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

Weekly Open Thread with Baby Mountain Goat

tigtog

This week’s open thread host is precariously perched on high rocks at Cathedral Provincial Park in British Columbia. Please natter/chatter/vent/rant on anything* you like over this weekend and throughout the week.

A fluffy white baby mountain goat standing on grey rocks. In the background are towering snow-covered peaks.
Image Source: Photo by Shaundd (Own work) (CC-BY-SA-3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

So, what have you been up to? What would you rather be up to? What’s been awesome/awful?
Reading? Watching? Making? Meeting?
What has [insert awesome inspiration/fave fansquee/guilty pleasure/dastardly ne’er-do-well/threat to all civilised life on the planet du jour] been up to?

* Netiquette footnotes:
* There is no off-topic on the Weekly Open Thread, but consider whether your comment would be on-topic on any recent thread and thus better belongs there.
* If your comment touches on topics known to generally result in thread-jacking, you will be expected to take the discussion to #spillover instead of overshadowing the social/circuit-breaking aspects of this thread.

133 thoughts on Weekly Open Thread with Baby Mountain Goat

  2. Hi tigtog! Out of curiosity, what’s a tigtog?

    Any thoughts on this Suey Park #cancelcolbert hullabaloo? I’m not sure how or whether I’m supposed to respond, given that she doesn’t want me as an ally. But it’s not really about me… except it is, because it’s about how a white comedian uses racist satire to communicate with a white audience. Color me confused.

    1. Out of curiosity, what’s a tigtog?

      It’s one of those family nicknames that started out as one thing and morphed into variations as I grew up, and there’s several lengthy stories about how it changed when and why that are rather tedious for anyone outside the family. It just seemed like a good pseudonym to play with when I first started blogging.

      1. I can understand how tough it is to settle on a good pseudonym, which is why I’ve been procrastinating by using this one.

    2. It seems the issue surrounding Colbert has completely over shadowed the original point- That there exists an organization that uses a racial slur against the indigenous in its title. But badly executed satire is more important than Native issues and oppression. Evidently.

      1. I don’t think it was even badly done- one line just got taken out of context (which, to be fair, is the fault of whoever tweeted it). In the context of the full show, it’s a genuinely incisive and anti-racist bit.

      2. I haven’t really been following, but are the people campaigning against Colbert also focusing on the original point of there being such an organization?

        3. Link dump: The Campaign to “Cancel” Colbert

          BTW, the original issue was not just that Dan Snyder is defending the name of his Redskins team, he’s establishing a charity ostensibly to help Native Americans but calling it the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation, in case anyone wasn’t aware.

          Are NDNS what I’m guessing they are?

        4. It’s just another way for us to say Indian without using the white version of Indian.

  3. I’ve been catching up on the threads, and I just want to add what others said in the last open thread: Mac, if you’re reading, and even if you’re not, I miss you. I wish you would come back.

    2. Since my impression is she is mad busy I would like to add to this friendly chorus a big NO PRESSURE caveat.

    3. I wish Piny would feel safe enough to come back, too.

      There is a lot of clique-y pile-on here sometimes.

      2. Piny was infrequently commenting when I started commenting here in the fall of 2011, and has rarely commented since — I didn’t even realize until fairly recently who they were or the fact that they had such a long history here as a commenter and (I think?) former moderator. (Nor am I sure what pronoun Piny prefers, so I’m keeping it neutral.) So I’m not sure it’s fair to make assumptions one way or the other about whether the problems they had and/or have with Mac were the primary reason they hadn’t been commenting, or haven’t commented (that I know of) since that thread in which they explained their feeling of not being safe here. For which Mac apologized, but hasn’t commented since herself.

        I certainly haven’t always agreed with Mac, and we’ve had a couple of arguments here ourselves, but she has been a regular and significant presence here for a long time, and she’s been very kind to me, and I’m not going to pretend I don’t miss her. Nor is saying that I miss her intended as a slight to piny, whom I simply don’t know as well.

        1. Speaking of “no pressure,” I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed the drastic drop in commenting frequency here the last couple of months — there have been period of 24 hours where it seems that there have been only 1 or 2 comments at most, and with a couple of exceptions it seems that in any give week the vast majority of comments have been in the open threads and self-promotion threads.

          And I can’t believe that it’s a coincidence that during the same period, Jill’s posting frequency has also seemed to drop rather drastically.

          I have no doubt that she’s been extraordinarily busy on other things, and I truly am not trying in any way to pressure her to comment more, and God knows I am an incredible admirer of tigtog and caperton, and I apologize if I’m being presumptuous, and for all I know this is something that’s happening already, but I can’t help wondering if it’s time to recruit some more people to blog here. Preferably people who would reflect the same diversity that I would hope we would all like to see, both in the blogs and in the commentariat. Black women, WOC in general — even trans women, of color or otherwise!

          1. The recruitment of some more bloggers has been discussed. One of the problems is that alongside less time for blogging oneself there is also less time for commenting on other people’s blogs and building the sort of relationship with other bloggers where it even seems possible to take that next step to extending those sort of invitations.

          2. eta: there have also been several “sorry, but hell no” reactions due to negative perceptions of the Feministe commentariat. This tends to discourage further outreach.

        2. eta: there have also been several “sorry, but hell no” reactions due to negative perceptions of the Feministe commentariat. This tends to discourage further outreach.

          You know, I’ve heard this a lot (and I’m in no way suggesting you’re not being truthful about this phenomenon) and it just boggles my mind. Sure, we have some garden-variety trolls and some heated discussions, but in general I’ve found this commentariat to be kind, supportive, and wicked smart.

          I’d so much rather have these people of essentially good faith who occasionally passionately disagree than, say, the terrified meekness of some other sites. I’m not a blogger, but if I was I have no idea who I’d rather blog for.

        3. Yeah, even though I’ve heard that too, it doesn’t make sense when you look back and notice the only really consistent commenters here who aren’t moderators are… the ones in this conversation (i.e. EG, Donna L, pheenobarbidoll, tinfoil hattie, trans_commie and you). Sometimes Fat Steve comments, and then there’s that Tom-something bloke who’s ESL and writes extremely strange things that are impossible to debate (because the grammar is nonsensical), but that’s all I can think of right now…

        4. Just to put our hands together in this thread…I wonder if Mac would be interested in blogging here? I know she’s got more than enough on her plate this term, but she can mix it up with the best of them, and her thoughts and perspective are smart and fascinating.

          1. Just generally, we’d be thrilled to get more guest post pitches from regular commentors. The submissions guidelines have been described as daunting, but that level of detail is meant to make it clear to the guest post spammers (many of you may have not known that this is a thing, but it is) that their writings need a connection to this community’s worldview, which regular commentors already have.

        5. You know, I’ve heard this a lot (and I’m in no way suggesting you’re not being truthful about this phenomenon) and it just boggles my mind. Sure, we have some garden-variety trolls and some heated discussions, but in general I’ve found this commentariat to be kind, supportive, and wicked smart.

          This is one of the threads that drives that particular critique. There are definitely others, but this space hasn’t always been welcoming to women who aren’t otherwised privileged. And to EZ’s point – when posting has died down, only a few commenters stick around to check in on each other, but regular posting of alternative viewpoints is likely to bring people out of the woodwork. We have an ugly past as a community.

        6. Even though that thread may have been a year and a half before I started regularly commenting here, I do remember it (and its unpleasantness) rather well, because it was, I am 99% sure, the very first time I ever commented here at all.

          I would like to think that this is a different place now than it seems to have been back then, when a lot of the commentariat seemed to reject what you call alternative viewpoints. And there was obviously a major issue with race in general back then, as that thread a few months ago made very clear. As well as with trans issues back then; the dismissiveness (if not outright hostility) seemed palpable to me at times.

          I would hope that history wouldn’t repeat itself, if someone were willing to give this place a chance again.

          I understand that some of the guest posters have been treated harshly — perhaps too harshly — but then again, some of them (like the one who had violent fantasies about physically attacking women who disagreed with her about sex work, etc., and exuded a very strong hint of transphobic viewpoints) have kind of deserved it, and I don’t think people are generally unfair.

        7. that Tom-something bloke who’s ESL and writes extremely strange things that are impossible to debate

          You don’t mean our friend Tomek from Poland, do you? I think he was banned a long time ago; he was definitely too down the lane and into the mace.

        8. I can understand why some people might have a negative impression of the commentariat here at Feministe. People tend to jump right in, and there isn’t a whole lot of hand holding or inclination towards being gentle with one another.

          But I also think that some of the negative guest blogging experiences have been resulted from that guest blogger not seeming to really understand the audience here. Especially if a blogger is expecting to find widespread agreement with their pov, or expecting to not have the logic underlying their opinions questioned and picked apart. I suspect that some guest bloggers are just so eager to get their stuff out there that they don’t really stop to consider that this isn’t a place where everyone will just nod along politely and say how interesting thank you for sharing.

        9. I would like to think that this is a different place now than it seems to have been back then, when a lot of the commentariat seemed to reject what you call alternative viewpoints.

          Just in case I wasn’t clear – I wasn’t endorsing the maia hatred – I meant viewpoints that are alternative to current feminism which is racist, cis-centric, and occasionally everyone’s favorite “problematic.”

        13. I would love to see some guest posts by Donna and mac here. I’ve always valued their perspectives, even when I disagree with them.

          And I would like to write a guest post here, if anyone is interested. I’ve been here since I was 16, and though I disagree with a lot of people here on all sorts of issues (even the people I like), I’ve always appreciated the more insightful commentary here. So to give a little back in return, I would be interested in writing articles on trans women’s issues. I hope I’m not acting self-important or anything, but writing a guest post here has been on my mind for a while.

