On the fragility of comfortable privacy on the web
Well, I suppose perhaps it was inevitable. I experienced my first serious discomfort today with having so much information about me online.
Ill-advisedly, I got into a tangle on the radical feminist blog “I Blame the Patriarchy“. The bone I foolishly chose to pick was about whether it was, in fact, a good idea to pre-emptively castrate some schmuck who had written an email in stunted English in which he asks how he can avoid being a rapist, and says that “when women’s and girls are very open, I could hardly control myself.” While this doesn’t sound at all reassuring about this fellow’s future as an upstanding citizen, I thought that actual forced castration might be going a little too far, given what was known of the situation. Apparently, that was an outrageous suggestion.
You can read the whole debacle here if you’re bored and have a lot of time. It goes on for a while. I might have more to say about the issue, and why reaction was so violent and nasty, at a later time, when I have calmed down a little and gotten some perspective. In the mean time, though, I would like to talk about an issue tangential to what was actually being debated.
I was surprised at the level of hostility I ran into, but I was even more surprised when a handful of commenters decided it would be a good idea to leverage the information available about me on the web to make fun of me. So, in the course of the afternoon, I was treated to someone wondering out loud if I had secretly been hoping for a son instead of a daughter:
I continue to read that the child is named Ryan….Ryan Marie.
Are you familiar with Kathleen Parker, a columunist who goes to very great lengths to support everything that males do? And to make excuses for everything that a male does wrong? I refer to it as the “Katey P” Disease…and I think you just might suffer from it.
Were you disappointed that Ryan wasn’t a male? Have you been so throughly dipped and fried in Patriarchy that you are willing to come onto a Radical Feminist blog and spout off about how rapists’ nuts need to be defended?
– slade [an anonymous pseudonym]
slade carries on some more in a later comment about Ryan’s name. One of these is plenty, I think, to get the flavor, and if anything, the later comment is even more vicious, so if you care you can go look it up. As if this weren’t enough, someone dug up a link to a self-portrait on my photoblog, and had some fun with that:
I’ve done better [at taking pictures] with a Canon TX. I used to just love getting A1 with my TX while the guyes (check the shot) always had the big penis I mean lenses, the most expensive camera, wore those dorky pseudo-military hats. Oh geez, perhaps I could send him a pair of fingerless mittens?
– Pony [another anonymous pseudonym]
I can only assume “Pony” didn’t read the image comments where I mentioned I was suited up to go snowboarding. Oh, well.
I just love that shot of him on his blog. How long do you think he had to hang in front of the mirror to get everything just so. The stubble, that hat, squint, no the other eye, umm no this lens is too small the other, and that way, I look more…dangereuse. Har. Poseur.
– Pony
My initial reaction was to be surprised and taken aback that anyone would go off searching for personal details about me just to fuel personal attacks. My second reaction was to be angry. My third reaction was to consider why I was feeling angry, since after all, all this information is readily available online, and more besides, and I have nobody to blame for it being there but myself.
Lots of bloggers write from behind pseudonyms and take care not to reveal their identity. I have never done that, partly because this blog started out as my personal observations about what it was like to get clobbered by a car and have a titanium rod threaded into my femur, and during my recovery, my only audience was friends and family. Since this blog became political, though, I still never bothered to use a pseudonym because, as I now realize, it never occurred to me that someone would come digging through the information here in anger, or with malicious intent. I’m starting to think now that that may have been naive.
The idea that this afternoon, at least a few people came digging through this site and my photoblog looking for something, anything, that they could use to attack me makes me deeply uncomfortable. Being open about my life, sharing my artistic efforts, and talking about my family are things I felt comfortable doing because I trusted that anyone who cared to stop by would bear me no ill will. I assumed that if I stayed calm and well-reasoned when having discussions elsewhere, nobody would take such great offense that they would make it personal. It turns out, I was wrong.
I’m not sure what to do now. I suppose I could retreat behind a pseudonym, like everyone else seems to have already done, and stop mentioning anything about who I actually am. Or, I suppose, I could just shrug off the feeling of violation that came with people using my daughter and my appearance to attack me.
I know that several people reading are my close friends and that you run blogs under your own names. Perhaps you never participate in discussions where people may go off the deep end, so your risk is lower. I’m not saying not to carry on as you have been, but take a moment to think about the worst case. Are you comfortable with everything that is available about you?
What I found most upsetting out of all of this were the attacks on Ryan’s name, to the extent that I’m wondering if it’s wise for information about my family to be available. Both Laura and I are dismayed that anyone would think to drag a baby into the middle of any this ugliness.
Take a minute to inventory what’s available about you.
Update: Readers have left a series of extremely thoughtful and perceptive comments; please take a moment to go through them.
Confidential to Elena: I’m not editing comments to select only positive ones, as you imagine. Feel free to leave a comment of your own!
Pervy Blakeney wrote:
I just finished reading the whole Twisty thread, which took a while, and came here suspecting you might have something further to add.
