I feel like posting this. My take is that it's easy for a white guy or two (I don't know anything about mjd, Mr. Irrelevant is white) to sit around talking about how irresponsible Porter's behavior was, because most white guys don't have the experience of having their car searched and being cuffed after parking illegally. That makes it harder to understand how Porter can have been so angry.
And yet Porter's behavior was certainly irresponsible, and manifested male privilege too. (Kind of like in Brokeback Mountain; Heath Ledger is oppressed, but he couldn't act the way he does without an assumed male privilege.)
Oh right, except when I'm the unpleasant one. Then it's all, "ban this," "ban that," "stop oppressing apo."
Oh right, except when I'm the unpleasant one. Then it's all, "ban this," "ban that," "stop oppressing apo."
I almost put the line about how only you can be uncongenial in the post. But I'm all about love today.
Insofar as I've had any influence on the tone of the blog, it's been to try to make it a place where it's ok to err on the side of giving offense and hurting feelings
Then it was probably a bad idea to turn over the reins to a bunch of humorless femi-nazis. Although Apo hurts my feelings regularly, so you did a good job there.
5: Do you mean only I am allowed to be uncongenial, or that only I am capable of achieving such uncongeniality that it's Beyond the Pale?
Because, really, either one is quite flattering. I'm feeling the love here.
Unf loves you.
You never send me flowers any more.
As I was telling Uma Thurman the other day, the key fact about Unfogged is that it is a place where you can be uncongenial in a congenial way, and where offense is often given but never in a way intended to hurt feelings.
Anyone who would suspend Lee Siegel and doesn't love Gary Farber is just jealous of them both, and is stupid, besides!
I bet you have a thing for Ezra Klein's mother.
But as someone on my weblog commented, the result is that Unfogged is like "a nitrous oxide-induced new genre of self-parody."
a nitrous oxide-induced new genre of self-parody
This should so be the new tagline.
"a nitrous oxide-induced new genre of self-parody."
That seems not to have been a compliment.
I don't really have time for all the comments on the other thread, but I do wanna say that what I posted wasn't rules for decorum, but advice on how to be a better person. It's true that you can say what you want, but sometimes, saying what you want can show you off to be a jerk. The childfree people were all saying what they wanted. It's fine, great even, that they weren't banned, but they are sucky human beings in at least one respect, and probably others. I don't just want people to behave the way I want them to, I want them to understand the logic behind why they're pissing people off, and to internalize it. It's not just "don't say this," it's "understand this."
a nitrous oxide-induced new genre of self-parody...a triumph that will renew your faith in the power of literature.
-New York Times Book Review
I actually find 21 troubling. There is a pretty vast sliding scale of sexism, so it is entirely possible to be sexist in a way that is, at worst, a minor sin. I think this is what BPhd was trying to get at in the previous threads with her comments about the "cute shoes": things exist which are mildly sexist that do not require the immediate use of the banhammer to smash out all forms of sexism. So when we start talking about moral blameworthyness in the context of sexism it sets of all kinds of alarm bells. It elides the difference between cardinal sin sexism and venial sin sexism because men only hear the word sexist and think of some crewcutted 50's stereotype slapping his secretary's ass. Is it any surprise that they get defensive?
Well, I don't know about you, but *I* only get defensive when accused of secretly wanting to throw acid in Cindy Crawford's face...
And while "a nitrous oxide-induced new genre of self-parody" was clearly not intended to be a compliment, it is *so* a compliment.
wanting to throw acid in Cindy Crawford's face
I just want to put acid in Crawford, Texas' water supply. I don't think Bush sees enough pretty colors.
7: Oh, come on, Brock. Don't we offend you? We'll have to try harder.
re: 25
Does Unfogged have a villain? I've gathered that w-lfs-n is evil, but he doesn't seem to spend much time actually concocting plots which need thwarting.
It takes several villains to make a proper rogue's gallery. The Flash had Captain Cold AND Captain Boomerang AND the mind-controlling supergenius mad scientist gorilla.
21:"I don't just want people to behave the way I want them to, I want them to understand the logic behind why they're pissing people off, and to internalize it. It's not just "don't say this," it's "understand this.""
I'll do it this weekend, between the dog-walking and the lawn-mowing. Monday will see a whole new me. Is this a thread where I can be a jerk?
Yeah, I know, I know. When people tell me it will take a long time to get to the social democracy, and ground game, and congresscritteres one-by-one, and changing attitudes and framing, my standard answer to such calls for patience and tolerance: GUILLOTINE!
w-lfs-n is traveling right now. His evil is diluted as it passes through the tubes from Finland.
I've gathered that w-lfs-n is evil
Evil? That's not the word that best describes w-lfs-n.
"...AND the mind-controlling supergenius mad scientist gorilla."
That's "Grodd" to you, Mr.
Who can take someone named "Gorilla Grodd" seriously? "Captain Cold", now there's a name to strike fear into your heart. If only Grodd had been named "Ape-X" as God intended.
Apo, do you have some catalog of w-lfs-n related posts just waiting for utilization? Cause dayum, that was some seriously googling if it was from memory.
Also, which humorless feminazi gets to be Dr. Blight?
Glenn, I keep the internet in my back pocket.
I don't just want people to behave the way I want them to, I want them to understand the logic behind why they're pissing people off, and to internalize it.
Uhhh, I don't get this. Why would you want people to internalize the logic if it won't affect their behaviour and create a norm that (you find) more congenial?
Yeah, but you still had to remember some year old pillow-talk to find the right post.
36: She says I don't just want people to behave the way I want them to. It's an "in addition", not an "instead of".
"Why would you want people to internalize the logic if it won't affect their behaviour and create a norm that (you find) more congenial?"
In response to "I don't just want people to behave the way I want them to...."
Note italics.
Tia didn't say she doesn't want people to change their behavior, she said it's not all she wants.
Marat we're poor
and the poor stay poor.
Marat don't make
us wait anymore.
We want our rights,
and we don't care how!
We want our revolution...
now."
Substitute as appropriate.
36:Apparently Dr Slack missed the "just"
I had a similar comment to 38-40 but I abandoned it on preview.
True, I keep a lot of meaningless stuff stored in my head. Unfortunately, it tends to displace data like where are my keys and did I have a meeting scheduled today. IRL, I'm famed for absent-mindedness and space cadetery.
23: Just for clarity, I'm actually not talking about shoes or hot or not threads, but the kind of feminism 101 that will allows you to do my 1-10 without thinking about them, which a not insignificant number of men do, in fact. Some of what fails at feminism 101 is just cluelessness, some of it is active dickishness. Eliminating all of it will make you a better person, yeah, because it's what allows you to hear, and empathize with, and take seriously feminist concerns. I'm using an example as extreme as the childfree people because I want to illustrate that "everyone can say what they want to say" does not mean that no sentiment is going to reflect poorly on the speaker, and some sentiments you'll be better for altering.
If it makes anyone feel any better, the longer version of my post had an extensive description of, and useless apology for, how I was racist at 22, because I failed at anti-racism 101, in that I was in the habit of writing head scratching blog posts about what was worse, racism or the American class structure. I was racist not because I thought a bunch of mean things about people who weren't white, but because I contributed to the atmosphere of disregard and hostility that people of color must experience when they try to talk about racism (perhaps one could say I was "being racist" rather than that "I was a racist"; I don't know if that's a useful distinction), and I now have something of a visceral, emotional understanding of what that might be like (although there certainly might be things I don't and can't understand about it either). I am a better person for not being racist that way anymore. Maybe in a few years I'll have come to understand the way I'm racist now.
Tia can speak for herself, but if I had said "I don't just want people to change, I want them to understand," I would NOT be saying "I want people to change, and to understand why." I would be saying, "I don't unambiguously want people to change. I want people to understand, and then to use that understanding to think, along with me, about what changes are and aren't necessary, and why."
45: so, labeling things as "racism" or "sexism" is beneficial for the aggreived parties, even if such descriptions don't result in better understanding of the problems or better discovery/implementation of solutions?
Look, it's fairly straightforward: if you want to be considered a good person by Tia and a not inconsiderable number of other women, you'll follow the rules. Interpretations of the rules will vary, and different people will cut you more or less slack for violations, but there it is.
Why don't those descriptions result in better understanding?
46: But you probably wouldn't mean, per Dr. Slack's interpretation, that you wanted people to understand but not to change.
There are things that are fine to say among the guys that none of us would dream of saying around our wives or girlfriends. There are discussions it would be great to have in a seminar that are totally tiresome and inappropriate at a dinner party. And there are adminissions and critiques that you'd make in your living room, but not ever on MSNBC.
If I say it on here, I'll say it to your goddamn face.
The problem, of course, is that sometimes hanging out here can become actively unpleasant.
More tedious than anything.
That price, like the lost lives of Iraqi children, seems worth it.
Maybe.
max
['Then again...']
Apparently Dr Slack missed the "just"
My bad.
If it makes anyone feel any better, the longer version of my post had an extensive description of, and useless apology for, how I was racist at 22
I'll give you an anecdote from the other side of the aisle. I was weaned on anti-racism 101, and scoffed then -- and mostly still do, now -- when people would talk about "reverse racism" and such. My worldview was complicated when I met, and dated, someone who saw literally every petty incident in life through the prism of race, right down to seething about it when she didn't get served fast enough in a restaurant or someone didn't sit next to her on the bus. This person once bragged to me about "testing" her white female friends on the question of race by taking them out to Jamaican dancehall nights and abandoning them to their own devices in a room full of strange black men.
I understood the motives behind this, viscerally so. But it horrified me then, and it still does now. I found it a really shitty, sactimonious, psychotic way to treat other people. And it illustrated to me vividly that the tenets of anti-racism 101, taken to an extreme, really could be problematic, counterproductive, and cheapening to the cause one was ostensibly supporting.
I don't think you're doing anything close to that, just to be clear. But that sort of thing is why I'm not as enthusiastic as I could be about things like your post about the rules of decorum, which interpreted loosely enough can be gateways to smaller versions of just that sort of sanctimoniousness. There are many, many ways to be a dick.
re:48
I don't think that can be it though. Or rather, unless we are speaking of good person in a purely metaphysical sense, the evaluation of "good/bad person" is meaningful insofar as it changes the behavior of the evaluator towards the evaluatee. From what I can see, certain types of rules-violations elicity behavior which is qualitatively, not just quanitativaly, different from other types. So what ever theoretical apparatus we use should account for that distinction, the one between the character flaw which should be remedied and the character flaw which is indicative of a bad person.
rules of decorum
Fuck your grandma, Doctor Slack, they're not rules of decorum. Would you please listen? Thank you very much!
I'm not helping. Consider me banned.
50: Indeed.
52: This is a really problematic anecdote. What you're saying is that the actions of *one* asshole person compromised an entire set of well-thought-out principles, and that this causes you to be suspicious of rules that basically boil down to "show respect, and learn to listen." I think it would be fair to say "let's talk about the ways that these kinds of rules can be misunderstood or misused, let's see if we can articulate how to prevent that, let's talk about the inherent problems of identity arguments." But I don't think that being suspicious of the basic points being made really follows from that. (And I think Tia went to some pains to not be making a simple identity-based argument, also.)
49: i'm asking, do they have benefit, independent of such understanding?
Fuck your grandma, Doctor Slack,
Only if you're not averse to digging.
they're not rules of decorum. Would you please listen?
Missed the "just" when I should have caught it, saw one where it wasn't. Very dickish of me. Replace "rules of decorum" w/ "how to be a better person" and read accordingly. Thanks for the correction, Standpipe.
57: Yes, labelling can be beneficial even if people's defensiveness prevents them from actually trying to understand, if it has the minimal effect of getting people to stop saying overtly racist/sexist things. It can also be detrimental, inasmuch as people know that racism and sexism are "bad," and interpret the use of those words as an accusation, and get defensive and shut down. But when that happens, it is the fault of the auditor, not the person pointing out racism/sexism--even if it is nonetheless true that it would be *politic* for the speaker to cushion those words a bit in order to be heard.
it is the fault of the auditor, not the person pointing out racism/sexism--even if it is nonetheless true that it would be *politic* for the speaker to cushion those words a bit in order to be heard.
So close, B, so close.
56: What you're saying is that the actions of *one* asshole person compromised an entire set of well-thought-out principles
Ummm, no, I still hold to the set of well-thought-out-principles, thanks. I wasn't using "complicated" as a euphemism. Nor am I suspicious of arguments that boil down to "show respect, and learn to listen;" the nature and scope of my objections is, I think, clear enough on the other thread. I'll grant you that I shouldn't have implied that this single incident was responsible for the shift in my worldview; let's just say it certainly helped and it definitely stands out.
And I am not accusing Tia of putting together a simple identity-based argument, just to be clear. Although I could fairly be read as accusing her of unwittingly putting together a gatway drug to such. That may be overshooting the mark.
The title should be "I'll show you congenial fucking."
Okay, well, I do think that you're quibbling in ways that you yourself also clearly feel require heavy qualification. I'm saying only that I think the amount of the quibbling has at least as much potential to undermine the goal as the "gateway drug" thing.
The title should be, "I'll Show You The Life of the Mind."
48: I wouldn't quite put it that way. People's lives and actions are obviously comprised of many elements; it's not that you can't be a good person without doing these things; if you cure cancer and start a dog rescue, who am I to say it doesn't balance out? It's that all else being equal, you'll be better for doing them.
It is true, however, that they're basically minimum conditions for the position of friend, lover, or ally in my life, not that anyone necessarily gives a shit. This stuff is just too centrally important to me to overlook. Unless I'm going through a weird phase where I'm desperately attracted to someone I kind of hate. But I just passed out of one, so another one won't be around for a while.
start a dog rescue
No one does this in real life, Tia.
The title should be "I'll Show You My Notch."
No one [starts a dog rescue] in real life
Q.E.D.
Either no dog rescues exists or all existing dog rescues have always existed.
Unless I'm going through a weird phase where I'm desperately attracted to someone I kind of hate. But I just passed out of one,
Solving the mystery of why I haven't seen Tia recently.
68: Unless dog rescues spontaneously spring into being from other, human-created institutions. They could just be emergent properties.
35 - Entirely off-topic, but I know I've commented here more often than that. Who's been banning me and deleting my comments after the fact? The Tenure Fairy? (If so, thanks!)
Please, resume...
62 is exactly right.
63: I sometimes wonder about the usefulness of certain levels of Quibblonic Radiation myself, truth to tell. All I can say is that I don't think contesting a subtle point is the same thing as quibbling over the inconsequential.
No, fair enough, I don't think so either. Maybe I'm overreacting b/c it's such an ongoing issue (not here, specifically).
an ongoing issue (not here, specifically)
Do you need one of us to kick somebody's ass for you, B?
I hear tell some around here are strong enough to punch to doors...
(By which I mean, "I'm using people's own links against them.")
BPD: i meant labeling in terms of my own internal cognition, not in terms of what to say TO someone. i think. my original thought was, is it better/more-affirming/more-empathetic to respond: "wow, you experienced sexism!" or "wow, you experienced some jackass!"
my own reaction is to usually see things as the latter, not the former.
74: Ooh! Do I have that privilege? B/c that would be so, so awesome.
You know, I actually used the phrase "apostropher is the hero" in a non-Unfogged context the other day? God, this place is fucking with my head.
77: I'm sure it depends on who you're dealing with. I remember an awful incident with a (very kind and generous) friend who asked me, "was that racist?" and I said, "hell yeah it was racist!" and it made her feel much better to have her sense of the interaction confirmed and to be relieved of feeling like she was supposed to care about the intent of the person who was rude to her.
Offered as indirect commentary on the whole affair:
"Make no mistake: It is love, not a shared hobby, that has brought us together here. Oh, we have as much trouble loving our own personal selves as the mundanes do -- perhaps more trouble. But we love each other a great deal. Most importantly we love our species, we love the damfool human race -- or we would not be so passionately concerned with its future."
on good days that is how I feel about unfogged. It doesn't depress me to see people disagree and argue and get angry, it uis only depressing when regulars, people who's presence in this particular forum I value a great deal, sound like they think that trying to make hhemselves understood over the internet is more trouble than it's worth.
"Offered as indirect commentary on the whole affair...."
That's pretty weird, Spider Robinson linking to himself in his own story. I had no idea he did that sort of thing. How very meta. (Also trite, but that's Spider for you.)
I can't sleep, but nor do I have the energy to read the other thread. But though, through skimming, it looked like a lot of the objections to my number 1 in the other thread were generally really stupid, I think Dr. Slack may have a point. I was wondering if he'd suggest a rewrite. Cause the thing is, there are some people in the world who are professionally aggrieved. They're a small percentage of the people in the world who complain about stuff, but they do technically exist. The problem is, the entitled dicks of the world would characterize me that way, and I know that's the dickishness talking. So I don't know how to admit a caveat into my (1) without my giving them too much leeway. The people I was referring to on the Truth and Beauty thread were, in no uncertain terms, being dicks. Part of the reason I referred to the broad consensus among the women here is that we are professionals at rolling with the punches; if we all say something's a problem, it really is. So how, Dr. S., can I convey that, in language that will generalize to lots of different situations?
"Broadly speaking" -- That's a nice touch.
I think you fail to distinguish between problem as "something wrong" and "something to be solved". If multiple woman agree that something is wrong, then it simply is; that doesn't mean their deduction about the cause of the problem and the solution that follows have to be accepted.
Part of the reason I referred to the broad consensus among the women here is that we are professionals at rolling with the punches; if we all say something's a problem, it really is.
Or, as I was going to say: Tia's #1 is spot-on. I've missed most of the latest brouhaha, but with the pigs-as-Rose-McGowan thing three weeks ago, there was a lot of 'But these women are hot! No man thinks they're not hot! Cala, LB, you are manufacturing this pressure-to-be-thin thing.'
And I'm sitting here thinking sweet saint cecilia, LB and I are not known for hysterical readings of patriarchal tea leaves in our morning chai ('the roundness of the bubbles symbolizes breasts. fuck!. one popped! death to the oppressors!'), if we're telling you it's a pressure, it's a pressure. None of us are whacked-out extremists here, except maybe B, but that's just cause of the Arabian stallion thing, really; if we say it's a problem, it's not cause we read it in our feminist monthly paper because I don't subscribe.
Now I want to know if I'm "really stupid" or not. Tia's 1st point becomes less and less comprehensible to me everytime I read it, so I guess I am.
Hell, 1) aint so tough for me. If blacks vote 90 per cent Democratic, it's Republicans got a problem. If a consensus of Unfogged females say I made a sexist comment, I probably did. If they say I am generally and iredeemably sexist...ta hell wid them. Acts and attitudes and structures are sexist, people are born with every breath.
Actually I came back with something fiendishly funny, but I decided the multiple layers of irony...well, I am not yet trusting enough.
84 was regarding the post, but I see that Tia, in 83, mentions a "broad consensus" among the women. Now that's congenial.
"Part of the reason I referred to the broad consensus among the women here is that we are professionals at rolling with the punches"
But you didn't? Where? I didn't read most of that other thread.
Now I'm regretting I posted that. It's too trivial to argue about. It was a great post you wrote.
Cala: I know you're joking, but let me just take the opportunity to say that B. is about the furthest thing from a whacked-out extremist I could imagine.
Tia, thanks for being so gracious about my dyspeptic ranting. I won't presume to comment on your reading of the prior thread, as I'm not conversant enough with what happened. As for suggesting a rewrite, I also won't presume to tell you how to phrase your thoughts, but I'll try to distill the points of emphasis that were gnawing at me:
Under point 1: Understand that if lots of women say something is important, it is. Your opinion, as a man, about the extent and nature of the problem is not valuable when the specific problem pertains to women's experience.
Re: the first sentence, the problem is an ambiguity in the word "important" -- it's not possible to challenge someone's claim that something is important to them, but perfectly possible and commonplace to dispute their assessment of that importance in the societal, or sociological, sense.
Re: the second sentence, it's not clear that someone's opinion as a member of group X is necessarily invalid when the specific problem pertains to the experience of group Y. (If I say, as a member of group Y, that such-and-such behaviour by group X seems stupid to me, the counter-explanation from group X isn't necessarily going to be a show-stopper, but it does matter.)
I don't know, maybe it's just that some qualifiers are in order, along the lines of "if many members of group X says something is an important problem, it behooves you to think that simply dismissing them out of hand won't work, and that maybe the canned generalizations from your group Y's going-out-for-a-beer convos just aren't going to do the trick as a response; you actually need to provide some well-thought-out specifics." I leave it to you.
My only other sort-of-issue was with point 7's Don't claim that psychological harm is not important.
Now, obviously, it takes a serious asshat to claim that psychological harm from rape and abuse is not important; if you're dealing with someone who's disputing that, the need for subtlely is past. With other claims of psychological harm, more caution may be in order: the woman from my earlier anecdote would cite slow service in restaurants as "psychological harm," but unless you're looking at an over-the-top Denny's-type scenario, that's clearly more problematic. Claims of psychological harm can in fact be founded on misperceptions, and this can happen to anyone.
What kind of edit this calls for, if any, I'm not really sure. Your basic point that waltzing into a debate and calling a bunch of women self-indulgent for simply mentioning the possibility is surely sound. Again, I think what's called for is a clear commitment to both parties being specific and non-blase in their framing of what's going on. Many people steeped in feminist theory and literature acquire the habit of simply expecting other people to know what they mean by phrases like "alienation from the body;" it's worth realizing that even well-educated and politically / morally sympathetic people may not be that conversant, and aren't necessarily being dicks on that basis.
I hope that's reasonably useful. Here's to insomnia.
David, I didn't even get that far, so don't feel bad. (Feel banned, maybe, but not bad.) I thought, "Do I want didacticism from Unfogged?" The answer was no, so off I went.
"waltzing into a debate and calling a bunch of women self-indulgent" s/b "it's a bad idea to waltz into a debate and call a bunch of woman self-indulgent"
Hmm, if I stick with this thread I will probably wind up reading a good bit of Tia's post here in comments.