          1. Please, anyone thinking of it, just send us your guest post pitches! Something already written on another site that you’d like to see a few more eyeballs on as a crosspost is perfectly fine for starters if you’re not feeling quite up to pitching a piece of brand new writing, but pitching a post you haven’t written yet is not that difficult, we just need a few bullet points to decide whether or not we’re interested in seeing a full draft.

            Part of the point of having the submission guidelines as they are is to be a soft introduction to pitching one’s writing in other (paid) markets. If you’re at all interested in getting paid writing gigs some day maybe, making an effective pitch is what it’s all about. So practice on us!

        14. I’d love to see guest posts by Donna L and Trans_Commie. I think you’re both awesome writers, super-smart, and sophisticated thinkers. I’d like to see guest posts from pheeno as well, honestly, particularly on issues affecting NA/indigenous peoples.

        15. I’d love to see guest posts by Ally and Mac and Pheeno. And you too, EG — although you’re probably exhausted by now from all the plaudits you’ve been receiving for your amazingly talented writing in other venues!

          I really do very much appreciate and feel flattered by the compliments and encouragement, but I don’t think it’s likely that I would ever actually want to guest post. My fundamental identity is as a Commenter, not a Blogger, after all — as I think EG’s and my brief adventure with our own blog last fall probably proved is a wise self-estimation! — and have always found reacting to others people’s writing infinitely easier than thinking of something to write about myself.

          Insecurities aside, however, and actually trying to be serious for a moment, commenting below-the-line has always felt a lot safer to me, given who I am and given what trans women who blog are exposed to, than blogging or posting above-the-line. I neither need nor want that kind of exposure, and I make it too easy as it is for people to figure out who I am. At the blog with EG, where I was really concerned with what might happen if people knew who I was (given the specifically trans-feminist-related subject matter), everything both of us wrote was completely anonymous. And I didn’t enjoy it all that much, because I like to put myself in my writing. But that’s something I don’t feel comfortable doing except down here where nobody can see me!

        16. I went and found my original comment – the spillover threads make it extremely difficult to keep track, but it wasn’t that inaccessible. This is what I said to Mac:

          One big reason I don’t comment here any more is you.

          It doesn’t matter whether Mac is the only reason I don’t comment here anymore (how could she be?). I said that Mac’s verbal abuse was a very important reason. Mac herself believes that she has a problem, and Mac is trying – has been trying for some time – to not do this anymore. This is what she said:

          It was mean and I am sorry and I will try not to do it again. I’d been getting better, I thought, and I really should stick to it.

          Once she has decided that she wants to change, the debate should be over. You should not interfere in what she herself considers a priority, and you should not give her an excuse to pretend everything is okay now, or think that I may well have just wandered off. I like Mac a great deal, apart from this one gigantic problem, but it is one gigantic problem.

          People who complain are usually understating – the normal response to this kind of treatment is to quietly disappear. That goes times fifty for people who feel like they lack support. I also said in as many words that I was afraid to say anything.

          There is also no reason to think I would get over it just because it isn’t happening anymore. I have no assurance that it won’t happen again. (This is the umpteenth time Mac has apologized, and the umpteenth time Mac has done it all over again.) That is not an adequate standard for a feminist space.

          Finally, I am sick and fucking tired of passive-aggressive comments to the effect that I have no place here, that I am simply not a priority compared to your friend who for some totally mysterious and unrelated reason feels welcome to hang. Your attitude towards all this is part of the toxicity of this space.

          You wouldn’t have any right to talk about me that way even if I hadn’t just said in as many words that, yup, it’s the tirades. It wouldn’t matter at all if I commented here once a leap year, and it wouldn’t matter if I got along fine with Mac. It wouldn’t matter if nobody had mentioned any “problems.”

          This is wrong, full stop. It is an obvious community failure, a glaring ongoing example of the kind of hostility that keeps people away. I shouldn’t even have to nerve myself to complain about it, or point to some specific chilling effect, or inform Mac or anyone of the inevitable consequence of her behavior. It shouldn’t happen in the first place, and you shouldn’t be finding reasons to forget about it.

        17. Finally, I am sick and fucking tired of passive-aggressive comments to the effect that I have no place here, that I am simply not a priority compared to your friend who for some totally mysterious and unrelated reason feels welcome to hang. Your attitude towards all this is part of the toxicity of this space.

          Oh please. I said nothing of the kind. I hardly know you well enough even to form an opinion about you. This is probably only the second thread in which I’ve ever even said anything about you in two and a half years. You need to stop assuming that everybody has been here long enough to know who you are or know anything about your history here, and complaining that when you showed up in that lengthy thread some time ago and came across (not only to me) as lecturing people in a rather condescending manner — without having participated much here for at least a couple of years — you weren’t given the automatic deference that you believe you were entitled to. I have no idea what your reasons were for stopping your active participation here, but that had already happened when I started commenting here, and if anything is passive-aggressive, it’s your implication that I’m in any way responsible for it.

        18. Plus, I consider it personally insulting that I’m apparently included in your general condemnation about toxicity and hostility. I don’t believe for a moment that that’s justified, and don’t think I’m being excessively self-serving to suggest that I’m not exactly known for being personally hostile even when I disagree with people. So count me out, please. Because believe it or not, and call me “passive-aggressive” or not, I have nothing against you.

        19. I do think that piny has a point:

          (This is the umpteenth time Mac has apologized, and the umpteenth time Mac has done it all over again.)

          I mean, I like mac as well, but I have made this observation as well, and I like to believe that my observation isn’t totally skewed as I’ve been here for about 3 years so far.

          piny, I’m sorry if I came across as being passive aggressive towards you. (I’m not going to speak about anyone else facing that accusation.)

          I was the one (IIRC) who originally pointed out that mac may have left because of your comment (although I take back saying that you were the sole reason, given that I misread your initial comment in that #spillover thread). In any case, I didn’t mean to point that out in passive aggressive manner, and perhaps I should have made that clearer. And for the record, I have never assumed that you’ve gotten over it already or anything like that.

        20. You are responsible for it!

          The cliquish way you treat people, your basic confusion between restraint and denial, the massive disparity between your treatment of your friends and your treatment of people you do not care to know: these are reasons I am not involved here now. You are a major part of my problem with this site.

          I am also sick and tired of your, “I only said this a few times” when the reason for that is that I hardly ever even come here anymore, for reasons that I’ve said over and over and over again amount to feeling really unsafe and unwelcome. You don’t get any credit for not being hostile in my absence, and you don’t get to just point to my lack of participation like it’s this thing that just happened.

          I didn’t stop blogging for this site because of you. I didn’t decide that blogging here was thankless and exploitative – and even dangerous – because of you. I didn’t regret every personal thing I shared here because of you.

          But would I trust someone like you? Would I offer up that kind of work in this space knowing that you were here, and moreover that Mac and you were here together? Would I ever choose to open up like that again, given the way you just treated Mac’s insistence that Mac needs a time out?

          No, absolutely not, never.

          I wrote for Feministe for four years. Most of that time, my output was “sporadic,” but there were periods when I contributed multiple posts per day. Before and since, I contributed a huge number of comments. My association with this blog comprises a decade; I’m nearly contemporaneous with Jill. You can find me under “Authors Emeritus,” and clicking on my name on one of my posts will take you to the complete archive.

          Feministe set itself apart with its content: it was characterized by long, intense, personal posts. The standout bloggers at Feministe wrote very openly about their lives. Now xojane and Jezebel and Salon are trying to manufacture the same dynamic in a much more crass, artificial way: “It Happened to Me: I Had an Eating Disorder When I Was Six.”

          I myself revealed a great deal of intimate information, more than I wish I had. I may find that this vocation has cost me a job someday; it’s impossible to predict the professional consequences of this kind of work. I can tell you about the personal ones.

          It didn’t initially feel like a transaction between consumer and consumed. But when Feministe began to professionalize, that niche carried into its brand. This put its bloggers into an impossible position: they were pressured to write more personal, individual, special posts, and at the same time create content that appealed to a wider audience. They had to be unique yet acceptable, vulnerable and unique but not isolated. That dynamic does terrible things to your writing and devastating things to your sense of self.

          I had some interactions at Feministe that made me feel like I had been very naive, that my sense of trust and obligation had been childish. I stopped when I realized that I had no privacy within my own head, that all of me had spilled out into this ephemeral stage. I thought of myself in terms of what might not appeal.

          This is what I hear from a great many writers who did the same thing: this kind of writing takes your content, your stores, your inside, and eats it away. It isn’t sustainable – but then again who wants writing that isn’t meaty, that isn’t real?

          And now I see tigtog describing a two-stage approval process for contributing free content to a dwindling website that is desperate for writing, any writing at all.

          I see Feministe solving this problem – that so many bloggers wound up feeling like they were not part of any community – by hiring temps. I see blogging devoid of personality – and I note that it fails to attract much interest. I see an even more formal division of labor between Commenter and Blogger, consumer and provider, and even more formalized, custodial arrangements between Blogger and Blog.

          I see the commenters here complaining weekly about the dearth of material to pick over – and then saying that they simply aren’t bloggers, or can’t or don’t want to blog. I don’t fucking blame you! It’s like stripping for people who refuse to show their faces. But then again I also see you proposing a caucus race rather than welcome anyone new.

          I can’t think of one advantage to writing for this site; I can’t think of one positive reason to offer anything else.

