Thursday, September 21, 2006

Fuck.

Another one bites the dust: Vociferate, who seemed like she was just making a comeback from an earlier, less permanent-seeming shutdown, and whom I was feeling like I was just starting to get to know. For the record, Andrea, if you read this: I am sorry for all the tsuris you and your sister are going through, and had no other agenda than to try to talk to you and anyone else who was willing to, you know, talk, and get past some of the Eternal Subject Wars to maybe some other subjects.

and am sorry some people are being such relentless fuckwits. And no, it's not about me, either.

Hope you see fit to come back one of these days, and good luck.

while I'm on the general subject: Kaka Mak, would love to see you back online whenever you're ready. I miss your blog and your presence.

27 comments:

Winter said...

I'm getting concerned to see several younger feminists stopping blogging due to disillusionment recently. I keep meaning to write a post about it but hardly know where to start. I've been so out of it myself recently that I'm not familar with the events to which Andrea refers, but I really hope she decides to return to blogging when she feels able.

antiprincess said...

oh. don't get me started.

belledame222 said...

heh. -sigh-. yeah.

You know, and I get peoples' knee jerking and so on; it's just, finally, can you -ever- turn it off? Some people can, even people i've had serious contretemps with, and for that i respect them. Others may not ever raise their voice or swear or say outright slurs (or in some cases, then again, they might), but in my book their -utter- rigidity, their utter apparent refusal to look behind the ideology and see the person trying to reach out, well, I find that contemptible. And frustrating as hell. Why do people do this?

A White Bear said...

Yikes. Perhaps one of the problems with the online feminist community is the other side of its virtue; we finally get a space where it's safe and normal and valued to talk about women's issues and suddenly we feel the narcissism of small differences. I know they don't seem like small differences within such nasty comment threads, but compared to the community I live in IRL, the online feminist community is, theoretically, amazing in its size and diversity.

Online, though, we can't help pecking each other to death over things we have no business criticizing in each other. "She says she's a feminist, but..."

Can't we all just join hands and say, "Ann Althouse says she's a feminist, but..." and stop picking on women who actually support pro-woman policies?

A White Bear said...

And also, uh:

dumbbell222?

What the fuck? I wouldn't say something that glib and dismissive about my worst political enemies, much less someone whose main intellectual project seems to be trying to get women to stop hurting each other.

I should add that it's pretty clear I have no commerce with the Interfeminist Squabbles. You're a brave one, BD.

Amber Rhea said...

dumbbell222?

I just had a flashback to grade school.

antiprincess said...

I swear, there is not enough hairspray, eyeliner, and strawberry glitter lip gloss IN THE WORLD that would armor me adequately for this battle.

Zan said...

Heh, it took me a while to figure out who she was talking about because well, Belle's not dumb ;)

You know, I'm a bit loathe to comment on a lot of the 'bigger' blogs in the FemmeO'Shire because I'm always afraid of being ignored or insulted. I tend to view everything through a very person-oriented lens -- which is to say, what does this do to the actual people living this experience? Actual people are more important than theory any day. So a lot of my posts and comments tend to be a bit personal. But it sometimes feels like you can't be personal and honest and truth-about-yourself if those things don't fit with the Program.

Bah. I hate when decent bloggers stop, because we need the variety.

spotted elephant said...

I had a false moment of joy, I went to Kaka's old site, and there was a blog there! Turns out it's someone in NZ who deleted my comment asking if it was our Kaka. (How could there be 2 Kaka Maks?)

I know Kim wanted to stop being Kaka Mak, but I hope she returns as Kim. I really miss her.

belledame222 said...

WB:

As a neighbor of ours when I was a kid in Indiana (for a few years) would say about her no-account husband, whenever he'd uttered something particularly boorish:

"Consider the source."

Really, it is to laugh.

belledame222 said...

SE: how weird. I know people can take over old domains, but I'd think they'd change the name...

I get that she wanted to stop doing that blog, but I dunno why she wanted to nuke the whole thing.

belledame222 said...

And I agree wrt Ann but also more in line with what zan said: Althouse's claims of being a feminist are risible not even because of the policies and people she supports but because, as she has just revealed, she is an utter fuckstain. Feminist=cares about making womens' lives better; Althouse just completely gratutitously did her utmost to make life really shitty for another woman, using time-old misogynist-approved techniques: thus, voila.

