If your friend is on fire, I'd avoid pouring more fuel on the flame...

Holly and Amp and about a million other people, I'm sure, have posts up about the most recent... conversation? taking place in the feminist blogosphere.

I hesitate to call it a conversation for the most part, because a conversation is, by definition, an exchange of ideas, but there's not really that much exchange happening, because lines have been drawn and sides have been taken, and that never really goes well for anyone.

I'm not going over the details of this particular incident- Holly's post is a good place to start- it's filled with links to a lot of the blogs that'll do a much better job than I could hope to of explaining exactly what happened and why people are upset. What I'm interested in talking about is building bridges. Specifically, how we go about it.

These sorts of events, and it's becoming increasingly obvious to me that they're a pretty regular thing at this point, make it clear that we have a need for building bridges. There's a lot of a anger, and there's a lot of criticism, but, unfortunately, a lot of it gets dismissed or ignored. And I can understand how that happens. I think that most of us feel really invested in the work we're doing or trying to do.

The things we write, the networks we build, the comics we draw, the conferences we organize, the music we make... it's important to us, and we're pouring our hearts and souls and blood and tears and anger and joy and excitement into it all the time. And, no, we don't all come from the same place and the stakes aren't the same for all of us- some of us, and I'll readily admit that this includes me, are coming at it from a more detached place. I'm not a woman, and I'm not sure that I can ever realy understand the lived experiences of a woman. That will always taint my understanding and color my perception. For others, their work is their lived experiences. Their work is vital because it's about surivival. I can walk away... not everyone can.

But, even recognizing that, I think it's clear that for most of us, it's personal. I don't mean that in a bad way or in a divisive or dismissive way- it's the truth though. Our words and our work are very personal, and our passion for what we're saying is high. And now, there's history, too. And so, when people start arguing and when the air gets thick and hot and tempers flare and people are responding in anger... it is personal.

Maybe it shouldn't be, and maybe these kinds of conversations would be a lot easier or more productive if we could be clinically detached, but I just don't see how that can happen. I imagine if I read a post that I thought had appropriated someone I care about's work, I'd be pissed. And if the person doing the stealing was associated with a group that I felt had a history of appropriation, or that I had a personal problem with, I suspect that my anger would be... significant. And if the appropriation was pointed out, and the person in question, rather than saying "oh, damn, you're right, and I should have linked to some of the people working on this" and providing links, acted defensive and hostile? Well, I'd probably be fuming, to say the least.

At the same time, if I saw dozens of posts accusing me of stealing other people's works, and talking about how selfish, or stupid, or arrogant or whatever I was, I'd be angry and hurt. And, no, I doubt I'd react with cold detachment to the allegations. I can't fault someone who feels attacked for being defensive or upset about serious allegations. Because I am a human being, and I know that there are times when I simply don't act rationally or when I'm unable to see the bigger picture because my feelings are hurt, and I think that's normal, if not particularly helpful to larger issue discussions.

And maybe this is just my perspective as a feminist guy, but, it's sometimes very hard not to take some issues personally. When we're talking about sexism and misogyny and patriarchical systems and privilege, and someone is talking about what "men" do... yes, it's difficult sometimes not to take that personally. When people say "we need to educate men about rape" I sometimes feel like "Wait, what? But... I'm a man, and I got it." And, yeah, sometimes conversations about race end up feeling the same way. I'm not about to deny that- I admit and own that the feelings are my own, and that it's my responsibility not to let that feeling dominate the discourse.

But, that's the personal level. There is, as both Amp and Holly point out, a much bigger issue that's not personal. There's the bigger issue of how women of color are treated by largely white feminist circles. There's a bigger conversation about appropriation and about how well or poorly we address the intersectionality of race/gender/sex.

And I think that's where the people- like me- who actually aren't directly involved in a particular argument, come in. As I'm looking over the conversation at Feministe, I notice that there are a lot of people making it clear that they're taking sides, which, I think, is a natural reaction. If someone I have personal attachments to looks like sie is being attacked, my first reaction is to want to jump to that person's defense or point out the ways that the attacks are unfair/baseless/whatever.

But, the reality is this: It's not helpful.

There's a really interesting comment by Pinko Punko over at Feministe that I'm still rereading and thinking about:

It is clear that many people want to deal with big picture stuff because they are personally detached from the specific situation, no matter how personally invested they are in the larger framework.

It also seems pretty undeniable that there are personality conflicts that taint motives. Note that motive and argument are not the same. Beyond this, as usual, in blog comments it is always a 5 million way argument and many things get conflated. So you have 100 people on each side arguing that the other side is conflating their arguments with things they haven’t personally said. I;m sure we could spend weeks parsing everything that came before this thread and identify the asymmetry in every persons understanding of where we are now.

Given what has been said, I have to say that I find it ridiculous in practice to level serious allegations against someone and expect them to deal with it like an emotionless robot. Holly has illuminated an alternate way of lighting an analogous situation that seems fruitful, the only problem being the situation isn’t really analogous because it just didn’t go down that way for Amanda.

