About three years ago, I decided to blog under my real name. I’d been blogging under a pseudonym for a few years before that on my college’s alumni server, but it was getting buggier and buggier each year and sites like Open Diary and Livejournal weren’t the only options anymore. So I decided it was a good time to switch providers and revamp my identity.
See, I’d just started a prestigious MFA program, and I wanted to make a name for myself as a writer – of both fiction and nonfiction. And I decided that that name should be my name, not that of an alter-ego. So I got a Blogspot account and started posting – about feminism, about fiction, about my life. It was still a personal blog, but politics were slowly starting to seep in.
The first time I was harassed was at a friend’s house. He’d invited me over to watch Star Trek and as he got out the tortilla chips, he mentioned that he’d been reading my blog.
“I can’t believe you’re writing about orgasms,” he said.
(I’d just written a post on sexuality.)
“Oh,” I said, and decided, for simplicity’s sake, to take it as an edgy compliment. “So did you like it?”
“It’s like… wow, TMI, you know?” he continued. “Do I really need to hear about that? Eww.”
Well, I didn’t write the entry for you, I thought, but was too embarrassed to say it.
The second time I was harassed was by a classmate. We ran into each other on the street and he immediately launched into a tirade: “I googled you and read your blog,” he cried. “Why would you write about that stuff!?” What stuff? “That stuff about sex and orgasms and stuff!” I realized he was referring to the same post. “I mean, people in China can read it,” he declared – the living rooms of Chinese citizens, apparently, being the reference point for how far information about white American women should not be allowed to travel. I politely pointed out that he’d just written a short story about a guy who likes to suck his own dick. What were we supposed to infer about him from that? That, he explained, was totally different.
Female writers have a history of being silenced. When Emily Gould’s essay on blogging was published by the New York Times Magazine, she received over a thousand comments in 24 hours telling her she was “just a stupid little girl,” that she should “get over [her]self,” and that “when a stalker appears in this girl’s life… she will have no idea that she brought it on herself.” (via Bitch.) Last year, Jill Filipovic was bombarded with threats of violent assault after she spoke out against AutoAdmit, and Brownfemipower was forced to stave off hundreds of angry commenters after her ideas were stolen. The standard response, it seems, to a woman with whom you disagree isn’t to disagree with her, but rather to call her stupid or threaten her with rape. Why would you respond to a woman any other way?
I know that compared to the situations above, I had it really easy. There were only two dudes who took issue with my writing, and they were relatively restrained (although still phenomenally rude and misogynistic). Still, though, it was enough to make me rethink the whole writing-under-my-real-name thing. If this was the response I was going to get – if men who knew me were googling me and then freaking out over what they found – then maybe it’d be better to use a pseudonym when I talked about controversial topics. So I created a new blog, picked “The Girl Detective” from a book of Kelly Link stories, and stopped giving the men around me ammunition.
But I missed my name.
To be clear – I know that there are a million reasons why people write under handles, so I’m not suggesting that I speak for everyone. I know that handles can be fun and meaningful. I’m just saying that for me, it was a form of hiding, and I never wanted to hide. After I became the Girl Detective, I never stopped feeling the urge to say, “Both of those people are me! The person who wrote the Jonathan Lethem essay is the same person who was published in the Missouri Review! The person who wrote ‘The Ivory Ceiling’ on Feministe is the same one who wrote ‘The Spectrum of Assault’ in make/shift!” When I write something I like, I’m proud of it, and I don’t like dividing that pride between my blogging self and my “real” self. I don’t like the idea that if a piece is vetted and published by someone else in a magazine, it’s legitimate, but if I publish it myself on a blog, it’s shameful. I don’t like that so many male bloggers don’t think twice about using their real names, and so many female bloggers would never dream of revealing their identities. I don’t like that I never called those two dudes out on their sexist bullshit. I hate that I gave in to their demands.
And I like my name. I like the sound of my first name – the old-fashioned elegance of the formal version, the simple prettiness of the nickname. I like my good Jewish surname, the history it carries.
