I like and respect both BFP and Amanda Marcotte. This shit just sucks.
1) I feel horrible for the stress and shit Brownfemipower’s being put through.
I don’t think there’s any blogger whose writing is better than Brownfemipower’s. (There are a few I find as good, but no one better. No one.) It’s wrenching that she’s taken her blog down, it’s wrenching that she’s going through a shitty time.
I hope she’s just taking a break, and that she’ll be back. But only BFP can say what’s the right thing for her to do. As a reader, I mourn the loss of one of my favorite blogs; but I support BFP’s decision, whatever she decides.
2) I also feel horrible for the stress and shit Amanda’s being put through.
Some people have accused Amanda of stealing, and of plagiarism. (I’m not linking, because that way lies blogwars, and I don’t want to start or participate in blogwars anymore). I don’t think that’s fair, or true. And that Amanda is now being criticized on “stop making it all about you” grounds is, I think, especially unfair. It’s not all about Amanda, but it’s hard to see the bigger picture when you’re being attacked.
3) There is a much bigger issue here. Appropriating ideas is, in a neutral context, fine. We all do it, all the time. No one is an island, etc..
But our lives aren’t lived in a neutral context; we live in a racist context. And in that context, when white progressives take up issues that POC activists have been leading on for years, we should credit, cite and acknowlege the work of POC. Otherwise, we’re contributing to a racist pattern that’s been going on for decades, in all forms of writing and art.
What I care about is that when white feminists undertake to write about the issues of women of color — such as immigration, which is clearly a massively race-infused issue — they should do so in solidarity with women of color. In ways that give political voice to women of color, to immigrants, to those whose voice is generally not heard as loudly.
When any of us have a soapbox, an opportunity to get up and talk, we must continue to stand by those who aren’t called on. If you want to consider yourself an anti-racist or a white ally to people of color — if you want anyone else to consider you those things — then it behooves you to swim against the current. If everyone did, perhaps the tides would turn, even if it was just in our corner of the blogosphere. And sometimes all you have to do is simply call out the hard work of another woman who went before you, who has paved the path that you’re walking down with research and ideas and words and strong feelings. All you have to do is cover your bases, pay your respects, and make sure you can’t be read as trying to take sole credit.
I totally agree. (Although I’m sure I’ve screwed up on that account many times myself.)
MODERATING NOTE: Anything that strikes me as a personal attack on either BFP or on Amanda may be deleted without warning.
Thanks for a sensible, coherent, thoughtful, and brief attempt to strike an even-handed note. I particularly appreciate, Amp, this:
and that Amanda is now being criticized on “stop making it all about you” grounds is, I think, especially unfair.
And fair enough, too, on the issue of doing a better job of crediting.
sorry amp, but you can’t be even-handed on a moving train. I like Amanda too, but those of us who grade papers for a living can tell the difference between failing to source as an oversight and stealing shit off the internet.
My question at another site was why another woman of color who was mentioned as a source of information for Marcotte’s analysis of immigration was not cited either. I wasn’t the first to ask nor was the only one to do so.
I know bfp’s work by now and when I was reading her article, I really thought that I’d see a citation for bfp like was done in an article written and posted at feministe by a Jessica Hoffman. I had a really strange feeling of deja vu when reading the article and I can’t shake it. And it does bother me that the one woman of color who was admitted as a source of research for said analysis of this issue by name wasn’t cited in the article. Was she the only one? That’s what I wonder too.
From what’s been blogged about for a while now, this isn’t an isolated situation where bloggers who are women of color have their constructs, words and workproduct reappropriated by White feminists. I had read bfp’s article on this before she took down her site and she was refering to notes she took on a speech given by a professor who’s a friend of mine (and who also has discussed this for women of color in academia). So it’s not just women of color who blog, if other writers including scholars experience the same.
I think it’s like you said, about it not neutral context. And about what Holly and others have said too, about the words and hard work of women of color who’ve been active in analysis, investigation and work on these issues long before White feminists “discovered” them are just for the taking, as if that’s another form of entitlement. It happens in other contexts as well. My personal favorite is when women of color raise a concern, say lack of racial diversity on a body and are chided by White men and women that the body picks only the most qualified people and that there weren’t qualified candidates (even when there’s no way they’d know this). After the scolding, the chair of the commission who’s White and male gives a public report at a civic meeting and mentions these very same issues as “concerns” as if it’s a conclusion they raised.
It’s not the same thing as this case but I think in a sense, these types of interactions that happen and this kind of reappropriation is a building point for more of the same in other arenas.
Well put, Amp.
How can it not be stealing when everything bar a few words (insignificant words at that) can be directly linked back to Bfp’s posts? (Or could when her blog was up). I have no link to either party in this issue, either online or in real life, but even I can see when someone has used someone else’s work and not bothered to cite it. And that is bad form. For a first year uni student it is bad form, for someone in Amanda’s position it is just … well… I am lost for words as to how bad it is…
Bri, I saw that post before BFP’s posts were taken down, and I wasn’t persuaded that there was anything in common but the ideas. There were no word-for-word takes or even paraphrases that I saw.
Look, by those standards, I could prove that virtually every feminist post written about Mary Koss in the last few months — and there have been dozens — was “stolen” from my previous work. This is because I’ve simply written more about the Koss controversy than anyone else in the blogosphere (that I know of); it’s frankly unlikely that any feminist writing about the controversy would say anything I haven’t already said.
But I don’t think that all those people swiped from me (although I do think I had an influence on many of them, directly or indirectly); I think that when people with broadly similar politics write on the same topic, they’re likely to put forward similar ideas.
Hi Amp, It wasn’t one of Bfp’s posts I was referring to, it was one someone else had done and was able to link practically everything in A’s article to posts of Bfp’s. ( can’t recall which blog I saw that on though). I get where you are coming from though.
Bri,
I followed that link while it was still working and read quite a few of the bfp posts. While I understand that people may have very different opinions on this, my own take was that that there was a lot of similarity on the ideas, but not on the text itself. Which runs into the issue that Amp raised, about Mary Koss and similarity of politics. I am not defending Amanda nor saying the accusations are completely out of line; I am just not so sure it is 100% obvious that (1) all the writing in Amanda’s article came from someone else, and (2) that the someone else was, for every single idea, bfp in particular.
I think the article Bri’s referring to is this one by Sylvia/M.
Pingback: Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Appropriation: Made of Suck
I quite literally don’t know enough about this particular controversy to have an opinion on who is right or wrong. However, I’ve seen two responses to it that bother me quite a bit:
Response 1: “Feminists” are a bunch of dumb white women who aren’t interested in the problems of women of color. I’m not going to call myself a feminist anymore.
Response 2: You can’t be a progressive if you aren’t a feminist.
I hate both these responses because they split the progressive movement in ways that I think are unproductive at best, self-destructive at worst. Because prejudice doesn’t usually stop at one characteristic, it spills over. I’ve never met (in person or on the web) a racist who wasn’t also a sexist and only very rarely met a sexist who wasn’t also an overt racist. Racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-religious prejudice, etc are all just manifestations of the same unfortunate and universal human tendency to categorize people as “my type” and “other.” To really fight against one type of prejudice, one must be aware of and fight the other as well. Even if we sometimes find those prejudices in ourselves. Especially if we sometimes find those prejudices in ourselves.
I’ve noticed on several of the blogs written by feminists of colour that not being cited or linked to by white bloggers who come by then incorporate ideas has been a pretty bit irritant for a long time now. So it’s not surprising that this stuff has finally boiled over.
Every time we have another one of these episodes, feminists of colour are just more and more disgusted and alienated by us. I do have a lot of respect for many of Amanda’s ideas, but when an entire group are repeatedly telling us that we’re fucking up, and we know damn well that we’re the privileged ones, we really need to stop worrying about our images and reputations and just be humble enough to listen for a change.
Has it even occurred to not just you but others that these splits as you call them exist before the people who talk about them are labeled the ones fostering those divisions? That’s what I think at least some women get tired of hearing. You merely point out the obvious and you’re the one that’s labeled, the cause of division. I hear that much more in conservatives including politicians who don’t want to think about race and racism, gendrer and sexism. They themselves contribute to those divisions and then chide those who point them out as causing them. It’s very good at getting the focus off of them and on the messengers. I see a bit of that on the feministe thread, among Marcotte and her defenders.
Things as basic as why do you have to label people as Black or Latino or Asian-American or White. We’re all people, what you’re doing is dividing people and that hurts progress. Or more complicated because like you say, there’s overlap.
Feminists often do this too and that’s disappointing.
That’s an overly simplistic and someone inaccurate way of looking exactly at why many women don’t identify as feminists or decide not to. It’s a little more complicated than having a temper tantrum and stomping off as well. Maybe if you sit down and talk to more women as to why they feel this why, you’ll learn that it’s more than just pique. And that’s not so much at you, but at anyone who thinks it’s that easy either to do or to define.
Feminists (as also in the case of women who work hard for and with women on issues ) do come in all races and nationalities besides White and American, for example, but when you often look at the structure of its organization including its roots (and this situation which led to this thread is one example), there’s many ways where it mirrors a White supremacist patriarchy. Precisely because we bring a lot of what society has built upon, as women and as feminists. It makes it much harder, but it seems the hard part is getting to the point of really acknowleging that racism, classism and other structural elements of society are within feminism as well. There’s still a hell of a lot of denial about that and yeah, when you try to look at privileges that some women have over others b/c that’s what society’s given them, it so quicly turns around to be about White women having been called dumb. Until we’re as skillfull and as committed to discussing privileges as we are oppressions, feminism will have difficulty growing.
Does this just happen with White women and Whites? No. Sexism and homophobia remain struggles in communities of color for example and there’s people including activists and organizations that work hard addressing these issues, which doesn’t get a lot of attention in mainstream media either.
That’s an overly simplistic and someone inaccurate way of looking exactly at why many women don’t identify as feminists or decide not to. It’s a little more complicated than having a temper tantrum and stomping off as well. Maybe if you sit down and talk to more women as to why they feel this why, you’ll learn that it’s more than just pique.
I’m not saying that it’s done in a fit of pique or even that it’s not justified. Sorry if I sounded like I was. Just that it’s a bad idea, IMHO. Feminism isn’t and never has been just something that white women do.
…when you often look at the structure of its organization including its roots (and this situation which led to this thread is one example), there’s many ways where it mirrors a White supremacist patriarchy. Precisely because we bring a lot of what society has built upon, as women and as feminists.
Agreed. And the civil rights movement and other anti-racism movements sometimes take on sexist, patriarchal overtones. This is a problem. But I think that it would be better to call people out when they do this than to desert the whole concept. I imagine that people withdraw when they get tired of pounding their heads against this particular brick wall–we are all products of our upbringing and we’re not going to rid ourselves of those prejudices quickly or easily–but I do hope that there might be some way to gradually come together and find ways to reduce the partriarchal, racist tendencies in progressive and even conservative movements rather than fragmenting.
