Yellow Peril: Are you gonna liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?
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Any of the precious and offended notice the title? Yellow Peril. I think that implies that references to ethnicity via colour are meant with just a little bit of mirth and irony.
Yes, but as noted earlier, there is a difference between self-referential humour and comments directed at others. To reference the recent Don Imus furore in the States, a black girl calling herself a "nappy-headed ho" is a whole different situation to a white man using the same term on the radio.
Yes, this thread has grown into something out of proportion to Tze Ming's throwaway comment. But hey, how often do us white middle-class males get to call for some Political Correctness to demarginalise us? ;)
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Russell I would have thought that if you couldn’t manage loyalty to other contributors you might at least but out. I have a lot of respect for your journalism but your judgement in some your comments on this thread is way off.
I'm really sorry you feel that way, but I commented because I thought the discussion was getting a bit untoward - I do that occasionally. Perhaps that was counterproductive in this case, but Tze Ming's my friend, and I thought I could take her up on the tone of her response.
The course of this conversation has really proved Tze's points regarding the disproportionate amount of shit thrown at female commentators, especially if they aren’t also white and dare to challenge white men. I doubt she would feel particularly vindicated or pleased though. I only hope she does continue to make more submissions. I doubt I will.
Woah. I think "throwing shit" is taking it a bit far. These are sensitive topics, and people have feelings about them, personal feelings included. I think they've largely been expressed without rancour. I'm happy to "butt out" if that helps, but I don't think the discussion has been entirely unhelpful.
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Yes, this thread has grown into something out of proportion to Tze Ming's throwaway comment. But hey, how often do us white middle-class males get to call for some Political Correctness to demarginalise us? ;)
Yes, that occurred to me too ...
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Email Web
Out of all the jokes made on PA, some of them infinitely more cutting, this one gets all the attention?!
Makes you wonder if there's not some reason for it.Sheeesh, I can't believe how this thread has degenerated.
Any of the precious and offended notice the title? Yellow Peril. I think that implies that references to ethnicity via colour are meant with just a little bit of mirth and irony.I too am surprised at the turn this discussion has taken.
There is certainly a problem with all kinds of online harrassment, but surely a blog for Take Back The Blog, an initiative set up to show support for Kathy Sierra, doesn't need to be full of "what about teh menz!!1!!"The course of this conversation has really proved Tze's points regarding the disproportionate amount of shit thrown at female commentators, especially if they aren’t also white and dare to challenge white men.
It's more than disingenuous to dismissively sniff that the Public Address Comments System is 'a white boy's playground', follow this up with the self-righteous speculation that this is because all the women are out 'teaching our children and nursing our sick' and then POST these insights on Public Address and act all indignant and bewildered when people take umbrage.
The critical response is nothing to do with gender bias - I suggest that if someone were to post an entry on this site pointlessly attacking another Public Address demographic - say, Mac users - for no fathomable reason they'd get an even colder response. The only difference is that the instigator wouldn't be able to resort to special pleading or hiding behind their ethnicity or gender as an excuse for their rudeness.
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Nanoplanet - I don't think you're really on strong ground telling somebody to butt out on a forum they paid for the development of and who pays for the servers that host it. Tze Ming would be well within her rights to expect discussion of her posts to be polite and considered, but claiming that polite - if notable - disagreement with her views represents "a disproportionate amount of shit" is facile. People aren't disagreeing because she's a girl, it's because they think she's wrong. Or is the fact that she's a girl so overwhelmingly important that we're to ignore the content of her posts or the strength of her arguments? I mean, isn't it cute - a girl! Posting on the internet! Wow. Please note, easily confused, that I'm being sarcastic.
Anorak - What? How the hell is it hijacking a thread to disagree on an issue? Hijacking would be if the subject had been diverted. At no point has anybody attempt to diminish what happened to Kathy Sierra, or to state that it was acceptable. However, opinions over how to best prevent such problems ocurring in future vary. Reducing what I presume to be my posts to a facile mockery in miXeD CaSe is cheap. If you've got something to say to me then quote me and reply to what I said, please.
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But hey, how often do us white middle-class males get to call for some Political Correctness to demarginalise us?
Yeah. Too right. Let's all pile in and tell this...person, where to get off! How dare she use loaded terms to describe our poor, marginalised selves. I mean...
white!
boys!
playground!Jeez, this is pretty close to the bone, I reckon. Calling it offensive is a pretty mild reaction if you ask me...
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Finn,
I'm sorry if you were offended by my use of internet slang.
My cases, however, are not mixed. I used capitals for proper nouns.
I think this thread was hijacked when it stopped being about online harrassment which disproportionately targets women, and possible solutions to that harrassment, and became about whether or not "white boys" is an offensive term.
I urge you to read the blog post I linked to , which is getting more pertinent with every post. -
All right.
