Closed for business

In some ways I never thought this day would come, but I’ve been feeling the need for a while now: I’m closing this blog. Not necessarily forever – because I don’t want to be one of those bloggers that makes some grand exit statement and flounces off, only to reappear back at the same URL a few months later – but for the near future, at least. Who knows, I might end up back here at some point, writing about any number of things. Or this might become another internet artifact.

I don’t have a grand exit statement, other than this blog has run its course and is no longer good for me. I’ve written here for over seven years, and now it’s time to pack up and start over. You might say that’s just a psychological thing, and yes, I’m sure it is; but I need the feeling of a fresh start.

I’m tired of feeling the breath on my neck from readers ready to latch onto any word and twist it based on their own bizarre motivations. I’m exhausted from trying to explain myself and anticipate attacks. The imperative to self-censor has become too great a feeling, and as much as I’ve tried to soldier on, I’ve realized I can’t, and it would be foolish to continue trying.

I’m not going to be ultra secretive about my new location, and if you try hard enough (it’s not even all that hard), you’ll be able to find it. I’m not keeping it a secret, I’m just not publicizing it. If you do find and choose to lurk in my new space, there can be no misunderstanding as to its purpose. It is mine to do with as I choose, and its use is at my sole discretion.

In its time, this blog has been good to me and led me to some really great things. With any luck, the new blog will do the same.

See y’all later.

Jun 16 2009 05:12 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , | 11 Comments »

Thoughts on Sex 2.0 past, present, and future

I can hardly believe that Sex 2.0 is less than two weeks away. I’m looking forward to plotting and scheming – I mean, catching up – with farflung friends, some of whom I’ve known for years and some of whom I met for the first time IRL at last year’s Sex 2.0. I’m also excited to finally meet some of my other internet nerd-crushes; Monica Shores, Nikol Hasler, Sarah Dopp, Maria Diaz, just to name a few.

At the same time, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have a few reservations. There’s a little ball of anxiety and worry that’s been hanging out in my chest for the past several weeks, and I’ve been doing my best to try to push it away and tell myself everything will work out just fine. But as the founder of Sex 2.0, and in the spirit of transparency with which it was created, I feel it’s important for me to share my concerns honestly and get feedback from the community.
(more…)

Apr 28 2009 11:11 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 45 Comments »

*continues work on carving out nice little echo chamber of my own*

Good lord. I got sucked into the various “o-spheres” (from which I had mostly extricated myself over a year ago, btu occasionally visited due to links from blogs I actually enjoy reading because they’re interesting, thoughtful, funny, challenging, insightful, personal, etc.) tonight and was reminded why this blog break has been so important in the first place. The levels of ridiculousness, drama, passive-aggressiveness, double standards, and overall STUPID BULLSHIT continues to astound. You want a concrete example? (EVERYBODY DOES!) – look at this comment from Belledame at ye olde untouchable BA’s blog -

BA is speaking for herself. It doesn’t matter if you think she’s wrong or what; it’s intrusive and invasive as hell (at minimum) to keep pushing at her like that.

Oh really! Well that’s rich. And quite interesting. ‘Cause when some of us (ME, that is – god forbid *I* be passive-aggressive too and not NAME NAMES!) do the same thing, we’re the subject of 100+ comment blog threads straight of high school and random interlopers coming over to dissect whether we REALLY know the truth of OUR OWN LIVES, demand EVIDENCE, break out the litmus test for Are You Really [insert fave oppression here]®, and better have those creds at the ready. </royal_we>

One thing I can say for myself about that thread on Belledame’s blog that I finally visited about 2 weeks after those jackasses came over here – it didn’t *hurt* me or anything. Not anymore. I looked at it and thought, you sad sad people. This is what you’re doing? How old are you. And it’s mostly the same small handful of people, I noticed. Belledame’s a classic bully and queen bee. Fortunately I graduated from high school many years ago. And being asked to leave (’cause it “just wasn’t working out”) that Den of Dysfunction Top Secret email list in late 2007 was a very good thing, it turns out.

But yeah – blog break continues, at least for a while, bc there is jut so much BULLSHIT. I feel I should write *something* in light of my approaching 7th blogiversary – not sure what yet. Maybe I’ll NAME MORE NAMES and INCITE DRAMA. Who knows. What I do know is, at the moment I’m refocusing and re-centering (as I said at Amani’s today). I need that once in a while. This blog was started for ME and no one else, and as such that’s how it shall remain, in whatever form it continues to take.

