Because I am lazy, and because blogrolls bring out the high school in people, and because really, what I read or don't read isn't actually any of your business.
I recommend this policy to anyone else who shirks maintenance, hated high school, despises ineffective feel-good activism, and doesn't care if his or her inbound links go to hell or not. It is a sound policy that will save you much annoyance.
You can tell me what to read and what to link to when you sign my paychecks. Until then, don't spit in free ice cream.
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23 comments:
Well, I guess yeah, if you think linking to bigotry is a-ok, Chris.
I'm not perfect by any stretch, but I wouldn't link to Twisty any more than I would link to LGF, as long as she allows such disgusting hatred in her comment section.
And "coercion"?! Okay, if you think so, then there it is.
If someone needs to be coerced to fight against bigotry, I want no part in anything they have to do.
Well, if you want see who's bigger, you win every time Chris. I've respected you for a long time. My delinking thing was for me. Always was. But if you can't see that Twisty doesn't care one iota about what happens on her blog, who posts there, and who gets hurt, then I have nothing else to say to you.
I'm not here to glorify you or Twisty Magnificat.
First off, the person in question was not you, Ilyka. That's all I'll say. From Twisty's thread, as I'm never posting there again:
I don’t understand why deleting a link now constitutes “fight[ing] against bigotry.” I guess pressing the delete key technically does involve lifting a finger, but come on.
NOT THE POINT. Have you read the thread in question? Well, I suppose we have to agree to disagree, but delinking was FOR ME, not anyone else. Trust me on that, if you can, though I bet that by challenging the glorious TF, I've somehow damaged my crappy-ass credentials. Fine. Whittle me down to delinking people because I'm a spiteful asshole. Whatever.
No, no, no--I don't think you're a spiteful asshole, and I'm not trying to whittle you down, honest.
The problem with this thing is that there are too many people in it and everyone's talking past each other, including me.
I certainly did read the thread in question and I am not now, nor will I ever be, disputing the awfulness of the remarks found therein. Man, I should not even have to get that on the table, but I feel like I have to, because there's this whiplash dynamic being perpetuated by some, NOT YOU, that makes the whole thing resemble an interrogation session:
Interrogator: Do you denounce the trans-hatred in that post?!
Me: Gads, yes, it was horrid.
Interrogator: Then you surely denounce the proprietor of the web site on which that hatred appeared!
Me: What? No. She told people to knock it off and then she closed comments and it was over the holidays, so--
Interrogator: Then you SUPPORT transphobia!
Me: No, I don't!
Interrogator: But you are still reading that blog, so you must agree with luckynkl and all the other transphobes!
Me: I do not!
It's possible to hate the haters without hating Twisty, is all I'm saying. I think she could have handled it better--I think what Jill told her was right on. And I notice she dealt with what Jill had to say more humbly than she did with anyone else, probably because Jill wasn't backing her into a rhetorical corner.
"Just admit you hate the transgendered" is no way to start a dialogue, but it's the ONLY way some people, and again, not you, seem to want to have that dialogue.
You link whoever you wanna, though. My whole point with this dumb post was to note that it's often easier just not to link anyone. Besides, any blogger out there's gonna fall off the pedestal eventually. Everyone fucks up. So think of my no-links policy as preemptive delinking, if you like. :)
Jesus, I can't sleep tonight, and all I really have to take issue with is this:
The first words of yours I read were incredibly offensive and bigoted
I'd like a bit of clarification on this. If it was hateful, I apologize. If it was my comment about fat, lazy assholes, THAT WAS ABOUT MY POS FATHER. I'm sorry if you take it to mean other people in general. In fact, I'm sorry for my bullshit statement. I should never have phrased it as such, and at the time, I was preoccupied on the matter. If it offended you, or anyone else, I completely apologize and submit that I am a complete asshole on many occasions, especially when they revolve around said patriarch.
I'm a fat person. I have been lazy many times in my life. I'm an asshole all the time, and I'm trying not to be. I am very sorry if I offended you, Chris, or anyone else.
If that instance wasn't what you were talking about, I am currently unaware of what you're talking about. This does not mean that I wasn't wrong, this means that I want to know what you are specifically talking about.
Again, in all of criticisms, I have never once said I am without flaws of my own. I don't wish to make grandiose pronouncements from on high, I only state my own wishes as a piece-of-shit primate who means nothing. My wishes mean nothing. I'm just, in the end, fighting for people I love.