I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time. I may regret it. It didn’t take that long for people to get upset about my writing last time; I may find threats from radical Zionists or anti-choicers or neo-Nazis or the very dudes I mentioned above in my inbox within weeks. I may lose a job opportunity or two because someone doesn’t agree with my politics. I don’t know what’s going to happen.
For now, though, let’s see if this works.
(Cross-posted at Modern Mitzvot)
Julia! Hello! ;)
I like my semi-handleness. My name is no secret here, but people have to make a minimal effort to find it, and google prioritizes my actual publications when people search me.
But it strikes me that you’re currently taking the political and blogular writing more seriously than I do.
Meh to the classmate. Hope it’s someone I don’t know. I think I got whispered about a lot more than directly confronted — for instance, I know it was a subject of drama that people decided I (and a couple women of color) called another student racist, even though we all specifically said “you’re not racist,” because we raised concerns about exoticism in class.
Can I say for the record that I completely identify with this post. I recently wrote about Glen Sacks and his opposition to some advertising done by a domestic violence shelter. It has been the worst 48 hours of my blogging life. I have been called every name you can think of and told that I deserved to be raped.
It seems that when you are woman some people feel that they can just bully you into silence. The worst part about it for me was knowing that my regular readers were having to put up with this nonsense right along side me.
There seems to be no safe place where a woman can express herself without some people feeling threatened by that expression. I fully understand why you think twice about using your name. I only publicly use my first name in part because I have always thought this kind of backlash could happen someday.
Feminist blogs just seem to be a magnet for this kind of behavior. I have yet to see this kind of onslaught occur at an MRA blog. It is infuriating. Just for once, I would like to see a single space where a woman could just be, without having to worry that she isn’t being sufficiently submissive. or lady lije etc. We seem to not be able to get any peace no matter where we turn.
Oh, Julia, I wanted to add that I started out commenting here with aggressive anonymity, and never really had a desire to be connected to my real name. That was, until Ampersand sussed out that I was a published writer, and wanted links to my stories. There was a very short mental war between “but anonymity!” and “but a reader!” and the latter won handily. ;)
Oh, Renee, I read your post. It was smart and right, and I’m sorry people are being assholes to you. *hug*
Go, Julie, go!
Gah, AutoAdmit — their intersection with AbovetheLaw and a couple of other websites with vicious commenters actually decided me against having a wedding announcement published, and in favor of making my wedding website password protected. From a lengthy exchange with the guys running AA, I know they consider the people who complain about the abuse and harassment stemming from such sites to be too thin-skinned. But I like to think that people — both men and women — should be able to state their opinions and even post pictures of themselves to flickr without drawing the anonymous personal vituperation of a hundred losers.
That’s what bugs me: I welcome criticism of what I write, both in its style and substance, but so many people are either too lazy or too dumb to engage what’s been written, and so they go on personal attacks. Sadly, this isn’t constrained just to anonymous commenters, though not having to worry about being known as a jerk does free them from civility. I encountered it recently on Facebook, when the undergrad classmate of one of my grad school classmates decided that the way to respond to my arguments against conservative policy was to accuse me of “hating” all Republicans. (Kind of funny, considering that I have a Republican spouse who claims that Sarah Palin is perfectly competent to be president.) My classmate was so embarrassed by what his friend had written that he sent me a message apologizing for him. This wasn’t someone who had nothing to lose by making an ass of himself, either; he was the communications director for the U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Anyway, I’m happy with my pseudo-anonymity online. If you know my name and Google me, you can find all the stuff I write as “PG,” which I think keeps me somewhat accountable and responsible. However, it doesn’t work easily in reverse; while you can find my full name through looking for my blogs, it takes a little effort. That at least staves off the lazy and dumb harassers, which are the majority of such folks.
Good for you. As far as people commenting to you on the content of your posts – I can and will agree or disagree with people’s opinions, but I cannot fathom challenging whether or not they should have written them in the first place. Don’t let anyone silence you. Let a hundred flowers blossom. Tell them to FOAD if they don’t like it.
