work on the problem of self-definiton. Eventually the definition becomes meaningless, if your principle is held inflexibly. And you end up with chimeras like “Compassionate Conservativism”, karpad.
“A good feminist man does not allow himself to accept any male privilege? Any?”
Emphasise good and it’s a good rule of thumb, if you’re accepting without comment some kind of male privelage, or white privelage or whatever, you’re not a good anything.
I once quit a bar job way back in ‘99 because a few days after I got the job the boss told me that he was glad I’d applied because otherwise he’d have had to employ one of those lazy wetbacks”, I quit pretty much on the spot and told him why, with a hearty “fuck you” added on the end for good luck.
That’s what I considered my christian duty at the time, ontop of it being my basic obligation as a white woman to rise above allowing people who will be assumed to speak for my entire skin tone if left unchallenged, to go unchallenged when they wave my racism around, it just seemed right that as a white person I had a duty to do something more than just stand there and shrug my shoulder and keep the job and play act a deaf ear knowing that I had got employed there because of my skin color and because of my boss being a bigot, no matter how easy it would have been. (and before anyone misconstruse that, there’s been more times when I haven’t stood up and chewed someone out when I proabably should have, which means I do suck, but at least I do recognise that I have fucked up on those occasions rather than shrugged and decalred such things to be inconsequential or harmless)
You guys all read what flea said right?
Think about your duty as a man, as a human being. Think about Hugh Thompson. I know it will be hard. I know you could probably get away with doing nothing, or doing the wrong thing. I know you’ll be called pussy, or faggot. I know you may lose friends. But know that if you are in a place where you have the chance to help those who can not help themselves, even if your help angers those who are presumably your allies
Do you think for a second that most of those trolls aren’t rapists or some other kind of highly abusive man? You think a guy like robert, who feels that women need to be forced to give birth so that they are taught to be responsible for their actions, will stop if a woman said no to him, after he bought dinner and she got him hard with her cockteasing ways? And you guys really don’t get how creating a place where these rape minded trolls know they can go to have their abusive thinking enabled by being treated like it’s a reasonable and rational opinion seriously harms your feminist credentials?
Racism is not publically acceptable nowadays because way back when Good people refused to allow racist jokes to be accepted as harmless and inconsequential, it’s not funny, it ain’t true, and treating the denigration of black people as though it’s a justifiable thing, or worse; as something that’s “harmless”, is aiding and abetting the oppression of blacks.
Also remember that a student who refuses to be taught cannot learn.
Of course, only the space pope can fully revoke feminist credentials, using her mighty naral membership club card cutting abortifacient exacto-knife o’ doom, but if you think you’re a good feminist, or a good christian or a good secular humanist or a good progressive parent, you have some buddhas to kill if you insist on letting the cocknazis own your comments section and think that trolls have opinions worth treating with respect, they are, to a man, made up entirely of the lowest scum on the face of the planet.
It seems to me that it’s not that hard to distinguish between someone who falsely wears a label and someone who imperfectly wears it. I pick on Naomi Wolf above tonight in no small part because she can’t abide people who choose differently than her in life, but I’d never say she’s not a feminist. She’s committed to women’s equality, so she’s a feminist.
think that trolls have opinions worth treating with respect, they are, to a man, made up entirely of the lowest scum on the face of the planet.
two problems: 1, beating the crap out of trolls without banning them can educate a lurker. follow the steps: troll cites some bullshit statistic and uses it disingenuously. lurker had heard said statistic, but really had no background on it, and took it at face value. forum soldier beats the crap out of troll, showing what at fucker troll is being, and lurker now knows “that statistic is full of shit.” there are a bunch of “moderates” (read: ignorant. those who have the background to know better are divided into Neo-Con Troll Monsters and Voltron Force for Justice) out there who need educating.
2: trolls actually don’t have opinions at all, at least not proper trolls. a real troll is only in it for the lulz, and seeing how many people they can anger. I’m actually still convinced Robert has no genuine politics, he’s just in it to show off how smart he is, and how he can get people riled up. He probably is misogynist hence his choice of targets, but that isn’t his motivation in trolling. Robert posts because he’s a preening egotist. He thinks himself a modern plato, talking people into corners (at least, he thinks a corner) and going “ha ha, you contradicted yourself.” because he’s a dick.
read again what I said: there’s a point where they’re disingenuous to the point of really having a different agenda. but Hugo and Amp aren’t there.
although I’d also recommend (Hugo, paying attention?) preferential civility policies. since ANY banning of the trolls is gonna get you called a fascist in their regrouping freeper forum, set the threshhold for “bannable rude” lower for wingers than the good guys. like “your writing is like diet cola, fizz without any substance” for wingers, and “tubby lamprey shitdick” for the goodguys. (adjust as nessicary)
know that’d be my policy, but hey, what do I know? I’m just some jerk on the interweb.
I think AB makes some good points. Just sayin’.
Disclaimer: I consider myself a feminist, but I’ve been called a troll on more than one occasion in the blogosphere, and from various factions. I’m working on being more conscious of the trollish aspects of my comments, so if this comes off trollish, I’d appreciate people letting me know, though I acknowledge it isn’t your job to do so.
Disclaimer #2: I disagree with Hugo on a fundamental level–if pressed, I’ll tell you that I think feminist Christians are something of an oxymoron, what with the holy spirit getting Mary pregnant with no input from Mary herself, etc.. But I also acknowledge that this opinion ought to be up for some debate, and I still read Hugo occasionally. I can’t say yet that I completely agree or disagree with his commenting policies, but I don’t think that it’s something he’s taking lightly, and I appreciate that in him.
I think this is tough, complex stuff. Perhaps I’m simply looking at it all through my own feminist-guy specs, but I don’t see easy answers to most of the questions that people are posing. Which isn’t to say that they ought not pose them, of course, or that we can’t find some answers.