Apr 10 2009 11:34 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Classy

Here’s the progression of how things went. Apparently Courtney wrote a post at Feministing talking about what a typical day for her looks like. Lauren at Faux Real wrote a post in response, saying she’s tired of hearing about people having too much email and how it’s soooo hard for them, when people in her community are struggling to keep their jobs, if they haven’t been laid off already. She then wrote another post, which expanded on some of the stuff in the first post. Aunt B wrote a post linking to Lauren’s second post, and Daisy linked to Aunt B in her post about WAM being elitist, which I took issue with.

I didn’t see any of the posts until I read Daisy’s, and then I went in reverse-chronological order trying to catch up (and was still left wondering what WAM had to do with any of it – I guess Daisy just wanted to try to tie it in).

I agree w/ this comment Amanda left at Lauren’s:

There’s kind of no way to write about your life if you’re lucky in any way without becoming a lightening rod for envy on the blogs, though. I can see your point, but I also worry about the way women have been socialized to compete with each other on whose life sucks the most. It’s a lot like the, “You’re not fat, I’m fat!” game. Women aren’t permitted to be happy with themselves, and so writing something that insinuates that you are pretty happy with yourself automatically generates bad reactions. I can see how Courtney is trying to fight against that.

Predictably, another commenter (someone called evil fizz) comes along and says:

But is is possible to write about your own successes and privilege without being bone-crushingly oblivious to the fact that not everyone enjoys such things. It’s not necessarily about envy as much as it is awareness that one’s corner of the universe is not the quintessential experience.

Well, I really wish someone would tell me what that way is, because I’m getting the feeling there really isn’t such a way, unless you devote nine-tenths of every post to self-flagellation. Because that wouldn’t become tedious to read, oh no.

As Lisa said recently…

I’m tired of writing disclaimers of my privilege. I’m tired of apologizing. Even as I write that, I’m sure it reads RESISTANCE to acknowledging my privilege. But it’s like, no matter what I write about, no matter how much I paint the elephant a traffic cone orange color and acknowledge it, point at it, sit next to it, and then I write my thoughts – someone, somewhere (usually “anonymous”) comes in and reminds me, “don’t forget – you’re a privileged person of color. You don’t have that much experience in oppression.” Here’s the thing: I don’t know how to acknowledge it any more than I already have. And if I stop acknowledging it, I’m sure someone will call me a “leftoid cunt” again. I don’t want to spend my life writing about privilege. That would be a sardonic tragedy all on its own.

EXACTLY.

I mean, how many times do you have to spell it out to people? At a certain point, you just can’t be responsible for other people projecting their own drama and hangups onto your writing about your life. And on a blog, especially! Evil fizz goes on to say that (s)he doesn’t care about Courtney’s day. Well, then don’t read about it. Get on with your life and find something you do care about to occupy your time. Does every blogger exist simply to satisfy what you personally want to read about?

I get that on a large group blog like Feministing, the lines are less clear – and indeed, this is what people spend entire social media conferences talking about. Know your audience, write stuff they’ll be interested in, etc. But I just keep coming back to the fact that blogs started as people writing about their own lives, and guess what, an audience showed up, eventually.

In Lauren’s “Context” post, she says:

And I wonder too if those making feminism their career change her message to remain marketable? Does the new Professional Feminist have to set aside some of her feminist beliefs to keep the paycheck rolling in? Will she self-censor?

This is always a problem. The difference is, feminist bloggers did not START with the goal of being ‘professional feminists’ – they were just writing, doing their own thing, and they got recognized for who they are. (A modicum of success; say it ain’t so!) Now, if they’re expected to change… -but this is the same thing as all bloggers. At social media conferences bloggers are so concerned w/ their “image” and how to be “professional” and present themselves online. But they forget that the first bloggers who are now relatively famous – Scoble, etc. – took risks, and that’s why they were noticed. Yes, a lot of ‘em are assholes, but this isn’t about the characteristics of their individual personalities; the point is that they weren’t sanitizing everything they said. They were writing in their own voice – sometimes even writing as if no one was reading.

But stepping away from bloggers specifically, let’s get back to the larger issue of class in more general terms. I agree w/ much of what Lauren says here. I share her frustration w/ “get ahead” solutions that are aimed at people who are beyond the access point of many people looking for advice. I’ve been there. Suggestions to buy less Starbucks and refinance your home ring hollow to someone who doesn’t go to Starbucks at all and rents instead of owns. It pisses me off that this passes for “solutions” in some people’s eyes, and I wonder how they can be so blind to others’ reality. Do they REALLY think everyone owns a home, has a 401k, can afford a new car or even has a car at all?

