In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Category: Blogging

Things One Might Want To Know When One Reads My Blog

1.) I have been writing on the internet for close to ten years, and maintained a blog for nearly five. Over this time, I have been called every name in the book, received idle death threats, been contacted at my home address and phone number, and had my son and my parenting skills insulted, berated, chided, and belittled. Chances are, if you have something nasty to say, I have not only heard it before, but have heard it several times. Thus, if you intend to hurt my feelings, please be creative.

Let me help you get started. Here is A Helpful Guide to Words and Phrases That Do Not Hurt: feminazi, socialist, Marxist, ugly, dyke, man-hater, man-eater, misandrist, frigid, sexist, bitch, slut, whore, etc. in all their various incarnations and related terminology. I will be more insulted if you badmouth one of my favorite bands than if you revert to name-calling. Really.

2.) This is not a feminist primer. I assume that my audience is well-versed in feminism, feminisms, and has a critical mind intelligent enough to argue in an intelligent manner without resorting to sarcasm and the above-mentioned insults. If you believe I am in error, please state so, but only if you are interested in a civil debate.

2a.) I am not interested in meeting feminist standards of card-carrying feminism. If you read feminist literature, it is likely you have run across the term “feminism(s)” or read that “there are as many feminisms as there are feminists.” If I do not meet your feminist standard, I heartily apologize, but do remember that I and my comrades are complex individuals in a complex world that have taken on a complex label belonging to a very complex theoretical tradition. Feminism is not composed of a bullet-point list of talking points and behaviors. If you don’t understand that, chances are you are not operating from a viewpoint educated on the subject.

3.) If you address me with sarcasm, I likely will address you with the same. One cannot expect a thoughtful and intelligent answer to an unthoughtful comment.

4.) If you have a question about my theory, I have probably addressed it before. Please refer to the search box on the sidebar. If you cannot find an answer, please email me.

5.) Unpaid solicitations and advertisements are unwelcome. If you have a legitimate request for contributions from me or my readers please send it to the email address provided. Otherwise, I have handily set up a Paypal account where you can reimburse me with the amount of bandwidth your text uses.

6.) Solicitations to cover stories or link your blog may also be emailed to me at the address provided. Whether or not I actually respond, link, or cover the story is not indicative of how much I like or dislike you and your work. Most likely I am busy or have other content I would like to cover. It ain’t personal.

7.) Please do not attempt to derail a comment thread. Stay on topic and, again, be respectful.

8.) Do not assume that you know everything there is to know about me simply because you read my weblog on a regular basis. Any judgements you make will be based on the information I have provided you about myself, which is probably vague, incomplete or embellished. If this subject offendeth thee, please refer to narrative and autobiographical literary theory. It ain’t that unusual.

9.) If I did not personally provide you with my URL, this is probably because I may not want you to read certain things I might write about you or others you care about, in order to spare your feelings, avoid drama, or maintain their privacy. While I try to preserve others’ privacy and anonymity, I may slip up now and then. Again, communication is important. Discuss your feelings with me, but do not be surprised if I am miffed.

Also, if you see something you don’t like remember you are free to stop reading at any point. I continue to keep this site because I feel compelled to write, not to please another. That I do manage to please a reader now and then is what makes it extra special.

As I’ve written in an earlier post, I’ve spent several years now writing on a daily basis, sometimes about big things and sometimes not. But I’ve been writing, and that is important to me. As a child I wanted very badly to be a writer, spent hours writing in notebooks, kicking around story ideas, and writing horrible poetry about my teen angst. I get flack from some people around me for “not writing,” as in not writing creatively, but one thing I’ve learned since I dropped the notebook for the keyboard is that writers write. Writers write every day. They do it even when they don’t want to, just like I sometimes don’t want to write here.

Blogging upped the ante for my thoughts and my writings. Once I started to gain a larger readership, I was no longer able to make decisions about my beliefs and opinions by pulling my own heartstrings and seeing where they took me. If I make my opinions public, I am held accountable for them. I have to own my words, be willing to take responsibility for what I have said, admit flaws and quibbles in my rhetoric. I have to pay attention to the particulars of language, how punctuation and word choice can shift an entire argument. I have to be my own editor, personally and publicly.

I’d rather foolishly have my words public and widely-read and be accountable for what I say than be content to make a fool of myself in obscurity. I want to be a part of the discussion. That’s why I started this whole endeavor. In the meantime, the primary rule is one of respect.

Related Commentary:
Thoughts on Blogging, Metacognition, Pedagogy and Ethos
How Blogging Has Changed Me As a Writer
Bits of this diatribe were taken from the README Disclaimer.

What I’m Reading Since I’m Not Writing

Feministe occasionally aims to subvert the dominant link paradigm.

Feminism
• Via Chaos Theory, a college course on being single.

• Hugo on “How To Shut Your Wife Out of Business”

• Media Girl highlights pro-consumer politicians. My state’s Evan Bayh is thankfully on the list. I’m willing to bet that if Bayh ever ran for the presidency, he’d be a shoo-in. Also, “Why Abortions Should Be Free,” where she battles the perception that abortion is the “easy way out.” I don’t agree with the entirety of this post, but Morgaine Swann makes a compelling case. AND, “Equality? Hell, How About Reparations?” Media Girl is on a roll.