Not that i'm saying her positions aren't loathsome and risible too (Michelle Malkin is a feminist?? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA. oh. god. i don't think even MALKIN makes that claim, does she?); just, well, I didn't know who the hell she was before, but boy, that's one fuck of a first impression.

and then again: the fact that she's a loathsome fuck and the fact that she supports loathsome policies and people, well, i suppose there are instances where one doesn't HAVE to follow from the other, but in this case: pretty textbook, no real surprise.

Bimbo said...

Once again we all come together as a team to perpetuate the myth that feminism is a thing of the past, that we are now hostile martyrs divided into 10K camps by excruciating minutiae. Basic Human Decency 101 courses for everyone. I'll be in the bar.

Anonymous said...

The idea of ’safe spaces for women’ is frequently a joke too, since all too often what this actually means is ’safe for women who agree with me, unsafe for women who don’t’.

Unacceptable that ANYONE feels this way. Totally unacceptable.

Spiky said...

Well, now that that's cleared up...

belledame222 said...

And WB, delphyne in that thread said pretty much what BL has been saying all along: that radical feminism takes the position that male sexual abuse of women is the heart of the problem, "pornstitution" is a part of that abuse, and therefore no quarter can be asked or given.

Obviously not everyone who calls herself a radical feminist buys this, and I think even a lot of other people who do more or less take this line are more open to...interpretation.

Blackamazon said...

DUMBELLE 222

*blinks*
*blinks harder*


I keep repeating I am young and therefore prone to being a bit on teh hair trigger side but

Is she out her mind

and and


*searches for machete*

belledame222 said...

O, okay, I hadn't realized that FF (the author of the above comment) and this one were (apparently?) the same person.

http://pippiblog.wordpress.com/about-2/

Well, then, I'm not surprised she's disgruntled about other peoples' lax standards (in allowing the likes of me to post). Bless her heart.

Alon Levy said...

I know I'm going to come off as smug again, but if you want to get radfems to compromise, you can't talk about compromising all the time. The side that keeps wanting to compromise is usually the side that ends up looking weaker.

There are several things you can do. One is pack up and make a conscious decision to ignore the radfems. That's what I did. A few shrill anti-trans comments aside, Feministing has been radfem-free for the last 2-3 months; radicalism there is more racial than gender-based.

Another is to go on the offensive. That generally involves pissing off a large number of people you'd often prefer to get along with.

Yet another is to combine the two, but that involves doing a good-cop/bad-cop routine with another blogger. That's essentially what the libfem blogosphere is doing: one or two people are engaging Twisty (though less confrontationally than I'd like) while the rest just pretend she doesn't exist.

belledame222 said...

-sigh-. Alon, thanks, but I'm good here, really. "Radfems" aren't a monolith, point o' fact. I don't deal with monoliths. The people who DO act like a monolith, well, that's where i say sayonara; but at the end of the day, the label really doesn't matter much. Either the light's on or it's not; the rest is commentary. Or gravy. What you will.

belledame222 said...

...tbh, there are a number of "libfems" I'm far less enamored with than I am with certain radfems. For example. For a number of reasons.

Alon Levy said...

Yeah, I know what you mean, Belledame. I don't know the specific people you're talking about, but I understand the general point.

Still, if you're pissed about a segment of the blogosphere, it makes a lot more sense to go to another segment than to abandon the blogosphere.

belledame222 said...

Oh, I'm not abandoning anything. And Andrea has very good personal reasons for putting her blogging on hold, besides her fed-upness.

belledame222 said...

Jack: there're still some parrot feathers on yer shoulder...

soopermouse said...

Why am I not surprised?
Been there, done that... and learned a couple of things about the radfemosphere... namely that I am better off outside of it.

The tactiques of bullying everyone who disagrees with the generally accepted points- see Delphyne, remind me fondly of my youth under communism.

Do not get me wrong, I am a radical feminist because I choose to identify myself as such. However, as far as the general policies and the rest of the blah, I have said it before, the hivemind can go fuck itself.

This is bullying, and I am not having it.

Alon Levy said...

What do you mean, Andrea - are they trolling your comments? Are they hounding you on other blogs?

Maybe radfems are just different from the fanatics I know, who tend to get bored after a while and leave.

Amber Rhea said...

Bless her heart.

Ha! And how.

Andrea, I know what you mean about it seeming like people are "following you around" to harass you on the internet. Maybe that sounds like hyperbole but I don't know of better wording. And, as Belledame said wrt my blog... (and this is currently my header quote), "You do seem to have a handful of particularly fuckwitacious people who have been moths to your flame."

I mean, I disabled comments on my post about rape today, just because I don't want to deal with the bullshit that I KNOW would come.