Blokes at Crikey are wondering why they don’t have more female subscribers, and “Where are Australia’s female political bloggers?”
Excerpts from the thread:
Possum Comitatus:
“Something that has surprised me for a while on the gender balance of the Australian political net is the lack of big female political bloggers. We have Kim and Anna over at LP as a group blog, while Tigtog and Lauredhel at Hoyden touch on politics occasionally and do it well – but where are the dedicated Australian political bloggers of the likes of Wonkette or Pandagon that we see in the US?
Let’s do our bit to find them. Know any female political bloggers in Australia? If so, drop a link in comments and we’ll list them here – big or small, old or new – and hopefully give them some exposure. If you’re an Australian female political blogger, don’t be shy – tell us about your blog.”
Dave Gaukroger:
“I agree that more female voices online would be a good thing, but there is still the ’shrill vs confident’ gender problem to overcome. Until online discussion as a whole becomes a bit more civil I think we’ll continue to see women ignore the rabble.”
Jason Wilson:
“Poss, I don’t want to preempt what will no doubt be a long list of female political bloggers, but is it possible that snark culture in big-p Political blogs might be off-putting for some women? Let me be clear, I don’t mind a bit of snark myself, but is it possible that it’s a macho mode of speech and interaction that a lot of women can’t be bothered with?”
daiskmeliadorn:
“i always considered most of my LJ to be ‘political’: in the ‘personal is political’ way; when i was talking about my honours thesis on sexuality; when i wrote about my own or others’ activism; and when i occasionally discussed stuff that was in the (mainstream) news of the day/related to the “circus down in canberra”. of course there is overlap between all these aspects of ‘politics’.” (and all of daiskmeliadorn’s comment @5)
BH:
“oss – I think it is partly time constraints. Working life, family life, keeping relationships in tact, etc. take a fair amount of time. [...] My daughter and daughtersinlaw just do not have any time in their busy working/home lives to indulge in the way I do. But they are very, very politically astute.”
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{ 157 comments }
← Previous Comments
hexy: Agreed.
pharaoh_katt:
That’s an adorable lolcat, thank you. :)
This was an upsetting conversation for me too, which is why I don’t feel bad about mocking and/or gloating. It’s a survival tactic, you know?
This conversation was upsetting even before the “going native” phrase that jumped the shark. While it’s admirable that he was willing to engage over here at all, he was almost totally on the defensive rather than attempting to explore and evaluate the arguments. And afterwards? I’m dismayed not only by the “my black friend” defence but also that a political blogger used a formulaic “if I offended anyone” non-pology without any apparent trace of irony.
There was no IF about it, people had told him that they WERE offended, the proper way to apologise is to acknowledge that the act IS offensive rather than frame it as a conditional. Given that this and other feminist blogs routinely excoriate pollies and public figures for non-pologies using conditional formulations, it would be hypocritical NOT to call Possum out on it.
P.S. I have, in the distant past, been guilty of parallel situations making jokes with a punchline about “wogs” as a WASP Australian, that I thought were fine because I had best mates whose families came from the Mediterranean and I was totally being ironic and non-racist. I now know that I offended someone’s family terribly as a result, and they never said anything but I know that family could never really like or trust me afterwards, even though my friends who knew me did understand that I was trying to be supportively satirical about racist WASPs and had simply “misjudged the audience”.
It was a mortifying realisation about how just being mates with a marginalised group who use slurs about their group ironically amongst themselves doesn’t mean that it works when I as a member of the dominant hegemony try and use the exact same words in the exact same way. Without the context of that marginalisation directed against me personally, it’s just appropriation and it’s arrogant, inconsiderate of both my mates and others in the group whom I don’t know personally, and a glaring example of unexamined privilege.
Wow Anna. I watched as you told Wildly Parenthetical that perhaps she just was not used to the ‘testing and refining’ of ideas – that what she experienced as hostility dismissal and a refusal to engage – not just with her ideas but with people speaking from the position of people with disabilities on the Christian Rossiter thread – were respectful clarification and dialogue. But now that PC is here any testing and clarifying of *his* ideas is a vicious gang bashing? I’m not sure what the thread proves, but I’m pretty sure your comment re hypocrisy is kinda unintentionally funny.
And at the point of using ‘going native’? I would HOPE that there would be uproar.