I find your intersection with the topic fascinating. On the one hand, it may make you feel better to know that I, as a person who identifies as a feminist but first as a human, do not support pre-emptive punishment for as-yet-uncommitted crime or for actually committed or potentially committed thoughtcrime. On the other, that might well be small comfort, since I missed the whole conversation over there and failed to post a comment in agreement with yours or in your defense.
In reading the thread, though, I did indeed aggree with many of your comments, and found most of them reasonable and all of them civil. Some of the responses you received I would not categorize the same way, and although to be frank I personally admire strong, declarative, even vicious dialectic among women (and feel very differently about exactly the same type of discourse when it comes from men) I felt the comments about your child, your sex, and your photography (or appearance or whatever) appalling and unacceptable.
I will admit, however, that though I read with revulsion and anger the implied idea that your opinions were the result of your gender, I was not untouched by more positive emotion. This is something women are told frequently: we are feminists because we are female; if we like shoes it is because we are female; if we support Senator Clinton it is because we are female; if we don’t like heavy machinery it is because we are female. It was ringingly familiar to see exactly the same outrageous and demeaning assumptions applied to a man’s opinions, and for a moment I felt almost joyful: the thought that passed through my head was “Oh, thank God, finally we’re ALL treating each other unfairly.”
In reality, this is of course not the case. You treated no one unfairly, and were abused in return. Conversely, you mention above that you “trusted that anyone who cared to stop by [your blogs] would bear [you] no ill will.” As a woman, I find the idea of assuming it is safe–*physically* safe, not just emotionally or intellectually safe–to reveal personal information on a website to be entirely alien. Have none of your commenters have ever threatened you with rape, torture, and murder; advertised websites displaying persons of your sex being beaten, dominated, enslaved, abused, and treated as nonsentient property; told you to shut your mouth; or informed you that the political opinions you record are the result of your chromosomes?
I am being disingenuous, of course; obviously my assumption is that the above is not a large problem for you–so much not a large problem for you, in fact, that you’ve never before thought about it. Thus the one thing you proposed on *IBtP* that I found ill-considered was the idea that “not everything to do with the status quo is enmeshed with the patriarchy.”
As evidence that that belief might be rather questionable, I offer you a quote from your photoblog:
“I’m a software engineer and photographer and I live in Seattle with my lovely wife and baby daughter.”
Even assuming that space is limited and you are permitted only one word with which to describe the woman most central in your life, the woman you love and respect more than all other people, I can’t help but notice that the word you use is “lovely.” Not “witty.” Not “accomplished,” or “whip-smart” or “strong” or “super-human” or “hilarious” or “amazing” or “wonderful,” but rather a word whose closest synonym, according to the *Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary,* is “attractive.” I realize of course that “lovely” has several different meanings and even several different connotations within one meaning, all of which probably apply to your wife; but the word catches my eye because it is one traditionally applied to wives by men, one that, now as in the past, carries a strong connotation of physical appearance and a lesser but still significant overtone of graciousness and hospitality–in short, of servitude and of sacrifice of personal ambition for the happiness of the (male) beholder.
I don’t mean to say that’s what you mean when you write that your wife is lovely, nor am I implying by any means that you yourself are sexist. I want to point out, instead, that an adjective as denotatively gender-neutral as “lovely” is in fact a heavily gendered word. (Try applying it to a man and see what reactions you get.) I offer this word, its common usage, and its connotations as one example of literally thousands that every aspect of waking life–EVERY aspect–is indeed enmeshed with patriarchy, tangled up in it so inextricably that to make even a relatively minor change would completely collapse American and indeed all human civilization as we know it. Thus any evil you fight and any good you do will be gendered, because both the fight and the victory take place in a gendered world.
And thus the words I use to describe the changes you hope to effect upon the world around you–”fight” and “victory”–are metaphors that apply a millenia-old pattern of effecting change by destroying or subjugating difference through violence of the physically strong upon the physically weak, a pattern whose weavers have almost without exception been male and whose victims are female more often than not. EVERYTHING is enmeshed with patriarchy, because the world as it is today is built on and out of patriarchal yesterdays. I have my crackpot theories about why yesterdays were patriarchal, but I have nattered long enough. I wish you well, and I’m sorry you went through what you did at chez Faster.
The Scarlet Pervygirl
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 3:36 am | Permalink
Rococo wrote:
I’ve been reading without comment the goings on at IBTP for some time, and was following with interest the debate surrounding your comments.
You seem to have unwittingly touched the third rail of radical feminist politics by discussing the rights of a potential rapist.
Rape is apparently a shared experience in the lives of most of the posters there. Blamers also seem to believe that rape is the essential expression of the patriarchal system, which itself is a hierarchy of dominance and submission assigned by caste and enforced ultimately through violence. If the personal is political, rape is the ultimate political expression of such a system.
There’s plenty there worth thinking about. Ultimately, a lot of our problems as humans stem from the hierarchies we create, the rationales we use to support the system, and ultimately the violence we’re willing to resort to to enforce our hierarchies. It is radical, but nonetheless worth asking, whether this whole structure is the result of innate or learned male aggression. Male aggression does seem to play the major role in creating hierarchies, it comes up with some crazy intellectual excuses to justify itself — an angry jealous (single) Male creator god? - and it uses violence as a first resort, when it can.