This thread is full of intelligent people but how intelligent are we if we are demanding that right his second Amanda needs to act totally rationally in some predetermined way when it is obvious, at least to me, that there is no way I could be acting in an emotionless fashion under these circumstances, and I don’t really expect than many others would either. I do not think she is overstating what has been said about her, even if not everyone is saying it, that just doesn’t matter, because many people have.

Additionally, if one is already friends or enemies with AM, how are we to judge either their partisan defense of her, as we’d all love our friends to defend us when attacked and the alternate side, the people that she rubs the wrong way, for any number of reasons, reasons that predate the latest business. They all have arguments to make. They ll have motives that can be questioned, separately from their arguments.

The last batch of people just wants to survey the field and talk about the other stuff, the bigger stuff, the stuff touching AM and BFP but much bigger than that. This is commendable, but how reasonable is it to act like right this second these are the issues we’d like to demand AM deal with, and if she doesn’t right this second we’re gonna find her responses “telling.” I just don’t think it is reasonable, though it may be rational.

I’ve spent the last few days reading up on stuff to understand as much as I can just about the personalities involved and the baggage people have with one another because this seems to be the dominant forced in this specific debate.

Everybody wants a piece right now, and they want an answer to many legitimate questions, questions about the bigger picture, questions about how ideas are related to, how they are trafficked, how blogs work as blogs (whether they are like shorthands for conversations between people, but they are also like legitimate publishing) and what does that even mean? It just seems unfathomable that anyone could expect AM to be able to give a satisfactory response just right this second. Not in you know, a couple of days, or maybe a week, or maybe one on one.

I’ve suggested the ol’ back door policy before, and have been called a concern troll on this very blog. I can see that argument, but I can see a different, more pragmatic argument based on just what do you want your comments to accomplish and just what do you really think they’ll accomplish?

I’m all for disagreements in public. I think this would be great. It is not gonna work in all cases, and everyone here that thinks that this thread is a great way to get the calm, emotionally divested response from AM has just not been reading the internets the last few days.

I agree with a lot of that, but I think that one of the things that can happen, is that those of us without a direct and personal stake in the argument can talk about the big issue. I don't expect either BFP or AM to be in a place where they can remove themselves from the personal attachments- maybe they can, and if they are able to, that's great, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that it's hitting a little close to home right now. But, there's no reason why the rest of us can't try to address the bigger issue, I think.

In fact, at some point, we have to.

And it's not like I have a magic solution that will build bridges and make us one big happy feminist family. Hell, I have my doubts and reservations that we'll ever be some kind of utopian feminist collective. Ignoring that there's a lot of bad blood between some people and groups, there's the simple reality that, for example, I will never find myself a perfect happy ally with feminists who think it's okay to accuse transpeople of being mentally ill or for whom advocating and working for the rights of sex-workers is anathema to the feminist cause. But, I do think that we can be a lot better than we are. And, honestly, as many WOC bloggers have repeatedly said, it's not that hard..

Example: When I posted about Seal the other day, I linked to BA's blog. But, I remembered that, in other threads, I was pretty sure that I'd read BA mention that there were times when she didn't want to be linked. My solution?

I e-mailed her and said "Hey, I'm writing about this, and I mention your blog, is it cool if I link." It took all of forty seconds. And you know what? She e-mailed me back and said go for it.

I just noticed that Sheelzebub, in the comments at Feministe, has a really great comment that has advice that I was going to mention:

Amanda, if it wasn’t intentional, fine. Whatever. But much of the reason why you run into so much rancor from people is the way you react when your posts or actions are criticized by your allies. I remember the “joy-killing” line over criticism of the cover of your book. Now you, Lindsey, and Hugo seem to think that this whole thing is feuled by jealousy, that BFP, Sylvia, Donna, and BA aren’t acting in good faith, and that they’re somehow out to get you.

I said it at Hugo’s place (in a far pissier post) and I’ll say it here: If you just explained where you got your ideas from AND THEN added links to BFP, a blogger whom you’ve read for at least two years, this whole thing would have died down. Even something along the lines of, “BFP spoke about this at WAM, you can read the text of the speech here, you should check it out.” But instead, there are accusations and rhetoric that are reminiscent of Kos’s “sanctimonious women’s studies set” bullshit.

They aren’t calling you out on this because you’re the big blogger with a book deal. BFP wasn’t some random blogger whom you’d never heard of; she’s written plenty about immigration in the past two years you’ve been reading her. And the thing is, I’ll bet the mortgage that I’ve done the same thing you’ve done. I get that you feel defensive. I DO TOO when I’m called on my shit. But it’s not as if we don’t know who these folks are–they don’t do this shit for sport, and it would be really nice if we could all consider what they’re saying, and what they’ve been going through, instead of invoking Stalin or some such crap. IOW, BFP, Donna, BA, Sylvia. . .they’re all acting in good faith.