Re: Twisty, I think she herself admitted she could have handled that thread better, even in her Twisty Goes to Camp post. At least that's how I take her saying "which is quite understandable given the recent unpleasantness" with respect to designated Camp 2. Which I may or may not have fallen into depending on how she interpreted my comments at Feministe, if she even read them. For the record, I wasn't saying "Twisty is transphobic." I was saying that if something happens regularly (and that wasn't the first time, although it hadn't ever gotten that bad before) and you don't challenge or delete it, if someone raises a concern to you, then it's understandable if they think you don't care much for their concerns. I also think the response she did give in that original thread, before she shut it down, was dismissive. If it was because she hadn't actually read the comments, fine. That's where she could absolutely have handled it better. It's not that hard to say "Look, I hear there's some concerns about this thread. I haven't had time to read it, so I'll address them when I do, or I'll shut down the thread until that time" or something along those lines. But yes, she eventually did shut the thread down, and now she has made herself more clear.
As for this whole "delinking" thing, I happen to personally dislike public announcements of delinking. Challenge on the issue, for sure. But "I'm going to delink you!" Just delink. If anyone else considers it worth delinking, they'll delink. If they don't, delink them. But don't announce that if someone else doesn't delink, you'll delink them (and jackgoff, you might not have, but someone else did). If they are a friend of yours, then address it with them via e-mail or IM. This isn't international diplomacy and "cutting off relations" with another blog is going to have no significant real-life impact.
So, Twisty came in, finally, and brought the hammer down on luckynkl and some of the other hateful fucks.
and you know, maybe the spectre of a bunch of people delinking or threatening to delink had nothing at all to do with it; and maybe the fact that one of the very first things out of her fingers was a "haha, -I- have 20,000 readers a week." Maybe in real life she's a mensch who was just having a really bad couple of weeks, and those of us who have yes been expressing rather harsh assessments of her character as assessed by observations of her interpersonal online behavior, specifically how she runs that site(and no, really, it has feckall to do with goddam b-w-j-bs, already, okay?) for quite a while now are meen unfair and cranks. Okay. I can live with it. I can live with it, if it means -finally- some people (and some on her site, please note, the nice sane "reasonable" people, might realize, oh yeah, actually, the people who were being referred to as "nutjobs, serial killers" are not abstractions who we all should care about as dutiful progressives, but real live people who read that thread, understandably didn't post -there,- but did post, elsewhere, did one care to look, about how "frightened and ill" it made them. Yeah, i felt frightened and ill, too. well, ill, certainly.
for the record, personally, i post a blogroll because i like having it up there as a resource for people passing through to get curious and go read -someone other than me.- Not, in the greater scheme of things, i admit, the most "empowerful" thing anyone can do, but hey. Personal is political, right?
piny slipped, and exactly.
you know, i understand the urge to leap to the defense of one's friends, first. hell, i do it myself. what i don't understand is why people who call themselves progressives seem to often to unerringly line up behind the person who relatively speaking, does have, yep, more power, more privilege, in the equation, while taking the people who haven't had much of a voice at all to task, or simply dismissing their concerns as, "say, do you hear a faint buzzing? oh, yes, that. that....issue. Well, regrettable, tut, let's move on to important things..."
seriously, and ESPECIALLY for any feminist: does this not feel just a teensy bit familiar, this shall we say transaction?
You are on a supposedly friendly, progressive site, run by a dude, populated largely by dudes. the comments section becomes a cesspool of ignorant to outright hate, MRA's, really; and when some people talk of raping a woman to get her to shut up, speculations of whether women are actually even human at all, it only stands out because the slightly less noxious sexism that runs thick and fast has become so commonplace that most people have simply ceased to notice it, like carbon monoxide.
so, some people call the owner out--the owner, who regularly goes out of his way to mock Republicans, slap other men around for something not related to women, something on the regular menu of professional Dems, let's say, because he seems to have gone fishin'.
owner comes back with,
"it has been suggested that my failure to have commented on this 'chicks:' good or bad?” issue implies my tacit agreement with one faction over another.
Incorrect."
(TF's initial exact words, substitute "trannies" for "chicks.")
...now how, as a woman, as a feminist, do you think you'd react?
Especially when so many, many other people--so many MEN--seem not to have any sort of problem with this at all?
I said to Jack as well as Vanessa that i personally didn't feel comfortable telling anyone else what to do or not do with their blogroll; that hell, i still have people on my roll who link to Ann Althouse. What people do with their own site, roll included, is their own prerogative. Which also includes delinking people--and announcing it--for whatever reason, at their own disposal.