Mustering whatever mana I have here, I think it's time to declare this part of the discussion closed, because it only seems likely to repeat itself. Either carry on with the main topic or post in another thread, thanks.
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OK - well, I don't post on any other blogs or at any other forums beyond my closed group of mothers because on the interwebby, as in real life, I don't like shouting, I don't like ranting and I don't like personal abuse.
I nearly ran away from here because of d4j's polemics. And I don't much like some of the stuff on this thread, which I'm carefully not reading.
Yeah, I guess I'm a wimp or a coward or something.
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I urge you to read the blog post I linked to , which is getting more pertinent with every post.
Good post. And jeez, what a mammoth (and occasionally pretty weird) comments thread.
But unless I've got it wrong and should just STFU (nb: should there be any doubt, this is a flippant aside whose relevance will be evident to anyone who reads that thread), the parts about real-life safety put me in mind of something that happened years ago.
I was walking down Ponsonby Rd late at night, before it was open late at night, or very well lit, and a woman came out of a side street just behind me. Acting on the not-being-a-potential-threat principle, I picked up my stride to put some distance between us. But I didn't seem to be making any ground on her. Indeed, her footfalls seemed to be quickening.
I'd just got into a really brisk stride when she called out.
"Excuse me!" she said. "Could I walk with you? I'd feel safer ..."
Oh.
I explained to her what I'd been thinking, we both laughed, and we walked safely up the road to her street and bid each other good evening.
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I nearly ran away from here because of d4j's polemics. And I don't much like some of the stuff on this thread, which I'm carefully not reading.
Yeah, I guess I'm a wimp or a coward or something.If it's the time I'm thinking of, I was watching D4J pretty closely, being aware of his style on less civilised forums, and had a word and suggested he come back when he wasn't so angry (if he'd actually been abusive to another poster I'd probably just have yanked him), as did a couple of other people. It was like talking to the drunk at a party. He grumbled about lack of conflict (a bad thing, apparently) and we haven't seen much of him since.
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Shucks.
I actually read the original blog, thought it was quite interesting, then saw the bit about white boys and thought that's a bit of a cheap shot but spent 60 seconds to get over it because what was surrounding it was thought provoking enough, and then actually posted (3rd) something that I thought was ON TOPIC! Well at least as good as a white boy could do on the issue.
I'm off to get a sex change and a new pair of shoes.
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Email Web
I'm a bit sad about where this thread has ended up, but it's not too late to yank it back is it?
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Email Web
I'm a bit sad about where this thread has ended up, but it's not too late to yank it back is it?
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Email Web
I'm a bit sad about where this thread has ended up, but it's not too late to yank it back is it?
Here's a little (not unrelated, but deeply funny and bizarre) light relief
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__I'm a bit sad about where this thread has ended up, but it's not too late to yank it back is it?__
Here's a little (not unrelated, but deeply funny and bizarre) light relief
Heh. And the funny thing is, I was just thinking about Cactus Kate and Lucyna, two local female bloggers who unsurprisingly aren't on Tze Ming's recommended list.
Any of the women reading here read either of them? Thoughts?
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No. Can't stand the social and moral conservatism of one, and the sheer viciousness of the other.
Although <cough>, I have only just started reading Span, which has been my loss.
I read DPF, but less and less, and I don't comment anymore, not only because of the cesspit in the comments, but also because these days he seems to be a National Party commentator rather than a right wing commentator. I would like to find a good right wing blog, because it's all too easy to read only people you agree with, and never challenge yourself with people whose views are opposed to your own.
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Re Cactus v Lucyna
Laughed like a hyena .. does that rhyme with lucyna?
While contemplating the Jelly wrestling post - I flicked to Wanda Harland where a deeply interesting poll is being conducted.
Marmite v Vegemite. Nature v nuture.
Sorry Russell and Tze Ming - maybe some of us girls are shy about posting .. cos.. that's more fun. {gasp -l} we lurk tho. -
Sorry Russell, I felt bad after posting that and I appreciate your comments. I suppose I'd had a stressout day and I was surprised you read your comments because you aren't normally like that from what I've read. But if you meant them as a friend to Tze and by way of moderation then who am I to say. She's a big girl and she probably knows where you were coming from. It's surprising how much more involved with the conversation you get when you comment instead of just observe!
"Throwing shit" is maybe over-reacting but I am still surprised at the strength of some of the objections. I think they are disproportionate but maybe I'm over sensitive considering the topic.
So to move on to lighter things "Cactus Kate and Lucyna". Very light, pretty stupid, very unimaginative and dull. I guess that is why I like reading Tze as one of the few women on the scene who call a spade a spade (but not in that way) but who does it with some style and wit. -
Sorry Russell, I felt bad after posting that and I appreciate your comments. I suppose I'd had a stressout day and I was surprised you read your comments because you aren't normally like that from what I've read. But if you meant them as a friend to Tze and by way of moderation then who am I to say. She's a big girl and she probably knows where you were coming from. It's surprising how much more involved with the conversation you get when you comment instead of just observe!