You might make a better argument if you would stop assuming that 1)anyone who disagrees with you must be a white feminist and that 2)all white feminists are the same person with one monolithic belief, response, and answer. It’s beyond ridiculous to take an argument with one person from a completely different arena and use it against a completely different person in a completely different arena, as though the 2nd person had ever made that argument.
Thanks Dianne for your clarification. I think you made some good points. Thanks for responding.
It wasn’t so much you. It’s just that this assumption’s made a lot. Maybe that’s not feminisms intention in terms of how it’s defined and that’s in part by who or what the media focuses on. But it certainly appears that way when activism of women of color either as feminists or not only seems to become relevent or even legitimate when White women catch onto it. This case is one example. And what makes it worse is when White feminists themselves either don’t respond to this, aren’t aware of this or don’t care. Maybe if the infrastructure
Because feminism isn’t monolithic but some of its behaviors within it and its dynamics frankly mirror elements of the White Supremacist patriarchy which it purports to be fighting or changing. That’s a large part of why it feels monolithic to many women. This is an issue that’s discussed in groups of women working together in issues when the discussion turns to inviting or contacting groups that identify themselves as feminist organizations like NOW chapters. And when you work with groups on issues where there’s barely or nary a White woman to be found (and even those usually don’t self-identify as feminists) that’s another reason why it might be seen as belonging to someone else.
The interesting thing is that there’s flip-flopping going on inverting behaviors as if we’re dealing with an equal system. For one thing, I dare say based on what I read online and my conversations with women, that women of color often know more about White women’s issues or the issues they focus on than vice versa. That’s another problem.
What feels monolithic is this thread of racial privilege which is why you have arguments taking place on this issue over and over and over again as they have been. As they’ve taken place among White women when they feel their work has been appropriated by White men. Or women by men. The responses by those are often the same.
That’s true. I’ve seen sexist overtones in civil rights movements locally as well. The thing is with feminism is that while it might be better to call out rather than check out, most often women check out after they’ve called out, called out, called out and called out and they’ve been dismissed, ignored, insulted, condescended to, told they lied or were called liars, told they didn’t know about feminism (often by those who if they’re enjoying racial privilege for example would probably by its nature not be among the first to realize it). That’s when they often check out. It’s not like they wake up, first notice something’s wrong, first feel excluded, misunderstand, misappropriated, reappropriated and drop feminism like they might shed a bad outfit.
No it’s not. It won’t be the next time it happens either. Because there were quite a few last times. It’s a damn shame that as Amp said, one of the best writers on the internet feels she can’t keep her blog up anymore. Wonder who it will be next time.
Wait a minute. Of course it bloody does.
Feminism and antiracism and anticapitalism can’t possibly be the work of a moment. They’re about sustained analysis of ideas and institutions, and of course they’re going to be a matter of steadily working out of the snares we’re all tied up in. Of course that task is going to be virtually endless.
I’m beginning to think there’s a problem with an entire implicit model of social reworking which is based around metaphors of struggle and fighting. I think it discourages self-analysis; I think it drives people to voice justifiable criticism in a way that’s neither reasonable nor helpful nor ethical (reading Holly’s thread at Feministe made me feel the way I felt when I was at a demonstration against arms traders and someone started shouting ‘You should have been aborted!’ at them as they passed); I think it is the origin of ideas that feminism is for women and antiracism is for nonwhite people and that anticapitalism is for people who have never had economic privilege, because you “shouldn’t try to fight other people’s battles for them”.
It’s not about sides. It’s about remaking ourselves and our world. We need to be able to take responsibility for all the effects of everything we do, which are always far beyond what’s visible to us at any one moment, and help others to take goddamn responsibility for theirs without calling them names or making personal slurs. And I’m particularly saddened by recent events because bfp was particularly good at doing that.
It occurred to me that I should probably make it explicit that it’s the very real demonstration of that kind of commitment at this blog that keeps me reading it (and even commenting from time to time).
P.S. And also that I should clarify that it was the comments at Holly’s thread, not her post, which I found depressing.
Reading through that train wreck at Feministe, and I have just one question:
Why will Amanda take the time to reply to white women she dislikes (Ilyka, Belledame) and yet STILL won’t take the time to reply to serious posts from Blackamazon, Little Light, Vanessa or Sylvia that are on topic and trying to lay out the facts?
Throughout the thread, the only WOC she deigned to talk to is Holly, and that’s because she MUST since Holly started the thread.
And do you think I am the only one who notices this?
To be fair, Daisy, I was embroiled in Teh Mean. It literally took an e-mail from BFP herself telling me she was okay and happy and generally cool to lower my blood pressure. Which did nothing for my anger. But to get to the point of this post:
In all honesty, it’s not even that simple. Crediting, citing, acknowledging are all great starts, yes; but when will POC get engagement without self-righteous defensiveness? When will POC get people fighting for saving their lives and not just credit for the stories about losing their lives? Writing and art and credit and citing kinda makes the whole discussion specious when it concerns the lives of real people trying to survive.
In other words, there are certain contexts where the importance of crediting and citing and acknowledging goes to broadening the debate and channeling more coordinated activism to fighting oppression, and there are contexts where it only serves to make white people feel better about themselves because by including that POC voice, that disabled voice, that LGBT voice, or a blend of all three, they have boosted their authenticity and their ally cred by 2. And when it’s viewed through the latter lens, it’s no wonder why the more ambitious white liberal can feel free to ignore the impulse to credit anyone and work alone on merit, not taking into account they’re invisibilizing a whole lot of folks and work in the process.
I don’t think so Daisy though thanks for saying it. Even though it’s not easy to follow trains of conversations going on there, but isn’t that usually the way it plays out? It’s usually the White women who speak out during these incidents who are responded to, whether negatively (as in namecalling for example) or positively. Women of color are usually invisible, not any more worth responding to than they are to cite or to give appropriation to.
It’s like that in many arenas though besides blogging. And of all the blogs that Marcotte did respond to, it wasn’t any of these women of color bloggers either.
And it kind of is like showing what is going on whether than talking about it. A continuation of what’s been going on.
This plays out over and over and over and over again. I know, in large part because I’ve been one of those White women responded to. It took a while to where I got to the point where I’d say, if you’re not going to talk to other women who raise these concerns, don’t talk to me. It didn’t take as long as it could have, but longer than I now wish. It’s been pointed out in these discussions before too, but it hasn’t changed.
Yes, the comments were depressing, acheman, but it’s the pattern and practice that played itself again involving how women of color’s work is appropriated
Maybe if that changed, we wouldn’t have to deal with so many depressing comment threads. But short of taking part feminism and rebuilding it so it’s truly a separate entity of the patriarch as it’s called and not a more feminine version, not really hopeful about that.
And maybe when change gets a little easier, you’ll stop hearing the use of words, like “struggle” and “fighting”?
Pingback: Brownfemipower and Appropriation « The Blog and the Bullet
Pingback: Brownfemipower and Appropriation « The Mustard Seed
Pingback: Shame on you, Amanda Marcotte
I gotta say, Amp, while I agree with this:
And in that context, when white progressives take up issues that POC activists have been leading on for years, we should credit, cite and acknowledge the work of POC. Otherwise, we’re contributing to a racist pattern that’s been going on for decades, in all forms of writing and art.
I fundamentally disagree that folks are being too hard on her/anybody should feel guilty for calling her on this shit. It’s just not cool, and this perpetuates the kind of racist feminism that has existed for years. Whether she just didn’t know or just had “similar ideas” to BFP doesn’t matter; BFP has focused on these issues for a long while now, and no doubt schooled Marcotte on a lot of the stuff she wrote about. Maybe she genuinely didn’t know or had a “whoops” moment, but that’s not an excuse; that’s just more of the same.
You aren’t the only one who’s noticed. Obviously the women being ignored notice, and I can’t help but notice, and RadFem noticed.
I can’t answer “why Amanda” specifically without, I think, going against the comment guidelines here; nor do I think that would be beneficial to do.
I can answer why me, because I’ve ignored women of color in favor of responding to white people, even white people I disliked, and I doubt any of my justifications were unique:
“No sense feeding the trolls/fueling martyr complexes/rewarding negative behavior like this.”
“I don’t even read these people. Who cares what they think?”
“Okay, that POC has a point–but this white person over here agreeing with them is just being a self-righteous, holier-than-thou ass-kisser. That kind of slavish agreement, that’s the real racism. You shouldn’t have to coddle people like this.”
There was certainly more, but that’s off the top of my head. And just as I’m sure those justifications for my behavior aren’t unique, so am I sure they aren’t universal, either. Amanda’s reasons likely differ. They may have nothing in common with mine at all.
The assumption underlying most of my justifications, though, was that people of color were not people as I had traditionally understood the word “people” to mean. People of color were people, but not people I was used to, not people I felt safe around, and not people I could distinguish easily among. Not white people (though I tried never to let my thoughts go that far, because only a racist would think such a thing).
I noticed this above from Bean:
But see, somehow it didn’t bother me too badly to see people of color as “the same person with one monolithic belief, response, and answer,” and I think you saw that going on with some participants in the Feministe thread. If all participating people of color are labeled by a defensive white person as equally oversensitive, equally irrational, equally jealous, equally meanspirited, etc., then what’s the use of dealing with any of them individually? They’re all the same and they’re all crazy anyhow. May as well respond to another white person; maybe s/he’ll be able to see what a swell person I am and appreciate what incisive arguments I make.
She responded at BFP’s, to be fair.
The thing is with feminism is that while it might be better to call out rather than check out, most often women check out after they’ve called out, called out, called out and called out and they’ve been dismissed, ignored, insulted, condescended to, told they lied or were called liars, told they didn’t know about feminism (often by those who if they’re enjoying racial privilege for example would probably by its nature not be among the first to realize it).
This is so exactly it, which is why it’s so especially infuriating to hear white feminists going on about “how do we engage feminists of colour?” when feminists of colour are already fucking here and we’re doing our damnedest to drive them away.
If anyone feels they need an in-depth illustration of Radfem’s explanation, just have a look at the comments in the Holly’s Feministe post that’s linked in Mandolin’s post here.
…and re the others; Yes, very good point about always talking about engaging women of colour…while largely ignoring the ones that are already there.
How hard is it to just Pay Attention instead of merely drawing attention. I’m saying, put that ear to the ground and listen. Whether it be reading other community’s newspaper again to learn about the issues, or employing one’s googlefu; search for issues important to coloured women, and you will find their blogs. Though some due have the misfortune of disappearing. Like, I just checked Made In Korea (mudeng.wordpress.com), a blog of an adult Korean women who was adopted by white parents as a child, in spite of her living mother who was pressured into it…and it’s private now.
Perhaps it’s because I still don’t have a good idea of what happened, but one thing that I don’t understand is why the owner of the BFP site decided to take it down. Was there a threat of legal action against the site or something? Or was it more of a personal decision? In which case, what was it supposed to achieve? Some of the comments on various blogs make it sound as if she didn’t have much of a choice, but it didn’t seem that way.