I agree that the NY Times piece about not being able to live on $500k in NYC is insulting. It’s the same thing I was talking about in this post from October 2006, where I criticize a Creative Loafing article that purports to explain why the younger generation is having a hard time economically. People who behave like Mr. Whitey McPrivilege (as I lovingly dubbed him) make the rest of us look bad. It’s an irresponsible piece of journalism because it falls into the old trope of casting as irresponsible anyone who isn’t middle class, so we can all attribute their situation to personal failings, wipe our hands and be done w/ it, rather than have to examine underlying, systemic issues. This goes back to the points raised in Stephanie Coontz’s book The Way We Never Were.

And yet… I do take issue w/ the rest of the stuff referenced here and here.

Putting aside the fact that I become very skeptical of anyone who uses the term “the intelligentsia” with any degree of seriousness, I’m frustrated that “the intelligentsia” is cast as upper class – always is and always has been upper class. Whereas the poor cannot be well-read (even tho Lauren’s friend mentions her mother, we’re to understand that she’s a curious outlier). Yes, it’s more likely, but it strikes as a dichotomy, that there’s one right “way” to be poor, and it strikes as insulting to those from poor backgrounds who are interested in “intellectual” things.

I guess I am annoyed because (going back to Lauren’s post) I have seen both sides of it, so I GET IT. Also – I have a distrust for people who have never experienced what it’s like to *not* have a safety net. I think they don’t get it, don’t really appreciate the double bind the working class and poor are often in. That’s why their solution is always the offensively simplistic “get a job,” and it’s so much BS.

Now, to respond to a few comments.

Aunt B’s comment on Lauren’s “Context” post:

And it pisses me off-it seems so “let them eat cake”-ish-to read feminists talking about a feminist day that is basically “La la la, here’s my wonderful life.”

Yeah, I get where she’s coming from, but this also reads to me a bit like: Shut up. It’s too similar for my comfort to what Ren hears all the damn time. It feels like a game of oneupsmanship: who’s the most oppressed, who gets to speak.

Yes, it’s helpful to have perspective. Some people are just self-centered, non-self-aware assholes who really do seem to think their email problem is the worst problem in the world. And they complain all the freaking time. (I think we’ve all had the misfortune of knowing at least one person like this.) They need to be smacked upside the head with some reality, reminded, “Hey, at least you HAVE A JOB, and this is a luxury thing to worry about for many people.”

I mean, just yesterday, there was a guy at work complaining about how high his HOA fees are, but at least they pay for the tennis courts. Obnoxious!

But most of the people in question here do not lack that perspective. They simply write about their lives, and if their life includes the frustration of a lot of email, then maybe they write about that. I don’t see any of them saying this is THE WORST THING EVER. But do they have to repeat that at every other sentence for people not to assume it?

Like Aunt B in her 2nd comment on Laurent’s “Context” post, I don’t know quite how to talk about my experiences, either. It wasn’t until I started reading Bitch|Lab that I had any of the words necessary to begin trying to describe class-related experiences – and I’m still not very good at it at all.

In the past couple of years I feel like I’ve been slowly entering a new world – one that was always there, going on right under my nose, but I never knew about. Is this the *real* middle class? It seems “upper class” to me, but I have a feeling upper class involves even more. What do people MEAN when they say “middle class?”

It’s why I felt so uncomfortable when that shitty financial planner asked, “When you retire, how much money would you like to have to live off of each month?” What is the right answer? X amount of dollars… is that too much? Too little? I have no frame of reference.

And from the other end, I was embarrassed when I bought my car last January, and I handed the salesperson the paperwork and upon seeing my salary, she said, “Wow, that’s a good job! I wish I had that job!” How am I supposed to respond to that?

But I’m not ashamed. I’ve worked too damn hard to allow somebody to lay a guilt trip on me out of what often seems like – and this will not win me any friends, but I’m calling it like I see it – good old-fashioned jealousy. Hell, at least Aunt B comes out and admits that she is jealous – but that still doesn’t excuse her nasty finger-pointing and line-drawing, deciding who’s the real feminist and who’s not, who’s sufficiently guilty about their success and who’s not. Shit like this props up a nasty system of shaming women out of economic achievement. Oh, you can do it, but only if you FEEL REALLY BAD about it!

Back to comments. Daisy comments and says:

You are talking Class Consciousness 101, and according to THAT, the people on top will never be nice to those of us on the bottom, because they are too busy congratulating themselves that they are not us. Why would they listen to people that they believe are inferior?

Personally? I feel uncomfortable with “the people on the top” AND “the people on the bottom.” I have problems in both directions. Both seem so blind in their own ways.

Sometimes I think we need to remember, being poor doesn’t give you some special insight into How The World Works. But neither does being rich, of course.

Commenter arvind says:

I don’t think there is anything wrong in telling privileged people to be more aware of their privilege when they speak.

