Comments on: I’m Not Your Sister

By: piny

piny — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 15:51:31 +0000

>>Simply put, Andrea is a lonely childless spinster, which is why she is so bitter toward other women and motherhood.>>

What Jody said. It also opens the door to charges of anti-feminism on our part. This “lonely spinster” argument is one that feminists themselves have had to deal with. It’s also untrue. Gloria Steinem was childless and probably single when she wrote her famous essay demanding that moms and homemakers be compensated for their work.

If Andrea is lonely, she’s probably lonely because she’s an asshole, not the other way around.

And, Dave, other commenters have pointed out that even if Andrea was making a general statement–which seems unlikely–she was being offensive to Lauren. The quadriracial crack was racist. It’s not better to insult someone and everyone like them than to merely insult that person. So Lauren has every right to jump on her, and Andrea’s defense (“I’m making a racist generalization, not handing out a specific racist insult!”) is just sad.

By: Helen

Helen — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:10:41 +0000

Is this the Andrea who ahem, “moderates” (that’s not really a good term for what she does), Tim B.Liar’s blog?

She’s famous with us Australian bloggers for deleting any comments she doesn’t like – hence the long lists of adoring dittoheads in Tim’s comments. Various excellent bloggers have been banned completely by Andrea.

“Andrea bopped me on the nose metaphorically when I yelled foul over a specific instance of women-hating bile on her blog (she had described Cindy Sheehan’s protest as dragging “the level of political discussion in this country not into the mud, but into the men[s]trual muck of the slop pail” and then promptly deleted my complaint)”.

Yep, that’s the modus operandi.

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 12:03:14 +0000

With respect Deb, I always cringe when the “bitter…lonely, childless spinster” line is used against bloggers like Andrea Harris because it theoretically opens the way for her to retort back about, say, ‘promiscuously fecund welfare Barbies’ – or other enraged name-calling.
True, she has turned the personal into the political – Andrea seems to regard her own single, childless state as an accomplishment in its own right. And she demonstrates zero empathy – and this is an outrageous irony – for any woman who dares to use their own personal motherhood politically (hence the way she flung Cindy Sheehan’s biology back in her face with such venom, or her row here).

But the “bitter… spinster” swipe just seems begging for payback!
(I only “know” Andrea through her writing, btw).

By: Deb

Deb — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:47:28 +0000

Simply put, Andrea is a lonely childless spinster, which is why she is so bitter toward other women and motherhood.

By: Cleis

Cleis — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 03:38:47 +0000

As a white feminist (though far more than quadri-ethnic), I'm totally psyched that fanatics like Andrea get feminists' devotion to anti-racism, diversity, and equality. We must be doing something right to pose such a threat to their narrow worlds. Rock on!

By: Lauren

Lauren — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:48:14 +0000

Dave, that would be a plausible explanation had I not had a similar conversation with Andrea just ten days ago that she is very clearly referencing.

By: Dave Munger

Dave Munger — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:40:13 +0000

Did I write Ilyka? Meant Andrea.

By: Dave Munger

Dave Munger — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 02:38:27 +0000

People here seem to be getting a lot of play out of one possible interpretation of what Ilyka wrote, which she’s provided a feasible alternative explanation for. Maybe she’s just denying that she meant it in a cartoonishly villainous way because she’s afraid of all of the awful consequences of people realizing what she really meant, but … maybe not! She’s probably doing a better job at clarifying than I could, but I’ve got to give it a shot: She used general terms to lampoon people who behave in a certain specific way; You decreed that this was the same as making a specific racially derisive comment against your son.

By: mythago

mythago — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 21:51:46 +0000

Myth, please reconsider your position. The only things that comes out of Andrea’s mouth are hot air and spittle. Some words and logic would be rather nice.

If I had a way to jam logic into the mouths, much less the brains, of random loons, the internet would be a VERY different place.

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Thu, 15 Sep 2005 20:50:14 +0000

Andrea Harris is an indisputably lively blogger – I suspect there’s often genuine sweat behind her off-the-cuff, mad-as-hell pose – but with a seriously disabling flaw. Basically, classic Lady Macbeth syndrome. That is, a kind of thwarted misogyny that throws her logic wildly off balance and also makes her sentimentalize aggressive rules of behavior – she’s a real eyelash-batting cheerleader for testosterone in a weird way.(See the real Lady Macbeth for that little quirk too.)
Andra bopped me on the nose metaphorically when I yelled foul over a specific instance of women-hating bile on her blog (she had described Cindy Sheehan’s protest as dragging “the level of political discussion in this country not into the mud, but into the men[s]trual muck of the slop pail” and then promptly deleted my complaint). You don’t have to look far for other loopy examples from Andrea of the same; “I have had it with my sex. I hereby proclaim myself Female By Accident; it’s just an “F” on my driver’s license and a mistaken chromosome set”. Or: “Unfortunately I get to live in a society where 90% of the women seem to have the sense of entitlement of the seventeenth century French nobility minus the attendant sense of duty.”
It’s also as if the moment she gets the sniff of a single mother, her sense goes out of the window. (Obviously the “quadriracial” comment was additionally racist- what’s with her crackpot defence?)
It’s tempting to play analyst with her words (‘I say “menstrual” you say “muck” and “slop pail”‘ – ooookay, shall we talk about that for the next 55 minutes Andrea?). But for the purposes of this thread, perhaps we should just dub her Lady Macbeth – and leave it at that?
(Sorry to go on – but she’s been licking her chops in victory over Lauren at her blog…)