You seem to have taken an essentially liberal approach to the problem of violence: there is a human tendency to violence, so we’ll create humane, rational structures like due process to channel and limit it - because the problem of violent individuals is compounded a great deal if there is also an ultra-violent and unlimited state.
Some radicals would not agree. It seems like they think that humane structures cannot be created in a patriarchy. The problem is male violence, male violence being the coin of the realm, the way patriarchal societies do business, from top to bottom, and if it was in the interest of a violent society to control its potential rapists, the “Future Rapist” would have been castrated yesterday.
As you’ve discovered, there are a lot of people in a great deal of pain posting over at IBTP. Read some of those stories about rape that people have posted. For you, arguing about the rights of a rapist, or potential rapist, is an intellectual exercise. For some of the women over there, there is no way to deal with the issue in a solely intellectual manner because rape is a defining experience of their lives. By coming into the argument you have (unwittingly I’m sure) done something that many seem to have interpreted as an invasion of a space they would like to be free of the patriarchy, which they define pretty broadly to include you. You might not think so, being a nice secular liberal guy, but apparently they do. IMHO, and that’s all it is, better to allow them their space. I’m guessing that in the view of many there, there are plenty of other places for the beneficiaries of the patriarchial system to express themselves, and the Blamers deserve at least one refuge from it.
Finally, I’m sure it will all blow over pretty quickly, and I doubt that you really need to be worried about the posting of personal information, although it is something we all should be aware of.
Best regards,
Rococo
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 4:08 am | Permalink
Rococo wrote:
BTW, great comment, scarlet pervygirl.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 4:14 am | Permalink
Mark wrote:
Thank you to both Pervy and Rococo for your thoroughly reasonable and thoughtful comments.
Pervy, I found it interesting that you called out my use of “lovely” to describe my wife on my photoblog’s “about” page. Incidentally, not that you were malicious in any way, but the fact that the adjectives that I use to describe my own family members are now under scrutiny was the topic of this blog post — the sudden turning-over of every shred of material available about me is very unsettling.
I find it difficult to write “artist statements” and “about” pages generally (chezlark doesn’t have one, for example), so the prose over there is pretty trite. You’re right — when in doubt, and for lack of any better idea on how to generically but positively refer to my wife, I reached for what I unthinkingly thought of as the “default”: the canned, but highly gender-laden, “lovely”. As a partial defense, the adjective is so over-used that I meant it with a slight ironic twist. But not entirely.
I would tell you all about how fantastic Laura is, how she got a graduate degree and started her own business when I have yet to get my act together to accomplish either, but that wouldn’t really be the point. I would be defending against the idea that because I’m a man, I see my wife as subservient and pliant and, at least in my current frame of mind, I’m resentful at having to do so.
I think your example is well-chosen and telling, though. The fact that I would think of “lovely” as the default reflects how profoundly gendered our society is. You take me to task for thinking that anything at all is not enmeshed with the patriarchy, and perhaps rightly so.
Thanks again for the comment.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 5:25 am | Permalink
Mark wrote:
Rococo, your comment gave me a lot to think about as well. I found this particularly insightful:
Far, far too late, I came to understand that my whole tone and approach to such a sensitive subject may indeed have been inflammatory, simply because a man showing up and proposing to dispassionately discuss what punishment is or is not adequate for potential rape would inevitably come across as propping up the patriarchy, no matter what he may say.
I see that since I left IBTP, a commenter talked about how they “sensed” right away that I was male because of the “abstract distance and bloodlessness” in my writing. That sounds like what you’re describing.
There are a couple previous posts here about male privilege and the “smile, honey!” phenomenon. Reading them now, they sound kind of breezily detached. I guess folks at IBTP were hearing something like that, too.
I think this is probably true, and I find it very discouraging. Discouraging, because it means that calm discussion about practical measures for making things better may not yet be possible, at least with those whose who have been wounded. Of course, as always, it’s easy for me to shake my head and be discouraged, since I’m not of the sex that’s suffered.
Again, thank you for taking the time to comment.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 6:02 am | Permalink
Becky wrote:
Mark,
Laura might have told you this already, but I had read that blog before this whole thing even happened, and I have to say, that I had written the author off after reading just a few posts. I don’t have tons of time to surf blogs, and I prefer to stick with ones that give me actual news and practical things I can do to better myself and my country. Maybe that makes me a ‘bad feminist’ but whatever; I thought that instead of being informative and raising good questions, that it just attacked and didn’t provide any logical solutions. Anyway…
I went back to read the exchange you had with them after Laura told me about it, and after reading what I thought was a logical and fair response from you, I was VERY surprised to read that others were attacking you for a position that was logical and based in equality. I especially love the comment about how you ‘defended a rapist’s nuts’ or some crap like that- all the while calling the dude ‘the rapist’ when the whole point is that THE DUDE HADN’T RAPED ANYONE YET. I for one, would not want something I said to be taken as proof that sometime someday in the future, I would do something illegal. (Big Brother anyone?) The government is taking too many liberties with our freedoms as it is…and preemptively chopping off some idiot’s nuts doesn’t seem like a logical solution to any problem. I know it’s a ‘radical feminist blog’ or whatever, but that doesn’t excuse the author and readers to attack someone who isn’t agreeing with their radical solutions.