Possum if you are still reading, this is the type of crap I’m talking about – comment 35 from Helen’s post on LP about why we are in Afghanistan
Helen has already dealt with this (I’m assuming male) commentator, but the fact is she shouldn’t have to. Were this written by Mark, or Brian or one of the numerous male posters on LP I doubt this comment would have been written like this. This is what I mean when I say that identifiable female commentators and posters have to prove their bona fides.
I just saw that Mindy. The condescension and contempt – appallingly routine practice when someone dares to centre women’s oppression.
Ok I just spent the last hour going back over the thread looking for the pile ons:
See the thread here used the questions elsewhere as a starting point and it was about the invisibility of women’s political blogging.
It starts with general comments re women being disappeared etc. PC wades in at 7 to say even when we define politics as widely as possible it’s still heavily weighted to men (I’d like to see stats on that actually – not snark, just interest).
Conversation continues as previously. There was the issue of BH’s comment being misread as coming from a guy interspersed with general discussion of politics. Rachel corrects this.
Not til 18 does PK point out a couple of her issues with PC. At 20 Anna argues the definition of politics and turns it around to ask ‘Where are the men writing about the issues that matter to me’.
Helen apologises for the misunderstanding re BH. WP discusses the dismissive tone over at LP as being a major issue in women’s participation and the political action of challenging the centre.
At 20 PC jumps back on to take on the two comments who directly referred to him. Gets all matyr like about the language of ‘women/female’, doesn’t ask questions to clarify what people mean, just assumes that he is right. Further more misreads/doesn’t properly read WPs comment and is wounded that she has that reading of his question – except she quite clearly *doesn’t* – her comment was specifically about LP threads and political stances, and not at all anything to do with PC OR his question.
PC redefines his question and asserts that people are assuming the worst motives despite only 2 comments to date directly addressing him/his words at all.
Anna tries to make a point: why are you not reading about these issues: they’re political. That’s what I read and you’re asking why I’m not reading/writing about what you’re interested in/see as political?
PC back again: knows nothing *about* disability (no mention of a plan to learn). Concern is that women aren’t focussing on MSM issues, and why that is.
L asks PC to delineate the issues and perhaps reflect on why they might not be covered for himself.
PC pretty much says he doesn’t know/learn b/c his life hasn’t taken him ‘down that road’
Says that the ‘issues’ L asked him to clarify come to one issue: who controls the power and what they’re doing with it. (That’s what he’d asked why women aren’t writing about remember)
Skud says if it fills the paper that’s enough reason to write about other issues. Points out that disability will affect us all at some point and that’s enough incentive to learn about/care about it.
43 PK giggling at the accidental use of ‘that’ in trying not to be offensive with female/woman stuff. Also takes issue with the traffic stuff. Points out that some women may not want the traffic. (I know I don’t the only commenter I picked up from Crikey was a pain in the arse). Argues women aren’t necessarily failing to be *heard* so much as to be heard by PC.
46 PC dismisses Skud and takes on PK – fainting couch moment over the traffic issue.
47 (someone – sorry didn’t write down your inititals) challenges PC as to what’s on *his* radar.
48 PC back to say he didn’t define politics at all (?) and that his concern is few women are focussing on the same issues as the MSM
49 Anna points out that he did, in actual fact, define politics.
50 L points out that the topics Anna raised *were* in MSM (so the point that women aren’t writing about the same issues as the MSM doesn’t actually stand up since the MSM covered it as did women who blog politics). Suggests he start actually listening to what women are saying here and snarks that perhaps he should drop the saviour complex (ie/ the offering of the traffic to enable women to ’speak to power’ amongst other things)
51 Tigtog steps in to say PC is attempting to respond to many ppl and we should try to keep it brief and concise and remember to distance PC from threads atmosphere at LP and Crikey (which I actually think everyone had done an admirable job at doing)
52 L reminds PC that in fact many women ARE writing on his previously stated ‘ultimate issue’ of who’s in power and what they’re doing with it (remember he offered this as the definition of the issues he wasn’t seeing women blogging on)
54 Misses L’s point that women are covering it, gets upset by apparent accusations. Explains slowly and carefully how politics works and that issues covered in MSM are those that affect the most ppl and asks why women aren’t writing as much about those issues.
