Feminism

[Bjorn]

Just specifically about that piece (and not the more worthwhile discussion about how people within the community treat each other), Chait kind of goes down a bullshit rabbit hole pretty quick.  The entire section about manslpaining and the internal strife of a Facebook group are just...wrong.  Using the word mansplaining is an abusive term, apparently because some men are offended by it?  If that's what that man considers abuse, I'd love to see him describe the real world.  Who is the one being over sensitive?  Sure, anecdotes can be useful to explore a subject, but drawing from screencaps someone gave you of a Facebook group you don't belong to?  That's just weird.  Like in the whole Internet, you can't find a better source to illuminate the point you're trying to make?  It's a weak, poorly delivered anecdote without enough context.  To characterize the intersection of people who are pro vs anti choice as expressing opposing views is a very fucked way to describe that.  Did that woman interfere with those people's free speech rights.  Yep.  Are those people trying to actually take away the constitutional rights of women's control over their bodies.  Yep.  That's a debate between two opposing constitutional freedoms (speech versus control over your body), and one side of that debate features a decades long terrorist campaign of murder, arson, assault, abuse and cult-like indoctrination.  I can't imagine why some women feel literally threatened by their presence.   That is not a good faith example.  It would be like arguing that black people are anti-free speech because a dude stole the hood from a grand poobah wizard at a KKK rally. 

 

Anyways, yes, I agree there is a valuable conversation here.  But that piece, and its twisting of events and words, is just terrible. 

[Chris]

All of these articles have in common the belief that discouraging the speech of generally white, generally straight, generally male voices, even by indirect and unintentional means, is an unequivocally bad thing that demands a fundamental change in the direction of liberal and feminist culture to rectify. The fact that many of the authors find the fear of saying something offensive and being expected to apologize for it a huge problem, but not the fear of being attacked or just not being heard as a minority voice speaking out against oppression, tells me volumes about their privilege and somewhat about the relative worth of their arguments. Like Deadpan said, it's a bunch of white dues being worried that no one cares what they have to say, which is not malicious but certainly a bit oblivious.

I entirely disagree with your interpretation. I think you are significantly misreading the concern. As a straight white male, I do not fear being disagreed with or attacked, but I am extremely frustrated by the notion that sincerely-presented arguments are frequently dismissed out of hand because they do not adhere to a specific idea of having an opinion, or because they are voiced by the wrong kind of person. But I have seen more than enough evidence to know that this does not only apply to straight white men; other well-meaning women who voice disagreement in the wrong kind of way are seemingly just as frequently dismissed.

[Chris]

Using the word mansplaining is an abusive term, apparently because some men are offended by it?  If that's what that man considers abuse, I'd love to see him describe the real world.  Who is the one being over sensitive?

Like basically every single word in the English language, the term "abuse" has many degrees of potency, and if you read that passage in good faith I have a hard time believing you can't situate it in context to understand that he is not equivocating this with violent domestic abuse or something similar. His point is that the term is used to dismiss and discredit, far beyond the specific case it was once intended to describe.

Sure, anecdotes can be useful to explore a subject, but drawing from screencaps someone gave you of a Facebook group you don't belong to?  That's just weird.  Like in the whole Internet, you can't find a better source to illuminate the point you're trying to make?

The entire point of that section is to demonstrate that, even in private spaces that are supposed to be "safe," and populated by like-minded and well-meaning people, the exact same kind of language, discrediting techniques, and ire are marshaled. It is specifically that exact context that gives the point its weight. If you aren't aware of similar examples on the public internet, you aren't taking an honest look at our online communities.

[Argobot]

Chait is definitely not the 'right' person to write this kind of article (which I personally think says something bad about the state of discourse), but the larger point isn't just that white men can't say what they want, it's that everyone is subjected to this kind of unconsidered scrutiny. The atmosphere is too toxic and uninviting and I really do feel that it's a problem for progressive causes.