White men and women do this. They do read community newspapers and many do support them with subscriptions and advertising. Do they make up a large portion of readership, in that sense? No, but at least in my experience working for one. Though you do get Whites who complain there’s no columnists writing from the “White” perspective. All you can do is point them to the local daily’s Op-Ed section, news section, entertainment section, sports section and so forth.
I understand this. I think many of us are works in progress. The important thing is to keep challenging ourselves. I wasn’t born enlightened and even though from the time I was young, I had friends of different races but what a lot of White people don’t understand is that by itself that doesn’t mean much in terms of not being racist. And often that’s our defense when called on our racism is oh, I have Black friends and then we use those friendships as they were to defend our positions, often when those friends aren’t present when they’re being used that way. I also didn’t speak up on racial slurs and jokes at nearly as young as I should have. When I saw them venture out of conversations among Whites and out of the abstract to see how they impacted the targets was when I started figuring out that this was bad and what took me so long. Part of racial privilege is being able to live for years in a sea of racism and not *see* any of it. But then if you finally do, you might ask yourself, how could I have missed it?
In my line of work, I see, hear a lot and talk to people who are called racial slurs in a variety of places, have them written on their homes, businesses and cars. And the jokes especially in schools and the workplace. And see Whites can move along in our lives and not even know this is going on in our country which is why when I see comments including but not exclusively White feminists about how racism including “overt” (as opposed to “more subtle”) but sexism’s not, I think that these individuals don’t see what’s going on as I do when I hear sexism as being more acceptable than racism when sometimes they may just be expressed differently. Neither racism nor sexism is subtle in this country in its expression though it can be, it’s not necessarily so.
When I see White people who act like they were yet they stumble and make mistakes including putting their feet in their mouth in the ways that I did earlier in my journey or still do (because being in work in progress is like that), it’s hard to believe that what they’re proud of is nothing more than another form of color blindness.
As far as noticing that Marcotte responded to White commenters at feministe, I think I did because of the context. I think of that behavior as a continuem of the appropriation issue and actually, it wasn’t a behavior which did Marcotte any favors in defending her position. Appropriation of the work, often the life’s work on issues by women of color, by White women didn’t appear in this case to be a concrete, stand alone action. The conversation by Marcotte and her supporters (who I think hurt her position more than helped it) seemed part and parcel of not just what the individuals brought to it but the larger issues that have been raised or have been attemped to be raised in these various postings.
If we don’t think enough of women of color to acknowlege them for their work product, then why would we treat them as anything less than invisible. Why would be respond to them when they try to engage us when this happens? Why wouldn’t be treat them as invisible in the dialogue? Both behaviors naturally go together as they are part and parcel of the same problem. And that might be very true in other situations as well.
I’m very glad that Daisy brought it up here.
I didn’t know Marcotte had responded to bfp in her blog. It was down before I was able to read very much.
Bri, I saw that post before BFP’s posts were taken down, and I wasn’t persuaded that there was anything in common but the ideas. There were no word-for-word takes or even paraphrases that I saw.
Amp – I have taught writing and research for the last ten years or so. Paraphrasing and quoting verbatim without crediting the author are examples of plagiarism, but so is borrowing ideas without crediting the author. Now, you may not agree with that definition of plagiarism, but that is, in fact, what plagiarism is. If you present an idea as if it is yours, and it is not, regardless of whether or not you do this intentionally, it is plagiarism (though some, like these folks, distinguish based on intent, and call unintentional acts “misuse of sources,” which works for me).
I’ve been careful until today not to use the word “plagiarism” in reference to this whole thing, but is seems that folks are coming up with all kinds of definitions of what plagiarism is or isn’t, and that many of them have nothing to do with the literal meaning.
“The expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property, and is protected by copyright laws, just like original inventions. “
Plainsfeminist, I agree with you in general. I didn’t say, and didn’t mean to suggest, that only direct stealing of words is plagerism.
However, that doesn’t mean that anytime someone expresses an idea that others have also expressed, it’s plagerism, which is what you seem to be suggesting here.
And I maintain that it’s unfair to say Amanda is a plagerist, or a thief. (Not that you’ve said that.)
However, that doesn’t mean that anytime someone expresses an idea that others have also expressed, it’s plagerism, which is what you seem to be suggesting here.
But it’s not about what I say or what any of us think about what constitutes plagiarism. It’s about what plagiarism actually is. When you express an idea that others have also expressed and you don’t give credit to those others, and you pass it off as your own, that is plagiarism.
It’s kind of like, if one person says, “well, the fact that I had sex with her while she was passed out doesn’t make it rape because she’s my girlfriend and we have sex all the time.” Legally, that would still be rape.
[Stupid comment by Amp, deleted by Amp.]
In my original post, I wrote:
That’s certainly not my original idea. It’s an idea that I’ve seen many people put forward; it reflects hundreds of books, articles, posts, speeches, broadcasts, and conversations I’ve had over multiple decades. How can I possibly give a citation for that? But it’s not my idea, and I didn’t credit a source; does that make me a plagerist?
Finally, I’m not at all certain that progressives should accept and go along with mainstream ideas about copyright and intellectual property, many of which have regressive effects.
Sylvia, I largely agree with what you said (comment 21), but it’s hard to know how to apply it a lot of the time. (At least, it’s hard for me.) I don’t think that allies should be seeking “cred” as in “credit,” and you’re right, that happens way too much (not just for white with anti-racism activists, but also for men with feminists). Probably I’ve done this myself, although I try to avoid it.
At the same time, we ally-types should want “cred” as in “credibility.” For instance, I sometimes draw anti-racist cartoons; but if none of my cartoons ever seemed credible to any anti-racist activists, then that would be a sign that I’m screwing up.
I don’t think the defensiveness will disappear while we live in a white-centric society, to be honest. As long as racism is a problem, white people will be defensive when called on it. For whites, it’s a very difficult impulse to resist.
Does it even matter whether it was literally plagiarism? And, though I admit I wasn’t paying attention when this all blew up, but the way I understand it, wasn’t it actually the Marcotte camp who first used the word “plagiarism” in the first place? I was under the impression that what pissed BFP off was the question of appropriation and lack of recognition.
The point is that Amanda had been reading BFP for a couple years, as I believe she herself said. So if her ideas on a topic that doesn’t really touch her world come out sounding a hell of a lot like BFP’s, who has a demonstrable history dealing with that topic, then dammit come on: Amanda was influenced by BFP’s ideas.
It may very well not have occurred to her that she was just regurgitating what BFP had already said. But, as has been pointed out, once she was made aware of the fact, the only proper response was to say, “Whoops, you’re right, my bad” and give credit where credit was due.
I think that trying to determine if it was plagiarism by some some sort of officially-recognised standard is completely beside the point. The point is that once again, feminists of colour have been let down by a white feminist. And once again, a shockingly large segment of the white feminist community have rushed to her aid, circling the wagons to defend her from the attacks by the non-white hordes.
What I don’t get about those people defending Amanda or too reluctant to actually criticise her is this: if you are truly someone’s friend, don’t you tell them when they’re fucking up? And if you don’t, what the hell use are you as a friend?
One thing that has really been bothering me over the past year or so is the cult of stardom that has taken over certain sections of the feminist community. It seems that certain people, because they’re getting media attention, have suddenly become beyond reproach. They don’t have communities willing to engage in debate anymore, they have fanclubs. And those fans are becoming so sycophantic and uncritical that their idols can be blatantly hypocritical and they won’t make a peep. And just look what happens whenever someone does speak out: the fanclubs go berserk, slinging accusations along the lines of “you’re just jealous of Famous Feminist’s fame/book deal/cuteness/popularity”. I mean, what the bloody fuck? Firstly, are we all 12? And secondly, aren’t we supposed to be feminists? Since when is “yr jus jellus” an acceptable response to a woman raising an issue that’s important to her?
Actually, you seem to be leaving out the part where the supposed plagiarizer actually GETS the stuff from someone else.
E.g. if you think of it on your own, and you don’t get it from someone else, it’s not plagiarism, whether or not someone else thought of it first. It may be a failure on the speaker’s part to know enough about the subject area, and it won’t get you published in an academic journal, but you’re not a plagiarizer.
Just because A and B write/think/say the same thing doesn’t mean one of them is a plagiarizer.
Similarly, influence is not plagiarism. And a good thing, too: It’s complicated enough to allow people to “own” very distinct ideas and to deal with plagiarism of those ideas. there’s no reason to allow (and to realistic way to enforce) the concept of ownership of, not only your specific ideas, but the entire conceptual structure that surrounds your ideas. The concept that someone (bfp or anyone else) owns the specific content of their posts makes sense, at least in some ways. But the concept that someone owns the entire idea of “immigration is a feminist issue,” or any other issue, is ridiculous.
Amp – You don’t have to cite if the ideas you are discussing are commonly known. In your example, the ideas are pretty common ideas, so you would not need to cite them.
E.g. if you think of it on your own, and you don’t get it from someone else, it’s not plagiarism, whether or not someone else thought of it first. It may be a failure on the speaker’s part to know enough about the subject area, and it won’t get you published in an academic journal, but you’re not a plagiarizer.
As I understand it, the rule is this: if you didn’t get there first, and you were challenged, you would then have to prove that you didn’t know that someone else had already made that intellectual claim in order not to be found guilty of having plagiarized.
Michael Bolton, I believe, claimed that he had never heard the Isley Brothers’ “Love is a Wonderful Thing.” As it turned out (if I remember correctly), there was evidence that proved that he not only had heard it, but that he had purposefully used it. I don’t know that he thought he was plagiarizing, but anyway, there’s an example.
I was under the impression that what pissed BFP off was the question of appropriation and lack of recognition.
And also, that the ideas were being presented out of their historical context. But yes, you’re right.
I’ve been posting about what plagiarism is just because it’s a topic I deal with a lot, but I haven’t meant (in *this* thread, anyway) to be talking about whether or not Amanda did or didn’t. I was just trying to clarify what plagiarism actually is.
Perhaps it’s because I still don’t have a good idea of what happened, but one thing that I don’t understand is why the owner of the BFP site decided to take it down. Was there a threat of legal action against the site or something? Or was it more of a personal decision? In which case, what was it supposed to achieve? Some of the comments on various blogs make it sound as if she didn’t have much of a choice, but it didn’t seem that way.
I don’t have any knowledge of BFP’s motivations for taking down her site, but there are many reasons (reasonable ones, IMO) she might have done so. If on a good day, a WOC blogger gets quite a bit of racist hate mail (and also the occasional hacker messing with their site), you might imagine that would be exponentially worse during a debate/firestorm like this — all while still being denied credit for writing and thoughts and having swarms of new readers show up to pick at your work. A single writer managing a blog under that sort of pressure would have to abandon job and family to keep up anyway. And to what end?
plainsfeminist Writes:
April 12th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
As I understand it, the rule is this: if you didn’t get there first, and you were challenged, you would then have to prove that you didn’t know that someone else had already made that intellectual claim in order not to be found guilty of having plagiarized.