This sets up a dichotomy, as if there are two kinds of people: privileged and not privileged. It also, once again, casts privilege in solely economic terms, which is why a lot of people not versed in the academic language of privilege get defensive and misunderstand it – e.g., I’m white and poor, how do I have “white privilege?” We need to do much better at avoiding falling into this trap.

Commenter Casey says:

There’s always been an “introduction to intersectional feminism for comfortable college students” feel to the blog, which is probably due, at least in part, to the fact that it is a blog, and, as such, is very much bound up in the lives of the people who write there (almost all of whom seem to come from very comfortable backgrounds, have MAs, and are getting their names out as a way of getting their books published).

The key word here? SEEM. Yep, it happened again. Why assume??

THIS is the kind of shit that pisses me off. You don’t know shit about their backgrounds. Yes, I know humans make assumptions to fill in the blanks about the things we don’t know. To an extent that’s human nature. But then at a certain point, stereotypes take over. The woman Daisy mentioned assumed there were no feminists in the welfare office; Casey assumes the Feministing bloggers have always had an easy-peasy life.

And for the love of god, can someone tell me WHY so many people think writers live a life of luxury??

For another example, just recently I got into it with Renee in a thread at her blog (link forthcoming when I dig it up), where I called her out for being judgmental and making assumptions about people who shop at Wal-Mart. You want to talk about privilege? There’s a hell of a lot of unexamined privilege going on in those types of judgments. She tried to tell me that the poor have more opportunity to “produce within the home”… give me a fucking break. I was incensed at that point and asked her how, exactly, when my mom was working from dawn to dusk and simultaneously trying to care for her dying, uninsured husband, she was supposed to “produce within the home?” I reminded her that for people with schedules like that, who don’t live in metropolitan areas, Wal-Mart is often the only place that’s open when they are able to go shopping! Not to mention the prices. “Going green” is a luxury for many, many people. Oh and if you live in a more rural area, Wal-Mart if often the only store around, period!

Bottom line: You don’t know someone’s situation.

On a completely different note, Catherine’s comment captures exactly the problem I have with ATACC (or is it just ATAC now?)…

I can’t tell you how many times I have listened to members of my peace group gripe about it being all white. (and, I have to say, majority middle class and above). why aren’t black people in our group? Why aren’t poor people in our group? Umm, maybe they have other, more pressing things to worry about? Maybe they are wondering, how come we aren’t at the protest of the latest cop-killing of an unarmed black male youth. Maybe, black people in particular are wondering why they, who were already against the iraq war long before most white people caught on, should be marching to stop that, when very few if any white people, are marchign to stop something that is much more insidiously destructive to many black communuties; the drug war, and instituionalized and racist sentencing disparties.

Finally, on another unrelated note – and to end on a more positive note – I really enjoyed this post by BFP. I don’t often read her, but I’m glad I clicked over to her blog, because that post was a jewel.

Feb 14 2009 10:29 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments »

Fragments of longer blog posts, condensed

ETA: Dammit! Left out one other link I was going to add. I am loving this post by Ginmar. (Yes, Ginmar! She and Ren recently laid down arms and acknowledged a common ground, which I find pretty darn cool.) She said I could quote from it extensively so here’s a big blockquote of truth-telling:

Here’s how a rape culture is constructed. A boy is born, and his dad hands him a football before the umbilical cord is cut and freaks out if anybody mistakes his kid for a girl. He teaches him how to be a ‘real man’ which means better than women, because to be a ‘pussy’ or a ‘fag’ is the worst thing in the world. The cartoons he watch features heroes and the stupid girls they rescue. The books he read feature boy heroes. The TV shows he watches are all about men, with women stuck cleaning house—just like Mom!—-or acting sexy and stupid. Sometimes he watches movies about how evil women are. He sees how his dad won’t do housework and leers at women, and hears how his dad’s friends joke about women, and ‘getting some’ and ‘gettng laid’ and winking and laughing at sexist jokes. When he gets to school, he’s surrounded by boys who have been taught the same lessons, and who teach him more. Girls ain’t shit. Girls are stupid, hos, trashy, slutty, easy, lying, worthless, whores, and the enemy. His coaches call his team ‘ladies’ and ‘pussies’ when they don’t perform well. He sees TV shows full of the same messages about women. Magazines are full of naked women. Everywhere he hears the message that women are sluts and it’s stupid for them to pretend otherwise. His friends talk about nailing women, getting a piece, and when they do have sex, they boast about it later and denigrate the girl. He learns lessons about getting girls drunk, working a yes out, and trains.

He never learns about the word ‘rape’ unless some dried up ugly bitch gives a talk about it in some assembly. He learns how to pinch and grope and fondle girls, and how teachers always yell at the girls for reacting or just ignore it. He learns how boys get to do what they want, because they’re boys, and girls have to obey the rules. Girls that resist are dykes, losers, queer, ugly, bitchy, need to get laid, and need to watch themselves.