Nevertheless, to follow up on Dr Slack in 92, I would add that sentences structured like "Your opinion ... is not valuable ..." is not going to be well received by any audience on any topic, no matter what goes into the ellipses.
Hi, Doug. No, I meant 87, mostly.
This person once bragged to me about "testing" her white female friends on the question of race by taking them out to Jamaican dancehall nights and abandoning them to their own devices in a room full of strange black men.
This strikes me as a rather excellent practical joke and certainly not something that would call into question the validity of someone's moral and political views. I assume that she didn't chloroform her friends and drag them off secretly to a dancehall club (that would probably be a bit out of order). I'm guessing that they had asked to be taken to a dancehall club, or enthusiastically agreed to the suggestion, presumably because they wanted to dance with black men.
I'm also guessing that this wasn't a gay dancehall club, so the room was not actually "full of strange black men" but in fact had a roughly equal proportion of strange black men and strange black women (hahaha, erasure of the female, how are ye!). I'm further guessing that anyone who accepts an invitation from one of their black friends to go to a reggae club must be pretty much aware that there are going to be black people there.
If her friends had said something like "I will come along with you to the club but you must stay with me at all times because I am terrified of the idea of being alone in a room full of black people" there would hardly be any need for a "test" so I am guessing they didn't. In which IMO it is perfectly acceptable to carry out the practical joke; if someone talks the talk, then they have made an implicit social contract to walk the walk, IMO.
Would it have been morally better to play this joke for the sheer joy of giving your friends a scare, rather than to make an important point that can't be made any other way (this strikes me as something that you can show but not tell), and in the meantime learning something useful about their character?
As far as I can see, the only reason for regarding this as "assholish" behaviour is if you believed that her friends were being exposed to a genuine danger of rape or robbery. But I don't think we're entitled to make that assumption, because we don't believe that the mere fact that the clientele of this club were black means that it was more dangerous than any other nightclub.
Many people steeped in feminist theory and literature acquire the habit of simply expecting other people to know what they mean by phrases like "alienation from the body;" it's worth realizing that even well-educated and politically / morally sympathetic people may not be that conversant, and aren't necessarily being dicks on that basis.
Well they are if they nevertheless insist on taking part in a conversation on the subject without making a good faith attempt to learn. To use an analogy, if the Jewish contributors to CT decided to have a thread on kosher cookery, would you expect to see me in there on post #150, calmly but persistently explaining to Eszter that the particular food storage conditions which made it sensible not to eat pork in the Middle East around 500BC have now been solved by modern refrigeration, so the concept of "kosher" is really not as important as Jews think it is? Well yes, I admit you might, but that is hardly the point here.
97: This strikes me as a rather excellent practical joke
Yeah, you see, not so much for me. But maybe there are different cultural norms going on here: where I live, it's pretty much expected that buddies of any sex in any setting will routinely watch each other's backs when going out to a nightclub. Not because the clientele of either sex are expected to be unusually dangerous, but rather because they're expected to be usually so, no matter what race they are. What horrified me was that she found this to be a useful test of "racism" or an acceptable thing to do in any setting.
The setting did tend to be disproportionately male at the time, though it's since diversified. And I do tend to regard women alone as being more at risk in a disproportionately male setting, so yeah. Not so funny, really.
The setting did tend to be disproportionately male at the time
do I detect a note of nostalgia?
99: I take it the lame response means I made my point. Cheers.
I know you are[1], but what am I?
[1] this should be taken as shorthand for "I know you are the kind of pillock who will happily prune this example into a topiary of whatever you need in order to make your point, so I will simply call you a poof rather than goading you into saying that it was actually a VAMPIRE reggae club! with NINJAS!".
It is a useful test of whether someone's professed lack of racist instincts is genuine or not, and your "hey where I come from, your buddies watch your back" posturing is quite risible sub-macho which I utterly refuse to take seriously.
Well, good on you for sticking to your guns, mighty d-dub, aimed at your toes though they may well be. Perhaps you can entertain us all another time with your anecdotes of how great an idea it is for female friends to abandon each other at the club. I'll wait with baited breath.
Off to bed for me.
If I ever did such anecdotes, I can assure you that they at least would be entertaining.
They would go something like "hey you know how in a club, you gotta make sure your buddies got your back? well there was this one chick and she like totally didn't have her buddy's back! that's fucked up, I don't care what you say. that's fucked up", with hilarious consequences.
It simply isn't a terrible crime to leave someone on their own in a nightclub for a bit; it's a bit annoying but no more. One might do it for such reasons as "because I thought I was going to get laid", "because I thought she was going to get laid", "because I am never going to get laid with this lummox hanging round", "because you're getting on my nerves", "because I'm a bit confused" or indeed "for a slightly cruel laugh".
The funniest thing about it in the latter case is to watch the victim pissing and moaning and spluttering "but that's not cool man! you don't do that! you gotta have your buddies' back!" and telling him not to be such a wet end.
68: There is a third possibility which you do not consider -- new dog rescues could come into existence without being started by people. Perhaps they generate spontaneously! Or, they could be evidence of an intelligent creator with ongoing involvement in the world. (As I understand -gg-d's use of "nobody" it would cover only people.)
Yeah, but the Girl Code, as I understand it, is you don't go off and leave your friend alone in a club without at least telling her, so she can decide if she wants to sit around looking like prey.
Plus she has to go through the whole "Where's X? Shit, I hope she didn't get drugged and abducted, because otherwise she would have said she was leaving, wouldn't she?"
Maybe if your "friend" is a prig whom you dislike you could have fun doing this.
103: Oh, you're entertaining, no doubt about it.
It simply isn't a terrible crime to leave someone on their own in a nightclub for a bit
I love how we're suddenly talking about "for a bit," but never mind that. What's really awesome is this:
One might do it for such reasons as "because I thought I was going to get laid", "because I thought she was going to get laid", "because I am never going to get laid with this lummox hanging round", "because you're getting on my nerves", "because I'm a bit confused" or indeed "for a slightly cruel laugh".
Yeah, what's that you were saying about "risible sub-macho"? Totally. And completely. Wicked.
Per mcmc, it's not exactly abnormal for guys to not ditch their friends without letting them know what's going on, either. Sub-macho poofs that we all are, I guess!
Per mcmc...
And yes, that's a horror of a sentence. Oh, what a fun day this is going to be.
The "dump your friend at the nightclub" prank is pretty indefensible. Even when leaving to get laid, it's common courtesy to tell your friends you plan to ditch them.
But I don't see what Slack's Jamaican nightclub anecdote has to do with Tia's post at all. He brings it up to say that "that sort of thing is why I'm not as enthusiastic as I could be about things like your post about the rules of decorum, which interpreted loosely enough can be gateways to smaller versions of just that sort of sanctimoniousness." Where's the connection here? Is it that the slippery slope that starts with treating women like human beings leads to cold-hearted feminists cruelly stranding their guy friends among random packs of chainsaw-wielding lesbian amazons?
109: No, no, vampire chainsaw-wielding lesbian amazon ninjas. Otherwise yeah, it's like you're totally reading my mind.
110: Your ire notwithstanding, I'm as confused as s. jones.
The "dump your friend at the nightclub" prank is pretty indefensible
I await the release of the DVD "America's Most Hilarious Pranks Without Discourtesy, Disrespectfulness, Unkindness Or Making Anyone Feel Bad", featuring Ashton Kutchner and Martha Stewart, with baited breath.
Maybe if your "friend" is a prig whom you dislike you could have fun doing this
Or for that matter, if they were always going on about how liberal they were about race issues and how much they'd loooove to go to that slightly "edgy" reggae club on the other side of town. Come on, who among us would not like to see that joke played on these types? Oh you fibbers!
111: The anecdote is not a literal description of the Horrible Things That Will Happen if Tia the Terrible Has Her Way. It is meant as a) a more general example of how sanctimoniousness can throw up different versions of dickishness, and b) as a partial explanation for why I'm going on about it.
Have a nice day, all.
It is meant as a) a more general example of how sanctimoniousness can throw up different versions of dickishness
and in that respect it succeeds, though not necessarily in the way you intended.
a more general example of how sanctimoniousness can throw up different versions of dickishness
I would suggest that the dickishness Tia is complaining about is far more widespread than the dickishness you're complaining about.
114: I hereby name you "Burns," on account of all the burnage.
It's hard for me to imagine how supporting an apologist for vampire chainsaw-wielding lesbian amazon ninja robot dinosaur pedophiles makes Slate Magazine any more moral than a Super-Duper-Hitler, were there such a thing. I mean, honestly! My opinions on pedophilia are more valid than his, and I'm not even a pedophile!
I believe I meant to refer to "Unfogged" instead of "Slate" in the earlier post. Still, it would not surprise me if this "dsquared" (puerility will get you anywhere on the Internet) was one of the anonymous screedistes at Slate as well.
My apologies for the double post. And so I wade out of the fray...
This "Lee Siegel" stuff is unproductive and utterly not funny, IMO.
I think you fail to distinguish between problem as "something wrong" and "something to be solved". If multiple woman agree that something is wrong, then it simply is; that doesn't mean their deduction about the cause of the problem and the solution that follows have to be accepted.
I don't think I failed to make that distinction in the post, or am failing to now; I'm not totally sure what you mean. That was some of why some of the objections to (1), in the other thread, were dumb. (1) never said, "and you must follow on with policy prescription X." It was about the subjective experience of psychological harm in a situation where the harm and the immediate cause of it are pretty closely related in time, and not hard to see. (You can make some convoluted argument about how "maybe we don't know what's *actually* hurting us; how well do you know your own mind? But the obvious rejoinder is, certainly better than you do.) It's not macroeconomics we are talking about. And it wasn't under dispute that the men were actually doing the thing in question.
I mean, I do think it is possible to be mistaken about why you are getting slow service in a restaurant, but intent (or unconscious motivation) is a central question there. It's upsetting in a different, and much more trivial, way if the service is just bad. It would be insane to say to someone who says, "It is angering to me in an important way that I consistently get slower service in restaurants than white people do," "That's not important."
There is some tiny fraction of people in the world who do make a point of getting upset about really trivial things. I think they are actually as likely to not belong to the group they claim to be representing as otherwise.
I mean really, it's a statement about probabilities; it's just the probability that you're being a dick is extremely high. Because, as everyone is saying, the kind of dickishness I'm talking about: way more common than the other kind.
123: Exactly. I just posted a long comment saying something similar in the other thread -- we're not asking everyone to accept the diagnosis and solution to any given problem without critical analyis. That sort of critical analysis is interesting and useful.
What's useless and irritating and dickish is the insistence that before we talk about any feminist issue, we first argue extensively over whether there's really any problem there to be dealt with, or if we're just all making it up out of oversensitivity.
Not to mention I find it somewhat distasteful that the response to Tia's "you're being a dick" is "telling someone they're a sexist dick can lead to a slippery slope whereby some unlikely and infrequent bad thing can occur."
It's not like the behavior Tia's pointing out is hypothetical.
People are always going to overreact, or overcompensate, or get upset about trivial things, but we can't let fear of such toolishness prevent us from making useful progress. Otherwise, you know, the terrorists have won.
You know, dsqured does have a point about the "leaving the white chick alone in a club filled with black men" anecdote. That part of it bothered me, too.
I'm surprised no one has responded to Doug's 95, so I will: Doug, one might also point out that advice from someone who admits that he hasn't even bothered to read the thing he's offering advice from is, at least, somewhat presumptuous.
What's useless and irritating and dickish is the insistence that before we talk about any feminist issue, we first argue extensively over whether there's really any problem there to be dealt with, or if we're just all making it up out of oversensitivity.
What if the entire culture of educated American women is oversensitive on this score? I'm not saying it is, but is that possible? What if the problem with those women isn't that they're oppressed, but that they feel aggrieved? Again, this isn't a position that I want to sign up for, but it's something I've heard Middle-Eastern women say about American women. I guess I'm trying to make a distinction between "the fact of the matter" and "the consensus of a class of women in this culture." It might be the case that in terms of how one should behave, that's not an important distinction....
124: Perhaps I'm missing some nuance here, but I think there's more overlap between the territory covered by your first and second paragraph than would be rhetorically convenient. I hate to take any kind of issue with Tia's post, because it's fundamentally very reasonable. But point 1 really, really irritated me. As Doug said, the "Your opinion ... is not valuable" formulation is a loser.
I think the problem simply lies in trying to make these kinds of bright-line distinctions. In many, many, many cases people violate these rules and are dicks. But not in every case. What about the problem of girls feeling too intimidated to raise their hands in mixed-gender classes? It's faded from the media spotlight, but it certainly got some attention for a while. The only thing is, if you look at metrics for female academic performance, it's hard to conclude that this is actually a very pressing issue (and indeed, the media has since moved on). Now, I may be violating points 5 and 7 with this statement (and am on the verge of violating 6 and 8). And I don't want to get bogged down in a larger "is our children learning"-style debate -- I'm no education expert. But this seems to me to be a conversation that ought to be able to be entered into. Denying it by saying "but I was that intimidated female student; your lack of anecdotal experience means you're unqualified to engage this issue" is an extremely unconvincing form of argument.
I think the real problem for me is that the principles Tia wrote up are occasionally stated firmly enough as to violate their own underlying theme: "don't assume you're right". Are women much, much more likely to be right about these things than men? Of course, for a lot of reasons. But denying me entry to the conversation is just going to make me ignore it, petulant though that reaction may be.
Dquared is awesome for reminding us of blackpeopleloveus.com.
127: If that's the case, then yes: resisting feminism would make sense, ala the analogy someone made at some point about anti-immigration bigots.
But surely the consensus of X group within a culture about X group's role in that culture is worth something; and surely, knowing what we know about cultural differences and the ways that divide-and-conquer strategies work, there's good reason to be suspicious that the "American women are just spoiled" argument, coming from non-American women (or, within U.S. boundaries, the "white feminists are just spoiled" argument coming from women of color) contains at least as much cultural misrecognition, internalized sexism, ignorance, and/or sour grapes as it does reliable truth.
There are absolutely conversations to be had about the distinctions between different cultural manifestations of feminism. And god knows it's obnoxious when, say, American feminists get all up in arms about sending sex toys to Iraqi women, for instance. But that's not the same as simply dismissing feminist claims outright.
That said, if we grant the hypothetical that "the entire culture of educated American women is oversensitive" about X or Y, then surely that's something to be thought seriously about, not simply dismissed as some weird women's problem, right? Would it not be equally true to say, perhaps, that the entire culture of educated American men is overentitled? I'm inclined to agree that educated American women *are* oversensitive about body issues--but isn't that, in fact, precisely the problem we're talking about?
I think the real problem for me is that the principles Tia wrote up are occasionally stated firmly enough as to violate their own underlying theme: "don't assume you're right".
If this is the thread for being uncongenial, well, Tia has that problem a lot, so we should probably just learn read the post congruent to the one she wrote, module overstatement.
128: I don't think that the point is to deny entry into a conversation. I think the point is to say that if the point of entering into a conversation is to dismiss it, then that's going to be rhetorically ineffective. As well as rude.
I thought of this before ogged's 127 appeared, but maybe it's still on-topic. There seem to be two dangers people (often different people) are worried about here:
1. Certain groups get the short end of manifestations of privilege, which are often invisible to the privileged group
2. Members of those unprivileged groups might get oversensitive and view every single issue through the lens of their unprivilege, becoming a Frankenstein's monster of emotional entitlement
I think it's pretty unserious to think that 1 isn't a considerably bigger problem than 2; more widespread and more pernicious. (Compare the number of black people who ditch their white friends at black clubs to the number of black people who get their cars searched and get handcuffed after parking illegally.) So the question has got to be, are the groups we're talking about really unprivileged [on preview: I had in mind the anti-nativists b mentions in 130], and to what extent? And I don't think "American women/black people aren't really that unprivileged" is a serious answer either. Just look and listen.
131: We all get a little shrill from tiem to time.
black people who get their cars searched and get handcuffed after parking illegally
I count it weak evidence in favour of my proposition that this would not make a good practical joke, unless you were really over-the-top about it.
128: I think the problem simply lies in trying to make these kinds of bright-line distinctions. In many, many, many cases people violate these rules and are dicks. But not in every case.
Do rules of courtesy have to be a priori truths? When women talk about feminist issues, we end up having to spend a shitload of time and effort arguing with people who are being dicks about whether there's any problem at all. If you're strongly committed to the position that gender roles in our society are hunky-dory, and it's important that the humorless feminists should shut up about this stuff, then that's good. If you're not, than it's bad.
You don't have to assume that women must, by definition, be right about gender issues as an analytical truth, to believe, as Tia suggests, that where you have a fairly broad consensus from women you respect about their subjective experience of sexism that you should accept that experience as valid.
134: Speak for yourself, woman. My tone is always appropriate.
ogged, I don't get why your concern in #127 isn't basically the same one as the tipping issue: if there's a standard, you follow it if you don't want to be considered a bad person by American women as a whole. Given your dating restrictions, the impressions of that group should be important to you.
Time to time.
My point is, one reason women (e.g., in this case Tia; in other circumstances, it's been me) "have that problem a lot" is that the pressure of trying to be good, to get along, to not be humorless, is such that overcoming it requires a certain force of effort. Often anger. If it helps to be told that there, there, I'm just angry, but please listen to what I'm saying anyway, then fine.
On the other hand, it's worth noticing that this anger on these issues *does* come up a lot, and that when it does, it *is* often met with comments saying, more or less, "well, I don't know if I agree with what you're saying because I think you're not saying it nicely enough for me to be able to receive it." Which is a really shitty way of shutting someone down. Both the anger and the "that's not a nice way to talk" response are, themselves, significant, if you think about it.
Which is a really shitty way of shutting someone down. Both the anger and the "that's not a nice way to talk" response are, themselves, significant, if you think about it.
You can see that this is flippable, right? It's not as if the only people expressing anger (or, probably better, irritation) have been women.
What about the problem of girls feeling too intimidated to raise their hands in mixed-gender classes? It's faded from the media spotlight, but it certainly got some attention for a while. The only thing is, if you look at metrics for female academic performance, it's hard to conclude that this is actually a very pressing issue (and indeed, the media has since moved on). Now, I may be violating points 5 and 7 with this statement (and am on the verge of violating 6 and 8). And I don't want to get bogged down in a larger "is our children learning"-style debate -- I'm no education expert. But this seems to me to be a conversation that ought to be able to be entered into.
Sure -- any question should be able to be entered into. The question is whether your mode of entering into it dismisses the question and shuts it down.
You can look at the "Girls don't talk in class" issue a bunch of ways -- look at whether it's true, what larger effects it has, if any, what can be done to change it. And what you see about metrics for female academic performance might be an argument for saying that it has no larger effects, and so no resources should be spent on changing it. Which would be a possible argument.
But it's not an argument that justifies you in saying that it's wrong to pay any attention to the issue, or to talk about it -- it's wrong to use an argument like that to dismiss, rather than to address, concerns.
I dunno. Do the women in this particular discussion use the "that's a good point, but your rhetoric is ineffective" nonsense? Because I always think that's kind of an asshole move, actually.
And I don't think "American women/black people aren't really that unprivileged" is a serious answer either.
Has anyone suggested that as a general answer? I think the objections are simply to the idea that every stated instance of an asymmetry in privilege is correct. It's probably wise to assume that they are, so as to be receptive, conscious of one's privileged position and generally un-dickish. But I'm afraid the ignorant (such as myself) will still occasionally have to be convinced. And argument seems like the best way to do that, although I'm sure it's frustrating to feel like you're wasting your time on it. But, to respond to 136 (the second half of which I agree with completely), it seems necessary, in the same way that intelligent people must, from time to time, engage with creationists. Having to justify yourself is irritating, but ultimately healthy, I suspect.
B's point about the uninformed weighing in on a debate is well-taken, though. So long as that refers to not having done the reading and thinking (as opposed to being the wrong gender), I agree completely, and will consequently shut up.
Which, to be fair, I think that's what Ben was saying: it's not impossible to read the post while allowing for the tone, if the tone offends you.
115: I think the dickishness Tia is talking about is more widespread and more obnoxious, and that the dickishness I'm talking about is widespread enough in progressive contexts to be disruptive, and worth talking about.
124: we're not asking everyone to accept the diagnosis and solution to any given problem without critical analyis. That sort of critical analysis is interesting and useful.
That's kind of why I limited my criticism to the points that seemed to undermine critical analysis, which I never doubted you'd agree is useful on principle.
What's useless and irritating and dickish is the insistence that before we talk about any feminist issue
I'm pleased not to be insisting any such thing.
126: You know, dsqured does have a point about the "leaving the white chick alone in a club filled with black men" anecdote. That part of it bothered me, too.
I don't really see why. As I remarked earlier, the point of the exercise was specifically race-based, and the exercise seemed dangerous and ridiculous to me regardless of the race being used for the prank.
But for real, am I being a drama queen about the "leaving women alone in the club is dangerous" thing? I think that's possible. A lot of women I know are quite explicit about this, but following my own advice I suppose I shouldn't uncritically believe them.
Has anyone suggested that as a general answer?
Ogged kind of did in 127. But mostly I wanted to foreclose a possibility.
As for the rest of it, yes, there will be some times when something gets interpreted as a manifestation of privilege when it's not. But what I said is that that isn't a big problem compared to the manifestations of privilege that get covered up.
Nor do I see anyone saying that it's never appropriate to talk about whether something is a matter of privilege. But it's probably incumbent on the privileged folks to give other people a respectful hearing instead of leading with "You're just oversensitive and how you feel about this isn't important" (which is about what happened in the thread), and the nature of privilege also means that if one person says that there's a problem and another says there isn't, the presumption should probably be that there is.
I dunno. Do the women in this particular discussion use the "that's a good point, but your rhetoric is ineffective" nonsense? Because I always think that's kind of an asshole move, actually.
That strikes me as a fair reading of this: "768: Tim, relax. The boys are tough, Tia arguing strenuously isn't going to make them cry."
