"compassion", they're calling it
here is what sexism has to do with supporting obama, kids. since apparently it's that fucking hard to understand. since apparently it's more important to court conservatives than to support liberals, when you're running as a democratic condender for the presidency. since apparently it's more important to assert the rights of the religious over the rights of ALL humans. since apparently women just aren't human yet. since apparently we can't call rape "rape", but must instead call it "certain situations [in which women] may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex", because, i guess, actually calling a rape a rape would be divisive or something. since, apparently, under an obama administration, i would be expected to make health decisions with the assistance of "clergy". since, apparently, it's so important to affirm the "sacredness of sexuality" that people should expect to die for it.
you don't have to "turn over a rock" to find sexism and racism. it's crawling out in the open for all to see. always has been. i'm beginning to fear it always will be.
but fine. trample over progressive values on your Super Awesome Rainbow Funtime Jesus Unicorn Pony Ride to Unity. have an awesome goddamn time. be sure to blame the iraq war on me while you're at it. you should also probably assert i'm a racist, even though i'm not the one explaining that AIDS is a problem in kenya because of "certain behaviors", including that all-time favourite dogwhistle, "promiscuity". certainly it's not a crumbling, strife-torn social structure. certainly it's not a lack of access to condoms, caused in part by religious pearl-clutching over any health programme that doesn't stay abstinence-only. no, the problem is those kenyans are just too promiscuous, that's all!
posted by anne @ 11:08 AM
24 Comments:
I'm with you, anne.
The only thing we can do is attack them from the left rather than the right
And this is why people develop feminism filters.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed yourself. I, at times, have found similar rants to be purgative. I also appreciate that in other instances, at least, you've actually been interested in communicating with other people.
nate, you know what? fuck you. fuck you and your sanctimonious priviliged white ass. fuck you with your snooty convert dickwadery. fuck your snide little driveby comments that contribute nothing of substance, which serve only as an opportunity for you to indulge your sad appetite for that tired old stern-and-pitying patriarchal oh-why-can't-you-be-reasonable routine. fuck your sad little apings of the douches they publish on Slate.com.
fuck you.
like you've ever once been "interested in communicating with other people". like you're anything but disingenous in these conversations. like you could, for just a moment, get over your fucking privilige and your fucking ego and communicate with another human being. don't you give me that "filter" bullshit.
i hope you enjoyed yourself too, you empty-headed, empty-hearted, self-important snotty little shitstain. go back to jerking yourself off over michael sullivan. don't you have an "i'm the second coming of aristotle mixed with kant and superman!" daydream to indulge in, or something? a harvey danger album to listen to on repeat? some made-up moral crisis to wrench your hands over?
seriously, though: do i come onto your blog and tell you about "religious filters"? how is that productive? if you want to engage me, ask a question. if you don't want to grant me that much, keep your fingers away from the publish button and move on with your life. don't just drop a dissmissive little one-liner and double back to reproach me for my "rant".
Man, good thing you were here to tell me I didn't have to care about this, Nate. I was all set to sit and think seriously about the valid issues raised by people concerned with a candidate's position on an ongoing epidemic of human rights violations, but now I know I can just filter out anything that I can't come up with a useful response to. Now I'm just annoyed I spent all this time considering the opinions of others instead of just filtering them.
when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex
I keep almost being able to say something about this thing. Words aren't coming right now. They will. Thanks for pointing this out. I would not have found it otherwise.
w00t!!!1
Nothing like sheer, unabashed vitriol.
Anyway, if one thing is clear from your well-crafted explosion of fury, it's that you hurt. A lot. If it's just the pain of a fundamentally unjust world, that's cool. Believe it or not, being white and male doesn't shield me entirely from that, either. If it's something more personal, I'm sorry. The world often sucks.
That's firstly. Second: you're wrong. Wrong about a bunch of things. And, for reasons that are your own, you seem to want enemies rather than friends. So, hey, fuck you, too. Things that are natural and human become pain for you, apparently. I'm not sure that's your fault. But I think it's your duty to fight against it. Your vision of the world--whatever the many aspects where it's right--transmutes the genuine search for truth and dialogue into something you can fight.