As yall might know, I wrote a pretty popular piece titled ON HAVING A BLACK NAME (still getting hits, months later) wherein I deliberately didn’t give my first name. I wanted people to “fill in the blank” for themselves. What is considered a “black name” changes throughout the country, and certainly, outside of the USA. And I wanted everyone to relate.
The piece was linked everywhere, including high-traffic sites like JEZEBEL, and I got tons of emails demanding to know my name, under the guise of wanting to know if “my story is true”–now come on. Several people got very exercised about it and decided I’d made it all up as liberal propaganda. (After all, we all know that nobody was allowed to use the n-word in public school! These people seemed to forget that I was writing about 1965.) Some informed me that they could find out my name even if I chose not to tell them. Several became very nasty and aggressive and I got very freaked out by that. I also realized that you never know if one of your blog-posts will get 30,000 hits, and are you prepared for that? I decided that I was prepared for my pseudonym to get 30,000 hits, but not MY REAL NAME!
Also, my blog name is my grandma’s name, the woman who gave me my hell-raising ways. :) It is right and proper that I name it after her.
Great post. I love the part about the Jewish name–for similar reasons I sometimes would love to use my real first name. It’s totally ME. But after that whole foofaraw and the weird people coming out of the woodwork–I would be very easy to identify and just don’t feel safe doing so. (((sigh)))
It’s definitely a way to intimidate women-bloggers: be anonymous or else.
Someone doesn’t want to read about your body functions, they don’t have to read your darn blog. Simple as that. Everybody’s gonna run into what they consider TMI at one time or another…we all know where the back button is. I myself think there’s some things best left behind the fold, but this is a personal decision. I wish you the best, and hope that you and your friends can not just withstand but demolish those who have nothing better to do than vituperate or threaten.
Your blog, your rules. You can ban folks who don’t act civilized. Or just disemvowel them. [hats off to Teresa Nielson Hayden of Making Light, who invented this practice. ]
@Renee – I often think that Sacks doesn’t get a fair shake from the online Feminist community – he gets often thrown in with the woman-hating nutjobs – but he damned well knows that his readership is full of serious nutbags and so he’s really gotta be more careful where he points them.
Disgusting the kind of crap you have to put up with, and Sacks is embarrassing any decent causes he might be pushing to do it.
And as for the more relevant discussion at hand, I’m utterly baffled that people would even do that. I mean, some of my blog-friends are gay and so they post a lot of details and photos that absolutely squick my heteronormative mind, but I’d never even dare to suggest that they shouldn’t post that stuff.
Thanks for writing this! I could have written it but you did it so much better.
My name’s not on my blog but it’s local and everyone knows who writes it. I started it anonymously or so I thought fairly private. After all, the blogsphere is huge, right and millions of blogs exist. Alas, within six months, I had unidentified individuals “praying” for me and my family to be harmed. Writing racist, sexist and homophobic comments and some identifying themselves anonymously by name but by profession, local cops. Well, some how the city and department found out what was going on and launched an investigation which I found out about one day before being called by the local press to comment on it. I had been responding to these unidentified individuals’ comments while investigators from the department’s internal affairs division were watching. The first information I received that anyone was watching it was when the liaison to the state attorney general (who had forced the department to reform) came up to me before a meeting to talk to me about it.
It’s interesting how quickly people can learn your identity even if you don’t use it. I think it took a little while for some of the commenters to figure out my name and then a little while longer to figure out what I looked like. Others seem to know a lot about me from the beginning and I had a reporter contact me at one point asking me about my site because an officer who knew who I was started talking about the blog while she was with him on a stakeout. This officer was the first one suspected by the department because of his employment history harassing me. But then after being so sure it was him, the department said it wasn’t. I didn’t know whether to believe that over the dozen or so people who read it and said it sounded just like him.
