It’s now become a bunch of white women yelling “Racist!” and BFP seems to have become incidental. It’s a damn shame, because what could have been a productive conversation between BFP and Amanda that everyone could have benefited from is instead a gleeful rush to, as the opoponax said, eat our own.

However, as soon as people started claiming that there was out-and-out plagiarism and tried to prove that Amanda copied a speech that she very clearly could not have been present to hear, that side lost a lot of credibility. Not only that, but it distracted from the actual point that BFP was originally trying to make about how the voices of people of color get drowned out.

It’s just so ironic to me that BFP was complaining (rightly) about being silenced and drowned out and a few of overzealous supporters proceeded to … drown her out and draw attention away from the actual issue that BFP was complaining about in the first place by turning it into an accusation against a single person instead of an institutional problem that needs to be worked on.

Sorry, that should have been mainstream culture, I think?

Not sure whether it’s a typo, a freudian slip, or something from the work half of my brain sneaking into the blog half. Either way, carry on.

Say whaaaaaah?

Should someone inform bell hooks about this?!

God, I’m glad I never got that far down into the comments.

Feminism is probably the only area of publishing outside of niche ‘ethnic’ markets where that is grossly untrue.

At Bluestockings yesterday before the reading I was browsing around, and there certainly seemed to be quite a few books available by feminists of color.

I’ll grant that it’s probably easier for a straight white woman to gain MSM acceptance, or to be seen in mainstream color as a “spokesperson for feminism”, in the way someone like Gloria Steinem always has been. It also could be true that more book deals go to white women, their books are printed in wider numbers, by larger publishers, more widely reviewed in the press, and/or stocked more often at mainstream bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble.

But since when do only white women get book deals?

The number of feminist litmus-tests that have been invented on the spot is rather staggering.

The only winners here are the Republicans and MRA’s pointing and laughing from the sidelines at the dumb wimmenz fighting over of a fucking Alligator on the cover of a book!

What I love to say about right-wingers, that they defy parody, is sadly true here.

I get that a lot of the criticisms have been super-snarky, sarcastic, personal and sometimes downright mean. I was pretty shocked and angry about the tone this was taking and it sure felt like a self-righteous pile-on at first.

But as much as I think the plagiarism charges are crap — I also really don’t think this is a conspiracy to torpedo Amanda’s career, and I think saying that is just as unfair as claiming that Amanda plagiarized Bfp. After reading lots and lots of threads on this, I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that where there’s smoke, there’s some kind of fire — not that Amanda did anything intentionally or personally, but that there is something wrong going on in the way that feminists of color are generally marginalized and made invisible. This became a flashpoint for that anger. Amanda didn’t do this intentionally and I think it’s unfair to claim or imply that she did. But maybe Amanda, as a blogger with a big megaphone, can raise some awareness of it and push some changes.

Cat of many faces @18, actually, I do think Amanda can address the current issue — even make some form of apology — and still maintain her integrity, without groveling or self-flagellating. I think that needs to happen, actually. Right now, fairly or unfairly, Amanda’s coming off as apathetic about actual issues of racism within feminism, and I fucking really hate to see that happen when I know that’s not her intent.

No, I’m lying. What did it for me was that this has been stupid from the beginning, the obvious result of people with old axes to grind.

Word about the moving goalposts.

The most disturbing thing here is that this is a scenario that plays out almost verbatim every few months, with pretty much all the same people saying all the same things, and it’s been going on for years.

At this point it’s performance art.

Whatever legitimate issues there are here are obscured by that fact. The other night I was randomly reading a bunch of other blog blowups - sammich-gate, Burqa-gate, Jesus General, “cunt”, pie-gate, various people “quitting the internet”, etc etc etc…they all read exactly the same, to the point you could cut and paste them into this discussion.

For some reason the feminist blogosphere does not know how to express itself in any way other than a shouting match. People seem to have forgotten how to dial down the outrage.

Of course not. Slagging on Amanda is just a happy bonus.

Look, 99% of our idiot media will only pay attention to the arguments raised regularly on this blog if they’re coming from a pretty white woman–and yeah, I know that *sucks* to the nth power of suck, but there it is. But Amanda is an eloquent spokeswoman for feminism, and this state of affairs isn’t her fault. And no, I’m not going to throw accusations of jealousy at the women of color in the blogosphere who feel ripped off–it must be galling to work so hard for so long in this area and then have journalists go running to someone else first. But shredding Amanda for her success won’t set things right either.