You've proved to me you can argue substantially and well when you're calm and interested, so you're interesting enough to me not to want to simply write you off. But, golly... I have a lot of sympathy for your tutors and classmates. You've got serious barriers to communication with other human beings.
So, to reiterate: fuck you, too. I hope life gets better. Look forward to the next conversation.
And, yes I'm being condescending. Because I'm calm and you're not. Possibly, because I'm privileged and you're not. I'd like to bring everybody to this position. You. Kenyan women. Everybody.
I hope I don't regret jumping in later...
Nate, I don't see what you hope to be gained from your comments to this post. You and I seem to get along fairly well, but the things you are saying in response to this post are just mean and dismissive. What right do you have to judge Anne? Has she given you that right? Has God? Since when is it better to be calm than to feel openly?
I don't think being condescending is ever called for, no matter if you're an 80 year old talking to a 2 year old who's throwing a temper tantrum. Condescension implies, to me at least, that the person doing the condescending thinks he or she is better than another.
You are not better than Anne, Nate. Anne is not better than you. Both you and Anne deserve respect.
It causes me some sadness that neither of you seem to give it. (This is not an attempt to cast blame, just to say what I see. I hope I'll still be friends with both of you after posting this.)
Tania,
Your argument about condescension is an interesting one. You said: "Condescension implies, to me at least, that the person doing the condescending thinks he or she is better than another."
Yet - isn't this the (right) premise of many human actions? When you teach a child not to punch its sibling, aren't you condescending to it? (You'll find the term used without negative connotation in many 19th century texts.) You are, in that instance, better than the child in one respect.
If we claim humans are equal, surely we mean in some ultimate sense. For instance, all humans are equally loved by God, to pick an example that might be comfortable for you and me. Yet we have myriad differences in quality: I am better than you are at bench-pressing heavy objects. You are better than I am at dealing with chronic pain. To deny such differences seems to me to be strange.
When I argue a point with a person, I believe I am better at being right than that person; I'm trying to persuade that person of the same thing. Essential to virtue, though, is the willingness to be disabused of what might be a wrong belief.
I judge Anne to be wrong in her anger and wrong in many of her beliefs. That right need not be granted me by anyone. This is an inescapable aspect of human thought and I will be happy, incidentally, to assert that anyone who thinks otherwise knows his or her own mind less well than I do. (In that respect.)
Anyway, I agree that we both deserve respect. Be both are equal in an ultimate sense. That's partially why I tried to turn her "fuck you" from a bleedingly ugly invective into something that was defanged and part of a larger exchange.
Nate said:
"You've got serious barriers to communication with other human beings."
Earlier, he said:
"And this is why people develop feminism filters."
I'm a late-comer to the bullshit-calling party(I see all the cocktail franks have been eaten), but you should check yourself before you wreck yourself, Nate, to use the parlance of my b-boy youth. Where are you in this argument? Are you struggling valiantly against Anne's supposed fury? Or did you just bait it? Because I think you have a little carrot on a string poking out of your hypocritical ass. Who has the barrier here? And don't say you're the calm one, because you can still be cool as the other side of the pillow and be about as rational as a pillow too, a tactic which seems to be your M.O.(T.O.R.H.E.A.D) here. You're not responding to Anne, you're responding to a stereotype, treating her(and all feminists), consciously or not, as hysterical crazy talking vaginas who are not "calm" and therefore must be wrong. Those darn womanly passions getting in the way of civilized discourse, yet again! If you were actually as virtuous as you claim to be, wouldn't you be more willing to engage in a discussion with Anne, instead of putting up "filters"? And what's uglier, someone being honestly pissed off about being condescended to and dismissed, or the person who hides behind a veil of virtue and old-fashioned reesonin' while being condescending and unwilling to actually discuss issues?
I tried to turn her "fuck you" from a bleedingly ugly invective into something that was defanged and part of a larger exchange.
And you failed. And you don't have enough credibility left here to succeed. With any argument. And it is unlikely you will ever again have enough credibility here to succeed. Anne can correct me if I'm out of line. But: You need to leave this blog. Now. And you need to not return unless and until you are invited.
It's clear you're not done; there's more where that came from. If it will help you, I'll serve up a clay pigeon 'fuck you' for you to shoot at. Not here. Somewhere else. Nothing personal, just a means to an end. So long as you *go* and don't come back here until you are invited.