Politics
• Shannon posts a Clue By Four exercise:

1) Read a major magazine like Newsweek or Time. If most of a story is about white people, from a white viewpoint (like a white person talking about the situation in Iraq) or features mostly white people, mark that story as ‘white’, but if it’s about people of color from a person of color viewpoint, or features (not just tokens, y’all. They have to be the main character) people of color, mark that a POC story. See the difference?

2) Minorities comprise about 25% of the US population. If less than 1/4th of the major characters (or even minor characters) are PoC, mark that show as ‘white’. See the difference?

3) When going to class, see who is mentioned. Are there any POC mentioned at all? Probably not.

4) Read “See You When We Get There“, how does the white author point out the difficulties of telling the stories of people of color? Do you think that if the teachers featured in this book were trying to get a book deal on a similar project that it’d be as easy? Bonus: What style is the author using? (hint: this probably has nothing to do with race) Double Bonus: Why do you think conservatives have the free time to bash anything that MIGHT make them think?

• Pinko Feminist Hellcat on the “Homosexual Agenda” and Emily on Subtle Examples of Homophobia, Heterosexism, and Sexism.

• Mac-A-Ronies has the “Ho” Story on Jeff Gannon.

• When the Bough Breaks: Mac tears apart the notion that the economy is failing because us breeders aren’t having more children.

Fun
• Flea has released the finalists for the Best and Worst Stripper Names contest. Mine was Ms. Kitty Trail, which sounds like something someone leaves behind after scraping her ass across the driveway.

• Language Log on The Grammar of Bullshit. See part two as well.

• Go wish Dr. Myers a happy birthday. Or even better, write something scientific for him and send him a link. He compelled me to take this quiz which informs me I’m all man, baby.


Your Brain is 33.33% Female, 66.67% Male


You have a total boy brain.
Logical and detailed, you tend to look at the facts and while your emotions do sway you sometimes,
You never like to get feelings too involved

• And finally, another quiz:

What Social Status are you?
 created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as alternative. You’re partially respected for being an individual in a conformist world yet others take you as a radical. You have no place in society because you choose not to belong there – you’re the luckiest of them all, even if your parents are completely ashamed of you. Just don’t take drugs ok?

Alternative
92%

Middle Class
79%

Lower Class
58%

Upper middle Class
42%

Luxurious Upper Class
17%

Anniversary

At some point, I missed the two year anniversary of this blog. Unfortunately the archives don’t represent this fact, thanks to the many posts deleted during my MT days. That makes about five years of blogging.

In other news, I got the new monitor set up. Now it’s all about the CD burner.

Go wish Rox a happy anniversary as well.

Feminist Blog Plugging

“Emma Goldman” is a name that gets me excited for several reasons, but lately it is because her blogging namesake has put together a fantastic blog called War on Error. The new Emma has been frequenting the feminist cul de sac with pithy commentary and insight, and so it is with great pleasure that I found her blog is just as exciting as her commentary.

Emma’s most recent post deals with the framing of “personal” and “political.” In part:

1. The rules that determine what counts as “real” politics are not objective.
This is NOT to say that the rules are arbitrary, or irrelevant, or even inherently unfair, only that the rules themselves are a product of our own activities, that the rules are themselves a social/political/economic construction, rather than something set in stone. Those who believe that human life and activity are governed by discoverable, immutable rules that were handed to us (on stone tablets, for example) will take some issue with this… Contrary to the caricatures of those who are more certain of the Truth than I am, I do believe that just because we adapt and change does not mean that it’s all always up for grabs willy-nilly…

…we don’t see the assumptions embedded in the rules. Think, for example, of the implicit message sent by separate sections in a newspaper. If the sections are labeled “news,” “sports,” “business,” “comics,” and “women’s” or “society” pages–which was not uncommon not that long ago–what does that tell you? One might assume, for example, that “women’s concerns”–typically articles having to do with cooking, children, the household–aren’t “news.” One might assume that (Real) men wouldn’t be interested in the content of the women’s section. One might assume that the rest of the newspaper implicitly belongs to men. One might assume that the economic conerns of “business” are relevant in ways that the concerns of “labor” are not. Or, most likely, one reads the newspaper and doesn’t think much about those divisions, even as they shape our own notions of the categories of our world.

3. Demands to change the rules aren’t special pleading.
If you’re with me so far, then you can see that arguments that the rules should be changed because of a bias embedded in them or embedded in the enactment of them are not necessarily some kind of special pleading.

…it is not special pleading to insist that matters like household economics, or childcare, or other matters frequently assigned to women–and designated as “personal”–are, in fact, political. Instead, it’s saying that the things that have made the front pages of the newspapers as “serious” stories are not, in fact, the only “serious” stories out there. The demand for rule changes is neither special pleading nor a matter of getting men to take women’s issues seriously–it’s an attempt to reconceptualize what counts as an issue for all people, and this reconceptualization is not an uncommon part of life.