Mostly all of this gets me thinking about the notion of community–in this case, what is in my mind a community of feminist (and pro-feminist, if ya like that word) bloggers who are not a homogeneous group by any stretch of the imagination, but who do get together to read each other’s stuff, comment, and do some active thinking about issues that we all find important. The community isn’t homogenous, as I’ve said, but it’s also not static–I drift to and from various blogs for various reasons, some relating to my ideals, some just relating to mood. Occasionally, I stop reading a blog altogether, and just as occasionally, I find a blog that I want to read every day.
We are all, every time we read a blog, put up a post, or comment (or even when we decide not to do any of the above!) saying what we would like the community to be. Some of us have more say in that than others–Amanda will forever have more say about it than I will, for instance, if for no other reason than she gives a more interesting read than I do[/asskissing]. But (and I say this knowing that it may be an exercise of male privelege to do so, but not thinking that it is–I’m sure others will clue me in if I’m wrong here) trying to draw a hard and fast line around what is feminist and what isn’t ought to be acknowledged as a tricky sort of thing to do. It’s not impossible to do, and indeed, coming up with some workable defninitions is quite necessary. But making whether somebody is or is not a feminist the central force of one’s point seems sort of disingenuous, I think–especially when some people who we respect and love to read as part of this community think it should at least be up for discussion. Especially because what counts as feminist is one of the central(!) tenets of feminism itself, if one takes a look at the historical context.
Sure, we all have an idea (I think!) of what we think does and does not constitute ‘being feminist’–and each of us can come up with examples that seem patently obvious to us as examples of men (or women) who claim to be feminists but who clearly aren’t–but the thing is, not even all of us in this community will agree on most of those examples, all of the time.
None of this is to say that anybody shouldn’t call bullshit. I like calling bullshit. I’ve had it called on me more than once. I don’t comment here as much as I used to because bullshit was called on me enough that it got me to think that maybe I need to rethink some of my positions, and the way I argue them. Same thing happened at Feministe, for me, with zuzu, and I’ve taken to not commenting very often over there, either, to give myself time to think about the general way that I’m thought of as trollish. If enough people say it, I have to start to take it more and more seriously.
And that’s the thing–I think that Hugo is taking this stuff seriously. He may not be doing everything that some people want him to do–but he’s rethinking his position, altering his comments policy. It may be that anything short of banning the MRA’s will please some of us in the community, but it may be that his changes will please at least some of us (which seems to be part of his goal hierarchy). Is he just paying lip-service? Time will tell; I don’t think he is, because, though I disagree with him fundamentally about Christianity and feminism, I get the feeling that he’s sincere in his desire to get better at being both a Christian and a feminist (although I obviously hope that he does better in the latter than in the former).
So, long story short, it seems to me that ginmar and others (I hope using you as the main example isn’t a wrong thing to do, ginmar–it’s just that you seem to be the most vocal proponent on one side of the argument; the side that Hugo isn’t on) want Hugo to draw lines around ‘feminist’ that he’s resisting drawing. But I think it should be acknowledged that *where* these lines ought to be drawn is part of what everybody is discussing. Some people have drawn lines around feminism such that *I* don’t fit into their community very much at all. Some people might even draw lines around femninism such that ginmar wouldn’t be allowed to be in the community (for instance, feminist gender essentialists might not call ginmar a feminist because she believes that men can be feminists at all). So when people seem to claim that ‘it’s obvious’ that what Hugo is doing isn’t feminism, I’d like to say that it’s *not* obvious to some of us, and I do enjoy hearing the reasons why y’all think that, as well as the opposing reasons.
Yeah, the day I compare Hitler to anybody but Milosovic and so on is the day after my lobotomy. Any time I see someone use that phrase it marks them. That’s all there is to it. When it comes from somebody who deliberately attacked me and played the victim, then boasted about how it made her such a rebel, yeah, well, oops, excuse me for thinking it’s the height of something I don’t even have the vocab for.
It does indeed mark them. Now look again at where you fit into that analogy. She wasn’t the one who trivialized rape for the sake of driving home a point that didn’t really need the ball-peen phrasing. You were.
And come on, Ginmar. No one here’s gonna believe that you’re ever going to be at a loss of words to describe misogyny in any form on any level.
Grooming a few good “ethical� trolls is an under-appreciated blog art. You want to cultivate one or two who are just excitable enough to amuse the real guests, and yet intelligent enough to go at least a round or two with a visitor who’s spoiling for a fight. They can’t be the kind who just randomly make shit up or start making threats when they get angry. They have to be trusted to stay on topic. They tend to be real male privilege types, so you can’t push them too far, or they get really ugly, especially the “ethical� ones. But, like feral dogs, they become remarkably devoted if you throw them a few scraps here and them to reward good behavior.
*Snort*
And every once in a while, they chew someone’s face off.
karpad: If someone says “I’m Catholic� you then get to judge how good a catholic they are, but you don’t get to say they AREN’T catholic. They’ve picked their ideology, how well they live up to it is another issue.
Really? Okay, I’m Catholic. I was brought up a Quaker, I’ve been to a Catholic Mass less than half a dozen times in my life, and I’m an atheist. But, hey, all I have to do is say “I’m a Catholic!” and no one can say I’m not.
Actually, I’m unclear about if Robert actually favors forcing women to give birth or not; it’s my impression that Robert, like Hugo, may have moved into the “change hearts and minds, not laws� camp of opposing abortion, although I’m not certain.
I think it’s awfully convenient to endorse a theory that says pro-forced-childbirth folks are probably rapists. In real life, people are more multifaceted than that. Studies have found that rapists on average tend to be more concerned than the average man with maintaining their masculinity, and tend to be hypermasculine; I don’t think Robert fits into either of those descriptions, but I’ve known many liberal, pro-choice men who have issues along those lines. For that matter, I’ve known feminist men who have issues along those lines (often expressed as white-knight syndrome).
