Being Amber Rhea

You’re probably thinking, “But Amber, you had just started there!” Yeah, I did - in January. And two months later, I’m quitting. All my posts are here, but there won’t be any more coming.

The comments in my last post spiraled out of control, quickly. Right now it’s up to 92 comments (but for the past twenty or so it’s been the same two guys beating their chests at each other). From the beginning, I probably should’ve created a Gmail filter to automatically delete comment notifications (which I did later), but I didn’t want to miss any good comments.

Then the attacks started pouring in.

I didn’t want to comment, because I knew it would be pointless. But then I left one snarky comment, and then a few more. Even as I was doing it I was feeling the emotional toll, and yet it was like the car accident phenomenon of not being able to look away.

And then I got some emails from fellow Download Squad bloggers who said they found my comments “reprehensible,” “close-minded,” and “mean-spirited.” They characterized the trolls, slut-baiters, and anti-feminists* as “disagreeing” and “addressing [me] civilly and, for the most part, maturely.”

So.

After lots and lots of thought on the matter, I’ve decided that I’m not going to continue writing at Download Squad. The kind of thing that happened on that last thread is just not a healthy environment for me to be in. I know how those kinds of situations affect me, and it would be extremely detrimental for me to continue putting myself in such a position.

It’s not that I’m all that surprised, really. I mean I’m not stupid or naïve. I guess I just… thought? hoped? wanted to believe? it would be different this time. But I’ve gotten that kind of reaction so many times, in so many different places, that at this point I can’t even try to enumerate them. That’s why I made the commenter Bingo card; it really is like marking squares off a board. They say the same shit every time. And some people have a thick skin, and that stuff doesn’t get to them, and they stand tall in the face of it and shout their message out to people who are determined not to hear it, in the hope that maybe 1 person out of 1,000 will listen and really think about what they’ve said…

But I’m not one of those people.

I’ve mentioned before that this is why I don’t consider myself a hardcore activist. I’m not cut out for it. I can say with reasonable certainty that being on the front lines of this kind of stuff would turn me suicidal.

I do very well in face-to-face one-on-one interactions where I know the other person sees me as a fully equal human being and is willing to listen respectfully and thoughtfully to what I’m saying. I enjoy those interactions; I enjoy respectful, intelligent debate. I do not enjoy or do well in verbal onslaughts where people are telling me I need to shut up, go away, show ‘em my tits, get laid, change who I am if I want to be taken seriously, and by the way why am I so ugly, why am I such a whore, etc. etc. etc.

For the sake of my own health (not to mention self-respect!), I won’t allow myself to be spoken to that way. And as I learned a long time ago, the “just ignore them” adage does not work.

As I said in the fateful Download Squad post, it’s important to keep hacking away at these bullshit barriers. And I completely believe and agree with the sentiments expressed here. But, I can’t do it on a large scale. This is something I know about myself; I can fight this fight with individuals and very small groups, but not with large groups or (god forbid) “the public.”

It’s an important fight. But it’s one we all have to do our own way, and that is not my way.

Maybe Download Squad can find someone with a thicker skin to write what was my column.

* Funny thing… I was called a radical feminist on that thread. That’s one thing that does make me laugh. Inevitably, in discussions (and I use that word loosely) with people like the lovely DLS commenters, I will eventually be called a radical feminist. Usually I’ll be called a lesbian as well, or the question will be raised of when I last had a good deep-dicking. Oh, if only they knew… actual radical feminists can’t stand me! And they accuse me of being some kind of girly-girl embodiment of the common man’s wet dream, which also cracks me up. Little do they know, the common man is calling me one of them!

In this week’s Creative Loafing, Cliff Bostock ruminates on the concept of “civil discourse.” I’m using snark quotes there because his point is basically that while a lot of people pay a lot of lip service to the idea, it doesn’t actually happen very much.