Crossposted. Yeah, we're down to soggy cucumber sandwiches and warm seltzer water.
I don't want to add more fuel to the flamewar, and I don't want to take sides. On the one hand, I'm an Obama supporter. On the other hand, I have very little against Clinton and would gladly vote for her as a second choice. But I've been verbally abused for "staying calm" while other people were angry and always felt it was unfair to have that held against me, like it was an unforgivable sin or breach of courtesy not to get as furious as my interlocutor. I'm a woman, and no one's ever implied that I was a "hysterical crazy talking vagina"; on the contrary, I feel like the fact of my sex sometimes has sheltered me from other women's invective when I disagree with them, and it seems unfair that Nate doesn't get that luxury. I'm basically on Nate's side when he says "That right need not be granted me by anyone. This is an inescapable aspect of human thought and I will be happy, incidentally, to assert that anyone who thinks otherwise knows his or her own mind less well than I do." But I know Anne better and would count her my friend more readily than I would Nate, mostly because Nate and I ran in oblique circles at school and have pretty divergent interests. I think I would agree with Anne on several more political issues than with Nate, but I find myself allied with him in the sense that I'm baffled by the huge amount of anger and ad hominem attacks that occur when Monadology and the rest of the blogmass collide. I'm not saying "can't we all just get along", but I don't understand how people who've actually met each other on more than one occasion and who all seem to me to be in good faith can turn furious and vicious so quickly. It looks like an outburst against something that the other side symbolizes rather than the actual person who's arguing the point, and that's a really dangerous and dehumanizing tactic to take against your adversaries, especially if they have the capacity to be potential allies. I agree that the "feminism filter" remark added nothing to the conversation, and was probably intended, consciously or subconsciously, to bait a conversational relationship that had flared into nastiness earlier on other blogs. But Nate said something mildly snarky and then got called a "snotty little shitstain". It just seems disproportionate. Nate doesn't come off as disingenuous to me. He seems like a guy with several closely held opinions which he holds up to check against reality now and then, and either puts them away again or revises them accordingly. Several of those opinions are vastly different from ones I hold, but the intervals make the difference, and you can't do much to revise your opinion when you're forced to shield it from a barrage of screaming fury. I've seen people who I love and respect enormously turn on those they're arguing with and accuse them of heinous intentions, of being treacherous and ignorant and vile. When it happens, it's hard for me to ignore the anger in favor of the truth behind what they're saying, because the fury of the attack drowns out the validity of the argument. I know Nate doesn't need defending, and I don't want to piss off Anne, 'cause I've always dug her and her blog and what she has to say. But it felt wrong to keep silent when the angry side got all the reinforcements and the calm side was only one guy. Anger can be valid and powerful and useful, but only if it hits the right mark. From where I'm standing, it didn't seem warranted.
Crossposted with Mike. I'll stop commenting on this blog, but Nate and Anne are both welcome on mine whenever, for the record.
For the record, I'm not sure it's true that "Nate doesn't need defending". In instances like this, especially, I seem to be the least effective voice in the room.
Mike, I must admit to being honestly perplexed at your reaction, and how it can seem proportionate or right to you. I'd be interested in hearing a defense of it in whatever forum you choose.
i can only respond briefly for now, though i will probably have something longer after i leave work. but, briefly:
i never kicked anyone off the blog. anyone who wants to read it is welcome to read it. i've modded a BBS. a BBS for the mentally ill. you people cannot scare me.
mira: i don't know how regularly you read the blog. nate... has a tendency to bait me. at least, that is my interpretation of what he does to me, and to others. i got tired of it. there have been other instances of this behaviour, but this is the first time i've gone nuclear on his ass. i've had a lurker or two previously express surprise at my not calling him out. it is true that he hit a few nerves, and so perhaps i responded with excessive force, but i do not think i was wrong in saying that his motives were, at least in part, to bait me yet again. so i got angry.
nate, i think there are ways your voice could be more effective. in this thread, your voice has been ineffective because you've been extraordinarily dismissive. i am not inclined to respect a person who makes an analogy between punishing naughty children and speaking to me. very, very few people are going to be inclined to respect you if you speak to them that way.
i believe i have been respectful of your beliefs, particularly when addressing you on your own blog; i am careful to comment only if i feel i have something to add to a conversation, and my intent is not to provoke or to "educate" (pls note scare quotes). i'm not going to flounce on in and lecture you about how silly and misguided you are for being a christian, and i would appreciate it if you'd grant my beliefs the same respect. often, you don't. if you aren't willing to, you're not worth responding to, and i'm flabbergasted that you'd respect earnest, honest discourse after your behaviour. you certainly didn't deserve it.