          I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, I have been involved with this blog for a decade, just about as long as it has existed, and I left long after posting here started to give me panic attacks. I don’t hang out here anymore because this site was a major part of my life for years on end. I can’t stand being here because I used to love it so much. I don’t contribute much now because so much of my work is already here. And you Commenters are sitting here in this wrecked house trying to figure out how to attract Bloggers, but all the emeritae get is, “Who the fuck are you?”

        21. trans_commie, I appreciate your comment, and I really don’t have a problem with what you said. It’s okay. And if you do decide to guest-blog here, good luck, sincerely.

        22. Sincerely as in, sincerely not passive-aggressively. I’m glad you enjoy being here, and I hope that you enjoy guest-blogging too.

        23. And this is not about not knowing who I am. You are defining my refusal to stay in this space as abandonment: I’m simply not a part of this community anymore. I have no real stake here, and no right to comment on what it’s like here. I certainly don’t have any right to lecture current community members like you.

          Someone who stopped participating in this space because it was unsafe is treated like they simply left. If they stay away long enough, they’re treated like they were never here at all. To have a history of trauma here is to have no history here.

          All of the people who will not set foot in this place because their animus is so intense become outsiders. And at this point, dunno if you noticed, that’s almost everyone who ever blogged for this site in any long-term way. Everyone whose work still forms a part of this site’s social and literary (and economic!) capital.

          This is bully logic, it is abuser logic. You don’t have to know who I am or be deferent to me, but you do not get to wave away Feministe’s long and severely problematic history with its past contributors because it happened before you showed up, and you do not get to talk about me like I’m just not really here.

        24. No, I’m not buying this.

          I’m not buying that Donna is a mean nasty bully because she prefers Mac’s commenting to yours. I’m not buying that the dearth of blog posts from Jill is due to the evil that is the commentariat rather than, oh, the fact that Jill is now a working writer who gets paid for what she writes, and so has not unreasonably deprioritized writing for free. And no, I’m not buying that commenters don’t want to blog because it’s like stripping, or whatever, rather than it being that well, when I write, I expect to get paid too, be it in dollars (creative) or in professional standing (academic).

          This is what I hear from a great many writers who did the same thing: this kind of writing takes your content, your stores, your inside, and eats it away.

          If you hear it from a great many writers who did this kind of thing, then the problem is with the kind of writing. And that’s a shame, but it’s not on Donna or Mac. But if you’re going to publish writing—as in, make it public—you can’t then complain that it’s unfair when the wrong kind of public responds in a way you don’t like. That’s the risk of publishing rather than writing in a diary. If the kind of writing is unsustainable because it’s too self-revelatory, then it’s unsustainable, and the blog model you valorize is not sustainable either. And perhaps that’s one of the previously unacknowledged uses of traditional publishing—it insulates the writer from the public.

          I’m not buying that Mac is somehow terribly awful—I’ve been on the receiving end of her anger, it’s not pleasant, but nor is it the soul-scorching experience it’s being made out to be. I liked her before I started commenting, I liked her once I started commenting, and I like her now. And if that rubs you, piny, or anybody else the wrong way—because how dare somebody prioritize a friend over you and your emeritusness—that’s too bad. I notice Mac’s comments here and miss them. I and others get to say that, and if you feel upset because you feel it’s giving her “an excuse” to not sit around and feel so so bad about your feelings, that’s yours to deal with. Oh noes! Mac and Donna are here together! People commenting, interacting, forming bonds! Bonds that they don’t have with you! Horrors.

          Nor am I buying that the commenter turnover rate is anything out of the ordinary. I specifically asked about this once, as my only other experiences were a fairy-tale discussion board and the late, lamented Fametracker discussion boards, which were much more heavily moderated than Fametracker, and the turnover rate was about the same. Multiple people confirmed this. People comment for a year or two or three, they get involved in other things, cultural winds change, and they stop. Blogs come and go. Angry Black Woman hasn’t had new pieces up since the end of 2012, for example, and the commentariat there was not, as far as I know, thought to be particularly nasty.

          all the emeritae get is, “Who the fuck are you?”

          No. What you get is “who the fuck are you to demand deference when you can’t be bothered to demonstrate the slightest respect for others yourself?” That’s a very different question. And you may claim that this isn’t about deference or knowing who you are, but that’s not what it sounds like to me.

          you do not get to talk about me like I’m just not really here.

          Except…you yourself just said you’re not here most of the time. Due to being really unhappy and upset and angry with how the site has gone, yes, but still not here. So…yeah, that’s how your name comes up. As if you’re not really here.

          As for toxic and passive-aggressive, you, piny, like all the rest of us, automatically exclude yourself from any wrong-doing. But I become pre-emptively tired every time I see your name in the recent comments bar. Let me emphasize that: not angry, or frightened, or upset. Just tired. Because I know it’s going to be yet another long rant about how poorly everybody’s treating you and how this blog just isn’t what it used to be and what big meanies we all are, and now everything is ruined, ruined. And I notice that you don’t like the spillover threads and you don’t like the guest-posting policy and you don’t like many of the most regular commenters, but I have yet to see any suggestions for you besides …what?…the bad people should just go away, I guess. After we’ve internalized your assessment of our corruption and unworthiness and “abusiveness,” I guess, like Mac, and decided to prioritize your observations and reactions in our therapy sessions or something. No thanks.

        25. Oh noes! Mac and Donna are here together! People commenting, interacting, forming bonds! Bonds that they don’t have with you! Horrors.

          My thoughts on accusation of ‘cliquishness’ exactly. If everyone has a similarly negative reaction to the things you write, it takes a special type of obliviousness to decide the problem is that they’re all coordinating against you.

        26. Part 1 of a long comment in moderation that can stay there if these shorter parts get through:

          In no particular order:

          the massive disparity between your treatment of your friends and your treatment of people you do not care to know: these are reasons I am not involved here now. You are a major part of my problem with this site.

          Examples, please. Other than you (allegedly). I have a feeling that there are none. Who are all these other people I ‘ve treated so badly? Where is the evidence of all the arguments I’m supposedly involved in? Other than failing to kiss your ring sufficiently when you were repeatedly talking down to everyone here?

          However justifed your screed is, don’t put it on me. I don’t deserve your vituperation.

          Before and since, I contributed a huge number of comments.

          If you’re talking about the period of time since the fall of 2011, this is completely untrue. According to you, I’m supposed to know about your history? There’s some sort of requirement in your mind that everyone who starts out here is assumed to have studied the history of this place and memorized the list of bloggers emeritae? Where do you get this idea? You’re acting like this is place is supposed to be some sort of feminist Skull and Bones.

          you do not get to wave away Feministe’s long and severely problematic history with its past contributors because it happened before you showed up,

          Same answer, basically. My fault, apparently, for not doing the required reading of “the archive” you refer to before or since I became a commenter here, but I didn’t. That doesn’t make me an “abuser.”

        27. Let me try again with the quotations set off (please delete the first and second tries):

          Part 1 of a long comment in moderation that can stay there if these shorter parts get through:

          In no particular order:

          the massive disparity between your treatment of your friends and your treatment of people you do not care to know: these are reasons I am not involved here now. You are a major part of my problem with this site.

          Examples, please. Other than you (allegedly). I have a feeling that there are none. Who are all these other people I ‘ve treated so badly? Where is the evidence of all the arguments I’m supposedly involved in? Other than failing to kiss your ring sufficiently when you were repeatedly talking down to everyone here?
          However justifed your screed is, don’t put it on me. I don’t deserve your vituperation.

          Before and since, I contributed a huge number of comments.

          If you’re talking about the period of time since the fall of 2011, this is completely untrue. According to you, I’m supposed to know about your history? There’s some sort of requirement in your mind that everyone who starts out here is assumed to have studied the history of this place and memorized the list of bloggers emeritae? Where do you get this idea? You’re acting like this is place is supposed to be some sort of feminist Skull and Bones.

          you do not get to wave away Feministe’s long and severely problematic history with its past contributors because it happened before you showed up,

          Same answer, basically. My fault, apparently, for not doing the required reading of “the archive” you refer to before or since I became a commenter here, but I didn’t. That doesn’t make me an “abuser.”

        28. Part 2

          I certainly don’t have any right to lecture current community members like you.

          Actually, no. You don’t. Who the hell do you think you are?


          Someone who stopped participating in this space because it was unsafe is treated like they simply left. If they stay away long enough, they’re treated like they were never here at all. To have a history of trauma here is to have no history here.

          And how was I supposed to know all this, exactly? Perhaps you can circulate a packet to all new commenters with a history your participation here, and the reasons you left? If you ever said a word about it other than in that one thread where I was apparently insufficiently deferential to you, I must have missed it. And no, I didn’t research it, any more than I’ve studied the history of anyone else who used to be a blogger here.

          you do not get to talk about me like I’m just not really here.

          When do I talk about you? Someone else brought you up in this thread, and I responded. Also, this is a situation akin to a tree falling in the forest with nobody hearing it. How could I or anybody else possibly have known that you’ve still been “really here” all this time, when there was no tangible manifestation of that presence?

          given the way you just treated Mac’s insistence that Mac needs a time out?

          This is perhaps the best example of how divorced from reality your screed is. Yes, I agreed with someone’s statement that I missed Mac. This is transformed into my abusively pressuring her to ignore her decision to take a time-out — a decision I wasn’t aware of (and am still not aware of), because if she announced it I didn’t see it.

        29. Part 3

          Regarding not seeing any announcement from Mac that she had decided to take a time-out, believe it or not, I don’t see every single comment here!

          I think what I find most reprehensible about your assertion that you’ve basically been the Holy Ghost, present all this time, and that you should be treated as such, and complaining about lack of support, is this: if you were really here all this time, how exactly were you supporting people?