His parents divorce, and his father calls his wife ‘that bitch’, and tells him never to get married. His dad says the gold digging bitch is trying to bleed him dry, but he was too smart for that. By the time he graduates from high school, he knows of at least one guy who’s put something in a girl’s drink, or forced a girl, or manipulated a girl, or threatened a girl. In college he learns how fraternities score with chicks, and how the key to success is knocking her out. Er, getting her drunk. He might study civil rights as a part of history—and maybe womens’ rights. Men are people. Women are…something else. He might respect other men, but women are just something to fuck. What do they need rights for? Why do they have to bitch so much? They’re only good for one thing.

And then we wonder why they sit there and watch a man set in motion his plans to rape a woman. He grows up learning how to rape but the only rape he knows is when a stranger jumps out of alley with a gun. He knows that women are stupid bitches who need to shut up already, and stop going to parties or wearing short skirts or drinking if they don’t want to ask for it, but what else are they good for? Fat chicks, ugly chicks, hairy-legged lesbos….those are worse than ordinary chicks.

If he doesn’t force women himself, he knows guys who have. He sympathizes, gets defensive, gets angry—at women. He makes excuses. He lines up with other guys at Take Back the Night and shouts slurs at the marchers. It’s a great joke. Bitches need to stop taking themselves too seriously.

Okay! Good night for real now.

ETA #2: Geeeez. :P I guess I had more stuff built up to post about than I’d thought! The latest GA Politics Podcast is up; listen here. Now, that’s it! If I think of anything else, I’ll do a separate post tomorrow. Or maybe get off my ass and right a full post about any of these half-formed fragments!

Jan 21 2009 09:26 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Top 10 blog topics of 2008

Inspired by Griftdrift, I decided to make a list of the top blog stories/topics/themes of 2008 ’round the parts of the blogosphere I frequent. The great thing about blogging and top 10 lists? There’s no wrong answer, because of the diversity of the communities we move in. So here they are, in (mostly) chronological order:

1. Spitzer scandal

On March 10, the story broke about New York governor Eliot Spitzer being involved in a (get your Bingo cards ready) “prostitution ring.” The pro- sex workers’ rights blogs were all over it from the beginning, especially Bound, Not Gagged, which was the #1 resource for updates as they unfolded. Sex workers’ rights groups across the country and world issued statements and press releases supporting Kristen and denouncing Spitzer’s hypocrisy. Bloggers challenged the same-old, same-old coverage put forth by mainstream media – oversimplification, titillation, and reinforcement of stereotypes – as well as MSM’s clumsy and transparently insincere attempts to “reach out” to sex workers. Behind the scenes, via email, text messages, and Twitter DMs, sex workers and their allies wasted no time in organizing a media team, and gave last-minute interviews from far-flung locations. Even though the voices of sex workers’ rights advocates were largely overshadowed by the usual rehashed “arguments” about prostitution, for the first time we began to make a dent in the coverage, thanks in large part to the greater connectivity offered by social media.

2. Atlanta tornado

On March 14, a tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta. I first heard about it on Twitter; Dave, who was at the Flatiron at the time, sent this tweet: “Tornado just came through the flat iron. We’re all fine but it was insane.” Coverage via social media and citizen journalism was almost overwhelming in its immediacy and thoroughness. People were taking photos, shooting video,Twittering, etc. Because of the coverage from the people on the ground, mainstream media reluctantly had to admit that the tornado hit parts of town other than the business district – although their coverage of the damage in places such as Vine City was still miniscule compared to citizen journalism coverage.

3. Seal Press/WAM!2008 debacle

Some bloggers who are women of color went to WAM!2008 and had some complaints about it. Blackamazon said “fuck Seal Press” and the feminist blogosphere blew up. Seal Press responded and the bloggers Apostate refers to as the noisy group didn’t like the response, and the blogosphere blew up again. Then other publications wrote (poorly and inaccurately, for the most part) about what happened and the blogosphere blew up a third time.

I stayed out of this one for the most part, because I’m pretty sure my thoughts on the matter wouldn’t have been popular with most people on either opposing “side” of the brouhaha, and I didn’t feel like dealing with drama.

4. Amanda Marcotte, Brownfemipower, and “intellectual appropriation”

On the heels of the Seal Press girlcott, there was also Amandagate (have I mentioned I hate the use of -gate as a suffix for any scandal?), wherein some bloggers accused Amanda Marcotte of having plagiarized Brownfemipower. I stayed out of this one for the most part, too.