This post is excellent and is difficult to excerpt – read the whole thing. And welcome, Emma.

Linking Etiquette and Discovery Credit

If you get a story from another blogger, do you cite that blogger?

On “Link Propagation and ‘Discovery Credit’“:

I agree with Blaze that this is an instance of a general problem, and this connects to recent discussions of fairness in weblogs. For instance, as he points out, within the “political economy of linking” there can be incentives not to point to one’s sources. While there’s a general norm of bloggers linking to sources, the practice is not universal and few chains of credit go all the way, with the unfortunate consequence that promising sources can remain obscure for longer than they would otherwise.

Not crediting your peers takes the “we” out of weblogging, doesn’t it?

Busted Monitor

I’m blogging from my ancient laptop, coming in on dial-up at a whole 48Kbps. It always seems that as soon as I take care of a massive bill, another lines up to take its place.

Today’s issue: Sometime during the night, my monitor blew out. If any local bloggers or readers have an extra monitor you can sell for a reasonable price, send me an email. If not, no updates for awhile.

UPDATE:
Someone reminded me about the university salvage center, the place where they take all the outdated furniture, hardware, and the like to sell to the public. I might tool on down there tomorrow and see what they have.

Estrogen Week, Continued

• Distorted Dreams suggests an equal opportunity action for lesbian escorts. Factesque posted a related political cartoon.

• Cinnamon writes on gentrification and racism.

Hey, anyone remember when identity politics were regarded as actual politics?

• See Democratic Wings for coverage of stories on women’s rights, foreign policy, civil liberties, and more.

• Ellen Goodman takes on Larry Summers’ teachable moments:

When MIT scientist Nancy Hopkins dropped the dime on Summers, there was a firestorm of criticism. But that was followed by a second round in which he was defended as a victim of political correctness, a poor defenseless seeker of wisdom in the Ivy League madrassas.

George Will tagged professor Hopkins as hysterical, a word which, he failed to note, comes from the Greek root for uterus, thus proving that only women can be hysterical. Other pundits either compared Summers’s opponents to “religious fundamentalists,” accused Harvard of “neo-Stalinist intolerance,” or praised poor Larry for facing down “the gods of political correctness.”

Even The Washington Post editorial page said that if Summers was punished for the “crime of positing a politically incorrect hypothesis” the “chilling effect on free inquiry will harm everyone.” After all, the editorial said, he was “provoking fresh thought on big issues.”

Why didn’t I think of that? The suggestion that women were innately less able to do math and science wasn’t the same old tired stereotype with a sell-by date of 1636, when Harvard was established. It was a cutting-edge fresh thought!

• DED Space takes on the notion that Million Dollar Baby is “an insufferable, manipulative right-to-die movie.” Right.

• Cruella looks at a study that discerns the difference between young women’s and young men’s idea of what makes up a good sense of humor: “for a woman, a Good Sense Of Humor means someone who makes her laugh. For a man, it means someone who laughs at his jokes.”

• Dove’s Eye View points us to Lebanese Politics for Beginners. Also, Leila is a breast cancer survivor. In this post she shows off her beautiful bald head, inspired by Melissa Ethridge’s recent public appearances with no hair. I thought Ethridge looked lovely. Leila does, too.

• At Whirled View, Patricia looks at America, Europe, and the Iranian Question.

• Rowan asks whether rape in the military is a woman’s issue or a man’s issue. I’d posit it a human rights issue.

• Noli Irritare Leones has moved to a new site with WordPress. Welcome Lynn to her new domain.

All this hard politics! I don’t know how the little ladies do it with all the doilies to iron.

UPDATE:
Breaking my goal to only list female bloggers this week (again), this story absolutely cannot be passed up. Lest Blood Be Shed points to a post in which grotesque militarism is showed off in church:

“A guy was asked by his father to attend a ‘father-son’ event and he brought a camera and was really disturbed to see a place of Christian worship being used to promote militarism and warfare. Even though this guy is a Republican and supporter of the war, he was shocked at the visual propagandistic ritual, which reminded him of movies he had seen about Nazi pageantry. Anyway, his account is not the best but check out the photos – you have to see this to believe it.”

The True Moral Majority

Gleaned from Blog or Not?

I think it’s morally wrong to let children go without health care just because their parents have made unwise career choices.

I think it’s morally wrong for a teacher to make a child feel bad because she doesn’t share the religious faith of the majority of her classmates.

I think it’s morally wrong for the president to lie his way into war.

I think it’s morally wrong to force a rape victim to carry her rapist’s child.

I think it’s morally wrong to rape and torture prisoners of war.

I think it’s morally wrong to execute over 300 people on Texas’s Death Row and then talk about “a culture of life”

Additional tenets welcome in the comments or at Maureen’s blog.

While we’re at it, the lady at Bloggg points out that Senator Santorum is hosting a poll on his website asking, “Do you support the creation of voluntary Personal Retirement Accounts as a part of Social Security reform?” Vote now.