          If you were really here all along, then you must, of course (given your own philosophy of constructive knowledge), be fully aware of the fact that for the first year or so I was regularly commenting here — and was the one and only trans person doing so — I was continually confronted with transphobia, often on a daily basis, both generally and at times specifically directed at me. Not so much from regular commenters (apart from quite a bit of ciscentrism and dismissiveness); mostly it was just people who would show up out of the blue whenever anything about trans people or trans issues.

          If you were really here all along, you must also know how much this upset me, and how enervating it was, and how often I said I wished I weren’t the only person here to bear the personal brunt of all this, and wished there were other people who had sufficient knowledge of trans issues to be more than sympathetic (which many people were), and to be able to take on, at least partially, the burden of arguing with and fighting back against all of the bigots and willful ignoramuses. (This was all before Ally came out as trans.)

          I gather (from what I’ve been told, not from doing the research I was supposed to do), that you identified as trans at one time. And that even though you don’t anymore, you certainly have plenty of knowledge about the subject, and are still very supportive of trans people.

          So if you were really here all along, where were you when all of this was happening? When did you speak up against all of that transphobia and cissexism, including things people said to me personally? Where were you when I was expressing my sadness and frustration that there was nobody else who knew enough to help out, leaving me to do so by myself because I felt I had that obligation as a member of the community? Where was your “support”? Why didn’t you speak up?

          Where the hell were you?

          Shame on you.

        30. Part 4

          I see the commenters here complaining weekly about the dearth of material to pick over – and then saying that they simply aren’t bloggers, or can’t or don’t want to blog. I don’t fucking blame you! It’s like stripping for people who refuse to show their faces. But then again I also see you proposing a caucus race rather than welcome anyone new.

          Also wildly unfair and untrue.

          I brought up — and it sure as hell wasn’t a “complaint” — the decline in general commenting traffic in this thread, and wondered if there’s been an attempt to recruit new blogger’s given Jill’s recent inactivity. When has anyone else “complained” about it, weekly or otherwise?

          And what’s this nonsense about not welcoming anyone new? Didn’t I specifically suggest that we need more diversity in the bloggers here?

          Again: I didn’t bring up the idea of commenters who are already here submitting guest posts. I agreed (except with respect to myself) with others’ suggestions about people here they’d like to see do that, and added a mention of EG. So sue me for mentioning people I know. That hardly suggests I don’t want people I don’t know, especially given that I specifically suggested new people!

          And for you to connect the recent decline in commenting traffic with the awfulness of me and Mac and perhaps a few other nasty, mean, cliquish, hostile, unsupportive regular commenters? What? The idea that it has much to do with anything other than Jill’s no longer posting regularly — and hardly at all, most recently — is ludicrous. Up until that happened, however many weeks or months ago it was, there were just as many comments on many of her posts as there had ever been during the time I’ve been here.

          As far as baring one’s soul, I think I’ve done that here as much as anyone has, probably including you, and don’t really mind doing so at times. I explained why I don’t want to do that “above the line,” and it clearly and obviously has nothing to do with what you’re assuming is the reason. It has to do with (1) feelings of insecurity about having anything interesting to contribute, and (2) entirely practical concerns about “outing” myself (especially given how close to my real name my user name is).

        31. Should we take this to #spillover? Sorry if this is the wrong time to bring it up, but I think tigtog and co. would appreciate it. The last time we had this argument it was also in #spillover, hence my suggestion.

        32. EG, I did not complain about people saying that they miss Mac, and you know I didn’t. I had a really big problem with Donna L – specifically! as in, I responded to her and quoted her comment – saying that I probably didn’t comment much here anymore for unrelated reasons, and anyway, Mac probably wasn’t responsible for all of that.

          I said Mac was responsible for her own big chunk of it. To the extent that there are other reasons, they are irrelevant.

          And no, this is not true. I mean, you can say you “don’t buy it” all you like, but most of the people who have given up on this place haven’t either stopped writing or moved on to paying gigs. They produce the same content; they have the same conversations. They just don’t do it here. They won’t do it here.

          I have a blog! It is a free blog. It is much more random and volatile than this blog. It will never earn me any money at all. It may even get me fired someday. It is a distraction from a great many other options, some of them creative, and I publish all kinds of deeply personal shit on that blog that is not anywhere near this blog.

          It is not here.

          And these people are on record – at least several of them in the comments threads on this blog – as saying that they specifically do not blog here because of this specific space and the dynamics that this space just cannot stop playing out. It’s not just attrition. It isn’t.

          And I personally am fucking telling you that this space is toxic. As someone who unlike you actually did this thing, I am telling you that this space is really inimical to its contributors. It’s not the kind of writing. It’s contributing that kind of writing to this space. You can say that I have nothing to complain about, but you can’t pretend that the exposure or the lack of “exposure” is the problem. It never has been.

          The people who spent years writing here for free – and the people who fucking loved spending hours commenting here for free – never had much interest in getting paid. Virtually none of them had any hope of that, either. If money was the issue, Feministe would have been terrible from the beginning. Jill is not the paradigm here, and the people who fit that model were always in the minority.

          And you know, you can pretend that there’s just no explanation for any of this ill will. You can pretend there’s no reason someone like me might go from being devoted to this site to feeling sick to my stomach whenever I go near it, except that I’m obviously a big whiny baby who loves to get upset. But this place is about as popular these days as, well, a blog scarcely anybody posts or comments on anymore, and I frankly don’t think I’m the one who needs to explain shit.

        33. I’m not buying that the dearth of blog posts from Jill is due to the evil that is the commentariat rather than, oh, the fact that Jill is now a working writer who gets paid for what she writes, and so has not unreasonably deprioritized writing for free.

          EG, I can’t comment about Jill specifically, but piny’s comment jibes really well with what tigtog said above in this thread, i.e.

          eta: there have also been several “sorry, but hell no” reactions due to negative perceptions of the Feministe commentariat. This tends to discourage further outreach.

          So I’d argue there’s probably something to that idea, regardless of whether any specific commenters are at fault.

          It does feel a little like Donna is getting pooped on because of what looks like guilt by association, but I suspect at least part of the defensiveness I’m feeling right now is because I’m absolutely certain that I was at some point part of the toxic dynamic piny is mentioning and I’ve been trying to change it while still balancing my need to share my opinions when people are saying things I find genuinely harmful to marginalized groups (which is what I felt that entire trigger warning post did).

          piny, I hear you. I’m sorry this experience has been so negative for you, and I’m sorry for the part I’m pretty sure I played.

        34. I think what I find most reprehensible about your assertion that you’ve basically been the Holy Ghost, present all this time, and that you should be treated as such, and complaining about lack of support, is this: if you were really here all this time, how exactly were you supporting people?

          Are you kidding me?

          If this isn’t some sort of high-concept Modest Proposal I don’t even know what.

          Are you really that self-absorbed?

          “Identified as trans at one time.”

          How many times do I have to flat-out say, “I fled this site because being here seriously made me want to hang myself,” and, “I stay away from this place for the sake of my own mental health,” and, “I limit my contact with this space because being here makes me sick,” and come up with, “Where the fuck were you?”

          Donna, I left this space because it made me miserable. I stayed away from this space because it made me miserable. I stay away from it now – and regret coming back right this instant – because you cannot even read those words without trying to come up with some way to turn that into some kind of…fuck, fuck it, selfishness.

          You are arguing in all apparent seriousness that I had some moral obligation to come back in here to support you – and, I suppose, everyone else in this community. And if I didn’t do that, I don’t have any right to complain about being treated badly myself before I gave up, or feeling excluded at any point afterwards. That is your argument.

        35. And before you start with me, I get your terrible joke!

          But this is what that joke is saying, and this is exactly the position you have taken in all seriousness:

          If you left (because this space made you want to hang yourself), you don’t get to complain about not being here (because this space makes you want to hang yourself).

        36. No, you don’t get to complain about my being insufficiently supportive or deferential to you as an absent community member, and claim that I have obligations to you as such, when you completely disclaim any obligation to be supportive of me or anyone else, or to participate in the community in any way — and I’m not saying for a moment that you do have such an obligation! — but nonetheless demand support and deference from me based on your participation and contributions before I ever was here.

          Yes, you are being monumentally unfair in singling me out, all based on ONE time when I supposedly insulted you, when I obviously had nothing to do with your reasons for leaving in the first place. If you truly can’t see by now how ridiculously you’re trying to have it both ways to your own benefit, and how much of a complete asshole you’re being towards me, then I suppose you never will.

          And please, please, provide examples of all the people (or any of the people besides you!) whom I’ve supposedly treated with such hostility and so differently and with such lack of support, in contrast to the way I treat my little clique of friends.

          I will also note for the record that Mac (completely unsolicited by me) just posted on another website about how asinine she thinks it is for you actually to have claimed that I’m somehow being abusive towards her by saying I miss her and wish she would comment again.

        37. I will also note for the record that Mac (completely unsolicited by me) just posted on another website about how asinine she thinks it is for you actually to have claimed that I’m somehow being abusive towards her by saying I miss her and wish she would comment again.

          Oh, well, then I hope you’ll make some unsolicited comment to the effect that this is what I said in bizarroworld. This is what I complained about:

          Piny was infrequently commenting when I started commenting here in the fall of 2011, and has rarely commented since(…)So I’m not sure it’s fair to make assumptions one way or the other about whether the problems they had and/or have with Mac were the primary reason they hadn’t been commenting, or haven’t commented (that I know of) since that thread in which they explained their feeling of not being safe here. For which Mac apologized, but hasn’t commented since herself.

          And if you like, you can tell Mac that I know how seriously to take her apology, and that she knows where she can shove her “listening.”