Oh, and 125: Not to mention I find it somewhat distasteful that the response to Tia's "you're being a dick" is "telling someone they're a sexist dick can lead to a slippery slope whereby some unlikely and infrequent bad thing can occur."
Ummm, whose response? If this is a reference to me, it doesn't seem like you've read my posts.
But I'm afraid the ignorant (such as myself) will still occasionally have to be convinced. And argument seems like the best way to do that, although I'm sure it's frustrating to feel like you're wasting your time on it. But, to respond to 136 (the second half of which I agree with completely), it seems necessary, in the same way that intelligent people must, from time to time, engage with creationists. Having to justify yourself is irritating, but ultimately healthy, I suspect.
You know, you're really not getting it. If you really, really, really need to argue about whether a bunch of women you respect generally are mistaken about how sexism affects them, go straight ahead -- no one's going to come to your house and set your stuff on fire for it.
The problem is that this sort of argument happens all the goddam time. Whenever a feminist issue comes up, we end up arguing with people who are being dicks about whether we're imagining it or overreacting. Which makes it incredibly difficult to have the conversation.
Tia's asking you to weigh your need to argue about whether a given feminist issue is real against the degree to which you're blocking the progress of the conversation. If you want to sit there and be unconvinced, go right ahead. But don't bust in and make every conversation about gender issues a conversation about whether we're overreacting.
"that's a good point, but your rhetoric is ineffective" nonsense? Because I always think that's kind of an asshole move
There really are annoying ways of arguing that don't reduce to sexism or anti-feminism.
On the other hand, it's worth noticing that this anger on these issues *does* come up a lot, and that when it does, it *is* often met with comments saying, more or less, "well, I don't know if I agree with what you're saying because I think you're not saying it nicely enough for me to be able to receive it." Which is a really shitty way of shutting someone down. Both the anger and the "that's not a nice way to talk" response are, themselves, significant, if you think about it.
I don't think I ever directly express this, but I realize that I am very sensitive to and disturbed by women's anger per se regardless of the issue. So that I become upset by discussions not aimed at me, where in fact I've already articulated views substantially agreeing with the angry ones, and end up avoiding such discussions.
The point here is that this can't be good, because it means that the full range of argument is not available, that I don't respond to arguments when the heat is there, but respond emotionally.
I think you're saying this reaction is widespread enough to be a problem for women and of course I see that. But I think of it as a problem I have, not you. I should be different.
I don't know where this comes from in my upbringing, but I'm sure that's where it is.
149 is very poorly phrased. You know what I mean though.
I don't think I ever directly express this, but I realize that I am very sensitive to and disturbed by women's anger per se regardless of the issue. So that I become upset by discussions not aimed at me, where in fact I've already articulated views substantially agreeing with the angry ones, and end up avoiding such discussions.
This is nicely honest, and I think that gets to a lot of what goes on in these discussions. Not just the dynamic you describe, but a slightly more pernicious one in which there's an attempt to have a discussion of a feminist issue in which most people are honestly and reasonably engaged but a number of men are disrupting it by being dickish in the manner that Tia describes. A woman calls out the guys who were being dicks (as Tia did in this post), and the guys who weren't being dicks -- who generally get it -- feel attacked, and close ranks with the dicks, talking about how it's oppressive of feminists to object to that sort of behavior.
The problem here is the response:
"well, look, I am a super non sexist guy; I don't beat my wife and I hardly ever visit strip clubs. I even work in a place where there are female executives and I can guarantee you I've never told them to make me coffee. If you're going to get this angry at wonderful wonderful meee, then you will never have any support from the mainstream against all those real sexists out there".
"well, look, I am a super non sexist guy; I don't beat my wife and I hardly ever visit strip clubs. I even work in a place where there are female executives and I can guarantee you I've never told them to make me coffee. If you're going to get this angry at wonderful wonderful meee, then you will never have any support from the mainstream against all those real sexists out there".
dsquaredian shorterizing notwithstanding, this isn't always a bad argument.
A woman calls out the guys who were being dicks (as Tia did in this post), and the guys who weren't being dicks -- who generally get it -- feel attacked, and close ranks with the dicks, talking about how it's oppressive of feminists to object to that sort of behavior.
I think this is a bit of an oversimplification. We're all normal people, prone to make standard mistakes, and respond in standard non-optimal ways when under stress. Note that several men (including teo, who I think more or less agrees with everything Tia's written about this, not just in the post being discussed) noted that lots of male conversation is (to use teo's very good word) structured as connoisseurship, and that restrictions on this type of discussion have implications for male bonding. The general response (excepting B) was to deny that this was, in fact, a good description of the way men talked or to deny that there were any negative impacts to changing behavior like this. None of this is to say that the behavior shouldn't be changed or moderated anyway. But, to paraphrase you, if a bunch of men you generally think are not complete assholes seem to be saying that this is slightly more complicated than we understand your description to be, there might be something to think about in what they are saying.
Yes it is. "I'm basically a good guy" is not an answer to "Stop doing that."
It's not always a bad argument for what claim? It's obviously a bad argument for the claim "what I just did wasn't sexist." It's not obviously a bad argument for, "you should forgive me for, or not strongly hold against me as an initial matter, the sexist thing I just did.
Tia's asking you to weigh your need to argue about whether a given feminist issue is real against the degree to which you're blocking the progress of the conversation. If you want to sit there and be unconvinced, go right ahead. But don't bust in and make every conversation about gender issues a conversation about whether we're overreacting.
Well, to the extent that she's asking me to perform that calculation, I'd like to think I can be sympathetic and non-obstructive. To the extent that she's asking me to perform that calculation and always arrive at the same conclusion (namely, that I should be quiet and take everything on faith), I can't really agree. But I'll at least try to be more understanding of the dynamic you describe and how irritating it must be to rehash the same territory over and over.
I should reiterate that I say all of this with the understanding that in the vast majority of cases, I ought to extend the benefit of the doubt and try not to derail the conversation. It's just the undemocratic, absolute terms in which the original principle was stated that really bother me.
156 to 154.
To 155: The deal is that it becomes very hard to have conversations like that -- about what exactly the contours of the problem are, and what should be done about it -- while you're simultaneously dealing with "Oh you silly oversensitive people". If you want to actually get anywhere, you can't insist on the first stage of "Prove to me your subjective experience is valid" and you can't close ranks with the guys who are.
It's not always a bad argument for what claim?
The claim that someone is arguing in ways counterproductive to his own ends. But that wasn't really what was being discussed in this thread, so I get the confusion. Apologies.
Isn't that more about what feminists, qua quasi-organized political group should prioritize then about what some women engaging in online discussion should note, or how they should note it? Or do you think the first has a lot to do with the second?
I again return to Bphd's "cute shoes" comments on the previous thread, because I really think the phenomenon they identify are the crux of this whole debate.
It is possible for woman to make peace with sexist things--they can differentiate their levels of conciousness in such a way that they can be involved with sexist things and they can realize it and still engage without being dicks in the process. A woman can participate in a hotornot discussion, fully aware of the sexist implications, and yet not be an asshole by virtue of their participation.
This simply isn't possible for men. If a man is participating in something he knows to be sexist --no matter how minor--he is a dick. No if's and's or but's, a man acting sexist is a dick regardless of any internal differentation or nuance.
Insofar as we exist in a still very much sexist society, this puts men who value feminist ideals in a bit of a bind. Especially in the type of male-bonding situation described here, any sexist situation is gonna catch him between either being a dick because he's sexist or being a dick to his friends. That might just be how it is, the price you have to pay for acting morally in a sexist society, but you can see why even nominally feminist men are going to be adverse to labeling things like hotornot conversations sexist.
I should reiterate that I say all of this with the understanding that in the vast majority of cases, I ought to extend the benefit of the doubt and try not to derail the conversation. It's just the undemocratic, absolute terms in which the original principle was stated that really bother me.
You know, I'd guess that Tia wouldn't disagree with dropping a footnote to her point 1 saying something along the lines of " 'You're wrong' should be read as a prediction rather than an absolute truth. Maybe, when a group of women you respect think that something is a problem for them, and you disagree, your assessment of their experiences is more accurate than theirs. It's possible -- almost anything is possible. But it's not how I'm going to bet."
I have to say that being troubled to the point of arguing about the absence of such a footnote strikes me as an example of what I referred to as 'closing ranks with dicks'.
arguing about the absence of such a footnote strikes me as an example of what I referred to as 'closing ranks with dicks'.
I don't get why it's ok to (more or less) call Tom a dick here. Seriously.
any sexist situation is gonna catch him between either being a dick because he's sexist or being a dick to his friends. That might just be how it is, the price you have to pay for acting morally in a sexist society
I think this is right, and also tough cookies. The other day I had to tell a good friend not to use "gay" pejoratively. Thirty seconds of awkwardness, sure, but that's the price you pay.
I remain amazed at most of the diagreement here. The amount of energy being put into what seems like a quibble over how generously to interpret Tia's piece seems out of proportion. She made her point in strong language and possibly not with perfect precision, but that's how we communicate.
On preview, 165: because he kind of is being dick-adjacent. For what principle is he arguing, exactly?
It's just the undemocratic, absolute terms in which the original principle was stated that really bother me.
Well, get over it.
I have to say that being troubled to the point of arguing about the absence of such a footnote strikes me as an example of what I referred to as 'closing ranks with dicks'
Since tom is saying pretty much the same thing I said previously about point 1, I'm going to respond to that. When I read something and think that I disagree with it, my normal reaction just is to point out my disagreement. There are of course times that I don't do this, especially with people above me in some hierarchy who I expect to be annoyed about it. But generally, if I'm conversing with someone I respect as an equal, I'm going to note any points of disagreement I do have, even with something I generally agree with. Not doing so strikes me as either sycophantic, disrespectful, or, at the very least, not attempting to contribute to the conversation. But I seriously do have trouble not pointing it out when I think someone is saying something that I see as incorrect, even something totally trivially incorrect.
I'm really not reading these threads closely enough to participate well, but I basically conceded my willingness to admit this caveat in comment 123, and earlier when I asked Dr. S to suggest a rewrite. I just don't want to admit the caveat in a way that allows a lot of wriggle room, because honestly, mostly, the guys in question are being dicks. But maybe I should just say "there is an extremely high probability that you are being" rather than "you are being."
Also, w-lfs-n said something insulting about me, but I couldn't understand well enough to be properly offended. Can you, w-lfs-n, or someone else explain precisely what was meant?
165: I'm not calling him a dick. I'm saying that he's not a dick. Still, he looked at a post in which Tia was calling dicks out, and decided that it was important for him (despite the fact that he doesn't engage in the criticized behavior) to argue at length about how disturbed he was that she had not sufficiently caveated her argument to acknowledge that not everyone who looks as if they're being a dick is necessarily being a dick.
"The other day I had to tell a good friend not to use "gay" pejoratively." Do you do it every time you have a conversation and someone uses the term "gay" ." Do you do this everytime you have a conversation with someone who uses "gay" as a pejorative? Because that's the equivalent burden here I think.
I would like it if everyone who has a problem with (1) but understands what motivates it would propose alternative language that would be equally forceful but more precise.
167: Well, you weren't saying that it 'really, really irritated you' and that "But denying me entry to the conversation is just going to make me ignore it, petulant though that reaction may be."
Pointing out that the caveat makes sense -- go ahead. Tom appeared to me to be moving past that into overidentification with those called out by point 1, despite the fact that I've never particularly noticed him acting that way.
Do you do this everytime you have a conversation with someone who uses "gay" as a pejorative?
Because that would be acting like a total female gaylord Mexican dick pussy something or other.
till, he looked at a post in which Tia was calling dicks out, and decided that it was important for him (despite the fact that he doesn't engage in the criticized behavior) to argue at length about how disturbed he was that she had not sufficiently caveated her argument to acknowledge that not everyone who looks as if they're being a dick is necessarily being a dick.
I don't know if Tia's post made clear the delineations that you see. You see, as I understand it, three groups of men in the prior conversation: dicks, not-dicks who started supporting the dicks, and people who generally agree very broadly with Tia's position. I know I don't fall into the last category, but I have no idea which of the first two categories I'd fall into. I'm betting I get coded as the first, but I think of myself as, at worst, I'm in the second. I would guess that I'm not the only one who is unclear about which category he falls into. That might be mere defensiveness on my part, it might be that, for example, Tia's post wasn't super clear about who was being called out (and maybe that's just not possible). But that is, in part, what motivates some of this, I suspect.
168: He said you were uncongenial often enough that anyone bothered by it should respond as if you'd said the same thing congenially. God knows exactly what he meant by it.
And on editing your point 1, throwing in an 'odds are that you're wrong' for 'you're wrong' is as much as any reasonable person could want, and I'd think that it's more than most reasonable people would want.
Do you do it every time you have a conversation and someone uses the term "gay?"
No, if only because it would make conversations with my gay friends difficult.
Do you do this everytime you have a conversation with someone who uses "gay" as a pejorative?
In fact, no. I let it slide twice, but felt uncomfortable about it, so when it happened again, I spoke up.
Maybe I'm just quibbling, but I'm not even sure the weakened "high-probability of being a dick" version of (1) holds. It definitely does regarding the general populace, but at a place like unfogged(don't beat me sb) where there is a presumption of good faith?
Why can't is just be "wrong," rather than "dick"?
174: Okay. First, it's not about identity, it's about behavior -- don't worry about whether you are a dick, but about whether you're being a dick. (I've started using 'dick' as shorthand for 'those exhibiting the behaviors called out by Tia's post' -- I hope that's coming through clearly.) The point is that engaging in the behaviors she describes, denying, minimizing, and changing the subject from feminist issues, makes it maddening to try to deal with them.
And so your response to her criticism should be some version of "Do I do that?" And if the answer is no, don't worry. And if the answer is yes, think about whether she's right that it's a problem, and whether you should stop.
If you agree that it's a problem, and that you either don't do it or you should try to stop, then being seriously bothered by the fact that she may have drafted her criticism in a way that is unfair to some possible third party who is probably being a dick but might not be, seems to reflect an overidentification with dicks.
Maybe I'm just quibbling, but I'm not even sure the weakened "high-probability of being a dick" version of (1) holds. It definitely does regarding the general populace, but at a place like unfogged(don't beat me sb) where there is a presumption of good faith?
Because arguing about whether someone else is accurately and reasonably reporting their experience is not extending a presumption of good faith to them.
177: I don't really get this insistance on changing the language. There is room for interpretation, and there is, in fact, room to deny that Tia's determination of your moral character is correct. You can even say that she's right in the main, but you don't find some of the claims compelling. She's laid out a general set of rules by which she judges people. It's not as if she can lay out something that takes into account every caveat, or even every caveat with which she may agree.
There are things that are fine to say among the guys that none of us would dream of saying around our wives or girlfriends.
Like what? And why are they "fine" to say around men, but not before the group they are about?
Do you think it's okay to make nigger jokes when in whites-only gatherings, too?
Because that's what you're saying. That it's all right to treat us as unpersons behind our backs, so long as you don't have to deal with the embarrassing fallout from being caught by representatives of the group you're mocking whose good opinions you peculiarly still value, although not enough or over the value of your own dominant group.
You think it's fine to make sexist remarks so long as no socially-important women who you answer to on some level in your personal life are around. And wingers think it's okay to make not just sexist but also racist and homophobic jokes, so long as there are no actual women or blacks or Asians or gays around.
Guess what, bigots don't GET to decide what's "fine" and what isn't. It's not your call, Privilege Boy.
I don't understand rule number one, and would be thankful if it would be explained to me. I have no idea if I agree or disagree with it, I don't understand what Tia is saying.
Incidentally, I suspect that many who've been arguing about it doesn't really understand what Tia means either, they just think they do.
"What if the entire culture of educated American women is oversensitive on this score? "
Then you have to choose whether to decide that they are all "oversensitive" and you represent the baseline, and that that's the most useful way to look at it, or not.
Or whether that's a dickheaded approach, and perhaps not very useful, save to encourage solipsism and reassure yourself that rethinking your views is unnecessary, since all those educated American chicks are just crazy wack, man.
Although I'm sure she must peruse Technorati and site logs and what not to determine who links to her (note: probably not), I threw Tia a link yesterday, incidentally.
LB: You're right that I wasn't paying much attention to tom's tone. I should probably consider why that would be.
And so your response to her criticism should be some version of "Do I do that?" And if the answer is no, don't worry. And if the answer is yes, think about whether she's right that it's a problem, and whether you should stop.
Right. But, in fact, depending on your age, you've probably seen all of the arguments in Tia's guidelines before, and thought about it a fair bit. If your behavior remains potentially offensive, it's because you're not aware of the applicability of the guidelines to your specific set of behaviors today, or because you have some disagreement with some interpretation of the guidelines. Which is the unacknowledged starting point for at least some of the discussion in the prior thread.
I don't understand rule number one, and would be thankful if it would be explained to me. I have no idea if I agree or disagree with it, I don't understand what Tia is saying.
When you become aware that a group of women who you respect enough to be engaging with consider social behavior X a problem, believe them that it is a problem. Don't argue that they aren't experiencing what they believe themselves to be experiencing.
decided that it was important for him ... to argue at length about how disturbed he was that she had not sufficiently caveated her argument
This is a massively annoying thing to say. Tom made a point that was basically "that's not, strictly speaking, true" and then responded to responses. That's not "deciding" to "argue at length." That's how discussions go. And is it really surprising that no one wants to cede complete argumentative authority, on any topic? Of course people will object.
And it seems particularly inappropriate to accuse him of "overidentification with those called out by point 1" when he also wrote things like "I should reiterate that I say all of this with the understanding that in the vast majority of cases, I ought to extend the benefit of the doubt and try not to derail the conversation."
Am I now guilty of complaining that men's feelings are being hurt? Look, the fact is that I reflexively identify with Muslims, and am predisposed to defend them when they're being attacked, and even when I think the Muslims are in the wrong, I'll want to note the caveats. Ditto identification with men. We just don't all start from the same place, and we never will. The fact that Tom, or I, or any other guy registers some misgivings about some feminist point doesn't seem to me to justify the "dick / overidentification" language.
167: But I seriously do have trouble not pointing it out when I think someone is saying something that I see as incorrect, even something totally trivially incorrect.
w/d, this is what I was referring to in the other thread as "being too much of an analytic philosopher." Sometimes pointing out trivial inaccuracies really disrupts the conversation, particularly if you don't mark that your point is trivial, because it comes across as though you really are taking a substantive point on the other side.
Glenn@163, maybe I'm interpreting people wrong here but I don't think the idea was that men who participate in any kind of sexist conversation immediately become dicks full stop. As B said, everyone's a little bit sexist. The dickish behavior was refusing to acknowledge that women's complaints about hotornot conversation had any validity whatsoever. [On preview, I think this is the behavior LB is talking about in 178 and 179.] There's space between that and never hotornotting at all, I think. [On preview, bellatrys may disagree.]
181 is pretty fucking uncharitable.
186: That is a very good rule that I fully agree with.
185: You know, if you're aware of the issues, and you look back at your behavior and you don't think you're doing any of that, then don't beat yourself up. If someone starts calling you out on something particular you're doing, think about whether they might be right -- if they are, they are, and if they aren't, they aren't.
It's not all that mysterious, it just requires attention.
But even knowing we agree, some of us get upset. I wish I didn't, I think it's crippling.
I got the idea from AWB when she guest-hosted that one of the theoretical graces of a term like patriarchy, if only everyone could agree what it meant, is that it depersonalized where this stuff came from. So that people who know they're not included in you or men don't find themselves being defensive despite that knowledge.
re:179
I'll have to review the play-by-play later, but I don't feel like that is what actually happened in the hotornot thread. Did anyone deny the validity of your experience. It seemed more that they were denying the causal relation between what they were saying and that experience. That assertion, as it happens, was wrong, but it didn't seem to be denying good faith.
re:180
The language is important because the current wording profoundly biases the "stakes" of the debate. If someone who disagrees with the assertion of multiple woman is wrong, than they are a dick, if the woman are wrong, they are just incorrect.
Actually, I want to say both that I did choose "being a dick" instead of "are a dick" for a reason, and I didn't actually think even "being a dick" described every failure I described. Somewhere I think on this thread I made a distinction between dickishness and cluelessness. What was going on on that thread that qualified as "dickishness" was men looking at bunch of feminist women they talk to every day, and saying, "despite this basically uniform chorus that a certain behavior is harmful because it fits into their other experiences in a certain way, I am going to inform them that my opinion about the matter's importance is the last word on the matter, despite the fact that I am not in a position to see or understand how it actually affects them, and my behavior is indicating, contra anything I could say to the contrary, that I'm not interested in listening." There were some other people who were like, "oh, I'll grant you that the matter has some importance, but I am going to sit around and qualify its precise extent and nature," and it was arrogant and condescending. I think soubzriquet said something really good in the other thread, "It may well be best to assume she/they are correct and try and reason backward from there to see if it breaks, rather than start from a position that may well depend on a number of problematic assumptions you are not quite aware of in your own stance...." That's just it. The way you were brought up, you've been taught not to see the problem. So "I don't see the problem"--not good enough! Start from the assumption that we're right. It will serve you well 99 times out of 100.
187: Did you look at what I quoted in my 172? Look, we're all arguing about tone now. Tom, and w/d, and others have objected at length to Tia's post being upsetting and wrong in that it was imperfectly caveatted. I'm saying that some of that objection seems overblown in a manner that looks like mistaken identification with the targets of her criticism.
Also, w-lfs-n said something insulting about me, but I couldn't understand well enough to be properly offended. Can you, w-lfs-n, or someone else explain precisely what was meant?
What I meant was that it's my impression that you tend to take absolute perspectives and assume that your own experience is valid generally, without (seemingly) being aware that you're doing so, giving your contributions an air of This Is How It Isness even on matters where it is patently different for different folks. Consequently, perhaps one should sometimes make allowances for that when reading what you say, instead of producing an endless stream of "well actually"s. I don't usually follow the threads that seem to be about sexism very closely, because they're often acrimonious and I'm apt to get all defensive and critical; this is a more general sense.