55 Tigtog – we’re covering other issues
57 PC says he never said that women don’t blog on the ultimate question. Except that’s what he said around comment 40
Anna points out that *women* are the largest group in society and by and large the MSM does not in fact cover issues which affect them.
Skud points out traffic stats
PK tries to point out that Anna (who had been dismissed with a yeah…and) was attempting to engage with PC on one of his points
PC gets back on to say ‘This has decended into silliness quickly (in fact we’re 6o plus comments in and the silliness I can see is PCs continual refusal to listen or engage or realise not every comment is about *him* particularly those that explicitly state they’re about other things). Further says if it’s the wrong question ‘ask your own damned question (uses a smily face – all better. So when you ask a question we’re not allowed to have opinions in our own spaces?) then drops the ‘goes native’ bomb.
From there I’m not even catalouging it cos that shit deserves everything it gets and more.
My point being it’s hardly the knives-out, bitch-arsed stacks on you make it out to be Anna Winter.
Which would be why I never said “knives-out, bitch-arsed stacks on” or gang bashing or whatever other hyperbole you would to use.
Are you accusing me of hypocrisy because of how when WP bowed out of the Rossiter thread we all laughed and called it a flounce and said that she was scared? Wev.
That’s the second time in two days that you’ve taken the most crazy and stupid reading of my argument to help prove your point, fuckpoliteness. So sadly while I really enjoy your blog I won’t be engaging with you ever again. Because this take-the-worst-possible-reading and point and laugh and accuse people of terrible motives hurts just as much (more, actually) when it’s done by supposed sisters in feminism as when the misogynist trolls do it.
@FP
You’re quite right, everybody had been doing an admirable job of that. I was attempting to pre-empt the possibility of things getting more heated as more people joined the discussion, but I should have acknowledged that everyone had been doing that well so far already.
I think Anna makes a very good point here, FP. I don’t see how paraphrasing her comments with words so entirely different from what she actually used is helpful in any way.
Sure. Please consider my statement revised. Let me rephrase: what I should have said was “it was hardly a pile on and hence hardly something that should lead us all to be chastised as hypocrites”.
And this: let this stand revised as:
Wow Anna. I watched as you told Wildly Parenthetical that perhaps she just was not used to the ‘testing and refining’ of ideas – that what she experienced as hostility dismissal and a refusal to engage – not just with her ideas but with people speaking from the position of people with disabilities on the Christian Rossiter thread – were respectful clarification and dialogue. But now that PC is here any testing and clarifying of *his* ideas is a pile on that invalidates women’s lived experiences of spaces like LP being unsafe? I’m not sure what the thread proves, but I’m pretty sure your comment re hypocrisy is kinda unintentionally funny.
No, I said I understood why she didn’t feel up to having that particular idea tested and refined, but explained why I still found the thread useful and important. In the same way that I didn’t say that feminists could never have stopped slavery but rather used it as an analogy for how someone still has to talk to people whose ideas we find troubling or even offensive.
Possum is a psephologist who displayed a large amount of cluelessness about feminism and the rules of grammar. But he was arguing in good faith and I’ve never seen him laugh at someone who displayed cluelessness about margins of error.
I’m suggesting that it’s hypocrisy to condemn this style of fighting in others, but yet employ the very same tactics when it suits. It doesn’t actually lessen the charge just because you think I’m one too.
Anna Winter, I think there’s a difference between someone not understanding math, and someone not understanding that my experience is valid and important.
I don’t think the problem was that Possum is clueless about feminism. I think Possum was refusing to accept that other people have different experiences than he does, and that those experiences are just as valid as his own. I really am quite irritated that “legislation” apparently means “legislation that is about certain things I think are important”, because that wasn’t what he said, just what he meant. (And, as I think I made clear, I only follow legislation I think is important, so I couldn’t have faulted him for that argument. It just isn’t the one he made.)
Of course, I’m very fed up in general that I continue to need argue that disability-related legislation is important. Having someone dismiss one of the most important things I blog about as not being something he ever thought about (and I read his comment as “nor will I, because it’s not part of my life”, as opposed to “I’ve been really ignorant of this, I will try to do better”), which coloured rather strongly how I chose to react to his final statements here. I don’t think I owe kindness or consideration to someone who thinks that legislation about the lives of 25% of the people in my province isn’t important or relevant to Politics.