It got quiet during the investigation after it was announced and then it got worse. It seemed like every bitter and frankly, disturbed personality on the net dropped by to harass or threaten or slander (i.e. saying I couldn’t drive b/c I had too many DUIs when I never had one). I think it was probably a hodge podge of different people coming out from different rocks.
I only was told the identity of one individual, the one who “prayed” for violence to me, and he was a very young and very young-looking police officer who received a civic award from the city not long after being identified in the investigation. And he wasn’t the only one investigated who did get a civic award which makes me wonder if the department just did the investigation to appease the state AG.
I bumped into another harasser on another online site a few weeks ago and I was able to identify him as well through information he provided there. He’s another local cop, not so young. Like the other one, I had never met him before in my life.
The harassment chilled my blogging a lot for a while. But I decided to first moderate and then shut down comments and keep blogging and even though I still get hate mail or elected officials disparaging me and my blog at public meetings or other nasty stuff, I do get positive response as well from some interesting places. As hard as it is to deal with the crap, I think it also shows how important the issues are and that blogging about them is important and in some cases, necessary.
It’s hard and highly personal often to make the decision how anonymous you want to be and it’s different for everyone and it can be different at different times for the same person. It has to be that individual’s decision but the reality is, sometimes other people including nasty people make that decision for you.
I think it’s women daring to open mouths and write on things we care passionately about whether it’s feminism, social reform, information technology (which happened in one publicized case), even knitting. We’re supposed to keep our mouths shut after all. When we don’t, often men feel threatened by that and express themselves.
I’d love to see that space too! I’d like to not have to worry about my safety because I’m a blogger and I know other women wish that too. Hopefully, we call see these things some day.
The complaints I see here aren’t “activists” or “right wingers” – the kind of behaviour described sounds more like pathological lunatics who happen to have right-wing views. I always worry about “safe spaces” – those MRA bloggers have safe spaces too – that’s where their nasty attitudes go to fester. Safe spaces become echo chambers where you only have to hear opinions that confirm your own worldview. That’s why I don’t like Sacks’ site – he only rarely polices his commenters to tell them that utterly hateful shiat isn’t acceptable. I mean, I don’t expect him to censor them – but crazy people need to be told by people that they think that they agree with “no, you’re farking wrong”. Of course the problem is that the moderate MRA types like Sacks can’t keep up with the streaming mob of crazy that follows them about.
That’s one of the reasons that I come here – because Amp et al put up with polite argument (up to a point) so that there is real discussion here instead of the chorus of “me-too” voices that most gender-issues blogs get. Unfortunately, the internet has a lot of crazies, so anonymity is important. That’s why I use a pseudonym, obviously.
The other problem is the trolls. I mean, I don’t think that any man online has uttered the phrase “make me a sammich, biatch” with a hint of seriousness in his mind. Feminists (and serious MRA types like Sacks) are notoriously thin-skinned, making sites like that a popular target for guys who get off on grief. He just knows it will piss you off. And yeah, guys like that need to go back to 4chan and keep that shiat out of the grown-up internet.
SiF,
Good point about the dangers of proclaimed “safe spaces.” I got some nasty name-calling when Heart linked a post I wrote that was sympathetic to transgender folks, and when I tried to respond, she blocked my comments as being an retread of arguments that had already been dealt with on her blog. The idea seemed to be that neither she nor her readers should have to put up with hearing an argument that they had dismissed already. If people want to run blogs or even certain posts as “safe spaces” where they won’t have to hear opposing viewpoints, I think it is good manners not to link those opposing viewpoints and misrepresent them; otherwise, the people whose views have been misrepresented ought, in the interests of fairness, have the opportunity to respond. I notice that in general, when the comment section on a post at Alas is limited or asks readers to be respectful, the post itself is about something personal and is not an attack on another blogger’s post such that the person whose viewpoint is under attack is forbidden from responding in the comments.
