So October 11th is National Coming Out Day. I was a bad queer and failed to blog about it. I do kinda want to walk around town some October 11th in a “Nobody Knows I’m a Transsexual” tshirt, or possibly, “Can You See My Breasts? Call 1-800-HOWSMYBINDER.” Other than that, though, “out” is kind of a complicated question in my life.
Some of the conflicts came up in this thread, B/L’s rant about internet outing:
Given that Ann Althouse’s behavior was savaged by Michael Berube, I’m guessing that, uh, even having a ‘Real Name’ ™ and an ethical obligation, I’d guess, to not be an asshole, this didn’t change much with regard to Boobgate.
What? If I had blogged under my own name, I would somehow check myself because someone in South Carolina might get angry with me and run to Tampa to — what? — beat me with a stick. (OH! nipply!) Give me what for, face to face? Scowl at me? Inspect my underwear drawer? Give me the Evil Eye?
Seriously, what? If I’m just a legal assistant in a law firm, you’re going to call my employer and complain that I’m a troll astro-turfing on the Internets. LOL. Charming. Very charming. I’m thinking that, as long as it was in her free time, they’d laugh at you.
Should I be careful in case I have a photo snapped of me in ratty gym shorts and stained shirts? I’ve got pink foam rollers around. Could be sure to wear those regularly too. This would be a feminist act?
Batshit guano insanity is as batshit guano insanity does.
Now, BitchLab is pissed, and she has my sympathy.
This is Ann’s original comment:
I wonder how many of the angrier participants actually identify as feminists in real life. I think there is a lot of astroturfing, sockpuppeting, concern trolling and intentional disruption that makes it hard to figure out what’s really going on with actual, committed feminists.
That’s not to say that feminists can’t be hard on each other, of course. I just wish more people blogged and commented under their own names and took responsibility for their words and actions. That’s not meant as a jibe at you (Fred and Mary) at all, I just think anonymity gets sorely abused in the blogopshere far too often.
And this is her follow-up:
General observation: Anonymity can be legitimately used, and there is a rich history of this that vastly predates the Internet. But it can also be abused. Lying about one’s personal circumstances for advantage is an abuse, as is soliciting donations under false pretenses, and misrepresenting one’s race, gender, or political affiliation for instrumental reasons. Launching personal attacks under multiple identities, and/or making threats are abuses. All these things corrupt the discourse. Some are not only unethical but may also constitute legal violations.
Specific observation: It’s one thing to disagree with (for example) Amanda Marcotte on issues. It’s quite another to launch personal attacks like this one of yours:
(from here: http://brownfemipower.com/?p=500…? p=500#comments )just a hint, you know, after all this time, i SUSPECT that Amanda Friggin’ Marcotte is NOT a WOC.
goddam, her brain’s not even connected to her typing fingers, is it?
…or, wait, is this some of my best co-bloggers are?
anyway:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
*wiping away tears.*
No, Amanda, honey baby cookie sweetie. I don’t think you’re a racist; or, well, i don’t actually think that’s your biggest problem. lord knows it isn’t your biggest FEAR. i mean, sure, you’re racist, hello; (and heterocentric, and stuffed full to the brim with all kinds of bougie terrors and snobberies) but in a way that’s the freaking least of it.
No; you know what you are, Amanda? You are a prancing lightweight. A birdbath-deep mediocre intellect with a serious Daddy complex and an even more serious “I am constitutionally incapable of paying attention to anything that doesn’t have MEMEME in it.” complex. -And- a product of your culture, which you have “examined” -rather- less thoroughly than you examine your skin for lines and blemishes every morning. That’s it. That’s all.
Well, even if no one else will (and who can blame them):
I forgive you, my child. Go, and be an asshat no more.
well, anyway, i don’t have to read you anymore, so i can FANTASIZE that you’ve stopped being an asshat, and in a way that’s almost as good. maybe even better.
‘cuz, hey, it’s kind of fun, right? this making up the “person” you want to see instead of dealing with the actual person in front of you? Makes life so much easier.
well, anyway, it’ll sure make -mine- a lot more pleasant.
Ciao.
That kind of attack, I think, illustrates Fred’s point in this post. To claim that it was justified because “she asked for it” is to give the answer almost every abuser supplies.
You know what there oughtta be a law against? This analogy. Now, I’m just some dumb anonymous blogger, but I was under the impression that “she asked for it” is a wrongheaded argument because it is never, under any circumstances, no matter what “she” might have done, permissible to molest or assault any woman. When you agree that there is some way in which a woman might “ask” to be beaten, you are supporting a worldview that supports rape, assault, and wifebeating. Feminists also are wont to point out that in any society where “she asked for it” was the standard, a woman could request violence simply by virtue of being female; it isn’t as though “she” can ask for it and yet retain basic rights like freedom from battery.