I may, however, be reading a lot more into your comment than is there. I’m not as calm about this as I’d like to be, all things considered.
Ok. I needed to step away from the computer. What I think is bothering me is feeling like PC hasn’t really listened to what is being said. I find it hard to see someone being confronted with some serious questions only to evade those, go off on tangents and be a shifting target.
With regards to yourself I also felt like you were not listening to what was really being said. I should take a deep breath here and I will apologise in that I think in between a great lack of sleep/far too much reading of family law and frustration with the discussions of this topic I was getting a little too fired up and overstating what could have been stated more productively. And yes, I suppose that is hypocritical.
What I would like to see engaged with is that spaces like some LP threads are not merely a little rude/discomforting – it’s that it claims to be a progressive space and yet somehow the fact that people are saying “I do not feel safe speaking my experience here” is not truly being taken on board (in my experience) as an issue to be worked on, rather the problem stays located with the individual and their feelings rather than with the space.
It is true that when I don’t feel like I’m going to be listened to I will go away and use sarcasm and hyperbole to vent.
What I am really condemning in others is a lack of reflexivity when it comes to privilege, and to a kind of personal nastiness rather than engaging with the argument.
I was guilty of the second in snarking yesterday. If you are interested in discussing the points at which I felt conversation was becoming impossible I will do my best to engage rather than be a smart arse. And you are right in that it’s not a nice thing to do.
The only thing I can say is (and this is more in relation to the style I use to have a go at de Brito etc rather than at you) that I do shout back at a world that I see as refusing to see some kinds of oppression for what they are. I should not have been so quick to lump you into that sort of category and yet I did feel that the way in which you phrased things to WP meant that implications and insinuations were flying around quicker than they could be addressed. So I took the lazy way out and got snarky.
Each of the things I said though has a more reasonable way of saying it. I do not think that the end to slavery came about only through the actions of those who put up with the status quo/put personal feelings aside – personal feelings are important and good motivators and I think that the end to slavery was far too complex to be ascribed only to the work of those who learned to ‘play the game’.
I don’t think it is sufficient for a progressive space to say ‘well some didn’t find it a safe space but on the whole I found it respectful’ – I think *who* is saying they don’t find it safe should be listened to. In the Rossiter thread it was pwd and cultural theorists whose academic experience and activism has been in the areas of disbility/constructions of the body and its effects. If *those* people do not feel safe to continue to debate then there is a problem. Because the fact that TAB and those with less personal investment/or the exceptions who are directly affected and *don’t* feel threatened feel safe and think it’s respectful does not hold equal weight.
I do find it problematic that you can cast WP’s withdrawal as being scared and laughing and I am irritated when I feel that you haven’t really engaged with what WP and others were saying in this thread that you then come on and say it’s a ‘pile on’ and that this either means we’re good at stoushing or hypocrites. I do think that in a few of your comments you were quite rude whether intentionally or not and my response was to be directly and loudly rude in response to what I saw as covert and ’stealthy’ rudeness.
I do not in fact wish to be someone who runs amok hurting people. I guess my strategy has been to engage in good faith where I feel that’s what the other person is doing – and where I feel they’re not to open fire (part of that is the refusal to bow to the gendered pressure to ‘be nice’ in disagreement once it’s been made clear that the other is not interested in listening or engaging). I do in fact think there’s a difference (generally speaking) in this tactic and in a space not making room and safe room for the lived experiences of those dealing with various oppressions. The one caveat there is if I go off half cocked I’m being an arsehole. But politically I think that where I am not jumping in too quickly there is a vast difference.
So that’s my story.
I’m not pleading for you to engage with me/continue reading my blog. I didn’t feel that you had ever engaged with me before. But I do like to think that when confronted I can take a step back, see how my behaviour has affected others and separate out what my *actual* issues are and the hurtfulness it’s caused. So I do apologise if what I have said has affected or upset you.
The one thing I would say here is that it would be great if we could expect that large blog spaces could also be expected to pull back when confronted and have a think through their own behaviour.
And with that I need to go do some long overdue study.
Nay I do apologise not ‘if what I have said has affected or upset you’ but for being aggressive and rude. My behaviour? I will own it.
Tigtog, you are the Paganini of moderators.