As for Belledame–look, I get that you two don’t like each other. Certainly, there are people who have criticized you whom I don’t particularly like or trust. But that’s beside the point. It doesn’t negate what WOC bloggers are saying. If I was calling out, say, Kos on something as part of a much larger issue, another blogger posted in support of me, and Kos accused that blogger of sucking me into a personal vendetta, you bet your ass that would piss me off no end. Same goes for right-wing baiting–Christ on a cracker, I get enough of that shit from misogynist “progressives” who think that not worshipping at the altar of the sexual status quo means that I love me some Phyllis Schafly. This isn’t a tactic of the right wing–have BFP or BA encouraged people to send you rape threats? Are they putting pressure on Seal Press to pull your book? NO. They aren’t interested in hurting your career. From where I stand, they’re beyond frustrated with the response they get from White feminists like you, LIKE ME, like Lindsey, when they voice their concerns.

It would really, really help things a LOT if people would consider what WOC bloggers are saying. And if you don’t want to, or cannot, for the love of all things holy and profane, stop throwing gasoline on the fire.

Like Sheelzebub, I know that I've thrown fuel on the fire before. I'm sure I'll do it again. When it happens, I hope that I'll have the good sense to step back and rethink what I'm doing and get back on the right track. Because, here's the thing: Even if some of the people in these discussions are acting in bad faith... even if there were some personal vendettas coloring how people look at the issue... even if there were people acting out of jealousy or out of personal bias or out of whatever... how, exactly, does throwing fuel on the fire help?

Holly is absolutely right, if you've got a megaphone, if you've got a big audience, if you've hit the maintstream and you're getting out a message that a more marginalized group of people have been working on for a long time, you've got some obligation to point in their direction. Whether a particular article was inspired by that community or by something else, it's just the right thing to do. One of the major benefits of blogging and the internet is the ability to create networks and to link to the things that you've read and been inspired by.

It costs nothing to say "Damn, you're right" and link to people who've made it a point to work on a particular issue, and, in fact, helps get those marginalized voices heard and get their work more attention and respect. Likewise, to the people who think that they're helping AM by jumping to her defense or by dismissing or deriding the people who've raised concerns: it's not actually helping. It's reinforcing what has become a really nasty problem. It's thowing fuel on a fire.

There's a reason why I've been trying to take time to think about these kinds of blow-ups when they're happening, rather than jumping right in and wading into the fray. Because, even if my first instinct is to jump in and back up the people I like, that's rarely the best tactic.

Like I said, I can completely understand where AM and BFP might have strong feelings about what's happening, and I'm not in a position where I feel comfortable condemning or lambasting them for taking the events personally, but for the rest of us? If we're acting from a place of jumping to the aid of our friend and we're dismissing or ignoring the Big Picture aspect in favor of the personal?

We're becoming part of the Big Picture Problem.

Monty: Feminism Meets Animal Rights -or- On Personal Criticism...

First: The thread that started it all...

Two interesting responses, from zuzu and Jill.

There's a lot of comments there, and even trying to do justice to the width and breadth of the comments would be a lesson in futility, so I'm going to leave it to you to really get into the meat of that argument, while I go all meta for a moment before returning to the point.

I think that arguments like this one are interesting in the frequency with which they seem to come up. In discussions about everything from clothes to makeup to sex to... well... just about anything you can come up with, the phrase "the personal is political" is probably applicable. Unfortunately, the inverse of that statement seems to be just as true- the political is, all too often, very personal.

Without weighing in on the issue of animal rights yet, I think it's worth noting how personally people in general take criticisms of potentially politically charged actions. Even when they're not directed specifically at them. When we have a personal investment in something, it can be easy to take criticism of that thing- whether it’s an object, an action, or a belief- personally, even if the criticism was intended more broadly.

This is hardly the first time this has happened, I just noticed that there was a pattern to it this time. Find a thread where someone is critical of just about any activity, and you’re bound to find at least a couple of comments along the lines of “But I do that, and I’m still a feminist!” or a comments defending the action in question because of who the person partaking is. There’s some general resistance to criticism being directed at the actions of the people we like, as SarahMC points out:

Yeah, it’s “the personal is political” where feminism is concerned, but not dog breeding because someone we like bought from a breeder and it’s not cool to criticize.
People on “our side” pass judgement on people’s behavior all the time. Usually sexist, misogynist behavior, on feminist blogs. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or is it only acceptable where feminism, specifically, in concerned?

And, ultimately, I have a hard time arguing against that- it’s a good point. Even still, it’s not like I don’t understand why people resist criticism. Sometimes people will clarify: “I’m not attacking your right to do X, or you, personally, I’m questioning something broader/bigger than that” but a lot of times, I think it’s hard not to take those comments a bit personally, even when you know it’s about a broader issue, and not just you. I know that I sometimes find myself feeling defensive when, say, video games are discussed, or when someone makes a comment about “what men do.” I think that’s natural.

