Feminist Blogs/Communities I Have Known...

For discussion of Feministing, Tiger Beatdown, Jezebel, et al.

What do you find useful, what not-so-useful?

Suggestions/discussion here

they are all obsessed w/ mad men and I can't watch the next series until after christmas so that kind of sucks

I don't own a television so I find the commentary kinda useful, like it gives me the sense that I've consumed what I need to know about these kinds of phenomenon. At least to the point where I'm not completley confused by office conversations.

ANyway, that was a really quick list from what we were talking about on Craigslist thread. What others do people read?

copy/past why I think these things are important to keep an eye on, from the other thread...

Plax, I think your two-pronged approach is a very good one. That's it's important both to know the high end theory of it (the kind of stuff you'll find in the public library's Feminism section) but ALSO the day to day workings of it. And that a very important part of feminism, traditionally, has been the consciousness-raising and experience-sharing part of it. And that is something that you have to go to individual women, sharing their experiences, to get. And that the blogosphere has very much taken over from middle class dinner parties as the place where that consciousness-raising activity goes on, because it's more inclusive and you do get the voices that were traditionally excluded even from nice 70s style middle class feminism. (Queer/LGBT voices, women of colour - I like the push and pull of discourse back and forth between say, feministing and racalicious when they talk about the same things from different angles, and don't always agree. That's opened my mind a lot. But a lot of that comes from the community section and the comments sections, that stuff gets cross posted and cross polinated.)

That feminism is a praxis as well as a set of theories, that you can't just read a bunch of dusty tomes in a library and get an idea of what it's about.

i admit i've never heard of tigerbeatdown before you posted that link abt the girls gone wild video.

but it definitely broaches what mackinnon says about pornography, that its status as protected speech is predicated on coercion and domination of the female body.

xp I've seen it linked to fairly often within the last few months, probably starting with the "13 Ways of Looking at Tina Fey" piece.

what do they say about mad men

its the only major tv show w/ a majority female writing staff

... i think a lot of sci-fi has a majority female writing staff?

o really? i just read that somewhere

also the glamour of oppression

anyway they like mad men. which is great i love mad men.

did not know that

you don't need a tv to watch tv kate

I had seen Tiger Beatdown a few times before - mainly through links posted through from other blogs I follow via twitter (a lot of body image and beauty myth type stuff which, although coming from a feminist perspective, I wouldn't call primarily "Feminist Blogs" - they are specific sites.)

And, come to think of it, that was a Jezebel link, in fact - someone was talking about Lisbeth Salander as a "feminist icon" and someone else posted a link to the Tiger Beatdown going OH NOES SHE'S BLOODY WELL NOT AND HERE'S ALL THE WAYS WHY... - again, a back and forth.

Again, I think a lot of these things are great because they take advantage of the web-like linkages to spread opinions both agreeing and dissenting. None of these individual pieces, taken in isolation is THE TRUTH, but when you read all the links and everywhere that takes you, and consume a wide variety of opinions, it starts to point towards patterns and ways of making sense.

And now I've become so vague I'm not sure what I'm talking about, which means I need to get some lunch.

'cisgendered'! that's a new word for me

every time i hear that word it makes me think of cysts

and not the ILX poster 'cis'? read yr blogs

MY GOOGLE READER IS CLEAR THANKS VERY MUCH SIR

one of these articles reminds me of my pet peeve: "i'm not a feminist but..." wait why not?

belief in essentialism usually

i don't follow it regularly but everything i've seen on the f word has been really smart and on point.

about two-thirds of the time i want to stand and applaud jezebel for the things they focus on and bring to light and the stances they take. the other third of the time i think they're the worst morons ever (see: the taylor swift débâcle). i find that the writers can be quite...proscriptive and judgmental about other women, ironically. and quite smug about their "liberal feminist smartypants" identity, as erika v touched on here.

i read that lisbeth salander debate randomly last night (idk how, i haven't read the books - i assume we followed some similar link somewhere k8!) - it started off really well and thought-provokingly, but christ if that "sady" poster (i assume sady doyle?) who seemed to be moderating the comments doesn't come across like a huge, hectoring bully towards the few women who had read and liked the books.

most of the time the comments are a lot more well-rounded than the editorial tone would indicate i think.