Being an eternal optimist, I’m confident that civil discourse is possible - but only if those of us who are interested in it put our collective foot down and refuse to tolerate abuse, hate speech, threats, silencing, and other such bullshit that most certainly does not fall under the umbrella of Free Speech.

Further, this means wishy-washy assholes like Kos who’re showing their true colors in light of the recent discussions about online bullying and such, should continue to be called on their bullshit.

Civil discourse does not preclude disagreement, emotion, and anger. Nor does it mean never dropping F-bombs or constantly being that saccharine, passive-aggressive version of “nice.” It doesn’t mean never calling someone an asshole; if they’re behaving like an asshole, they should be told as much. What it means is not threatening people; not silencing people; not mistaking ad hominem attacks for “debate;” giving people the benefit of the doubt if they haven’t been behaving like overgrown 2-year-olds; and remembering, first and foremost, that behind the words on the screen is a person with feelings.

Frankly I don’t think we can accomplish this goal by letting bullies walk all over us. Trying to take the high road and ignore their childish antics is fine, so long as the actions/words in question are merely childish antics. When it gets to the point of completely derailing conversation, trying to take over someone else’s space - and certainly when it gets to the level of threats - silence is not sufficient.

The word “threat” here refers to threats of physical violence as well as threats of blackmail - e.g., “If you don’t do what I want you to do, I will reveal personal information about you that could result in potential harm (e.g., loss of a job) to you and your family.”

So, getting back to Cliff Bostock’s column… What spurred me to write about this particular approach on Take Back the Blog! day was this:

I have learned that the only thing bigots understand is being treated with the contempt they treat others.

It makes sense, because really, why try to be reasonable and rational with a person who has proven to be neither reasonable nor rational?

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that an important thing to keep in mind, of course, is being mindful of the line between putting the assholes in their place, and not expending too much energy on them. This is a line that I think all of us are constantly redrawing, and we should feel free to approach one another about where that line should be. I, for one, refuse to let would-be abusers keep me from living my life and being the change I seek in the world.

There are some truly vile people traipsing around the internet (often hiding behind “anonymous” or other unidentifiable handles), and I am left in awe of some of the horrendous shit that they say. But it just goes to show, once again, that you can’t control other people. Especially when those other people are very clearly fucked. UP. As in, beyond-the-pale, springs-coming-out-of-their-heads, “what’s it like on your planet?” BATSHIT.

So, if it’s true (and it is) that you can’t control other people, and that some people are fucking crazy - what then? What to do?

Well, you ignore them if they’re obnoxious pissants, which most of them are. But what if (speculating here, as none of the particular people I have in mind fit this description) they have real power? Power to make decisions and do things that will affect your life in a very real way? What then? Resistance, yes, but… how?

I wish I had an answer.

Quote of the day, from Teresa Nielsen Hayden of Making Light, a blog known for having some of the most civil conversations on the web.

Anonymous nastiness is easy to write, and will always find an appreciative audience. I don’t care. It’s not a manifestation of the free and open discourse of the internet; it’s a thing that destroys that discourse. To be specific, it’s the same old trashmouthed bullying we all know from junior high and high school. Putting it on the net doesn’t cause it to develop any novel complexities or interesting emergent behaviors. It’s just the same old sh*t.

If you have a weblog or live journal, or you administer a website that has comment threads, stand up for yourself and your readers. The jerks are never going to like you, or praise you, or admit that you’re doing the right thing. And if you’re waiting for someone to give you permission to suppress and thereafter ignore malfeasants, you have it right now. If you want, I’ll make up a certificate. Go forth and civilize.

Figleaf is writing, again, about the constraints of contemporary American “masculinity,” and how it is harmful to men and society as a whole. This is interesting enough on its own, but especially in light of the “online bullying” discussions, and the ways in which the blogosphere seems to turn garden variety assholes into full-on hate monkeys… well, this is quite interesting.