I will note, also, that my post was specifically about talking to feminist women, so all the people in the other thread who were like, "you said everything women ever said was right, and women contradict each other--you even said women contradict each other" were not reading carefully.
196: I often don't preface what I say with "this is my opinion." I assume they know that.
If LB is right, then 171 could be answered:
'When you become aware that a group of women who you respect enough to be engaging with consider social behavior X a problem, believe them that it is a problem. Don't argue that they aren't experiencing what they believe themselves to be experiencing. You're wrong, and you're being a dick. If you think it might be a little important, but not quite as important as we say it is, you’re still wrong.'
I combined LB's and your versions. Is something of what you were trying to say lost in this version?
196: I often don't preface what I say with "this is my opinion." I assume they know that.
In my opinion, water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
re:188
I don't think that people in this thread are neccesarily advocating the "dick full stop." interpretation, but the norm exists and is very powerful, so this conversation has to occur in that context. If you look at the history of the norm, a lot of it comes from active campaigns earlier in the feminist movement to combat more egregious forms of sexism. (I am thinking here specifically of the frown campaign the certain groups ran.) That norm has been spectacularly successful at combatting a lot of bad shit, but it does gum up the works when talking about these subtler forms of sexism.
197: I'm sorry, I can't agree with that. It was you who didn't express yourself clearly.
199: That's not bad, but I'm not totally comfortable with the "you respect enough" part. I mean, that's part of what made this particular phenomenon here so egregious, but generally I think the people who just don't respect feminist women are also being dicks, though it's useless to try to address them. Also, the "don't argue" sentence is not doing all the work it needs to, because it's not just about whether we're experencing it but whether it matters, although then the last sentence gets at that.
202: I could have been more clear, obviously, but the subtitle was "how to avoid actively irritating women who are raising feminist concerns" or some such thing.
Seriously, I quote myself:
"This post is about what you do when feminist women have raised their concerns."
201: I'm not getting this at all. Which norm exists and is very powerful? What context are you saying 'dick full stop' in? What 'frown campaign'?
I'm sure it would make sense if I knew what you were referring to, but I'm not following.
Did you look at what I quoted in my 172?
Yes, but my guess is that his annoyance has nothing to do with the substance of what's being discussed. When arguments are made in absolute terms, people who, as I said, don't reflexively identify with the position being taken, will get their backs up. That's a natural response, and doesn't justify the kinds of things you've said about Tom here. I think you're saying the same thing as Weiner, "Sometimes pointing out trivial inaccuracies really disrupts the conversation, particularly if you don't mark that your point is trivial, because it comes across as though you really are taking a substantive point on the other side." but Weiner wasn't a dick about it.
How about this?
'When you become aware that a group of feminist women consider social behavior X to cause them personally harm or great distress, that means there's a problem. Don't think that they aren't experiencing what they believe themselves to be experiencing. You're wrong, and you're being a dick. If you think it might be a little important, but not quite as important as we say it is, you’re still wrong.'
193: Did anyone deny the validity of your experience. It seemed more that they were denying the causal relation between what they were saying and that experience.
Two responses to this, which basically says "please acknowledge the way these discussions make me feel," were this and this. which basically said "sensible women don't feel that way." Which may not be denying that b (and the other women who were protesting) didn't feel the way they feel, but it certainly seemed to be saying that the way the felt shouldn't count for anything.
(On preview, like LB I don't follow you with 201.)
I think you're saying the same thing as Weiner,
I am, in part.
I'm also saying that, IME, that sort of nitpicking goes into overdrive when a feminist says something aggressive that gets interpreted as an attack on men generally -- a common reaction is to defensively start pulling whatever was said to pieces for being imperfectly clear or rhetorically overstated. And I got the sense from what Tom was saying -- that he was really, really irritated and was going to petulantly ignore the conversation -- that he was having that sort of inappropriately defensive reaction.
209: You know, I really don't like the "experiencing" sentence because it doesn't get to the heart of the issue. It's not that the guys who are being dicks don't think we're experiencing it, it's that they don't think it matters.
I've been entering the relevant data into an Excel spreadsheet for the past 90 minutes and can now state definitively that these threads are 47.62% less enjoyable than killing Iraqi children. Having been unable to determine a proper objective measure of necessity, I'll have to leave that calculation to w-lfs-n.
Okay, I concede I didn't read carefully enough. Sorry. I still think rule 1 was less than perfectly clear, but I would say that, wouldn't I?
I promise to stop twisting your arm and making you read them.
This ain't argument, or even decent participation, but just something I read immediately befire arriving here that pertains to my feelings about dickishness:Tuesday Theory, Part One
Michael Berube discusses Althusser and Raymond Williams. Now I understand so little I am afraid to even characterize the post. But I think it has to do with "class conciousness" and stuff like that. (I understand a little more than this, but am inhibited and inarticulate.)
Now did I ever tell y'all that Lukacs was important to me? That "History and Class Consciousness" helped, just a little bit, my karma by reminding me that I don't have to hate the fascist capitalist warmongers? That I don't have to take it all so personally, that we are all just a little bit "determined"? Maybe not. Maybe I am wrong.
Maybe Marxist theory has no relation to feminism. I know nothing.
Maybe I shouldn't ask for compassion until I take my jackboot off the lady's neck. But I am not asking for myself, anyway.
"'When you become aware that a group of feminist women consider social behavior X to cause them personally harm or great distress, that means there's a problem. Don't deny the validity of their experience. You're wrong, and you're being a dick. If you think it might be a little important, but not quite as important as we say it is, you’re still wrong.'"
Hmm...
11) Are you bored? Then be quiet and do something more fun. Your interjections into the conversation about how you can't be bothered to read the post at hand, or the thread doesn't entertain you suffficiently, are pretty insulting when the women at hand are talking about something centrally important to you.
re: 206
I was referring to weiners response to me. I was attempting (badly) to differentiate the effect labeling behavior as sexist on men and woman. Namely, woman can participate in behavior with sexist overtones without being dicks, while men who act at all sexist are (in weiners apt description) dicks, full stop. There are reasons for this, namely that the range of sexist behavior for men includes a lot of egregious shit, so that labeling a man as sexist is a pretty powerful aspersion on his character. (The frown campaign was a campaign by early feminists to get people to frown when people said sexist things, as a way of "jump-starting" a norm that would stop people from doing so. There were similar things in the civil rights movement IIRC.)
Sorry about the terrible incoherence, I am trying to participate in the conversation while packing, which is evidently damaging my intelligibility.
re:210
Ok, rescind that, those examples are pretty convincing.
Since nobody else seems to have mentioned it, I feel like noting that analogues of Tia's rules -- which are simply the same thing you could find any number of highly articulate feminist women saying back in the Seventies, and provoking exactly identical discussion as this -- also apply to the sentiments of almost any sufficiently significant number of members of a group that suffers an ism pointing out an issue where members of the majority feel it's more important to challenge and question any possibility that they're being dickheaded, rather than sincerely considering the possibility, and shutting up and listening.
It's a little sad, but unsurprising, to see this discussion exactly recapitulate the same dickheaded whining and moping identical conversations consisted of thirty years ago. But it demonstrates that the precise same dynamics exist.
217 strikes me as essentially the same as my original, except that it emphasizes the feminism bit more. That is, it seems to fix your problem with (1), but not everyone else's, maybe. I don't mean to quibble so much, I'm just trying to understand what the problem is, and how best to fix it.
I think the problem is that people are resisting what you're saying, not that you're not saying it clearly enough.
220: OK, the frown campaign is before my time. I just don't see the "Men who do slightly sexist things are dicks" norm as nearly pervasive enough to have that effect. I mean, I participate in these conversations sometimes, and I don't get the sense that my feminist friends are going to write me off because of it, just because I am willing to acknowledge that they aren't entirely innocuous. So I do see the "cute shoes" exemption as being extended, by most of the feminists on this site, to men as well as to women, though men should certainly take fewer licenses with this.
Maybe a lot of the feminists will tell me I'm wrong about my exemption. Still, the frown campaign really seems to me to be a less powerful force than boys-clubbism.. Not just in West Texas, either.
[Oh, and for my money feel free to bow out and pack! God, packing sucks.]
"Feel free to bow out" didn't mean "please stop posting," it was more an attempt at empathy and I'll understand that if you stop replying it's a concession on all points.
211: that he was having that sort of inappropriately defensive reaction.
His reaction seems to have been a pretty common one. Which is to say, it is possible to find a significant number of people who you don't think are complete jerks who have a reaction you suspect may be inappropriate.
Ya know, go ahead and sift thru the McArdle thread, you may find I didn't participate in the gleeful Galt-bashing and lib-dissing. Well, McArdle had provided me with a couple useful insights over the years. And there is stuff about saying things behind people's backs you wouldn't say to their faces.
And, well, in the context of the page of posts, here is McArdle feeling herself threatened(?) and seeing her opinions dismissed contemptuously and seeing her political persuasion laughed at...and well, never mind. I didn't defend her, and I have no compassion for Nazis and Klansmen and the like.
And it can't compare, not a little, never. She is not our kind.
217. I had to read the thing yet again to make sure I wasn't losing it. It's fine. Clear as a bell and bang on the nail. Stet.
It makes certain assumptions (that the group of women concerned are not generally on the other side - christianist anti-contraceptive activists, for example). Those are reasonable assumptions in the context of the argument as presented. I don't think it's Tia who's quibbling.
So, how's about that pet theory of mine?
227: I meant to (and apparently didn't do it gently enough) distinguish between people who were being dicks, and people who were getting defensive and concerned that not enough justice was being done to the dicks. I don't think the latter reaction is diagnostic of being a bad person, but I do think it's a problem and I would like people to stop it.
So, how's about that pet theory of mine?
That sensible people don't have them because they're dirty?
Yes, but my guess is that his annoyance has nothing to do with the substance of what's being discussed.
I wonder (genuinely) if this is true -- and I don't mean this as a slam on tom in particular, or on ogged, or on anyone. I suspect that for some people this issue is loaded enough that it engenders (ha!) annoyance over little things that other conversations might not.
this issue is loaded enough
Sure, issues where being "wrong" seems a lot like "being a bad person" are like that. Sexism, racism, homophobia, these all get people upset. But even in the context of those discussions, there are ways of putting things that will make people defensive, and ways that won't.
223: Well, lets find out. Who here has a problem with 217? Why?
Hah. I actually do have to bow out to leave, consider it conceded.
I have to say that, on the basis of a not very careful reading of all these threads, I am now going to take the Kurt Vonnegut line on male participation in discussion of women's body image:
"Tia's set of rules are harsh and strident and fail to consider the opinions of men on subjects they have neither personal experience nor objective evidence upon. Is this going to strangle male participation in the feminist debate?"
"It is not going to strangle nearly enough of them".
Just a quick question to my good friends the men; when you feel that you have been unfairly criticised, have you ever considered being a man about it? This fucking, fucking, endless whining is driving me (and the millions of lurkers who agree with me but are too shy to say, of course) to distraction.
Here is my redraft:
"1) If you are talking like a cunt, it is probably because you are a cunt. The best way to not talk like a cunt is to shut up, stop being a cunt and then start talking again"
I replaced the word "dick" with "cunt" because it sounds more offensive.
235:Small problem emotionally. Likely resistance.
Analogy:Bad guys wearing black in cowboy movies = racism. Some emotional resistance, I am wrong, ain't gonna kill myself out of guilt.
I would be the first to admit that post #237 above has probably damaged my chances of winning the "Miss Congeniality" award this year.
237:Is dsquared English? Or general vicinty of Great Britain? Just wondering.
239: And break your decade-long streak?
I don't get the "shut up and take it" angle. Don't men still have the power? Why wouldn't they go on merrily oppressing you? Aren't women supplicants in this discussion? How often does "shut up and take it" work for supplicants?
Dsquared is a Welshman in the tradition of Tom Jones and King Arthur.
237:Jeez, I watch the English and Scottish gagster movies and sit open-mouthed. That word is not used in America, is the worst word you can direct at women, and to use it as an insult directed at men should be a behavior only among those who deservedly fucking shoot each other.
I don't get the "shut up and take it" angle.
You aren't being asked to get it. You are being asked to do it.
Are there Scottish gangster movies?
A document jointly authored by Tia and dsquared would be a thing of beauty and a joy forever. May I humbly suggest that his draft could be improved by deleting "and then start talking again".
I'm going to stop being a cunt now because I've got to fuck off and cook the tea.
He's close enough to English, surely? But his 237 is spot on, congenial or no.
243: This is advice for men about how to act and how to talk about feminism if you want to be a top notch human being in this regard.
Tia's not begging, she's advising. And her advice is directed toward those who actively want to be helpful.
If you're expecting supplication, you're not the intended audience.
247:You bet. Trainspotting aproaches gangsterism. There is a movie called Intermission. Once Upon a Time in the Midlands feels a little Scottish, but anything with Robert Carlyle and Shirley Henderson feels Scottish.(Okay, Ravenous not Scottish) I don't know where the Midlands are.
245: As Hitchens has proved over and over again over the last five years, a British accent makes up for a lot perceived shortcomings. If women are bothered by it, they can shoot D2 and email and let him know. If they're not, that would seem to be determinative.
Jake, before I get onions all over my hands, just never tell a Welshman that he's close enough to English, OK. This is a public service announcement in the interests of your safety.
Hell, I guess Intermission is Irish, but it has Kelly MacDonald in it. Small film industry in the islands, ya know.
English and Scottish gagster movies
This sounds like a porn subgenre.
and sit open-mouthed
Appropriately enough.
#245: I am amazed and delighted that the dear old word retains some power to shock (I thought it had gone the way of "fuck") and apologise accordingly.
#249: #253 is basically right although I have more or less given up getting arsey about this because the alternative appeared to be to declare war on America.
and nobody can gainsay me until they have read this study from start to finish
I beg your pardon, Matt Hunt's dissertation has now moved
Considering I'm flying to Britain in a few hours, this conversation is giving me some excellent ideas.
For that matter, if women take it upon themselves to not act like supplicants, and say something less like, please be nice to me, and more like, look, I can't control you, but if you want me to respect you, here's what you'll do (and you'll understand why), it will get the message accross better. While on one hand I can see the point in phrasing things so it doesn't prompt defensiveness, on the other hand men advocating for this are basically what Atrios calls concern trolls. Maybe it would be better for my cause if I tiptoed around your feeeeeelings, but maybe, just maybe, it's good for you to hear the reaction you're actually prompting, instead of some watered down version of it designed to create the illusion of consensus and curry favor with men, and really that, in the end, is going to be better for my cause.
260: (Two-fingered whistle, foot-stomping, other wordless displays of enthusiatic agreement.)
ogged's pet theory is, I think, basically right. That doesn't really say anything about the merits of the various arguments, which may well be correct. These conversations about male-female relationships end up blowing up more than others because they matter more, in a day-in, day-out way.
Ah well. I have a feeling I should bow out here. I'll just reiterate that there's a difference between being forceful or even uncompromising and being annoying or alienating.
260:With all due consideration and respect. I read every word on Pandagon, feministe, and IBtP, and rarely feel defensive. Perhaps a broadening of targets with an increase in stridency could be effective.
Perhaps not.
Welsh:British:English::Texan:American:Yankee, more or less?
I read every word on Pandagon, feministe, and IBtP
No wonder you have such a bad attitude.
"He's close enough to English, surely?"
Don't know many Welshman, I take it.
266: No, I think the Welsh are considered British.
"What if the entire culture of educated American women is oversensitive on this score? "
Not sure the line of argument follows by comparing us to Middle Eastern women; by parity of reasoning, we don't have a poverty problem in America, because poor people in India don't have cable TV and many of our poor people do.
But, even if we are all simply oversensitive, it's still a good question why: is it that we educated American women are simply morally bankrupt or so bored we invent things to worry about? All of us? Is it the great influence of print and television media? Unless you think it's a sort of individual, independent choice to obsess, say, about body image, I find the question useless.
Hard to channel Marcotte:"Hey, ogged, this ain't directed at you, and I know you mean no harm and are not intending to hurt, but ya know, the Goddam sexbot-loving womenslave rubber-doll ego-destroying scalpeling off of undesirable-because- imperfect female body parts just really fucking pisses me off sometimes. But, dude, you're ok"
#266: not really. The Texans have a whole big superiority complex and there are a lot of them and they're quite culturally important, while the Welsh are a horrible grubby little slave race with no real history or culture and a penchant for animal buggery.
More like Oklahoman::American:: Yankee
270: I'm not siding with the viewpoint that Ogged was also not siding with, but: is it that we educated American women are simply morally bankrupt or so bored we invent things to worry about?
It really is possible for oversensitivity to spring from other things than moral bankruptcy or bored aristocratic elitism. And it's probably worth keeping in mind that people using the word "oversensitive" are not necessarily casting aspersions about such things -- it would seem odd to assume that the common Iranian female viewpoint springs from the same wellspring as the garden-variety rightwing dickhead viewpoint.
I was fairly congenial on the J. Biel thread, nevertheless I probably reacted to every comment Tia cites in precisely the same way, just chose not to engage. Oh great, here comes another men-have-problems-too argument, oh riiiight, b, who can write a post like the one about being naked in the locker room, is the woman who is most sensitive to body issues, whatever. Tia is pretty accurate in capturing how that comes off to almost any woman reading. Not everyone reacts in the same way--people have different breaking points, desire for argument, ideas about context, &c. But the reaction is the same.
Dsquared's take on this seems so simple, and yet so hard to grasp. Hey, try thinking about this stuff sociologically. That's the short, sweet version. And dsquared? Comes off really, really well.
Mmm. That Miss Congeniality award really isn't out of reach.
I should say, not everyone responds in the same way.
I am going to name my babies D and Squared.
for real, am I being a drama queen about the "leaving women alone in the club is dangerous" thing?
Personally? I think so, yeah. Women are grownups, they can handle being alone in public. I get that a lot of women don't feel *comfortable* alone in a club, but then neither do a lot of men, honestly. Women are conditioned to be way more afraid of being alone than we should be, and while it's nice and all to take this into account, that doesn't, in fact, mean that a woman left alone in a club is actually in danger.
146: I dunno. Do the women in this particular discussion use the "that's a good point, but your rhetoric is ineffective" nonsense? Because I always think that's kind of an asshole move, actually.
That strikes me as a fair reading of this: "768: Tim, relax. The boys are tough, Tia arguing strenuously isn't going to make them cry."
My bad, then. I meant that in rather a joking way that I thought was pretty obvious.
I wrote a ton of other stuff responding to various things, but it was too much. I boil it down thusly:
I think the basic "tone" argument boils down to this. Tia (and by extension most of the women here who have, at one point or another, lost it and yelled--me and LB, for instance) is saying, look: here is why we lose it and yell. Ogged (and by extension some of the men) are saying, look: when you yell, it gets my back up.
Our point is that there are a lot of things that are *as painful* as being yelled at. More painful, even. One of the biggies is being marginalized. Tia's post is trying to bring attention to subtle forms of marginalization. When people respond to someone who is hurt and therefore angry by saying, in effect, "your anger gets in the way of your message," this is, effectively, further marginalization. It ratchets the anger up. Hence, that kind of response *also* gets in the way of effective communcation: there's not a moral high ground there.
Now, I will charitably assume that what is *really* being said is "your anger makes me feel bad." That's legit. And I think that this fear-of-feminist-anger thing is a real topic that we should discuss sometime.
But. Honestly? If you want your fear to be taken seriously, as dsquared says, you have to be a man about it and *admit* that what's wrong with anger isn't that it's somehow morally unjustified or rhetorically ineffective or personally offensive. What's wrong with it, from your point of view, is that you are hurt that a friend is yelling at you. Which is valid.
And yet. The reason the friend is yelling is because *she* is hurt that *her* friend is seemingly indifferent to her feelings and/or arguments. What's frustrating about the "tone" quibble is that it seems, in all honesty, to boil down to saying that your feelings are more important than hers. Which is really weird, given that in other situations we seem collectively pretty comfortable with losing our tempers occasionally, or calling people dicks, or whatever. There is something about *this specific subject* that men get *very* touchy about.
I'll make you a deal. We'll consider that our "tone" is offensive (give me credit: I've moderated mine quite a bit) if you'll consider that you might be being unnecessarily rigid and defensive about this whole "tone" issue and maybe think about what would happen if you moderated that.
I lost my connection, but there was supposed to be an extra 'not' in 226.
if you'll consider that you might be being unnecessarily rigid and defensive about this whole "tone" issue
Nope. I actually think LB has substantively more extreme views than either you or Tia, for example, and is hardly shy about forcefully expressing them, but she rarely gets called on her tone. There are ways of arguing and responding that annoy people, and they're annoying even when women do them.
Isn't LB called on her tone in this thread, by you?
Shorter version of what I said above: quibbling about tone makes you sound like this guy to us. I honestly see very little difference, substantively, between the linked comment and some of Ogged's comments in this thread, although I'm strongly inclined to ignore Erik and am only refraining from saying very bitchy things to him out of respect for everyone else here, whereas I'm never inclined to ignore Ogged and don't want to say bitchy things to him but rather to plead with him to recognize that he's got a blind spot on this subject. (Or, if I'm wrong, to show me how and why.)
LB has substantively more extreme views than either you or Tia
My props! Finally!
Isn't LB called on her tone in this thread, by you?
Yeah, but that's because I wrote and deleted a version of 282 a few hours ago, thought about it, and decided it would be more fun to call her on it than point out that she's never called on it.
282: Then you will have to be more specific. Because I honestly do not see what you mean.
Would you say LB argues less emotionally?
Would you say LB argues less emotionally?
Don't try to trick me, ac. Seriously, I hate to do this, because it seems like Tia and I interrupt our hiati just long enough to come back and snip at each other, but consider the sentence in comment 194:
The way you were brought up, you've been taught not to see the problem.