I read the ones you cite - I dig Tiger Beatdown. Big fan of Feminist Law Professors, through whom I found Hunter of Justice.

okay feminist law professors looks like exactly the kind of thing i've been looking for

that ggw story is wild

mackinnon legally represented linda boreman who is better known as linda lovelace for her appearance in deepthroat. afterwards she claimed that she was coerced into appearing in the film and testified that "Virtually every time someone watches that movie, they're watching me being raped." you can still buy it on dvd.

if you want to have a really depressing conversation sometime find somebody who doubts that linda boreman was being held prisoner often at gunpoint because after all she does such a good job

and then review their album for decibel

I used to be really into estronet.com which then got bought and turned into chickclick, and then into something even dumber. Haven't really looked for an alternative since then, seeing as how jezebel makes me absolutely insane and I don't think they like my sense of humor there.

Sort of lost interest with the thing about the guy who threw his girlfriend's cat out a window, and half the commenters said he was worse than Hitler.

jezebel commenters are totally inane, but the posts are more interesting than, say, the frisky dot com. that site sucks imo. i guess as a community --> not my bag. as something i read while waiting for water to boil --> ok.

man the guy who invents a widget that makes blog/newspaper comments invisible is gonna get a dollar from me - I know, I know, "just don't read," but it's just sort of second-nature to keep reading what's written on a page that was interesting to me and then it's like GAH SHUT UP

sort of like when Whiney posts his mindless ad-homs

i still get super confused by 'cisgendered' and start imagining a world where being me is a gender in itself (the horror, i kno). also when i read things that say e.g. 'cis women just don't understand' and i'm all 'shut up! you don't even know me!'. it is hard, to be me. and the commonwealth of independent states.

i like tiger beatdown! i like sady doyle more than her co-writers, pretty much entirely because she is a super fluent and funny writer - my fondness for feminist blogs tends to rest entirely on whether i personally am charmed with the writers, not entirely on their politics.

a lot of jez commenters are a little hard to deal with but it's still super weird when on gawker or kotaku or whatever every stray mention of jezebel commenters is like 'lol crazy ladies'.

like, i will take jez commenters over, i dunno, av club commenters?

hahaha

whiney I gotta hand it to you you're a good sport & an example worth following in how to take it when people come at you with snark

i just realised 'cis dur' and 'c sharp major' are the same thing. a doy

the other third of the time i think they're the worst morons ever (see: the taylor swift débâcle). i find that the writers can be quite...proscriptive and judgmental about other women, ironically. and quite smug about their "liberal feminist smartypants" identity, as erika v touched on here.

That's a good assessment of some of the problems I have with that site. That and the silly life/fashion advice posts like "How to Get Dressed for Work", which I don't understand the need for. What next, "How to Butter Toast"?

man the guy who invents a widget that makes blog/newspaper comments invisible is gonna get a dollar from me - I know, I know, "just don't read," but it's just sort of second-nature to keep reading what's written on a page that was interesting to me and then it's like GAH SHUT UP

sort of like when Whiney posts his mindless ad-homs

― gross rainbow of haerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Wednesday, August 4, 2010 8:48 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

most comment boxes these days are built with java so if you run NoScript in firefox you'll have to elect to see them. saved me some ounces of sanity over the years.

Uhhhh do not underestimate a lot of people's ability to get dressed for a specifically pitched environment.

i love this blog

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/

I suppose, but it seems self explanatory and the writer of those posts takes it so seriously. xp

Sorry, shd have said "a lot of people's INability".

But okay, you're probably right anyway.

Use of the words bitch, whore, etc -- it was talked abt in one of the above articles, does anyone here still use them? I have pretty much given up on those words in virtually every instance (although I did use "bitch" today when my roommate suggested that he was noticing a lot of dogs with testicles lately and I asked "are you looking for a candidate for your bitch? -- tasteless, I know) and replaced them with what I think is the more gender-neutral "asshole" (which is actually really satifying -- two syllables!). I am taken to still using the gendered "dickhole" and "dickweed" occasionally but I spread those across both genders.