I don’t think that’s exactly the rule, and i would note that the rule as you put it requires proving an absence of knowledge in response to an accusation, which is essentially impossible to do. (If i name a random song, can you prove you’ve never, ever, heard it? If I name a widely distributed book, can you prove that you have never, ever, read or heard or been exposed to a particular passage, idea, or quote? It’s hard to do…) As with most things, i think that the accuser bears the burden of proof, at least initially.
Mind you, I think we’re largely in agreement here and are mainly talking about the exact location of the border.
I believe bfp took down her blog, as she’s done before more or less under similar having-reached-the-breaking-point circumstances, as a way to preserve her own peace of mind and withdraw from the maelstrom. I really wish she hadn’t, for a number of reasons, but it’s her prerogative, ultimately.
The justification of what’s going on — as someone who has written on IP for the Senate, forgive me for twisting my mouth in some derision if I didn’t think the “white feminist” blogosphere would be calling for BFP’s head if the principal players’ positions in the situation were reversed — is just staggering.
Staggering.
http://problemchylde.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/dont-hate-appropriate/#comments
Littlem, I can tell you with absolute certainty that if the positions were reversed, I would not be calling for BFP’s head.
I do think that Amanda should have referred to the work of some of the WOC who have been working for years on these issues, as I said in my post. I don’t think what she did rises to the level of theft or plagerism, and I don’t think that “calling for her head” (as you put it) is justified. If you think that means I’m justifying what’s going on, then that’s what you think.
I don’t know what’s going on here, though it doesn’t look good. I will say, the claim that “When you express an idea that others have also expressed and you don’t give credit to those others, and you pass it off as your own, that is plagiarism,” seems flatly untrue.
I do agree that it would be far better to give credit where credit is due. But I also have to wonder how far that goes. It seems that it should be common knowledge that to discuss immigration as a feminist issue, one should credit BFP. But, I’ve been studying and working on and writing about immigration as a feminist issue since grad school (when I presented a paper at a conference on oral histories of immigrant and refugee women and did my internship in a DV program at an immigrant and refugee organization). And I don’t think anyone should have to credit me, and not just because most of the people in this argument have probably never even heard of me or read what I’ve written, but because what I learned came from the women who were working directly in this field. Hell, Amanda did a whole paragraph on IMBRA without crediting me, and I started writing about IMBRA when it was first introduced into Congress by Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rick Larsen (D-WA), long before it was even passed into law. Of course, I wasn’t the only one writing about it (although I was one of the few to do so in the blogosphere), and I’m not the only one to come up with the same ideas. (And, if I have not made it clear enough yet, I’m not asking to be credited — as I said, I came up with my own thoughts on these issues, but, I too got them from the women I learned from)
I’m not saying BFP shouldn’t have been credited, or that others shouldn’t have been credited, or at least acknowledged. Of course they should have. I’m just saying, it’s easy to start assuming who it is that should be credited, when I’m not so sure there is just one person that should get credited. And, fwiw, some of the women studying, writing about, and actually doing the hand-dirtying work in the fields aren’t women of color, but are the immigrant and refugee women from Russia and the former Soviet countries. Yes, women of color are an integral part of this movement, and they should be included and acknowledged. But, we shouldn’t be going to so far to include and acknowledge them that we’re willing to ignore “white” refugee and immigrant women doing just as important work and who are just as affected.
Amp, I don’t recall saying that you were the entire “white feminist blogosphere”.
But funny that you should mention that.
I wrote a comment at Shakes that I think is quite germane, and I’d like to post a bit of it here:
I would submit
1) that the textbook definition of “infringement” under no less than Title 17 U.S.C. is NOT “word for word copying”, to paraphrase other commenters here. It is comprised of “access” and “substantial similarity” to the work(s) in question. (The arguments that go on for days are what actually does constitute said access and similarity — whether intentional/deliberate or negligent and/or unconscious.)
2) that Amanda’s point blank — and continued — refusal to acknowledge that the “sources of her inspiration” for her work currently at issue are the work of more than one WOC blogger is at the dead center of the need for discussion of the larger collective issue.
If she’s acknowledged, by Shakesville and others, to be one of the most powerful and prominent white feminist writers in the blogosphere, why would others just as prominent not be concerned that her continued LACK of action be perceived as representative, symbolic, even, of the type of conduct to be expected of the “mainstream” feminist blogosphere??
Or is it all just a bunch of placating BS by said “mainstream” to get WOCs to hush up, sit down, be quiet, and “know their place”???
Because here’s the thing — not only is she continuing to refuse to acknowledge these “sources of intellectual inspiration” in her bibliography, but no one else — not Shakesville, not Feministing, not Lindsay, not Professor Hugo , and not you, Amp — is encouraging her to, either.
And in the absence of actual action, petitions and letters and words (e.g., “Oh, next time we promise to Do the Right Thing”) — no matter how pretty, warm, and fuzzy — still ring just a touch hollow.
Full disclosure: I’ve always perceived Amanda to be somewhat dismissive about racial issues less graphically representative than an actual lynching.
The “LeBron=Kong” debate (minor unless you’re well versed in semiotics), — she “didn’t see” the problem; the Rush Limbagh calling Congresswoman McKinney a “pickaninny” flap (more significant, IMO, warranting at least a public call for censure) she dismissed as a “First Amendment” issue.
So if, as a writer, you don’t acknowledge people or their concerns as important, you’re less likely to acknowledge — in any way, which is how this seems to be playing out — any contribution of their unique perspective to your frame of an issue that you’re writing about.
In that context, I’d like to look at what part of bean said above:
There was more than one person. That’s part of the point. Daisy Bond goes into that on the Feministe thread Go visit here at comment 137:
*The “this” in question was this quote from Amanda:
Tellingly, Ms. Perales’ intellectual contributions are not acknowledged in Amanda’s article either. Which I believe reinforces the original point — if a woman of color framed the argument before she did, she’s not going to acknowledge that previous frame in her writing, no matter how impressive, original, or “authentic” (e.g., familial involvement, or whatever way that author/speaker is “closer” to the issue than Amanda because Amanda’s privilege removes her from it) that author/speaker’s original frame might be.
bean:
I believe that the point here is the specific, unique line of argument about the relationships between rape, feminism, immigration, and abusive language. There are thousands of arguments in any given body of work and issues; it seems — without attempting to paraphrase anyone — that the issue here is the distinct similarities between Ms. Perales’, BFP’s, and Amanda’s lines of argument on this particular issue.
No one is arguing that former Soviet and other refugee women have not contributed enormous amounts to other lines of argument on this issue, or to any other issues. People are talking about one line of argument on one specific issue.
To extrapolate from that, however, they (we) are talking about a pattern of activity of which Amanda’s behavior is explicitly representative.
And before anyone asks, “Well, why call one person out if you’ve seen more than one person do it?” The simplest response I have is that if you’re a prominent white feminist who has had it brought to your attention more than once that you and your peers are continuing the disenfranchisement of WOCs in the larger feminist movement right on into the third wave just on GP?? Please do your best to at least acknowledge it if WOC have contributed to your feminist thesis on … whatever your “topic of the day” might be.
And if you go so far as to casually acknowledge that they contributed to your analysis but refuse to acknowledge them bibliographically as a source in your written work, when you as an author and a scholar know that credit goes directly to the issue of credibility in the public sphere? And you’ve used their work to raise your own profile?? Well …
Further — for anyone wondering why cultural appropriation — and its attendant relationship to infringement, whether intentional or “just” negligent or unconscious — is “suuuuucch a big deeeaaal”, this woman — who is *gasp* white! — breaks it down pretty succinctly:
http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2008/04/borrowing-and-appropriating_09.htm
Plainsfeminist (quoting plagiarism.org):
This is not correct. A better statement would be that the original expression of ideas is protected by copyright. Copyright protects the expression; the underlying ideas are not protectable. So for example, the idea of a superhero is not protectable. The original expression of that idea which is Superman is.
Original inventions can be protected by patent, not by copyright. Though copyright could protect the specific design of, say, a vehicle, it could not be protect the idea of a vehicle.
Plagiarism is distinguishable from copyright infringement in that the former is use without credit, while the latter is use without permission.
LittleM,
1) I assumed you considered me part of the “entire” white feminist blogosphere. Sorry to have misunderstood you.
2) Assuming Amanda has read my post, she knows my opinion. What else should I do publicly, in your view? (My private communications with Amanda are between Amanda and I.)
I guess I could roundly condemn her, because that’s been just mega-effective so far.
Daran, this isn’t a criticism of your post in this thread, which was polite and broke no rules.
But I don’t think, given your loathing of feminism, that having you participate in a discussion about a serious fight between feminists is likely to be helpful. So with all due respect, please don’t post on this thread again. Thanks.
I did say that you were part of it. I didn’t say that you were ALL of it.
In response to your direct question:
1) Contact AlterNet and ask them whether the editors are sure that the most recent article has been properly attributed and credited.
2) Write a post – not a comment, not a note, not a parenthetical statement tucked away somewhere, a FORMAL POST – that requests that, as a prominent member of the white feminist blogosphere, Amanda mention, in a re-edited version of a resubmitted article (or failing that, an addendum), that her unique theory was inspired in part by Nina Perales’ work on the subject.
3) Include in the post a request that Amanda also note – with citations she has read, and if she claims she hasn’t read any, then she can call for submissions (I’m sure something will turn up) that other feminists of color have been writing about the subject for at least two previous years.
(Ideally, she’d also acknowledge that she likely doesn’t have the ethnic background to have done the complete intersectional analysis from scratch, but I fully realize that’s pie-in-the-sky territory.)
4) Include in your post, in the context of cultural appropriation and the historical marginalization of women of color in the feminist movement, WHY this is such a significant gesture.
5) That you encourage other prominent “white” progressive bloggers with feminist interests to do the same.
Now, additionally, I’m concerned about something.
In the face of the fact that
1) you and I have already gone back and forth three times about how I’ve characterized/mischaracterized you;
2) there are numerous others in the ‘sphere who have noted that, no matter how many times a solution – frequently, the same solution – is suggested/provided when a problem is raised, majority writers/bloggers/activists keep asking “What should we do? What should we do?” like no one has said ANYTHING;
3) the sarcasm at the end of your post intensifies my concern that you haven’t even heard me at all; I’m going to post copies of the folks I’ve seen around the sphere suggesting the EXACT SAME THING.
(As a matter of fact, I’ve already done it once already — see the blockquote about Nina Perales in my last post — and you STILL asked, “What should I do?”)
Oh, yes – almost forgot.
If your immediate riposte is “Well, what if she doesn’t do it?” as a rationale for not making a public statement that she should offer attribution credit for the building blocks of her analysis, here’s the thing:
You have then made a public statement to your audience of all colors, not only that she should, but that YOU, as a prominent progressive blogger, understand why she should.