          You are not obligated to travel back in time and make this space more welcoming. I don’t even think the time machine would be the dealbreaker.

          You do have an obligation to stop talking about this blog as though it started when almost everyone but Jill had left!

          I am not blaming you for not being around years ago. I am blaming you because you act as though back then has nothing to do with the way this site looks and is run now. I am blaming you because you act as though my absence is totally unrelated to any bad history – that my inability to stay here anymore damages my credibility with regard to this discussion.

          And look, you did not stop doing that when I explicitly said, “This is my problem,” and someone else answered, “I understand what you’re saying and I am trying to respond.”

          I mean, every time this subject comes up, I have to listen to this same, “Well, it’s probably just the way the internet goes,” and, “Well, I was here back in the early days, when it was mostly Jill blogging,” and, “They hardly ever comment here anyway,” and, I mean, you’ve got people telling you you have a problem.

          It’s not just me! Okay? The lurkers hate on Feministe in email. Feministe has been getting these, “sorry, but fuck no,” answers in various forms for quite some time! They tend to be concentrated among the people who were most committed before! What’s the response? Well.

          But I’m sure it’s just because this place isn’t enough like Double X.

        38. Oh, I’m sure tigtog is right about that, Pretty Amiable. But that’s not new; what I do think is bullshit is that that’s why we’ve seen the posts drop to half what they used to be (and most of those some form of open thread) from the regular bloggers. I mean, look at Jill’s post above–she’s writing for Cosmo. That’s decent money (in the context of freelance writing). And writing is labor–why give it away for free when people will pay? (This is one of the reasons I could never really commit to blogging.)

          I don’t think I have it in me to respond to all piny’s long posts–as I said before, too tiring.

          What I do find interesting is piny simultaneously touting zir instrumental role in building the site and disclaiming any responsibility for the commenting climate that developed. That’s…not really viable. If bloggers didn’t like the climate and tenor of commenting, they could have established stricter commenting rules, they could have brought down the banhammer, they could have taken a far more active moderating role. They didn’t. This is the climate they fostered, these are the commenters who stuck around for it, this is what they’ve got. Complaining about it as if somebody so essential to the site had no input into how it happened seems a bit rich to me.

          To say nothing of “the lurkers support me over email.” I can’t even with that. Sure, OK. And there are hate sites populated by former Shakesville commenters about that site, despite its rather draconian commenting rules. And the old Pandagon commenters, in my memory, thought the commenters here were pussy-footing crybabies. And I think that Shakesville’s rules of engagement would be intolerable to me. And round it goes.

          For all the complaining about the commenters here, I never anybody talk about a site with a commenting section gone right, one to use as a model. I’d like to see that site.

          1. I did. I previously suggested Slugger O’Toole, a politics site in Northern Ireland as an example.

            Playing the man, not the ball (making personal attacks) is forbidden, there is a card system, yellow card is a warning, red a temporary ban and a black spot is a ban for good.

            I thought it would work well here, but others disagreed because fighting oppression with rage is too important, even though, It seems to me that some of the biggest dust downs have been between frequent commenters rather than trolls. Hence the sizeable number of former regular Feministe commenters.

        39. I would have no idea how to communicate privately with Mac — I’ve never done so, outside of the comment sections here — and have no interest in spreading any of this to any other website. I happened to see her comment because it was at a place that I normally check on a daily basis anyway.

          If you had put things the way you’re saying them now in the first place, I probably not have had such a great problem with your comments in this thread.

          Instead, you chose to engage in character assassination by accusing me of a pattern of treating people badly and with unjustified hostility, unless I happen to be friends with them. And you have ignored my repeated requests for evidence — any evidence at all — to support your accusations. I naturally find it quite upsetting to be accused of behaving so badly, when I genuinely don’t think it’s true, and don’t think there’s any real basis for the accusation, and think that I have, in fact, been supportive to people even when I don’t really know them. (My being particularly friendly to people whom I’ve gotten to know here, especially in open threads, obviously doesn’t constitute evidence of hostility to anyone else. Nor is there anything wrong with it. As one recent example, I am quite certain that if anyone had asked for help in finding a trans-friendly therapist in Colorado or anywhere else, I would have done my best to find someone. I didn’t make the effort just because it was Ally who asked.)

          In fact, I suspect that it’s fair to say that I’ve gotten in as few or fewer arguments with other people here — not counting random bigots who stroll by — than just about any other regular commenter. I also would like to know when the last time was that I engaged in name-calling.

          Nor have I ever doubted that your absence and staying away are related to a bad history; nor would I ever suggest that you have to justify leaving or staying away. What I don’t appreciate is your singling me out as some sort of avatar of bad behavior, and your position that I am required to treat and support and defer to you as a continuing part of this community (based on history I don’t know much about), even though you disclaim any obligation whatsoever to reciprocate, and have certainly never been “supportive” to me in any way despite your continuing presence. To me, being a continuing part of a community — at least an active part — usually involves at least some reciprocation of that kind, especially when the same is being demanded.

          I imagine that you have no interest in withdrawing your accusations about my purportedly hostile behavior to others, so I suggest that you please just drop it. It was extremely unfair and unjustified.

        40. The problem with that safiya is that people can say some really horrible oppressive shit very nicely, abiding rules. KNOWING what they said is rage inducing, and knowing that moderators are often privilege blind and will focus on the reaction to the horrible yet nicely spoken words instead of the horrible, nicely spoken words. Its very easy to dismiss someone elses reaction to oppression as unjust or emotional rage when the boot of oppression isnt on your neck. Dismissal like that is often a silencing tactic, used to shame the oppressed as too angry. And unless every moderator represented a very wide range of oppressed groups, well…you can see how problems can arise from that, too. So no, I dont think thats a policy gone right, its just a different policy that can have the same problems.

        41. I know that people have pointed out I’m a regular commenter, and so I’m technically relevant to this discussion, but I’m getting stressed out. So I hope no one minds that I’m bowing out of this discussion. (I guess it’s kind of weird to say this since I’ve had so few comments in this discussion so far, but oh well.)

        42. I would certainly hope myself that the discussion is close to or at its end, and that there won’t be much of anything further to bow out from!

        43. What I do find interesting is piny simultaneously touting zir instrumental role in building the site and disclaiming any responsibility for the commenting climate that developed. That’s…not really viable. If bloggers didn’t like the climate and tenor of commenting, they could have established stricter commenting rules, they could have brought down the banhammer, they could have taken a far more active moderating role. They didn’t. This is the climate they fostered, these are the commenters who stuck around for it, this is what they’ve got. Complaining about it as if somebody so essential to the site had no input into how it happened seems a bit rich to me.

          No, this is a ridiculous argument. I did spend a lot of time on this blog trying to fix it; I did spend a lot of time on this blog fighting troll infestations; I did spend a lot of time on this blog skirmishing with Hugo Schwyzer.

          And then I figured out that it wasn’t ever going to get better, and then I figured out that it wasn’t going to get better for reasons that were beyond my control, and I left.

          So did a lot of other people. They realized that they were adding value to something that treated them like shit in return. It’s victim-blaming to tell someone that they’re responsible for a climate that wound up seriously harming them. The fact that they were hurt is a pretty good indication that they didn’t have any control over the climate. And saying that this site derived value from my work is not the same as saying that they had some obligation to respect me or treat me well.

          And you know, if Jill walked away from this site because she was getting a bunch more violent trolls in comments, I wouldn’t hold Jill responsible because Jill can technically make them stop by taking on a more intense supervisory role wrt intense abuse directed at her. I wouldn’t tell Jill it was her job to protect herself, and I wouldn’t insult her for feeling isolated if nobody else stepped up.

          And again, Jill is not the norm! She’s not! She didn’t actually create Feministe. To my knowledge, she may be the only past Feministe blogger to turn blogging into a solid freelance feminist writing gig. She’s certainly one of a tiny group.

          Most of us cannot do that, because most of us are not like Jill. And most of us really don’t have any interest in producing the kind of content Jill produces – or in working for outlets like Cosmopolitan. You’re just wrong about this, and Feministe is encouraging your selection bias bigtime.

          Blogging is not the intern stage of punditry, and most bloggers are not interested in turning their writing into content for paying websites. That’s an option available to only a few of us, and only in a very straitened and treacherous way. And most of us aren’t twentysomething aspiring writers in New York City. For most of us, this really was a community. It was never a job, and we never wanted it to be. We weren’t professionals.

          Bringing this model into feminist blogging caused serious problems for a lot of people whose faces didn’t fit, and placed pressure on writing – conversation – that wound up being insidious. And it had a major chilling effect on a lot of people – and lives and stories – who fell into the category of not-Jill. It’s really ignorant and irresponsible to act like it’s the only model now. It is not. The number of people who migrated away from this blog to even-less-lucrative blogs proves that, if nothing else.

          1. Blogging is not the intern stage of punditry, and most bloggers are not interested in turning their writing into content for paying websites. That’s an option available to only a few of us, and only in a very straitened and treacherous way. And most of us aren’t twentysomething aspiring writers in New York City. For most of us, this really was a community. It was never a job, and we never wanted it to be. We weren’t professionals.

            Bringing this model into feminist blogging caused serious problems for a lot of people whose faces didn’t fit, and placed pressure on writing – conversation – that wound up being insidious. And it had a major chilling effect on a lot of people – and lives and stories – who fell into the category of not-Jill. It’s really ignorant and irresponsible to act like it’s the only model now. It is not. The number of people who migrated away from this blog to even-less-lucrative blogs proves that, if nothing else.

