Weirdly enough, I don’t have much of a position on the whole Bitch magazine list controversy. It is just a list and they should be able to revise it how they see fit, while also being called, deservedly, on the carpet for their weird revisions.
That being said, I am curious about two things. Will they remove the authors who’ve asked to be removed in solidarity with the authors revised off the list? It seems like, if the list is revisable, it’s revisable, so yes, they should. On the other hand, a list of books the people at Bitch like by people who still like them is not really as useful as a list of books the people at Bitch like. I don’t know. Curious to see how that plays out.
But I’m also interested in how the comments go, about how now people are like “Well, you need to revise the list and think about it more carefully and break things into genres and…” So, while I get why the list was initially revised, I have to kind of laugh because, yeah, once the list is open to revision based on the feelings of people not initially involved with the list compilation, why shouldn’t it be open to more revision? Why shouldn’t everyone’s needs be met? Why do some random people get to be bossy and others’ bossiness not appropriate?
I don’t think there’s a right answer here, at least not for me, but I’m interested in seeing how these issues get wrestled with. And I think one thing we’ve not really worked out in the feminist blogosphere is this “Do what I want or I’ll be pissed!” tendency. How do you judge when you’re being asked to do something because that something really should be considered and when is it because it’s fun to throw our weight around a little? And what about when those things overlap?
Anyway, it’s interesting, if only for the fact that this may be the first feminist blog pile-on in which I don’t recognize any of the players (except the authors). Hmm.
Filed under: Fun with Feminism
It really seemed like a kerfuffle to me. They’re not the library or a school or the govt. They’re just a magazine, with a list, like every other magazine. Unlike most magazines, they were open about their reasons for compiling/editing the list.
I mean, we could debate all day about whether they had *good* reasons, but in the end, it’s just a list. I kind of think Westerfield et al are freaking out at the wrong people, esp. as Bitch is gung-ho on YA in general and did not slam the books taken off in any way.
It would have been more graceful to leave them on, but with discussion about them intact, I think. Lots of Web sites have a custom that when they change a post, they leave the old text in but marked through so their edits are obvious, or indicate it in some other way.
The thing that REALLY bugged me in the comments was someone loving on Girl of the Limberlost, which I found to be completely unreadable and retrograde. And also way older than anything else on the list. But whatever.
I’m not fully caught up on the kerfuffle, but I’m kind of gleeful to see >240 comments debating the proper handling of a feminist YA booklist.
I don’t see anything wrong with Bitch revising their list as long as they’re being transparent about it. I couldn’t load the list, so I have nothing really to say about its content in general, but I wholeheartedly agree with you about the feminist blogosphere’s “do as I say” attitude. It’s why I’ve been so reticent when it comes to participating on a lot of the big sites.
Kathy, I think that happens a lot. There are places I’m still hesitant to link to (even when the individual post I want to highlight is really good), because I’m sure someone will come along and say something like, “How could you link to them? Don’t you remember the really unenlightened thing they said back in 2007? This is an *outrage*!”
Let me speak up on behalf of Girl of the Limberlost. While I would not call it “feminist” in the modern sense, I remember loving the book as a girl. The heroine is a girl (Eleanor) who is neglected by a grief-struck and self-absorbed mother and rather than rolling over and taking the neglect and cruelty, she figures out a way to make some money and get an education to get out of the emotionally abusive household. Her patroness — another powerful woman — befriends her and encourages her to turn her passion for nature into a full-time teaching job. Eleanor’s mother finally snaps out of it, realizes the dead father was a philandering jerk, and even has a very modern confrontation with the “other woman” in which she places the blame squarely on the adulterous man. While everything resolves in a marriage plot and a Cinderella story line and far too much is made of the near-magical personality transformation of the mom when she stops being a hag and applies the Progressive Era’s version of a chemical peel — yep, hammy and obvious — I loved the idea that even a rural teenager was not stuck and that stories did not have to be dominated by the male characters.
Y’all, I’m going to confess that this post started out as a meditation on Jessica Valenti leaving Feministing (http://feministing.com/2011/02/02/farewell-feministing/) and how I think someone knowing when they’ve gotten too old and too successful to run a blog by and for women who are struggling with what it means to find and make their way in the world is really admirable.