The basic thing we all ought to be safe from is behavior that, if done offline and without anonymity, could subject the offender to civil or even criminal penalties under U.S. law. If anyone going to school with Jill had dared to treat her the way in person that she was treated at AutoAdmit, he probably would have faced punishment or even expulsion from NYU. That’s exactly why the AutoAdmit commenters have fought to protect their anonymity — so they won’t be held accountable. I ask for no more safety online than I have offline.
Unfortunately, the moderators of Alas do have some conflicts with each other on these points.
I would like to request that people who come here specifically because they think we’re wrong about everything — well, just go ahead and leave. If they’re not ever here to learn or negotiate or change position to be closer to us, but instead to try to derail our conversations and prevent feminist conversation from occurring … well, that’s not okay with me.
It can be hard for people to define who fits into what category, though. I felt strongly that Robert did, and find this place to be much more pleasant since he stomped off.
I’m actually kinda disappointed that Daran got banned – I mean obviously, he had a hell of an axe to grind (feministcritics.org looks to be an unhealthy obsession), but at least he is liberal and polite, rather than being a knee-jerk MRA-issues-only commenter.
Were you around for “withholding the right to vote from women doesn’t prove women were oppressed?”
O_o
No.
Withdrawn.
/me quietly slinks away.
Mandolin,
I don’t think people should come with the intent of preventing conversation from occurring, but does it really bother you to have people comment here with the goal of getting you to change your mind about something? Maybe it’s just because I have changed position on a lot of things over the last decade or so (ranging from affirmative action to reproductive rights to the constitutionality of campaign finance reform), but I like to have people try to change my mind as long as they do it respectfully. People who want to “win” an argument, however, can go to hell.
It’s a matter of … extremity. I think an unfortunate byproduct of the way feminist blogs have worked on the internet is that we end up with two populations: the feminist or feminist-inclined… and people who see feminism as basically a bad thing. We don’t end up with so many moderates, although Alas has proportionally more than other blogs.
Angry Black Woman, for instance, is more than happy to interact with people who have some degree of racism on her site. But people can cross a line. An anti-racist blog is not the place for members of the storm front. A feminist blog is not the location for rabid anti-feminists.
That doesn’tmean there can be no disagreement, in my opinion, but yes. There is a line. (And yes, in my opinion, part of what defines that line is fucking with other commenters and posters in a provocative manner, for one’s own amusement.)
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Silenced is Foo Writes “Sacks damned well knows that his readership is full of serious nutbags and so he’s really gotta be more careful where he points them…Sacks is embarrassing any decent causes he might be pushing to do it.”
A few facts:
1) I never “pointed” anybody to Renee’s site or asked them to go there—all I did was link to her site so readers could read her criticisms of me and judge for themselves. It’s the fair and correct thing to do, and it’s a courtesy that I always extend to feminist bloggers. It’s also one which is often not extended to me in return.
2) I had never heard of Renee before this began, had no axe to grind with her, and no desire that my readers visit (or not visit) her site.
3) The other post that I wrote linking to her was actually one where I praised her for an apology she gave to some readers. Unfortunately, soon afterwards Renee’s behavior became so bizarre and abusive that I would look foolish if I didn’t withdraw the compliment. You can read what I wrote at http://glennsacks.com/blog/?p=2919. The coup de grace was when Renee commented to a woman poster “I’m sure Sacks and his fellow misogynists are waiting in line to get their dicks washed by ignorant colluding woman such as yourself.” Renee claims she’s a victim, but her comments were as vile as anything others posted. Did Renee mention that to you?
4) It is certainly true that I, like feminist bloggers, have a lunatic component in my readership. The criticism that I don’t moderate carefully enough is generally a fair one, though of course you don’t see the people I boot off so you don’t get the whole picture. In the past couple weeks, for example, I’ve banned several people—one for insisting on referring to gays as “perverts,” another for insisting on referring to feminists as “terrorists and criminals,” and another for repeatedly insulting Renee as a mother.
5) You fail to mention that I go way, way out of my way to allow feminists to post their dissenting views on my site, even sponsoring “The Feminist Dissident,” where I allow feminist to make blog posts on my site. Again, this is a courtesy I’ve never seen feminist bloggers extend to people on our side.