And your voice is just as important. And feminists of all colors will hear/read/acknowledge the stand you’ve made on the wider issue of attribution and erasure.
(Assuming, of course, that you DO feel that there’s a problem with lack of attribution and erasure, and that in context this is a significant reparative gesture.)
Really, it’s all the same request.
What should she do? Publicly acknowledge her sources.
What should you do? Publicly ask her to publicly acknowledge her sources in an amended article.
Reason why? So feminists of color don’t feel like their ideas have been appropriated by yet another white feminist, yet again, in another link in a pattern of documentable historical behavior. Not rocket science. Hope I’ve been clear.
For the sake of bringing a little levity to the topic, I have to snicker at Daran for just a moment, given that this
“The expression of original ideas is considered intellectual property, and is protected by copyright laws”
and this
“the original expression of ideas is protected by copyright”
are the exact same statement.
See, that’s different from what I’m advancing when I mention “ally cred.” You nailed it completely and honestly with the second statement of the last graf here.
If white bloggers take from all this discussion that the best way to avoid appropriation is to quick-link to a person of color or people of color writing about the same themes, and they fail to do any further engagement with the field or information related to those themes, that turns what would be a productive way to avoid appropriation into mere tokenism.
That’s why the whole idea of asking white bloggers to engage when they do want to reference subjects where people of color have been substantially impacted is very important. If the goal is to distribute the attribution and to give credit for the work, that’s likely the best way to accomplish it.
I doubt it will disappear; but I grew totally disheartened at this entire thing when most people insisted on defaulting to it and its legitimacy rather than raising a critical eye to how that defensiveness is being manipulated.
For example, it seems that nearly 70% of this entire discussion has dealt with the fact that plagiarism does not exist, or if it did exist, it should not be penalized. And I think at its core, that was never the issue. People have consistently brought up that factor, referencing BFP and others specifically asserting that this wasn’t the issue.
All of the people pushing back against any sort of recognition for work people of color have done with regards to issues affecting them continually insist that a person’s reputation has faced damage. That wholeheartedly has NOT been the case. And repeating it doesn’t make it so.
Plus there are these constant references to hurting appropriators by calling them appropriators. If we were talking about racism, and we said that we couldn’t fight racism because it would hurt the feelings of people doing racist things, we’d be laughing at how ludicrous it sounds. It’s not about the injury to the accused solely, for once. If it were a courtroom, it would be — but even then it’s only in a limited context. It’s about pointing out instances where people have not undertaken a course of action that would make their engagement a significantly more productive one, and asking that person to take responsibility for what they’ve done and correct the problem. This is where shaming and guilting have little impact on the situation at hand.
To put it succinctly, when one person insists on the harm done to them outweighs the harm done (e.g. rape, death, disenfranchisement, debilitating poverty) to the great amounts of people they’ve served to marginalize or render invisible, the red flags should always go up. If a rule needs to be created, perhaps that’s one to remember.
bean, to speak for myself, there’s a reason that when I did my link post, the sentence about IMBRA remains unlinked. I think I included one from BFP’s site because it was a guest post by Priscilla Huang from NAPAWF, because she mentions how the marriage brokership industry negatively impacts Asian-born women when they come to America, and how the stereotypes about Asian-American women further serve to distance them from the resources for women caught in the marriage brokership industry.
And I don’t think anyone suggests, or should suggest, that BFP is the only person that should get some recognition for her work. It’s not necessarily attribution so much as recognition and acknowledgement of places where the dialogue continues. You’re absolutely correct that the work of white refugee women should not vanish either. This is about recognizing the efforts of those people who occupy the front lines or people who keep those on the front lines foremost in their discussions on helping the cause, not creating a color palette at the end of a post about what they’re fighting and where to send people to stare without engaging.
I think it’s important to note here that appropriation happens to marginalized groups, and that the importance of intersection does not magically fail to apply in these instances. It’s only the privileged lens that attempts to rank which marginalized voice is the most worthy one, and it’s wrong in this context just as it’s wrong in most others.
I don’t think that’s exactly the rule, and i would note that the rule as you put it requires proving an absence of knowledge in response to an accusation, which is essentially impossible to do. (If i name a random song, can you prove you’ve never, ever, heard it? If I name a widely distributed book, can you prove that you have never, ever, read or heard or been exposed to a particular passage, idea, or quote? It’s hard to do…) As with most things, i think that the accuser bears the burden of proof, at least initially.
If you’re accused in academic circles, then, yes, you are expected to prove that you got there first, just as whoever is accusing you needs to have evidence for his/her charges. (Your examples, by the way, are examples of exactly what happens when charges of plagiarism are made.)
I will say, the claim that “When you express an idea that others have also expressed and you don’t give credit to those others, and you pass it off as your own, that is plagiarism,” seems flatly untrue.
I don’t really understand the example you provided, since I don’t know what “TSR” is, so it looks like Tolkien coined a term that was then used by other and they were asked to stop – presumably not the situation you were wanting to illustrate – but anyway: I stand by my statement. This is how it works in academe.
I’m done debating what plagiarism is or isn’t. I see cases of plagiarism fairly frequently, and I know how a few different colleges and universities deal with them and how they define “plagiarism”, and I’m going to stick with that. I apologize in advance for coming off as a pompous ass, but there it is.
plainsfeminist, you’re quoting me and someone else in the same post, FYI, though you seem to think they’re both me. And [shrug] I’m fairly familiar with the laws of plagiarism myself, and I don’t think you are presenting it correctly, but if you don’t want to discuss it that’s your call.
I understand what yo are saying and feel like this is true. but I simultaneously feel like it is becoming more and more restrictive to write an opinion piece which should be relatively unrestricted. The path seems to have gone from “cite when you quote directly” to “cite when you take an idea” to “cite when you develop a parallel idea” to “citing in all the above cases is insufficient unless you have also done an appropriate amount of engagement.”
Now, as i said first, I DO think these are important issues, and I DO understand why the path i describe above is certainly better at the end then at the beginning from the perspective of appropriation.
But as I also have other concerns, among them the generally progressive view that thoughts and ideas should be shared as much as reasonably possible. And in light of that second concern, a requirement to “engage” seems too extreme to support.
So in the end, I’m a bit stuck as to whether I support the cited post or not.
In fact, that’s often how I end up in appropriation related discussions. I can see the negatives of appropriation. But I’m also a firm believer in rapid sharing of ideas, and putting limitations or requirements on transference of ideas makes me squeamish as well.
I guess then some folks think other folks are racist because they don’t acknowledge that appropriation Is Teh Important Thing and some folks thnk other folks are selling out freedom because they don’t acknowledge that speech is Teh Important Thing. And I am wondering whether, in these conversations, it’s ever possible to discuss some sort of middle ground. is it?
I’m more than a little confused by what you say here. Isn’t sharing thoughts and ideas as much as reasonably possible a critical component of engagement? Or is it just to put them out there with no expectation of people interacting with those ideas?
And one more thing — there have been plenty of situations where people have written opinion pieces about something more extensively covered by others, and rather than clutter up their fora with a very lengthy screed about what they think of the situation, they tell the person, “hey, this made me think of something I feel is related; check it out.” Or they write the opinion piece and they say, “this person or these sites were important to my piece” and provide trackbacks or some kind of notification to the person about what’s been presented.
I don’t think it violates the realm of opinionated thought to engage; after all, opinions aren’t formulated out of the ether.
Yeah, I asked this and haven’t received an answer. Others did as well, no answers either. There were a couple names of women of color Marcotte mentioned as sources or great inspiration who were cited only in her responses in the feministe thread which I found interesting.
I think the focus has been on the lack of citation or even acknowlegement of women of color rather than that involving the struggles of White immigrant women in this country b/c Marcotte’s focus including her examples which she did cite sources for, involved women of color. If individuals want to take Marcotte on for exclusion of White women’s struggles and work towards this issue then that’s valid in my opinion on that level and that’s a great point to raise. But as far as lack of acknowlegement and citation for what was the crux of her issues, I don’t think it’s racially prejudiced to focus on the lack of citation and acknowlegement given to women of color including Merales and bfp who’ve done tremendous work in this particular article.
Marcotte’s article also deals in a sense with the criminalization of immigration, an issue bfp has spent years writing about and analyzing right down to the role of derogatory language and violence against these communities, before Marcotte probably even realized that type of behavior was going on. And a lot of that criminalization is focused on immigrants who are women of color especially those from Mexico and other Latin American countries as well as those from several Asian countries. The wall that we’re spending major dollars on is NOT to keep people coming in from anywhere BUT the southern border of the U.S. with Mexico. This is where men and women and children from Mexico, Guatamala and El Salvador along with other countreis come through. Not exclusively through this route but a lot. This wall like Operation Gatekeeper, a lethal policing and suppression practice which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of men and women coming from Mexico (or from other countries through Mexico) many who died of hyperthermia, dehydration and heat stroke.
Like Gatekeeper, the wall will push migration to the areas of the border less strongly reinforced and that will be the desert areas of the south. But it doesn’t matter, because these people don’t matter including the women.
I’ve met members of the organizations SOS (i.e. Save Our State) and Minutemen and I’ve asked them, if they are against illegal immigration which is their main tenet, then why do they focus primarily on immigrants of color. Why don’t they rally in cities where the immigrants who are undocumented are White as much as they come into cities in several states right into Latino communities? I still haven’t gotten a very good answer kind of like when you ask them, why there are men waving the Confederate flag or the Nazi flag in the same rallies?
I bring all this up because I think the criminalization especially of women of color who are undocumented immigrants is what is an additional obstacle to crime reporting including domestic violence but also other crimes including hate crimes (which in my state are on the rise against Latinos). I wouldn’t know a lot of this if it weren’t women like bfp doing the work that’s so important.
Marcotte extended the treatment of undocumented immigrants as impacting legal immigrants and perhaps that’s where it stops for White women from European countries. But for Asian-Americans and Latinos, it includes those who are citizens because it’s a lot harder for communities of color including citizens to “blend” as it might be called in with the rest of society unlike White people.
Just because there are undocumented White women in this country (and there are many actually), that doesn’t mean White women who are legal immigrants and citizens feel less free to move around without having their immigration status questioned or interrogated on in most circumstances. But Latinos for example have to be prepared to be questioned because they’re suspects just on sight. Because society doesn’t talk about how bad, how criminalistic and of all things, how lazy and a drain on society that White undocumented immigrants are. Whites aren’t suspected at the voting polls of voting illegally because they might not be citizens whereas in Orange County, California for example, Latinos have been subjected to intimidation by security guards at polls and threatening mailers sent out of the office of a U.S. Congressman trying to stop them from voting.
DUI checkpoints (as they’re called, though few intoxicated people are arrested in most cases) put primarily in Latino communities in Southern California. Raids of neighborhoods where primarily immigrants of color live, raids of workplaces where predominantly immigrants of color work. Arrests and detentions of men, women and children of color and separation and breaking up of families during this process. Children getting tased in ICE centers and exposed to the use of other less lethal options against them as are men and women. Women of color being raped by border patrol officers and other law enforcement officers in large numbers.