I just deleted a really long comment, but it’s too long and I don’t think it will make a difference. In a thread about a man with quadriplegia who wants to die it’s useful and important to hear the experience of other PWD. But that isn’t the same as letting their ideas and arguments stand unchallenged because of their experiences. If you think it does then you and I are never going to agree. Because that’s all that happened in the LP threads. No-one was abused or ridiculed or ignored. Everyone was, however, expected to back up their arguments, whether the issue was close to them or not.
But I do want to clear up that I didn’t say that WP ran scared or anything like that. My entire point was that *I didn’t say that*. I respected her right to bow out of the argument unlike what happened here when PC tried to bow out a couple of times and kept getting responded to. Then when he finally did there was gloating.
Use as much snark as you like. I’m not objecting to your tone. Just stop working from the worst reading of my comments and work with the best one whether you think that’s what I really meant or not. It’s the principle of charity.
Link was broken.
I don’t believe that I did work from a ‘bad reading’ of your comments. I believe I exaggerated with sarcasm and hyperbole to point out that I had a problem with them so that I’ll apologise for.
But I do believe that on this very thread you have failed to really listen and engage with what is being said to you in response to your points, and that your reading of what is happening here wrt PC’s treatment has been uncharitable. So the snarky way I pointed that out I’ll apologise for. But as for my readings of your comments and my lack of charity, I guess I’ll have to live with that.
So far as not saying WP ran scared I guess I must have misunderstood what you meant a few comments ago when you said ‘wevs’ to the LP thread saying WP left cos she was scared and laughed.
More than happy to apologise for tone/misunderstandings.
Not going to apologise for having a problem with your behaviour in not listening/not engaging/casting disagreements as pile ons/not extending to others the same charity you want me to extend. I’m actually a-ok with us never agreeing and I don’t feel bound by the fact that there’s a name for an approach to reading other people’s comments to actually putting to one side the fact that the comments in question don’t engage/dismiss points of view.
But after I’ve spent half my morning neglecting the studies I need to finish to have some time with my son tomorrow in order to really try to honestly engage with you I find your response somewhat lacking and obnoxious.
I think BH’s theory that we just don’t have time to engage in this stuff, has been blown out of the water now.
@Linda, channelling my fourteen-year-old self: OOOOOOOOOOOH, SNAP.
Hi all. I’m wondering – am I to take it that I’m being quoted above as a bad example for this discussion to bounce off? Just curious – it’s not entirely clear.
@ Jason, maybe just missing the point a little? It’s not snark we object to – you may have noticed that when the situation calls for it we do a good line in snark ourselves. It’s the being asked to prove ourselves, ignored, belittled, even threatened in some cases that makes us stay away from “macho” blogs. Also, what you consider political and what women bloggers consider political may be vastly different things as I think Possum now realises.
Jason: Do you mean in the original post? It was intended as a discussion prompt, not summary judgement.
Well, that’s the thing, Mindy. The quote above leaves off the second half of my original comment:
Not perfectly worded, but I’ve qualified both suggestions (which is all they were ever intended to be).
Does that create a slightly different impression of what I might have been driving at?
Yes, Lauredhel, in the original post. Apologies – it’s just slightly alarming to come across oneself quoted at the top of a long thread and not know what the intention was – thanks for clearing that up.
Absolutely Jason, and I’m guilty of not actually reading the thread it was written on. Please accept my apology.
No worries, Jason. The “they don’t like snark” trope is a particularly common one in this recurring discussion, and it wasn’t intended to single you out as a person at all. I think it’s unfair to pull out quotes and strip attribution, so your name is there, along with a link to the original so people can see everything that was said and make up their own minds.
Yeah for what it’s worth I liked that you hazarded that point Jason. I thought it was getting close to what women had said previously and continue to say. I think Mindy’s right in that it gets covered as snark when it’s more than that but I think your comment was positive and a good conversation starter.
Same here, Jason. I liked your comment. Gendered abuse, rape jokes etc. that are then often written off as harmless snark, is genuinely off-putting.
Okay, I’m going to take a deep breath and say what I need to say.
“What I would like to see engaged with is that spaces like some LP threads are not merely a little rude/discomforting – it’s that it claims to be a progressive space and yet somehow the fact that people are saying “I do not feel safe speaking my experience here” is not truly being taken on board (in my experience) as an issue to be worked on, rather the problem stays located with the individual and their feelings rather than with the space.”