But then I couldn’t remember if there’s some reason we’re all supposed to be mad at or disappointed in Valenti and I just didn’t have time to look it up and rehash for myself whether I wanted to seem to be even remotely endorsing something controversial that I couldn’t even remember.
And, whew, that’s a problem, right there.
Do we shy away from engaging with each other because others read engagement as endorsement?
And doesn’t that start to feel like some high-school shit?
Do we shy away from engaging with each other because others read engagement as endorsement?
I never really thought of it that way, but I’m think the things that plague the feminist blogosphere are the same things that plague women’s spaces in general.
I’m older than Valenti (though nowhere near as successful). I hope that she doesn’t feel as though she’s “aged out” of online feminism.
bridgett, I did admire that aspect of the story, but the style was just so…odd, I guess, that I could not get into the flow.
Anyway, I have to disagree that women argue/rag on each other more than men do. Have you ever listened to a dude argument? It can get nasty, and they have plenty of their own hurt feelings and little digs and gossip going on (I kind of think that’s what sportstalk often is, gossiping about the jocks you admire but also kind of hate for being so far above you). There is a lot of angst about toe-ing the party line, but again, men certainly have their own versions of this.
I think what bugs us, deep down, is that we think we are supposed to be sisters who agree on everything, but of course we’re not. I think we need to give ourselves more room to just not like each other or agree all the time.
Ha, well, it looks like there’s a good illustration of some of this stuff over at Feministe right now, and in regard to Jessica Valenti.
http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/02/02/thank-you-jessica/
Is Feministing hostile to trans women? I, personally, don’t know. But I believe people who say that there are bloggers and commenters over there who are.
But is Valenti hostile to trans women? I don’t know. And the commenter doesn’t say.
So… I don’t know. If some aspects of a site suck, then they suck and it shouldn’t be glossed over. But, since we don’t know how to publicly disagree with each other, it means that a person as prominent and important as Valenti was in basically helping to invent feminist blogging can leave the blog she founded and we don’t know how the hell to talk about it.
emjaybee, I really suspect part of what it is, too, is that we still want to vest people with authority and then hold them accountable when they don’t let us boss them.
I don’t really have that problem here, because my blog is small and because I either know or feel like I know my regular commenters, but there’s something fucked about the blogger/commenter(s) dynamic at a lot of big feminist blogs.
I want to say something about how these places–feminist blogs–are not perfect, but they are important. But I also want to make a motion that indicates that the ways in which they aren’t perfect often really suck.
I keep coming back to the idea that we expect our most prominent feminists to somehow be undamaged by the forces they’re so good at articulating. But they’re not.
I think folks fall prey to the hope that, if everyone’s a good feminist, we won’t be assholes, therefore good feminists aren’t assholes and, when they are, they’ve betrayed us.
I don’t know if that’s a part of being young or part of a relatively young social justice movement (in some ways) or what. But we need to grow out of it.
I am still mulling this over, but I think there are a few things here. One is that it can feel like, if you’re going to write anything publicly and call yourself a feminist, you damn well better get everything right on the first try. I don’t think that’s possible over a sustained amount of time, and the expectation discourages people from participating who otherwise would. There’s the response issue, too, where people aren’t really saying “you better get it right every time,” they’re saying, “you can fuck it up, but you need to acknowledge it when you do and actively do better.”
But I also think that the ability/being in the position to say, “Yeah, I fucked up, but that was a minor thing, and you all should still pay attention to me in a positive way (and have people do so),” the ability to gloss over something like “being hostile to trans people” is a pretty big privilege, one that says, “Yeah, I might consistently fuck up on this one issue, but I really see that as a minor thing.”
And there’s a whole spectrum in between “fucked up once and so unreadable” and “how dare you question my feminist bloggy hero,” which you are sort of saying we don’t really acknowledge.
Sorry to ramble, but you have me thinking.
Rachel, I think that often the “you can fuck it up, but you need to acknowledge it when you do and actively do better” issues are what matter the most to readers in the long run. Some of the bigger blogs (with any emphasis; not just feminism) are run by people who have some trouble backing down, and over time that can mean that a whole host of topics become triggers on that particular blog.
nm, I think you’re right about that.