Regarding this whole issue, I frankly don’t see how I could have done anything better or fairer—if you’ve got suggestions, feel free to let me know at glenn@glennsacks.com
@Sacks, I know no ill-will was intended, but the fact is that when you have a rabid fan-base and you post a link to another blog that you vocally disagree with, you’re going to be funneling a lot of angry extremists to her blog. I know it’s not your fault or your responsibility to keep a tight rein on your readers, but you’ve got to know that they’re doing nasty things in your name. Those people give Renee an excuse unfairly categorize you as “just another misogynist”.
Think about that next time you do a “call to activism” – can you imagine the paranoid, hateful rants that, say, the DART is getting, and what those rants make them think about the legitimacy of your cause?
There are a lot of people who aren’t reading GlennSacks.com to read about legitimate grievances, but to fuel their misogyny. The “feminist dissident” segments do nothing to dissuade them, because they’re hearing from somebody they’ve already discarded as a lost cause. You’ve done a lot to distance yourself from the extremists, but there are still too many who think that you silently approve of their views. I don’t know that there is any more you can do to dissuade them of that notion, but at the very least they need to be carefully managed.
I do still read GlennSacks.com occasionally, but I stay the heck away from the comments section.
If I think in general terms, I hesitate to hold any poster responsible for comments. Also in general terms, I would therefore be doubly hesitant to hold posters responsible for comments of random people on OTHER blogs. Even if they link there.
Maybe, I suppose, if they said “hey, everyone, let’s get together and create a DOS attack on ________!” but it would probably need to be that. This seems fairly standard, doesn’t it? I’ve read a lot of moderation threads here and elsewhere, and the general opinion seems to match my summary AFAIK.
So unless you are working off a completely different general rule, I am a bit confused as to why there’s an exception for Glenn and/or Renee. (Disclosure: I have never read Glenn’s blog before, and I don’t imagine reading beyond the post he linked above. So maybe he’s done something intrinsically horrible that I don’t know about. I have scanned Renee’s writings a couple of times, and don’t read her comment threads other than the one linked. Maybe she’s done something intrinsically horrible that I don’t know about.)
Basically, it looks like Glenn and Renee traded argumentative posts (fairly standard, right?) and that some commenters were assholes (also, sadly, fairly standard.) But if a commenter was an asshole to Renee, is that Glenn’s fault, even if they found Renee’s site because Glenn linked it? Similarly, if someone is an asshole to Glenn, is that Renee’s fault? I figure that Glenn is responsible for what he writes and Renee is responsible for what she writes (and as far as I can tell from a quick read they both tend towards generalizing and demonization of their opponents) but I don’t see why they are responsible for third parties.
Sailorman asserts that “[Glenn and Renee] both tend towards generalizing and demonization of their opponents.” Sailorman says he’s never read my work, and that comment proves it.
The rest of his post makes a lot of sense–thanks.–GS
Sailorman,
Based on my experiences with AutoAdmit, I think the people who run a site bear responsibility for the environment they foster among their commenters, and therefore have some attenuated responsibility for what their commenters do when the site-administrator points them toward another site. If Glenn’s site is not tolerant of abusive language, name-calling, etc. by commenters and does not take a hostile personal tone toward “outsiders,” i.e. the people he singles out for criticism in his posts, then he really can’t do anything about the jerks who happen to read his site, happen to go to Renee’s and happen to send her abusive messages based on their independent assessment of her writing. Though if he doesn’t already put a message on his post saying, “If you follow the link, please act respecfully toward the writer in your comments and e-mails to her,” that might be an ameliorative touch to indicate that he personally disapproves abusive treatment.
However, if he doesn’t carefully police the comments left at his site, and doesn’t treat the people he writes about with respect for them as human beings even as he disagrees with their ideas and beliefs, then I think he bears some moral responsibility for effectively saying, Here, pit-bulls, attack! Obviously each of his readers bears his own, much greater and overweening responsibility for his own actions, but I believe that a bit of responsibility does attach to those who implicitly encourage others to behave badly and do nothing to discourage such behavior.