Blogger Elaine's comments seem to have led to exactly this kind of result, though. Hers is the eighth one in on the thread:

Jessica,

Monty is adorable and I don't mind some puppy time on this blog, but as a feminist on a feminist blog, I think you owe your readers at least a cursory feminist analysis of your choice to treat another living being as a product of consumption.

I'm not familiar with most of the Monty posts- I might glance at the pictures (and, yeah, Monty is a cute puppy, no doubt!), but I don't usually read the comments, because... well... I figured they'd mostly be "Aw! He's so cute!" I gather that Elaine has apparently attempted to engage with Jessica about this in the past, but I haven't read those posts. Now, I'm sort of loathe to think that any blogger really owes any reader anything, unless a specific debt has been incurred, but, that quibble aside, I didn't think that Elaine's comment was really that outlandish or demanding. I gather that I'm actually sort of in the minority there, though.

The really interesting thing here is how familiar the general form of this conversation is.

Here's how I break it down: Blogger posts some personal statement, x, of like/dislike. A responds with questions/criticisms about X. B responds in annoyance at A. C responds agreeing with A and dismissing/attacking B... ...G responds by calling A's (or B's, or Blogger's) feminist cred into question: "real feminists don't x"/"I thought that feminists were against x?"

The topic changes, but the conversation is the same, in a lot of cases. Whether you're talking about pornography, or children, or, apparently, pets. I haven't even been in the feminist blogosphere that long, and I'm seeing this- have others noticed this pattern, too? I have to admit, it's very frustrating to see in action.

From that thread, I get the impression that animal rights are a pretty major part of for Elaine, ngrey, SarahMC, et al's personal identity (apologies aplenty if I've misread any of you!). For some people, animal rights and human rights aren't different. Human beings, after all, are animals, so, the logic goes, how can we separate the two?

So, this makes sense, right? You're a person who cares deeply about animal rights. For you, animal rights can't necessarily be neatly separated from feminist issues. There's an overlap. You go to a site of a feminist author that you respect, and she's engaging in an activity that you find questionable.

Can we really, in good conscience, expect a person for whom animal rights are important to stay silent? Do we expect them to just shut up about it? I’m not sure, but I suspect not. I don’t expect people not to call me out on things just because I try to be good. If I say something sexist or racist or homophobic, I would hope to be called on it. The difference this time is that Elaine’s argument is that there some aspect of speciesism or human exceptionalism instead of some other ism.

There was a comment on the feministing thread that basically said: Aren't we allowed to just enjoy stuff, or do we always have to question people about their actions? Aren't we allowed to make our own choices?

I hate to bring up past kerfuffles, but, well... like I said, a lot of this sounds familiar. In particular, I'm thinking about posts regarding people of color, but I think it also applies to some of the posts about sex-work/pornography, and probably to other topics, too. In the end, I think that the answer is that, no, you can’t really just enjoy stuff, sometimes. Sometimes you have to accept that your actions may carry political weight beyond what you thought or wanted, and that sometimes you’re going to get taken to task over things that you didn’t think were political actions. You can choose to engage those questions, or you can choose to ignore them, but they’re still going to be there.

I think that the thing that bothers me about these conversations is the ways that another person's concerns and criticisms are sometimes casually dismissed and hand-waved away in ways that we wouldn't accept feminist concerns being dismissed. Every so often, we see MRAs or just anti-feminists coming into threads and dismissing feminist concerns. A particularly sexist ad might be getting critiqued, when some guy will come up and tell everyone to chill out or relax, or suggest that it's "all in good fun." That kind of comment (rightly) gets ripped apart.

Midway through the thread, SarahMC takes some people to task for the thread:

Why is it OK for feminists to protest stuff that harms women but not OK for animal lovers to protest behaviors that harm animals? Seriously. These, "But that's what I want to do and nobody can stop me!" arguments are the same types of arguments used by anti-feminists all the time!
"But I like porn so nobody should examine or criticize it!" etc.
How can anyone be offended by this discussion? None of us advocate outlawing buying from breeders (I don't think). So nobody's being "oppressed" here. Listening to our opinions/viewpoints is not hurting you.

Which struck me as a pretty fair point, and even though I don’t find myself agreeing with everything that the animal rights crowd on there is saying, I found myself rereading some of their comments, and trying to see things from their point of view. Unfortunately, the thread sort of degenerates rapidly from that point...

There are a lot of things going on in that thread, and some of them I'm still struggling to come to terms with. At one point Elaine compares animal ownership to slavery, which prompts a number of comments along the lines of "That's incredibly offensive." It inspired Zuzu’s post, and has been pretty generally torn apart. And while I understand and agree with much of what Zuzu says in her post, I’m not all the way there yet.

