Toxic Online Feminism

meg said:
Tyr_13

I am not saying that all the blogs on the internet are irrelevant to the feminist movement. Some of them are quite good and informative, and I think they do a lot of good educating people. Some of the activists even actually inspire actions. And some of the discourse that passes between bloggers is interesting, and shows a changing and evolving sense of what some feminists are thinking about. I am saying that the bickering and infighting so prevalent on the internet (the focus of the OP) is irrelevant to the movement.

I could just as easily write an article called "What's Wrong With the Skeptical Movement" and point to all the bickering and infighting that happens on this and other skeptical forums, and add in some quotes of people that feel bullied by other members in the movement as evidence of some deep inherent flaw. Someone else could write "What's Wrong with Christianity Today" and point to the exact same thing.

Bickering, bullying, and arguing seems to be some large part of what happens on the internet. It's the reason that Scientific American and Popular Science disabled comments on their articles. They found that the arguments in the comment section not only were irrelevant to the articles in question, but they actually altered how people viewed the articles and viewed science in general.

No, I don't believe my post is relevant to the discourse. Any more than a typical white boy's troll post onto the comments of a feminist blog in order to tell them why they're wrong and how they should all just run off and make him a sandwich and all the gefuffle that ensues. I suppose you could say I just trolled this thread to say "Feminism is alive and well whether you like it or not, nyah nee nyah nyah". The only difference is our motivations. The little white boy either has an oversized sense of the importance of his opinions, or just a desire to disrupt. I'm here in the hopes that someone might read what kind of important work is being done, start realizing that "feminist" isn't just a word describing some kind of woman you don't like, but that it's anyone or anything that's trying to make the world more free of gender discrimination. Perhaps they'll even realize just how much more there is to do, and go home and start an actual real discourse in the real world with their daughters, mothers, sisters and aunts. With their schools and employers, with their lawmakers and media outlets.

Real feminist discourse is the guy who dares to say, "You ever notice that 90% of the people in this department are men? That doesn't seem right. Let's fix it." Or the parent that says "How come most of the kids at this science fair are boys?" As well as any person that writes to his or her lawmakers to do something about female genital mutilation or to sanction countries that refuse to educate their girls, or that legally allow the honor killing of women. Real feminist discourse says we've got to stop rape, whether it's in our neighborhoods, in the military, or in the Congo.

This thread is jibberjabber. Background noise. It is no more relevant to real feminist discourse than a picture of my cat.
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I disagree that because there is more important discourse happening that this subject doesn't deserve discussed, is just background noise, or has the same weight as your cat pictures. I doubt that you believe that either, otherwise why post at all (besides with cat pictures)?

I disagree that these complaints are adequately equated to trolling in comment sections. I'm not one to put weight in comment section talk, nor in trolls. These people take their complaints seriously and I think you might be conflating those anti-feminists cheering on the sideline and trying to make this a bigger issue than it is with people finding a worthy discussion.

Again, you make several good points, but I think you're being needlessly dismissive. There are several grades of relevance and importance beside 'jibberjabber' and 'rape prevention' and they're all 'real feminism'.
 
tyr_13 said:
There are several grades of relevance and importance beside 'jibberjabber' and 'rape prevention' and they're all 'real feminism'.
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I think a case can be made that what the OP is talking about isn't 'real feminism'. There's a wide margin between doing actual feminist activism and just contorting vaguely-feminist ideology to justify bullying people online. For the most toxic 'feminists' on twitter, it's easier to attack their own over pointless ideological squabbles than it is to actually try to effect change.

I can offer this as an analogy: My old university's socialist chapter was a cesspool of infighting and petty attempts to 'out-radical' each other. Anyone taking that as representative of socialist governments would think they were toxic too. And yet the government of Denmark seems to be doing fine.
 
Senor_Pointy said:
I think a case can be made that what the OP is talking about isn't 'real feminism'. There's a wide margin between doing actual feminist activism and just contorting vaguely-feminist ideology to justify bullying people online. For the most toxic 'feminists' on twitter, it's easier to attack their own over pointless ideological squabbles than it is to actually try to effect change.

I can offer this as an analogy: My old university's socialist chapter was a cesspool of infighting and petty attempts to 'out-radical' each other. Anyone taking that as representative of socialist governments would think they were toxic too. And yet the government of Denmark seems to be doing fine.
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To be clear, I'm not taking the writers who are squabbling and criticizing as representative of feminism. It is part of it however. I don't think the case can be made strongly that the people concerned with this issue aren't doing 'real feminism'.

Yes, people using the complaints as evidence that feminism in itself is toxic are wrong in my view. But I also don't agree it's a non-issue of no importance.
 
meg said:
[Snipped for brevity]

I think if you are genuinely interested in the real discourse of feminists, you should look to the actual words and deeds of the women above and thousands more like them that work each day to make the world a better place for our daughters. Listen to their real speeches. Read their real books. Study their real bills that get passed into real laws. Feminist discourse is alive and well and solidly rooted in the hearts and minds of millions of women and men around the world. The songs of feminists are loud and strong and impeccably clear. Once you hear it, you can recognize it again anywhere.