Ten, maybe fifteen years ago I was profoundly influenced by an article in The Atlantic Monthly magazine about the culture of the adolescent boy. The article (now either lost in the ether and/or banished forever behind their subscription-only firewall) pointed out that because early adolescent boys have tremendous spending power compared to other demographics there’s natural market pressure to a) cater to them and b) encourage extension of that pre-adult period as long as possible.

Okay… keep going…

In strictly economic terms it’s a tough argument to refute. Very young men tend to live at home where their obligatory expenses are negligible, have quite a lot of free time, have surprisingly few responsibilities, and therefore while not exactly high-income never the less tend to spend whatever they do have on discretionary items. If I were in business I suppose I’d covet, and coddle, that demographic as well.

In nearly any other terms, The Atlantic article pointed out, it’s a bit of a catastrophe both for the young men themselves and for society as a whole. The issue being that young men of that age are maximally alienated. Physically and, for the most part, mentally they approach adult capability but, largely because they’re still emotionally, hormonally, and experientially immature, they tend to be tightly controlled by their elders and nearly powerless. The perfectly understandable result is a lot of anxiety, insecurity, and frustration that, when left unchanneled, is expressed with sarcasm, passive-aggression, extremely rich fantasies, physical distractions (including drugs, alcohol, sex, music), status-seeking posturing, and aggressive game playing. They tend to have enormous, though largely untested, self-confidence that manifests in often-aggravated mixtures of “nobody listens to me” and “if everyone would just listen to me.” They tend to have contempt or wariness for those they don’t perceive as being in the same boat they are. And intense affinity for, and loyalty towards, they believe are. Oh yeah, and they revel in opportunities to shock, surprise, or one-up adults and other authority figures.

So there’s your “identity politics.” And, about those self-declared radio shock jocks (and their online brethren, by extension)? It’s not difficult to see where this is going, now…

Enter Don Imus, the 70-year-old man who based his career, and his popularity, on pretensions of arrested development. The man who’s remark about the women of Rutgers was offensive not only for its unforgivable racism, its gratuitous sexism, and it’s uncivil diminishment of athletic accomplishment but also its sheer, pointless abdication of masculine maturity.

The problem with Imus’s remark, like way too many similar remarks over the years, was not its utterance but its origin in pre-adult male jealousy in the face of that which he believes he himself could not accomplish. The Rutgers athletes had advanced to the NCAA national championship, something Imus, not an athlete himself, did not and could not. Reaching into the standard toolbag of the alienated and resentful he sought for an insult that would, in his eyes, most diminish his guest in his eyes and those of his “market demographic.” And found what turned out to be a perfect one in the sense that it deeply cut those at whom he threw it, shocked and outraged responsible people, got him “sent to the principle’s office,” and earned him sorrowfully approving murmurs from his admiring ostensible peers about “going a little to far this time.”

Now, how does the Duke lacrosse team figure into this, as well?

And meanwhile look at the world he and his maturity-challenged cohorts have wrought through the lens of the Duke lacrosse team. The unsupervised boys Imus strives to both recruit and emulate semi-surreptitiously rounded up a couple of kegs and a couple of strippers and behaved like little boys getting away with something — not least because in a world populated by Imus’s, Sterns, Letterman’s, George Walker Bush’s, and sundry athletes and entertainers you can count the number of responsible public adult-male role models on the fingers of one mitten.

Real adults can accept when someone declines their overture in the presence of their peers without losing face or otherwise feeling diminished. Real adults can distinguish the difference between a stripper and a prostitute, not least by asking clearly and by insuring the clarity of the reply. Real sexual adults don’t think they have to sneak around or cut corners on their prospective partners to have sex. Even if Don Imus reinforces the impression that men can’t “get any” unless they do.

And to bring it all back around to real adult sex, since that’s the name of the blog, after all…

For that matter, real men don’t “get any,” they don’t “hit that,” they don’t “score,” and they don’t “get lucky.” Real men don’t “get a piece” of a chick, a MILF, a babe, a coed, a “nappy headed ‘ho.” Real adult men, “even” unmarried men, fuck other adults eye to eye, belly to belly or belly to back with nothing else on their mind at the moment but the enjoyment that can be shared, not taken or given, between equals.