Rachel, I think you’re actually hitting exactly on the part I find most difficult to muddle through. Not every blogger is fucking up–at least they don’t and aren’t going to understand themselves as being mistaken. Some people are fucking up and are actually in the middle of a painful learning process, which is going to mean repeated fuck-ups. And some people do get that they’ve fucked up majorly but, like you said, they have the privilege of seeing it as a minor thing.
And there are commenters who do genuinely seem to think that you have to get it right every time AND there are commenters who are asking for the social justice of you acknowledging it and striving to do better.
But I’m becoming more and more suspicious of the “But let us never forget how they suck!” motion. It’s necessary, but…
I guess what I’m wrestling with is that, on the internet, where you have so many people participating, it’s easy to see how every impulse, even good ones, get distorted by scale into things we need to keep an eye on.
I mean, for instance, it’s great that people go to a blog and feel a sense of community and a sense that the blog is “for” them. That’s a good impulse. And when it leads to commenters saying “Hey, you fucked up there and you need to rethink that,” I think that’s good.
But it so easily morphs into “You’re not doing it how I would do it. You didn’t think about this in a way that satisfies me. You suck.” in ways that, for me, feel more about “How can I make you do what I want?” than it does about “What is justice?”
And I’m uneasy about that.
Upon rereading that, I think it sounds like I think that dynamic only goes from commenter to blogger, but I feel like it’s a two-way street.
But it so easily morphs into “You’re not doing it how I would do it. You didn’t think about this in a way that satisfies me. You suck.” in ways that, for me, feel more about “How can I make you do what I want?” than it does about “What is justice?
I was going to ask for help in figuring out the distinction, since I’m sure that at least occasionally I cross the line without noticing, but that last question in your quoted bit is quite helpful. Thanks! :) And most excellent topic, btw.
Now if only I could figure out how to calm the hell down… lol
One is that it can feel like, if you’re going to write anything publicly and call yourself a feminist, you damn well better get everything right on the first try. I don’t think that’s possible over a sustained amount of time, and the expectation discourages people from participating who otherwise would.
This is exactly why I’m hesitant to comment on some of the big blogs unless I’m 110% sure of what I’m saying, and maybe not even then.
There was a good discussion on Tumblr about how language policing inevitably hurts the progressive blogosphere by silencing those whose needs it’s supposed to be addressing. It’s like “unless you speak OUR language, go away.” Yes, hold people accountable for their bigoted behavior, but at what point does it nullify everything else? Part of the problem is that, with internet activism, there’s a record of every transgression.
Perhaps it would be helpful to have something in the sidebar, or maybe as a footnote to every blog post, that kindness and tact go a long way, and taking a day or so formulate a reply to contentious subjects is the better option.
One of the reasons it’s so difficult for me to do that, is because on the busier blogs, I’d end up commenting long past the time when most people would see it. So I post in haste and rudeness. I just need to learn how to state my objection respectfully — you’d think that wouldn’t be so freakin’ difficult… :/
Otoh, just the fact that someone has taken the time necessary to write a blog post requires that they spent time thinking about their topic, and it seems like they should have taken into account any possible major objections. Drives me nuts when people not only fail to identify the actual argument they are proposing, but fail to ensure that it can withstand scrutiny. That’s just such a basic error to me, that it seems like they shouldn’t BE blogging if that’s a frequent habit of their’s. (ie Feministing and TheFWord!)
Or perhaps start with something like, “These are some recent thoughts and I’m still thinking them through — what do my readers think?” Half the reason my previous posts sounded so arrogant is because I did spend a tremendous amount of time considering all aspects of the topic. And yet, that arrogance is a turn off…
Anyway, I’ve been thinking a short, all-purpose script for me to follow when I’m objecting to another comment might be just the ticket, at least to get me into the habit of being more respectful and considerate. But I can’t think of an all-purpose one, or even three or four different ones, each to be used for various types of circumstances. I’d love some ideas for scripts, if anybody has any!
[...] so this seems like the natural place to link to this thing B has us mulling over, the conversations on feminist blogs, how often the leaders of those conversations fail, and how we [...]