Is this a dumb conversation to try and start? probably ugh whatever it's what I'm thinking about.

he silly life/fashion advice posts like "How to Get Dressed for Work", which I don't understand the need for.

i find some of these useful! i am regularly worried that i am not doing these kinds of basic things right and it is v reassuring to read a whole passel of people explaining their personal rubrics (plus a bunch of pointless 'i just wear sweatpants because i work from home' type comments).

i have taken to (at least mentally) saying 'dickface' with alarming regularity - i am not quite sure if it is gendered or not, but it's bloody satisfying.

I've started that conversation very recently, coming down hard against 'bitch' and FOR more anatomical cuss-words

but this thread is kinda for links communities, rather than ad-lib debate, and I'm pretty sure we all agree on this one

oh well lj if you have laid down the law on that conversation already! (tho yeah it might as well go in the objectification thread along w everything else)

Hey - there's always a debate!

I still maintain that Kate's being ridiculously patronising when she asserts that I don't know what feminism is in practice just because I went to bat for some weird dude who's discovering his own principles and erring more in terms of expression rather than action - I'm reading this thread assiduously and plan to visit plenty of the sites but I have a certain grounding in this stuff and a hair-trigger sensitivity to a LOT of casual anti-woman tropes

that's really what got under my skin the most

re: use of bitch/whore

I never had much faith in reclamation of words. I was doing a group presentation w/four other guys in my class yesterday, and I had put the powerpoint together – they were all older than me & scared of computers. SO I told them I'd also run the presentation. When we were practicing, one guy finished his slide, and said, "New slide, bitch!" And I said, "Aw, fuck you," and everyone laughed (both had an air of levity but also an air of for-realness). I was, really mad! But after he explained his daughter 'who is a feminist' was trying to reclaim the word so it was ok for him to call me that. When, what the fuck, it so isn't.

dude, i'm not sure how much the problem is who you're going to bat for so much as how loud you are about going to bat for ppl!

aaaaanyway

i think this is a good recent thing by Sady Doyle on being feminist on the internet.

also your post about how our audience changes what we say and how we say it is brilliant!

i will admit that i find the don't-give-a-fuck shorthand useful to get at what i like about personal hero roseanne barr but you're right, it's probably not the most precise way to describe it.

i feel like it's usually more about the person enunciating it, like i wish i could be more like roseanne barr in x y and z ways but i'm just going to lump them all under "not giving a fuck." it's about my total inability to not give a fuck rather than about her, i guess.

Lol I have a friend who is so DGAF-looking and cool that I am deeply jealous, but I'm pretty sure it's her own compromise among the pressures of being able to get by in the world and meet her obligations and be not-unhappy at the same time. I also don't think she thinks that she Doesn'tGAF, I think she gives many, but sometimes you have to cut your losses and stop letting yourself care abt things you repeatedly feel like a failure at/neurotic about, u kno?

It's not that hard to not post on a thread. I don't understand how someone just has that burning desire, MUST POST ON GIRLS THREAD and that start getting the shakes and sweats because they can't. There's like a billion other threads to express your opinions. Not being able to post in one will not destroy you. Just don't do it.

I just wanted to butt in to say that I think it's more complicated than this; I never really read the girls only thread that much but tbh I can imagine having posted in it, either absentmindedly or on account of being insufficiently aware of the guidelines regarding participation. most of the time I have something to bump a thread with - which was the case w/Mookie, right? - I search a keyword & pick an old vaguely relevant thread to bump; I'm sure a lot of these times I'm not spending a lot of time catching up or pre-screening the thread, just using it as a launchpad for any future debate, & I think this casual, digressive style is part of ILX. there are other things, like having a bunch of tabs open or, again wrt digression, feeling inclined to address something in a thread, that I don't think my knowledge of the purpose of a thread would reflexively counter. also per ENBB's post above, I kinda thought of "no boys allowed!" as a standard ironic ILX thread title quirk, rather than an actual thing.

there is a women only thread, now, which seems more explicitly exclusive, but I feel like most of the well-delineated threads on ILX reinforce their guidelines by like, being on 77, or doing something more foolproof/schumpproof than embedding info with in the post history.

zillion xps

ive never read the thread - i think i clicked on it once before realizing it was the cooties zone - but i mean, i feel like you have to be p clueless to not immediately get that its a thread for women, and not dudes

Saying "hey, have you thought about asking men not to do this?" when HEY IT SAYS IN THE FIRST FUCKING POST, BOYS DO NOT POST IN THE THREAD. That's mansplaining.

this is not "mansplaining," it is "oversight."