I also love how they found out enough about you to attack your choice of names for your child (an action which is NOT ok. Your family is not a part of your political blog and in my humble opinion, it is NEVER ok to bring someone’s family into anything) but they obviously didn’t bother to READ any of your actual blogs. If they did, they would realize that you want fairness for EVERYONE. Anyone not convicted in a court of a crime, is worthy of being protected under US law, whether they are a citizen or not- that is what I get from reading your postings (and I read every one). That is more proof of your support of equality than any support you may give some blogger about cutting off the nuts of a person who has yet to commit a crime. You support solutions that are realistic and practical. Your initial response to the post was in keeping with everything you write on your own blog- that everyone deserves due process and shouldn’t be preemptively punished for something that may not even happen. I still don’t understand why they jumped on you.
So in short, don’t worry about what they said. Their opinion really doesn’t matter, and those who matter, know what you were trying to say and know that it was in keeping with everything that you believe and write about on a daily basis. They were being ridiculous. Especially to bring Ryan into it. That was unacceptable.
They would probably say that I am a horrible excuse for a woman, and I can’t call myself a feminist if I’m ‘defending someone that was defending some rapists nuts’- so I must be brainwashed by patriarchy- but I think that THEY are bad excuses for feminists. Their solutions aren’t based in reality and therefore are not doing anything productive to actually HELP the plight of women in this country- because lets be honest…the only way things get changed in this country is to work within the system. Blowing things up and mutilating people don’t help anything at all. And to be honest again…I really don’t give a shit what they think of me. And I don’t think that you should either.
I know this is long, and I’m sorry for that, but the whole thing pissed me off. The funny thing is that I don’t actually KNOW you. All I know is from what I’ve read on your blogs, so everything I’m saying is based on things that any other person who actually READS your blogs would also know. It’s not privileged personal information that I have.
So maybe they should stop talking out of their ass, and actually READ what you say. And then use their brains to THINK about it. Instead of just attacking you with whatever comes to mind. Because when people get personal with stuff that isn’t involved in the conversation- it makes them sound really unintelligent and it makes their arguments weak.
Ok, I’m done.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 6:48 am | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
http://feet2thefire.blogspot.com/2006/06/with-all-due-respect-twisty-can-blow.html
I’m not even that charitable to most of her commenters.
good thing there’s no such thing as institutionalized misandry…
I think that the act of being anti-you, the act of expressing anti-you sentiment as eloquently and viciously as possible, was more important to many of the commenters than protecting themselves from feeling threatened.
The act of expressing anti-you sentiment identifies a commenter as being one of the cool kids, and identifies the group of cool kids as a strong, unified force - a team.
group cohesion is strong over there, almost to a point that defies reason.
you could have posted a beautiful, elegant, unassailable, perfect-in-every-way, winning-high-school-math-team proof that two plus two equals four, but if Twisty says “math is patriarchal”, ain’t nothing you can do to stop the assault.
shake it off. live to fight another day.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 7:04 am | Permalink
Becky wrote:
Amen Antiprincess. Amen.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 7:45 am | Permalink
alphabitch wrote:
I read all the comments, and I came over here to see who you were. I spent some time reading/looking at your blog. I like what you’re doing generally and found your stories of the titanium femur incident highly engaging (I used to work in orthopedics) and I absolutely loved the stories & photos of Miss Ryan Marie. This is a good blog. Thank you for putting it out into the world.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 8:15 am | Permalink
DG wrote:
“I think this is probably true, and I find it very discouraging. Discouraging, because it means that calm discussion about practical measures for making things better may not yet be possible, at least with those whose who have been wounded. Of course, as always, it’s easy for me to shake my head and be discouraged, since I’m not of the sex that’s suffered.”
It is not so much that “calm rational arguments” aren’t possible, but that you must be sensitive to when and where you engage in those arguments. The point of Twisty’s blog is not to provide a “fair and balanced” view of patriarchy that allows equal time for “both” sides. Patriarchy gets that 99.99% of the time. Twisty’s is a refuge from the everyday, all day arguments for patriarchy. It is the place where we get to call patriarchy out in all of its insidious over-arching manifestations. There are blogs out there that talk about policy, and social action from a liberal perspective, and I believe some of the posters at Twisty’s frequent those blogs as well. And amazingly, can construct “calm” and “rational” arguments. Those are the blogs to bring up the appropriateness of castrating future rapists.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 8:45 am | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
It is the place where we get to call patriarchy out in all of its insidious over-arching manifestations.
calling out patriarchy and endorsing the maiming of individuals are two entirely different things.
It is good to examine power structures. I can get behind that. there are few better at that than Twisty - few even as good.