Y’see I find this really interesting as a woman who’s a regular poster at LP. Personally, I find it a really safe space to comment in. OTOH, I find HAT a really unsafe space, because of the sort of piling on, mockery, sarcasm and the reading of comments of people in the most negative possible way, which is what I’ve seen from some commenters here. Even BH got jumped on for a very mild comment which was misread. It feels like the schoolyard where the uncool kid has been chased away. I think an attitude of aggression and bad faith was taken with PC from the get-go. I’ve seen it, and experienced it on other threads here as well. I don’t feel safe writing about my lived experience here, unless I know that it’s going to fit in with the rest of comments on a thread.
I think there’s an attitude from some commenters here that it’s okay to be as nasty to people, if you think their politics stink. That’s an attitude with which I basically disagree. And I don’t think being upset is a good reason to behave badly. My solution to that is not to say HAT needs to change to fit in with my desires. Why should it when it obviously works for a lot of people? My solution is simply to post here rarely and very warily. I’m breaking that rule here and I’m not looking forward to the response.
“I”n a thread about a man with quadriplegia who wants to die it’s useful and important to hear the experience of other PWD. But that isn’t the same as letting their ideas and arguments stand unchallenged because of their experiences. If you think it does then you and I are never going to agree. Because that’s all that happened in the LP threads. No-one was abused or ridiculed or ignored. Everyone was, however, expected to back up their arguments, whether the issue was close to them or not.”
This.
“Possum is a psephologist who displayed a large amount of cluelessness about feminism and the rules of grammar. But he was arguing in good faith and I’ve never seen him laugh at someone who displayed cluelessness about margins of error.”
And this.
If you truly, honestly believe that dropping racist crap which you are offered a chance to apologise for and refuse is exactly the same as making a statistical error, we are not going to see eye to eye on this, ever.
I don’t know that there’s any way to make this any clearer than that.
Fine @33 – I agree.
That’s certainly not the kind of space that I want HaT to be, Fine. I also mostly don’t see it that way, although I know a few times other people have made a similar complaint. I do find that sometimes the misreadings go both ways – I know I’ve been accused of attacking women for their described actions when looking at my own words that prompted the accusation leaves me genuinely baffled as to where that attack is supposed to be.
This paragraph is directed at everybody, not you in particular and certainly not excluding me: perhaps everybody taking a bit more time to write very very clearly, avoiding rants and characterisations that are possibly defamatory (and thus placing the publisher (me) at risk of litigation), and also taking time to read each other a bit more carefully, could avoid some of this perception that HaT is not always a safe space for those who swim against the Hoydenish consensus.
In particular, if someone has already made the point that you wanted to make in a thread, for you to then add to their point is exactly what creates the sense of a pile-on. I’m sure it’s frustrating to have written a comment that you feel sums up your argument perfectly, and then realise that someone else beat you to the same point, but that’s the nature of rapid online interaction. Why not save it to a text editor instead for use in some future discussion along the same lines?
If anything this has cemented my view that although we all identify as feminists how we go about our feminism is vastly different. That is why I find HAT a safe space and LP not so much at times.
The misreading and attribution has gone on on both sides and over multiple threads both here and on LP. It is regrettable, but it’s done now. Hopefully this can be the end of it.
And still no one who is working hard to centre the feelings of a white guy who dropped an unapologetic racist slur and had that behaviour called out (note that it was focused on the behaviour, I was playing the ball here) has so much as begun to acknowledge hexy’s multiple comments in this thread. This is not cool with me, as the initiator of this thread. I’m not going to be submissively silent about it, nor am I going to put up with being scolded for eschewing silence.
If you choose consciously to engage only with the white folks in a conversation about racism, frankly, you can go away. If it’s not conscious, you can fix it.
“If you choose consciously to engage only with the white folks in a conversation about racism, frankly, you can go away. If it’s not conscious, you can fix it.”
Lauredhel, I’m happy to go away if your exhortation is directed to me. As I said above , no reason for HaT to change its style of communication to satisfy me.
“and also taking time to read each other a bit more carefully, could avoid some of this perception that HaT is not always a safe space for those who swim against the Hoydenish consensus.”