The status quo for masculinity does no service to the genuine boys of Duke, the geriatric “boy” that is Don Imus, or the staggering number of men who imagine adulthood in the form of “Larry ‘Bud Melman” is the only alternative to the shameful destructiveness of extended juvenility.

A 10 out of 10, sir.

So, you know when feminists talk about how feminism is helpful to women, men, and society? Well, here’s a shining example. If you’re not reading Figleaf’s blog, you should be, because it’s A-List in the actual meritocratic sense. I wish there were more men blogging about the question(s) of what it means to be a man, and how/why that definition should be changing.

Too tired to write a full post (I went upside down again in pole dancing class tonight!), so I’m just going to quote myself, from comments on the previous thread:

What I’d like to to write about in my next post is the cry of “censorship!!” and “free speech!!” that, predictably, always goes up whenever these assholes are called on their behavior. It amazes me that so many people are, apparently, ignorant of the fact (or, more probably, just don’t care) that ‘free speech’ refers ONLY to government. As in, the government cannot persecute you for expressing your views. Free speech does NOT mean you’re allowed to have verbal diarrhea anywhere, any time, with no consequences whatsoever.

WRT blogs? The ‘delete’ and ‘ban’ commands are there for a reason. I use this analogy often, but it remains accurate: if someone comes over to my house and shits on the living room floor, they will be unceremoniously kicked out, and don’t let the door hit ‘em on the way out. They can stand in the yard screaming their head off, but nobody’s going to believe they’re being persecuted. In fact, the cops will be called and they’ll be escorted away and charged w/ trespassing.

Instead of writing more on that specific topic later, I might leave it at that. Brevity can be a good thing!

[Originally posted at the old blog.]

There have been a lot of conversations lately about online bullying… and I have plenty I want to say about the subject. But I think I’ll break this into several blog posts, rather than one big one.

It goes without saying that the perpetrators of online bullying - a term I don’t like, because “bullying” doesn’t even come close to accurately describing death threats - are cowardly and insecure. You know, just like the “bullies” were back in school - and some people never really grow up, do they? For all the talk of “No one can make anyone feel a certain way” and “Don’t let them bother you” and so on, the truth is, none of us lives in a bubble. Other people’s actions and words do affect us, and even if those words or actions are motivated by fear, insecurity, etc., ultimately it has fuck-all to do with whether or not they hurt us.

I don’t know what’s to be done about this… and I wish I had some answers. But I don’t know if there are any answers. Not any hard-and-fast ones, to be sure.

(It annoys me when people write in the second person, but I’m about to do it anyway.) The most frustrating thing, to me, is not being able to defend yourself. Not because you’re not able to stand up for yourself, articulate your points, use your brain, etc… but because the other party refuses to take your defense seriously, no matter what you do or say. That’s how it was for me throughout much of school. It didn’t matter that I was smart and my attackers were scared, stupid fools. They had power - not because I “gave” it to them, but because it didn’t matter what I did; I wasn’t taken seriously. In retrospect, I don’t think much of anything could’ve gotten through to them short of an actual ass-kicking or some other sort of physical humiliation, but I wasn’t physically capable of that.

I was a kid. I was at school. I didn’t have a choice. I wasn’t allowed to stand up for myself, and no one stood up for me. That’s the kind of thing that drives people to extreme acts.

Only I didn’t have the guts for extreme acts, either. I was scared.

And sure, with “online bullying,” things are different… to a point. We’re adults, not kids (even if plenty of blogosphere denizens seem to be in a state of arrested development circa 7th grade). We can choose who to ignore or acknowledge, whose words matter and whose are just noise. But even so, when there’s enough noise, it can drown out anything else, and cause real harm. So, what to do then?

I’ll write about it some more in another post.

[Originally post at the old blog.]