5. New UK porn law

In May, the UK passed a new law banning so-called “extreme” porn. Bloggers on both sides of the pond covered the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill (of which the porn ban was a part) as it made its way through the Houses of Parliament. Protests were held and people of all stripes spoke out against the ban, but ultimately it passed. So you’d better be careful about what’s on your hard drive, even if you don’t live in the UK; this law sets a dangerous precedent.

6. Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s death

On May 1, the body of Deborah Jeane Palfrey (a.k.a. the DC Madam) was found at her mother’s home in Tarpon Springs, Florida, dead from an apparent suicide. I first heard the news on Twitter, from Melissa. As with the Spitzer scandal, Bound, Not Gagged was again the central location for information – and, in this case, mourning. An online memorial was created shortly after her death, and starting on the night of May 12, a 24-hour vigil of remembrance was held.

It’s hard to talk about death without slipping into what sounds like clichés and platitudes, even if they’re actually sincere, but what I want to say is: We might never know whether Palfrey actually took her own life or was murdered, but sex workers’ rights activists will keep asking the questions that need to be asked, in memory of her life which was needlessly cut short.

7. Kyle Payne

Kyle Payne is a self-professed anti-porn feminist ally, who “is particularly interested in men’s roles in confronting pornography and the rape culture” and served as a rape crisis counselor for four years. It just so happens that he was arrested for assaulting a female student at Buena Vista University. After Eleanor’s Trousers first mentioned it, the news spread like wildfire through the feminist blogosphere. In the weeks leading up to Payne’s sentencing, feminist bloggers stayed on top of the story and sparked a letter-writing campaign to the judge that would preside. Ultimately, Payne was sentenced to six months in jail. It should have been more; but feminist bloggers brought attention to a case that would have otherwise gone virtually unnoticed, and that’s a testament to the power of blogging.

8. The C-word: “Credibility”

So here’s what happened. Andre Walker, who is well-known in the Georgia blogosphere (if not necessarily well-respected), was exposed as having received money from Congressman David Scott’s campaign without having disclosed it. Because Andre wrote several favorable posts about Scott and was credentialed as a journalist by the Georgia Legislature, this is your classic conflict of interest problem. I have to admit I was nonplussed by the revelation, since I never understood why anyone would consider Andre’s blog a beacon of journalistic integrity to begin with. But although I said that with my tongue firmly in my cheek, it’s exactly those sorts of words – “integrity,” “credibility,” “ethics” – that were suddenly being tossed around by the likes of Ken Edelstein. Andre’s actions apparently served as an indictment of all bloggers (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). The debate flared for a while and then died back down, but it’s only a matter of time before the embers are stoked again. Unfortunately, the actions of a few bad apples reinforce the negative pre-conceived notions held by new media naysayers.

9. Pink slips in the pink ghetto

I know, the title for this one is cheesy. I should’ve just stuck with “Sex writers getting canned,” but somehow I couldn’t resist. All silly puns aside, though, the fact is traditional and online publications lost many important voices for positive sexuality this fall. The tanking economy and the precarious position of the media industry in particular was the inevitable explanation. Whether or not you agree that these cuts make sense from a bottom-line perspective, there’s no denying that the effect will be yet another obstacle to intelligent, nuanced discourse on sexuality. While I hate to see people I respect losing their jobs, I do think there’s an opportunity presented here, too. Since one thing that certainly won’t happen is that these people and others like them will simply shut up, I have hope that blogs and other forms of new media will continue to grow and fill the void left by traditional media institutions. Mainstream media might see smart sex content as too risky, but as advocates of positive sexuality we take risks every day.

10. Prop K

Proposition K was a San Francisco ballot initiative, but its importance was covered online regardless of geographic location. Unfortunately Prop K did not pass, but the fact that it was on the ballot at all and got 42% of the vote should be seen as positive gains. I know that doesn’t do anything to change the lives of vulnerable, criminalized sex workers facing real violence right now, and the people who voted “no” and/or vocally opposed it need to think very hard about what their “no” means. Yet this was a historical moment and hard as it is sometimes, I think it’s important for activists to remain positive (which also means taking care of ourselves). I don’t believe Prop K would have had nearly the support it did without the effects of the online community; and maybe next time those effects will be even greater.

Honorable mentions:

Steve Gower

Gower is a dangerous vigilante who terrorizes street-based sex workers – especially trans* workers and workers of color – but thinks of himself as some sort of neighborhood champion for midtown Atlanta. On the heels of the 5th International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, Creative Loafing published a predictably slanted (and infuriating) piece about Gower. For a short time there was outrage over this asshole in the local blogosphere as well as the larger sex workers’ rights blogosphere, but sadly Gower and his MNA sidekicks (see Peggy Denby’s latest stunt of racism and homophobia) are still terrorizing some of Atlanta’s most vulnerable populations.