However, it is not good to assert that the way to demolish existing power structures is by performing surgeries on people who look like they think they might someday in the future contemplate committing a crime.
that’s not good or admirable. that’s fucking creepy in any context.
suggesting prophylactic castration to prevent possible future rapes is no better than suggesting prophylactic hysterectomies to prevent possible future abortions.
and here’s the problem - you, John or Jane Q. Blogreader, find IBTP, and read it, and go “yeah…yeah…yeah…YEAH! OMG someone finally gave words to what I’ve been feeling! Oh thank goodness! Twisty ROOLZ! on everything but this little teensy thing here…” and then Blogreader posts a comment that says “I get what you’re saying, but have you thought about XYZ?” or “I’m with you right up to this part here, and here’s why,” or “this doesn’t make sense to me and seems to contradict a post you made a week ago” or whatever. then all hell breaks loose. And Blogreader goes home and licks hir wounds and wonders where it all went south.
and nobody examines the power structure in which there is no authority but Twisty’s authority, no right opinion but Twisty’s opinion, no Twisty but Twisty.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 9:10 am | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
I believe some of the posters at Twisty’s frequent those blogs as well. And amazingly, can construct “calm” and “rational” arguments. Those are the blogs to bring up the appropriateness of castrating future rapists.
well, yeah, but I don’t see the topic of castrating FUTURE rapists come up at Salon.com, or Feministe, or Pandagon.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 9:13 am | Permalink
Rococo wrote:
@ antiprincess: “and nobody examines the power structure in which there is no authority but Twisty’s authority, no right opinion but Twisty’s opinion, no Twisty but Twisty.”
Why would you want to examine the “power structure” of anything with so little actual power? If people want a place where they can agree with one another about the advisability of castrating potential rapists or discussing the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin, that’s their prerogative. Moreover, internet etiquette basically demands that open forums are not really “open.” They’re like bars that are open to the public, but at which you might not feel confortable speaking up. If people don’t like what you’re saying and don’t want to engage you, you take the hint and leave. Which is what maiken, to his credit, did.
I followed up on your mention above about a post on IBTP from June 2006, about the politics of oral sex, that apparently set off a bit of a stir. I was pretty surprised that the thread of 200+ posters was open, funny, non-dogmatic and pretty welcoming of diverse points of view. That was not what the last month of reading IBTP had lead me to expect. Of course, the topic in that case in leant itself to humor, while the “Future Rapist” topic did not. Still, even the more light-hearted recent threads on IBTP had lost some of the open, freewheeling dynamic of that one. Which makes me wonder whether IBTP might be developing into a cliquish fan club-type blog. It often happens with writers who are as readable and smart as Twisty - and if that’s what the readers want, that’s great - but I’m kind of sorry the “community” seems to have changed before I even found the site.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 10:29 am | Permalink
Pretty Lady wrote:
Darling Mark, I just popped in to offer my condolences at the disgraceful way you were treated. I myself did not pop into the discussion until you had already departed in disgust, or I would have offered my support, at the very least drawing a bit of fire in my direction. (They hate me because I’m pretty. ;-))
You have, however, empirically proven that what is going on in the wounded minds of these dear girls has nothing to do with rationality, justice, fairness or debate, and everything to do with the fact that they are wounded. Thus, the Issue at Hand is never the true issue. Blame is sprayed outward in a vain attempt to assuage the unbearable pain that lies within.
It is very difficult to know how to have a healing response to this. One cannot take personal responsibility for a situation that, really, has nothing to do with you. This is evidenced in the increasingly ludicrous and far-fetched nit-picking of your entire existence, down to the adjective you use to describe your lovely wife (recently I participated in a discussion which established that the word ‘lovely’ is most frequently used to describe a woman who is both attractive and accomplished, so I highly congratulate you) in an effort to make you responsible for something– anything–hurtful.
In the long run, one can only pay attention, try to understand, and do one’s best to forgive. Self-flagellation serves no useful purpose; neither does trying to ’solve’ something that never was the problem. It may be that these rabid and irrational attacks upon everything male are a necessary start to the healing process; it may equally be true that they are an avoidance of the steps needed to genuinely heal. We have no control over their choices, just as they have no control over you, avidly and passionately as they might wish it were otherwise.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 10:39 am | Permalink
alphabitch wrote:
I was interrupted earlier but meant to add something about how appalling I find the whole thing. You never claimed to be female, you never behaved like a troll, and your comments were appropriate and respectful, under the circumstances.
If you’d used a neutral screen name and it was ‘discovered’ that you were in fact female, you would have been blasted for that too, somehow.
If you made a mistake (and I’m not saying you did), it was to treat the inflammatory rhetoric of an accomplished polemicist as literally true. You are not the first to do this, and you will not be the last. Even reading the ‘Patriarchy Blaming the Twisty Way’ disclaimer doesn’t seem to help.
I am a fairly experienced patriarchy-blamer myself, a radical feminist and a queer, and I have worked with rape/incest survivors. I enjoy a good polemical diatribe as much as the next gal, but this is all just crazy.
My original reasons for posting my blog pseudonymously have more or less faded, but events like this make me kind of glad that I haven’t done much to change that status.