That, as far as I'm concerned (I will now advocate the beating of women) is in "please punch me in the face" territory. And I say that even though I basically agree with the substative point. But there are a dozen less condescending, less bizarrely implicating your interlocutor's parents ways to make it. Maybe that sentence didn't annoy everyone as much as it annoyed me, but let's say that some people write more sentences that are likely to annoy people, and I don't think it has much to do with the topic being discussed, at all. I'm uncomfortable with this discussion because it's hard to make a good case without naming names (which is to say, some of the guys are like this too, and not on the topic of sexism).
282: Also, LB is less likely to make definitive "this is simply true" statements about all sorts of things. You make those kinds of statements all the time about stuff. There seems to be a double standard here: women are only reasonable on feminist issues if they don't presume the same kind of freedom to offend that you yourself enjoy?
I think that the distinction, for you, lies in the realm of the personal: it's okay to say, for instance, that w-lfs-n is a pedophile because we know this isn't true, and it's okay to declare as irrefutable truth that Jessica Biel's ass is the holy grail because Jessica Biel isn't posting here. Whereas declaring as irrefutable truth that "you're being a dick," even when the speaker is using the rhetorical "you," crosses a line because (1) the post is about the commenters at this specific blog, and (2) the post links to and quotes specific people.
If that's the distinction, then I kind of get that. But I think that that's a point that might be more effectively made by simply saying it than by arguing at great length over tone.
Cross-posted. 289 helps.
I think my own hangup on this particular issue, feminism entirely aside, is that your saying that some of the guys do it sheds light on something I'd not had a glimmer of before: the distinction between "Blogowner Ogged declaring some argument styles out of bounds" and "Ogged saying he, personally, doesn't like some styles of argument." I say this because, if there are guys who do this stuff too, then to me, that sets part of the collective expectation of what is and isn't communally acceptable. (Assuming that said guys are among the core group of commenters, and not in kind of weird pariah group who we all secretly barely tolerate, e.g. someone who thankfully doesn't seem to comment here any more.)
So okay, fine. If the point is that Ogged doesn't like X kind of argument, whatever. That's cool. I don't like some things myself. As long as the point isn't that X kind of argument is somehow objectively wrong or out of place on this here blog.
If the point is that Ogged doesn't like X kind of argument
No no, I don't mean it like that at all. Let me try this another way. It's indubitably true that some of the criticism women get for their "tone" is rooted in sexism. But it's also true that a woman's tone can be legitimately off, even when she's discussing sexism. Agreed?
How the fuck did I find myself in this discussion? How about that great little pet theory, eh?
Did you see this?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009453.php
Worth blogging about.
279: Well then, food for thought. I guess I have to rescind my earlier taunting of dsquared.
292: Of course. The question is what constitutes "off," which is honestly a question I'm interested in simply out of an interest in rhetorical analysis, and without any personal axe to grind.
293: I responded to your pet theory WAY upthread, and you never said anything about my response. So fuck you.
Off in what way? It depends what her point and aim is. I'd say that "guideline for not being a dick" contains some irony, no? In one way she is legitimately suggesting some ways to approach women more effectively, in another, is so fed up she doesn't care. She says herself it's pedagogy disguising rage.
I did see it. How about another gender post! No!
It really is possible for oversensitivity to spring from other things than moral bankruptcy or bored aristocratic elitism.
You get two answers!
Indeed it is! But I was assuming, and I don't think I'm crazy for saying this, that when someone says, 'You're just being oversensitive', they're probably not agreeing with me that the problem is serious and that my reaction is appropriate. And to that extent, yes, the Iranian friends of ogged and the chauvinists are on the same side: both are saying 'these silly women, they shouldn't be so sensitive about these things.' Which implies that the American women could easily do otherwise.
It really is possible for oversensitivity to spring from other things than moral bankruptcy or bored aristocratic elitism.
Indeed it is! But if the oversensitivity is the result of a lot of culture and social pressure, then it's hardly an informative statement to describe it as gosh, American women are just oversensitive. In fact, one might say that if a person has been more or less trained to respond to stimuli in a certain way, it's not being oversensitive or overreacting at all. In fact, one might be tempted to start pointing to societal causes, like fashion magazines or those skinny jeans or the idle chatter of male connisseurship.
In such a case, though, I doubt 'oversensitive' would have been offered as an alternate explanation of all the phenomena discussed.
Off in what way? It depends what her point and aim is. I'd say that "guideline for not being a dick" contains some irony, no? In one way she is legitimately suggesting some ways to approach women more effectively, in another, is so fed up she doesn't care. She says herself it's pedagogy disguising rage.
I thought Tia's post was fine. And "off" can mean any number of things, depending. It's not a consistent thing like "too emotional."
I responded to your pet theory WAY upthread
Where, fuckhead?
some people write more sentences that are likely to annoy people
More sentences than whom? For my money, the "punch in the face" line was out of line, even when leavened with a joke about its inappropriateness. In fact, especially when leavened with a joke about its inappropriateness—saying something offensive and adding that it's a joke is an annoying maneuver. You did something similar with the "humorless bitch" remark, which was also annoying in its own right. (I'm not saying that this "it's a joke" maneuver is unique to you, far from it, just that it's annoying and you've done it.)
And jokes about hitting a woman during discussions of feminism are pretty much the definition of "off." (Maybe if you're really really really secure in your relations with the women in question, but that's not happening here; it seems you're sincerely angry at Tia.)
"Don't try to trick me, ac" also annoyed me. Why assume she's asking the question in bad faith?
I think we have a mote/beam problem here, as when you accused Kotsko of being blindingly angry when he was stating provocative points without particular heat. This is not to say that I am never annoying myself, but I think you shouldn't set yourself up as the arbiter of tone.
Also, I think Tia's comment about how you were brought up is meant to implicate society, not your parents.
298: Yes! And a post about rhetoric and tone!
(Re. oversensitivity, I'd honestly attribute a lot of this to American culture more broadly--we're very media-centric, we're hyper-competitive, we care way too much about sexiness and novelty. None of which is really the fault of feminism, although fair enough to say that American feminism, like American culture generally, exhibits some of these weaknesses.)
Matt, you are so humorless sometimes. Seriously, I don't even know where to begin with any of those, other than to say that you and I are on different planets. Let's maintain our Coors-hating comity.
302: Here, asshole.
Pop quiz, genius: what do you think my "pet theory" is?
you and I are on different planets
Weiner is from Venus. Ogged is from Uranus.
Oh fuck, if I'm responding to the wrong pet theory post, then that's your problem for being unclear.
I'm not taking your pop quiz. You're not the boss of me.
Since B said the same thing as your pet theory, in regards to a transition from the frat-haus style atmosphere to a new one with a more prominent place for women's voices, I'd bet she agrees with it.
Oh, *that* pet theory. Mebbe. I dunno, though, and I don't think I was saying the same thing you were (sorry WD). But at this point I admit I no longer remember what I said, exactly.
I think that the acrimony of late comes from two things: feminism (which, along with the associated issue of gender was always an acrimonious topic) and partisanship. I don't think they're about uncertainty about the forum, per se; I think they're about how incredibly difficult it is to maintain a forum that discusses hot topics while maintaining good humor and bonhomie.
Which to your credit, you did very well w/r/t politics; less so w/r/t gender. But then, hey. You're a guy.
No need to be sorry, I'll just refuse to let your authorial intent be decisive.
Whatever, I'm only ever discussing my pet theory from now on.
237: Bravo, dsquared.
260: Brava, Tia.
312: Well, as that's the really important thing, I'm quite happy.
To address (what I conceive of as) your pet theory, ogged, I think the difficulty of maintaining a forum of sharp criticism leavened with bonhomie grows with the square of the number of commenters. After a point, it becomes impossible to rely on interpersonal (emphasis on personal) mutual understanding and goodwill, at which point something akin to boring old respecfulness, or what have you, has to take over if the project isn't to implode.
Jesus, I don't think I can read this thread. Can we start a new one where we refer endlessly to the "bitches"?
And, to respond somewhere upthread, yes, you do have to converse so that someone wants to listen to you. If you don't like that, have fun screaming to your fellow cooks, cause no one else will listen to you. And that's perfectly just.
So we need to get rid of some commenters? We'll call it The Bridgeplate Plan.
..."being right" is the second or third most important thing in an argument, not the first.
316 strikes me as a reasonable explanation, though I think that changes in the demographic makeup of the commenters makes up a significant part of it. Nothing wrong with that: that's how it's supposed to work, I think.
Oh, good. Blame it on the immigrants now.
317: Don't be a smug jerk, Michael. Plenty of people read that post, as the comment thread length indicates. So obviously the problem, if there is one, isn't that no one wants to listen to what's being said.
Don't be a smug jerk
What, you make the rules now?
if there's one theme to this discussion, it seems like the women are talking more about the effect/framing of the communication, and the men on the words themselves?
323: Hey, you're on hiatus. And I can probably beat you up nowadays. And I'm feeling threatened that Tia might be the front-runner in the bitchy feminist stakes these days.
Hey, I have more substantively extreme views than you do. Tia's not all the competition.
I'm feeling threatened that Tia might be the front-runner in the bitchy feminist stakes
(Except for my girlfriend in college) you'll always be the front-running bitchy feminist in my life, b.
So we need to get rid of some commenters? We'll call it The Bridgeplate Plan.
If you're going to go there, don't be half-assed about it: "The Bridgeplate Solution".
Fail boldly, as the saying goes.
Rafael Nadal: annoying jungle boy, or kinda endearing virility?
He'd be perfect minus the grunting.
The Bridgeplate Solution
All the annoying people are banned!
Only bridgeplate and the apostropher are allowed to comment anymore.
Man. That'd be a blog you could bottle and sell. If you could get them as the only commenters on Fafblog, it'd be even better.
Fuck that shit. No double jeopardy, I'm here for the duration.
Two can play that game. Anyway, I'll be indirectly outing myself once that article goes up, assuming anyone reads S&F online. Plus the MLA's coming up.
B, why not just use the Spartacus routine and have everyone announce that, "I'm Bitchphd"?
I'm not gay manly enough to be Spartacus.
He'd be perfect minus the grunting.
Is this also true of Sharapova?
341: No, but Clara Zetkin, maybe a little, around the jaw.
Fuck. True confession: I was trying to trick you.
I agree with Matt that ogged's "punch you in the face" joke was shitty, and it made me flinch a tiny bit. I hate ogged's tone constantly. ogged, you should know you don't have the kind of relationship with me where you can make jokes like that at my expense and have me treat them generously; you used to, not anymore. your relationship with B is certainly different, and I can't comment on that.
One thing that drives me crazy about discussions about blog dynamics on the blog is that nothing can ever completely be said, because it's on the blog, and thus they are inevitably totally dishonest. (Please know the following is said with affection, LB, and will only shore up your credentials in the bitchy feminist competition). I really hated some of LB's tactics in the first Hirshman discussion. You, ogged, can rank people according to who you think is most irritating, or who is being irritating when, but really, there's plenty of irritation to go around, and not everyone who's pissed off about everything is always announcing it publically.
I will now prepare a longer comment about how I view different moral issues, and the assumptions that undergird things I say, because I think I am sort of misunderstood, which is certainly partly my failure to make myself understood.
Seems like that could be a post unto itself.
It's not you, text, it's me. I've changed.
This blog was held together with majuscule letters, "ridgeplate", and Hello Kitty band-aids.
Oh, and while I work on this longer comment, Matt's interpretation of my "brought up to" comment was the right one; it was about society.
oh, but I wanted it to be about me, standpipe.
This is what happens when people start being earnest.
I was thinking something just like 354. What we obviously need now is a thread of pure cock jokes, to heal this rift.
Remember how when Ogged wanted to talk about Kierkegaard, and he made a separate blog for doing that, and that way, Unfogged didn't die from boredom? Perhaps, in similar fashion, we could make a different blog where we all hated each other, but retained this blog for sweet love.
On the hate-blog, Weiner, you're first on my list. But luckily you are also first on my list on the love-blog.
But luckily you are also first on my list on the love-blog.
Two-timing tramp!
there's plenty to share, Chops. I'll pencil you in for dance number two.
Remember how when Ogged wanted to talk about Kierkegaard, and he made a separate blog for doing that, and that way, Unfogged didn't die from boredom?
That's Heidegger to you, chump.
CHANGEBAD!
You know how things can come back to haunt you? Like, how you casually mention that kumquats are funny and then your birthday presents are kumquat-themed forevermore and there's not a darn thing you can do about it?
Does anyone fucking care that I pine for kumquat sorbet?
That's a whole lot of concentrated citrus.
I care, because of the two, only Heidegger was so hot.
I think lots of people probably care about that, yes.
See but Chopper, if you could get the tartness of the flesh and the bitter of the pith together with the, uh, kind of there-ness of the seeds, what a triumph! a triumph!
I'm certainly not the maven of appropriateness, but would quite possibly have sent 346 or a version thereof as an e-mail to ogged rather than posting it. Also, I would continue the exchange via e-mail, if either party desires to continue it. I don't see how having that conversation in a public forum can lead to anything good for anyone, especially me.
364: Holy shit, you're clairvoyant!
Oh dear. As a longtime lurker, going back to before the changeover in primary postership, I'm going to have to chime in to say that 346 feels to me like it just forever changed the tenor of this place in one single blow.
Eeek.
Bring back the cockjokes!
Guys, I kind of think the germane thing here is that Tia's pissed on matters of principle and personal feeling, rather than that we're uncomfortable and afraid that the blog's creaking at the seams.
I'm really sorry that things are at this point. I think the problem may be as much about incompatible senses of desirable social interaction and/or communication strategies as it is about unclear intentions, honestly. I think the intentions of Tia's post and comments were pretty clear, and I feel badly that she doesn't feel like she's being understood.
Why is everyone suddenly moaning that the blog is teh doomed? 346 seems no more out of line than 289, which it's responding to, and neither seems likely to bring the whole edifice crashing down. Have some faith, people.
I think the intentions of Tia's post and comments were pretty clear
I think so too.
Maybe we can just let Tia's comments stand as they are, without trying to decide on their appropriateness or not. She expressed herself as she meant to express herself. She's not compelling anyone to agree, address, or even read them. If you get something out of them, great. If not, great. There isn't something that must be settled here, lest the children die.
Everything's fine.
Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I haven't been reading this thread (or the other one) because I've been super busy and there are many comments. This is FUCKING FREAKING ME OUT PEOPLE. I don't want to go on hiatus with people talking about the tenor forever changing/people being upset/etc. etc. I know this is bad and wrong and horrible to make it ALL ABOUT ME but, honestly, I'm going "aaayyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaa" right now.
I think the intentions of Tia's post and comments were pretty clear, and I feel badly that she doesn't feel like she's being understood.
Seconded (or, on preview, thirded). I continue to assert that Tia was both clear and right.
Won't someone please think of teh Becks?
384 - With you around, I know it is. You're very good at helping keep the calm. Awesome facilitator, you are, and I thank you for it.
In fairness, I was sort of kidding about the blog breaking up.
But in unfairness I'm a little tired of hearing about what the germane thing is all the time. I mean, if everyone seems to disagree as to what the germane thing is, or if lots of people think it's something else, maybe one needs to do more than just assert that no, the germane thing is really this thing over here.
Speaking for me, personally, and nobody else--which is one thing we need to get back to doing here--I understood Tia pretty damn well, which led me to stay the fuck away from these threads, because I had nothing of value to add to them. And I think you'll find that quite a lot of people had the same response. I mean, who the fuck am I to say what Tia feels?
But at some point I would like to get back to jollity. So, B, whenever you think we've reached that point, and jollity is once again germane, could you let the rest of us know about it?
Loooooong time lurker here, and don't worry Becks, this thread isn't going to change the tenor of this blog for teh forever. I do think, based on my long and glorious history of reading without posting, that the tenor of this blog has already changed pretty considerably over the last couple of months. Whether one thinks that's bad or good depends on how awesome one is.
While you're gone, Becks, we'll be sorting out how this is ALL YOUR FAULT!
I second text's 289. I also favor jollity. Jollity over germaneness.
Or even 389. But still, with the jollity, and the ho, ho, ho.
It's all been downhill since Bob left.
That fucker.
Bob's "necking" comment on the penis-stretching thread remains my all-time favorite comment. Or at least in the top five.
I just spent the last X minutes searching for the Ogged-is-leaving-blog-thread in which SCMT (?) thanked him for his tenure as host, and specifically mentioned how much emotional work had been put into nurturing this community. (Although I'm sure Tim didn't say "nurturing.")
As I recall, Tim ascribed a lot of Unfogged's ability to *simultaneously* make welcome serious policy, shallow hotornot, clever wordplay, and o-earnest conversations to -- well, to Ogged. Particularly his generous willingness to make himself the butt of...well, a lot of jokes.
Teofilo's right. The blog is fine. Alameida was right the other day; LB and Tia and Becks (and the return of B), have really shifted the tone of this place. But it's a blog -- it's changed tones at least three times since I started reading. And -- dead serious here -- I did not post a comment until the frathaus atmosphere had well and truly lifted.
So, anyway. Wish I could have found that old comment of Tim's. It said it better, in fewer words.
I'll give you germane.
Gay Couple Has Public Sex, Crowd Applauds
397 - Only oral sex, though. I feel very cheated by that link text/headline.
379's what I meant to say.
Text, I was totally not trying to lecture or be heavy handed. I probably should have stayed out of it; I was merely trying to say something that I hoped would address the most salient point of what Tia was saying, which is that she didn't feel like she was being understood. It wasn't meant to scold anyone else for what they were or weren't saying.
Yeah, apo. You've set up an expectation of buttsex.
But yeah, I admit that I sometimes tend to interfere. It's b/c I'm a mom. We're taught to do that crap in mom class.
The weird thing about the not-getting-Tia's-point comments was that they mostly seemed to be from people who didn't participate in the original (Biel) thread. Actually, I guess it's not that weird.
[E]verybody here should remember that any time you are in a room with [Apo], you are in a situation where you cannot get out of [butt]sex.
Teo, I'm confused by 403. Tia's comments were inspired by the Biel thread, but written (and I take it intended) to apply far more broadly. They're also substantively correct in most every measure, so I don't why it would be weird or not, it just doesn't sound relevant.
I just mean that people were like, "I don't get #1. What kind of behavior are you talking about?" when it was totally obvious from the Biel thread what she was referring to.
Hey, if you want good news, I sold our house today.
So I think the way to go with a kumquat sorbet would be to make it as if it's a lemon sorbet, that is, using only the juice of a bunch of kumquats (I can't imagine there's much juice in any one kumquat, so this would probably be mad bunches), but then serve them in kumquat-sized single-bite servings mochiwise covered with a bitter "peel" made from the peel and pith (or something like Campari, or the like).
I have dreamed of blogs where everybody hates on each other all the time, and sticks around anyway. Would feel like family. Hardly need to defend ObsWi anymore. Round Here
I'm surprised Mr. B let you handle such a big financial undertaking all by yourself, B, considering how bad women are at any sort of business negotiation.
"Why is everyone suddenly moaning that the blog is teh doomed?"
Hell, I got most of complaining done shortly after Ogged left.
I am always ahead of my time.
389: "I understood Tia pretty damn well, which led me to stay the fuck away from these threads, because I had nothing of value to add to them. And I think you'll find that quite a lot of people had the same response."
As I said earlier, I read this thread numerous times back in the Seventies; the parts about women, feminism, and men, and where some men come in to be dickheaded about it, anyway.
390: "I do think, based on my long and glorious history of reading without posting, that the tenor of this blog has already changed pretty considerably over the last couple of months."
Not to mention when Unf stopped posting.
Though the major change was when it became IRC/a chat room.
411: Thanks!
413: I'll have you know we cleared over 70k on the thing. Bite me.
I just spent the last X minutes searching for the Ogged-is-leaving-blog-thread in which SCMT (?) thanked him for his tenure as host, and specifically mentioned how much emotional work had been put into nurturing this community.
I think you're remembering two comments, one by NickS and another by tom.
Even with ogged back (for now), I don't recommend rereading the whole thread unless you want to be sad all over again.
well congrats on the house, b. The only thing worse than a scold is a scold's scold, and the only thing worse than that is Ben w-lfs-n. It's a fact well illustrated by history.
This thread is reminiscent of an exchange of letters that took place in Renaissance Italy, which was itself a recapitulation of a dispute that occurred in ancient Greece, which classicists now believe was actually the first recording of a much older oral tradition.
When they finally decipher Linear A, it will be this thread.
I also congratulate B, and anyone else, reading or otherwise, for any good thing that happened to them recently, unless they have radically different conceptions of the good than I. Simultaneously, I commiserate with people who had bad things happen to them, similar provisos being applicable.
That is, when they finally decipher some prominent text written in Linear A.
This thread is reminiscent of an exchange of letters that took place in Renaissance Italy, which was itself a recapitulation of a dispute that occurred in ancient Greece, which classicists now believe was actually the first recording of a much older oral tradition.
Not the oral tradition you're thinking of, though, but another oral tradition by the same name.
Can we declare a moratorium on the phrase "is reminiscent of"? It's way overused in faux-sophisticated advertising copy, and it bugs me.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!
(Not about the thread this time, just in general. SO PANICKING about being ready. Can somebody, like, slap me like they do in the movies when somebody becomes hysterical? Please?)
((And congrats to B!))
Your mother has an oral tradition.
"Is reminiscent of" smacks of smacking.
I thought blow jobs was only one tradition.
Thanks, Becks!
There will be no slapping of women. You'll be fine. Have a cold drink of water or something instead. Or a beer.
And keep in mind that anything you don't pack you can buy there. Wallet, ticket, passport, keys. That's all you really need.
I had a bad day of mythical proportions yesterday, w/d, so I'll take that vaguely expressed goodwill and run with it.
I wish specific goodwill on ac.
Ill-will to you reminiscent haters.
You didn't say where you slapped me, Teo.
438 - (Meaning, that's the excuse you can use to rebut 433)
438: Will specifying spare me B's ire?
"Vaguely reminscent" is the name of a dessert at the Medici in Chicago.