See, the problem I’m having is that there’s Slavery, and there’s slavery. I’ll totally grant that Jessica’s owning Monty is not on the level of “someone whose ancestors survived the Middle Passage only to be sold at auction and kept in bondage for the rest of their lives.” That would be Slavery. Of course, I don’t think that the guy working the counter at McDonald’s is really experiencing that kind of oppression either, but I don’t know that I’ve seen much outrage over the term “wage slave.”

I sort of take it because there’s a recognizable difference between slavery and Slavery. You can be a slave without having undergone the level of torment and torture that happened during Slavery, and I just can’t see the value is trying to suggest that any conversation about slavery as a form of oppression has to involve oppression on the level of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

Nor do I think that there’s value in assuming that people on the animal rights side are arguing in bad faith or are racist jerks just because PETA has a bad track record, which is part of what I think might be happening. This, even after Elaine clarified: The definition of slavery is to treat another as property. Property is the essential concept of slavery. Property. The only way you can be offended is if you think it's OK to treat non-human animals as property.

Does an elephant in a circus that’s whipped and beaten, that’s forced to do strange tricks and perform at the whims of the ring-master suffer on the same level as that person who was kidnapped and brought across the Middle Passage? Maybe not. But is that elephant still being treated as a thing? As property? Is it being forced to do things that it would likely otherwise not want to do? Is it being kept in bondage for the rest of it’s life? Absolutely.

So, maybe not Slavery… but I have a hard time being overly critical of someone calling it slavery. After all, I think that people can and do torture animals, even if the torture never reaches the levels of the Spanish Inquisition. (And, I have to wonder, what happens if we discover, for example, that dolphins or chimps do meet the requirements for sapience? That they are “people” in a moral sense?). I’m still mulling this one over, though. Zuzu’s point about the history of racism and the ways that, in particular, POC have been Othered through the use of animal imagery isn’t lost on me… Like I say, I’m still mulling that over and running it around my brain.

I also found Jill’s take on the blow-up pretty interesting (and the comment thread looks to have been pretty good, too) although I can’t completely agree with her when she responds to Elaine’s comments with “I’d pick a human stranger over [an animal] simply because a human stranger is human, even though I think of my dogs as family and the closest thing there is to human.” I haven’t read all of Elaine’s comments on Animal Rights, but I think that there’s a difference between saying that it’s wrong to treat animals as property, and suggesting that every human being should regard every animal as being of exactly the same worth or value as, say, your own mother.

I don’t value all people the same. I’d pick my immediate family over most of my friends. I’d pick my friends over most of the bloggers I read. I’d pick most of the bloggers I read over a total stranger. I think that’s probably pretty normal- to have different levels of value for the different humans in our lives. For that matter, I value children and adult humans over fetal humans. It’s not that I don’t think that fetal humans have value- if you want a child, I think that your fetal offspring is probably pretty valuable to you- it’s that I think that born humans have greater value.

So, ultimately, suggesting that you’d pick any particular human or even any human over, say, a dog… well, it doesn’t seem to me to be much of a response against the claim that it’s wrong to treat animals like property. One doesn’t really have much to do with the other.

Maybe I sound like I’m being a little bit too critical? I don’t know… maybe I am being too critical. The thing is, animal rights are still a controversial issue, and there are a lot of people who are trying to raise awareness and do work on animal rights, and I just hate to see their issues being derided and ignored in ways that anti-feminists deride or ignore the issues that matter to me.

Mostly, I guess I’m just starting to notice this trend, and I’m not really sure if there’s a way to break out of it, or if we’re sort of doomed to repeat these sorts of arguments. Is there some way that we can try to raise questions about each others behaviors, and respond to those criticisms in a way that doesn’t feel quite as… I don’t know… antagonistic? Maybe there’s not, but I sort of hope that there is.

Let's clear a few things up...

Not that I think it'll make much difference to those involved, but:

1. I'm not a radical feminist. If I walked up to most self-identified radical feminists and tried to tell them that I'm a rad-fem as well, I strongly suspect one of two reactions: a. they'd laugh in my face at such a patently ridiculous claim, or b. they'd punch me in the face for making such a ridiculous claim. I know it's a difficult concept, but bear with me. Radical feminists are feminists, but not all feminists are radical feminists. I am a feminist, not a radical feminist.

2. Anyone who can read my blog and think that I want to ban video games is flat-out a moron. I mean, I can see how you might get the idea that I, like that uber-dipshit Jack Thompson, think that video games are evil, what with my post Games are Good For You. You know, the post where I talk about some of the ways that games are, uh, good? Or, maybe it's the post where I specifically say that I'm opposed to banning games? Actually, I suspect it's more about posts like the one I made about RE5. Of course, if you read the whole post, and the follow-up, you'd notice that I specifically mention how much I love gaming. That I'm critical of games sometimes is not to say that I don't love them or that I think they should be banned- in fact, it's rather the opposite. It's my love of games that inspires me to be critical and push for improvements. There's a pretty significant difference between constructive criticism and an attempt to ban games. Saying "I think things can be better" does not translate into "We should ban games" unless you've got all the mental facilities of a rock.