No worries. We talked about it. Funny old day. Glad you came back.
Anyway, what I popped back in to say is that outiside the political sphere there are quite a few good local girlblogs. I like Hannah at Let's Walk Slowly:
It's a rock 'n' roll blog, with about a million photos to load on it at the moment. But she's clever, and her review of Peaches at the BDO was awesome.
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Yet another day engaged in thinking about this issue - thank you! And thank you to the people who have contacted me off-line, and pushed my thinking along. You will see your influence in what I have written.... over several glasses of wine, and a brandy to top it all off. Thank goodness my significant other was cooking dinner this evening.
You know what this discussion reminds me of? Working on my thesis, and trying to deal with issues that really, really matter. I know there's a fair amount of disagreement here, but we are dealing with it, and we are talking very hard about something that matters. So far, no one has descended into the sort of personal abuse which can be seen from time to time on other blogs.
It's unsurprising that this has been difficult. Recall the old slogan - "The personal is political."? Most people here, myself included, with some notable self-outed exceptions, are ensconced, or would like to be ensconced, in relationships with the other gender. When we start talking about gender relations, we start talking about the fabric of our everyday, most personal lives. It touches us to the quick. I know that if I say something about men in general, I necessarily include my own beloved partner. That is, the man who has provided for me through two degrees, is the father of my children, has time and time again supported me to the hilt and beyond, who cooks and cleans and maintains and works to support me and our children, as indeed I cook and clean and maintain and work to support him and our children. In my earlier post on this thread, I referred to ODMs, or ordinary decent men. He's one of those, although in my book, an extraordinary ODM.
One of the things that occurred to me is that one of the problems we are running into is that there are several different feminisms, and I think posters on this thread are perhaps working with differing conceptions of what feminism is. Hence some of the cross talk (as in "crossing over" rather than 'tetchy", 'tho "tetchy" might be appropriate too).
I take it that everyone posting here, and most people lurking, buys into at least some basic notion of feminism - that women ought to have the same rights as men (you know, voting, education, jobs - and spare me silly cracks about sperm donors and wet nurses).
There's another form, which is about ensuring that women can compete in a man's world, provided they become the same as men (remember the shoulder pads and 1980s power dressing for women?).
And another version - that there is a world in which all can participate, because it is genderless. That is, gender doesn't matter; what matters is people's ideas and achievements.
That's pretty attractive, and based on what she has written here, I think it's the type of feminism that Emma (and many other women) buys into. I also think that it's the type of feminism that many of the men here buy into, without having to force themselves to it. Of course ideas and achievements ought to be counted without reference to gender. Hence the "me too" motif, and the concern to not be part of the problem, and to focus on the equal competition of ideas, and the equal vulnerability to abuse.
The standard critique of this type of feminism is that it invites us all to be genderless, and to think that our gender neither influences nor constructs who and what we are. However, another type of feminism says that gender is important. I think I only started to tune into this type of feminism when I had children, when I suddenly started viewing everything, and constructing everything, through the lens of motherhood. I realised that actually, gender does matter. Other people start to hear (as in 'comprehend' or 'understand') what this sort of feminism is about earlier, or through different routes (sexual harassment is a classic).
Which leads to another type of feminism - difference feminism, which says that men and women are fundamentally different, and the ways we approach the world are different. There's an overlay on this, that women's ways are necessarily better. You know, in prehistoric times we all worshipped some sort of earth mother and we were all peaceful and good, and if only women ran the world, it would be a better place.
I find this sort of analysis nauseating (if that's a word). It's based on some sort of mythology about women necessarily being better than men. So not only is it based on some sort of tale telling, it's tautological, and thus logically fundamentally flawed. There is however, a grain of truth in it. I know that in our house, some of us who have XY chromosomes are much better at single minded focus and getting things done, and others of us who have XX chromosomes are much better at organising the house, the children, the day to day routine, and getting the children's homework done while cooking dinner and getting three loads of washing though and paying bills and keeping in contact with family members and organising our social calendar. But that's different, not better.
The point is that gender matters, and that it's very hard to strip away gender, and approach the world as disembodied. This is why I'm not so happy with the type of feminism that works on the premise that all that matters is whether or not our ideas and achievements stack up. I think that our embodied experience matters. The fact that I cross the street at night when I hear footsteps behind me matters. The fact that I worry about how my colleagues feel about something, rather than the 'right' outcome, matters. The fact that I am prone to teariness, and chocolate cravings, about once a month, matters. (We have three daughers; my husband says that once they all reach puberty, he plans to spend about one week in the shed every month.) The extraordinary vulnerability that comes with late pregnancy (I recall that in the late months of my first pregnancy, I got a male colleague to walk me home, when normally I would have been quite happy to go by myself), and in the early weeks following childbirth, matters. The constant focus on children. (Recall the psalm that says that as a mother never forgets her children, so god will never forget his people. And even if a mother should forget, god would not, because they are carved on the palm of his hand. Not that I am a believer anymore, but I certainly recall this sentiment from the songs we sang at my convent school.) And so on.