And, while i am sure that popular "progressive" bloggers do not care about the possibility of becoming significantly less popular, particularly when they immediately start off with stats about their readership--that they are more concerned with, well, what? not activism, apparently nothing that happens online is really activism, brownfemipower and others who've put tons of energy into using the 'Net as a source of alternate communication for the stories that don't get out there, for building communities between otherwise isolated people, for fundraising, will surely be pleased to know that it's all just a game--
i'm sure you know, they don't care. At all. About who does or doesn't link to them. And neither do we, of course.
So why even mention it, ey?
...because we are the Good Guys. because it's dirty laundry. because it Isn't Done. because we protect our own.
except some of "us," aren't. In fact. It'd be nice if we were, but it's hard to hold onto that belief, in times like this.
too poor, too brown, too freaky, too foreign in their concerns, too upsetting, too angry, too...other.
don't frighten the horses. don't let's rock the boat, not THIS boat, this rowboat we've constructed as an oasis from the bigger sinking ship, and the bigger one before that. let's all be civil about this. we're all in this together. right?
sigh.
...now how, as a woman, as a feminist, do you think you'd react?
Hey, there's a reason I don't read Amp or Hugo anymore. I, for one, was certainly not suggesting people were wrong to be upset. Quite the contrary. FWIW, I also virtually never read Twisty, except when other people link her as part of these kinds of challenges.
What people do with their own site, roll included, is their own prerogative. Which also includes delinking people--and announcing it--for whatever reason, at their own disposal.
Of course. Addressing my comment, my statement of a personal dislike for something is simply that. If I'm wrong, and it's really more than that, here's a few other things I personally dislike: inter-league baseball, the MLB wild card (and the division series, by extension), astro-turf, and reality television.
Well, I also think that certain things are more than a matter of taste, yes. Even whilst acknowledging that even moral compasses are, indeed, subjective. as is everything on this our mortal coil, no doubt.
What it comes down to is this. No one wants to be the bad guy. No one wants their friends and allies to be the bad guys. That's a given.
The question is, what -else- drives you to do what you do? Or don't do? And that is a general "you."
i mean, as a "progressive," that is.
and the other given: no one--well, most people--enjoys fighting. a lot of people are reaching for the Pepto this morning, i think, off of this, and spinoffs. it's not the first time this has happened, or the thousandth, and won't be the last.
people don't want trouble. but sometimes, trouble is already there, and speaking is better than silence. and sometimes, when speaking doesn't seem to be having any effect, it gets raised to a shout.
which, i would have thought, is kind of the point of being a progressive, small-d-democrat, whatever you want to call it, in the first place, understanding that, be it feminist or anti-racist or plain old I-hate-the-Bush-admin-and-what-it's-done-to-our-country.
"we have met the enemy, and they is us."
it doesn't -have- to be that way, no. that's the -good- news. but, it's not gonna get any better if we keep clinging to our old defenses in the stark face of this isn't working anymore, and yes, i mean me, too. All of us. Goddamit.
by the way, speaking of apologies, Jack's got one up at his blog now.
piny, i totally get it, and you have every right to be tired. i feel frustrated and angry on your behalf, as well as people like Jay, little light, prosphoros, emily, Lady Aster...and any number of other people who've felt viscerally hurt for other, if probably not unrelated reasons, over the past number of months. It isn't okay, no.
what i really hated is in the comments section, the whole, oh, gee, now we have to concern ourselves about every little thing? what about Darfur, huh? what about the penguins starving in Antarctica?
as though transwomen weren't women; as though transhatred had nothing to do with misogyny, or the repudiation thereof with feminism; as though none of this were any big deal.
Well, okay, but if it's not a big deal, why have a damn blog, a FEMINIST blog, up in the damn first place? one that talks about Revolution and Patriarchy Destruction, no less. -Is- it all just a game? Is it?
Maybe it depends who you ask, and when. It really sucks, though.
I was saying that if something happens regularly (and that wasn't the first time, although it hadn't ever gotten that bad before) and you don't challenge or delete it, if someone raises a concern to you, then it's understandable if they think you don't care much for their concerns.
Agreed. What I'm getting out of this discussion is that there's a whole history of this kind of thing happening over there that I was not aware of. I wasn't kidding when I said I don't read the comments at IBTP--I haven't done that since Pony basically took 'em over. And when it's not Pony it's Mandos, making dumb jokes about poutine. None of it adds anything to the original post, in my vain opinion, so I normally skip 'em.
I also think the response she did give in that original thread, before she shut it down, was dismissive. If it was because she hadn't actually read the comments, fine.
That seems to be exactly what occurred, and now to why I suspected that was exactly what had occurred: Because I hide from my own comments when they get nasty all the time. i am a big old coward who hates having to play the heavy. I freely admit that I shirk my responsibility as a site owner in that regard, which is why I'm considering not having comments open at all. If you can't maintain them, you shouldn't keep them.