            Speaking only for myself here, and not for other current Feministe bloggers: I certainly don’t see ALL blogging as the intern stage to punditry, but plenty of people do [eta: see their own blogging as a gateway to paid writing gigs], and they’ve been pitching guest posts to Feministe for a long time before the current Guest Post Submissions Guidelines page was published. The Guidelines page was established to give these people a framework for their pitches, in order to waste less time for them and for us.

            The more personal blog posts that people have written for their own sites and suggest as potential crossposts as guest posts are a different matter, they are still very very welcome, and are treated the same way they have always been – submit the link to the post for consideration as a guest post and it gets a Yea or Nay, that’s as complicated as it gets.

            In terms of Feministe “going commercial” – the ads were taken on to obviate the costs of maintaining a massive database on a secure server. Some months there’s a small excess to share with the contributing bloggers, some months there is not. If Feministe’s advertisements had ever been meant to make a reliable income for anybody, then it would be structured very differently.

        44. You know, I am also sick and tired of this, “I feel hurt and insulted by these critical things you’re saying about me. I really feel that you should take them back.”

          No. Of course not!

          I would have no idea how to communicate privately with Mac — I’ve never done so, outside of the comment sections here — and have no interest in spreading any of this to any other website. I happened to see her comment because it was at a place that I normally check on a daily basis anyway.

          This. This. You happened to see her comment and then you happened to bring it over here so you could use her to stir shit.

          You knew I said that I felt unsafe around Mac, and didn’t want to comment in the face of those not-infrequent-enough tirades. (You know I’m not the only one who made that particular complaint; Mac doesn’t dispute it.)

          You knew that Mac had voluntarily – proactively! – taken a break from the blog so that I would feel more comfortable commenting here – and presumably to try to work this out. Until last night, I had a lot of respect for that! It was a lot better than what I had expected.

          First you encouraged everyone to dismiss what I’d said, even though you know perfectly well that other people have been bothered by Mac’s outbursts.

          Then you made a point of telling me that Mac thinks my feelings about all of this are ridiculous, and brought Mac’s comments over here to this thread so that I could see them. So that I would get pissed off at Mac and probably assume that the whole no-tirades thing was out the window! Mac, whose behavior towards me has actually been pretty fucking stellar! Recently!

          Oh, but of course you aren’t going to spread this to other websites. All about the boundaries, is Donna L.

          And you know, I give Mac the benefit of the doubt here. I think Mac isn’t going back on the “listening” thing. I think Mac isn’t going to turn around and mock me for saying that I felt unsafe. I think Mac really will be nice enough to leave me alone.

          (Well, I’m almost sure.)

          This is all you.

          You don’t say really nasty things to people very often, but this manipulative bullying shit you pull is just as bad.

        45. To say nothing of “the lurkers support me over email.” I can’t even with that. Sure, OK. And there are hate sites populated by former Shakesville commenters about that site, despite its rather draconian commenting rules. And the old Pandagon commenters, in my memory, thought the commenters here were pussy-footing crybabies. And I think that Shakesville’s rules of engagement would be intolerable to me. And round it goes.

          These people aren’t commenters – and they’re not commenters at other blogs who think this blog culture is stupid. They’re former bloggers. That’s not generally true.

          Although there is a cadre of Amanda survivors: a bunch of people who wrote for Pandagon under her and then found out, after devoting a lot of work in good faith, that they were furthering the career prospects of a malignant narcissist.

          Of course, they have only themselves to blame. They should have just taken a more active role in fixing Pandagon, since they were so valuable to the site.

        46. Sorry to pipe up.

          @piny: What I said to DonnaL was two sentences and the entirety of it was that I did not perceive her saying she missed me as boundary-crossing in the least, re your comment:

          given the way you just treated Mac’s insistence that Mac needs a time out?

          and that I was sorry she was catching shit for her comment on it.

          For the rest, I’m still reading and listening. I in no way mocked your feeling of safety/lack thereof in my comment. Just wanted to clear the air re: Donna because I don’t want her thought badly of because of my stupid comment. Going back to silence now.

        47. Now you’re just flat out engaging in fabrication, Piny. Because you couldn’t possibly believe that what you just said is true. I didn’t quote Mac at all, and certainly didn’t bring over here what Mac thinks about your feelings about “all this.” Pay attention for once, because you’re clearly not doing it now. I brought over what she said about your accusation that I was being abusive to her by saying I missed her! Who the hell else was better suited to comment on that completely ludicrous accusation, and assure me that it wasn’t true, than she was? She was expressing sympathy towards my having to take the brunt of your behavior. You had no damn business saying that to me in the first place. How arrogant can one person possibly be? You don’t get to decide that and accuse me of being abusive towards her, on her behalf. And all for saying that I missed her!? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you serious?

          Not to mention that once again, you’re singling only me out among the several people who said they missed her. I wasn’t the first. If anyone — anyone — has been bullying and abusive on this thread, it’s you.

        48. But you’re all about making accusations that have nothing to do with the truth, aren’t you? Asserting that I had Machiavellian motives for trying to defend myself against claims that I’m being abusive to Mac by agreeing with others that I miss her, because apparently I’m disturbing her fragile constitution and tempting her to break her alleged vow to stay away from here? That I was trying to tempt her over here so she could yell at you and be mean to you again? Maybe that’s how your mind works. Mine doesn’t. People who dream up theories like that generally get accused of wearing tinfoil hats (sorry, Hattie!), but I don’t know you well enough to draw that conclusion. All I know is that your behavior in this thread towards me has been reprehensible and inexcusable and I’m asking you to just fucking stop. I hope someday you read what you’ve written in this thread again, and actually demonstrate some self-awareness, and realize how ridiculously over the top and infantile your conduct towards me has been.

          You don’t say really nasty things to people very often, but this manipulative bullying shit you pull is just as bad.

          I’ll bet you don’t even realize how hilarious this. For you, this is an apology, I guess. Because obviously you tried to find something to support your insupportable accusation that I’m just a mean, nasty person who’s hostile to anyone other than my friends. And you couldn’t find a goddamn thing, could you? But you’re not enough of a mensch to apologize, because it’s all about you and your angst about this place, isn’t it? It’s all about your anger towards me because in one goddamn thread I reacted badly to your condescension. Which you’ve repeated here in spades.

        49. In other words, not one single word you’ve said about my alleged pattern of bad conduct here has any basis in anything I’ve ever actually said or done here, including “and” and “the.” It’s Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman all over again!

          I really don’t know if you’ve been deliberately lying or if it’s that your antipathy towards me simply makes it impossible for you to see the truth. But because you’re so unwilling to admit that you’re wrong, and are so willing to continue to make stuff up that makes you seem to be right, it doesn’t really matter. You are not the person being badly treated in this thread. Not by any standard. Please stay away from me. If anybody else had spent the day accusing me of all this nonsense, I would have called for a giraffe. But I have little doubt that if I had done so, you would just use it as another excuse to accuse me of persecuting you.

          PS to moderators: please leave in moderation my comments that are in moderation.

        50. Speaking only for myself here, and not for other current Feministe bloggers: I certainly don’t see ALL blogging as the intern stage to punditry, but plenty of people do [eta: see their own blogging as a gateway to paid writing gigs], and they’ve been pitching guest posts to Feministe for a long time(…).

          I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s not really how this site started, and it really doesn’t apply to a lot of the departures. This framework Feministe was left with, where Jill did short-hit poliblogging and guest posters came on to provide various other content, and you guys moderated and did other things: it’s not actually what it used to be like. Most of the bloggers here were amateurs, and a lot of them didn’t really think of themselves as anything else. This was an end in itself, and what it purported to be was enough.

          And, let’s be real here: most of them can’t. Most of us cannot survive as freelance writers; most of us do not appeal to paid sites; most of us have professions that are not writing. That’s not less true of the people who contributed volumes of text to this site, or the people who were very invested in the writing they did here.

          I don’t think that there’s any problem with having interchanges between paid sites and blogs – and I don’t begrudge anyone any success. Except Amanda.

          But you were maybe around for all of this, and you remember that a lot of people complained about the flattening effect this money idea had on feminist writing. You remember how many people were upset about suddenly finding out that they were being viewed as potentially marketable. You remember people interrogating the definition of “marketable.” And you have to remember the cynicism that crept around – remember how people speculate that Mai’a was left twisting in the wind for hits?

          You probably also remember the pretty striking demographic disparities between all the writers who got paid and the ones who didn’t – especially several years ago, never mind the partial reparations that are going on now.

          And you must remember how a great many of those people were labeled jealous, bitter, uncooperative, lazy people who should have simply solved all the problems they complained about.

          People might come here in the hopes of getting a paid gig, but they didn’t leave because it didn’t pay – and they definitely didn’t leave because it didn’t lead to a career in feminist journalism. It’s an ignorant, ahistorical version of events, it doesn’t apply to anyone but Jill (who AFAIK is just fine), and there is no reason to believe it.

          1. I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s not really how this site started, and it really doesn’t apply to a lot of the departures.

            I never claimed it applied to any of the departures, and I don’t know that anybody else has either. There’s a big difference between the many bloggers who have been part Project Guest Blogger in the early years, and people who went on from Project Guest Blogger to be regular posters here for months/years afterwards, and the people who have had their posts published here using the general Guest Blogger byline. To conflate them is to muddy issues.

            This framework Feministe was left with, where Jill did short-hit poliblogging and guest posters came on to provide various other content, and you guys moderated and did other things: it’s not actually what it used to be like.

            Yes, Feministe has changed, as blogging generally has changed. Various social media platforms have eaten into a lot of the discussion space that blogs used to occupy, because many people prefer them for a variety of reasons. With fewer people commenting on blogs in general, the pool of potential co-bloggers and guest-bloggers has shrunk. Blogs have had to adapt to this change in the discussion environment.