Not to say these experiences are necessarily exclusive to these women and their families but demographically, the focus has been on Latinos who are undocumented. Even though no one from Mexico or any Central American country has ever planned or carried out an act of terrorism against the United States, the issue of addressing and policing undocumented immigrants from these countries is being more and more tied in with Homeland Security which is playing a large role in the Wall (which both of our leading Democratic candidates support by the way)and fighting the War on Terror.
The impact of this criminalization and increased tying into homeland security and its impact on women and their families has also been extensively addressed by bfp and other women.
As far as derogatory language used on immigrant groups, Marcotte touches on a point that bfp’s also published volumes about on her blog. Yes, there’s a relationship between derogatory language against immigrants and violence, just like there’s a definite relationship between derogatory and dehumanizing language used by police officers and violence against the target communities subjected to this language which are men and women of color, gays and lesbians, religion (particularly Muslims) and transgenders.
As far as derogatory language against Latinos in particular (and unlike the case of White undocumented immigrants, this derogatory language extends to Latino legal residents and citizens), there’s plenty of sources online. I was reading some SOS postings from 2006 where some police officers working a security detail during an immigration protest in Maywood, California were using a lot of derogatory language and slurs.
Maywood 2006 protest commentary
Actually, relatively speaking, these ones aren’t too bad. Relatively speaking of course.
plainsfeminist, you’re quoting me and someone else in the same post, FYI, though you seem to think they’re both me.
Nope, I was aware that each quote came from a different person. Sorry I didn’t make that more clear in my response.
And I don’t think anyone suggests, or should suggest, that BFP is the only person that should get some recognition for her work. It’s not necessarily attribution so much as recognition and acknowledgement of places where the dialogue continues.
I understand this, but that doesn’t mean every significant thinker or place of dialogue needs to be acknowledged in every opinion piece. You need to acknowledge your sources, yes, but not everyone who’s done significant work on the subject. If BFP was a “source” or “inspiration” for Marcotte–by which I mean that Marcotte’s work would have been significantly lacking in some respect if she hadn’t been a reader of BFP–then she should have been acknowledged, certainly. But the fact that Marcotte reads BFP doesn’t mean that BFP is a “source” for her. Speaking just for myself, most of the blogs I read from time to time haven’t told me all that much that is new to me or deeply influential to my thinking.
I have thought, and continue to think, that Marcotte missed an opportunity to promote BFP’s work, which I’ve heard is both excellent and unsung. But IMO what she did is not appropriation because there’s a multitude of sources in various places to get the ideas in Marcotte’s article. I was fully aware of those issues, and I got that awareness without ever reading anything in the blogosphere about it. So I still don’t see how she took something that’s special to any particular writer or group of writers.
Maybe if Marcotte had written an academic piece about this issue, I could see the need for her to be very rigorous about citing others who do a lot of work in this. But as others have said, I don’t think opinion pieces are required to meet that standard.
And one more thing — there have been plenty of situations where people have written opinion pieces about something more extensively covered by others, and rather than clutter up their fora with a very lengthy screed about what they think of the situation, they tell the person, “hey, this made me think of something I feel is related; check it out.” Or they write the opinion piece and they say, “this person or these sites were important to my piece” and provide trackbacks or some kind of notification to the person about what’s been presented.
I’m not certain how this is different from the “quick links” you were criticizing upthread. What I understood Sailorman to be saying was that it’s perfectly fair to expect someone to say “this person or these sites were important to my piece,” but that “engagement” refers to something above and beyond that sort of citation.
Plagiarism and IP issues interest me, but I’m concerned that they’re off topic for this thread, so I’d encourage folks to put off discussing the technicalities thereof for another time.
I am going to reply to more comments here, especially Sylvia’s, but I won’t feel up to it until I’ve had at least eight hours of sleep. (Sometimes it seems to me that the more thoughtful and interesting a comment is, the less quick I am to respond to it, because responding to those comments requires more thought on my part.) And I have to get some work done, too. But I don’t mean to be ignoring people.
Sylvia: Yes, I agree that engagement itself is often a positive thing. I’m only talking about the requirement to engage, which carries (IMO) the presumption that ‘you shouldn’t _____ if you can’t do it right.’
So when you say
I may put out an idea, and those who like (or dislike) it may choose to engage with me, or not. They may prefer to discuss the idea among themselves. They may choose to apply a form of analysis I don’t like, or that I don’t know about. Or, they may view my idea as worthy of passing on to others who may be interested, but they may simultaneously lack the detailed interest in engaging with it at all on their own.
All of those options seem OK to me. If I require them to engage with me, to my satisfaction as a condition of using, discussing, or forwarding my idea, then I think that’s a loss. And whether or not it is a loss, it will surely serve as a limit on the spread of my idea.
Does that make more sense?
*Edit: in case it’s not clear: i am having a theoretical discussion at this point, and am by no means trying to set up either side of the marcotte/bfp debate as a straw man with my “if” statements.
Sailorman, it’s like casting a movie.
If one movie has a leading role that can be cast as a POC or with a white actor (the role doesn’t require one or the other), and happens to cast a white actor, that’s no problem. Maybe Kathy Bates really was the best actor for the role, etc..
But what happens if out of 100 movies which can be cast with POC or white leads, 99 “just happen” to cast a white lead?
There’s nothing wrong with casting a movie with a white lead. There’s nothing wrong with doing an occasional post which happens to lack engagement or which doesn’t include a discussion of where the ideas came from.
There is, however, a problem when nearly ALL the movies are cast in a way that creates a pattern of POC being excluded from leading roles. Similarly, there is a problem when a pattern is created of WOC’s work not being credited or engaged with, even on issues where WOC have been essential to laying the intellectual pavement we’re walking on. (God that metaphor sucks. I’m really really tired right now.)
In my view, it’s not any individual example that’s the problem. It’s the pattern.
Quoting BFP (via Anxious Black Woman):
(RWOC = “radical women of color,” I think.)
Having edited opinion pieces for newspapers, including college and also judging opinion pieces and editorials for a state community college journalism organization, both as an editor and as a judge, these are things that you look at. As a judge, it’s harder to know who “inspired” the writer because you don’t talk to them or know who they are because the name of the writer and school aren’t given to you.
As an editor, it’s different because one thing I did enjoy doing and thought was important was talking to staff opinions writers and editorial writers beyond what was written and sources, etc.
But standards differ from publication to publication and Alternet’s may be different though I would imagine even opinion pieces would get vetted because there’s this erroneous belief that’s commonly flowing around that when it comes to even commercial publications, they’re not.
I’m not an academic person but attribution is something that’s addressed in teaching writing and researching papers.
I think that an advantage to providing these sources and names of people and organizations who do inspire and do contribute to your workproduct is that your readers can do further research on their own using these resources. I think that’s one of the goals of any writing is to encourage people to read other sources including ones that contributed to the writer’s knowlege and work product. Marcotte had an excellent opportunity to do that but with the exception of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, she didn’t do that.
I mean, MALDEF wasn’t cited or a link provided even though at feministe, Marcotte mentioned that organization as being very helpful in terms of information.
Bean:
Bean, are there any particular writers you’d recommend?
I agree, and I think people are probably ascribing more to my point of engagement than necessary. I don’t really have much time to clear it up now; but I will attempt to give my opinion about it soon.
Once again, no one’s asking for a laundry list or a color palette or any other form of mass citation or chain of causality for writing an opinion piece. If you had main sources or influences for your work, they should be acknowledged.
You’ll note that I said they notify the person or organization also, and not just the general public at large. That’s the critical difference. If you do some quick links or you make some general references to someone who may not want her work to be used in the manner you are using it, there should be some way to resolve that matter before the links are already present on the person’s work. Notifying the person or organization or making your presence and intent known in the fora where it’s presented seems like the best way to resolve that problem.
And note that most of this assumes we’re referring to new media as a default because it makes the requirements slightly more doable than if we’re talking about old media.
I’ll likely have to develop this more but right now I don’t have a lot of time. I will return; but there are a lot of other assignments over my head. (I wonder what’s the point of taking a hiatus at one’s own blog if she then fills time commenting at everyone else’s, heh.)
>>If BFP was a “source” or “inspiration” for Marcotte–by which I mean that Marcotte’s work would have been significantly lacking in some respect if she hadn’t been a reader of BFP–then she should have been acknowledged, certainly. But the fact that Marcotte reads BFP doesn’t mean that BFP is a “source” for her.>>
Well, that’s just it. She’s now denying strenuously that bfp IS a “source” for her, and you know, short of prying her head open, there’s really no way to “prove” this. Thing is, -many- people who’ve been following both blogs for a while now independently remarked on the remarkable similiarities, not just in the general subject material–sure, no one has a patent about that–but in the specific examples AM used to illustrate that alternet piece as well as some of the particular conclusions she drew. Sylvia’s post made a point by point demo of this from various of bfp’s posts over the years; alas, bfp’s blog is no longer there, so the links don’t work.
and to be honest, this isn’t the first time people, not just bfp (although often yep WoC, bfp often included) have noticed the striking similarity to a post of their own and a post, departing rather markedly in subject material and POV from the Big Blogger’s usual, appearing on a Big Blog shortly afterward, without credit; and while Amanda isn’t the only offender in this regard, her name’s come up rather frequently, muttered along the grapevine, I have to say.
No, it’s not a smoking gun, all right? It’s not a bloody court case. No one is trying to nail her to the cross or “bring her down;” people are saying, this has happened a lot, this is a bridge too damn far, we’re sick of this happening, can this not happen again? kthxbai.
and, signing on to much of what radfem said.
and also just to say: littlem, you rock.
wrt the question of “you know, friends and allies actually call out friends and allies, really,”
Shakesville comes the closest to “encouraging her to name her sources,” I would say. It may well be all that one can do at this point, even assuming one isn’t reluctant to make waves, confront Amanda as friend and purported ally. Because, it’d be nice to think someone “on her side” bending her ear would help, but…I wonder. she’s so frigging defensive. maybe just saying, “right then, this is how WE’RE going to do it, who’s with me?” might be enough, especially if she is, indeed, continuing to be sulky and defensive. It’s not, again, about her. It’d be nice if she could make amends for THIS, but people may well just have to work around her.
Belledame,
I know there are certainly situations where “this isn’t about YOU” applies, but is this really one of them? Can we seriously believe that this isn’t about Amanda as well as about BFP as well as about the general issue of WOC blogger recognition?
I mean heck, here Amanda is in the post title, and the word “Amanda” is mentioned (wait, let me count) somewhere on the range of forty times just in the comments of this single thread, and in fact your posts immediately above are pointing at her and discussing her in person.
And this is one post, on one blog. Shall I count the mentions on Feministe? Elsewhere?
Let’s admit it: whether or not this debate has a larger focus, or a larger effect, it is also about Amanda. And i say that not as her ardent supporter (I don’t think she is necessarily acting correctly here, and I personally don’t read her much anyway.) There’s some point at which the “It’s not about you” line can be used as a weird argumentative tactic, and it seems inappropriate here.