“implicitly encourage others to behave badly”
I never did anything of the sort. All I did was link to her so people could see what she had to say if they want. This is quite an inverted world we have here, where simply being fair and honest is somehow stigmatized as encouraging attacks or “bad behavior.”
I don’t think that a blogger is necessarily responsible for his commenters being jerks.
I do think that everyone is responsible for the predictable consequences of his or her actions.
Therefore, if you know your commenters are, by and large, jerks, and you link to someone that they are likely to ‘go be jerks at’ without any sort of admonition to not be jerks, then you are responsible for the result.
This isn’t because I’m somehow responsible for what RonF has for lunch, it’s because everyone is responsible for the predictable consequences of his or her actions.
If you deliberately and knowingly do something that is obviously likely to result in jerkery, and you don’t do anything to mitigate said jerkery, even if you’re not the one specifically being a jerk, then yeah, it’s your fault, at least partially.
—Myca
Well, i agree that a line exists which can somehow lead to some responsibility (autoadmit) but I think it’s a hard line to reach.
Well, i would say this should be true if you say “glenn and renee,” but not if you just say “Glenn.” Otherwise I pretty much agree with this.
In this case I am not actually sure who “started” the argument: Glenn, by writing about Renee, or Renee, by writing about Glenn. I am guessing neither of them was involved in the ad campaign itself. Do you know who wrote first? If someone is going to get the obligation regarding “hostile personal tone,” it probably should be the person who wrote first.
Well… this might work as a general rule but it’s not what happens now. If you are going to enforce it at all: I have been linked by other blogs which disagree with mine, and I have read many linked posts off of other blogs. I don’t think most bloggers do that. Glenn didn’t; jack stephens doesn’t; I don’t think feministe does; renee didn’t…
If you expect it only on our opponents’ blogs, that seems to be a sort of silly requirement.
I don’t know how I feel about this part but I’m leaning towards disagreement. I have developed a sense that “treat people like human beings” is sort of a code word for “not share my views.” I have seen many arguments where people are accused of not thinking ___ are human or not treating ____ as human beings, where that is clearly being used in a ridiculous fashion. I think that generally that term (and the accompanying tactic of raising it) are used in an incorrect or inappropriate fashion, though it obviously applies sometimes.
But how do we get from “actually” to “effectively” sending out the dogs? I admit to being human, and as a result I know that i am more likely to view with disapproval the actions of those I don’t like or agree with. I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me that we’re going to tag those people we don’t agree with as having “effectively” violated a rule. I don’t like doing this if i can avoid it, which is why i like to argue the general rule.
Well sure, a bit. And if the behavior goes beyond implicit then eventually they are really liable (I forgot about autoadmit but that’s a good example.)
Look, I don’t like Glenn’s POV*. But I see this in a bit of the same light in which I see things where thefire.org or the ACLU defends some twit whose views I detest: I am willing to support a general rule if I think it’s a good rule, and I am willing to fight against arbitrary enforcement of rules. I am willing to do so even when I dislike the beneficiary of the fight. I mean, i want Renee to “win” insofar as I agree more with Renee than with Glenn. But I’m not willing to bend the rules to get there.
*Glenn: I don’t even need to read your whole blog to know that you engage in overgeneralizations and annoying wordplay. See, e.g., “This post was originally titled “A Feminist Delivers an Honorable Apology.” Her name is Renee, not “A Feminist.” Nice attempt at a dig, though.
I don’t mean to imply that Glenn rallied up a text-based-mob. He does a good job of maintaining open discourse in his site, and simply linked to another site that he was complaining about some of the comments.
The problem is that, for a small subset of people, they think of that as marching orders.
To be clear: Glenn didn’t do anything *wrong*. I just think he ought to be careful.