Calling someone a jackass on the internet, on the other hand, is sometimes justified. (In fact, it’s nothing like rape or assault in a lot of ways, but for the sake of argument we’ll stick with this one.) There’s a lot of jackassery on the internet. The aforementioned Amanda Marcotte levels “personal attacks” like those all the time, if “personal attack” means insulting someone’s intelligence because they’ve made a stupid argument, or their integrity because they make a disingenuous one. Her language is frequently quite harsh, even cheerfully obscene. I made my reputation saying nasty things about nasty people, and Ann up until very recently thought I was awesome. I doubt she does any longer, but that has nothing to do with my tendency toward “personal attacks.”
There is nothing wrong with that. It’s not like stealing Amanda’s identity, or defrauding her. It doesn’t really lower the standard of discourse, certainly not any more than the arguments its users are responding to. This complaint is also diversionary: the people who tend to call for civility are the people who have a rather troubling standard for personal attack. I see no reason why, “You’re a jackass,” is more offensive than, “You’re like an abuser.” I’d actually get a hell of a lot angrier at the latter.
There’s also the faux-balance aspect of this standard, such that a jackass engaging in jackassery must be treated with anything other than scorn and harsh language–that people who are unwilling to respect debate must be granted protection under a nebulous set of rules of order. Ann Bartow is being a jerk in this comments thread, and she’s making arguments that are stupid. I am under no obligation to respond to them with, “I don’t think that’s quite accurate,” or, “I feel like you’re not weighing all aspects of the situation equally.” Disingenuous, manipulative: same thing, only with more syllables.
Which brings me to the second big problem with this argument, and one that I am also disinclined to treat politely: outing people online.
Ann, not content with a single self-serving conflation, is attempting to work a few more. The first is the conflation of pseudonymous with anonymous. A pseudonymous blogger is someone with an online persona, which they use for blogging and commenting on other people’s blogs and message boards. Belledame is a pseudonymous blogger like me. I have no idea what her real name is, and have never been interested in finding out. Online, to me and everyone else, she is exactly Belledame; so far as I know, neither myself nor Ann has ever encountered Dellebame or any other Belledame anima anywhere online. She could very well have some anonymous sideline, but then, so could Ann Bartow. Blogging under your real name only means that certain statements are traceable to your real self; it doesn’t make it any more difficult for you to make other statements anon- or pseudonymously, and might in fact provide cover for them.
An anonymous blogger or commenter is someone blogging or commenting under no name or under a name different from their pseudonymous/eponymous online persona. They do this in order to shield themselves from the repercussions of their viewpoints, because anonymity makes it difficult for people to link your statements with any version of you. An anonymous blogger could troll a blog anonymously while flattering its owner pseudonymously. An anonymous blogger could anonymously present several conflicting viewpoints without having to integrate any of them. Pseudonymity does not afford this kind of obfuscation. Belledame’s statements at her blog, feministe, brownfemipower, B/L’s blog, amptoons, punkassblog, and Stone Court are all traceable back to Belledame. She has no problem with that, and has not attempted to frustrate attempts to figure out what exactly she is saying.
The second big conflation is between an unwillingness to reveal one’s real-life identity and an unwillingness to be consistently pseudonymous. I am unwilling to reveal my real-life identity. This has nothing to do with an unwillingness to own my arguments here, or to interact with all of you as a single integrated person. It has to do with the tendency of the internets to spawn a lot of very dangerous people. Revealing real-life details could get me very badly hurt–harassed, stalked, or even the victim of actual assault. I am publishing my life on the internet. A lot of people feel this way about online interactions, and so they take the basic precaution of not leaving themselves vulnerable for no good reason.
And it is no good reason. I don’t care what Ann Bartow does offline. I do not know Ann Bartow offline. I am interacting with her here, as someone discussing an issue online. Her personal details are irrelevant to me. Her decision to reveal them is no more politically courageous than the decision to leave one’s front door unlocked. Her willingness to blog with her real-life persona in mind opens her up only to the sorts of attacks that are deeply unfair. It makes her accountable to abusive trolls who might be interested in harassing her. It doesn’t give any rhetorical ammunition to anyone with a shred of integrity, and is therefore irrelevant to the question of Ann’s strength as an online debater.
Her tendency to set herself up as superior to people who make a different decision about irrelevant information, on the other hand, does speak to her relative worth. She is attacking the right to privacy in a forum where the right to privacy is frequently violated, and pretending that there’s no reason for these bloggers to worry about personal safety. And she’s doing so as someone whose comments have at least seemed like the “I know where you liiiiiiiive…” sliminess that precedes outing. That’s vile. Ironically enough, outing or threatening to out the victim was (and in many places, still is) a common feature in abusive same-gender relationships. The same potential exists here, and a lot of people are very sensitive to it.