^^ is this mansplaining?

sure, perhaps so, but I think it's awkward because there's a gulf between someone being careless, or ignorant, or oblivious, & posting in a thread, & the fact that their participation in that thread would be actively discomforting for the other participants, rather than just a gauge of a poster's whatever, like when someone accidentally posts in the wrong thread or whatever. so I just meant that it being better identified, somehow, and therefore further limiting user error, would probably be helpful for all involved. I think that's truer of the new thread.

xp

I don't think the little controversy today was really about mookie but about different kinds of discussion that people want to have, and now they can have them separately, so that's good. Also I think mooks knew exactly what he was doing and has done it before, and has not been fully called out on it BECAUSE he's normally rly good at gender issues stuff and we/many people like him. But it still was a misstep.

sure, yeah

stubbornly defending your right not to bother reading the most basic contents of a thread before wading in with your valuable contribution is not a particularly good look. how about being less careless? it would take like a second's extra time and thought.

Also, hi, mookie! Sorry this all blew up from your post! I don't think it was your fault or anything, just so that's out there. Hope you're having a p good Sunday.

stubbornly defending your right not to bother reading the most basic contents of a thread before wading in with your valuable contribution is not a particularly good look. how about being less careless? it would take like a second's extra time and thought.

― first period don't give a fuck, second period gon get cut (lex pretend), Sunday, 12 February 2012 19:40 (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm trying to talk about the way that I use ILX, and the ease with which I can imagine making such a mistake: it's obviously good practice to read as much as possible, and tbh to post in a thread without having read all of it is always going to leave one exposed to potentially making certain faux pas; duplicating content or addressing stuff that's gone before or reviving drama or whatever. I'm just aware that there are probably times when one doesn't pay sufficient scrutiny, & it's particularly difficult if instead of that resulting in the modest embarrassment of having mis-posted, it actually offends people, & it just seems preferable to me if something about the thread could insulate as effectively as possible against that, what with some of the ways one can trip up seeming to me fairly easy lines to cross, or being blurred by the ostensible if misguided or ignorant good intention of the poster.

You realize that although you disagree with WCC's reading, you are now actually doing what it was that she said happened before that you disagree with, right?

― carl agatha, Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hardly. i simply disagree with WCC and with her (clearly stated) interpretation of what other people in this thread said and did. she's still got every right to feel however she likes, and no one has suggested otherwise.

Contenderizer. Please don't tell me how I read things. Thanks.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Sunday, February 12, 2012 10:27 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did no such thing. you told us, quite clearly, how you interpret things ("all I got was people telling me why I had no right to feel uncomfortable about it"). i in turn characterized that interpretation as "extreme and reductive". i stand by that.

nplusone to all other media: meh.

nplusone: writing about blogs which write about magazines which want to be blogs.

<I>I'm trying to talk about the way that I use ILX, and the ease with which I can imagine making such a mistake: it's obviously good practice to read as much as possible, and tbh to post in a thread without having read all of it is always going to leave one exposed to potentially making certain faux pas; duplicating content or addressing stuff that's gone before or reviving drama or whatever. I'm just aware that there are probably times when one doesn't pay sufficient scrutiny, & it's particularly difficult if instead of that resulting in the modest embarrassment of having mis-posted, it actually offends people, & it just seems preferable to me if something about the thread could insulate as effectively as possible against that, what with some of the ways one can trip up seeming to me fairly easy lines to cross, or being blurred by the ostensible if misguided or ignorant good intention of the poster.</I>

Crazy pills moment - I agree with everything you're saying here (that's not the moment), but you are sort of avoiding the fact that it wasn't an obscure fact or arcane board lingo that was breached, it's that the thread was titled "no boys allowed".

haha sorry everyone

i had kind of forgotten i'd posted that link, actually, as i was notably un-sober at the time. i'd have put it here, but i couldn't remember the thread title. at any rate, it seemed somewhat interesting, so i shared it. i certainly did not mean for any clusters to be fucked.

i understand that making the post could be considered an encroachment, and if it's deleted that's obvs fine. i feel a little guilty, but not too bad, as i wasn't trying to troll anyone or anything.