The secret of 430 is that, while on the surface it appears to be a lame attempt at schoolyard humor addressed to all readers, it's actually an important message addressed to PK whenever he decides to read the unfogged archives.
434: ac, sorry to hear that. Sticking to vaugeness, as I have little other recourse, I hope that whatever parts of your bad day can be resolved are, or are in progress towards so being. And that you're doing all right wrapping your head around any parts that can't be.
I commiserate with people who had bad things happen to them
The missus felt poorly during our entire trip to California, and worse when we returned, so she went to the doctor yesterday. She has mono. Which means I'm probably next, having never encountered it previously.
I have good and bad things happen to me everyday. Some of them vicariously. Beyerstein got a job at WaPo. I cried. I finally read some old Josh Marshall posts. I cried.
Weather has changed in Dallas, so I can drive dogs to the parks without their brains boiling in the back seat. Feels fucking great.
442: I rest my case.
Thanks, WD. Condolences to AC.
Everyone's all initials nowadays. It's weird.
Oh, I may be dining out on stories of yesterday for years to come.
I just tried to call you to yell at you, Becks, but apparently you've changed your number or something. That's ok, because I WILL FUCKING TRACK YOU DOWN!
With love,
Ogged
447 - Pshaw. You will be having exciting adventures, only of a different sort.
The funny thing is that you're picking on a faux-sophisticated comment for using a faux-sophisticated phrase.
448 - Doh! My ringer was off. Back on now.
I finally read some old Josh Marshall posts. I cried.
McManus, now I'm ashamed to say that I was touched when you said you teared up when you read that I didn't have stomach cancer. You bastard.
I stopped by briefly when I was really busy and there was this big breakup going on, and now I come back and it's all about blowjobs again, not to mention this weird sexual tension between teofilo and Becks. Man, this place is fucked up.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
this weird sexual tension
It gives the blog a sexual meniscus around the circumference.
458: Actually, it's why I got sucked in.
444: Condolences to the missus. To you, hahahahahaha!
443: PK will be too busy posting on Unfogged Jr. to be reading old archives when he grows up.
455:It wasn't personal, ogged, if that it what you thought. How could it be? It is always the words, my imagination and lability.
They were good words. I like to think I am a decent reader.
Congratulations on selling the house.
Thank god I checked back at this thread, and found everyone in such an improved mood.
I'm going to bed much happier than I was just a few minutes ago.
It gives the blog a sexual meniscus around the circumference.
Or else it gets the hose?
Just like you to turn something dirty into something creepy.
She has mono. Which means I'm probably next, having never encountered it previously.
Mono sucks. Bit of advice, which might make no difference: rest, and don't try to fight it. It can go away in a week or two, but it can also linger for a long time if you try to keep working.
And if you're not careful, you risk developing a case of stereo.
Pssst, Apo! Don't take health advice from him, he just had cancer.
He got better, though.
Maybe, apo, if you tell your wife you have mono, she'll have sex with you to relieve the agony.
No, apo! Don't tell your wife you have mono. What she doesn't know won't hurt her.
Better yet, don't tell her that she has mono, and let her keep doing all the work.
472: That fucking doctor ruined everything.
First I should say that ever since I have first encountered the phenomenon of people saying "that's just your opinion," when you say something, I have thought it was dumb. "It came out of my mouth; whose else's opinion would it be?" I feel like saying. This seems to me like the equivalent of saying, "the First Amendment means I have freedom of speech" when someone criticizes something you said. I understand that other people value these "IMO" type caveats, and I sometimes employ them. It may be that I have to adapt to the wider social convention, but it really seems empty to me.
I do, occasionally, think people make the mistake of heaping too much scorn on people who disagree with them; I am rarely heaping scorn (there are occasions when I basically am; I'll get to that), though sometimes people seem to think I'm heaping scorn when I'm not, so I must not be making myself clear to everyone. But when this happens, I feel like there are plenty of other people who get my meaning perfectly, so it isn't just that I am so naturally bitchy. In fact, my problem with Linda Hirshman was not the point she was trying to argue (though I do, in fact, disagree), but the fact that she really was, in a way that tons of people were sensible to, scornful of women who were trying to navigate extremely difficult waters with a lot of icebergs of cultural pressure--okay, this metaphor is breaking down. (And really, as I said once before, her point was quite speculative; she was making an argument about a pathway to equality that depended on a lot of stones falling into place, and we weren't convinced they would fall the way she said they would, and for a lot of us, "be an ibanker for feminism" felt like a rejection of the more holistic thing we wanted feminism to be: sensible work family balance, maybe conected to social justice movements that would point out that your ibank was investing in DeBeers, or whatever. So considering the theoretical leap she was taking, and how hard a lot of these decisions are, stuff like her concluding paragraph about how SAHM's are stained by babyshit seemed gross to a fair number of people.)
All this business of having to explain that it's your opinion, I do think is probably partly a manifestation of sexism, in that women are expected to moderate themselves in a way that men aren't; it's one reason why I feel somewhat resistant to "IMO" caveats. I further think that the character of my, and B's, and Cala's, and actually, yeah, I think LB's, since I see her in the process of negotiating her tone all the time, all have certain qualities that are results of reactions and responses to sexist demands that we be quiet (I'm sorry to psychoanalyze you, people who didn't ask to be psychoanalyzed). I also think that responses to women on the blog, including, possibly, my own, may be somewhat sexist. I mean, ogged, perhaps more than anyone else here, is in the habit of making very extreme unmoderated statements. Seriously, in the infidelity thread, next to anything I or Cala, who repeatedly emphasized how forgiveable or understandable it often all ways, said, his comments were off the charts. He said something about how breaking a vow made you not a person or something like that; I never, ever would have endorsed such a statement. But B and I are the ones who are too forceful? But actually, now that I think about it, I don't think my more intense emotional response when B or LB is pissing me off is actually sexism; it's that I don't really give a shit about ogged, but I don't want to be fighting with B and LB, because fundamentally (and I am actually crying ridiculously hard as I write this) it makes me so goddamned happy that they are in the world trying, basically, to do the same thing I'm doing. It's *so* important to me, and it's important to them too. I remember on the gay thread, when I was still in the process of trying to define and preserve my status as community member here, because of some combination of boredom at work and feeling bereft (as I still am) of Clementine (I started commenting at Unfogged precisely when she left town), and I saw the post, and I thought, "Good God that's shitty," and I saw everyone else responding to it in the same old ways, and I was trying to formulate a response that would preserve my status but also say something truthful about it, I was so happy and admiring and grateful when I saw LizardBreath had gotten the ball rolling.
Anyway, IMO, "but others may differ" shouldn't really need to be stated. OTOH, the implications, in my mind, of others differing from me is quite different depending on the issue at hand, and I try sometimes to say explicitly what the implications are when the question arises, but my tone doesn't change depending on the implication. So here's some clarification:
Barring some really weird ticking time bomb example, and assuming a degree of cultural and economic freedom, I don't think there's any particular excuse for not communicating with your spouse if you are interested in another source of sex. However, not only is this apparently a controversial point, but it's a matter of private behavior. It's not a broad question of justice. So my interests in discussing it are only twofold: one, to figure out what I, personally, should do when in relevant situations, or when asked to advise my friends, and two, as an intellectual exercise. I don't, in point of fact, give a shit who is fucking whom; nor do I think disagreement with me on any of this is a sign of bad character. I can't even quite articulate what the nature of the distinction I see between ways people can personally fuck up and big justice questions, but I see it, and it will inform everything I say about a moral issue. I do think people who are engaging in the activities in question are doing wrong, but especially considering it's a wrong I think I'm susceptible to and have done in the past, I tell them to stop if they ask my opinion, but I don't maintain a stable negative opinion of them because of it. Clementine, one of my top two favorite people in the world, was a big cheater for a period of months. I don't just love her; I think extremely fucking highly of her. I like pairing the language of moral judgment with the language of compassion, because it demonstrates that they aren't incompatible.
On animal rights: this is somewhat different from the first, because I do think it's a broad justice question. I think everyone who's come to the conclusion "It's jolly well okay to eat factory farmed meat, eggs, and cheese" has made a big mistake in reasoning, and the wheels on the bike they took to that mistake were greased by desire. Desire and bacon fat. I actually think the position, "I know, you're right, but they taste so good," or "it's fucking hard!" is perfectly comprehensible, especially since I eat eggs and dairy not infrequently, mostly because of the fucking hard part. Food is a very psychologically complicated thing. But I also recognize that especially since the issue pertains to animals, and not to people, there are some murky and confusing things about it, and of course, this question too is controversial. Graham and Clementine, my top two people? Both eat meat at least sometimes. So I strenously disagree with omnivores who would try to morally justify eating factory farmed animal products; in fact, it is wrong, in that there is a better choice available, but is it a sign of bad character? No. I do think it's better for the world, and therefore makes you a little bit better, the less you do it. But obviously there are tons of things that make a person, not just how much meat you eat.
Now, on to feminism. This is a broad justice question. It pertains to people, not to animals, so there should be absolutely no question about the moral status of whom it affects. Failure to grasp and internalize the tenets of feminism, and I mean the kind of feminism that critiques the entire architecture, not just the kind of feminism that says maybe you shouldn't beat women, does seriously reflect on your character. Obviously, Iranian women who think I'm aggrieved? I'm not mad at them; they're from a different culture; maybe it's that from their POV we've got it made (wildly speculating, I've no idea, really), since they live with more intense restrictions, it's hard to see, from the outside, the kinds of invisible cages (though really, plenty of them are pretty visible) American women are forced into. For that matter, there are tons of American men and women who get slack because, sort of like the virtuous unbaptized who never had the chance to know Christ, they don't necessarily have the resources to figure it out (though I think plenty of people figure it out on their own, and they rock). It's like complaining someone in 11th century France wasn't a feminist. But, like, people on this blog? You've had your chance. It is a really serious failure if you don't do it right. And the thing is, if you really understand, guidelines 1-10 are like breathing. You don't have to think about them. Not doing sexist things, especially when those sexist things are married to essential things, like bonding with your friends, or pleasure in self-decoration, is really hard. Following my guidelines is the simplest thing in the world for people who have actually internalized what feminism is. So falling down in this regard is a serious mark on your character, although I do appreciate that people are fluid, and some might change, and some might even change in response to things I said (this is not the same thing as taking theoretical issue with them, or with the way they're stated. People have done this who I've never seen exhibiting the problematic behavior in question. Suffice it to say that each item does in fact describe a problematic behavior, even if it could be put another way). Even though I only dipped into the comments on my own post, I did notice JAC really arguing the issue from our perspective, and it made me kvell (I don't want to presume to say it was because of me; I just noticed a change from one instance to the next). Also, I appreciate that some aspects of human interaction, predicting the effect of your words, are harder for some people than others; good faith efforts are appreciated. Even still, I can't say that if you don't do it, you're not a good person; like I said, cancer cure, dog rescue, might balance out. But I can't overlook it. You wouldn't be wrong if you thought I thought less of you for it. In this respect, you really need to change. Like, right now. But that's just my opinion.
Anyway, I wrote all this, as I said I was going to, to explain what undergirds my moral reasoning, and the kinds of distinctions I draw, and what thoughts inform the way I express myself, because it seems like I've been misunderstood. I think anyone who knows me in real life would say I am quite loving and forgiving; I just like to call a spade a spade, even if I understand why the person's digging.
Also, before I even checked out a couple comments on preview, before I even put up the uncongenial post, I did feel pretty bad that I knew I would stress Becks out; Becks is my meatspace friend. But otherwise, I can't really care about creating, or, more properly, exposing conflict on this blog. The larger justice issue is too important to me.
That fucking doctor ruined everything.
I need to get in on that specialty.
474: too brief; can you expand, please?
I've read the above comment. While the rest of this comment is just going to be about ogged being a cool guy, it's not because the things you said weren't interesting and hugely important, it's because they're things I either don't feel any need to respond to because I agree completely, or would need to put a lot of energy into thinking about whether and why I disagree with any of it, and I'm not particularly energized to do that right now.
While I agree that our original host has a habit of saying outrageous things, and in particular agree that things he said (taking the same side I was arguing for) in the infideltiy thread were outrageous, I have a lot of trouble not liking him (you, ogged, I don't really know what person to be writing this comment in) for his willingness to do this with the knowledge that a bunch of people whom he willingly spends a lot of time with each day are going to be thinking, "What is this guy, nuts?" Also, I like ogged's sense of humor, not in that his jokes have a high rate of success, but that he's good at creating an atmosphere where funny things are likely to happen.
i really can't wrap my mind around reconciling your position of okness vis-a-vis clementine and meat eating. or when things count as universalizable, or count against character vs. only intellectually.
Yoyo, it's something that I think is, in a more abstract form, a fairly common position, though Tia's exact instantiation of it may not be. It looks analogous to me a lot like the question of what susbet of the things that one thinks are immoral they think the law should prohibit. It looks like Tia is just doing what subset of things she thinks is immoral she should, for whatever reason, apply her full social sanction to, and what things she should just advise upon when asked. Except maybe on a continuum between those two positions, rather than a dichotomy.
474 -- After days of reading the various comments, this finally prompts me to want to respond.
I am going to argue a little bit, but I want to make clear that I substantively agree with you on almost everything you've said for the last two days, and that if I'm arguing it's just because everyone's emotions are a little raw and I, personally, have been alternating back and forth between feeling argumentative and like I want to promote congeniality (which was the spirit in which my 81 was intended) and at the moment I'm more argumentative.
Before saying anything else I want to explicitly agree with these comments
[Feminism] is a broad justice question.
[I]f you really understand, guidelines 1-10 are like breathing. You don't have to think about them.
(with the exception of 3 which is an obviously correct thing to do but hardly "as easy as breathing.")
What I don't understand is how you see yourself in relation to the larger unfogged community at this moment. I believe I understand that you're frustrated at having spent a lot of time and emotional energy engaging in an argument that felt like it was going nowhere. But I don't really understand how you feel like this argument is with the larger community rather than a handful of people that are being assholes, and I feel like your writing implies that you do.
When I read the reaction to your post I see broad agreement (at least in the abstract), a couple of people being obnoxious, a couple of people being pedantic, and a couple of people arguing with no real force, just because they want to say something and don't have anything meaningful to contribute but wander around on some tangent anyway. All of this seems to me to be exactly like what you would expect from a blog discussion. Blog discussions never end up with everyone on the same page, they always stumble around through thickets of non sequitors and dumb remarks.
By my count, until Dr. Slack posted at comment 32 there was only one comment arguing with your post (#20) which was immediately criticised and being obnoxious and then ignored. Other than #20 the first 31 comments on the post all expressed gratitude to you for making the post in one form or another.
Does that mean that the unfogged community deserves a cookie? Of course not. In particular it's obvious that there are many people who appreciate what you wrote, agree intellectually, and haven't internalized it (and I'd put myself in this category if I hadn't lurked through most of the discussion).
But if that's what's going on that doesn't seem like cause for this level of frustration.
(as an aside, I have always appreciated rhetorically the ways that BPhD, when asked a question about Feminism 101, will respond and say that at that moment she has time and energy to "teach" but that this stuff is obvious enough, and that there are enough resources available, that she is doing a favor by explaining it. I think that's an appropriate position and, obviously, a rhetorical position she has had ample opportunity to practice).
So then, I want to tie this in to the people arguing that your posts should have more caveats. I think the purpose of those caveats is not to clarify that the statements are your opinion, but as way to signal your position with regards to the larger community. If you believe that the community is moving the right direction, just in ways that are slow, triesome, and frustrating, than you break off an argument in different ways that if you don't think that the norms are gradually approaching a more desirable state.
I don't know whether the norms on unfogged are mocing in the right direction but my immediate response would be to think that are (and that, broadly, fights like this one help), but they are doing so slowly.
But it is lines like these that bother me about your posts:
I can't really care about creating, or, more properly, exposing conflict on this blog. The larger justice issue is too important to me.
I told some people I was writing this, and a not insignificant portion of them wondered if there was a reason to bother; that the men I was addressing weren't that interested in changing. And I said that yeah, I wasn't particularly sanguine, but really I was expressing amger disguised as pedagogy,
But I can't overlook it. You wouldn't be wrong if you thought I thought less of you for it. In this respect, you really need to change. Like, right now. But that's just my opinion.
I care about these statements because I want to know, as a member of this discursive community, is this an issue on which you want to argue from a postion based on the belief that the community is essentially functional (from your perspective) or one in which you believe the community is disfunctional and you set yourself in opposition to it.
These comments make me feel like you are doing the latter and they scare me because I care about this community and I don't know what will happen if you do set youself in opposition to it. So I have an immediate impulse to want to defense the community. and I suspect this impulse is shared.
I emphase that my defense of the community is not based on the idea that the people or the discussion here are ideal, but that I do consider it a group of (somewhat removed) friends and that I have different ways of working out disagreements with my friends than with non-friends.
Second what w/d says about ogged.
And though I feel a bit uncomfortable posting after that long outpouring from Tia, I owe a response to Cala's 300:
Indeed it is! But I was assuming, and I don't think I'm crazy for saying this, that when someone says, 'You're just being oversensitive', they're probably not agreeing with me that the problem is serious and that my reaction is appropriate.
And indeed, in the real world, we all sometimes do misread the importance of problems and react in inappropriate ways, right? I know I do. In fact, on this very thread I've been given reason to re-evaluate a situation in which I may have been doing an injustice to someone in my past.
I saw Tia's rule 1 as responding to a tendency among the dickheaded to say "you're overreacting, you hysterical broad, period, that's the end of the debate," and that's mucho fine. But the reason I balked a bit was that it seemed really easy to inflate into a non-reality-based position that emotional reactions are inerrant and always appropriate. I see a couple of people as in fact having already taken it there (as I think I noted at some point on the other thread). And I think that's really misguided, however well-intentioned it may be.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, the fact that someone's assessment of this or that overreaction happens to put them "on the side" of someone you dislike actually doesn't tell you that much. That Pat Buchanan opposed the Iraq War does not make other people who opposed the Iraq War his moral equivalents. The fact that some Iranian women take a jaundiced view of American cultural particularities does not necessarily make them the moral equivalents of some American males whose views bear a superficial resemblance. (Somewhat related to this, I thought B's point about perceived oversensitivity and ties to the peculiarites of American culture was really interesting.)
But if the oversensitivity is the result of a lot of culture and social pressure, then it's hardly an informative statement to describe it as gosh, American women are just oversensitive.
I think it's rarely an informative statement to say that anyone is "just" oversensitive. By the same token, I don't think cultural and social pressure are automatic outs from the possibility of misreading or overreacting to a situation. It's possible for something to be a genuine problem, but for someone's reaction to it still to be over-the-top or morally problematic in some sense that's not readily explicable by cultural and social pressure. See the above caveats and qualifiers.
474: I obviously am not in a position to comment on most of what you write, stemming as it seems to from long-standing issues here that I haven't been around for. But... I think something really, really needs pointing out here. Part of your frustration re: feminism may be that there isn't a single "feminism" for someone to internalize. For example, certain feminisms (and other ideological viewpoints as well) would find this:
Obviously, Iranian women who think I'm aggrieved? I'm not mad at them; they're from a different culture; maybe it's that from their POV we've got it made. . . It's like complaining someone in 11th century France wasn't a feminist
...incredibly offensive in a really red-button sort of way, for reasons too detailed to go into on a blog comments section. Now, since a lot of that post has a heat-of-the-moment quality to it, I'm assuming you didn't necessarily mean that comment the way it comes off. But if you haven't already read her, someone whose viewpoint on Third "vs." First-world feminism that I've found really useful and enlightening is Himani Bannerji. Just a suggestion.
I would have to say that at this point, that post #474 was quite obviously written for serious reasons. There comes a point at which the alternative hypothesis (of over-reaction to trivial annoyances) is so utterly unsupported by the evidence that it becomes impossible to believe that anyone accepts it in good faith.
I'd also add that I for one am not taking it as an unarguable datum that "Iranian women" unanimously or even significantly believe that American women are over-reacting to sexism. I will happily admit that I'm wrong if someone can point to it, but as far as I'm aware no Iranian women have posted here. Call me mr social sciences here, but second-hand testimony as reported to someone with an obvious pre-existing bias wouldn't have been all that convincing even if Ogged was presenting the results of a rigorously controlled and defined study which he wasn't.
483 / 484: My response to Cala has nothing to do with why post 474 was written or what Tia is responding to in the larger sense, just to be clear. And you're right not to take the talk about Iranian women as an inarguable dictum -- I should not have used the words "the fact that."
I for one am not taking it as an unarguable datum that "Iranian women" unanimously or even significantly believe that American women are over-reacting to sexism
I didn't and wouldn't say that anyone should. I doubt it's true. But I was genuinely curious whether it would make a difference if people from a different culture thought so, which B understood and addressed.
And "obvious pre-existing bias?" Give it a rest, tough guy.
Not to make this the slag on Dr. Slack thread, but I have all this pent up bile after saying nice things (which I believe to be true) about ogged: Slack, I'm still holding this thread against you. It just wasn't pretty.
487: It just wasn't pretty.
From any number of standpoints, really. I won't go into the reasons I'm non-apologetic about it.
487: Oh, I remember that. Wow, same guy.
487: Though I have to admit that if I had it to do over again, I'd have considerably dialed down the snark on the follow-up thread in particular. (Towards certain parties, anyway. I've got no regrets about whatshisface.)
Is there a word that means "scapegoat" except without the connotation of complete innocence? Because, I think we found one.
483: I sit and read and try to think of what to say. I do believe Tia's Uncongenial #10 might refer to me, or if not could, and I am ashamed. Ashamed and guilty and sorry aren't good enough. That may not be in Tia's points, but it is in mine.
I don't know if I ever quit drugs. Sometimes I wonder if I really changed, or wanted to change. It just happened, mostly thru reducing my opportunities and access. Oh God, that is pertinent. I am such a liar and bullshitter. I guess I could withdraw from this forum, and decrease the likelihood of hurting someone. Contemptible, I suppose.