Oh, and re: the ‘lovely wife’ thing; I generally refer, both on-blog and in person, to my ex-sweetheart as ‘my lovely ex-wife’ for much the same reason you made your choice. It’s cheesy and funny, but it’s also true: she is lovely.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 11:06 am | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
@ rococo - I was pretty surprised that the thread of 200+ posters was open, funny, non-dogmatic and pretty welcoming of diverse points of view.
I must have missed the subtle and sophisticated humor stylings in that thread…I wasn’t laughing, so much.
of course, it wouldn’t be the first time I was humor deficient or couldn’t take a joke.
But see, that’s the thing. you renounce The Patriarchy, shuffle off that mortal coil, are awakened and reborn and all - and suddenly what Twisty and The Blamers think of you means EVERYTHING.
Why would you want to examine the “power structure” of anything with so little actual power?
quite to the contrary, Twisty is HUGE and influential in the feminist blogosphere - to some of us, the only blogosphere that counts. She may not have the power to fire me from my job, or end the war in Iraq, but such things do not encompass all definitions of “power”.
and it’s a feminist value to speak truth to power, wherever it is necessary.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 11:26 am | Permalink
Rococo wrote:
antiprincess - Well, maybe we’re referring to different things, but I’m talking about the June 14 post and the attached comments, which had plenty of funny anecdotes and quips about sex. I thought it was pretty entertaining. Maybe there’s something else I’m missing.
I guess I tend to miss a lot, actually. I did not realize Twisty was huge in the feminist blogosphere. I can’t say I was aware of a feminist blogosphere outside the pretty tame realms of Pandagon and Feministing and the like. I guess that shows you IBTP’s impact on the community of left/liberal blog-reading males - almost nil, for whatever that’s worth.
And for whatever limited value my opinion on this is worth, it seems to me that Twisty was not making a policy proposal regarding the castration of potential rapists, but was basically quipping and then kind of got bent out of shape about being called out or questioned on her blog, and refused to back down to maiken, especially when he proved to be smarter and more tenacious than the average nay-sayer. Is that right, or do I miss again?
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 11:44 am | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
well, her nay-sayers tend not to be idiots (those who aren’t illiterate 14 year old boys, at any rate).
basically, rococo - what went down with Maiken was pretty much SOP, not because he was right or wrong or appropriate or inappropriate or male or female - he just disagreed.
and that’s what happens with folks who disagree.
it’s just the way it goes.
I disagreed, and a handful of her commenters called me a man. Ashamed to say but I was deeply hurt by that.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 12:23 pm | Permalink
Pervy Blakeney wrote:
Rococo, I must return the compliment. I think you have hit upon one of the primary reasons the maiken explosion (that would be an awesome name for Part I of a science-fiction novel, I feel: “The Maiken Explosion”) occurred, all in four paragraphs. I do not post often at chez Faster, and I certainly have never posted a disagreement over what’s said there; this is less due to cowardice (though that’s part of it; I won’t lie) than it is to the sense *IBtP* is space sacred to a select few–Faster and her regular commenters–in the same way (and I’m sure Twisty would hate this) I don’t feel it would be appropriate to publicly disagree with, say, Shinto dogma, even in an open-to-the-public informational meeting at the local shrine.
In short, what I’m saying is that I have never seen *I Blame the Patriarchy* as a place for rigorous debate, and I don’t think its master or her regular commenters see it that way, either. Maiken may thus have been committing an egregious faux pas–even a heresy–on the ground of a religion other than his own in the middle of a sacred ritual by commenting there, and there is absolutely no way he could have known that was the case without reading every post and every comment in the Faster archives and then taking a week to think about the overarching shape they synthesize to make, at which point the article about Mr Potential Future Rapist would have gone by the wayside for fresh outrage over something else. I’m not saying that the way Twisty and her compatriots run and police the site is an inappropriate one; in fact, I think space for exactly that kind of unleashing and practice of power is necessary, particularly for people who are denied power elsewhere. I do think, though, that a little advance warning about the nature of the site might not go amiss; in retrospect, I think this is what “Patriarchy Blaming the Twisty Way” is designed to do, but in my opinion it’s not clear enough.
(Your distillation of the role of rape in patriarchy–as Blamers may see it–is insightful, as well.)
I would point out, too, that even Twisty’s idea and much of the subsequent support for it are not necessarily hideous. I FEEL, as do many of the commenters there, that prophylactic castration of (actual) future rapists would be pretty spiffy; I THINK, too, that it would be a great thing if the justice system worked in such a way that the suffering of innocent people was prevented rather than merely punished, and I defy anyone to disagree with me on either point. The fact that it’s entirely impracticable, and that the implentation of it in real life would be absolutely monstrous, doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea. Analogously, Sherlock Holmes, a genius detective who often privately punishes crime as he sees fit, is a great idea, and boy howdy do I love reading stories of him doing just that; if someone did that in real life, I would be appalled. That doesn’t mean the *idea,* or perhaps better to say the *ideal* of Holmesian justice sucks.