I have even emailed other people saying, "Please go take a look and tell me how bad it is in there." That's pathetic. I did it with a thread between Darleen and belledame, in fact--I just couldn't stand to look. I knew from the high volume of emails I was getting on it that it couldn't be good, but I didn't read any of them. It's no fun opening something you KNOW is only going to bum you out.
But I should have, you know? It's relatively easy to do what you suggested here:
That's where she could absolutely have handled it better. It's not that hard to say "Look, I hear there's some concerns about this thread. I haven't had time to read it, so I'll address them when I do, or I'll shut down the thread until that time" or something along those lines.
Yep. This is why I think there's some advantage to participating in a group blog versus an individual one: If you really can't stand to look you can ask one of your co-bloggers to help out, provided of course you're willing to return the favor and help out on the stuff they can't stand to look at. You can all share equally in the comments-moderation misery.
Plus, the same commenters have IIRC posted shorter aside versions of the same venom on other threads. When I heard that there was a transphobic thread at Twisty's blog, I knew exactly who was gonna be involved and exactly what they were gonna say. Lucky is to eruptions of transphobia as FDL is to homages to blackface.
Thanks; I didn't realize luckynkl was a serial offender. I just thought she was a hateful paranoiac who wandered in from who-knows-where. Putting this together with Lesley's comment that this is not the first time transphobia has run wild on IBTP, I take it she's gone off like this over there before?
Those comments were not just mildly but extremely transphobic. They made me sick to my stomach, even though they're not new to me. I like a lot of what she has to say, and I don't think she's like Luckynkl, but...this was really bad.
And really, really, revoltingly stupid. Yeah, when I go to the restroom, I'm always checking underneath the stall to make sure no mtf's are next to me just waiting to rape me. Whereas I never worry that a cisgendered man might wander in to do that, because that "women" icon on the door will totally keep him out. It's like a cross to a vampire, that icon.
But I gotta say that Jackgoff's, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" attitude towards Twisty, the belief that this is a huge fucking oversight on her part, is really appealing.
I can see that. And that's why I like Jackgoff. Anything he deems important he cares about passionately, and he doesn't let up. I wish he and Chris were not feuding, but I can't disrespect Jackgoff on this one. He's a good person to have at your back.
Damn--AngryBrownButch nailed exactly what galls me about the women-born-women-only radfems:
I think that one of the most telling aspects of this transphobia dressed up as feminism is the double standard, for lack of a better phrase, that is exhibited towards trans women and trans men by some anti-trans feminists. Oftentimes, I see people claiming that trans women can never truly escape or abandon their “male” privilege and the “male threat” that they somehow pose towards non-trans women (see the arguments about trans women making women’s bathrooms unsafe.)
Alright - so apparently, trans women are always “still men” to some degree, entertaining that view for a brief moment. So what about trans men? Are they embraced by these same anti-trans feminists because of their apparently intrinsic and inescapable womanhood, their continued inherent lack of male privilege? Seems like the logical continuation, right?
Wrong. Trans men are either demonized for taking on male privilege and turning their backs on women, or are patronizingly pitied for being self-hating women duped by their own internalized oppression. Now, following that logic, wouldn’t one think that trans women might be embraced by these feminists for voluntarily shedding their male privilege and aligning themselves in solidarity with other women? Nah - see above.
Exactly--it all falls apart under just a few seconds' scrutiny. And all because some feminists can't say, "I need to figure out why I'm so threatened by transpeople," instead trying to dress it up in faulty logic. That's, uh, that's actually very Republican.
I don't know that transphobia per se has run wild there so much before, although it certainly has done at say the Margins (a lot of the same cast of characters). if not, i think mostly because it probably didn't come up, or not for a long while. (no, i don't read regularly, but enough other people do that even just following the pointed-out threads, i have an idea). but there's been other shit. well, just recently, a perhaps even more charming one: comments along the lines of, (mostly the same yahoos who're now hopefully out of there and un-mainstreamed, but): sodomy is not the same thing as rape. the ass is not a sexual organ and therefore men cannot be said to be "raped" in the same way that women are. and it happens in such vanishingly small numbers (does male rape) that it's not worth mentioning; and even if and when it does happen, well, good, it serves them right, maybe NOW they'll have some empathy for women...like that. honest to god.