            Most of the bloggers here were amateurs, and a lot of them didn’t really think of themselves as anything else. This was an end in itself, and what it purported to be was enough.

            See, this is where you seem to think something fundamental has changed about Feministe, and I don’t see it. Most of the bloggers here are still amateurs, and their contributions are still an end in themselves, and that is still enough. There are fewer regular posters, and that makes a big difference to the feel of the site as a whole – but how can it be an amateur/professional divide when the site barely pays for itself?

            But you were maybe around for all of this, and you remember that a lot of people complained about the flattening effect this money idea had on feminist writing.

            Actually I missed most of that. There was a long time where my only contributions to Feministe where keeping the software maintained, for which I was paid my normal webwrangling fees. There was a lot of other stuff going on in my life, and I decided that limiting my time on most blogs for a few years was what I needed to do right then. So I had to catch up with the gist of what you reference much later, and as a result have almost certainly missed a lot of the details.

            People might come here in the hopes of getting a paid gig, but they didn’t leave because it didn’t pay – and they definitely didn’t leave because it didn’t lead to a career in feminist journalism. It’s an ignorant, ahistorical version of events, it doesn’t apply to anyone but Jill (who AFAIK is just fine), and there is no reason to believe it.

            I absolutely agree with you, and note that I for one have never said any such thing.

        51. I never claimed it applied to any of the departures, and I don’t know that anybody else has either. There’s a big difference between the many bloggers who have been part Project Guest Blogger in the early years, and people who went on from Project Guest Blogger to be regular posters here for months/years afterwards, and the people who have had their posts published here using the general Guest Blogger byline. To conflate them is to muddy issues.

          EG has made that claim several times. She has flat-out rejected the assertion that a significant number of people have left this site because they can’t stand to be here or got hurt trying. She has claimed that people have either (a) drifted away, no hard feelings, to other social-media platforms or pursuits or (b) drifted away because they want to get paid and either can do it elsewhere or can’t do it here. Or if they’re me, opted to split their time between anger benders here and my rage still in the tumblr backwoods.

          (And you know, tumblr isn’t just a new platform like facebook – it’s the newest blogging platform, and its popularity among certain discontents seems to coincide with things like the various Hugogates (there were, what, three?). I don’t think everyone’s attracted to the site – I think a lot of people started supplementing with it and wound up staying with it after the center dropped out of this place and its contemporaries.)

          And don’t misunderstand me: I am not talking about Project Guest Blogger alone, okay? Even that is kind of a latter formalization of this whole process – there wasn’t this Guest Blogger vs. Summer Blogger vs. Permanent Blogger vs. The Blogger Everyone Associates with the Site. Guest bloggers tended to take an extra portion of shit because they were outsiders – and I think some of that time because Feministe (and I mean the community as a whole, not management consciously) was in the process of, well, divesting from a lot of less-marketable people. That and their compressed schedule put a lot of this in sharper relief, but they weren’t the only ones.

          I don’t think it’s muddying the issue to simply treat this as a general problem. I agree that some of these arrangements are more naturally transient or officially transactional than others, but I don’t think that really matters. More anonymity, less attack doesn’t change what happens when your relationship to this site becomes personal.

          And you know, if you get people on a temporary basis – and moreover people who seem to think they are already writing short pieces for the Entertainment section at Salon, circa anytime since The Sopranos premiered – this cruelty trap is going to be solved with denatured content and comment.

          That’s maybe a valid management decision, but…it’s the negative reflection of this. It’s not a trend. It’s not just the natural outgrowth of exposure to blogging a lá Jezebel, or the natural obsolescence of, well, the format that looked pretty much exactly the same as what you see all over tumblr now. It means that people feel unsafe saying anything here, developing work and a history here – it’s just that they have learned to function with that additional degree of cynicism and constraint. I don’t think it counts as a solution.

          And I will never agree (with EG, mind) that this is the way of all feminist blog, I will never agree that Amanda plus Jill plus Courtney plus Liss plus Jessica equal the inevitable, that this is just how commenters go.

        52. And you know, one reason Feministe may get a lot of grief for this is that it was a standout at first – setting aside whatever happened later.

          Lauren was not part of the Full Frontal Feminism target demographic, and she attracted a lot of people who weren’t either. Feministe offered a certain level of welcome to people who didn’t connect with Jessica Valenti,* and that reputation stuck around for a surprisingly long time.

          This place was kind of a refuge from a feminist politic that assumed everyone was a twentysomething white (straight, cis, upper-middle-class, college-educated, childless) woman living in a coastal city. It welcomed and gave voice to the people who could never, ever become professional feminists.

          There were always the Big Three – Feministing, Pandagon, and Feministe – but Feministe was always somehow different. Even when it didn’t manage to live up to its reputation. I think that may have been why – and I think that might be why this has so many undertones of betrayal rather than business as usual.

          This tension between marketable feminism and the Other kind was never clarified, or really dealt with until it was too late. I think the transmission problems were ignored – and I think that awareness of the basic economics of all this was itself a demographic disparity.

          *People might not remember now, but A Certain Jizzlord was very vocal in his defense of FFF (If you want to mod this out as a violation of Feministe’s No H*** policy, tigtog, I completely understand – but linking seemed worse, and I think he’s pretty key to this dynamic. Nobody performed this dance better than he did):

          Feminism has never had so many powerful non-white, non-heterosexual, non-able bodied, non-middle-classes voices. Can we do better? Sure. Could Jessica’s book have done better? I don’t think so. It’s pretty darned inclusive as it is.

          (…)

          As we build and expand a movement, it’s vital that no group gets left behind. But at times, as in any family, the criticism of our loved ones is harsher and uglier than the criticism of our actual opponents. This has been an ugly week in the feminist blogosphere, with many folks feeling exasperated, misrepresented and hurt.

          Etc. Etc.

          1. piny, I don’t think I’m the person to field your points. My primary blogging identity has always been at my own place, Hoyden about Town. I can’t speak to the dynamics perceived by others who may have identified (at least temporarily) primarily as Feministe bloggers – it simply isn’t my experience, and I don’t want to presume to speak for others on this.

          2. BTW, trans_commie suggested it up-thread, and I think now is the time, to redirect this subthread to #spillover. There’s a new Open Thread that’s over 24 hours old, so it’s time for this one to close and let that one have its due.

      3. I feel very wary of posting on a lot of the threads here. Partly it’s because a lot of it is US-centric and I don’t know who the people being discussed are, but it’s also that this feels like anything but a safe space a lot of the time. It’s almost as if the sub-head quip about the sanctimonious women’s studies set were being taken seriously.

        Can’t say any more or it’ll be “the lurkers support me in email!” territory. 😛

        1. I’m not sure Feministe is intended to be an entirely “safe space,” beyond certain fundamentals on which I would hope we all agree.

          1. Honestly, I don’t think it’s actually possible for any space to be an entirely “safe space”. The best any space can realistically hope for is “an intentional and accountable space”.

        2. The problem here, as in quite a few other SJ spaces, is that people think not having to moderate your tone means personal attacks, playing the man not the ball and being generally unpleasant.

          When things get heated, things swiftly turn to personal denunciations on here, as if you know anyone from a few comments on here.

          The “miss you mac” is a bit rich, because as piny quite rightly pointed out, she was one of the worst offenders for launching into personal attacks on people.

          I don’t claim to “know” mac, I can only go on her comments here and I am sure I’ve seen people be banned for less.

          I’ve read and lurked here for years and in all that time, there’s always been the same perception of the Feministe commentariat. I think that far too often, people who seem to do nothing but stir and make trouble get coddled here because they make the right noises on certain issues. It kills a community as it seems to have done here.

        3. Clarification: I probably misused the term safe space. I’m thinking safe as in not going to get personally abused. Safe to speak if you don’t already have all the jargon, all the insider knowledge. I’m one of the lucky people who isn’t subject to triggers from horrible events. I haven’t copped the pile-ons and endless bickering that crop up in too many threads, but I’ve seen them, and it’s very unpleasant indeed, and not encouraging. It’s not even like this place is troll-heavy (at least these days – was it, earlier?) and regulars have a reason to be wary of newcomers.

        4. @piny

          I’ve been lurking and/or reading this site for almost 10 years (yikes!) and have always appreciated your posts/comments (even when I disagreed with you), and I miss your input.

        5. I’ve read and lurked here for years and in all that time, there’s always been the same perception of the Feministe commentariat.

          Yes, I agree. Different people, same dynamic. The reputation is well deserved. But is this really so unique to this particular site? Is this endemic to all online communication? Are feminist sites held to a higher and more noble standard relating to societal constructions of femininity?

        6. trees –

          Yes, I agree. Different people, same dynamic. The reputation is well deserved. But is this really so unique to this particular site? Is this endemic to all online communication? Are feminist sites held to a higher and more noble standard relating to societal constructions of femininity?

          I am only really familiar with Feministe, Pharyngula, Hoyden About Town and Manboobz, where I spend the vast majority of my online time. Feministe and Pharyngula are the ones where commenting has an “Is this worth risking” feel to it.

          I come away from Manboobz – a site that mocks the most abhorrent, extreme misogyny, things that can be enraging or depressing – mostly feeling good and like it’s been worth taking part in the comments. Off topic is on topic and we save our real sniping for the trolls. Yet the atmosphere (and, yes, intent of the site) are uplifting. I usually come away from Feministe on a downer. Yes, it’s a serious site, not a mockery site, and the rules are very different, but does that mean the atmosphere has to be so walking-on-eggshells for fear of being jumped on in disapproval? That’s the cumulative effect the place has on me.

