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Roderick

Feminism

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Wow, what a crazy idea to just have some babies frozen somewhere waiting for you. 

 

Thanks for sharing Sarah. I'd indeed seen the tweets but it's great to have this contextual discussion emerge.

 

I'm definitely digging the new look but that might be because of my youthful adorement of Sinead O'Connor.

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Ten things feminism has ruined for me - a surprisingly enjoyable article that is not nearly as horrifying as its title would suggest. With our recent discussions about call out culture and how trying to be completely right all the time can make for difficulties actually talking about anything, I thought some people would be interested to read this. It isn't really strongly about any of those things, but I look at it as an example of how you can be a feminist and be funny about feminism and condemn sexism and acknowledge the lingering enjoyment you had of some sexist things all at the same time.

 

I'm not necessarily putting this out there as a counterpoint to call out culture or anything, just as evidence of a perspective that walks an interesting line and ends up, I think, in an entertaining and approachable place while still tackling genuine issues.

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Something about this is way too breezy for me, even as someone who enjoys problematic media (which I can, because I understand that's a thing I can do), because she's more consumed with gendering her cat vs. the fact that she's calling a cat that has a mustache fur marking "Frida Katlo" and that doesn't bother her in the slightest? Yeah, let's pay respect to a famous Latina artist by making a joke about her facial hair. 

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Hm. Isn't that only a problem if you regard that as negative? Otherwise it seems like just naming it after a famous person with a distinguishing characteristic. Is there something I'm missing?

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I dunno, I think it's incredibly disrespectful to talk about a cat with a visible mustache fur pattern and think, oh, I should name it after Frida Kahlo. I wouldn't name a cat after any famous woman of color in particular, though. Feels extremely callous.

 

Edit: White feminists have a huge, historical problem with generally devaluing or ignoring women of color's contributions to the world or otherwise liberally borrowing them without compensation or crediting them, or grasping what kind of context there is about white women in particular doing that.  Frida Kahlo was pretty critical of white people in general and yet her image and legacy get borrowed pretty regularly by feminists without remarking upon that or why that was important. 

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I'm really enjoying the discussion between female identity and health between argobot and apple cider. As a friend recently asked me to switch their pronouns, I've kind of thought more about gender identity as well.

I've never thought of myself as butch or unfeminine, but when I was a kid I had all-male friends, drove quads, took shooting classes and was generally very active. Dresses and perfumes and jewellry were more of an aesthetic fun thing than it was a mark of femininity for me.

 

Then White Feminism™ happened. I was on a womens forum (on a normally popular website that won't be named), and meekly suggested something along the lines of: 

"Hey gals, maybe the threads on breastfeeding and childbirth could go into the parenting subforum. I don't mean to be rude, but not all women can have children and not all women want to. Having a child is not a requirement or necessarily an integral part of womanhood, and this is a forum for all women."

I was flamed into the abyss. Like, I have actually never recieved online hate like I did then. People genuinely thought I was an idiot for not thinking motherhood = womanhood. I can't get over the massive hate I recieved for even suggesting that not all women are interested in (or that some take harm at the mention of) children and motherhood.

It just boils down to: White + Middle class + Traditionally conforming feminine + Mother = Woman. And I am almost ALL of those things! And there's still enough hate towards me to feel threatened!

Conclusion: White feminism is abominable and even the seemingly progressive gender roles are whack!!
 

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I am actually confused myself why if the forum HAD a parenting subforum, why those threads wouldn't be down there too, just from an organizational standpoint!

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Yes, that was a broken link, fixed it. It was a link to the TLDR interview with the author of this piece about Vivek Wadhwa.

 

So, this thing exploded apparently. The two women who run TLDR elected not to interview Wadhwa in their piece originally, as it was focusing around whether or not he got too much attention in the discussion around women in tech, so it was a conversation between women about the self-appointed champion of women. Personally, that's a coinflip of a call. Interviewing him originally certainly would have added something, but if the piece is viewed as commentary and analysis, then it isn't strictly necessary. OTM itself has certainly run many pieces about people who did not appear, but they may still always reach out and then still run the piece if there is no response.

Anyways, the result is that Wadhwa complained on Twitter, accused TLDR of airing libel and lies about him, the episode was removed from the site, and now a new one is up which is mostly Wadhwa illuminating the female host about what sexual harassment is, what journalism is, what an ally is, and more. It is stunning, in how incredibly oblivious the man is.

There's a bunch of links on the episode page to various responses to the show over the last week or two. They're pretty much all worth taking a look at, at the least.