I can’t say for certain that Robert, or any other man I know, is not a rapist. What I can say - from real-life experience, since I went to college with him - is that Robert chose to spend his college years primarily socializing with a group in which virtually all the women (and many of the men) were proud and loud feminists, and who generally decried standard gender role ideology. And I know that - unlike a lot of liberal, pro-choice men I’ve met - Robert didn’t act differently when it was “just guys� in the room, as opposed to when the room was mixed sex. (I hate it when guys do that.)
Based on my real-life experience with him, I would be very surprised if Robert were a rapist. And if I had to rank how likely it is that men I’ve known HAD raped at some point, there are definitely some pro-choice men I’d rank as more likely than Robert.
I’m not saying Robert is perfect (god no!), or that there was nothing in his college behavior I’d criticize, or that I don’t find much of what he writes sexist, deplorable and wrong. But I have no reason to think he’s a rapist (and if I did, I’d cut him off, both as a friend and from my blog). And the “pro life = probably rapist� formulation is too convenient a standard when endorsed by pro-choicers, and I’m not convinced that in real life liberal pro-choice guys are really any more likely to be rapists.
Sigh… I can’t believe I made this mistake again.
Where I wrote: “and I’m not convinced that in real life liberal pro-choice guys are really any more likely to be rapists.”
The sentence should have ended “any LESS likely to be rapists.”
Sorry, all.
no Jesurgislac, we can’t (well, the pope can, but that’s a specific case because Catholicism is a religion, not a philosophy.)
we can say “you’re a suck catholic.” of course, really claiming to be catholic. you’re being facisious. and deliberately missing the point. Human beings are fully capible of embracing simultaineously inconsistant beliefs. if someone genuinely says “I embrace this philosophy” you don’t really get to say “you don’t really think that, you really think this.” you simply get to point out their inconsistancies as failings. Catholicism is a bad example honestly, since you have rites to go through to be one. but since you don’t believe in god, and you’ve never gone through the rituals, and you don’t recognize the authority of Rome, the easier cognative disonance to fix is calling yourself catholic.
If someone says “I’m an enviromentalist” and you point out “you own a fucking Range Rover.” that doesn’t make them NOT an enviromentalist. it means they need to do some thinking about which they prefer, or why that exception is appropriate (ie “I’m a park ranger”)
If someone says their a feminist, being in favor, ambivalent, or against prostition or pornography is rather up in the air. similarly, saying “safe spaces are great and all, but I prefer to keep the MRA trolls around for verbal punching bags” doesn’t make you anti-feminist. We’ve seen them, people who are anti-abortion, but still feminist. so they work to minimize abortions through birth control, and won’t get one themselves, but don’t infringe on other peoples choices. they exist. having one, or even several specific positions that run contrary to your overall political philosophy is absolutely acceptible. and if you have your rational reason for it, doesn’t need any amending (if you don’t have a rational reason for it, that’s where the “you’re a lousy feminist” part comes in)
I’m not saying Robert is perfect
I’m deeply hurt.
Fortunately, my perfection means that I can forgive you for your crime against me.
It is fairly standard for “nice” men to assure women that their friends don’t commit rape. It is such a cliché, in fact, that I’m not sure why Amp expects us to believe him.
He’s not assuring you that I’m not a rapist; as the person in this forum with the most knowledge and experience of me as a person, he’s telling you that he has no reason to think that I am one.
I’m not sure I understand the connection Mildred draws between believing in personal responsibility and committing sexual assault, but there must be one somewhere. The alternative would be to believe that someone is being an ignorant blowhard in a blog comment section, and that’s just nuts.
R. Mildred makes an excellent point above, and it’s one that I am surprised isn’t more obvious. Perhaps it’s easy to think that because the trolls at Hugo’s blog (for example) are self-pitying and whiny they are therefore harmless. But think about it… they are advocates for mens’ “right” to abuse women with impunity. What are the chances that they are abusers themselves?
Yeah, well, there’s that comment Robert made once where he said he hoped he could resist the temptation to rape or something. Like it’s a temptation or whatever.
Uh, Piny, I wasn’t exaggerating. There are some things I don’t have the vocabulary for, that’s one of them. Sorry if you don’t believe me, but it’s true.
Yeah, Ginmar, and there’s that comment you made once about how you were going to kill some guy.
Of course, for me to “cite” you in that fashion, without giving people the chance to see what the context is, and without providing an actual quote, would be incredibly irresponsible and childish.
For anyone who is curious, I don’t actually have a link to the quote, but it was part of a discussion on Alas about the poll showing that a lot of college men said that they would commit rape if they had an iron-clad guarantee that they could get away with it. My response was that as a Christian, I don’t believe that I could “get away with it” - even if temporal authority failed to punish me, there would be consequences in eternity. And I said that in the hypothetical extraordinary case where even those consequences were obviated, I hoped that I would resist the temptation to indulge that power over women, because rape is terribly morally wrong regardless of whether there are consequences or not. I may have the details wrong (it was a couple years ago as I recall) but that’s the gist.
Which is pretty much what you’d expect a uterus-controlling sex-punishing pro-life rapist like me TO say! So that proves it.
Robert: He’s not assuring you that I’m not a rapist; as the person in this forum with the most knowledge and experience of me as a person, he’s telling you that he has no reason to think that I am one.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, both you and Ampersand are straight. So, if you were inclined to rape, you still wouldn’t have given Amp any reason to believe you are a rapist, and Ampersand’s defense is the usual “Robert’s my friend, of course he’s not the kind of guy who rapes women!”
Jesurgislac, how would you like for me to demonstrate that I’m not what I’ve been accused of being?
Gee, Robert, unlike you, I either speak honestly or with an extra helping of sarcasm. You’ve never been anything but a troll. I especially liked when you summed up one woman’s difficult decision to have an abortion to save her health as, “Yeah, I didn’t feel like it.”
So you’ll excuse you if you get hoist by your lying petard.