SpaceyG booted from Peach Pundit

Speaking of predictable… in August, SpaceyG had her front-page posting rights on Peach Pundit revoked. Coverage in the local blogosphere had a particular tone that other stories about political bloggers lacked; it didn’t take a rocket scientist (and we even have one of those!) to smell the sexism. It manifested itself not only in SpaceyG’s initial ousting from Peach Pundit by overlord Erick Erickson, but also in the manner in which it was “covered” – downplaying the significance, blaming the victim, saying “nuh-uh!” – all the usual Bingo squares. C’est la vie, right women bloggers?

Bloggers taking blogging back

To close on a happy note, I started to notice this year that one by one, bloggers are getting fed up with the little boxes into which “digital entrepreneurs” and “social media experts” have tried to shove them. You can do this, you can’t do that, play by the rules if you want to be taken seriously! We’ve reached the tipping point, and more and more bloggers aren’t having it. We’re taking blogging back from those who have tried to co-opt it. My prediction for 2009? Even more momentum of this sentiment!

Dec 28 2008 10:48 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Class and Oppression Olympics

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a kind of Oppression Olympics with class-related stuff. For one thing, when you start talking about class, this is what most people associate with the word “privilege.” And I feel like discussions involving class sometimes descend into a kind of oneupsmanship.”Our lights were always getting turned off because we could only afford rent or bills, not both!” “Oh yeah? We lived off of food stamps when I was growing up!” And so on and so forth.

I get annoyed by class discussions for reasons at both ends of the spectrum. This bit from a recent comment at Anji’s blog really rubbed me the wrong way:

However, your own photo you posted to this entry (and the other flickr photos) shows the pro-sex work protesters to be white, and visually middle class.

“Visually middle class?” What the hell does that mean? That’s just supporting the idea that you can tell what a person’s current financial/economic situation is, as well as their background and personal history, just by looking at them. And frankly I find that extremely condescending. There isn’t one way to be middle class, working class, poor, whatever. Thinking you can clock someone based on a set of external markers is reductive at best and downright offensive at worst.

I’ve mentioned before that for all the talk of the definition of privilege as not referring simply to economic advantage and/or being a personal fault, it seems like an awful lot of bloggers who should know better fall into this trap. This was particularly evident to me with that “class privilege” meme that was going around a while ago. Talk about annoying. No, class is not something you can determine by ticking a few boxes on a form. An empirical fact such as “when you were growing up you had a lot of books in the house” carries, by itself, not much information. It’s all the backstory, the complex stuff that can’t be represented by a tick-mark, that contains the real information.

I also keep coming back to what Queer Dewd said: “Class is not a sweater that you take on and off.” I hate the way some bloggers have been guilty of pointing to a person’s current perceived (because let’s be honest, for the most part they don’t know much about anyone else’s personal situation) economic status as if it exists in a vacuum. There is also a conflation of income and wealth which I find very frustrating and, again, reductive. (We’ve discussed this at some length at Octogalore’s blog, but I can’t find the thread now.)

On the other hand I’m also annoyed from the other side, when people try to act like economic privilege doesn’t exist, or minimize its importance. Sometimes I wonder if I’m slipping into the Oppression Olympics game, but I really do feel it’s worthwhile to talk about the differences in perspective from people who have never really known what it felt like to not “have enough” as opposed to people who have felt the very real effects of the lack of a safety net. To pretend these differences don’t matter, or to minimize their effect, is foolish.

Hugo wrote a post yesterday about college graduates who end up having an existential crisis after graduation and I just can’t get too worked up about feeling sorry for them. Yes, I know I went to college; but these are the kinds of people who annoyed me in college. They didn’t seem to have any sense of perspective. They never had to worry about paying the rent or paying their tuition or anything like that, because mom and dad were taking care of it. Or like on the Suze Orman show the other night, this couple was asking whether they should focus on saving for retirement or saving for their child’s college education. To me the idea of saving for a kid’s education is so foreign. I wonder what it would feel like to be someone who had a college fund or whose parents paid their tuition. Personally I think college students should pay for their own education, take out loans, get jobs, figure out how to make ends meet, because otherwise you get this protracted adolescence and a lack of understanding of the real world. Or maybe I just think that because I’ve always been so independent, by nature. I wouldn’t have wanted to be supported by my parents even if it had been financially possible. I was an adult and I wanted to live accordingly – which is why I used to get so annoyed by people talking about college students as if they weren’t adults. I probably even wrote about it on this blog back in 2002.