The argle-bargle twitter-twaddle mish mash of toxic chatter is NOT the song of the feminist. It is irrelevant background noise.
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Absolutely, meg and while fringe and radical elements tend to be the most vocal some of the examples you cite demonstrate that feminism and its goals are threatened more from fringe and radical elements outside of feminism. Tea party and ultraconservative activists and politicians actually attempting and enacting laws and policies certainly require the most attention and effort. I see no issue with essentially ignoring the internal fringe and radical elements that are basically inactive while addressing those external fringe and radical elements that are actively working to set back feminism and women's rights (among other things).
 
Senor_Pointy said:
I think a case can be made that what the OP is talking about isn't 'real feminism'. There's a wide margin between doing actual feminist activism and just contorting vaguely-feminist ideology to justify bullying people online. For the most toxic 'feminists' on twitter, it's easier to attack their own over pointless ideological squabbles than it is to actually try to effect change.

I can offer this as an analogy: My old university's socialist chapter was a cesspool of infighting and petty attempts to 'out-radical' each other. Anyone taking that as representative of socialist governments would think they were toxic too. And yet the government of Denmark seems to be doing fine.
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A feminest looks at feminism.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/10/23/feminism-razing-village/

What does Meg etal say back to her?
 
AlBell said:
A feminest looks at feminism.

http://thefederalist.com/2013/10/23/feminism-razing-village/

What does Meg etal say back to her?
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Really? A right-wing shill who wrote about "the Marxist influences hidden inside [feminism]" in her regular column for Pajamas Media and whose other articles on thefederalist.com include a screed about how terrible the "abortion pill" RU-486 is and a lament over the electoral defeat of Ken "mandatory vaginal ultrasounds and jailtime for oral sex" Cuccinelli is a feminist?
 
A'isha said:
Really? A right-wing shill who wrote about "the Marxist influences hidden inside [feminism]" in her regular column for Pajamas Media and whose other articles on thefederalist.com include a screed about how terrible the "abortion pill" RU-486 is and a lament over the electoral defeat of Ken "mandatory vaginal ultrasounds and jailtime for oral sex" Cuccinelli is a feminist?
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One that, in the article says she's not a feminist...
 
tyr_13 said:
I disagree that because there is more important discourse happening that this subject doesn't deserve discussed, is just background noise, or has the same weight as your cat pictures. I doubt that you believe that either, otherwise why post at all (besides with cat pictures)?

I disagree that these complaints are adequately equated to trolling in comment sections. I'm not one to put weight in comment section talk, nor in trolls. These people take their complaints seriously and I think you might be conflating those anti-feminists cheering on the sideline and trying to make this a bigger issue than it is with people finding a worthy discussion.

Again, you make several good points, but I think you're being needlessly dismissive. There are several grades of relevance and importance beside 'jibberjabber' and 'rape prevention' and they're all 'real feminism'.
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Tyr_13, I think maybe you should go back and read my posts again. I have been addressing some very specific points brought up in the OP. Namely that some subset of feminist activists are

A) Shutting down “real discourse”

B) Degrading the image of feminism

C) The “face of feminism”

Anyone that spent as much as 5 minutes on wikipedia could learn that ever since the word feminism was coined in the 1830s, the movement has been and always will be thousands of separate groups and smaller movements, all working toward feminist goals.

As women are half of the people on this planet, what one group of feminists might think is the most important cause that must be tackled first is not necessarily the cause with the highest priority for another feminist group across town or around the world. Being a woman obviously intersects with a woman's race, religion, social class, nationality, customs, education and poverty. This has caused huge clashes between groups for almost 200 years. If you'd like to learn something about these clashes in feminism, you might start by reading about Sojourner Truth's “Ain't I a Woman?” speech in 1851. And moving on to a book by the same name over 100 years later, by bell hooks.

It's hard to read Francis Gage's description of the event.

The leaders of the movement trembled on seeing a tall, gaunt black woman in a gray dress and white turban, surmounted with an uncouth sunbonnet, march deliberately into the church, walk with the air of a queen up the aisle, and take her seat upon the pulpit steps. A buzz of disapprobation was heard all over the house, and there fell on the listening ear, 'An abolition affair!" "Woman's rights and *******!" "I told you so!" "Go it, darkey!" . . Again and again, timorous and trembling ones came to me and said, with earnestness, "Don't let her speak, Mrs. Gage, it will ruin us. Every newspaper in the land will have our cause mixed up with abolition and *******, and we shall be utterly denounced." My only answer was, "We shall see when the time comes."
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And it's hard to read bell hook's Ain't I a Woman? Written 130 years later, showing that the times and our attitudes toward women of color hadn't changed nearly as much as we might have thought.

Accusations that so and so sold out, or whatshername is a traitor, or that someone else is acting against our feminist interests are par for the feminist course. And yet feminism soldiers on. Decade by decade, the lives of women around the world improves, little by little, thanks to feminists willing to fight for it. Despite our disparities, despite our faults, despite our bigotry, we are moving forward. We are strong. And the momentum is unstoppable.