On further reflection, get the fuck over yourself. Nobody’s aaying you’re a rapist, merely that you have a shitty attitude toward women that makes us wonder what you treat them like in real life.
Oh, and don’t even TRY and bitch about being slightly misquoted or whatever. You do nothing but twist women’s words and situations so that we look stupid, selfish, shallow and vain. There’s these two in particular:
“I’m glad you decided not to kill it.”
“Yeah, I didn’t feel like it.”
Not to mention any number of insulting things you’ve said to various people over the years. You’re not exactly in a position to whine about how badly when you’ve been treated, One could make a very good case that you deserve nothing but.
Ginmar, one of the classic elements of being a troll is constantly bringing up arguments from other threads and other forums.
The last time we went through this merry-go-round, we ended with me asking you to write something up putting your complaints against me in one coherent narrative which I would then address. You then chose to bail on the conversation.
Let’s skip to the end. If you think that our dispute is important enough to keep at it on blog after blog, site after site, then please do me the courtesy of putting your complaints in one narrative, and I will then respond to it comprehensively.
You think a guy like robert, who feels that women need to be forced to give birth so that they are taught to be responsible for their actions, will stop if a woman said no to him, after he bought dinner and she got him hard with her cockteasing ways?
this is a really, really, really unfair comment. he has stated that he doesn’t support outlawing abortion. many of you have stated that he is lying about that, and it’s your right to hold that opinion, but i personally prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. he is annoying, snarky, and passive aggressive sometimes, but i never would have concluded that he is a probable rapist based on that behavior.
I have no idea what you’re talking about, Robert, but since you’re whining that you’re being treated unfairly when you get a taste of your own medicine, I don’t really give a shit.
Emily, to know robert is to loathe him and his statements about women.
OK, Robert, you want to know what you could do to demonstrate your sincerity in this matter? You could type the words, “I have never comitted rape, nor would I.”
That would take a few seconds of your time. And yes, they’re just words, but it would be a start.
Emily, to know robert is to loathe him and his statements about women.
maybe so. you have more experience interacting with him that i do, so i defer to your judgment on that. i’m not saying that i agree with many of his opinions because i do find many of them insulting. it’s just that ‘rape’ and ‘rapist’ are not terms i like to see thrown around casually.
Ginmar, I’m talking about the last time you brought my past statements up as evidence of my badness, or something, on Feministe. When I asked you to sum it up and give me something to respond to, you said that it wasn’t worth talking to me and changed the subject,
Which is fine. But here you are on another blog, bringing up the same old threads and conversations, and having essentially the same conversation that was started on Feministe. If you are going to do that, then I request that you put together something that sums up what your problem with me is, so that I can respond to it definitively, instead of having slap-fights across the blogosphere every time we run into one another.
OK, Robert, you want to know what you could do to demonstrate your sincerity in this matter? You could type the words, “I have never comitted rape, nor would I.�
That would take a few seconds of your time. And yes, they’re just words, but it would be a start.
OK. I have never committed rape, nor would I.
Robert, you have been told over and over by various feminists everywhere exactly what you do that pisses us off and here you are, whining that you don’t know what’s wrong. You know what that means? It means you’re not listening. You’ve been told over and over again, and yet you dare to act like this is the first time anyone’s ever expressed the thought.
To the best of my knowledge, Ginmar, your anger at me and the disagreements I have had with various feminists over the years are not completely isometric. Your own posted disputes with me have been rambling and difficult for me to follow. I’m not asking you to sum up what other feminists have said; I am asking you to coherently express your beef so that I can understand and respond to it.
Robert: how would you like for me to demonstrate that I’m not what I’ve been accused of being?
Never rape anyone. Silly question, obvious answer.
Jesurgislac - Done!
Except, of course, for the whole internet anonymity unverifiable thing.
As I said, Robert, this is just one of the things that I hate about you: your innocent act, the way you act like you haven’t been told this over and over again. Every time you act like this is the first time anyone’s said anything to you. You do the same things over and again. For example;
Your own posted disputes with me have been rambling and difficult for me to follow. I’m not asking you to sum up what other feminists have said; I am asking you to coherently express your beef so that I can understand and respond to it.
You get what you give. Your contempt not just for me but for feminists is crystal clear and yet when you get called on it, you act all intellectual and superior about it. You’re not here to learn: you’re here to nitpick and change the subject. When someone expresses anger, it’s the first time they’ve done so, and you’ve been ever so reasonable.
No dice. Go back and re-read everything I’ve ever said to you and examine a few of your ad homs against me and others.
What you just don’t seem to grasp is that when you insult and attack other women, other feminists, that means something to other feminists. When you twist a difficult decision into, “I just didn’t feel like it,” you are insulting not just that woman but every other woman who’s had to make that choice or watched a woman go through that choice. You always do that kind of thing and then you act like everybody else misunderstood. You hide behind politeness while you express hatred and contempt for women.
SAying I’m sorry, as Amp has forced you to do, is absolutely worthless when you keep doing the same things for which you’ve apologized.
Pretending that you just don’t know why people are pissed off at you is more of the same.
Go back and re-read everything I’ve ever said to you and examine a few of your ad homs against me and others.
That’s a good idea. When I have the time, I’ll put together a compendium of everything you’ve said to me.
Hmm…there’s a point at which if we don’t say ‘hey, that’s not feminist’ the word feminist has no meaning at all, I think. Also, personal responsibility is about imposing power, not actual responsibility, or else the people for it would go after say, people who are responsible for stuff instead of simply people who have bad circumstances.
Robert: Jesurgislac - Done!
What, you’re planning to die tomorrow?
Except, of course, for the whole internet anonymity unverifiable thing.
Not relevant to the question you asked. You asked, “how would you like for me to demonstrate that I’m not a rapist?” to which the only possible answer is, “Don’t rape anyone”.
The “whole internet anonymity unverifiable thing” does not, in fact, stop you from not raping anyone. Why claim it does?