I do appreciate and thank you for that tigtog, but I feel there’s some mixed messages going on.
Fine, I very much doubt that Lauredhel is directing her remarks only to you. But if you choose to see yourself included, let’s be scrupulous: you are being given a choice, not being kicked out willy nilly.
If you (and others) don’t choose to stop ignoring the solitary indigenous-identified person on this thread, the only one who has a personal stake in the effect of that casual colonialist racial slur that has been challenged, that is of course your choice, but don’t pretend that it’s anything else that you are being asked to do.
Sometimes people deserve to be challenged, even when they are generally goodwilled people, even when they are political allies. In fact, especially when they are political allies.
I assume that Lauredhel is referring to me and Anna Winter, because no-one else could be seen as defending PC. I maybe wrong about this, however.
FWIW, I agree that PC’s remark was racist and offensive and his non-apology was useless. I didn’t comment on that for the reasons you write about above: what’s the point of repeating what many other posters have said ? – it just creates a pile-one and doesn’t add anything to the conversation. There were many posters not ignoring Hexy’s post, after all. I also dislike the undertone of mocking glee that accompanied some of this.
Lauredhel also chooses to ignore what I actually wrote about, to criticise what I didn’t write about, which is interesting. It then creates, by inference the idea that I’m being racist (only engaging with the white folks), because I haven’t addressed that issue. I think that’s a case of one’s comment being read in the most negative way possible. I don’t see where I, or anyone else, has asked anyone to be silent either. What I’ve said is that I find the style of communication which some people use here unsafe – which was a response to FP’s comment about the differences between LP and HAT.
But I also feel I’ve said enough here, as I think that any ensuing stoush might be fairly pointless.
I have no comment on the issue of what Possum Comitatus said. I do need to speak up to make it clear my experience of the atmosphere of this blog has been precisely stated by Fine in the long comment numbered 33, and earlier by Anna Winter when she said “Because this take-the-worst-possible-reading and point and laugh and accuse people of terrible motives hurts just as much (more, actually) when it’s done by supposed sisters in feminism as when the misogynist trolls do it.” I decided some time ago, after experiencing just one too many verbal attacks here, that it wasn’t good for my mental health to engage, so I “flounced off”, to use the local language, and have felt it was the right choice, if a sad one, because the style of engagement practiced and indeed encouraged here is totally incompatible with my feminist ideals and ethics.
Some of you might know that i research and teach in women’s literature and women’s studies; that doesn’t mean my opinions or ideals are better than anyone’s here but it does mean I have a lot of experience with facilitating feminist consciousness-raising conversations for people of all kinds and ways of thinking.
My experience, and my philosophy, is that no matter how wrong a student’s comment is (and last week I had a young woman say ‘Hitler wasn’t really that bad for Germany’) the demeaning belittling techniques of jeering and scorning and mockery and smart remarks is never deserved, and it never teaches them to think any different. For that to happen, you have to make a space where *everyone* is safe and held – vulnerable people, privileged people alike – and everyone can safely venture out of her or his comfort zone, and perhaps make very big mistakes, not without consequences, but without catastrophe. And that means not laughing at or misquoting or getting angry at people when they make mistakes. Basically, it means not fighting. I don’t know if verbal non-violent resistance can be successfully practiced in online communication but I think it’s kind of important to try.
I get that here you don’t see your role as being to educate or to help people with questions to educate themselves; but I don’t get how you reconcile the desire to subvert oppressive structures of domination with the way you treat people don’t agree with you here. As Anna said the most dismaying part of it all is that it’s often other feminists who are the butts.
For what it’s worth, Laura, I never saw your decision to leave as a flounce. A flounce is a particular style of signalling an exit, and it’s not a style that characterises your choice to leave. What I remember about our last round of engagement here is that I thought I was saying one thing, and you thought I was saying another thing entirely, and neither of us was able to persuade the other to a common view, and I’m sorry that it fell out the way that it did.
The term “flounce” does apply to certain other announcements of exit intentions, just not all. I’m not sure that it applies to Possum’s exit announcement in this thread either, to be scrupulously fair.
@Fine
That may well have been what you inferred, but it’s not the only reading. I read it as a “check your privilege” moment, not a “what a racist” moment.