Maiken, I suddenly find myself late to an appointment, so these last few sentences will be poorly expressed; I just wanted to clarify that I did not intend to take you to task for your use of the word “lovely” in describing your wife; and I certainly understand your reluctance to discuss it further. I meant instead to point out that patriarchy is so entangled in all things that even a perfectly nice compliment from a feminist man to a woman he respects and loves is victim to sexism because language itself–the very way in which all people understand the world–is sexist. I did not mean to imply that you yourself are sexist or that your use of the word was an instance of sexism, merely that words themselves have been poisoned. Your response was as usual well-thought and civil, and I appreciate it.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 1:17 pm | Permalink
Rococo wrote:
@antiprincess - Is the term “man” within feminist circles different than the term “male”? I’ve seen that use over at IBTP - it could be a common convention in some places but I’ve honestly never seen that before. Male seems to refer to some biological maleness, man to the social meaning of being male — that is, that one buys into men’s dominant position within society; the patriarchy. Within those parameters, yeah, being called a “man” ain’t too cool.
I have to say, though, that really thinking about it for the first time, feminism has a lot of explanatory power as a theory of human relations.
@pervy - “The fact that it’s entirely impracticable, and that the implentation of it in real life would be absolutely monstrous, doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.”
OK, it’s a good idea to the same extent everyone growing wings and flying to work at their fulfilling jobs is also a “good idea.”
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 1:31 pm | Permalink
antiprincess wrote:
@ rococo - feminism has a lot of explanatory power as a theory of human relations.
well, yeah.
as far as being called “a man” - it seemed simply to be the worst thing in the lexicon to be called, like “communist” or something.
and, you know, plenty of folks tried to tell me “no - it’s just that you sound so patriarchal.” and the hurt I I tried to express was seen as some kind of proof of my status as patriarchal running dog.
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 3:14 pm | Permalink
zeynep wrote:
Whoa Mark - so sorry about what you had to suffer through. I do think that this is a good blog and anyone in their right mind, upon reading your blog, would be filled with the warm fuzzies that men like you exist in the world. But clearly the women of IBTP are not “in their right mind”. Which is fine actually, people need to vent off steam and it’s best to do that verbally and not physically.
Try and shrug it off, i guess. There are people you just cannot reason with. Both Whatever and Dooce talk about this problem periodically and John Scalzi of Whatever actually does a funny thing where he’ll periodically take all the hate mail he’s received and turn it into even funnier missives a la Cyrano de Bergerac. You could try doing that??
Anyhoo, keep your chin up - we know what a “lovely” guy you are
(see you can use lovely in a male setting).
Posted on 13-Dec-06 at 7:13 pm | Permalink
JJE wrote:
My best friend (a big Twisty Faster fan) warned me not to read, much less post in, the IBtP comment section. So does Twisty, very plainly, on her site. It’s good advice. Isn’t it?
I’ve been silly enough to ignore most of the good advice I’ve received, over the last half century, and I’m not inclined to learn from my mistakes. That’s my male privilege speaking, of course. Isn’t it?
I think so. So… I’m turning over a new leaf. It’ll still have the same package underneath it, I’m afraid, and that places me apart from the rest of the natural world and any intelligent planning for the unnatural world that follows. So it is written. So it shall be done. Isn’t it…RICH?
Posted on 14-Dec-06 at 9:21 am | Permalink
belledame222 wrote:
okay, so -that’s- what happened.
anyway:
seriously, my condolences. that bunch gets more Koolaid-o-riffic by the day, it seems. pony in particular is one sorry excuse for a clump of wet cells. as for TF the Gweat and Tewwible herself, all’s i have to say today is,
“by their regulars ye shall know them.”
by the way, appreciated your piece on the first “habeas corpus? we don’t need no stinkin’ habeas corpus!” case.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 12:04 pm | Permalink
belledame222 wrote:
anyway, as i said elsewhere, i’ve no problem with the idea of castration, provided this lot does it themselves. could be very etnertaining, really. doesn’t have to be a potential rapist either; seriously, if you’re gonna smash the patriarchy, then SMASH the PATRIARCHY. here R your nutcrackers and hammers, and some S.C.U.M. manifestos and a handy helping of crank to get you going!
seriously, i think it’d at least do TF some good to you know get her own hands dirty for once…
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 12:08 pm | Permalink
Veronica wrote:
“What I found most upsetting out of all of this were the attacks on Ryan’s name, to the extent that I’m wondering if it’s wise for information about my family to be available.”
1.) It’s a legitimate concern, with or without flame warriors, since the baby can’t consent and who knows about how “permanency” of the internet will evolve–it’s a privacy concern for Miss Ryan (LOVE the name, btw, LOVE it!) Ya don’t want someone to have access to baby stories and whatnot, when she’s trying to get into college, or get a job… that kind of thing. I know it seems remote, but who knows what “they” will do in an archiving sense with all this nonsense?
2.) If you’d named the baby Tiffany or Daisy or something really girly, they’d have been obnoxious about it, too. You couldn’t win for losing in that battle. It’s actually kind of annoying the way the play with Gender essentialism. It’s like they only get their concepts of what’s Masculine and what’s Feminine from the toy aisle at Wal-Mart, and you’re not allowed to give it much more thought than that.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 12:54 pm | Permalink
Melanctha wrote:
My very first visit to IBTP yielded your little flame war, and I must say I was fascinated. As someone who is in no way invested in that website and had no previous awareness of your existence as a blogger, I’d like to share my impressions.