R. Mildred writes:
“Do you think for a second that most of those trolls aren’t rapists or some other kind of highly abusive man? You think a guy like robert, who feels that women need to be forced to give birth so that they are taught to be responsible for their actions, will stop if a woman said no to him, after he bought dinner and she got him hard with her cockteasing ways? And you guys really don’t get how creating a place where these rape minded trolls know they can go to have their abusive thinking enabled by being treated like it’s a reasonable and rational opinion seriously harms your feminist credentials?”
Slurring people who disagree with you in good faith as being abusive rapists is as dishonest as slurring feminists as being baby-killing feminazis.
If you think that’s acceptable behaviour, you and the troll MRAs make a perfect match for each other.
Jesurgislac, someone has (basically) called me a rapist. I’m trying to defend myself against that horrific claim. I’ve asked how I can do that here, in an Internet forum. Nobody in my real life thinks I’m a rapist; none of you can verify that I’m not a rapist by knowing me in person and following me around.
So when I asked how I could effectively respond to this claim, I got told two things: Say you don’t rape, and then don’t rape. OK, I’ve said that, and I’ll do that. But you can’t verify that I mean either of those things. That’s all I meant - you either take me at my word, or you don’t.
Except, of course, no one called you a rapist. But, hey, why let accuracy be a concern for you now?
Gee, Robert’s going to put together a compendium of everything I’ve said. I’m sure it will in context and everything, because it would be too cheap a shot even for Robert to…..Oh, wait, what am I saying.
“You think a guy like robert…will stop if a woman said no to him, after he bought dinner and she got him hard with her cockteasing ways?”
That, by me, is calling me a rapist, in essence.
You may disagree. Perhaps I’m “twisting a feminist’s words” to make her look bad, or something.
An Archive of Ginmar, showing all of your conversations on blogs in full context, would be a great service. If I can squeeze out the time, I’ll put it together.
Uh, Robert? Let me get this straight, okay? The author of lines like this:
“I’m glad you decided not to kill it” and
“I didn’t feel like it”
is complaining when someone wonders about you? When someone doubts your honesty? If you were that fuckin’ bothered by being misquoted you wouldn’t have done it so goddamned many times in the past. You’re complaining that people don’t take you at face value after you’ve repeatedly twisted other people’s words, not to mention the numerous ad homs you’ve lobbed at other feminists. But you’re complaining when you get the slightest taste of your own medicine? Perspective, Robert, try it some time.
Meanwhile, with your sterling reputation for truthful paraphrasing, you’re promising to to do a compendium of my statements?
The best part of all this is that you’re evidenlty writing this with a straight face. I love it.
As far as I know, nobody is misquoting me, so I don’t know where you’re getting that.
Nor have I been accused of misquoting by anyone other than you. Generally, that has occurred when I have provided verbatim quotes of your past statements that contradict more contemporary statements, or when you have made two mutually contradictory statements in the same post. Then you accuse of me of misquoting or twisting your words; when asked how a direct quote can be a misquote, you usually start to swear. Or you make one of your regular promises that I’m not worth talking to, and so you’re done, and won’t be speaking to me again.
As any archive I collect will consist primarily of hyperlinks to your own words, you can rest assured that there won’t be any paraphrasing going on. I would not dream of improving upon your statements.
On (patriarchal) (male) feminists
(http://darkdaughta.blogspot.com/2006/03/on-patriarchal-male-feminists.html)
Oh look it’s ginmar, once again airing her nebulous grievences with Robert. We certainly haven’t heard that on every single thread.
If you claim that Robert takes things out of context and now you are giving him a taste of his own medicine, does that not imply that you are quoting Robert out of context with those quotes, and hence your complaints are fatuous? Not that they are particularly offensive even out of context.
But don’t let me stop you from derailing yet another thread by starting your substanceless bickering with Robert.
Yeah, Robert, except that’s not what happens. That’s your take on it.
“I didn’t feel like it.”
That’s you. I’ve noticed that every time I corner you you back down and disappear, only to surface, saying the shit you’re saying now, with the addition of your claims that I’m the unreasonable one. Sorry, no dice.
Please tell me how the statement quoted above is an accurate paraphrase of the original remark. It’s not mine, but as I’ve had too many tangles with you to remember them all, let me just add this:
“All you have to do to bait ginmar is draw breath.”
You deserve whatever I throw at you and more. I notice you didn’t address your own hypocrisy in whining about people saying harsh things about you…. who continuously says harsh things about women and then…..just ignores it. Well, I’m not ignoring it and I never have.
“Ginmar, pretty much everything you write is a joke.”
And you’re the one demanding accountability.
I’m not demanding anything, Ginmar.
But please, do keep talking.
“You think a guy like robert…will stop if a woman said no to him, after he bought dinner and she got him hard with her cockteasing ways?�
That, by me, is calling me a rapist, in essence.
Oh of course it is robert, in essence, but that’s not the standard you hold yourself to little guy, did I actually say “robert is a rapist”? no, I implied that you were a rapist, thoughtwise at any rate, and just becasue you were never given the opportunity to get some good ol’ boy style date rape action going on, doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
In actual fact robert I said (rather than merely implied) you were someone who a woman can’t trust to be alone with her drinks.
So you see, you’re not demanding, I’m not calling you a “rapist”, I don’t seem to have broken the nebulous rules of civility, so everything’s cool right?
just becasue you were never given the opportunity to get some good ol’ boy style date rape action going on, doesn’t mean I’m wrong
What data do you have regarding my past (or present) opportunities for “date rape”?
no past data robert, merely your philisophical willingness to use an activity that requires forcing a large object through a woman’s vaginal canal against her will as a justifiable form of punishment for women doing sexual things you consider “wrong”.
Uh huh. What data do you have supporting your contention that I believe in childbirth as a punishment for sexual immorality?
the comment about how women need to be made respojnsible for their actions slowpoke in reference to abortion’s legality.