As feminists are human beings, they tend to behave in the same way as every other group of human beings on the planet, whether it is in your local PTA or neighborhood watch, the IBM boardroom, the Democratic Caucus of KS, the Catholic Church, or the national Republican party. They fight. They bicker. Some people rise to leadership roles, other people resent them. Some people get thrown under buses. Alliances get made. Alliances gets broken. Some people get stabbed in the back. Some people are bullies. Some people are easily intimidated. Lots of people gossip. Almost everyone complains about how they hate all the drama.

Is the politicking, deal making and backstabbing of the cardinals when picking the new pope the real discourse of the catholic church? No.

Are the rumors about Chris Christie throwing so and so under the bus in the whole bridge shutdown thing the real discourse of the republican party? No.

Is Bob tricking Jim into voting with him even though he knew good and well he was never going to approve Jim's idea for the fund raising fair diminishing the image of the PTA? No.

The real feminist discourse is the conversations that move us to act toward a feminist goal. Namely, in the most general terms, that we want our daughters to have the same opportunities, responsibilities and privileges, and as fair a shake in life as our sons.

Talking about feminists is not real feminist discourse.

Talking about feminism isn't even necessarily real feminist discourse.

This thread is about talking about a subgroup of feminists, and thanks to me, a little bit about the history of feminism. It's just yak yak yak. Interesting as it may or may not be, if it's not motivating anyone to do something, it's not a part of the real feminist discourse. So why do I bother? Because sometimes I like to yak about feminism.

Anything and everything a feminist might say is not real feminist discourse. I am a feminist, but I also like to post sometimes in the Limerick thread. That does not make them feminist limericks, nor does it make the limerick thread part of the real feminist discourse. Likewise, some other feminists talking about all the drama and backstabbing that's been happening in their particular chapter is also just so much talk.

Obviously, this isn't to say that there are lots of interesting conversations people can have about feminism or with feminists or amongst feminists. Just don't flatter yourself that your every tweet is somehow an important part of the discourse of the movement.


And by the way, to make it perfectly clear. I did not used the phrase “real feminism”. You did. I would not use that phrase.
 
No, you said 'real discourse of feminists', and that the situations discussed by the people in the OP were not 'the song of feminism'. Is there something about the term 'real feminism' that's different? Why would you not use it?

If you had not noticed, I agreed with most of what you said. There really isn't need to repeat that. I disagree, and continue to disagree that it's irrelevant. Discussions on what to do, what needs attention, and what actions to support inform actual actions. That people feel they can't contribute, and don't contribute is an actual problem.

Incidentally, I disagree with all your examples. The counsel of cardinals decision of picking a new pope is part of the Catholic discourse. Chris Christie's problems are part of the Republican discourse. They're small parts and not nearly as important as other parts, but they are parts. I can't just dismiss politics, either in government, small groups, or feminist groups, as not part of the discourse.

I assume you were using the rhetorical 'you' but I have to ask, who do you think is arguing that every tweet is an important part of the discourse? I've already said that while I read up on feminist issues and the importance, here is the only place I really comment on it at all as there isn't a place for my voice there. What I say on it has basically no weight at all for any of that. Are the people having issues all slacktivists?

Who is arguing that everything feminists do is part of the feminist discourse?
 
Sorry, Tyr_13

I do understand that we probably agree on much more than we disagree. I take a much more high altitude view on the whole thing. As the Big Book of Feminist History gets written, these arguments won't even get a footnote.

“Who is arguing that everything feminists do is part of the feminist discourse? “
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You were, in a way. Bitching and griping about other people's behavior or how hard it is to get along with a certain person or group of people is not feminist discourse. It's something almost everybody does. It's just part of the human discourse.

If you want to value it, go right ahead. I think you should label it what it is, though. Politics is politics. It happens in every group of any kind doing any kind of activity.
 
meg said:
Pffft. Cherry picking is a logical fallacy. Cut it out.

If, on the other hand, you honestly believe that these few bloggers somehow represent the vast majority of feminist thought, then your education has been seriously lacking. I wonder why that is.
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Are you using you as "thou Aepervius" or are you using the impersonal you as "people" or "one"because if this is the first you are off the rocker. English is not my first language, but there is a good reason why I prefer to use "one honestly believe" rather than "you honestly believe" on the internet.
 
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Skeptic Tank said:
How's that multiculturalism and liberalism workin' out for ya, society?
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Is this a Poe? If not, what do you mean?

I tend to think it is better than any practical alternatives. However I do think that no group should have rights as a group, they should have them as individuals.
 
jimbob said:
Is this a Poe? If not, what do you mean?

I tend to think it is better than any practical alternatives. However I do think that no group should have rights as a group, they should have them as individuals.
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Or wot Morrigan wrote between these two posts....
 
I think a number of people are missing the fact that this article is talking specifically about online discourse. Although it bleeds over into meatspace to some degree, the point is that this problem is affecting predominantly the online communities; that the new social media world is being dominated by the victim culture.
 
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