I had $10 on it being a drunk post versus illiteracy/malicious but I'm not sure who I collect from

Let's just say you owe me a beer, but neither of us can post near ilx after drinking it

aw, mooks <3

it's a good link to have posted!

Yeah, I re-read it after my initial drunk 'bleccch not more LDR discussion' reaction and it did raise some good points. But I don't think it was very well-written, tbh.

Mookie I didn't think you were trolling. I actually now wish I'd never said anything. The clusterfuck has been far worse than the discomfort, but such is ILX.

i appreciate that you think i am generally a good idea <3

Good idea. ;-) <3

Crazy pills moment - I agree with everything you're saying here (that's not the moment), but you are sort of avoiding the fact that it wasn't an obscure fact or arcane board lingo that was breached

sure no & I'm happy to acknowledge that. but I'm just saying more broadly that the politics of it have to be coupled with the way people actually use ILX, & that there are a variety of ways in which people might 'accidentally' or w/e fall foul of the participation norms regarding certain threads, the way they do when posting on superseded threads, meta on 77 &c&c&c. for that reason it's ideal if there is some measure in place to make that less common, or impossible, or mitigated when it happens &c&c&c.

it's that the thread was titled "no boys allowed".

― Andrew Farrell, Sunday, 12 February 2012 22:24 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for me, I might have read 'no boys allowed' as a throwaway suffix satirising the slumber party motif of the thread, & so not considered it too serious. but obviously I am in a minority there & I am okay with the idea that if I hypothetically had I would have been in the wrong to do so. I am totally happy to continue debating the semantics of my interjection upthread but otherwise reeeallly don't have a horse in this argument, so will otherwise cede my time & just offer high fives for which all are eligible in the support of us all getting whatever ilx space & community we want.

It's amazing to me the ways in which men will continue to bend over backwards to continue to find new semantic ways of insisting that women don't really want or couldn't possibly be asking for things we explicitly state or demand.

WCC, I agree with you on many, many (most?) of the points on this thread. I enjoy reading your thoughts on gender, and I've learned a lot from you. Sincerely. Sometimes, though, I kind of wish you wouldn't paint all men and men's thinking with the same stereotyping brush, because it makes it easier to dismiss/ignore/eye roll at points that could otherwise be v. enlightening.

Do I have to qualify the "some" in what I thought was an implicit "some men" is that previous statement? I guess in the interest of fairness I do. Apologies.

It's just really disheartening, how often this is a thing. But heartening that dudes like Andrew and Alex will provide blowback on it, so yes, some but by no means all men.

It's amazing to me the ways in which men will continue to bend over backwards to continue to find new semantic ways of insisting that women don't really want or couldn't possibly be asking for things we explicitly state or demand.

― White Chocolate Cheesecake, Sunday, 12 February 2012 23:19 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kinda thrown by this being below my post - should it be in reference to mine, to clarify:
afaik i've only referred to the various motivations or mistakes made by male participants in the threads we're referring to, & the almost technical factors that relate to posting in threads. if me suggesting that i might've taken the no boys allowed thing in cheek seems evasive, idk; i just can imagine a thread in which for the kind of discussion contained there, to which it was attached ironically. it felt useful to highlight that it can be awkward to create the kind of thread that's desired by its participants, which i think is corroborated by the debate over what the best solution for that is.
xp

As much as I understand the urge to take it as a really fucking serious character criticism when someone on a smart message board suggests that u might be deviating from the Non-Asshole Thinking Person D&D Rulebook and, time for some unproductive discourse, as much as I think that WCC can sometimes be an unusually-difficult looney toon, it is killin me how many different ways the smart sensitive guys of ILX are finding to say "hey wait a minute...to be fair"

if a woman says you're violating woman space then you really have to let women clarify the subject because it's not for man-critics

@ WCC. I do think the 'some' is necessary, espesh w/r/t the men/boys/folks of notionally male identification who have - in one way or another - been victimized or oppressed under the same mechanisms that are usually associated with/reserved for women. In other words, men of less than optimal masculinity (heavy scare quotes around that phrase) who have suffered oppression/repression due to their perceived or real lack of fit can comiserate with various and sundry concerns/agonies/experiences expressed in these threads.