OMGWTFBBQ, the arguement has lapped itself.
Again.
Ah. So in short, you have nothing, and are talking out your ass.
Strangley enough, I’m not.
How many feminist blogs do you troll these days anyway?
Zero.
But then, I know what a troll is, even if you don’t.
But then, I know what a troll is, even if you don’t.
Yes I do, it’s a silicon based lifeform with teeth made of diamonds, EVERYONE knows that.
Oh right, we’re playing THAT game now are we?
I’m so sorry, let me rephrase that, ahem.
How many feminist blogs do you regularly comment at in which your whole purpose there is to derail threads, disrupt conversations, add nothing of interest or worth and generally exhibit a wide variety of narcissistic controlling behavior aimed at the various bloggers and fellow commenters? And do try not to dis genuousness’ while you ‘fess up this obviously shameful secret of yours, otherwise santa will piss in your cornflakes when christmas rolls around. He knows what evils lie in the hearts of man after all.
Zero.
“Narcissistic controlling behavior”? Good Christ, I can’t even get most of the people I discuss things with to acknowledge that the sky is blue if they think it might take a chip out of whatever tottering edifice they’re worshipping at the moment. If I was a controlling narcissist, I’d have blown my brains out years past.
My purpose in commenting at blogs where my viewpoints aren’t majoritarian is threefold: one, to learn new things from people with a different viewpoint, two, to possibly share some knowledge that I have with anyone willing to hear it, three, to attract intelligent readers and commenters to my own writing sites, and four, to
advance the unholy Rovian agenda of my dark mastermeet new people with new ideas.Reducing people like Ginmar to frothing inarticulate rage through the malicious act of having coherently defensible positions that don’t agree with hers, or the wicked crime of demonstrating how what she said Monday contradicts what she said Tuesday (also known as “telling lies about feminists”) is pure gravy.
And you know what? If you find what I have to contribute of no interest or worth, then there’s a very simple device you might want to look into mastering. It’s called a “mouse” and it lets you scroll down past things you don’t want to read. You think I’m a troll, fine - don’t feed me.
Robert: Jesurgislac, someone has (basically) called me a rapist. I’m trying to defend myself against that horrific claim. I’ve asked how I can do that here, in an Internet forum.
Oh. So, your question wasn’t really how you could demonstrate you’re not a rapist: it was how can you get people to not assess you by the things you write?
I don’t know, Robert. When you spend your time online making it clear you think of women as inferior, that you’re fundamentally opposed to feminism and feminists, I have no idea how you could convince women you encounter online that you’re not the kind of guy who rapes women, since you spend so much of your time convincing us that you are the kind of guy who would.
But you can’t verify that I mean either of those things. That’s all I meant - you either take me at my word, or you don’t.
We do take you at your word. We take you at your word that you despise women and hate feminism: you make that very clear with everything you write. What you mean is, you want a cheap and simple sentence from you to outweigh everything else you’ve ever written.
We take you at your word that you despise women and hate feminism: you make that very clear with everything you write.
OK. That’s a very strong clear negative statement, and it’s one that I appreciate hearing so forthrightly.
Can you please point me to something I’ve written that makes it clear I despise women and feminism? It ought to be really easy, from what you say of my written words.
I would find it really helpful. I know you’re not obliged to do it, in any help-the-non-feminist type of way, but it would be really useful to me if you did, and I would appreciate it.
Reducing people like Ginmar to frothing inarticulate rage through the malicious act of having coherently defensible positions that don’t agree with hers, or the wicked crime of demonstrating how what she said Monday contradicts what she said Tuesday (also known as “telling lies about feminists�) is pure gravy.
Huh. I’d say that statement pretty much fits the bill. See, Robert, your positoins aren’t coherently defensible becuase you think women should be forced to give birth, and theoretically at least, you’re a man. You just don’t have the courage to come right out and say it. When confronted, you attempt insults based on your feeling of superiority, then nitpick until you think you’ve confused your opponents. You seem to think that if you exhibit all the characteristics R. Mildred has identified, you can just argue that they’re not there by saying, in effect, “DID NOT.” That in itself displays contempt for feminists, along with your, “Now, now, you stupid little girl….” attitude. Oh, wait, you didn’t say that, did you? Unless you say something, it’s not true or it has no validity. Get the fuck over yourself.
You do tell lies about feminists. I’ve quoted some of them and it’s interesting to see how you avoid dealing with them. You refer to hysteria, not caring that this is the classic woman-hating stereotype. You’re not interested in listening, learning, or honest debate, so your presence on any feminist blog is in bad faith.
I guess for you, even negative attention from women is better than what you actually get elsewhere. It was tedious when it was in grade school; stop pulling the girls’ pigtails and blaming it on them when they get pissed at what a passive aggressive asshole you are.
And with Robert’s usual logic, he will ignore the substance—probably claiming there’s no substance, as that’s his style—and ignore the dare to explain any of his quotes, and label this hysterical rage. My, my, Robert, I can’t imagine why anyone thinks you’re a troll.
BWAHAHAHA! What knowledge have you ever imparted to anyone? Your MO is to try to find what your laughable attempt at half a wit (i’m giving you the benefit of the doubt there and asssuming you’re not trying for anything that could be described as a full wit) calls a logical inconsistency, followed by a serious bowel declenching all other the thread in an attempt to derail it and disrupt actual intelligent conversation, that’s the controlling part robert, that desperate need you have to manipulate people (or more accurately because you only troll on feminist forums, women) into reacting to you in someway.
and of course you’re tolerated robert becasue you don’t type in ALL CAPS or do any of the more obviously trollish behavior of say a daphne or a keef, and that gives you the leeway you need to troll any passing radfems, and to seem oh so “polite” and “civil” as you do it, in comparison to those oh so unreasonable overly emotional feminists.