The show is getting what seems to be pretty equal amounts of support and condemnation in the comments and on Facebook. I really hope this doesn't do long term damage to the show. I really like the direction that Haggerty and her producer have taken the show and would hate to see it killed or changed.

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White feminists have a huge, historical problem with generally devaluing or ignoring women of color's contributions to the world or otherwise liberally borrowing them without compensation or crediting them, or grasping what kind of context there is about white women in particular doing that.  Frida Kahlo was pretty critical of white people in general and yet her image and legacy get borrowed pretty regularly by feminists without remarking upon that or why that was important. 

 

Ah, okay yeah I can see the problem, that's pretty appropriationy. Intersectionality!

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I think if you removed the gendering this would still be just good advice in general (I've often experienced many of these same things), but as a not-woman I will assume it's a way worse problem for women than it is for men.

I am so glad someone wrote this because there's legitimately some innocuous but extremely annoying things men do on Twitter, like make unfunny joke responses to your jokes or take your rhetorical questions as literal, or fave dozens of your tweets at once.

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If you don't know each other, maybe just don't @ her. This one is going to make dudes mad, I think, but like ... what if you just didn't? Would you die? Maybe think about why you feel entitled to have a stranger listen to your thoughts at all? This isn't a perfect analogy, but a good rule of thumb is to treat the mentions of someone who doesn't follow you back (i.e. someone who hasn't explicitly consented to listen to you) like you're asking her to take out her earbuds on the bus. (Here's a bonus article-within-an-article, by the way, entitled "How To Talk To Women On Public Transportation": Oh gosh please just don't.) Is what you have to say funny or interesting enough that you'd feel good about saying it to her while she looks at you blankly, earbuds dangling? Listen, I'm just urging you to consider the alternative path of not @'ing her whenever you're about to @ her. You may find that it suits you, and sorry, but there's a good chance it'd suit us, too.

 

This doesn't make me mad, but is the advice really that men should never talk directly to women they don't know on Twitter? The article adds nuance and reasoning to this elsewhere but it still seems like a super strict rule of thumb...

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This doesn't make me mad, but is the advice really that men should never talk directly to women they don't know on Twitter? The article adds nuance and reasoning to this elsewhere but it still seems like a super strict rule of thumb...

 

I'm a go on a limb and say maybe the author doesn't intent it to be taken as a super strict rule of thumb, just a "think twice" about it kind of thing, because if it were to be taken as a rule of thumb, it would invalidate parts of the rest of the article, for instance:

 

Faving is almost always cool. Ditto thank-yous, expressions of sympathy, non-gross compliments, answers to actual questions, and pictures of cute animals.

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Yeah, like I say, nuance elsewhere, but if the author doesn't intend the rule of thumb (which boils down to 'never' at least for me because there's nothing outside of "there's a bomb on the bus" that I would consider interesting enough to ask a stranger to remove their earbuds for) to be adhered to, why write it?

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Yeah, like I say, nuance elsewhere, but if the author doesn't intend the rule of thumb (which boils down to 'never' at least for me because there's nothing outside of "there's a bomb on the bus" that I would consider interesting enough to ask a stranger to remove their earbuds for) to be adhered to, why write it?

From Wikipedia: A rule of thumb is a principle with broad application that is not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable for every situation. It is an easily learned and easily applied procedure for approximately calculating or recalling some value, or for making some determination.

The author is providing a different framework through which to judge a situation. For you, the judgment is effectively a standing "never," but other people might find more latitude in it.

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This doesn't make me mad, but is the advice really that men should never talk directly to women they don't know on Twitter? The article adds nuance and reasoning to this elsewhere but it still seems like a super strict rule of thumb...

 

Yeah, I shouldn't have translated it as "men should never", that's not what's being said. Still, perhaps I just have a weird mental block here, and everything else in the article made perfect sense to me, but even as a broad guideline it seems rather extreme.

 

It strikes me as I type, that I'm including replies in this rule about @ing someone and that's probably not intended; rather, it's about unsolicited remarks, in which case it makes a lot more sense to me.

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Yeah I got the impression that you should default to not sending an unsolicited tweet, think about whether it's worth sending based on what the article outlines and then decide if you'll actually send it or not.

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Yeah, this article made me so happy because it covered 90% of the random shit men feel comfy doing on Twitter without realizing how it might come off, and it included that innocuous-but-super-weird-or-annoying stuff that's really hard to yell at someone for, lest you look like a monster. (However, she's like "favs are cool!" and I actually hate serial fav'ers because I'm old and I don't consider Twitter to be like Facebook - people who like my stuff nonstop is weird.) 