But, clearly, I haven't made it clear enough. If you're a gamer, and you're thinking that people like Tipper Gore or Jack Thompson are better allies than me? You've got all the intellectual power of raw hamburger. I don't want to ban any games. I want games to improve, and I'm doing my damndest to discuss them in an intelligent fashion so that we can, with any luck, get to the day when games are taken as seriously and seen as being as valid an art-form/entertainment medium as film. Super conservative groups and people like Gore and Thompson don't want to see games succeed- they want to destroy the industry. They think that games are responsible for all of societies ills.

But, hey, you're free to pick whatever allies you want.

3. I've seen some complaints about "Free Speech" popping up a bit. There seems to be some confusion about what constitutes free speech. I'm not imposing on your right to free speech by not letting insulting or hostile comments through moderation. I'd be imposing on your right to free speech if I tried to shut down your blog, or if I took actions to silence you on your own turf. You have every right to be as closed minded or obnoxious or offensive as you want on your own space, and if someone tries to shut your site down, and I know about it, I'll stand up for your right to say what you want. I won't stand up for your "right" to shut other people's sites down, though. When you try to silence other people, you are the one destroying freedom of speech.

And, for the record: I'm more than happy to entertain disagreements on my site. If you show respect for me and my site, you can disagree with me all you want. If you come on here and tell me to go fuck myself or post threatening comments, I'm not letting them through. If you don't like the things I say, I encourage debate. Just keep it at least moderately respectful. I think that's fair.

Anyway, I just thought I'd clarify those few things, on the off chance that it matters to anyone.

Race in Resident Evil: A Missed Opportunity For Understanding...

Might Ponygirl mentioned the rising controversy surrounding Resident Evil 5. Apparently, the game trailer is... raising some issues on race. I don't think it should be surprising, when you have a trailer that features a white guy (and, at least in earlier games, a cop) shooting and killing large groups of blacks, that some people are going to stand up and say Hey, this is pretty problematic from a racial standpoint.

Now, I readily believe that Capcom probably didn't intend for this to be controversial. I'd guess that they never even considered the racial implications (at least, I hope). But, ignorance isn't an excuse. I think it's perfectly fair to criticize the content of a game, and all of the social implications of that content. In this case, I think that it's completely fair to point to the game and say "Look, there's nothing wrong with having blacks be zombies in a game, but when you have a game where all of the zombies are black, and the hero is a white guy with a gun killing them, it starts to look a little ugly."

One of the really disappointing, though not surprising, things about all of this controversy, is the way that people have reacted. Rather than taking the words to heart and considering the racial implications and how the game might make people feel, a lot of gamers have gotten really angry about the criticisms and are on the attack. Read through some of the comments in Black Looks post, or at Villiage article. Immediately, people start making accusations of "playing the race card" or how there were "no problems when the 'inhumane savages' are white."

The reaction is just like I desribed before: There's a sense that these people are afraid we're trying to take away their toys, and they're reacting with anger and resentment, instead of engaging the conversation.

A lot of us are gamers. While I prefered Silent Hill to Resident Evil, I love blowing zombies away as much as anyone. I think that Resident Evil did a great job of capturing a sort of action-movie/zombie kind of feel, and I don't really have that many complaints about the games. I don't think that makes them immune from criticism, though.

These criticisms were an excellent opportunity for gamers to engage in some serious dialogue about how race is portrayed in gaming. Video games have a pretty shitty record when it comes to portrayals of race and ethnicity. The only way to improve that is through dialogue, and this was a perfect opportunity. I don't think that there's anything wrong with questioning why most of the heroes in video games are white men, and what that says about gaming culture. I think that it's important to try to move beyond what games have always done. One commenter asked (I'm paraphrasing) "Why should the hero be black?" That's a flawed question: The hero is almost always white. Given that, the real question ought to be, "Why shouldn't the hero ever be black?"

And, ultimately, this is directly related to conversations about privilege. I'd wager that most of the people getting outraged about this as being a non-issue or leveling accusations of this being more politically correct race baiting are white. It's easy to get offended and say things like "Well, why should he be black? Why should this bother you? Why can't zombies be black?" when you don't have to worry about seeing a hero like you, and when the history of violence and oppression that exists wasn't directed against your race.

I love video games, and I really, really want to see them thrive. Video games are a unique form of entertainment media in that they're interactive in ways that no other mass-market media is. As the player, you're directly controlling the way the story unfolds, and that creates potential for really powerful experiences. Unfortunately, video games are facing serious social stigma, precisely because of the ways that people like the commenters in those threads act. It's easy to dismiss games as violent bullshit when people respond to criticism with the kind of disgusting bile that they're spewing there.

It's only when gamers are willing to have serious discussions about the philosophical and social implications of games and gaming that video games are really going to be able to be taken as a serious art form. When the popular voices of gaming and gamers respond to criticism by throwing out racist and sexist insults and refusing to engage in a conversation about the very real, very serious social issues that games bring up, it only serves to further marginalize gaming as a hobby.