And what I love is that you’ve just insulted hugo immensely and he won’t even notice it, and while trying to hijack his very noble (if wrongheaded and deeplyflawed) reasons for allowing trolls to own his comments section to justify your actions could almost be considered a sign of intelligent life in your trolly little head (if of course, somebody hadn’t suggested the idea up thread and you’ve just stolen it wholesale) it falls down once you realise you never actually advance discussions or put forward interesting critiques of whatever poster you’re trolling off of today, but errs more towards completely off topic attempted-quips that you then follow up with until a thread is well and truly derailed beyond hope of recovery. In other words you present no arguments to persuade and you’re saying you’re arguing to persuade?
And that’s why your little “don’t feed me” line is so cute, the true mark of the carcer-esque troll, “She was begging for it”, neatly shifting the onnus of blame for thread derailments not on your shoulders but on the shoulders of the people you intentionally try to incite into responding AND attempts to dodge the actual responsibility you have for derailing threads, if you were really interested in providing a counter point to others’ views you would accept that actually you don’t have to provide them or that you certainly don’t have to present them in the way you do, but of course! it’s not your fault is it carcer? And what’s it to me if you disrupt actual discussion at blogs I like to read? Silly old me, it’s my fault obviously, or ginmar’s or whoever has reacted to you today.
And of course there’s the flip side of that, you do need to troll, you have a right, a noble (*snigger*) duty to troll, to tweak, manipulate and control in whatever small way you can, the people on the feminist blogs you regularly troll.
So obviously you’re not a rapist robert, oh yes, sure you’re privelaged, insecure to the point where you get your kicks playing cheap emotionally manipulative games on feminist forums, and have a sense of entitlement that is only matched by your absolute lack of empathy, but you’re not a rapist.
Because obviously that woman in your past shouldn’t have gotten you all wound up and ready to go right? No one would consider that your fault, obviously.
Well, Ginmar and Mildred, you’re certainly entitled to your unique points of view.
I’ve enjoyed having this discussion with you, but I think we’ve moved well past the point where anybody is getting anything out of it. It’s quite clear that it doesn’t make any difference what I say or do; you have an idee fixe of me that will not be modified. So please feel free to keep piling on, but I won’t be responding on this thread any more, unless Jesurgislac has a response to our previous exchange. Enjoy your weekend.
Robert: Can you please point me to something I’ve written that makes it clear I despise women and feminism? It ought to be really easy, from what you say of my written words.
Can’t be arsed, frankly. It’s not my problem. And I have no reason to suppose you’re making this request in good faith.
I would find it really helpful. I know you’re not obliged to do it, in any help-the-non-feminist type of way, but it would be really useful to me if you did, and I would appreciate it.
When a non-feminist with a consistent habit of making vicious and nasty attacks on feminists says it would be “useful” to him to have it pointed out to him how his writing shows he despises women and feminism, I wonder what use he’s planning to make of it.
If, on the other hand, your request was made in good faith and you really want to find out how to present yourself better, I suggest that you go take a look at comments you made that got feminists into a state of, as you so nicely put it just upthread, “frothing inarticulate rage”. Read your comments, read the responses to them, and do the work yourself of figuring out why I, and other women, justly assume from your writing that you’re the kind of guy who wouldn’t stop if a woman said no to him.
But the thing is, Jesurgislac, I don’t see a history of nasty attacks on feminists. I see a history of having a lot of disagreements with many feminists, and arguing (sometimes vociferously) with them. But as far as I can see, it’s always ideas that I disagree with and sometimes attack, never people. I don’t say “Ginmar, you’re a nutbag moron”, I say “Ginmar, I don’t think the empirical data supports your statement that women never lie about [x]”. A subset of feminists think that arguing like this is vile and vicious; I have no idea why. Perhaps they’d rather have me personally attack them, rather than try to show that they are objectively wrong on the facts Maybe that would be less threatening; I don’t know.
Other feminists read the same comments and have a discussion with me; sometimes they learn something, sometimes I learn something, sometimes we can’t get anywhere and walk away relatively amicably. When 90% of the people I talk to say “that’s interesting” or “you are so wrong” and want to talk more, and 10% throw a wobbler, I’m inclined to assume that it’s the 10% who have an issue, not me. That inclination is reinforced when in my RL dealings with feminists, we get along just fine. Nobody thinks I despise them, nobody thinks I hate their position or devalue their humanity, and so forth. So the people who have the most information about me deal with my perhaps provocative positions or personality with equanimity, and the people with the least information assume I’m a feminist-beating rapist; it seems odd to discard the best-informed opinion for the least-informed.
The thing is, many (really, most) of the people in my life are women. My wife and daughters are women, and I’m pretty sure I don’t hate and despise them. My mother and I have a highly conflicted but still basically loving relationship. I have women as clients, and they like working with me. I have women contractors working for me, and they like to work for me. My last boss was a woman, and we got on famously. There have been women that I don’t get along with, on an individual basis. And that I think is the key - on an individual basis. Of course there are going to be some feminists who hate my guts; some portion of any population is going to hate my guts. But that would seem to be an issue either with the person who hates me, or with my own personality vis a vis that person - not an issue with my dealings with the entire group. I think that you, and a handful of other feminists, really really dislike me - but I don’t think that proves anything about my hatred of feminism or feminists or women in general. It just says that there are some individual feminists who don’t like me very much, as is of course their prerogative.
However, I do appreciate your response and I’m sorry that you’re not willing to point to one of my vicious attacks or what have you so that I can get a direct view of what you’re thinking. Thanks anyway.
Robert, I hear you saying you really don’t see any good reason why you should change your ways. I take it, then, that you have in fact no real objection to being assumed to be a rapist.
No, Jesurgislac, you may interpret me any way you wish. But what you HEAR me saying is that I don’t think your view is accurate, and I reject it. It’s obvious that you’re going to think of me whatever you wish to think, and that what I have to say is of no evidentiary value. Thanks anyway.
Robert: It’s obvious that you’re going to think of me whatever you wish to think, and that what I have to say is of no evidentiary value.