 

But yeah, unsolicited tweets are just weird most of the time, also because there's usually stuff to hang a reply to on? I almost NEVER send unsolicited tweets unless it's specifically about something to someone I don't know like a direct question. And I try to be very polite. 

 

I guess the difference here is - I read that article and it all makes sense to me. If someone is like "Maybe you shouldn't contact someone out of the blue" - that seems really reasonable and I don't know why myself and men have different reactions to being told something like that. (Okay, I do know what the difference is, but...)

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I guess the difference here is - I read that article and it all makes sense to me. If someone is like "Maybe you shouldn't contact someone out of the blue" - that seems really reasonable and I don't know why myself and men have different reactions to being told something like that. (Okay, I do know what the difference is, but...)

 

I think in addition to what you would expect, I've had good experiences with sending tweets out to strangers. I mostly try to be funny unless I'm answering a direct/implicit question in their tweet. Of all the tweets I've sent, I've had maybe one negative response due to my tweet being worded poorly. Honestly talking to people I don't know is one of the biggest draws of twitter for me. I get to read the thoughts of all sorts of people and then share my own with them. I have gotten plenty of positive reactions from tweets I send to strangers.

 

But obviously that's not worthwhile if I'm inadvertently sending tweets that are having negative reactions just because I carelessly toss out tweets without considering their potential effect and actual worth.

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The section in there about repeating a woman's joke is a good, subtle one that wouldn't be obvious to a lot of people (probably particularly men).  It's the kind of behavior that's relatively natural in a group of people, someone cracks a joke, someone else riffs on it, pattern is explored until it's been mined of funny, much laughing ensues, conversation moves on.  It usually passes within a few minutes.  It's the kind of thing the Thumbs' hosts do all the time.  But once you've got dozens or hundreds of strangers engaging in that pattern for hours or days...that's just obnoxious, and a little gross.

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I've responded to some jokes with my own joke extensions and gotten favorited-tweets in return. I very rarely do it, though, so I'm gonna go with, I'm okay. Hopefully. Most of my interactions with people on Twitter is nothing but a retweet, anyway. It helps that I am habitually nervous and so even if I type something up, the chance of me sending it to someone I don't actually know is about 1%.

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It took me so long to work up the nerve to reply to people on Twitter. Even with people who followed me, I would generally wait for them to say something first before engaging. There was this intense feeling of not wanting to encroach on anyone's time, not wanting to bother them, even though they voluntarily deciding to allow my own tweets into their feed. This feeling was always worse with anyone with a lot of followers, because I was even more conscious of being yet another voice inundating them with empty comments. I'm a little less self-conscious about replying to people I don't know, but I try to remain respectful. It's absolutely amazing to me the level of entitlement that some people (usually men) feel in communicating with strangers on the Internet and I think there could stand to be a little bit more restraint with how and who you reply to on Twitter.

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There's definitely a lot of wisdom in not operating from the assumption people are available for or interested in talking to you. Else you might end up looking like the gooblegrump who once got mad at me for answering Their tweet a full eight hours late. Timezones exist! I happened to be asleep, very selfishly.

 

The joke thing I am probably guilty of on occasion, but in my defense it can be hard to judge whether something you say will end up being funny to somebody else, and whether this is an appropriate time to take it one further and earn favs and retweets, or if it's played out already. Better to err on the side of caution than look like a jerkface, obviously, so I only really joke around with people I've known for a while, but I still frequently feel bad about it afterwards, particularly if we've had no sincere interaction in a while.

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It took me so long to work up the nerve to reply to people on Twitter. Even with people who followed me, I would generally wait for them to say something first before engaging. There was this intense feeling of not wanting to encroach on anyone's time, not wanting to bother them, even though they voluntarily deciding to allow my own tweets into their feed.

 

(I typed a first reply to this then deleted it. I should do that more on Twitter, too).

 

I think it's largely about the social context a person has to exist in. As someone with a lot of privilege, a stream of @'s from different people to me tends to be implicitly flattering in the way any sort of non-negative attention is. Because of my privilege, assholes rarely direct their guff at me, and non-engagement generally makes them go away. Consequently I've always felt less reluctant than you did to @ people. I bet lots of privileged guys assume twitter is like that for everyone.

 

I've often been reluctant to @ people with a lot of followers or who've been harassed (unless it was just a message of support or encouragement, and even that makes me afraid I'll be unintentionally patronising), but until I read that link it never twigged that, over time if not immediately, being @ed basically sucks for all women and minorities.

 

Edit: Long before GG, I saw @rare_basement tweeting that she wished she could only see @s from people she followed and not randos. It'd be a good feature, and I'm surprised it hasn't made it into any clients.

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