[Chris]

One quick point about points being undermined by way of who is making them:

We know that orchestras hire more women when they make use of blind auditions. I think most of us would say that says something sad about the ongoing state of gender prejudice. I wonder if it would be equally useful to mask bylines on articles that make any kind of point about anything that might inflame anyone, as it seems like a pretty meaningless distraction to get worked up about who is making the point. I know nothing about Chait and for all I know he's a hateful racist transphobic bigot asshole. But if that is evidenced in the actual argument he is making, it should make no difference that it's his byline; one should be able to agree with or disagree with an idea regardless of what name or skin color or sexual orientation is attached to it. (If you're an American, or probably someone from any modern democracy, this is sort of part and parcel with how one interprets the fundamental principles their society is based on, as they tend to be well-meaning and lofty ideas originated by people who are inherently hypocritical in the living of them.) I'm just as likely as the next liberal in line to get worked up by a privileged white person on Fox News using harmful coded language about minorities, but I would really like to think I'd feel the same way about it regardless of whose mouth it were coming from, and I really don't think it adds anything to any discussions to try and preemptively discredit or promote by way of oppression qualifications.

[syntheticgerbil]

The call out cultural that takes up a lot of space in current feminist discourse is something I am becoming more and more uncomfortable with. Of course I want to create a society where historically marginalized groups are given the respect and power they deserve, but not at the expense of supporting a knee-jerk culture that favors loudness and shallow snark over depth and consideration. Issues of equality are complicated and, I believe, are supposed to be challenging and hard to talk about. However, I see less and less of that thoughtfulness, especially online.

I agree, I guess I'm generally less liberal on the spectrum but there's a lot of stuff I support and I am often not even wanting to talk about any of this stuff anymore because it's just so divided as you said. It's exhausting and tends to make me not care anymore since I feel like talking online is like walking on eggshells (Facebook, forums, twitter, etc.) and may result in you being demonized even though you may mean well.

 

I guess now I always just think of this: http://natazilla.tumblr.com/post/22797932401/leosboots-i-love-the-art-and-the-style-and-the

Natasha Allegri is an artist that has risen to prominance and now has her own show starring a female character for once, but cutting down her stuff as sexist like this is terribly unproductive and maybe a little bit unfair (even if they have a point I suppose). She already has enough detractors that she's a woman who is only now famous because of riding the coattails of Pendleton Ward or that she "ruined" Adventure Time with her gender bending stuff. It's just in good fun and it's her job. So adding angry feminist accusations to her pile of criticisms just makes me frustrated even though I'm not her.

[Gormongous]

I entirely disagree with your interpretation. I think you are significantly misreading the concern. As a straight white male, I do not fear being disagreed with or attacked, but I am extremely frustrated by the notion that sincerely-presented arguments are frequently dismissed out of hand because they do not adhere to a specific idea of having an opinion, or because they are voiced by the wrong kind of person. But I have seen more than enough evidence to know that this does not only apply to straight white men; other well-meaning women who voice disagreement in the wrong kind of way are seemingly just as frequently dismissed.

 

You are referring to those getting their arguments dismissed as individuals but those doing the dismissing as an undifferentiated group. I don't know if that's a helpful characterization of the situation. Individuals make arguments and individuals dismiss them, each ideally according to their sincere beliefs. I understand that it is frustrating to have your arguments dismissed, but it is equally if not more frustrating to have to be presented over and over with the same arguments, sometimes borderline offensive, just because of who you are and how you've constructed your identity, especially when most presenters expect to have treated their arguments treated specifically and with all due consideration. The dismissal (and the specific ideas of having an opinion that inform it) isn't coming from a vacuum.

[Chris]

You are referring to those getting their arguments dismissed as individuals but those doing the dismissing as an undifferentiated group. I don't know if that's a helpful characterization of the situation. Individuals make arguments and individuals dismiss them, each ideally according to their sincere beliefs. I understand that it is frustrating to have your arguments dismissed, but it is equally if not more frustrating to have to be presented over and over with the same arguments, often borderline offensive, because of who you are, especially when most presenters expect to have treated their arguments treated specifically and with all due consideration. The dismissal (and the specific ideas of having an opinion that inform it) isn't coming from a vacuum.