If you buy into the version of feminism that says that what matters is ideas and achievements, not whether the person involved was male or female, and that it is important for us to make a society where this can happen, then it also makes sense to claim that abuse happens to men too (and I agree, it does), and that the abuse that happens is not gendered. That is, we are all equal here. And indeed, in this forum, we are. Genuinely, what matters is ideas. But, I don't think that PA is a 'usual' forum.
On the other hand, if you buy into the embodied sort of feminism, then you might be more inclined to think that the fact that a great proportion of the abuse is directed at women is a problem in itself. It's not just abuse, it's abuse of women qua women. ("Qua" is shorthand for "in the role of", or "in the position of" or "by virtue of being".)
I think the Kathy Sierra story is a classic instance of this. She wasn't abused for having opinions, or for writing, or for being out there in public. She was abused for having the temerity to be a woman. Hmmm... maybe that's an exaggeration. Maybe she was successful and popular, and being a woman gave people a way to attack her. Whichever way you view it, she was attacked qua woman.
BTW, I don't think that women are the only people to experience this. Anyone who is in the outgroup gets it. Try being an immigrant, or gay, or disabled, or mentally ill. It's an excellent avenue of attack for the hate mongers.
In a sense, "ideas are equal" feminism is an idealised form of feminism. If indeed the world really was this way, then it wouldn't be a problem. But this is the real world that we operate in, and in the real world, gender does matter, so we might need to construct institutions that take gender into account instead of acting as though it doesn't matter.
It would be interesting to understand the group dynamic of what's going on when white boys (and I say "boys" quite deliberately, because it strikes me as a particularly immature behaviour) attack outsiders (women, not-Anglo-Saxon men, cripples, mentally ill people, and anyone else who doesn't fit in). I could speculate that it's backlash behaviour - those who are now being forced to share power are fighting a rearguard action to retain it for themselves - but I simply don't know enough to make that kind of claim. My training is in philosophy, not sociology and pyschology.
To sum up - this discussion has been difficult because actually, it is difficult, gender does matter, and women do get attacked qua women. And so do immigrants, gays and lesbians, cripples, mentally ill people, any out dwellers, qua immigrants, gays and lesbians, cripples, mentally ill people, and out dwellers.
What to do about it? As I have said before, it's hard to say in a forum like this, where respect for each other (although we attack each other's ideas freely) is the prevailing ethos. But as long as ordinary decent men and ordinary decent women turn the other way and ignore the attacks, then the hate mongers will feel they have a licence to persist. We really do need to stand up and call them out. That already happens here on PA - people who have been abusive have been asked to leave. It would be good to be able to work out what to do about it on other NZ blogs.
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Thanks for fixing my link, The Unseen Hand!
I'm still trying to learn tags and stuff. (Perhaps this is one reason I only ever comment on feminist and progressive sites: fear of ridicule when "they" work out I'm no computer whizz).Another reason would be that I don't really enjoy arguing with people with whom I have no common ground; if we can't agree on (what I see as) basic facts, then the discussion can't really go anywhere.
I'm glad you read that post, Russell, yes there are certainly some strange comments. It took me over an hour to get through them all.
I liked your story, next time I'm walking home after dark, I'll hope there's a Russell Brown-type about!
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it's interesting about women's voices in the public sphere. i haven't bothered to go through and count, but i bet this thread still has more male than female contributors. and watching what was happening, most of the women were pulling out as things started going downhill.
so one of tze ming's key points of how we get more women to get involved and active on the web has remained largely ignored and unanswered, and i don't know whether this thread or tze ming's original post has helped at all. as with span, i'd like to get back on topic and actually look at how we can do this. it's a little more important than "light relief" just now.
unfortunately i don't have any particular insights to offer, but would appreciate hearing from others.
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Holy smokes, Deborah, you've said a mouthful!
There's a lot there I'll need to reread, but:" But as long as ordinary decent men and ordinary decent women turn the other way and ignore the attacks, then the hate mongers will feel they have a licence to persist. We really do need to stand up and call them out."
That's it, really.
I think, by Jove, you've got the answer.
It works online, it works when men are yelling out of cars, it works whenever someone is trying to make someone else feel scared.
By not addressing abhorent behaviour, we are all condoning it. -
yanked back up, yay!
Thanks.
I just wrote a really long post and it appears to be lost. Maybe a good thing it was rather rambling.
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