It’s obvious that you would prefer not to be judged by what you have to say, since that is precisely what you are being judged on. What you have to say is of immense evidentiary value - you just don’t like what the evidence says about you.
OK, Robert, you want to know what you could do to demonstrate your sincerity in this matter? You could type the words, “I have never comitted rape, nor would I.�
Right. Because every single accused rapist in court doesn’t say just that. Also because the world is divided into Nice Guys, who would never ever rape regardless of their situation or psychiatric condition, and Bad Guys who would.
And I can’t believe I’m defending Robert, who I’ve always seen as somewhat trollish, but a rapist? Because he’s against abortion, he would commit rape? Give me a fucking break. I agree that forced childbirth is as big a violation as rape. This doesn’t mean that someone against abortion would commit rape. What a fucking insane thing to say. If I had a blog, that comment would be a bannable offense.
As for Hugo and Ampersand, I continue to agree that their policies need work, but I also agree with AB’s comments. Those two have a feminist responsibility to work on changing men’s minds. Even if they don’t change the troll’s mind–and it may be that they never will–there are plenty of lurkers on Amp’s and Hugo’s blogs, far more lurkers than there are commenters, whose minds can and will be changed by reading those debates. Maybe Ampersand and Hugo should specify that their comments-threads aren’t “safe” or supportive spaces for feminists, because they will contain antifeminist and misogynist opinions, but I see no wrong in allowing those threads to exist.
Also, to bellatrys: lots of liberal men believe, on some level, that you’re not human either. Hell, lots of feminist women have–despite their feminist ideology–swallowed some of our culture’s patriarchal bullshit and believe on some level that their fellow women aren’t fully human. So what? Do you cut them all off? Are you obligated to cut them off? We all have our prejudices, and not all of us are stubbornly committed to hanging on to them. Also, sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between someone who wants to hang onto prejudices and someone who doesn’t–i.e., a non-troll and a troll. I don’t see a problem with a feminist blog engaging with people who don’t believe that women are fully human. For one thing, many anti-feminists don’t see their arguments in that light, and some may be amenable to changing their beliefs. How many of us on this thread are former anti-feminists, or conservatives, or whatever?
Given that Robert’s been told over and over again exactly why he’s offensive and a troll, and he keeps avoiding it, I’m skeptical of anything but htat he represents a typical troll.
Also, would anyone seriously advise that black people have to debate with the KKK? Come on now. Why are women always told we have to persuade people, to tolerate just a little bit more abuse, to be just a little bit more noble? That’s bullshit.
People don’t change unless they have some incentive. Trolls have no incentive to change at all, at least as long as the same old fucking arguments get aired. They’re not saying anything they haven’t said for forty years. At some point, it’s time to say, “Fuck this shit, it’s old, we’re going nowhere, and that’s that.” Could it be that so many of these trolls are male that makes them so important to Hugo and Amp? What it amounts to is valuing men’s bigoted beliefs about women more than women’s fight against those very beliefs. Gee, why does that give one some pause? And if it doesn’t, it should.
I think a lot of the hurt feelings that are flying would probably be helped a lot if there was a male-run feminist blog that actively troll hunted and expunged people who only jump into conversations to derail them. Right now, there’s nothing that comes to mind–a lot of feminist male bloggers have no problem banning rape apologists and other misogynist trolls, but they don’t run blogs that are primarily about gender issues.
I tried something sort of like this, way back when, at http://phmt.livejournal.com/ - though it was not quite a feminist blog, more a way to divert the “what about men?” posts from feminist blogs. It never took off, for the following reasons:
* I didn’t prioritize it enough to “seed” it with interesting posts
* I didn’t publicize it enough. The only way I know how to get a lot of publicity is with a big flamewar, and that’s precisely what I wanted to avoid.
* Most of the people making “what about men?” posts weren’t interested in discussion so much as trolling.
Ginmar, people do say that black folks should be nice and civil to white racists all the fucking time. Please don’t do that again.
Also, Robert, being forced to give birth against your will can be as bad as rape, I think. Imagine if you were forced to have something alien inside your body, and push it out with great pain. Giving up your baby can be tramatic too. Basically, they mean you like inflicting pain on women, which is what rapists do. They may rationalize their actions to themselves, but the effect is the same to the woman left bleeding.
Shannon, did you miss the point or what? Anyone who says that is an asshole. I don’t find either kind of asshole to be convincing. The difference is, people are more ready to call a racist an asshole than they are a sexist. Women are supposed to tolerate being insulted and stereotyped. It means ‘they like us.’
Also, Robert, being forced to give birth against your will can be as bad as rape, I think
I would imagine so; haven’t had either one happen to me.
I’m not in favor of forcing women to go through childbirth.
I’m trying to explain that people often will excuse racism as much as they do sexism or even more than sexism sometimes. Try Steve Gillard’s blog after he has mentioned that there is racism or any people of color mentioning that whites may be less than perfect. People of color are always ‘overreacting’ and people of a certain color always ‘don’t see race’
That’s funny, and not in a good way, as access to women has always been viewed as something lower-class or whatever you call it men have protested they’ve been deprived of. Racism is the one thing that can get you fired, but sexism is just seen as some stupid bitch’s over-reaction. You can see racism; sexism is woven right into the culture. I’ve seen too many instances of sexism being used to fight racism, as if being shitty to women was some male right that is denied to disempowered men. Which leaves women out of the question, but that’s a whole nother subject.
That’s funny, and not in a good way, as access to women has always been viewed as something lower-class or whatever you call it men have protested they’ve been deprived of. Racism is the one thing that can get you fired, but sexism is just seen as some stupid bitch’s over-reaction. You can see racism; sexism is woven right into the culture. I’ve seen too many instances of sexism being used to fight racism, as if being shitty to women was some male right that is denied to disempowered men. Which leaves women out of the question, but that’s a whole nother subject.
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