I mean, yes, of course that's how I'm referring to it, because that's how it works: an individual presents an argument, and a group responds to it. At least, that's how it works on the internet, because of the way blog posts/comments/facebook posts/tweets/etc. fundamentally work.

I'm not claiming that this isn't frustrating for ANYONE, but I am claiming that the specific METHOD of response being described in this article--which, again, I think anyone posting in this thread is either aware of or is willfully ignoring, and doesn't need me to spell out--does absolutely harm legitimate and well-meaning debate.

[Gormongous]

I mean, yes, of course that's how I'm referring to it, because that's how it works: an individual presents an argument, and a group responds to it. At least, that's how it works on the internet, because of the way blog posts/comments/facebook posts/tweets/etc. fundamentally work.

I'm not claiming that this isn't frustrating for ANYONE, but I am claiming that the specific METHOD of response does absolutely harm legitimate and well-meaning debate.

 

Well, I think it's part and parcel of the medium, put that way. The way someone perceives disagreement as a producer of content is a million responses to a single statement. The way someone perceives disagreement as a receiver of content is a million statements, most of which merit the same response. Under those circumstances, I can see how both sides mourn the difficulty of legitimate and well-meaning debate on the internet, but I don't agree that it's a direct consequence of the culture that can or must be resolved. There's no magic bullet to make Twitter anything but shallow and tangential, that's how it was designed to be.

 

More to the point, I know so many people who are tired of debating (and defending) their own identity politics in general, legitimate and well-meaning or not, and would rather just have an apology when they tell someone that something is offensive to them, but there's very few articles about how people don't apologize enough on the internet. Instead, we get the same article over and over about why callout culture is annoying, which rarely address why callout culture came into and remains in being. It's weird what we each see as a fundamental part of the system and what we see as alterable.

[Chris]

Most of all, I know so many people who are tired of debating (and defending) their own identity politics in general, legitimate and well-meaning or not, and would rather just have an apology when they tell someone that something is offensive to them, but there's very few articles about how people don't apologize enough on the internet. It's weird what we each see as a fundamental part of the system and what we see as alterable.

I think one thing we may fundamentally disagree about, and that may allow for no further discussion, is this: I do not think that somebody being offended by something is inherently enough to merit an apology. The number of factors that go into determining any one human's reaction to anything that could possibly be said, is such that I do not believe it is automatically incumbent on the person saying the thing to feel remorse. This is a tricky area for sure, but I do think that the reinforcement of identity politics does create more situations where people are encouraged to feel offended by more things than they otherwise would, with little positive social gain as a result.

I was born with a severe congenital spinal defect that kept me in and out of hospitals for the first decade and a half of my life, and left my childhood riddled with constant insults and mockery about how I'm weird looking, a hunchback, called Quasimodo, etc.--this was even worse during the years when I had to wear a large and obvious brace, but it lasted in some form into high school. It's a lot better now, for which I consider myself lucky; it still has a big impact on my body, causes ongoing pain, etc., but the outward effects have been dampened. (It resurfaced for a while when I first became a semi-public figure online after college and had to be ambiently aware of people talking about why I look weird in certain ways, which wasn't the best.) Despite that, it still hits me when I see a piece of popular media like "THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME", or see subservient henchmen depicted as hunchbacks, or any number of other less obvious but still psychologically potent references to various physical ailments, which aren't worth listing. Even most of the furniture I use on a daily basis is a constant reminder to me of this kind of thing, as it is usually uncomfortable for me (and sometimes painful), which makes sense given that it was designed for people WITHOUT this kind of condition. I'm not looking for sympathy or asking for any kind of treatment--my life is fine, I'm fine--I'm just saying that I think it is psychically easier to live to try and live with this kind of thing as opposed to let oneself get bent out of shape about every instance of it. I absolutely 100% know that, at least for me, my interior life was a lot shittier and more stressful when I indulged in letting myself wallow in frustration when I saw things that would "trigger" certain memories or reactions inside myself. It just was. I can't ever compare my own experience to anyone else's, and I know for sure that there are kinds of institutional prejudice and bias that run a lot deeper than what I have to deal with. (Although, on the flip side, my thing is rare enough that as far as I know there aren't enough people with it that I have an obvious social support structure simply floating around on the internet.) But I also find it hard to believe that there is NO commonality in terms of how people choose to react to these things.