and then there was the dogpile on Pretty Lady not long ago, wherein the ever charming pony said "you sound like a fag" (and no one called her on it, that i saw); and there was the business where someone was lecturing the former grannyvibe, "angry" at her because i guess she wasn't toeing the line wrt some handwringing over a stripping fundraiser for someone-else- with cancer, and she, Liz/grannyvibe, was apparently just "bitter" because no one was holding a fundraiser for -her- (well, if you go to her site, that and having stage IV lymphoma and no insurance and having to sell your home will probably do that to you, bitter, yes). and yeah, TF did call her out on it, that particular asshole, i guess, and so did a couple other people, but i mean: compare the outrage to say the outrage over some goddam radfem taboo...
and then when the Red Guard Feminists/ism seem to be spilling over into the more mainstream sites, as they have, had been doing for a while now, as well as some of their loopier ideas and the really charming habit of interrogating other women, "examine, examine," for something that frankly did not affect anyone else...
and every damn time i turn around, seems like, someone else i like or care about or someone they've linked to has gone in there with good intentions and come out of there feeling like they just walked into a broken glass tornado...
...then, yeah. it does make me cranky.
and then the other part of it is, you know, i believe her when she says that she did not intend the transphobic shit to happen there, especially since that wasn't what the thread was about.
but when you do shit like delibarately troll your own blog (BJ, yadda), and then later post snapshots of apparently unaware womens' asses with the thong sticking out, without comment, and the commenters duly start making fun of it, and when people protest the making fun of it they're mocked and abused too...even though i realize i do not exactly come off as objective here, i'll just say, even now in the calm light of day with my charitable pants on, it does to me feel like this is more than just -inattention- to the comments. She is deliberately provocative, okay, on the whole, even if she wasn't intending to provoke with this one. And when you -are- a provocateur, in my opinion, okay fine; but watch your aim. And if you provoke the wrong people, or too much, well, kind of you broke it you bought it; you need to take responsibility (which yes i do think putting the kibosh on the hateful people is a start), because it's hurting people and it's hurting the commons.
i would like to move on here, yes. whatever that actually entails. there are some good conversations wrt trans issues, and how they connect, the parallels, with race issues, among other things, happening hither and yon; the one at bfp's was quite good, until another minor drama eruption (and Heart being, well, Heart) had bfp throwing up her hands. it's moved to little light's now, i think.
per the double standard (and there is hateful anti FTM sentiment, too, but probably it's true it's not as widespread and doesn't take the same forms), i was just saying over at feministe:
to me there is also a connecting thread between all the other "wars," lame as they are, and this: lipstick, shaving, giving head, yadda: it has to do with what some people call "femmephobia." which is yep a big ole part of this our patriarchal culture, trickles into pretty much every population, i would say--gay men, lesbians too, the ambiguity of the rewards of being a "fembot" or "sexbot" or what have you--and y'know, -that- is something i personally would like to shall we say examine further.
I guess if public announcements of delinking can actually convince someone to challenge some of the bullshit on their sites (or stop putting it on themselves), then they would be a net good. Maybe that was part of what convinced Twisty to finally say something. I haven't seen any evidence that a site like Firedoglake has been swayed. At least I don't think so. I haven't read them since the first blackface bullshit, but there appear to be semi-regular racist and sexist posts from what I gather from other blogs.
I'm of a mind that the public delinkings would have to be somewhat organized, like a boycott, to have a hope of being really effective. Not that I couldn't be wrong about that.
As for Twisty, that certainly is not the first time her comments section has degenerated into transphobia. She, herself, does write well, and I agree with her regarding gender being a social construct (as in, you shouldn't have to be a specific gender, just what you are). However, I find her general writing style to be flip. She is often dismissive in these situations. While I enjoy a flip writing style when it's P.G. Wodehouse, that's because it's fiction. Real people with real feelings not directly involved. If Twisty wants to start writing fiction, I'd probably buy her books. Wodehouse is my favorite author, and she writes a lot like him. Even uses a lot of the same words and phrases. If she told me that she'd been influenced by him, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
I haven't seen any evidence that a site like Firedoglake has been swayed.
Agreed. they're too over-inflated now, and they've taken to swarming small to medium bloggers -outside- fdl (on their own turf) to try to discredit them or get them to shut up, which is really...charming.
Whereas I never worry that a cisgendered man might wander in to do that, because that "women" icon on the door will totally keep him out. It's like a cross to a vampire, that icon.
ha, i just said the same damn thing somewhere. exactly.
it DOES however tend to have a curious power over everyone ELSE, i notice-- even when it's a single-occupancy restroom. As in, there'll be a huge ass line for the womens' room, and the (SINGLE OCCUPANCY) mens' room will be totally empty, and you go to the woman in front of you, "say, is anyone in there?" and she laughs nervously and turns away, "oh, I don't know..." waiting for the "proper" one to open up.
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