This is a feminist’s blog.
I, myself, sometimes forget that. I get tired. I get fed up with how other feminists behave and I debate about putting the word down and finding something else to call myself. And, really, like anyone else, I want to be liked. And I want to feel like “fuck you, I can too stand it,” when really, I can’t.
It’s so dumb. Like Liz says, “they play me like a pit bull in a basement and for that…”
So, here’s the thing. I’m tired of reading, in the comments of my own blog, cunt and pussy used as an insult. I am beyond tired of anyone making jokes about anyone else’s mom being a whore or anyone at all being a whore. I have a vagina. I have sex. That puts me in the group(s) of people who are supposed to be the butts of those comments, like being like me is some nasty insult.
Why in the fuck am I tolerating that kind of shit? Why am I wasting my time worrying about how to fix things?
I’m not an advocate, at least not in the usual sense of the word, and I have long ago accepted that choices I’ve made about how to run this place were going to have broader implications for how effective I could be, in a traditional sense. In other words, if I’m going to cuss and be forthright about how I feel about religion and abortion and other controversial topics, some folks are going to hesitate to link to me and others are going to dismiss what I have to say.
I won’t be as effective in some ways because I don’t present myself in a way that makes it easy for me to be effective at some things.
And yet, I regularly mull over how being “effective” is so often so easily conflated with “stop making us uncomfortable.” And how “make everyone as comfortable as possible” and “don’t make waves” are so often specifically gendered.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter.
My point is this. If you’re not a feminist or at least sympathetic to the broad goals of feminism, you don’t get to question feminism or what my example as a feminist in the world means for feminism as a whole or whether I really care about women, as if I am somehow outside of the category “woman” and have me take you seriously.
You don’t get to use words designed to make women feel like shit about being women or to make men feel like, oh no, they might be mistaken for women or be being too much like women and expect me to treat you with respect. It’s sexist bullshit to expect that you can just dole out whatever you want and its the women’s job to take it or smooth it over or ignore it or make it right (and I thank Shannon for reminding me of that).
And if you make an asshole of yourself here, it’s not my job to fix it.
I will say, upfront, that I’m not completely comfortable with that, especially when I see comments that are so egregious that I can’t help but think “My god, what if someone who doesn’t regularly read me stumbles on that and thinks that’s how my readers are?”
But, yeah, no. It’s not my job to smooth things over.
Or, actually, it is my job to smooth things over.
And I reject that.
I have to go to bed, but I don’t think you could come up with a more feminist prayer than this one and, frankly, it’s the one I’ll be praying tonight.
Filed under: Blogging & Bloggers, Fun with Feminism, My Imaginary Friend is Better Than Yours
Darling B, you *don’t* have to put up with that idiocy on your blog. I think I know to what you’re referring, and may I say that a) folks who come here and see that sort of trash in context will immediately say, “Hey, that don’t belong here!! What’s the matter with that jerk?!?!?” and b) I actually grasped my own throat in horror when I saw the vitriol being spewed by that particular commenter. Why in the WORLD someone would take such an attitude about someone he doesn’t even know, who will never have any direct impact on his life, is extremely alarming. It’s alarming enough that if somebody starts physically assaulting Latinas around here, I’ll be calling Crimestoppers to investigate him.
We can’t make people be civil, or even intelligent, in political discourse, but when it’s being done on your blog — in the virtual equivalent of your living room or your back porch — you can set ground rules. And those rules can include a ban on names of body parts used as insults, or whatever you want to ban. If folks want to call people names like the ones you’ve noted, then they can just trot over to their own blogs and fondle themselves while typing those words repeatedly.
You don’t have to worry about “fixing things” or “smoothing things over” on your own blog or in your own house. You are effective, extremely so, because you express your opinions intelligently, fervently and reasonably, and you encourage your guests to do the same.
If a “guest” wants to act like a vicious inbred troll in your house, then you have the right to boot him out with the verbal equivalent of a shotgun. And madam, you, like my dear aunt and myself, have a talent esteemed even by my vicious inbred troll of a maternal grandfather: “You can cut a great big man to shreds, honey, and not even need a knife.”
It’s your house, ma’am. Take the trash out. Good guests will even help you tie up the twist ties and hoist it off the porch.
xoxoxoxoxoxo
I agree about ground rules. Now I’m horribly crude on my own blog, and will say just about anything, but here I don’t say things like that, because it’s your space.
But there are two ways to ignore offensive comments, with diametrically opposed implications. One is the on-line equivalent of what happened in the story Shannon linked to: recognize that the comment was made, but ignore the bile, anger, whatever, smooth things over, protect the person who made it. The other is the on-line equivalent of cutting a person dead socially, and turning one’s back on him: simply not responding, leaving the remark out there in all its ugliness to be seen and deplored. You can ban commenters who make such remarks, it’s true. But not feeding the trolls is even more devastating, and shrivels their little egos something wonderful, I find.