An open thread for personal stuff, continuing from here.
As usual for these threads: no trolls, no MRAs, no I’m-not-really-an-MRA-buts, don’t be mean.
Categories
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
We Hunted The Mammoth
Wow, LBT, you just never get a break.
LBT, all the jedi hugs you need.
My stats class went well! I was just running lots of examples, but those ‘kids’ now know invNorm and normalcdf like no-one’s business!
Although, now they know my email, what I look like, and that I know R and SPSS (which they need to use one of for their second paper due on Sunday.
SO MANY R AND SPSS QUESTIONS!
Also, Robert, jedi hugs for you if you need them.
I have a ton of respect for people who start out extremely disadvantaged and manage to turn a hell of a bad situation around.
You’re out there trying to be a good person.
That counts for a lot.
In my volunteer job, I see a lot of people who are trying and a lot of people who really don’t try at all. Not all of the trying ones succeed, and it can be extremely heartbreaking because I can’t do more for them. Eventually, I’m hoping we can do more for them, but right now I don’t know what else to do.
When someone does succeed, though, it’s incredible.
You’re incredible.
Just thought you ought to know.
LBT, you’ve read more feminist lit than I have. I haven’t read a single book on the subject.
Shit shit and extra shit about the ceiling. What the hell are the building owners doing about this? Anything?
Also BOO for more brain horrors – not sure if “better out than in” applies to that sort of thing – and not getting the rest you need. Was Boston good overall, despite your conflicting feelings? I mean, did you have fun while you were there?
@ Policy of Madness – Pompous, self-righteous, overbearing, passive-aggressive, judgey, condescending asshats piss me the Hell off, whether they claim to be feminists or my unpleasant, hyper-religious, patriarchal relatives. That was a real apology!
QFFT!
@ Robert Ramirez – I totally grok you needing a break! Why do you think I’m only here for the snark and sarcasm and tend to just lurk when things get serious? May Bootsie smile on you with Her sacred Brain Bleach!
@ LBT – Well, Damn! Good luck with housing.
What strikes me as totally bizarre is the “Do not read X’s blog! She’s [insert unacceptable thing here, which may or may not be true]. Don’t even mention her name!” I’ve yet to see anything like that said about actual misogynists, only feminists who according to the writer are Doin It Rong.
Given that you can still find copies of Mein Kampf if you really want one, I’m not inclined to have much patience with people going “don’t read Xs tumblr”. People can of course choose not to read certain things for all kinds of personal reasons (find it too upsetting, don’t want to give them the clicks, whatever), but when you’re telling people that they’re not allowed to read certain things in that “it’s very important that you never, ever be exposed to these ideas” way I start wondering a. how much faith you actually have in your own argument, if you think it would be so easily cast aside if someone is exposed to a different perspective and b. when and where the official book burning party is going to be.
My personality being what it is, telling me that I’m not allowed to read something will usually result in me going and reading it immediately just because WTF, is this Farenheit 51? So there’s that to take into account too when issuing those sorts of proclamations.
@ LBT
Melting ceilings? Are you guys still in this apartment or somewhere else temporarily? My first thought it that depending where you are your landlord may be legally obligated to fix that.
I am unable to imagine what that tumblr person would consider a not-garbage apology. Certainly no example was offered of an acceptable apology for compare/contrast purposes. The one actually offered is completely sincere, accepts responsibility, and promises to try to do better in the future. What precisely is wrong with that? I have to conclude that there is no apology even theoretically possible that would make that individual happy.
If you read the exchange, the other person accuses the nitpicker of demanding perfect feminism, and the nitpicker denies this, but it’s very hard to reconcile that denial with the refusal to accept an apology like the one in contention.
LBT: What Cassandra said, and check with whatever tenant org you may have in your area. Here in the Soviet NW, it would be highly unlikely that you wouldn’t get your security back with no problem if the place became uninhabitable.
Yeah, unless you guys melted the ceiling by cooking meth up in the bathtub or something, melted ceiling indicates something not structurally sound with the apartment, which is the landlord’s responsibility. If he tries to keep your deposit I’d threaten him with either a lawyer or the local tenant org, if you have one.
@ Policy of Madness – about the only scenario that I, personally, can think of when such an apology would be insufficient would be if this was the latest in a series of honest sounding apologies from some one who repeatedly apologised and then turned around and did the exact same thing again. This doesn’t seem to be what’s happening here, though.
@grumpyoldnurse
No, that’s definitely not what happened.
Anyway, that was my latest encounter (very peripheral) with the interpretation of third-wave that tries to be so open and so welcoming of everyone that, perversely, it is irrationally and self-destructively critical. It was, after all, a transphobic entry that spawned it all; the nitpicker wants to be so accepting of transwomen that a transphobic entry, posted on accident by someone who didn’t see the transphobia of it until it was pointed out, was cause to essentially declare that This Can Never Be Forgiven.
I’m sure that the straightwhiteboystexting tumblr came away from that encounter super-stoked about learning how to spot transphobia, and full of really positive feelings for feminism, like she had, herself, been welcomed and accepted!
Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I don’t think people like that are trying to be open and welcoming. I think they’re using feminism (and other social justice movements) as an excuse to bully people. Some people just really enjoy the whole call out process, and spend far more time doing that than they do on any actual activist work.
That’s definitely the impression I get; people who are just hanging around waiting for something to call out like it’s a cage match for the title of Best Feminist.
I hate to admit it, but it is entirely possible that I am just too old to grok a lot of 3rd wave. I’ve run into a few things like this, and some attitudes from younger women that had me wondering what the what just happened. I’m not transphobic, or anyone else phobic, and I do try to check my attitudes and assumptions for biases of which I may be unaware, but maybe my poor old dino-brain is too ancient to catch up with a lot of concerns and ways of presenting that seem to be in vougue right now. It might also be a by-product of interneting, but people seem to be really ready to write someone off for a relatively minor transgression. It’s almost as if some people look for excuses to disregard someone’s voice, or are really eager to do the passive-agressive “Imma school you now” thing.
TL;DR – Maybe it’s a generational thing, rather than a 3rd wave v. 2nd wave thing? (at least in my case, PoM, as I don’t know your age/generation). Sorry if that was unduly rambly.
OT: I read Nimona last night. Thanks for that link, what a great comic!
I definitely <3 Ballister. 🙂
I tend more to hope that people will eventually realize how counterproductive that shit is than to assume that my irritation with it means that I’m incapable of understanding what they’re saying.
The fact that people are feeling like they’re too old to understand or have an opinion, though? That’s the result of ageism, and it’s both rampant and almost never acknowledged in those sorts of spaces.
The irony of the whole “you must not read X” (who, surprise surprise, often happens to be a radfem – or simply not a liberal feminist) is that when I do read them, I agree with them more than the finger-waggers, and learn about shit happening that the Thou Must Not Read mob never mention.
About reading feminist literature:
The way I see it, and feel free to skip if I’ve said this before, is that feminism isn’t a club that only certain people earn entry to, it’s a mindset that, ideally, everyone would have. So I don’t think there are things you “have” to read, because it’s not a movement that needs gatekeeping.
(Yes, there are feminist things that everyone should read, but there’s an infinite amount of stuff that everyone should read and no one can read all of it.)
Also, I’m 41, so I ought to be solidly 3rd Wave it if was generational (I was exactly the right age when The Beauty Myth came out, for example), but still, a whole lot of 3rd Wave stuff reads as attempts to rationalize the ways in which we/the writer have had to compromise in order to survive and repackage those compromises as empowerment, and that trend is just getting more and more obvious (and occasionally outright ridiculous) over time.
@cassandrakitty
I definitely agree that purity testing is NOT a phenomenon unique to feminism. Far from it; it’s present, to one degree or another, in pretty much every radical ideology. I’ve never run into it, though, outside of feminism, in which the rationale was “we want to be open and welcoming.” I mean, it’s not hard to find purity tests in, say, radical Marxism, or the Tea Party, but those folks are straight-up about their motives. They don’t use “we don’t want to make this marginalized group feel more marginalized” as their rationale for their purity tests. That makes it more insidious, because who is going to argue that perpetuating the marginalization of groups is OK? Well, a TERF might, and this is how ordinary women practicing feminism get labeled TERFs even though their feminism is not remotely TE. I know that you know that the TERF label is wielded like a club on tumblr and how gross that whole business can be.
It’s apparent on its face that this is morally wrong, but more difficult to articulate the reason why it’s morally wrong. Not to denigrate 15-year-olds, but it’s probably beyond the power of the average 15-year-old to describe why this is so ugly. Had I encountered this at 15, I would just come away with a very bad taste in my mouth and the idea that feminism is NOT for me.
I get eyesprains every time I see the word empowerment these days.
@grumpyoldnurse
I’m 42. No idea what generation that makes me (other than Gen X).
QFT!
Thanks, cassandrakitty! You just articulated what I failed to! I’m not that much older than you, and Beauty Myth was my first serious exposure to feminist thought, but then I (somehow) wound up finding out more about 1st and 2nd wavers and theory, and it kind of stuck. Maybe that’s where my alienation comes from.
The ageist thing might be part of it, too, though it goes both ways. It just seems to me that it has become fashionable to conflate passion with aggression. And, if it has now become common to tell others that they’re feministing rong (TM), that just sticks in my craw something fierce. Also, you kids get off my lawn ::shakes fist::
Yeah, part of the reason that I’m getting increasingly vocal about how fucked up this dynamic is is that I’m worried about the impact it’s having on young girls. I’ve hit that age where I feel protective in a mama bear kind of way towards teenagers, and on top of that I feel like if things continue along the current path feminism will have been completely de-fanged within a generation or two. The “everything is empowerment! Weaponized eyeliner!” stuff has already made a good start on that, this is just adding to the “maybe feminism might not be for me” reaction that I’d be having if I was just encountering this stuff as a kid now. Kid me was naive about a lot of things, but I’d have identified a lot of this stuff as pure unadulterated bullshit even then.