But, see, that’s kind of my point, too. There seems to be this thought that immigrants and refugees from former Soviet countries are just more “white” people coming here (documented or undocumented) and aren’t dealing with these same issues (see radfem’s post on this, for example). And that’s just not true. They’re not in the same boat as white Canadians or Europeans, by any stretch of the imagination. Don’t get me wrong, I know that in the broader, national, discourse, the focus is on Latin@ immigration. And some people will even expand that to Asian immigrants. But Russian and Eastern European immigrants and refugees (both documented and undocumented) aren’t “just” more “white” people who don’t have to deal with these same issues. Certainly and particularly not in cities in which there are large populations of these immigrants. Yes, they might be able to walk down the street and, if they don’t say anything, not be assumed to be an immigrant, let alone undocumented (same for many (but not all) African immigrants, if they aren’t [obviously] Muslim). But, these women are facing the same situations being discussed here. They are targeted, harassed, assaulted, assumed to be illegal, exploited. IMBRA is as much about and for them as it is Asian women and Latinas (Cantwell and Larsen wrote the bill after learning about this issue because of the Anastsia King [Solovieva] case, in which Indle King had beaten and abused one foreign (Russian) bride, killed and buried in his back yard a second (Soloveieva) , and even while the investigation was underway in that case, was completing paperwork for a third (this time, IIRC, she was Asian).
I’m not trying to claim that racism doesn’t play a huge role in this arena. But I am pointing out that having white skin doesn’t make these issues being discussed here irrelevant, less important, have less of an impact on women from the former Soviet bloc (and you know what, that should be directed at Amanda as much as anyone else). Ironically, I can’t even tell you how many “progressive” people I’ve met who felt their bigotry against immigrants and refugees from Russia and Eastern Europe was tolerable because it wasn’t “racism.” So, yes, let’s (as Sylvia/M said) talk about marginalized people. Let’s not marginalize, even further, women experiencing these same issues just because they are perceived to have some level of privilege.
um, Sailorman, in the context of that whole comment: I think I was pretty clear about where I’m coming from with that. Amanda’s being talked to, and her response has been considered less than satisfactory. Therefore, I for one am happy to continue having the conversation without her, and indeed moving on to the larger picture.
If you mean, I should concern myself about the potential damage to her career: here’s me on the record as the “fucking mean bully” and coldhearted bitch: sorry, not -my- concern. I recognize that it’s -her- concern, indeed apparently her -only- concern, but that doesn’t mean it has to be everyone else’s. Again: people are being very, very clear that they’re not asking for her damn head on a platter: they’re saying -would you please fucking acknlowedge your sources from now on.-
bean: yes, Natalia Antonova talks about this, the situating/situation of Eastern European women, quite a bit.
http://nataliaantonova.wordpress.com/
p.s. hay guyz! I just posted a link to someone I know of who knows more about that particular situation than I do! See how easy that was?
Well, FWIW, I probably wouldn’t be able to quick link to anyone talking about this subject (the link you provided, belledame, is appreciated) because the women I know of working on this subject (and who I learned from) have either only been published in non-on-line academic journals or aren’t published (or self-published) anywhere, because their on the ground doing the work. And, I don’t spend much time keeping up with the blogosphere, because I’ve become rather disillusioned with “blogging as activism” (or, should I say, blogging vs. activism) myself.
belledame, I’m a little bit familiar with Natalia. Thanks for the link.
One of my brothers married an immigrant from an Eastern European former bloc country and I’ve heard stories about undocumented women particularly in the Northern or Mid-western parts of the country. Mostly it’s about being cautious and not attracting attention to your status but there’s not that sense of policing entire populations, i,e. profiling or having militia types “guarding” borders with guns and assaulting people like they do in Arizona and other areas by the Mexican border.
I mean, when people hear the term “illegal immigrant” “illegal alien” or even “undocumented immigrant”, how do they picture the individual? If they hear the term “immigrant” , “legal immigrant”, what comes to mind? When you hear politicans complaining about immigrants, undocumented or even documented in some cases “stealing” jobs from Americans, what do you think most people envision as the “thieves”? Is there a single major candidate running for president who opposes the wall bordering Mexico? I don’t think so. Would they dare oppose it? I don’t think so.
Marcotte kind of stated a bit on the blurring of the line between illegal and legal immigrants in her piece in terms of treatment, but as stated bfp did it much better with her writing.
I do think racial privilege even among immigrants, even undocumented immigrants is a little bit more than a perception but I realize that a lot of people don’t or might not and I think I can live with that.
For example, if African immigrants walk down the street, they’ll still assumed and profiled as Black even if they never talk, even if they never identify their status or are never asked, which is a little bit different than the assumption that a Russian born immigrant is White. A male or female immigrant who is Black doesn’t gain nearly as much privilege if he or she passes as a nonimmigrant than a White man or woman does. I think because most of the lack of privilege of White immigrants is their immigration status (and citizen status does definitely provide privilege) or nationality tied with gender and so forth) and so that creates possibly a larger gap between White immigrants and White citizens whereas a portion of the lack of privilege for an African immigrant is tied to that status but also his or her race.
I’ve received complaints for example particularly from Nigerian immigrants in the area who get pulled over by police officers who just assume they’re Black. By their stories, it’s initially racial, before it may or may not be an issue of their immigration status.
The most famous case of police violence against an African immigrant was in 1999 against Amadou Diallo who was from Guinea. He was shot over 40 times by NYPD officers who said he was reaching for a gun. They were driving by and thought he resembled a rape suspect who had last struck nearly a year earlier and approached him standing in the doorway. They didn’t see a man born in Guinea. They didn’t see a man who was once a foreigner and an immigrant. They saw a Black man. Take a look at a photo of him, what do you see?
He never said any word which could have betrayed a foreign accent. And what he was “reaching for” was probably his wallet where he kept his identification card. Maybe that’s the one part of him which may have betrayed his immigration status. Maybe he had been asked to produce I.D. to prove he was here legally. Though since they were plain-clothed and may have been brandishing weapons and may not have identified themselves, he might have thought he was being robbed. But even if he “passed” as a legal resident (which he was) or even if they thought he was a citizen, he was still Black and thus profiled as a criminal. He’s not an isolated case in NYC and there’s also women who’ve been profiled in similar ways by police.
yeah, sorry, the snark of “see how easy that was” wasn’t directed at anyone here, obviously.
and yeah, wasn’t trying to suggest that the fact that Eastern European women do tend to be differently situated from “Western” immigrants means that there’s no further hierarchy wrt immigrants of color, or that erasing the original context of “immigration fears being used to stoke racism & vice versa” in a more generalized talk about “immigration” would be okay, just that there are subtler ways in which racism works, and the sort of grey area in which certain “white” groups still find themselves in is worth looking at as well, as well as the historical context of how various ethnicities became assimilated (in the U.S., at least, in the context I know it) and thus “white” in ways that they weren’t before.
also, most of what I know about immigration comes from watching the tribulations & activism of my best friend, who’s from Ireland. yeah, there are ways in which I think it’s very different from and (often, unfortunately) politically separate from the issues faced by, say, Mexicans; and yet, you know, you’d be surprised. there are a lot of undocumented blue-collar workers from Ireland in my neighborhood, or rather the one just adjacent. America’s current reading of Irish people as “white” does make a difference; but, well, I mean, my best friend grew up before the current “Celtic Tiger” boom, very near to the Northern Ireland border (and went to school in Derry); and yeah, between experience as a “Fenian” (and a gay man, to add an orthogonal twist, which is also mostly what’s been hampering him as an immigrant here–the fact that he can’t marry his partner of eight years, for instance, and what that means for the relationship if my friend can’t figure out other ways to stay on) in Northern Ireland and some stuff that did kind of open my eyes at how he was received at the very WASP-y East Coast, Ivy League school we both went to–yeah, it’s not all gone, either, you know. racism, or whatever you want to call it, even within “white” demographics.
>>For example, if African immigrants walk down the street, they’ll still assumed and profiled as Black even if they never talk, even if they never identify their status or are never asked, which is a little bit different than the assumption that a Russian born immigrant is White. A male or female immigrant who is Black doesn’t gain nearly as much privilege if he or she passes as a nonimmigrant than a White man or woman does. I think because most of the lack of privilege of White immigrants is their immigration status (and citizen status does definitely provide privilege) or nationality tied with gender and so forth) and so that creates possibly a larger gap between White immigrants and White citizens whereas a portion of the lack of privilege for an African immigrant is tied to that status but also his or her race.>>
Yes, that much is true.
But–well, yeah. I mean, there’s “passing” privilege, i.e. what you look like, and yeah, it’s an added factor, a big one. But I mean, I remember C telling me of undocumented Irish kids somewhere in the Midwest who were grabbed off a train or bus and deported, just off the top. (he does journalism on Irish-American issues for a living, so the fact that I sound like I’m talking out my ass doesn’t mean he was, I just can’t remember the details, unfortunately).
of course they’re also far less likely to be the targets of the Minutemen or y’know Pat Fucking Buchanan’s hatemongering.
layers and layers, you know.
but, like, going back to both Natalia and the subject of the OP here, she has this as an aside:
http://nataliaantonova.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/dear-x-i-once-said-that-i-hope-you-never-change/
Speaking of immigrants, I noticed Twisty has given a review of your book, and took the trouble to quote this particular tidbit:
>>Once a Nice Guy has slid into racist fetishizing, he is usually unsalvageable. The best thing you can do is wait until he brings home potential mail-order brides from Russia and slip them pamphlets explaining how to get a green card outside of marrying a Nice Guy.>>
You know, a lot of Slavic women come to the States and make mince-meat out of the men who “order” them as if they’re at a buffet. I’ve met several women like that. I’ve also met several women who met potential husbands through online dating portals, got to know them (as opposed to just sending them their bra size), got married, and lived happily ever after – with kids, and barbecues, and watergun-fights on sunny beaches.
Finally, having also encountered a guy hunting a runaway mail-order bride (think they’ll make THAT one into a cutesy Julia Roberts movie?) with a gun, I have to say that seeing this entire phenomenon being used as a throwaway punchline in mainstream feminist circles makes me feel like punching a hole in the wall, or a hole in the fabric of space-time, or something equally drastic.
Pingback: deanna zandt » Higher learning: being an uncomfortable feminist in 2008
This about sums it up.
Regarding IMBRA, these guys
will. not. quite.
http://www.online-dating-rights.com/forum/index.php?topic=1394.msg5086#msg5086
Referring to Marcotte as a liar and a crook is taking it way too far.
Due to not really having the time to keep up on blogging at the moment, I feel confident in claiming a relatively unbiased perspective (other than that as a feminist/social activist). That said, there is a helluva lot of vitriol being levied about that is really disheartening. A lot of dead horse kicking too. Amanda clearly could have been better about referring to her sources, but on the same token, this ownership of issues to the extent that is going on at least in this thread is outright bullshit. Investment in an issue doesn’t = control of dialogue, nor should it.