I don't know how to talk about this stuff without preemptively feeling shame or guilt about what I'm saying, which is in ITSELF frustrating. I care about progressive causes, particularly politically progressive causes, and I just cannot deny that the way many progressive ideals are currently discussed online actually decreases the amount I am encouraged or willing to engage with and consider them. There is an insular nature to a certain kind of progressive discussion that, in my opinion, mirrors that of the far-right. Given one, I'll take the far left any day, but it still feels insufficient to me.

[Deadpan]

Like Deadpan said, it's a bunch of white dues being worried that no one cares what they have to say, which is not malicious but certainly a bit oblivious.

 

That's not entirely what I wanted to say, but it is how I tend to encounter the argument most often. Which doesn't necessarily disprove it I guess, but the mere fact of how often this comes up by way of guys going "Man, I'd have nothing against feminists if they were a little bit nicer about combatting the massive injustices marginalized folk face" should show us that any internal discussion to happen about this should take great care not to fan that particular flame.

 

In essence, I think that the complaint far too often borders on tone policing for me. In essence, yeah, feminism should be interested in trying to reach more people, but at the same time if it makes itself entirely unobtrusive it also becomes toothless. Meaningful change isn't going to happen without pissing a few people off. More than a few, depending on how radical your goals are. Although this is an area in which it's possible to constructively disagree about how far it should go.

 

but I would really like to think I'd feel the same way about it regardless of whose mouth it were coming from

 

It doesn't change the point, but it does place it in the unfortunate tradition of men being paid top dollar (or pitiful freelance rates, but at least getting paid) to write ill-informed articles about feminist subjects. This can tilt a bit far in the direction of sounding like men shouldn't be allowed to write about it at all, but only if you look at the issue in isolation, which I think is generally misleading. If it were possible to divorce what is being said from who is saying it, the concept of cultural appropriation would not exist and something like mansplaining would just be a nonspecific annoyance. A little detail my feel irrelevant to an individual exchange, but it's meaningful in where it situates that exchange culturally.

 

Edit:

 

I think one thing we may fundamentally disagree about, and that may allow for no further discussion, is this: I do not think that somebody being offended by something is inherently enough to merit an apology. The number of factors that go into determining any one human's reaction to anything that could possibly be said, is such that I do not believe it is automatically incumbent on the person saying the thing to feel remorse.

 

I've never quite understood that, to be honest, given that there are plenty of other situations in which we apologize even if something happened unintentionally. Never in my life did I mean to step on somebody's foot, but it happened regardless and there's no harm in telling them I'm sorry for accidentally causing them discomfort.

[Bjorn]

Like basically every single word in the English language, the term "abuse" has many degrees of potency, and if you read that passage in good faith I have a hard time believing you can't situate it in context to understand that he is not equivocating this with violent domestic abuse or something similar. His point is that the term is used to dismiss and discredit, far beyond the specific case it was once intended to describe.

 

Except he doesn't provide any examples of that. His example is of how a woman used it to describe an answer by the WH press secretary, in answering the question of a man. Yes, I think a person can still mansplain something, even if the question is coming from a man, because the answer is addressing a concern specifically about women. That is a specific case where using the term mansplaining is perfectly valid. I know the kinds of things he's describing, but I'm honestly hard pressed to think of a time when I saw someone deploy the word mansplaining and there wasn't at least a partial truth to it. But I've seen men get irrationally furious at seeing the word or being told they're being patronizing/condescending many, many, many more times. If we have one example of mansplainging being used wrong for every 10 examples of a man just getting pissed off because it was used (usually correctly), I have a far greater concern with the latter and am skeptical of arguments of someone who focuses on the former.