I thought of making that point but I think it's not really the same thing, although you can definitely commiserate on a number of issues. Kind of like how gay men may have some common ground, but I find it kind of insulting to insinuate that gay men intrinsically "get" feminism in a way straight men can't.

Ok absolutely fair point RB, and I'm usually one of the ppl singing that "patriarchy hurts men too" tune so I will agree and qualify.

I'm just going to diplomatically ignore the strange new sock.

See, what I don't get is, I agree that ILX can be used in a lot of ways, and that there are some conventions where the thread title isn't indicative for historical reasons (like, y'know, the LOL threads). But this is a case where the thread is doing like its title.

Like, if you've read the title (which the active part isn't really a suffix - the title in full is "no boys allowed in this room"), and you've read enough to be aware of the slumber party motif, you've also read enough to notice that a rough approximation of boys in the room is none.

But yeah, arguing about a thing when the dude who did the thing has apologised is Too ILX, so I will take the high-fives and be done.

i am fairly new to ilx and always regret jumping in on these things, but i've had a bit to drink, so:

i really don't think it's the responsibility of the [person of a particular community] in question to make disclaimers about the type of oppression they face that generally come from a privileged community. when trans/gender non-conforming folks or lgbtq folks talk about cis-privilege or straight privilege, i'm not going to say hey, wait a minute, what about me/this really great straight person i know/etc.?

^^^

like actually *oppression* though?

yup!

agreed, and bearing in mind that not all ostensible members of a privileged community are actually allocated or receptive of the privilege explicitly or implicitly conveyed by 'membership' in that community. there's a lot of granularity, a lot of particularity, a lot approaching the spectrum of 'us' within the 'other' – however you draw the power structure and 'normal' in the equation.

and i apologize for all the quotes and double quotes but not for the fact that my world outlook owes a lot to kermit the frog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JmgepLjKfA

sorry to behave like an Unpleasant Life Terrorist: total result of drinking on the internet

Dude (dudette?), I don't know what your deal is, but you pretty much committed the triumvirate of verbal ticks that are gonna get me to not pay attention to anything you say,

1) Tarring women you dislike or disagree with as "difficult" or "crazy" is like Misogyny 101 and that's a big sign for me saying "this person is too prejudiced to contribute"
2) "Looney tunes" as a pejorative is like Ablism 101. People can be short-sighted, or selfish, or hateful, or just plain RONG without having anything the matter with their mental health.
3) Using Ablist terms to discredit someone who has been open about dealing with Mental Health issues is demonisation and Grade A asshole material. It is perfectly possible that I can have Bipolar disorder and *still* be perfectly qualified to talk about Feminism or Politics or Oppression or any of these issues.

So if you come in here, saying stuff like that, I don't actually see as far as *what* point you are trying to make, because when you wrap it up in the triple layers of hatefulness above, no, sorry, drunkenness is not an excuse as far as I'm concerned, you've already discredited yourself as a reasonable or even thoughtful human being.

it is killin me how many different ways the smart sensitive guys of ILX are finding to say "hey wait a minute...to be fair"

― zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (pharmacy), Sunday, February 12, 2012 6:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol, yah

Oh hey, back to magazines & blogs and whatever: http://maura.tumblr.com/post/8752919184/must-we-all-pee-on-sticks-on-camera-to-be-heard

and how do you feel about that post vs. the n+1 article?

I think they're coming from very different standpoints and arguing very different things, and exist in v. different rhetorical contexts.

To get back on track w blogs just slightly:

Preventing Sexual Assault: Tips Guaranteed to Work!

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.