A brief perusal of ChezLark reveals you to be a sincere, well-intentioned person who is sensitive to gender issues, strives to educate himself, aspires to growth and understanding in these matters, and seeks to help and strengthen his daughter to withstand the detrimental effects of the ingrained bias in our society. Yay Mark! You seem nice, funny, smart, one of the good ones.
Your presentation on IBTP was a lot more ambiguous to me. Here’s what it SEEMED LIKE TO ME, although after seeing your blog I am pretty convinced that this was not in ANY WAY your intention, which is what makes it interesting to me, and hopefully to your readers. Your very first post seemed to fall into the drearily familiar pattern of privileged male stepping in to play thought patrol on the hysterical females. You basically jumped on the one slightly over-the-top part of Twisty’s reaction to Future Rapist’s deeply terrifying post, then tried to hijack the whole discussion into outing the women as castrating bitches happy to ditch due process in order to fulfill their revenge fantasies.
There’s a global culture behind a mindset like Future Rapist’s. It’s a continuum of thought from seeing a commuter in a tank top as an invitation to seeing a passed out sorority girl the same way, and it is a daily threat to women everywhere. As a man, you are arguably in more danger from a widespread diminution of due process (a grave threat to us all in the current political climate in the U.S.) than you are from the daily threat of rape, so that’s what you reacted to. But Future Rapist’s post was extremely scary, and IBTP is a place to go to talk about how mindblowingly wrong and scary and prevalent that kind of thing is, and how it just broadsides you sometimes that the world is like that. By not addressing that point at all, by just focusing on your reaction to someone saying she’d like to chop his balls off, you, as a man, SEEM TO BE coming into a “women’s space” and insisting the conversation turn from REAL actual danger women face daily (note how many posters were rape victims) to your irrational freudian terror about your genitals.
Now, which is a more realistic scenario, a woman getting raped, or a man being suspected of being a potential rapist and being castrated? But in any conversation about feminist issues, there is such a strong pressure to endlessly reassure the “good” men that all women are not after their balls. It gets tiresome. So women go to places like IBTP expecting not to have to do that there. That’s one very small part of the idea of “Womenspace.”
I guess the point I’m trying to make is about context. Your post on IBTP resonated with a history of men attacking, demeaning, and belittling feminism. It is as difficult to adequately convey the hostility women face for expressing feminist ideas as it is “to adequately convey how little male engineers worry about gender and sexual messaging generated by their clothing” as you put it :). I’m sure you felt you were being very rational, respectful and civil, but I hope you can understand why your posts didn’t play that way over there (insert cliches about left handed touching in asia and unburka’d seductresses here.) And you seem like the kind of guy who would genuinely like to understand, rather than just dismiss feminists as psycho rape victim lesbians.
Just the thoughts of one middle class white heterosexual woman with a very lovely male domestic partner.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 2:58 pm | Permalink
belledame222 wrote:
IBTP is not “womennspace,” is the thing. IBTP is…well, never mind. i’m tapped out.
more and more, i think it boils down to just this: there are thems that have empathy and thems that don’t. and increasingly, ideology is -not- the deciding factor in discerning one from the other, for me.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 5:29 pm | Permalink
belledame222 wrote:
> did not realize Twisty was huge in the feminist blogosphere.
shrug. i think maybe she’s passed her peak. she has, what, about 2/3 the readership of feministe, half that of feministing. i think pandagon has even more than that.
she does seem to have more or less cornered the market on radical feminism in the blogosphere, and for a while there it’s true that the bigger feminist blogs were taking their cue from her. i think there is a real trend toward souring. i find radical feminism problematic as an ideology; i find her, personally, one hell of a lot more problematic. a friend used the word “corrosive,” which i thought apt. it’s a quality that lends itself well to various “radical” ideologies, i suppose, but ultimately isn’t really about ideology at all.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 6:23 pm | Permalink
belledame222 wrote:
btw, i use “lovely” to describe men as well as women that i find so, all the time.
Posted on 15-Dec-06 at 6:27 pm | Permalink
Mark wrote:
Melanctha, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I basically agree with your description, although I’m still discouraged that what wasn’t in my comments on IBTP (a hostility towards feminism, a “freudian terror about [my] genitals” and a burning desire to “out women as castrating bitches”) swamped what was in my comments: the suggestion that perhaps preemptive castration is not a good way of dealing with the problem of rape.
I’m not interested in just Blaming the Patriarchy. The Patriarchy deserves plenty of blame, but I would rather discuss what can be done about the Patriarchy. Preemptive castration is not an ethical or responsible proposal, IMHO. I would like to talk about practical steps that can be taken in the real world.
As many have pointed out, spaces need to be available for blaming. Blame away, I suppose. But hopefully there can be other spaces for discussing solutions.
Posted on 16-Dec-06 at 6:08 am | Permalink