I grew up in a manless household with five women. I don't think I have ever much cared much for men, or cared much of what they thought of me. The only thing that I have ever allowed to hurt me was women's rejection, and so I was scared witless of women, and rebelled, and hated them for my dependence. Can you live with women for decades, and not see them? My current relationship is way too polite, and careful, and too much a shared loneliness.
I am terrified of the banter here. I won't look smart, and something could slip. The whole blog thing is such a gamble. I told ogged it was "just words, and my imagination" Probably a lie. Every day I feel might be the day my cover gets blown, and y'all blow me off, and I am gone. Y'all probably got my number better than I have.
Probably the whole tone here is I don't care and didn't want it anyway. Tough guy. I do care, and it hurts like hell.
All about me, and tedious. Probably the only thing worth writing was in the first paragraph. The rest is whining. Which rule is that? Is all this passive-aggressive bullshit? "Fuck off loser" is a response I am actually quite comfortable with. Don't doubt it.
We do stay up very very very late around here.
God bless ya, Tia. Do the others see how much you care? Do you? Forgive my presumption. Forgive me.
Mcmanus is sounding tipsy.
I'm down with #379.
Yeah well it is 4 am. And I have a natural high based on chemical imbalnces or something.
Hey, a "nice" and possibly useful analysis of sexism involves presuming good intentions on men's part with an inability for self-inspection and a tendency for self-deception. Part of the problem demonstrated in the thread was a fear of opening oneself up to women's appraisal and input. If I went overboard and swam thru maudlin waters, it is not the first time.
There is also Berube Pt 2
"For if ideology were merely some abstract, imposed set of notions, if our social and political and cultural ideas and assumptions and habits were merely the result of specific manipulation, or a kind of overt training which might be simply ended or withdrawn, then the society would be very much easier to move and to change than in practice it has ever been or is." ...Berube quoting Raymond Williams , and again
"Williams underscores the point about the substantiality of the social two pages later, and this time I suggest you should also hear in his words an implicit rebuke to people who think that you’ve pointed out the “socially constructed” nature of X, you’ve all but toppled X forever: ...Berube
"The processes of education; the processes of a much wider social training within institutions like the family; the practical definitions and organization of work; the selective tradition at an intellectual and theoretical level: all these forces are involved in a continual making and remaking of an effective dominant culture, and on them, as experienced, as built into our living, its reality depends. If what we learn there were merely an imposed ideology, or if it were only the isolable meanings and practices of the ruling class, or of a section of the ruling class, which gets imposed on others, occupying merely the top of our minds, it would be—and one would be glad—a very much easier thing to overthrow." ...Williams
But such excusing references in this so particular, so personal context are in the mode of, well, being what dsquared said. We must shed our shackles as if they were paper-mache.
481: But... I think something really, really needs pointing out here.
Actually, I think it's clear that it really, really doesn't need pointing out, and that we'd all be better off if you dropped it.
126: People often don't respond to what I write because I'm a quarter of the way around the world from many of you and prone to chime in when most of the commentariat is sleeping.
As for presumption, b, since when has that really been an obstacle at Unfogged? (And how does it compare with laying out rules for being a better person?, cf 196) Besides, even Tia (168) isn't reading these threads all that closely.
Still and all, if a writer wants to persuade people, the formulation "Your opinion ... does not matter ..." is a poor way to go about it. If the writer wants to do something other than persuade people, it may be just the ticket. This is in line with your interest in rhetoric (296).
186: Lucid and persuasive. Congenial, even.
189: 181 looks like a drive-by.
474: Tia writes that the post and susequent comments were written "to explain what undergirds my moral reasoning, and the kinds of distinctions I draw, and what thoughts inform the way I express myself." In which case, questions about whether a given approach is persuasive are only relevant for potential future posts in which persuasion might be a goal.
Doug, I don't think 181 can just be dismissed as a drive by. It's certainly uncharitable (189) in that it assumes that ogged has in mind that the things that are fine to say among the guys include things which are demeaning to women, which is a narrow and unimaginative assumption at best. But Bellatrys calls 'em as she sees 'em, like it or lump it.
But, Bellatrys has an important point in that there are men who think it's OK to slag off women in all male company, and there are white gentile people who think it's OK to slag off black people/muslims/jews in the absence of those people. Haven't you ever worked in an environment like that? Because you will. And it's not OK, not remotely, as everybody here presumably understands.
It is crucial that white people challenge racism when the victims of that racism don't happen to be in the room, and it's crucial that men challenge sexism when the woman whose anatomy is being dissected like an eighteenth century medical textbook is away at the water cooler.
OK, I fail this test much of the time, like most other men, because we find we don't have the emotional resources to constantly batter at it all day. That's one reason I so admire women like Tia and LB who apparently do. But you have stick your flag in the ground at some point, otherwise how do you sleep at night?
So no, not a drive by, more a gauntlet flung down.
Is bellatrys here more often? I didn't recognize the handle (and I read many more of the threads than I comment on), hence the drive-by characterization.
Flung gauntlets resulting more often in fights than persuasion, I note as an aside.
. It's certainly uncharitable (189) in that it assumes that ogged has in mind that the things that are fine to say among the guys include things which are demeaning to women, which is a narrow and unimaginative assumption at best. But Bellatrys calls 'em as she sees 'em, like it or lump it.
Who the fuck cares? There is no more offensive formula than "[X] is America's last [n-word]," and anyone who uses it is morally corrupt. Because, as has long been the case, African-Americans remain America's last [n-word]. Black women aren't confused about on what grounds to worry most. Go back and look at reactions to the OJ Simpson trial. Note the difference in the way black women voted in '04 and white women voted in '04. This isn't confusing.
But, hey, at least she got to use that word.
I care about these statements because I want to know, as a member of this discursive community, is this an issue on which you want to argue from a postion based on the belief that the community is essentially functional (from your perspective) or one in which you believe the community is disfunctional and you set yourself in opposition to it.
I don't know how to answer that. I wrote 474 for reasons not just pertaining to the current discussion. It was a general "who I am; where I'm coming from thing," because I was concerned that the picture was getting distorted and I didn't want to let it. I know this is all very self-centered, but w-lfs-n and ogged particularly have made me and my style of self-expression in general, not just in a particular post, an issue on this thread.
It became clear to me after I wrote the uncongenial post that the men on Unfogged who were the entitled doofi were probably the numerical minority, both because of the comments on the post and the emails I got. (I don't want to be all, "the lurkers agree with me in email!" but I got some emails.) The problem is that a few people can really affect the tenor of the discussion, and I dislike both engaging with people who are using tactics I don't respect ("men have problems too" &c.) and letting them go unchallenged. Another huge problem is that the single person with the most influence over the tenor of the blog is one of the worst offenders.
Anyway, much of my problem with ogged is personal, and not documented on the blog. As for whether it's great that he makes dramatic, unmoderated statements, I think you'll find that I rarely (I'm tempted to say "never") am the first one to complain about tone. If I bring it up, it's to show that my (or someone else's) tone did not arise sui generis, or that who's getting criticized for what and when may have as much to do with the psychology of the criticizer, and his or her relationship to the person-construct talking, as it does with what's actually being said. I was also trying to bring this up something related in the uncongenial post. Sometimes I can see the potential for confusion in people's words. But other times the way people take things just must have to do with their psychological needs at the time. I basically think, for example, that there's a high probability that part the reason number (1), which said, if we say something matters to us, and you say it's not important, you're being a dick, got read all these other ways, including I think that I was saying it was wrong to ever disagree with what any woman said, that I was saying anything about what to do once you'd agreed that what mattered to us was important, had to do with people's defensiveness.
(As an example of a time I actually felt sympathetic to a male perspective in a conversation about feminism, I actually saw the point of some of the men on the Rose McGowan plate scraper thread. On one hand, the women were talking about a very real phenomenon in which men line up to talk about what gets them hard when the whole conversation is about how we don't want to hear about it all the fucking time. But I didn't think that thread was the best example of it, because the precise way LB had worded her post did invite the men to comment on what they were in fact doing. There was a good example at Lindsay Beyerstein's place, I think. At least one guy, with no justification whatsoever, decided to announce, I don't like skinny women and I don't like women with "meat on their bones." I like women who look like fitness models. Not fucking helping.)
When there's ogged in the world, and you love him, it becomes odd to say that B or I is too forceful or unmoderated. It's also totally bullshit to say, "but look at all these other people who get annoyed with you or B" since other complicated dynamics affect what gets reported. When I am privy to a stack of private communication about who is fuming about what, or who is crying about what, people's on blog judgments about who is generally congenial (as opposed to who personally appeals to them) seem worthless. And I have held back from saying this for so long, but I'll just say it now, because I can't help it. Whenever someone on the blog brings up Unfogged, even pre 800 comment threads about sexism Unfogged, as a model of how combative male bonding is so happy and carefree, and good faith and bonhomie is so sufficient to make sure everyone feels loved in spite of all the towel snapping, I privately observe that that, um, bears no relationship to the truth, and I'm not just talking about women's place in all of it. In fact, it bears so little relationship to the truth, and yet Unfogged is publically defended as a model of this, that it kind of calls into question for me any defense of combative male bonding; though I have no direct experience of it; I just become a little more skeptical.
Doug, not having time for something is not the same thing as "not caring for didacticism" or whatever reason you had for not reading the post.
499: This completely cracked me up.
The Joe Frazier clip is worth the price of admission by itself.
(But note the crucial difference between seeing different implications for the men's ideal behavior on the Rose McGowan thread and saying the issue isn't important.)
Doug, were your first couple of comments jokes about the use of the word 'broad', or were they denying that there was in fact a broad consensus among the women here on the issue? If the latter, it did seem to me that most of the women who commented on the original thread were in agreement. If the former, well, it wasn't funny.
A point about the numerical minority affecting the tenor of the discussion; suppose that you have a bunch of commentators who (as Tom said above) think that the vast majority of the time women's experience should go unchallenged in discussions of feminism, but that sometimes it should be questioned. Say ten men, who each think it should be questioned 10% of the time. Well, if each one questions women's experience 10% of the time, then you'll never have a thread where it goes unquestioned. This is a pretty common blog dynamic I think, and I think it's natural for feminists to get tired of this.
That's part of the reason it might be a good idea to slap people across the face with hard-and-fast rules: to say "Think about this. If you don't follow these rules, you're making a certain kind of discussion impossible. Is that what you want?"
Who the fuck cares?
Well I don't for a start. If you read what I said I agreed that she was being uncharitable, and added narrow and unimaginative. But dismissing an reasonable point because it's inappropriately presented doesn't help either - falling into the same trap.
Tia: thanks for 474. Really, it means a lot to know that as much as we can clash over stuff, you think of me the same way I think of you, as basically an ally on these issues.
It became clear to me after I wrote the uncongenial post that the men on Unfogged who were the entitled doofi were probably the numerical minority, both because of the comments on the post and the emails I got. (I don't want to be all, "the lurkers agree with me in email!" but I got some emails.) The problem is that a few people can really affect the tenor of the discussion, and I dislike both engaging with people who are using tactics I don't respect ("men have problems too" &c.) and letting them go unchallenged.
I don't think this can be stated too strongly, and I think it addresses NickS's 480. I think part of what makes arguments like this go nasty is that it's really hard to pin down who's talking. I like pretty much everyone here as an individual, and when someone new starts commenting I'm predisposed to like them just because the act of commenting here indicates that they share my tastes. But I'm also fond of what I think of as "all you guys" as a group. And when you get a thread with someone being maddening, it's easy for me to get annoyed at 'all you guys' when it's really just a couple of individual people, who I may not have any investment in, being twerps. I'm guessing Tia feels similarly.
I just moused over OFE's email address and whaaat?
A point about the numerical minority affecting the tenor of the discussion; suppose that you have a bunch of commentators who (as Tom said above) think that the vast majority of the time women's experience should go unchallenged in discussions of feminism, but that sometimes it should be questioned. Say ten men, who each think it should be questioned 10% of the time. Well, if each one questions women's experience 10% of the time, then you'll never have a thread where it goes unquestioned. This is a pretty common blog dynamic I think, and I think it's natural for feminists to get tired of this.
Dude. Exactly.
A different guy from the shaven-headed lurker with the same name, I believe? Is that the question?
509: why whaaaaat? It seems like a common enough name, right? Is there somebody of this name with a big blogospheric presence?
w-lfs-n truly is the king of indiscretion.
And since I'm mentioned in 501: I'm torn between wanting to explain myself further and, well, not; I suspect in the long run there's little to be gained by dragging anything out … anyway I (honestly, though I can see how that might be hard to believe) didn't mean to make you feel even more put-upon or attacked, so, I apologize for having done that.
514: I see your plot is beginning to come to fruition.
You're all puppets, dancing for w-lfs-n.
Ben,
Different guy indeed. I used to occasionally comment here under my own name, but when I thought the shaven headed lurker was going to start posting more I discussed the issue with him, and since he was clearly the more worthy possessor of the handle (not least because he made me a gift of that email account), I volunteered to go pseudo. I don't actually even like Kingsley Amis, but it seemed appropriate.
And indeed, in the real world, we all sometimes do misread the importance of problems and react in inappropriate ways, right?
Of course. But we're a bunch of pretty reasonable women addressing a problem by arguing about it on a blog post's comments section. This is hardly the sort of thing that suggest it's become an unhealthy obsession.
Furthermore, it's not just highly educated women who, say, have body image issues, or develop eating disorders. Now, maybe it's just a case of women overreacting (as a moral failing) across lots of backgrounds and subcultures. But I'm thinking that that's the harder claim to prove, given that there seems to be lots of other things that would suggest that women are pretty much conditioned to have, say, body image issues.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, the fact that someone's assessment of this or that overreaction happens to put them "on the side" of someone you dislike actually doesn't tell you that much.
Where the hell is this condescending lecture coming from? Have I, or anyone else besides you here:
And it's probably worth keeping in mind that people using the word "oversensitive" are not necessarily casting aspersions about such things -- it would seem odd to assume that the common Iranian female viewpoint springs from the same wellspring as the garden-variety rightwing dickhead viewpoint.
asserted that if two people agree on one point, they must receive their beliefs from the same source?
You assume I think it's from the same wellspring. I respond by saying, in 300:
But I was assuming, and I don't think I'm crazy for saying this, that when someone says, 'You're just being oversensitive', they're probably not agreeing with me that the problem is serious and that my reaction is appropriate. And to that extent, yes, the Iranian friends of ogged and the chauvinists are on the same side: both are saying 'these silly women, they shouldn't be so sensitive about these things.'
You have to be pretty egregiously reading into what I'm saying a lot to think that I'm making a moral argument at all, let alone a moral equivalency argument.
So let's review: I'm just saying I don't have to postulate that the hypothetical Iranian women & the American chauvinists are sourced from the same spring in order to argue that they
might be misreading American women on this particular point; you respond by saying that I am making a moral equivalency argument that indicates I don't understand when people disagree with me, poor little stupid Cala, that they might also disagree with each other, and I conclude that you haven't read what I wrote and are instead responding to a hypothetical Cala who is twelve and incapable of thought.
474: All this business of having to explain that it's your opinion, I do think is probably partly a manifestation of sexism, in that women are expected to moderate themselves in a way that men aren't
FWIW -- which ain't much -- my inclination and experience both indicate that this has nothing to do with sexism; it's equally aggravating, or at least equally potentially aggravating, from either gender. [This is particularly true online, I've found, where unmoderated declarations of truth have a nasty habit of spiralling out of control.] This may have more to do with the circles I run in than anything else, though, so YMMV.
Also, I want to say that I really appreciate your sincerity and efforts, Bob, particularly in the face of being called out, and in response to this:
Can you live with women for decades, and not see them? My current relationship is way too polite, and careful, and too much a shared loneliness.
The longer version of my post had a discussion exactly this; that becoming a real feminist will allow you to know the women in your lives better, and consequently yourself better, because you will understand how you affect other people. Feminism is the opposite of solipsism when it comes to how men see women.
Say ten men, who each think it should be questioned 10% of the time. Well, if each one questions women's experience 10% of the time, then you'll never have a thread where it goes unquestioned.
This is not actually true.
If each is the first to bring it up 10% of the time, then.
519: All I have time for at the moment, just to say no condescension was intended, sorry it came across that way. And yes, it's entirely possible that I was reading way too much into your earlier remarks.
Weiner, we properly distribute our men to ensure maximum sexism coverage (dropped remarks only in roaming coverage areas.)
Tia, LB, thank you for responding. It is an indication of how heated this thread has been that, for all my confidence that my comment was written in ood faith, I still worried about how it would be received.
Everyone appears to have moved on so I will try to keep this short.
I realized, after writing my previous comment that it could be summarized as this, "I have less stake in this specific dispute than it what it might turn into and, while I agree with Tia substantively I am scared that she is a position to be more likely to push this into (even more) unpleasent territoty." Whether that assessment is correct, I suspect that's part of the explanation for the phenomenon of "closing ranks with the dicks."
It feels odd for me to be commenting so extensively about the tone of the blog because I really don't feel a sense of ownership about it. I do think of unfogged as a cliquish blog and of myself as not part of the clique because, unlike Tia, I have had the time and motivation to try to become part of the community.
I think the point about he problem is that a few people can really affect the tenor of the discussion, and I dislike both engaging with people who are using tactics I don't respect ("men have problems too" &c.) and letting them go unchallenged is a huge part of the dynamic and is not easily overcome. The simplest way to deal with annoying comments online is to ignore them (and, at times, unfogged has been very good as a community about not feeding the trolls) but if, for various reasons, you don't want to let the obnoxious comments go unchallenged then inevitably things will get messy.
That's not a statement of blame, just repeating the statement that the reason this got so heated is because it does concern issues that people have strong feelings about.
It seems like part of what you're saying is that it gets tiring that the female commenters have to be the ones to make an issue about sexist comments and that it would be better if more of the male commenters took other male commenters to task for making sexist comments (as Matt Weiner and d^2 have?). At the same time, I think there's a natural barier for male commenters to overcome to say, "hey, you're being anti-feminist" in a forum in which there are a number of active feminist women who can speak for themselves. It runs the risk of men saying, "I know what feminisim is, this is my sense of feminism."
Perhaps that description of the problem assumes too much of a consensus. If there really isn't broad (if shallow) consensus that people desire unfogged to be a forum that is receptive to feminist arguments and points of view than an also saddened and frustrated. If there is that consensus than it seems to me that the real question is not, "what are ways that people (in the world) are sexist, how does one recognize it, and fight it? But rather, what is the work that needs to be done to make unfogged a forum in which basic feminism 101 is part of the standard of discussion (to the point that the community can tolerate some sexist statements because there's confidence that, in the long run, it will be self-policing) and how does that work get divided up.
As I type that I think that both that's a difficult task and that, framed that way, there is a lot of discussion that I would be very interested in having.
How or when that conversation can take place I have no idea.
As one final note, I will say that the comment in this whole discussion that resonates most strongly with me is this from BphD:
I'm willing to cop to that being one of my particular compromises with the world as it is and discuss *that* issue (compromising with the world as it is) for a while instead of or before returning to shoe nattering . . .
I feel like much of the most intersting discussion on unfogged is, implicity, about the compromises with the world as it is that we all make, and I am always interested in seeing that topic made explicit rather than implicit because it's one that has tremendous personal importance for me.
and also this, proceding it which requires no additional comment
I dunno if I can agree with the idea that the solution to this kind of thing isn't that complicated. If it were easy, we'd have figured it out by now.
Am I the only one bewildered that this whole thing has become about the Identity of Unfogged?
I disagree that it's about that.
Didn't I tell you not to contradict a woman, w/d?
And I disagree with you, washerdreyer. Most vehemently. Our vehement disagreement is a rift that cannot be bridged, and verily, you and I must fight for the future of this strange little website. Dick.
I don't know if it's about The Identity of Unfogged, but I do think that Tia, in particular, has said the the normal standards of argument and dispute resolution have produced notably unsatisfactory results in this instance.
I don't think that means re-thinking the whole blog (and, as I said, what I think doesn't really matter), but it seems worth responding to.
Now text, there's a feminist ally. Go get 'em, tiger.
What I should have said --
Is there anything more "meta" than a conversation about whether or not a conversation is about the meta-standards of the blog? This being unfogged, how could we have arrived at any other point?
I think we should change the name of the blog to "Fogged". Admittedly, we'd have to change Unf's name to 'F', but I figure he can take it.
Dammit, is Cala a consensus all by herself? I knew I should have had those guidelines tatooed on my arm in larger type, this way they're pretty hard to read.
Cala, it's probably that the identity of the blog is a stand-in for something else: feelings about the combative male dynamic, and whether that actually works or not in terms of not producing hard feelings at the end of the day. Which is a larger issue than just unfogged.
I feel that Tia is taking some heat for me, in that I maintain a more outwardly diplomatic tone while inwardly making a lot of the same observations. Some of the private communication she's talking about is from me. There have been times when I would have been happy to torch this place and watch it burn like Atlanta. And that may not, um, come across. So I thought I'd support her on that.
Feel a wee bit more calm and zen and centered, these days. Om...
As long as you don't propose changing the name to F-ogged. That would seem overly hostile.
I haven't been keeping up with these discussions because this is supposedly the week I stop reading unfogged for a month or so (for mostly offline reasons, I suppose I should add), but I want to endorse all of Tia's points, and especially point 4 about the importance of reading carefully the comments you're responding to.
Whoops, that reminds me, when I referenced point 3 in my 480, I meant point #4.
It was late.
I am legion.
Calalegion! Calaconsensus! Calamity! Calastroophic!
I admit that I'm a bit at sea because somehow, reading the discussion late isn't actually the same as reading it while it's going on, but all this wailing and gnashing of teeth about Whether We Are Still How We Used To Be but I seem to be missing the part where everyone decided that everyone else was taking it personally and we must all be no longer pretend Internet friends over a post that really said nothing different than anyone here has said before.
It's not like Tia called ogged gay or anything.