  4. I request that those interested in equal rights for women visit http://www.FreeJamieHein.com. If the information that you find there makes sense, please consider signing the petition to Nevada Governor Sandoval to grant clemency to Jamie Hein.

    Thank you

  5. [CN: rape, self-hatred, transmisogyny]

    I have no choice but to return to the Bay Area soon. I won’t move there until I get to move into my brother’s place in the Santa Cruz area and I get the letter from my therapist for HRT. I’ll try to get a part-time job there to help my brother pay for the rent. It’s the only way we can stop my dad from having financial control over us – he wants to help pitch in and pay the rent, and it may be his way of making us dependent on him again. I can’t stay here much longer because my step-dad wants me to get a job, and not only can I not easily find one, but I don’t even know how long I’m staying here, so maintaining a job will prove to be difficult.

    I just know that going back to California means that I will once again be within easy reach of concerned family members coming to tell me how I’m “selfish”, “perverted”, or “gay” for wanting to “become a woman.” I highly doubt I will even be able to transition because of the likely family outrage. I feel useless and pathetic – I wonder if I’ll ever be able to live freely. My main aspirations are transitioning and joining/forming an anarchist affinity group with like-minded people to tackle social and political issues. But maybe I’ll never be able to do those things in my lifetime. I’ll just remain who I currently am: an ugly, ineffectual, worthless, weak “teenage boy” lacking any hope and making life harder for everyone else.

    It also doesn’t help that last night I had a nightmare in which I actually was a beautiful, fully-transitioned woman…who was violently raped for being a trans girl almost immediately. It was the most graphic, violent rape nightmare I’ve had in a long time – even in the nightmare, the violation felt real. Sometimes I wonder if such nightmares are life metaphors, although perhaps that interpretation is comically dark and cynical.

    IDK. Sorry if I’m being too negative. I wish I could say more positive things.

    1. I’m sorry to hear that you’re feeling so constrained in your choices right now, trans_commie. I wish you the best of luck in finding a job that gives you more financial independence so you have more options soon.

  6. So I just watched that lone ranger movie. I knew better, but morbid curiosity led me to watch so I could see for myself how offensive the tonto character is. Frankly, that’s the least horrible part. The scene near the end where the cavalry just noes down the Comanche…It’s sickening. Then, while bodies are floating down the river, a joke is made about the fucking horse. I was angry through most of the movie, and now I’m just terribly depressed. The disrespect…the callousness, just cold hearted jokes at the expense of NDNS. And on the heels of the Colbert mess with so called allies shoving us to the back of the line so they can be heard. I just don’t like this world anymore. I think I’m just going to stay in bed tomorrow and ignore this world.

    1. My god, I take my hat off to you for sitting thorough that. A couple of friends wanted to see it, and I tried (unsuccessfully) explain why Depp’s character is grotesque and disrespectful (at best).

      They ended up not going. Why? No idea. At least they didn’t spend their money on it.

      (Goes off to Google the horse joke)

      1. Tonto is sitting on the river bank watching the remaining bodies float by when the lone ranger sits next to him. They hear a noise and the horse is standing in a tree, then tonto says ( all indianified) “something wrong with that horse”.

        1. Tonto is sitting on the river bank watching the remaining bodies float by when the lone ranger sits next to him. They hear a noise and the horse is standing in a tree, then tonto says ( all indianified) “something wrong with that horse”.

          I don’t know what to say. I wonder if the audience thought it was funny. ( I venture to say yes, yes they did.)

  7. Shit, pheeno – I’m really sorry. I did NOT see the movie because I knew it would be a racist, appropriating, white-person-indulging pike of CRAP. I am horrified that it’s even worse than I imagined.

  9. So people with good memory may remember my mates and I used to vlog here, before we vanished at the start of this year. Well, actually we’ve been labouring on it behind the scenes the whole time, working to completely reboot the vlog — the visual designs, the fonts used, the efficiency of our microphone setups, everything. Basically we wanted to start from scratch and consciously think through every step.

    Now it’s done, and it looks and sounds great. (Fat Steve would be proud.) But looking it over, I wonder if when we upload it and people here see it, they’ll say, “Gee, this looks great, but it deviates too far from what a Feministe vlog should be.” Of course I don’t know that’ll happen. I can only wait and see.

    (tigtog, when it’s on the WordPress server, should I email Jill, you, or both?)

      2. Over here, “belt and suspenders” is a common expression. I guess I didn’t realize that the exact equivalent is common elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Which came first, I have no idea!

  10. My professor just had “his friend” Laura Mulvey skype into our film studies graduate seminar. She’s an absolutely delightful person, and gave some interesting personal insights surrounding the famous Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema/male gaze essay (though we mostly spoke about her more recent work). I was trying to explain this to my non-academic friends by saying, “It’s like if you had a graduate seminar in basketball and your professor had ‘her good friend Kareem Abdul Jabbar’ skype in.” Absolutely fascinating.

  11. Content Note: Homophobia

    This was so unexpected: I am on a pet loss chat room and I asked one of the regulars if they watched Frasier.

    The “brother” character is played by David Hyde Peirce who is gay in real life. He plays a straight character on Frasier

    Me: Do you watch Frasier?

    Him: at times I do

    Me: I adore Frasier

    Him: I don’t like his brother

    Me: I do like his brother.

    Him: I like Frasier but I don’t like his brother
    Because of what he is I won’t allow him on my TV screen

    D: D: D:

    He left a second later. I was stunned, but I should not have been surprised: He doesn’t believe in evolution, and a couple of other people chimed in their agreement:

    “Whenever someone says we are descended from apes and monkeys I just laugh at them and walk away”

    D: Naive, privileged me. I didn’t expect to see that there of all places. The owner and maintainer keeps the chat room and message board 100% a safe space. Still, it wasn’t anything I could report him on.

  12. I don’t know where you get those adorable animal pics, but they are fantastic. Thank you for sharing them with us!

    1. It’s generally a rush job on Fridays where I google Creative Commons images for some animal I’ve recently seen on the news or my social media timelines. I’m always happy to see links on these Open Threads to adorable photos of animals I haven’t previously featured, to add to the pool of contenders. I like unusual artworks and architecture too, or picturesque landscapes.

  13. Trigger warning for sexual assault:

    Has anyone else seen the Amy Schumer sketch where she’s playing a Call of Duty-like game and her character gets raped? It was mentioned on Shakesville today, and I actually thought it was brilliant.

    Brief description: Amy and a guy are playing CoD (or something). Dude walks out of the room, and her character gets raped. She gets a prompt asking her if she wants to report it. The prompt then asks, “Are you sure?” Then the prompt tells her he has a wife and kids. She commits, ends up having to fill out a ton of paperwork, then wins her suit – only to have the offending soldier immediately reinstated.

    I like it because it should demonstrate how ridiculous this shit would be in a video game – but it actually happens all the time. Anyone else?

    1. I’ve watched that sketch after reading about it on SV, too, because I suspected Liz was kind of missing the point. I’m a huge gamer nerd and by the way the scene was summarized, I initially thought it was (mainly) going to be more like social commentary on gamer culture and how disgustingly hostile towards women it is in general.

      After all, how far away was that skit from e.g. what Jenny Haniver was writing about (TW for abortion and rape threats) over at NKA last year? Stuff like this happens all the time when you’re gaming while female, and it usually needs a massive shitstorm before any actions are taken.

      But you’re right that it can be read more obviously as being about sexual assault in the military and I agree with you that it was executed pretty well.

      1. The gamer interpretation is totally legitimate too (and probably more accurate as I’m apparently super prone into reading too far into things). My video game playing is limited to Mario and other one player games on the Wii systems, but I’ve been reading a bit about online gamer culture on The Mary Sue – the misogynism in online chat systems is gross and makes me cranky. Whatever – all around, I loved that sketch.

    2. It’s important to remember Liss doesn’t care about survivors nearly as much as she does about maintain her own brand; this is a women who’s called survivors “rape trolls” for bringing up President Clinton’s history of sexual misconduct on a thread she wanted to reserve for praising his speech at the DNC.

  14. Hey everyone, sorry to bother you with a request after not having posted here for a while, but I’m coming out to my mom tommorrow and, to put it mildly, I’m pretty nervous, so I’d appreciate any encouragement/well-wishes/good thought/prayers/whatever else you’re willing to send my way.

    2. One of my favourite blessings: May God(dess) be between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.

      I’m also hoping this won’t involve harm at all. Best of luck and jedi hugs if you’d like them.

    3. Wishing you luck, SophiaBlue, and the warmth, acceptance, and love that a good friend of mine got from his parents when he came out to them as gay forty years ago, and that everyone coming out deserves.

    4. (((hugs))) You’ll be fine. One piece of advice:
      Never come out to your parents in the car
      My friends kid did, and she said it was a long car ride home.
      (her parents are great btw)
      😀

    5. I wish you well, SophiaBlue. I don’t know anything about your mom or your relationship with her, otherwise I would try to offer some advice. Sending good thoughts your way.

    6. SophiaBlue, I’ll be thinking of you and sending you all my good wishes for the best possible outcome: all the love and acceptance and support that you, and everyone else in your situation, deserve.

    7. Best of luck with it SophiaBlue. I don’t have a faith with blessings to send, but you have my warmest wishes for a supportive reaction.

  15. Thank you so much for the kind words, they helped me out a lot today. It went well; my mom was surprised, but supportive, and we ended up spending a lot of time talking about my plans for the future, and how I was going to talk about this with the rest of the family.

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