The above, about paying for college, might sound draconian. You might ask, why shouldn’t someone’s parents pay for their college, if they can afford it? And, yeah, I get that. It’s not like I’m advocating making a law or something. :P I’m just saying I think being able to fend for yourself is an important skill that should come sooner rather than later. And it’s a skill many people don’t have the luxury of foregoing.

So is it Oppression Olympics, to say that? Or just fact?

Dec 09 2008 10:36 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , | 13 Comments »

Online identity redux all over again

I was trying to fit this into my previous post on the topic but couldn’t find a way to work it in. Anyway, I want to address something Nikki said a while ago.

I guess my point is that some people have a valid, personal reason for not feeling like it’s all that and a bag of chips to have every detail of their personal lives on the internet. I don’t mind if anyone else does, but maybe it’s not for me. I realize what probably sets my take on it apart from some of these people is that I’m not *judging* anyone for having 100-0% of their lives online, I just understand why I make the choice *I* make, without feeling like it’s incumbent upon me to force it on someone else.

Read her full comment here.

I want to respond to her comment because I sincerely hope that throughout all the times I’ve spoken about this issue, it’s been clear that my attitude is actually the same as what she says above. The crux of the matter is not how much or how little you choose to share about yourself online. We all have our own boundaries and set them as we see fit. What matters is that we respect each other’s right to set those boundaries differently.

I was getting very pissed off about this back at BlogSavannah, because when Gennie was leading her session she mentioned that she doesn’t use swear words in front of her son, and some woman in the group kept harping about it and saying she wasn’t “being honest,” because she uses those words on her blog. This woman really pissed me off, because who is she to make that call for Gennie? Get off her back already!

I would never attempt to “force” any degree of personal revelation on someone. That goes against the entire spirit of what I see as the power of blogging. These decisions are for each of us to make, on our own time, in our own spaces.

Believe it or not – and I say this only partially sarcastically – there are things about my life that I do not share online. I am a very private person in the sense that only a few people truly know me, good, bad, ugly, everything. It is very important to me to write openly online and speak my truth; but that does not negate my privacy and the fact that I have boundaries. Personally I don’t think this is such a radical notion, but apparently to a lot of people it is (I mentioned it here, and of course there’s always the whole sex thing with dudes).

Why do we assume that if you choose to share some things about yourself that are traditionally coded as “private” – i.e., ew ick keep it out of public conversation; that’s just not fit for polite company; that might make people uncomfortable; chin up, dearie – then you have nothing left that you keep to yourself or to a small group of friends/family, for whatever reason? And that just as the words you speak to a larger community are yours to share as you see fit, so are your reasons for not speaking about other things yours alone to determine?

Obviously, I think there is tremendous value in people – especially women – defying the traditional rules of what you can and can’t talk about. But only if they want to. If someone feels stifled, then I want them the find the tools and the strength to not feel stifled anymore. As Muriel Rukeyser wrote, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” (I was recently reminded of this excellent quote via a post by AV Flox; eventually I want to write a direct response to that post.) Far too many of us feel stifled, so let’s split open the world one blog at a time – and no, I do not think that’s hyperbole!

Oct 24 2008 11:08 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Quote of the day

From AV Flox:

It’s not easy to put your thoughts and experience out into the world, especially in a culture that believes that they have the right to destroy everything that isn’t hidden or somehow protected.

“Would you graffiti a car in the street just because it wasn’t parked inside a garage?” I asked a friend once.

“That analogy doesn’t even make sense,” she responded. “The car belongs to someone.”

“So do the words used to represent the thoughts this person is expressing. So does that blog. The internet is a space and a post is a person’s property. And by leaving a vicious and useless anonymous comment, you’re vandalizing it.”

She didn’t respond.

Oct 11 2008 02:31 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Smart sex content and getting paid

So by now you’ve probably heard about seemingly everyone in the freakin’ world getting canned (or voluntarily leaving due to “circumstances”).

Dacia wrote about it the other day and included a master list of sorts. Let us also not forget Regina Lynn leaving Wired, and Playboy Radio putting the kibosh on her Sex in the News segment. And you could really say it all started nearly two years ago, when the Village Voice killed Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Lusty Lady” column.

In particular, it was really bizarre to hear about Melissa being laid off from Valleywag, because just a day or two before that, I’d heard about Tristan’s Village Voice column being axed, and as Rusty and I were walking from the MARTA station to work, I said something like, “It seems like the only one who still has a job is Melissa, at Valleywag.” Then Rusty said something about all of us starting a site together and how awesome that would be.

Ahem.

Dacia isn’t so worked up about the idea of starting a new site – and neither am I, honestly. Admittedly, after hearing about all the latest news, I did say this on Twitter (tweets listed in reverse chronological order, for those not on the bandwagon):
(more…)

Oct 06 2008 03:51 pm | Category: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments »
Next Page »