 

And I'm pretty skeptical about claiming that the word abuse has any place in the conversation around whether mansplaining is a word that should be used or not, or whether it is overused.  Sure, abuse has multiple levels of meaning.  I don't see a good faith claim in which saying someone mansplained something is abusive.  It might be dismissive, but not abusive.

 

The entire point of that section is to demonstrate that, even in private spaces that are supposed to be "safe," and populated by like-minded and well-meaning people, the exact same kind of language, discrediting techniques, and ire are marshaled. It is specifically that exact context that gives the point its weight. If you aren't aware of similar examples on the public internet, you aren't taking an honest look at our online communities.

 

I may not have delved enough into why that section bugged me. I don't trust him, or his characterization of that exchange. He posits it as PC run amuck in a safe place, but he's filtered the posts for us, only giving us the ones he thinks back up his view. It's a source I doubt any of us can check to see if his characterization is accurate. But I actually see someone raising a legitimate point based on the evidence presented. Then there's a joke, that may or may not be mockery, then some defensiveness, then a disagreement, and then some drama. But which side in that discussion is being oversensitive? Which one is doing the policing? I'm not confident to say it's the PC SJW types. I mean, if you are engaged in a discussion of a specific topic, and the people most invested in that topic are not present in the discussion, then you should be really thoughtful about why that is the case. I think that applies to these very forums. We are super male dominant here by numbers, and while most of us try to be thoughtful and progressive, I have no doubt that we also completely fuck it up occasionally. If a woman were to point that out right now, that this thread is a majority men, mocking that would be wrong.  Acknowledging that we are missing voices and perspectives would be right. I just don't see where pointing that out is some sort of PC sin.

 

Chait is definitely not the 'right' person to write this kind of article (which I personally think says something bad about the state of discourse), but the larger point isn't just that white men can't say what they want, it's that everyone is subjected to this kind of unconsidered scrutiny. The atmosphere is too toxic and uninviting and I really do feel that it's a problem for progressive causes.

 

And I totally agree with you, which is why I just wanted to pick at a few things that raised my hackles in that piece.  I guess, ultimately, I think Chait's piece actually does more to perpetuate that toxicity rather than provide a solution.  He's basically calling out call out culture, but doing so with poor faith arguments.  But then how do you call out call outs without calling out?  It's a weird conundrum, and one that's hard to solve. 

 

One quick point about points being undermined by way of who is making them:

*snip to save space*

 

That's an excellent point, and one worth considering. I don't think it would have changed my reaction to the sections I brought up. I don't honestly know who Chait is, at all. I don't think I've ever read anything by him and don't recognize the name.

 

 

 

 

In general, at this point I worry way more about marginalized voices.  I think one of the things I've personally seen that bugs me the most is the vitriol, attacks and dismissiveness that goes on between women on opposite sides of the sex criticality conversation.  When I see a sex worker try to speak out, or try to live an open life owning her choices, and she gets shit on from multiple directions, including people who should be her allies, I care more about that than whether or not a legitimate white dude ally feels afraid to speak up.  I think about the nearly invisible Hispanic women who drive a metric fuckton of the Kansas economy, with few people willing to acknowledge them.   I worry so much more about that than I do about whether or not a man feels abused by being called a mansplainer. Yes, call out culture can be counter-productive. There should be better dialogue within these communities. Yes, people tend to be loud and vitriolic on the Internet, and it seems like its getting harder and harder for anyone to listen to anyone. But in that piece, I don't see him worrying about those people, at all. He's worried about whether or not white men have a voice, about whether or not abortion protesters have a voice.  And that bugs the shit out of me.

[Gormongous]

I think one thing we may fundamentally disagree about, and that may allow for no further discussion, is this: I do not think that somebody being offended by something is inherently enough to merit an apology. The number of factors that go into determining any one human's reaction to anything that could possibly be said, is such that I do not believe it is automatically incumbent on the person saying the thing to feel remorse. This is a tricky area for sure, but I do think that the reinforcement of identity politics does create more situations where people are encouraged to feel offended by more things than they otherwise would, with little positive social gain as a result.