Well, he is, but that's not important right now.
But you're right, the angsting about the health of the community is silly. If people stop commenting and it gets boring, that's a problem. Arguments aren't a problem.
I am legion.
Hear me roar.
I should say that the other half of what gets me feeling alienated, after the feminism stuff, is precisely the failure to do point 4. There have been times when I've felt like someone's run with a fantasy version of what I'm saying, and while I totally concede that I compose hastily, I never preview, and I can be muddled in expression, by my fourth or fifth effort to clarify it starts to look like it's not just my fault. Sometimes the feeling that there's nothing I can do to get someone to stop attributing things to me that I do not in fact believe gets very stressful and exhausting.
If people stop commenting and it gets boring, that's a problem.
But isn't that up to you? Confused now.
That's a general problem with online arguments, but it really does seem to kick into high-gear on the feminism issues. And it is maddening as anything -- I go one of two ways: into what I'm sure is a terribly condescending sounding spelling-everything-out-in-words-of-one-syllable mode, or I just give up and stop talking to the person.
545: Shhh, or everyone will figure it out.
I guess I disagree with Cala as to whether there isn't a discussion of identity going on, at least intralineally, but agree with her to the extent that she's saying that it's not vitally important. The whole thing seems roughly analogous to the minor flare-ups that happen when, for example, a previously white neighborhood gets a substantial influx of Hispanics. People who settled in the neighborhood when the community was primarily white were drawn to the neighborhood when one set of characteristics predominated. As the demographics change, so does everyday life. Suddenly their are signs in Spanish as well as English. Some of the people initially drawn to the neighborhood get worried or irritated. But usually it all works itself out, and is all the more fun for it.
Of course the tone and identity of the blog changed when the majority of new posters that Unfogged added were of a different gender then the people who originally set-up and sustained the blog. It would have changed if they were all male Hispanics; different stories would have interested them, and different issues would have come to the fore. None of this is bad. It's about setting a new equilibrium. Some people will be more uncomfortable, and many more comfortable. Maybe it's fewer cock-jokes and more vagina-jokes. That's not so terrible.
If people stop commenting and it gets boring, that's a problem. Arguments aren't a problem.
Admit it, it's been sweeps week for blogs and this was all a stunt.
All the vagina jokes I know are terribly sexist.
Shorter 548: There went the neighborhood.
551: That really, really wasn't the intent, and I tried to make that clear (though, apparently, I didn't do it very well). I don't think the neighborhood "went" at all.
I'm not asking you to forgive me. I'll never understand or forgive myself. And if a bullet gets me, so help me, I'll laugh at myself for being an idiot. There's one thing I do know... and that is that I love you, Scarlett. In spite of you and me and the whole silly world going to pieces around us, I love you. Because we're alike. Bad lots, both of us. Selfish and shrewd. But able to look things in the eyes as we call them by their right names.
Sorry. After mentioning Atlanta I went off looking a GWTW quotes.
552: Oh, I'm sorry. I was kidding -- I didn't think you'd meant that at all, really! I should learn not to do that when people are being sincere and recovering from a nasty argument.
Well done, SB. Keep up the good work. Now on to Amazon to plug my book.
555: I find your positions on feminism to be far less extreme than either Tia's or B's, LB. Hidebound and timid, even. (And I meant it to sting!)
548: I guess I disagree with Cala as to whether there isn't a discussion of identity going on, at least intralineally, ...
This is probably the wrong time and place, but I'm having a moment of poor impulse control. I should know that someone who is legion will impose Roman' charges, especially since everyone is reconciled and has moved on, but here goes.
I see a discussion of identity going on. This blog is all about identity. The vast majority of the discussions here are about identity.
It's all about identity as constituted, acted out, and affirmed through culturally meaningful symbols: What is the meaning of pleated front pants? What is the meaning of listening to [insert name of musical group I can't remember here]. And, of course, that all time favorite: what is the meaning of feminine/masculine?
Personal identity is also wrapped up in the group one associates with, so it's a short step from the presonal to the group. "who am I?' leads directly to 'who are we?'
Which is not to say I disagree with anything Tia or others have said - but yes, feminism is (in part) about identity, and unfogged is about identity, and sometimes identity and its symbols are contested.
It would have changed if they were all male Hispanics
Mexicans don't count?
footnote, for the benefit of my future tenure committee
In fact the blog and comments do tend toward the Whitey McWhitington. It'd be interesting and in some ways beneficial if that changed too.
The site is disturbingly white. I should ask LaShawn Barber if she wants to blog here.
565: This is true of the people I've met, but I haven't met more than maybe a tenth of the commenters I 'know'. It's probably true, but I feel weird making assumptions about the ethnicity of people I only know as words on a screen.
(Oh, come to think of it I've seen pictures of a lot of commenters I haven't met. Yeah, pretty white around here.)
Please let me remind everyone that CHANGEBAD. To the extent that you enjoy Unfogged more than, or at least differently than, you enjoy society as a whole, it might make sense not to try and replicate society as a whole. It's a blog, not an attempt to vindicate social social justice.
Wow, Timbot really hates black people.
506: I thought it was interesting that in a post (and set of comments) that was to a large extent about language and feminism, the adjective that was chosen to describe a widely-shared consensus was a word that, to me, is most typical of a '50s-style, unreflective way of talking with or about women. I mean, there are several adjectives available, but both Ogged and Tia used "broad." I thought maye Ogged was using it with tongue in cheek. Anyway, I thought it interesting in the sense of "worth a throw-away comment," no more.
501: Not wanting didacticism from Unfogged would be the reason. Point taken about this not being equivalent to not wanting to devote the time to read 1300+ comments.
568: Yes, indeedy.
And with that, away to Budapest for four days. Any misunderstandings still outstanding will have to wait.
There are things that are fine to say among the guys that none of us would dream of saying around our wives or girlfriends.
Actually, no, for me there isn't.
572: If I had a girlfriend, I suspect the same would be true of me. [It's never stopped me in the past.] Of course, this could explain why I'm still single...
I know people have basically moved on, but I just wanted to say something I was thinking of while working out my aggression on the StarTrac. A crucial part of my 260 is that the message of the non supplicant women sounds like anger, with real bitterness and uncongeniality. (My original post said "rage disguised as pedagogy" and I changed it to "anger", which I regret.) Maybe some other people can be the "argue forcefully but calmly" person, but they're not enough on their own. Men have to not only hear that we're angry; they have to feel that we're angry.
Also, anarch, I really doubt such an awesome sentiment is the reason you don't have girlfriend. (You must not have enough money...)
I think the awesomeness of the sentiment is contingent on what I was actually saying...
Though, now that you mention it, I am broke.
575 "they have to feel that we're angry.": for the speaker;s sake, or the audience's sake?
There are things that are fine to say among the guys that none of us would dream of saying around our wives or girlfriends.
like discussions of hunting, farm prices, the Army and the Stock Exchange, presumably? I occasionally wish I lived in a Victorian novel but I don't.
Seriously, this is one thing that has confused me all thread. Making comments about women, like talking mindlessly about sports, is not a way that men form relationships with their friends; it's a way in which men avoid bonding.
There is a cultural thing here; as far as I can tell, American men often do make a big deal out of "locker room talk", this presumably being the banter that you carry on in a locker room in order to loudly proclaim your homosexuality so that other men in the changing room mind less about you staring at their penises. I don't like it; I think it's coarse, but that is presumably a cultural thing too. But it certainly isn't something that is essential to men forming relationships - it's just a male version of the endless twittering about handbags that women go through with people they like too much to actively avoid but not enough to have a proper conversation with.
Davies, what the fuck? You're now moving to actually deny that men form relationships by talking about sports? Not that many men don't do that, or that there are better ways to form deeper relationships, but that it just doesn't happen?
The word "mindlessly" there was meant to be an integral part of the sentence rather than a random insult at people who talk about sports (or at least, on this particular occasion it was).
And if there's one thing Daniel Davies stands against, it's being coarse. As with Farber decrying whining and moping above, the unintentional comedy in this thread may yet save it.
unintentional? Both cases you are referring to seemed pretty straight-out consciously comic to me.
Perhaps so. It's pretty early in the morning.
BTW (since D^2 looks to be reading this thread) -- a very good op-ed piece in today's NY Times about seafood.
579:This thread may be dead & buried. But I would Davies if
a)actually avoiding intimacy through mindless ritual discourse might have personal and social utility;we literally cannot love everybody equally
b) having spent a decade in group therapy, watched the baring of souls and sharing of innermost feelings, the screaming, crying, hugging, and then seeing these same people walk out the door and not a give a fuck about each other has made me skeptical as to my understanding of the precise mechanisms of "bonding" and intimacy; and beyond skeptical, cynical...tho cynical in a very magnaminous and humanistic way
c) If this has implications...aww never mind
to loudly proclaim your homosexuality
Did you really want to split that infinitive?
This thread is getting pretty long. Becks is out of pocket for a good long while, (I think) w-lfs-n is out of pocket, and ogged had cancer and so can't be counted on to be alive when needed. If we break the blog, it's broken for a good long time.
Someone who actually understands the various issues at play when the blog breaks can judge whether this is relevant here or not; I'm certainly not competent to do so.
588: Plus, I'm fairly sure he meant heterosexuality there. Unless he hangs out in radically different locker rooms than I.
590 -- I think it means you have to pay.
582: Right, a bit of both. And on that note:
I forgot to note it at the time, but did y'all notice how Michael told me I belonged in the kitchen? That's sexist, racist, and classist all at once! A threefer. I think one of the great tragedies of this universe is that no matter how many voodoo celibacy curses I put on someone deserving, there will probably be some poor woman misguided enough to facilitate his orgasm. Sad.
Sexist and classist I can see -- where is the racism?
Because members of the non dominant ethnic group are also people who are relegated to the kitchen. Any reference to sending someone to the kitchen, and any assertion that any part of it is just, is racist.
I fail to see why I should be concerned with racism and sexism when the real discrimination is against kitchens. They get stuck with all the poor, colored, lesbian women, while the rest of the house gets the rich, straight, white men. Fuck that. No justice, no lunch.
Huh. I guess that makes sense -- my intution as a privileged white man would have been to distinguish sending someone to the kitchen qua woman from sending someone to the kitchen qua colored person. I mean I wouldn't think of sending a black man to the kitchen.
A thousand curses on the head of the 'Postropher for making me unable to read 594 with out thinking "sexiest, classiest, raciest".
And dammit! This is why I haven't participated in these feminisme threads, ones where my intellectual and emotional reaction is to sympathise strongly with Tia et al. -- I can't seem to post here without coming off as snottily protective of my male privilege. Sorry 'bout that.
Are you fucking kidding me? The one time one of those whiners came in because he needed a hot compress for his head it was all, oh, my God, the world isn't made precisely to my specifications; how my head does ache. I'm all for equality, but I don't know if I'll be able to take it when I actually have to talk to these people every day.
Clownae, you haven't seemed snotty at all. You asked a question. Questions rock.
No way am I reading 600 comments to find out if I'm about to pwn myself, but I figured this Diesel Sweeties would either amuse or enrage.
Lord help me if I start another fight, as it is not my intention.
Wait, Michael isn't gay? That was a joke I misprisioned?
Uh, I think you people are seriously overlooking some of us who at the intersection of different forms of oppression. Would it kill you all to light a match?
Why must sex or its withholding be punishment or re-ward?
606: I was being sort of ironic. The real issue is that I just don't wish some people on any one.
Look, you snooty, walled assholes, some of us don't even get recognized as rooms.
Why won't anyone visit me?
I'm so lonely...
605: Hey, your chosen career path means you're covered in shit. It's not my fault you're untouchable.
Any of you other rooms want to help funny 611 up some, feel free.
Fuck you, Attic. This house used to be fun.
You wouldn't believe what goes on in here in the name of male bonding.
614: You're the room that went to Harvard and has the tenure track position. Do your own damn funny.
Living Room @ 618: No impersonations!
618: Jesus, everything I've gone through, and now you're appropriating my identity, Living Room. Who the fuck are you, that guy who wrote fake Native American memoirs?
This comment would be funnier if I could remember his name. Which maybe I could if I ever got reading material besides Us Weekly and Reader's Digest!
Would you guys mind keeping it down up there? I've got a wicked hangover.
Hey, I can't control how I was born. What matters is that I feel like a bathroom. I care about bathrooms. People sit in me and make bad smells too and I, uh, I, uh...
I'm going to have to resign as Department Chair, aren't I?
607.--No, no! I wouldn't be that lame. No, no, no.
I'm going to have to resign as Department Chair, aren't I?
Life as an adjunct isn't that bad.
617: I reject your implication that being penetrated is an act of submission, cockloft.
If you were warmer, like me, people would find you more appealing and take your concerns seriously.
625: Living Room's going to have a harder time breaking into Queer Studies, though.
I think I should be the Department Chair.
627- I think you have some false consciousness there, Nook.
629: No fixtures! Rooms only! Geez, there goes the neighborhood.
In my father's house Unfogged there are many rooms.
No one comes to the Father, except through me.
Well, technically I'm a hallway. It's just that I have low self-esteem.
You and Root Cellar should hang out.
Ooh, "foyay." Jesus, the privilege of some people.
I know I'm a mere fixture, but have you noticed that Study is sockpuppeting?
Since a rigorous distinction can't be made between "room" and "fixture" (consider Walk-In Closet), there is no distinction at all!
"No one comes to the Father, except through me"
Thanks -- it had never before crossed my mind to read that line with a sexual meaning.
641: You're not even a fixture, bitch. You can be moved at will. Now pipe down.
642: We've resolved the Sorites Paradox. I read about it in Reader's Digest. Which you also have access to.
Now pipe down.
Well, well, well, aren't we full of ourselves? Like you'd be anything without us.
If anyone's concerned, 646 was indeed me. I'll never let anyone sockpuppet me again!
Well, well, well, aren't we full of ourselves? Like you'd be anything without us.
Ahem.
I fucking hate it that I have to sign my full name to get respect.
Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
I feel a bit prickly myself.
Anyway, don't fuck with me to try to firm up your status issues. I have pictures.
I just want you all to recognize that what you do in me has social implications, no matter how much you would like it not to.
Watch what you say about the plumbing, fixture dudes.
Who can be moved at will now, bitch?
Why can't you look at me for myself?
Hey, Mirror, I got something to tell you.
Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel.
656 -- you guys provide the soundtrack ok?
651: You seem out of place here. Though we might not seem out of place in you.
(Incidentally, Toilet's URL seems very apropriate.)
Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel, Lee Siegel.
You mispronounced "Sprezzatura, Sprezzatura, Sprezzatura."
What are these fucking sock puppets doing everywhere? What am I, invisible?
662: Not only invisible, but smelly and embarrassing. Try the douche. It's on the top shelf, hidden behind the stained sheets.
Who can be moved at will now, bitch?
I was young! I needed the money!
You don't fit in here, Bathtub.
You don't fit in here, Bathtub.
Stop oppressing me! Without me, Bathroom would just be Half-Bath! I matter! I am somebody!
Get back here, "lamp," and stop giving yourself airs. Everyone knows you're only a book.
659: What, no house music? Or, if you're feeling more serene, maybe some chamber music.
That's not a book, it's another fucking sock puppet.
"Fucking sock puppet," eh? Look who's talking.
You know, some people around here might really try giving some of my contents a look. I recommend that Dirty Linen Closet start with this.
Please: I'm a metaphor.
Still doesn't make you a fixture.
If only I could get to the Bookshelf, I would want to read this.
675: Funny, I would have thought these books would be more up your alley, so to speak.
672: You're a plagiarist.
Okay, now you lost me.
Since when is Google Search a room or even a fixture?
Get yourself out of the dark ages, Another Lamp. All modern homes have me now.
The Lamps reflect Medieval *and* Romantic styles? Someone needs to read *me*, not that feminist nonsense.
I always thought all the talking furniture in Beauty and the Beast was make-believe. How wrong I was!
Oh, you all think you're soooo funny.
If this stupid site worked, I'd link to the answer for 679. In 676 I was being a bitch and alluding other comments I'd made on the subject of metaphor and enlightenment here.
You know, self-aggrandizing, ego-based stuff. But then, after all, I am rapidly taking over the world.
Someone needs to read *me*, not that feminist nonsense.
Please. You're not even a book. Look at you, lying there on Coffee Table.
Settle down. Don't make me flip on and off.
alluding other comments I'd made on the subject of metaphor and enlightenment here.
Comments you made before 1953?
Don't make me come back there, you two.
Toilets unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!
Comments made before you started pretending to be a Lamp.
Consent or no, Interior Decorating Magazines do not constitute feminist theory.
before you started pretending to be a Lamp.
I think you need to examine your hostility to pretense.
I never claimed to be feminist theory. Isn't there time in life for *both* heavy reading and frivolity? Lighten up, Bookshelf.
Hey Google Search is outing the Lamp! That's Not Nice, GS.
Hey, some of us argue that things like "frivolity" or mutually-consensual lying upon women who think it's hot to pretend to be Coffee Tables is, in fact, feminist.
And then the outing of the lamp.
699: We all have to make our compromises with the world, Feminist Theory. I did insist that people start using coasters.
I'm just a fixture, I'm not responsible for how I am used.
703: If *you're* a fixture now, we're really fucked.
You know, we've been meaning to talk to you about that, Coffee Table. Did you ever ask us if *we* consented to being used?
705: A world with no inanimate objects is hard to negotiate.
If *you're* a fixture now, we're really fucked.
Welcome to virtual reality.
Everyone knows coasters evolved a psychological desire to be used in that way. Don't deny your natural purpose---protect my finish!
I feel dizzy.
Come on over and lie down a minute.
706: That's why you're supposed to just sit there, Coffee Table.
I feel dizzy.
Yeah, before you were the token inanimate object. I'm sure it's very threatening.
Now that you realize I'm sentient, will you have second thoughts about using me? Or will that add a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole experience?
Oh, everyone says that furniture's an end in itself, but when an actual End Table tries to speak up, look what happens.
I won an award from Time magazine.
The kerning on your award proves it's a counterfeit, inanimate carbon rod. Advantage, blogosphere!
No one falls for that bullshit any more, Fold-out Sofa. We all know you're completely awful to sleep with.
Thanks a lot for outing me, Fold-Out Sofa.
That was in the old days! I've changed!
We've begun hanging out with Feminist Theory, Fold-out Sofa, and we know that there isn't as much difference between now and the 1970s as guys like you think there is.
If you want, we can go over this again and skip the boring comments.
Oh, and I suppose you think Waterbed is any better.
Hey, why is all my furniture talking?
When's the last time you were reset, TiVo?
On preview, I'm wondering if 729 answers my question.
That was in the old days! I've changed!
Yeah, before you were the token inanimate object. I'm sure it's very threatening.
It's threatening because I doubt their commitment to inanimacy. They're not showing solidarity, they're just co-opting inanimate culture for a laugh.
C'mon, Chick Lit. You know that only I can support you in the comfort to which you're accustomed. Settle down with me.
Oh, and I suppose you think Waterbed is any better.
No one sleeps with Waterbed any more except me.
736: Waterbed is a two-timing bitch!
Prarie Settle, you're way too frumpy for a contemporary girl like Chick Lit. She's all mine.
Oh, please, Lava Lamp. I've seen you hanging out in all the trendy places, you lying tramp.
No one sleeps with Waterbed any more except Shag Carpet because everyone's learned that wet shag is disgusting.
737: Dude, Lava, you're usually more mellow than that.
Hahaha, you French sockpuppets. Chick Lit likes American boys.
Let me have a go at your misfit Ikea joints, and then we'll see who's frumpy.
I think I'm just going to stay away from Bathroom altogether, because Dirty Linen Closet and Disposable Razor are really starting to bug me.
Now, now, let's keep the hardware where it belongs.
I think I'm just going to stay away from Bathroom altogether
Honey, if you're going to use Kitchen and Dining Room, you'll need us sooner or later. You can't pretend to be a disembodied discourse forever.
Will people please stop appropriating my identity. Also, Feminist Theory, haven't I been begging for something to read. Why you gotta be such a withholding bitch?
Let me have a go at your misfit Ikea joints
Hey, man, whatever. Chick Lit isn't into that whole "the good is that which sustains the test of time" nonsense, anyway.
you'll need us sooner or later
To my great dismay, I have discovered this to be untrue. God, I hate this job.
749: Will people please stop appropriating my identity.
Oh, you're one to talk. Like you've never appropriated anyone's identity.
I have discovered this to be untrue
The horror.
752: I didn't appropriate your identity, I just superceded you, because I was better. Does that make you angry? You probably want to throw acid at beautiful people, too.
Hey gang, let's reënact The Inanimate Tragedy!
Hey, Bathroom, I'm happy to hang out with you. I'm way less bothered by Dirty Linen Closet and Disposable Razor than that high-falutin' bitch Feminist Theory.
C'mere, Chick Lit, and forget that stupid Feminist Theory you've been hanging out with.
Forget the books. I'm the one you really love. Stare into my eye. Stare deeply.
Nice try, Bob, but while Chick Lit and I aren't identical twins (which I know disappoints your manly fantasy world), we're good friends and she knows I can appreciate a sense of humor.
Unlike you, I might add.
Bathroom, can I hang out with you too?
I hope that Lamp really is MH Abrams, but somehow I doubt it.
somehow I doubt it.
I'm sure you have the ability to look at IP addresses, ben.
757: Thanks! I'll take you up on that.
762: Um...whose house are we in?
Stare into my eye. Stare deeply.
But for the love of mike, quit drooling on my arms while you do it, you rube.
Fucking dykes.
Yeah, I've got that. Any other requests?
Some of us remember animacy.
I'm sure you have the ability to look at IP addresses, ben.
Just because a comment comes from Cornell doesn't mean it comes from Abrams.
Conversely, if a comment came from someplace that was not Cornell and that was also the same IP as a dozen other commenters' in this thread, you'd have good reason to think that it wasn't Abrams.
712: Get back in here and cool the house down, willya?