Nobody (Well, almost nobody- Jack Thompson be damned) is trying to take away people's right to play video games- what's happening is that people are trying to raise some social awareness about the reality that games reflect. Games don't exist in a void, and there's nothing wrong with raising questions about the situations that they present, or saying "You know, that game has some problematic things happening." These sorts of criticisms are an opportunity to raise your own level of awareness about the lives of other people, and to understand the different realities that people live in. Instead, a lot of people are becoming reactionary and offensive. Someone has said "Wow, there's a troubling racial dynamic happening here, and I don't like it" and people are reacting as though that person said "All video games are evil and should be banned." That comment could have been taken as a chance to engage Kym with why the trailer bothered her, and how the game- indeed, all games- could have been made better. Instead, people got hung up on their personal feelings, and they've ultimately missed the point.

Thoughts on My Guest Blogging

Well, my guest blogging stint at feministe is over, now. It was a pretty interesting week, and I'm having a lot of thoughts and feelings about it, and I thought I might as well throw them down, too.

To say that feministe has a bigger readership than any blog I've been a part of before is sort of like saying that the Enterprise is bigger than a city bus. Sure, it's objectively true, but it's a pretty ridiculous comparison to make in the first place. It's practically comparing apples to oranges. The majority of my blogging has been personal- a livejournal or a myspace page. My readership has consisted entirely of my friends or family, until recently. A really interesting thread on one of my blogs might have, oh, 8 or 10 comments, including my own.

Feministe, on the other hand, is huge. It's run by a team. It's been around a while. It's pointedly political, and it's got a serious readership. I can go days without getting 2 or 3 comments on a post. Feministe posts routinely get ten times that many within hours.

In other words: it's big.

So, getting invited to post there was, to say the least, intimidating. I'm not at all sorry I accepted the offer, but damn-all if I didn't feel a little bit like I was moving from swimming in the kiddie pool to jumping into the middle of the ocean. I was moving from farm-league to big-league, if only for a week.

I learned a few things this week, though, and I figured I'd share.

The first thing I learned is that no matter how uncontroversial you think a post is going to be- it's not. I honestly thought I was starting off light when I posted about "I Hate Children." It was something that bothered me, and that I had talked about with a couple of other people, but I really figured that the basic response would be "Yeah, that is kind of shitty behavior. People shouldn't do that." It didn't help that I was completely unaware of The Mommy Wars. So, what I thought was going to be a pretty harmless post turned into 760+ comment post that really pissed some people off.

And I think that's probably unavoidable.

When you're talking about issues that people have strong feelings about, on a site that gets gods only know how many visitors, and you're taking any kind of stance on something... you're going to piss people off. Even when you don't expect it. Guest blogging on a site that big is, in this regard, a rock and a hard place. I'm coming from relative obscurity to a site with tremendous levels of traffic. I'm only there for a week- I don't have the time to build up a readership and slowly work my way up. I'm expected to come in for a week, write some things that people can be interested in, and then take off.

And on a site with that kind of traffic you're going to annoy someone. You just are. If you post on "safe" topics and don't take a strong stand, you're probably going to be accused of being boring or wishy-washy. People who prefer a more in-your-face blogging style will find that kind of writing really uninteresting. If you decide to tackle something more controversial or you take a strong stance on something, you're going to annoy some of the people who disagree with you.

Which isn't to say that some of the criticism doesn't sting. It does. The worst I've had to deal with on my own sites was a friend disagreeing with me, or some jerk-wad coming on and telling me how to blog. That's annoying, but hardly scathing. It's a little different when you're guestblogging. While I was unprepared for the reaction the first post got, I knew I was dealing with more traffic than my blogs, and I expected to get some criticism for things like my sex-work post. But, when people start getting personal, it does sting a bit. I put a lot of effort into making posts that I thought would be interesting and would encourage some debate and discussion. I opened up a lot with several of those posts- exposing some pretty personal stuff, and so, I'm not gonna lie, when someone says Another week of Roy’s “Hey, guys! Inflammatory, not even close to feminist statement! What do y’all think?!?!” would have lost me as a reader. It’s definitely dropped my esteem of this blog... well... yeah. That stings.

I'm not even completely sure what that comment means- were my posts afeminist or anti-feminist? I don't know. Particularly since I thought that the only post that went poorly was the first one. Even my post about sex-work turned out to be overwhelmingly civil, and several people had mentioned that they were surprised by how interesting and focused that thread ended up being. And, really, those were the only two that I thought were particularly "inflammatory," and I don't think it's particularly fair to call either one inflammatory.

Anyway, there were a number of comments along those lines. There were a few blogs that linked back to my posts with some pretty harsh criticisms, and a few readers who were really unhappy about my being there. I guess I wasn't quite expecting that- I'm not used to it, and it took me by surprise. I think that's probably just something you have to learn to deal with when you're talking to such a large group.