I was born with a severe congenital spinal defect that kept me in and out of hospitals for the first decade and a half of my life, and left my childhood riddled with constant insults and mockery about how I'm weird looking, a hunchback, called Quasimodo, etc.--this was even worse during the years when I had to wear a large and obvious brace, but it lasted in some form into high school. It's a lot better now, for which I consider myself lucky; it still has a big impact on my body, causes ongoing pain, etc., but the outward effects have been dampened. (It resurfaced for a while when I first became a semi-public figure online after college and had to be ambiently aware of people talking about why I look weird in certain ways, which wasn't the best.) Despite that, it still hits me when I see a piece of popular media like "THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME", or see subservient henchmen depicted as hunchbacks, or any number of other less obvious but still psychologically potent references to various physical ailments, which aren't worth listing. Even most of the furniture I use on a daily basis is a constant reminder to me of this kind of thing, as it is usually uncomfortable for me (and sometimes painful), which makes sense given that it was designed for people WITHOUT this kind of condition. I'm not looking for sympathy or asking for any kind of treatment--my life is fine, I'm fine--I'm just saying that I think it is psychically easier to live to try and live with this kind of thing as opposed to let oneself get bent out of shape about every instance of it. I absolutely 100% know that, at least for me, my interior life was a lot shittier and more stressful when I indulged in letting myself wallow in frustration when I saw things that would "trigger" certain memories or reactions inside myself. It just was. I can't ever compare my own experience to anyone else's, and I know for sure that there are kinds of institutional prejudice and bias that run a lot deeper than what I have to deal with. (Although, on the flip side, my thing is rare enough that as far as I know there aren't enough people with it that I have an obvious social support structure simply floating around on the internet.) But I also find it hard to believe that there is NO commonality in terms of how people choose to react to these things.

I don't know how to talk about this stuff without preemptively feeling shame or guilt about what I'm saying, which is in ITSELF frustrating. I care about progressive causes, particularly politically progressive causes, and I just cannot deny that the way many progressive ideals are currently discussed online actually decreases the amount I am encouraged or willing to engage with and consider them. There is an insular nature to a certain kind of progressive discussion that, in my opinion, mirrors that of the far-right. Given one, I'll take the far left any day, but it still feels insufficient to me.

 

Thanks for sharing that, Chris. I think you're right that we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe it's my Midwest upbringing, but I almost always apologize to people if they're offended, even online. The sheer fact that they're offended causes sufficient regret for the apology to be sincere for me, unless by apologizing I'm enabling or encouraging toxic or destructive behavior, in which case I don't for obvious reasons. With that perspective, I find it very frustrating, especially online, how rarely people apologize for saying or doing things that cause clear and sometimes severe distress to other people. An apology costs nothing to me and it can be the difference between the best and the worst day for someone, often an oppressed person who might have less opportunity for good days overall, so I'm really unsympathetic to complaints like those of Chait, even if they are borne out of legitimate frustrations.

[Chris]

Thanks for sharing that, Chris. I think you're right that we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe it's my Midwest upbringing, but I almost always apologize to people if they're offended, even online. The sheer fact that they're offended causes sufficient regret for the apology to be sincere for me, unless by apologizing I'm enabling or encouraging toxic or destructive behavior, in which case I don't for obvious reasons. With that perspective, I find it very frustrating, especially online, how rarely people apologize for saying or doing things that cause clear and sometimes severe distress to other people. An apology costs nothing to me and it can be the difference between the best and the worst day for someone, often an oppressed person who might have less opportunity for good days overall, so I'm really unsympathetic to complaints like those of Chait, even if they are borne out of legitimate frustrations.

Well, that's totally fair, but I guess I would be more specific in what I mean by saying that there is a distinction between apologizing for causing distress to another person, regardless of reason, and for taking the existence of that apology as an automatic discrediting--in part or in whole--of what was originally said.

[Deadpan]

Thanks for sharing that, Chris.