Scott,
I think it's pretty awesome that you were a b-boy. Planet B-Boy, which I saw a few weekends ago, was one of the best movies I've seen in a while.
You wrote:
"You're not responding to Anne, you're responding to a stereotype, treating her(and all feminists), consciously or not, as hysterical crazy talking vaginas who are not 'calm' and therefore must be wrong. Those darn womanly passions getting in the way of civilized discourse, yet again!"
This appears to be one of the great debates of our age, this one of calmness vs. hysterics, reason vs. passion (all oppositions that seem vastly more harmful than helpful). The debate seems laden with code words, things that instantly make any given argument about This Argument rather than about the things it started with.
Anyway, I'm not sure how much of that's worth getting into. Just one point. You claim I'm not responding to Anne, but to a stereotype. Do you deny the validity of either "vitriol[ic]" or "furious" as labels for Anne's earlier comment? For that comment, Scott, not for her gender or her race or her bicycle club.
It's the old Anne! I'm not sure how much I want to debate your charge of baiting; I bait a lot of people a lot of the time. ("So: what are your three favorite movies?") This is largely because I like having conversations. Sometimes, I like having conversations with you.
I agree that baiting can be mean-spirited; maybe mine is sometimes. You'd irritated me by responding to my attempt to ask for some justification of your snarky post about Obama and identity politics with a post beginning: "Here is what sexism has to do with supporting obama, kids. since apparently it's that fucking hard to understand." How is your comparing me to a child less offensive than my comparing you to a child?
My own subsequent snarkiness still seems pretty proportionate to me.
You wrote: i believe i have been respectful of your beliefs, particularly when addressing you on your own blog; i am careful to comment only if i feel i have something to add to a conversation, and my intent is not to provoke or to "educate" (pls note scare quotes).
My only reaction to this is that I don't think you're being quite honest: why wouldn't you try to educate me when I'm wrong? Why ever "add to a conversation" if not to provide something of use in the education of all involved?
Anyway, for the record: whenever you feel I'm baiting you, it's probably because I'm actually interested in hearing your reasoning. If you already believe you've presented your reasoning, it's probably because I couldn't extract clear arguments from the sarcasm. If you don't feel like explaining yourself, you can always drop a, "I'm not going to get into it with you today, Nate." That's fine. But please leave the name-calling out. I've never sworn at you or called you anything rude.
(Well: okay, I did say "fuck you" back. Surely we can acknowledge the justice in responding to "fuck you" with a "fuck you". That's in the constitution or something.)
When you say "calmness vs. hysterics, reason vs. passion", you seem to be conflating calmness and reason (and, for that matter, hysterics and passion). The two are entirely unrelated concepts. It's as easy to be calm and unreasonable as it is to be calm and passionate - and, for that matter, reasonable and passionate. (I don't really get why you view those as antonyms.) Being "calmer" than someone you disagree with does not make you more reasonable, it just means that if you aren't being reasonable, you become twice as infuriating.
Frankly, I think your first comments in this thread are a prime example of "calm and unreasonable". And they definitely don't jibe with your claim that "whenever you feel I'm baiting you, it's probably because I'm actually interested in hearing your reasoning". You said - and I think this is a fair enough paraphrase - "I am choosing to ignore this, because it's one of your wacky feminist rants." You have yet to apologize for saying this, or even acknowledge that it was pretty much the single most jackassful thing you could have said.
You are not a good debater, Nate. You are an extremely intelligent man, but your style of argument - well, this isn't the only comment thread that has turned into an "everybody against Nate" bash session, and the reason for that is not that everyone else is "too hysterical". I personally believe that you - unlike me - could actually be a good debater if you just went about it differently. Your ability to stay calm is a great asset, but you need to pair the calm with reason and, perhaps more importantly, with empathy. If you are honestly going to say that you expected Anne to respond to your comments with a thoughtful rebuttal (which would have been difficult, as it's hard to rebut "I choose to deny the validity of your complaints"), then you would seem to have no concept of how an argument works. I suggest you study the issue.