With all due respect, Kim, it’s hard to accept that you object to vitriol when you refer to the views you disagree with as “outright bullshit.”
And I also disagree that you’re objective; when it comes to race issues, no one is objective, because everyone has a context they’re coming from. You’re white, and that effects your perspective — as you well know. So it’s a mistake to claim objectivity.
Well you really put me in my place Barry. I’ll be sure to take part in the conversation in whatever manner is seen as acceptable to the powers that be from now on, and make sure not to claim any objectivity, expertise or otherwise non-submissive pretenses.
That’s the problem with this thread. It’s all about controlling dialogue, and that sort of framing is both pretentious and dishonest when it is used to discuss marginalization.
PS, since when did feminists have to be a certain color to talk about marginalization? Since when was who gets to frame it an institutionalized or even acceptable way to have discourse?
To say ‘you’re white’ is to discredit any other potential lens that I might be able to view something.
With respect, Kim, how do you get from “X’s writing really, really has a lot of echoes of the work Y has been doing for the past few years. And X has admitted that she regularly checks Y’s blog out. Damn, she really ought to have cited Y as a source” to “attempts to control the dialogue”? Seriously, I don’t see that connection at all. I think everyone knows that if Amanda had just said, “Whoops, my bad,” a couple of people might have snarked, but most would have let it go. The fact that she went into fight mode and refusted to even engage–the same tactic she’s employed on several previous occasions when she’s pissed off POC–is why not many are willing to cut her any slack now.
And what’s with the whole “reverse racism” thing of “To say ‘you’re white’ is to discredit any other potential lens that I might be able to view something”? So when the anti-feminist men here start going on about how There’s No Such Thing As Sexism These Days pointing out that they’re men and therefore have a specific, very different point of view to women is somehow shutting them down, denying them a voice, “controlling the dialogue” in an underhanded, dishonest way? Or is it simply stating the truth? When the issue is racism, being white is automatically more significant than any other identity you might have.
In all fairness, I think Amanda went into fight mode and refused to even engage because she was put in a position where she felt she had to. I agree that had she done a “whoops, my bad,” things would not have gotten to the point it got. But, from what I can tell, she felt attacked from the beginning — being accused of theft and plagerism (only later become appropriation). Right or wrong, I can understand why she had the reaction she did — it’s a common response to go into defensive mode when feeling attacked (and, unless I have completely missed earlier posts that simply pointed out her lack of attribution without allegations of theft and plagerism, I can understand that sort of reaction (not necessarily defend, but understand). OTOH, if those sorts of posts came first, I’d be open to completely re-evaluating my opinion of Amanda’s reaction).
Also, in all fairness to Kim, she has never (here or elsewhere) ever even implied “There’s No Such Thing as [Racism] These Days.” But we certainly do have people here who are willing to hierarchalize oppression, as though we really can determine who “has it worse” and should be doing so.
Crys T, I might be naive and maybe it’s wishful thinking but I thought Amanda Marcotte might say that. Instead, she pretty much ignored questions and concerns raised by women of color, responded instead to several White women (as noted on threads here), dropped the name of another woman of color (from MALDEF) who provided her with information but wasn’t mentioned in her article either and tried to belittle bfp’s blog and distance herself from both it and bfp.
But since there’s been complaints of her behavior in the past, it wasn’t likely she would say anything.
Good point. You’d think we’d learn from what’s been done to us, but we really haven’t. Instead, it’s entitlement of some kind conscious or unconscious to repeat this behavior towards other women. The fact that White women’s defensiveness about being called on their racial privilege which is often enjoyed at the expense of other women can become more important than addressing the privilege itself is both a sign of creating a heiarchy of oppression among women and that feminism with all its accomplishments still has a long way to go towards being relevant for many women. Maybe some day that will change.
Blah, edited out my comment. I don’t really want to get involved in this discussion to the extent that the post that was here would get me. Suffice it to say that Crys, I see your point but don’t agree on all accounts. I think Amanda could have handled things better, but I don’t attribute to her the kind of nefarious plagiarist’s intent that seems to be popular. If I’m missing some major bit of information that would indite her as such, then like Bean I would happily retract and reevaluate my own feelings on it. I also think the article she wrote would have been better for the shout outs. I don’t agree with the premise that the white lens is the most important or only lens from which I should have a perspective. That, however, is a whole other conversation about cultural lenses and how we manifest perspectives I think.
Radfem; sometimes I really find your writing great, sometimes you drive me nuts and I totally disagree with you. This is time it’s the ladder.
You’re entitled to your opinion but thank you for the compliment.
Pingback: An Open Letter to the White Feminist Community: « Dear white feminists,
“Passing privilege” — I can’t believe anyone is going to argue that the alleged ability to “pass” makes a group’s oppression somehow “not as bad.” Even if individuals can pass, they can only do so by hiding and disguising who they are. Is homophobia a “lesser” oppression because gays and lesbians (at least the white ones) can “pass?” — if they STFU, anyway. Are we really going to start comparing oppressions? Is that what anyone in anti-oppression work should be doing?
That said, I’d also like to point out that the idea that those of us from Russia and the former Soviet Union can’t “pass” nearly as easily as some people seem to think. I don’t have to say a word to be recognized for what I am. That’s largely because I live in Portland, where 75% of immigrants (documented and undocumented) are from Russia and the former Soviet Union. People here can tell just by looking at me what I am — and they don’t hesitate to act on those assumptions. I have been assumed to be illegal (and, even when they assume or know I’m legal, they still feel that I shouldn’t be here, and don’t hesitate to let me know that). I have been assaulted by anti-immigrant types (my own brother was jumped and nearly killed for being a “fucking Russian” – despite the fact that we are Bosnian, not Russian). Men assume that I will be like the women from the “mail order bride websites,” or that I am a “sex slave” who has been trafficked in (apparently for their pleasure).
And it’s not just your typical racists or conservative anti-immigrant folks who do this — plenty of “progressive” types engage in this same behavior, or seem to think that it’s not a big deal — it’s not “really” racism after all.
As an individual, I have it worse than some, far better than others. As a part of a group, I have it worse than some, better than others. I don’t have any desire to make my oppression out to be any worse than anyone else’s. In fact, I believe doing so is only furthering the oppression in this world.
Penka, you’re absolutely right. I mean, to bring it back to writing as an example — look at the Brontë sisters. If I raised an argument that they were successful because they did a great job passing as male writers, and therefore we should not talk about the fact they could not initially publish works as female writers, everyone here would be looking at me as if I had two heads and one was shoved high up my ass. Passing isn’t a privilege; it’s a survival skill. It is a choice to blend in with the oppressors to keep yourself as safe as possible from harm FROM those same people. It’s feeling knots as you hear people who care about you trash and belittle something that is a part of you you cannot change. And it is no cakewalk — it’s difficult to even couch it in terms of being a privilege.
I mean, think about these incidences of passing:
1) A woman diagnosed with a debilitating disease and experiences chronic pain tirelessly works a physically demanding job to reach managerial status as if she is able-bodied because she knows if she revealed that she had that disease and the treatments she receives, she would lose the job she loves.
2) A man attempting to join a primarily heterosexual fraternity gets an impromptu assignment to write homophobic slurs on a friend’s whiteboard. The group dives into writing; the fraternity heads are all watching. But he’s been dating this friend for a couple of weeks.
3) A woman who works three jobs to support her younger siblings while going to college part-time learns about a banquet at the end of the school year for graduating seniors. The banquet is mandatory for all graduates because they present their projects as the main event, and the cost is over $300 per person because of the event’s location. She only has $500 for groceries for the next two months.
In all these situations, people are forced to choose between “passing” and reaching a goal that is important to their immediate advancement or revealing something about themselves that could leave them vulnerable to attack or loss. How is this a privilege?
I tried to broaden these examples beyond race and gender because often the superficial examples of passing seem to scramble people’s brains as a “good thing.” Where is this hidden benefit of being able to pass?
96: Yes, absolutely. In all of those instances, I suppose one could make the argument that having the “choice” at all is a “privilege” over those who can’t–for instance, the young man who’s so obviously gay that he never gets into the fraternity at all, and is the one who gets the slurs written on the whiteboard–but what a fucking choice. It doesn’t change the basic problem, or who’s at fault for perpetuating it.
also, for those who can and do make the choice to “pass,” internalization, the “closet,” if you will (which can exist on a number of axes, not just sexuality) is its own special kind of hell.
in fact, speaking of, an old joke (not that I’m laughing here, but by way of illustration, I actually think it’s apt) suddenly comes to mind:
Person dies and goes to hell, and the devil tells hir that sie has a choice of several rooms wherein sie can go and suffer for all eternity.
The first room has people being boiled in oil.
The second room has people lying on beds of knives.
The third room has people standing chest-to-chin-deep in excrement, but they’re actually talking to each other and holding cups of coffee, and don’t seem to be in physical agony. The new infernal tenant tells the devil, “I’ll take this one, then.”
Choice made, the person goes to join the throng. Shortly thereafter, a demon comes in with a pitchfork and goes,
“Right everyone, coffee break’s over, back on your heads.”
That there would be “passing,” basically.
Thanks for your comments. They’ve given me food for thought and I’m sorry if I marginalized anyone or made them feel invisible. I do believe that passing as it’s called is both privilege and a survival skill. For me in my job, I talk to many people who wish they had that choice and could pass so they wouldn’t be targeted by police or racist skinheads or that clerk in the store or at a restaurant and so forth, others who don’t want to pass even if they could and others who wish they didn’t have to make that choice or make different choices. I think it’s different things to different people, even within the same families.
This has been an interesting discussion. I’m sorry I haven’t participated more even when it’s clear I have things to learn but I’ve been kind of busy with a situation that I’ve not had to address before and it’s kept me quite busy. I do have to admit that FM has at least tried to be helpful though.
This was originally written on my recent post on the matter, but I moved it here because I decided there were enough threads talked about appropriation.
I don’t understand how those defending Amanda can say ‘she didn’t appropriate’, as if appropriation depended on how the facts appeared from her point of view ((I would also ask those who read her book and didn’t notice the images to consider how far they trust their own judgement)). To make it about her intentions and thought processes is to centre this discussion on a white woman, rather than women of colour. White people can (and frequently do) appropriate without knowing they have done it.
The post I wrote on visiting a prison with a child, is more directly and urgently based on my own experiences than anything else I’ve written. I was there; I was the one changing the nappy on the floor of the visitor’s centre. But I knew that the experience wasn’t mine in some very important ways. I was travelling through a world that many women live in. I was really anxious not to claim something that didn’t belong to me. Looking back I don’t think I did enough. I think I should have done more than acknowledge that this experience wasn’t mine, but link to what other people had said about that experience.
I write about that to explain that the history of how she came to write the article is not relevant to whether or not she appropriated, and why I think almost every defence of Amanda has made things much worse.