 

Eyup, this <3

[Argobot]

Hey Chris, I think you're pretty great.

[Bjorn]

Thanks for sharing that, Chris.

 

Triple appreciated.

 

Thanks for sharing that, Chris. I think you're right that we'll have to agree to disagree. Maybe it's my Midwest upbringing, but I almost always apologize to people if they're offended, even online.

 

Maybe it is a Midwest thing, apologizing for causing harm or offense, even if minor and inadvertent, is deeply hard wired into me. I don't do as well online as I do offline, but I do try.

[Apple Cider]

I apologize because I think it's a basic human decency to say. There hasn't been a time that I can recall, anecdotally where I said something that someone felt hurt by that I felt no remorse about. Most of the time, it's been me really not considering what I said and passing over someone's feelings or generally stepping in where it wasn't my business to. Every single time, I've recognized what my mistake was, apologized sincerely, rectified the situation and thoroughly considered what I need to do going forward to make sure that isn't duplicated. I've become overall a pretty thoughtful person who thinks quite a bit about what they say and often chooses to listen in situations where my opinion isn't really warranted. I don't see this as a bad thing. 

 

I'm also a person who feels fairly liberated in some ways, by the politics I espouse - dealing with sexism becomes more pervasive when you start to recognize what it is but it also gave me relief because I finally had a name for many of the things I have experienced over my lifetime but had no idea was something common. Same goes for dealing with other oppressive behaviors. I don't get bent out of shape about every instance of it and therapy helped a lot for some of the really brutal stuff I've dealt with over my lifetime but I can empathize with people who come into this stuff hot and angry and raw, I was like that myself a few years ago. Confronting this stuff and realizing that the world is inherently unfair is not easy for anyone. There's also some topics I tend to get a lot more upset about than others - while it's easier to talk in a less emotional way about things like biphobia, I absolutely get my dander up when people consistently are belligerent about things like rape culture, etc. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

I unfortunately have to sidestep that whole intelligent discussion for a tangental one.

I guess now I always just think of this: http://natazilla.tumblr.com/post/22797932401/leosboots-i-love-the-art-and-the-style-and-the

Natasha Allegri is an artist that has risen to prominance and now has her own show starring a female character for once, but cutting down her stuff as sexist like this is terribly unproductive and maybe a little bit unfair (even if they have a point I suppose). She already has enough detractors that she's a woman who is only now famous because of riding the coattails of Pendleton Ward or that she "ruined" Adventure Time with her gender bending stuff. It's just in good fun and it's her job. So adding angry feminist accusations to her pile of criticisms just makes me frustrated even though I'm not her.

Nothing immunises anyone from prejudices and biases. Allegri may do some great feminist work but that doesn't prevent her from potentially setting the cause back too with other things she does. Your personal mileage varies on the actual depictions there, and personally I do see them all as being a bit feminised, when I think it's best to provide ranges of masculinity and femininity in all genders. Sure there are plenty worse examples available but that doesn't invalidate any of the less harmful cases. I'm more critical of how Allegri respond, with a numbered list of why they're equal enough and it's not a big deal.

 

All artistic choices deserve scrutiny, especially if someone identifies something that might be harmful in it. Especially if you didn't see that harmful thing when doing it. Sure you had other reasons in your head when deciding those things but you never really know your own though process fully. Everyone is loaded with a lifetime of baggage that pushes and pulls perception around the place, so you can't honestly say for sure "No I only made her blush because her beaker is smoking and that's embarassing", you have to acknowledge that maybe your brain figured her blushing made more sense than if a guy did and you just didn't catch the assumption that time.

 

Also "I don't hate ____" is the worst phrase. Systemic oppression and subconscious bias are not about hating groups of people so you decide to subjugate them, It's all about how your views of those groups has been imprinted. I would very much not say I hate women, I have more female friends than male. But there's no way I could claim that as a badge to say that it's not misogynist of me to be more sceptical of women's input or dismissive of their experiences. That applies to everyone ever. A lot of people don't hate their social groups but it certainly wont stop you oppressing yourself.