Mike, I must admit to being honestly perplexed at your reaction, and how it can seem proportionate or right to you. I'd be interested in hearing a defense of it in whatever forum you choose.
Sounds good, Nate. I'll lay it out, and then hopefully the two of us can talk about it. We're both perplexed, and it would mean a great deal to me if we could get to a point where we weren't.
There's an abandoned m14m blog under the user ID of blap. I don't know whose blog that was, or whether they or Moss would prefer it not be used, or what.
But I'll start, and if no one has any objections, let's continue in a comment thread there. It's the blogmass's middle of nowhere, but easy enough for people to tune in to if they like.
I don't have any gas left in the tank tonight. So I'll just put up a placeholder for now.
Mike: sounds good.
Martin: What if I meet you half way? I certainly appear to meet major obstacles when debating with some people. Since some of these people are people I'm interested in, I'm willing to listen to your (and other) critiques.
To be fair, I'm able to communicate very well with some other people. The very recurrence of grouping "those people at Monadology" together illustrates this. So: while I'm sincerely interested in your observations of ways in which I can better communicate with you, Anne, and anybody else, I think it should be at least held as a possibility that you guys as an audience have some unique characteristics.
Anyway. "You said - and I think this is a fair enough paraphrase - `I am choosing to ignore this, because it's one of your wacky feminist rants.'"
That doesn't strike me as a fair paraphrase at all. My exact quotation was: "And this is why people develop feminism filters."
I'll try to paraphrase: "Gah! I have to dig your actual grievance and argument from a giant pile of accusatory, sarcastic, angry rhetoric! I would be so much more able to actually understand--and perhaps join you in--your grievance if you just said it."
Anyway, it was certainly a snarky thing to say. I've argued previously that it wasn't significantly different in tone from the posts of Anne that led to it.
As to "calmness vs. hysterics", Martin, I agree with you. That explanation to Scott was to try to dismiss the silliness of those false oppositions. You'll notice that the only time I ever mentioned the word "calm" was in explaining why I was being condescending. Anyway, I am unbelievably bored with the rhetoric surrounding the word "calm". I'm bored of Remi & crew's snickering over it. That's not what this is about.
One thing I really appreciate about you, Martin, is that--to my knowledge--you've always either told me off or just let it go. And you've never accused me of being disingenuous. (That I can remember.)
Your paraphrasing of my original comment makes me more sympathetic with your first one, by the way. I saw my comment as "I'm so interested in this WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SAY IT THIS WAY". As such, your comment made absolutely no sense to me.
Last: regarding my lack of apology. I'd really like you to consider M's (plover's) arguments about lack of proportionality. Consider what I said, then consider what Anne said in response. Anne has described her statement as "excessive force". Hm.
Take my word--just for a moment--that what you describe as "baiting" is a genuine interest in hearing arguments. Now imagine having Anne's reaction directed against you. Would you find it difficult not to be a little bit resentful, a little bit angry that you were the one portrayed as the aggressor?
I've never used language like that in my life to describe another person.
So, Martin, I'm willing to debate the wisdom, justice, or correctness of my first comment with you, but let's at least acknowledge the disproportion of the response.
Anyway, I appreciated your comment. Do you think this meta-level debriefing is useful? Are we talking about the right things?
BTW, a few days ago I posted an explanation of my motivation over on blap's blog, which hits BLT as "Lather, Rinse, Repeat."
I have been running around, it seems, ever since, and so haven't checked to see if you'd seen it, Nate. There's no need to respond there if you don't want to. But if you do, please let me know, and I'll ask that the thread stay closed to all but the two of us until we're done.
Otherwise, I'd like to open the thread up to the 'mass. I've heard some comments along the lines of 'Well, I was going to comment there, but you'd asked us not to,' etc.
I've queried some longtime Reservoir Dorks and not heard any corrections or objections to the basic outline of history I laid out there, which I take as confirmation that it's workable.
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