Of course, it wasn't all bad, either. I also wasn't quite expecting the level of positive response my posts got, either. Overall, I think most people were really supportive and engaging with me. There were quite a few people who were absolutely thrilled by my posts and actually thanked me for making them. That was a pretty awesome feeling, I have to admit. One person said she was moved to tears by my post.

That's pretty freakin' awesome.

The biggest things I took away, in regards to my actual posts, were that it's ridiculously hard to come up with solid posts every day, unless you're going to post about the news. I generally don't like posting random bits about the news that come up. I love reading blogs that post quick hits on news articles and such, but I'm not particularly thrilled by making the posts myself. I like to talk. I'm wordy. I would much rather post something about my thoughts on issues and my reactions to things than just post a link to an article that's bugging me. Doing that five days a week plus moderating comments, plus trying to actually do work while I'm at work?

No. Freakin'. Way.

There's no way I could have kept up that kind of pace and still maintained any sanity. It's a lot of work posting on a site like that. I don't know exactly how long it took me to write any one post, but it's not the sort of thing that I can tear off in an hour. I read a lot of other blogs as I was writing those posts, getting a feel for issues. The post about sex-work was something that had been stewing in my brain for some time, and, then, reading Belledame's post kicked it to the front. That post took a long time to write, and was emotionally and mentally draining. It was, in other words, hard work. So, don't expect me to come on here and make massive, brilliant posts five days a week, is what I'm saying.

The other thing that I learned was something that was totally my own fault. When I made my initial guest-post on hating children, I was reading up on some of the different issues that children face in the United States and around the world. While the UNICEF stats didn't have anything specifically to do with my point, I found them really interesting in a heartbreaking sort of way, and I included them in my post. When I'm writing on my own blog, with a few dozen readers or so, it's not a big deal. If someone misunderstands my point, I can clarify it and everyone is happy. On a post like feministe, that's impossible. No matter how many times I pointed out my intention there, people were either unwilling or unable to understand, or, as likely, they simply didn't see my clarification.

Some people took my use of the UNICEF stats as a personal attack. Others weren't sure what I was getting at. Others thought I was trying to say that there's no difference between a US kid and a kid living in a developing nation. I think that the criticism of my use of the stats is fair, and I admit that I should have been more careful in how I worded that post. If I were going to write that post now, I'd be a lot more careful about using stats, and might even forego them completely.

Anyway, it was a hell of a week, and I'm absolutely glad that Jill invited me over there. I hope, if they do another round of guest posting in the future, that they'll consider having me back. In the meantime, thanks again, feministe readers- you'll still find me leaving comments there, and this will be my home for the time being.

How a Post About Iran Punishing Porn Prompted an Epiphany...

This is my fourth post over at feministe

I wasn't going to write about it.

I really wasn't.

When I wrote about children, I wasn't aware of the can of worms I was opening, but there are some things that I know are Big Messy Issues. Some things that I know people get upset about. I'm not sure that I'm equiped to comment on and deal with some of those issues- to not step in the shit, so to speak. Then, I'm looking over at Belledame222's post about Iran's parliament passing an anti-porn bill that could, if it becomes law, punish producers, directors, cameramen and actors with death. I'm reading that, and I'm reading belledame's post, and I realize... I don't see this anywhere else... Did I miss it?

And then I realize...

I don't even really know where to begin talking about a story like this.

So, my first instinct was to let it sit. To be horrified that people could be put to death over pornography, but leave it at that. After all, I don't want to say the wrong thing or step on more toes or... well... step in the shit. It's a minefield, and maybe I'm not informed enough or delicate enough to traverse this terrain without stepping on a mine. But, I'm thinking...

... if not now, then when?

My first cross post... posted second...

Note: This was my first post on feministe- I forgot to cross-post it here, but I thought I'd fix that mistake now. I had no idea, when I posted this there, that it would explode as big as it did. I actually thought I was coming out of the gate with a pretty harmless sort of post, just to get my feet wet. It's over 500 responses, and growing, now.

Hello everyone!
Roy here, starting my first day guest blogging. I thought I'd start my first guest-blog here by saying thanks to my gracious hosts for inviting me for the week, and by introducing myself to everyone. The bloggers here at feministe were awesome enough to extend me an invitation to guest-blog for the week, and I can't say how excited I am to be here. They set the bar pretty high, but I'm up to the challange challenge (edited 9:05 pm- thanks Bracken), I think.

My first post is actually something that's been rolling around in my mind for about the last month. See, last month, in two seperate posts- one here at feministe and one over at feministing, people indulged in rants about how much they hate children. The complaints ranged from how annoying loud children are in movie theaters, to how children run through stores, to how obnoxious children are when they kick the seat on an airplane. The animosity towards children extended to their parents as well, but the bulk of the real venom was directed towards the children. This anger towards children is hardly reserved to these sites, but I was particularly surprised to see it on sites like these, given how much time we spend here discussing ways to end bigotry and fight things like sexism or homophobia.