[Problem Machine]

I don't think it's necessarily fair to read an artist addressing criticism of a work by explaining the intent behind the choices as being defensive or dismissive

[SuperBiasedMan]

I don't really think it's as bad as the initial poster said but I do think there is a criticism there and I think

 

I don’t hate ladies. I mean, I AM a lady. kinda.

is not a self critical considered response.

 

I mean, I constantly second guess my own thoughts and readily notice all sorts of factors that I didn't think of the first time round. So maybe I'm just very open to all round criticism and expecting too much of others but I think she responded to the wrong sentiment there. To me it reads as a list of excuses and exceptions that fails to address an overall pattern within the work. You could totally say the pattern's not an issue and make that argument but to deny that pattern is disingenuous to me.

[Chris]

Also, while an artist obviously does not get to decide how her art is interpreted or the effect it has on anyone, the fact that somebody does interpret her art in a particular way does not inherently mean there's actually a problem in every individual case. I think the thing that I actually find frustrating about the general environment surrounding these issues is that it seems like, in a very high degree of cases, the "received" interpretation of a given situation simply ends up being the one that takes the most critical tack. In other words, people in a self-reinforcing progressive community tend to be wary of ever stepping back criticism of something that someone claims might be marginalizing, because they do not want to be seen as not being sufficiently sympathetic or privilege-aware. I think this happens subconsciously, not as something people are intentionally doing, but I think it happens. Part of why I think this happens is because, as a generally progressive person who associates with other generally progressive person, I can feel that instinct pulling at me. I think it's a good instinct to have, because it lends credence to marginalized people, but at this point I feel in many cases it creates a lot of tempests in teapots that do more harm than good by making progressive people seem impossible to please without adhering to what are essentially constantly-moving targets.

[Problem Machine]

I don't really think it's as bad as the initial poster said but I do think there is a criticism there and I think

is not a self critical considered response.

Fair enough I guess. She might not be engaging with the criticism in the spirit in which it was intended. I just really like reading about why artists make the choices they do.

[Gormongous]

Ugh, two separate long-term assholes on my Facebook feed have already linked the Chait piece with comments like, "And this is why I tell bleeding-heart liberals to stuff it when they demand that I consider my 'privilege.' Free speech cannot be silenced, liberals are worse than ISIS!" Whatever the reasons Chait has for writing this piece, I am willing to bet money that its only perceptible effect will be getting linked by MRAs and #GamerGate to defend their right to say offensive things from the criticism of progressives. It bums me out that any attempt, good or bad, that the left makes to self-assess its own flaws is simply incorporated into a hate machine bent on its destruction.

[Chris]

Ugh, two separate long-term assholes on my Facebook feed have already linked the Chait piece with comments like, "And this is why I tell bleeding-heart liberals to stuff it when they demand that I consider my 'privilege.' Free speech cannot be silenced!" Whatever the reasons Chait has for writing this piece, I am willing to bet money that its only perceptible effect will be getting linked by MRAs and #GamerGate who want to defend their right to say offensive things from the criticism of progressives. It bums me out that any attempt, good or bad, that the left makes to self-assess its own flaws is simply incorporated into a hate machine bent on its destruction.

While I agree that this is incredibly frustrating, and unsurprising, I don't think anyone who already would react in that particular way would fail to feel that way or link any number of other things in the absence of this once piece.

I think a big reason I react the way I do to this whole issue is because, to me, it's all evidence of how incredibly polarized our political reality is at this point. I absolutely do not believe that every issue has two equally valid viewpoints, but I do think the degree to which each side is hardline and relatively unwilling to engage in meaningful discussion with those on the other side (and believe me I count myself among this number, as soon as I'm surrounded by, for example, conservatives in my own family, I can feel my intellectual shell hardening) basically guarantees this state of affairs will continue.

It just feels that the internet and the way our current media works allows people to self-segregate into self-reflecting chambers that disallow meaningful communication with those in other chambers. I don't know what I think anyone should actually DO about it. I really have no idea.