I’m trying to come up with an effective way of participating in this part of the conversation, without being inflammatory. Being that I’m, quite frankly, a very angry person and HaT is one of the very few places I feel I’m allowed to be angry, I’m not sure I’ll be very good at that last part.
One of the ways that I cope with the random abuse that’s heaped on myself and Don for being “inconvenient” to others is by snarky, black “humour” that I know really disturbs people who don’t see it coming, and really don’t see its source. I won’t bore you with anecdotes for now, but it’s not unusual or unique to HaT or anywhere else for people who are oppressed to deal with that through snarky black angry humour that alienates some people.
This is obviously not everyone’s cuppa, and not everyone finds it effective. I don’t buy into the tone argument, but I do know that alienating some people by mocking their ignorance will drive them away from my message.
Making it clear, I hope, that I don’t speak for HaT, but only for myself, I don’t care. There are lots of very kind, very understanding and accepting, very patient women with disabilities and their allies who can shoulder the burden of being kind and graceful under pressure. And I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the work and effort they put into it. I tried that route, and it didn’t accomplish anything that my family needed accomplished.
I embrace snarky angry humour because the alternative is I pull the blankets over my head and give up. This is not h0w everyone sees the world, and I wouldn’t want them to.
I have felt that Lauredhel and Tigtog have understood that same balance, even if I’m not certain they both embrace that way of coping. Having a space where I can be unapologetically angry that the bucket is full and people keep adding more of their ignorance and abuse of people with disabilities to it is an important part of remembering that my anger is justified, and that the treatment we have received – from the medical establishment, from the city of Halifax, from AirCanada, from the universities, from our politicians – is not acceptable.
In my personal life, if people are afraid to say something about disability in front of me because they think I may bite their head off for saying the wrong thing – good. Seriously. Because there is a finite amount of times I can put up with people treating my husband like he’s not a human being, and that limit was reached some time ago.
I generally like the way HaT is moderated, but really – of course I would. The sort of anger and glee that I think Fine, Anna Winter, and others are concerned about is part of who I am. I guess what the real question is whether or not that’s the sort of atmosphere that Tigtog and Lauredhel are okay with, not whether or not I am.
I think I may have somehow implied that HaT has to allow snarky comments or I shall leave and be angry elsewhere, which isn’t my intention. I can by snarky elsewhere, and quite often am. It’s just usually over tea, offline.
Anna, thanks for the clarification.
Sometimes I wonder whether part of the disconnect is at least as much to do with nerd-geekery as it is to do with feminism. My reading and online interaction history is geek-nerd first and feminist second, and I suspect that the geek history frames my style of engagement a little more than the feminist ideology does. Engaging with snark, and expecting others in the community to appreciate the artistry of the snark before they delve into the nitty gritty of the arguments that are embedded within the snark, has been part of my style online in particular since the mid-90s.
So, is this divide in argumentation styles more of a geek-nerd/non-geek-nerd divide than a feminist-of-particular-stripes divide? In that our feminism is so informed by our geek-nerd history that the geek-nerd style of interaction is our dominant mode?
If so, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t endeavour to reach beyond it, just that perhaps some of our interlocutor’s assumptions also need to move sideways a few steps while we engage in self-examination.
This paragraph is directed at everybody, not you in particular and certainly not excluding me: perhaps everybody taking a bit more time to write very very clearly, avoiding rants and characterisations that are possibly defamatory (and thus placing the publisher (me) at risk of litigation), and also taking time to read each other a bit more carefully, could avoid some of this perception that HaT is not always a safe space for those who swim against the Hoydenish consensus.
I won’t speak for anyone else, but I know my comments mocking PC’s use of language were out of line and unhelpful. For that, I apologise. I found his tone to be condescending and rude, and my natural response to that is anger, and I deal with anger by being snarky.
I think my reaction is probably a combination of “I’m fucking *angry*!” and the other blogs I frequent. I was introduced to blogging through the BDSM wars, and if you can’t be angry in that situation, you can’t survive. Everything just feels so intensly *personal* to me.
Thanks, Pharoah-Katt for the apology for that part of your behaviour which was unhelpful. I appreciate you taking the time to think about it.
* * *
I was going to divert to another matter raised in the course of this discussion thread, but I might start a new thread for that. This one’s getting long.
I’m a homebirth wingnut according to Crikey. I think I can skip reading shit like that without too much distress.
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