Sailorman Writes “Glenn: I don’t even need to read your whole blog to know that you engage in overgeneralizations and annoying wordplay. See, e.g., “This post was originally titled “A Feminist Delivers an Honorable Apology.” Her name is Renee, not “A Feminist.” Nice attempt at a dig, though.”
A perfect example of how things are twisted around to give the impression that I did something wrong. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my headline. Were Renee a recognizable name, I probably would have used her name. But since she doesn’t even use her last name in her posts, that would be impossible, so describing her as “A Feminist” was the best that could be done.
And of course, you never even notice (much less acknowledge) that the point of my post was to praise Renee.
I have often criticized some who post on my blog for twisting everything around so the feminist(s) are always wrong/devious/evil. Feminists do the exact same thing to our side (though I can’t recall hearing a feminist criticize his or her own readers for it), and your comment above is another example.–GS
I don’t think that Glenn is responsible for the way his readers act, unless he encourages them. Linking to a site you’re criticizing is normal, good netiquette.
But I have to admit, although I’ve always found you to be very polite, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of people I have to ban every time you link to me, Glenn.
Now that the problem has been brought to your attention, why not link with a “if you go over there, please be very civil” request when you link to feminist blogs? I don’t think it could do any harm, and who knows, maybe it’ll help.
(If you have a problem with “Alas” people’s behavior when I link to your blog, I’d be glad to put in a similar notice next time I link to you.)
Sailorman,
Well… this might work as a general rule but it’s not what happens now. If you are going to enforce it at all: I have been linked by other blogs which disagree with mine, and I have read many linked posts off of other blogs. I don’t think most bloggers do that. Glenn didn’t; jack stephens doesn’t; I don’t think feministe does; renee didn’t…
I think it depends on how your readership behaves. I personally have run blogs either that are quite small or that are in a non-ideologically-based niche (law students). I’ve also written a bit for blogs that advance views with which I don’t agree (Federalist Society). I’ve never discovered or had a complaint that someone was getting nasty e-mails or anything like that when I’ve written about that person’s ideas. Quite frankly, my readership always seems to have been fairly civil in disagreement, probably in part because it’s dominated by people with legal training or with a law-sympathetic bent in their thinking, which means they’re comfortable with the idea of “reasonable people can disagree on close issues.”
However, if I ran a site that I knew, based on the comments I was getting, attracted some very rude and even violent-minded people, I would be a lot more careful. I would actively discourage the rude folks from patronizing my blog, and would post notices such as the one I described above when I was linking to someone whom I knew would be perceived by my blog’s readers as an “enemy.”
The sort of drawing of battle lines inherent in labeling people as “feminist” and knowing that pretty much your entire audience will understand that as “enemy” is frankly almost inconceivable for me. I married someone whom I first knew from his comments on my blog, where he agrees with me so rarely that he would highlight the fact he had on the (I think two) occasions he did it. We argue so fiercely that one of his friends, watching us talk about whether the boycotts of South Africa helped to end apartheid, said that she had to remind herself that we loved each other because she was afraid I would slap him. But we always argue about ideas. When I falsely attribute an idea to him because “it’s what Republicans think,” he calls me out on it and I apologize; and vice versa is true. In my opinion, we treat each other “with respect for them as human beings even as [we] disagree with their ideas and beliefs,” even though we have very little agreement with each other. (E.g., he would have voted for Prop. 8.)
For people who have some rude readers with a track record of abusive comments, it might be worthwhile when noting a blog to write about the person like s/he’s your relative: stating disagreement, but in respectful and accountable way, and taking seriously the possibility that your highlighting the disagreement may result in pain for that person.
Ampersand writes “why not link with a “if you go over there, please be very civil” request when you link to feminist blogs? ”
When we do campaigns, etc. I always include the words “remember, be polite.” It’s on the campaign page of our current campaign, for example.
I’ve never thought to put them up in the context you’re talking about because I’m not sending people over to the feminist blog–I’m merely putting the address up for those who want to hear the other side.
I might try it next time–we’ll see.
Thanks, Glenn. That would be nice.
PG, I basically agree with you.
So there. ;)