As B/L points out, none of these astroturfing weekend feminists are saying anything illegal, or even particularly offensive to decency, in any of these “personal attacks.” If Belle E. Dame posted about how Ann Bartow was a freakin’ moron, the repercussions for Belle E. Dame probably wouldn’t be much greater than those for Belledame’s real-life counterpart. Death threats are a different matter, but Belledame has shown no desire to engage in them, and is probably not remaining pseudonymous in order to make them. Real-life blogging probably wouldn’t create any just consequences for statements like, “Ann Bartow is a freakin’ moron.” The real-name bloggers I’ve encountered here, Ann included, really aren’t any less nasty. They are sometimes less likely to pepper their posts with profanity, but they are no more likely to be respectful.
ok, wait a minutes–she’s mad at my post or something that was said on my post? I don’t get it?
Oops. I’m sorry. Here–I’ll fix the quote. Ann actually quoted something belledame had said that she sees as a nasty personal attack, and I picked it up in two parts. Hold on.
And it is vituperative, but…whatever. There’s no crying in the internets, you know?
How can you dig through all that bile?
Well, technically, you can’t dig through bile. Wouldn’t you need a really big squeegee?
There’s a lot of bile all over the place; that’s one of the constants of this sort of interaction, between people who probably would deal with each other in different phrasing if they were meeting face-to-face. I don’t see that any one corner is freer of it than another; at best, different communities just have divergent standards for the kind of bile that gives them acid reflux. I don’t really intend this post to focus on bile (although I realize that’s an impossible boundary) so much as on an issue of personae online and offline–there are some troubling implications wrt privacy, particularly for someone like me.
Amen. I’m certainly not afraid to take a stand, but I’m not going to be stupid about it. I’m not going to expose myself to every random freak on the internet. And I’m going to protect my job, because I can do more good in my real life if I’m not being harassed by flying monkeys because of something I wrote on the internet.
This is something Chris Clarke didn’t get when he wrote this in comments to this post:
I’m still angry about this, though I’m even angrier at his brother’s response to me.
Are you a closet leftist, zu? I’m not.
No, but I’m a pseudonymous leftie on the Internet.
Oh, that’s just dumb. If you were actually using your blog as a magnet decal, then it would be valid. Since you are consistently left online and, apparently, in real life, you are being counted.
I should also clarify: I don’t remain pseudonymous because I’m afraid that people who know me in real life will find out what I think; I remain pseudonymous in order to keep the wack-asses of the Internet out of my personal life (or those of people who share my name and profession or borough of residence. They’re out there). Consequences for me are unlikely to go to stalking or physical violence, but should someone find out where I work and decide to call my boss, thus annoying him or causing him to wonder what I get up to during the day, I could lose my job. Or, someone with my name could lose her job, or be harassed at her home number. This, to me, is an unacceptable risk, and it’s a bit high-handed for someone who’s always worked under his own name and doesn’t have to worry about that kind of worlds-are-colliding thing to tell me that because I choose to not take stupid risks, that my commitment to what-the-fuck-ever is questionable.
My persona is constant across all blogs I comment on. However, I am not out as a sadomashochist at work. IME, an expression of sexual politics is often read, for anyone outside the dominant paradigm, as a come-on, and I don’t want people I work with to think that I am looking at them as potential play partners just because I’m a sadomasochist. Also, I fear discrimination. So I’m closeted at work.
OTOH, I find that if I talk about my feminism and sexuality comes up, I have to self-censor a lot in order to avoid talking about BDSM. So online I want to be able to be up front about sexual politics and practice.
What I do for a living is a personal cause that I am deeply attached to and seamlessly integrates with the rest of my politics. I do organizational work around my practice area, and it is an issue I vote and fundraise around. But I don’t say what it is online, because I don’t want someone figuring out what area of law I practice in and deciding to out me to my firm as a sadomasochist.
Hiding my sexuality at work does not stop me from telling people, for example, that continuing to penetrate a woman who has said “stop” is rape, or that my bar could do much better at promoting women lawyers. My values are what they are, and I live them. I use a pseudonym because there are parts of my life that I don’t want bumping into each other.
If anyone has a problem with that, pogue mahone (or, for the sticklers, pog mo thoin).
Exactly.
I meant, to zuzu. But both of you, really.
I do not see what the point of all this is—no one outed anyone as far as I can tell. Who was outed?
And some people are just intensely private. Some people are more comfortable and able to be themselves when they’re able to disguise themselves. I don’t see what the issue is here. My daughter’s real name is Katherine, but she goes by the name Kat–that doesn’t invalidate anything that she’s ever done in her life. My real name is *blank* but I go by kactus. That doesn’t change me, it just frees me.
I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but was someone’s real name given up? All I see is a link to some post where Bitch Lab linked a comment by Ann Bartow pointing out that Bitch Lab has talked a lot about her various degrees. And then for some reason, very silly, uninformed insults are being lobbed at me.
No one was outed. AB once strongly intimated that she could out a particular someone if she so desired. then backpedalled like crazy (when i called her on it, come to think of it). mostly has kind of a -thing- about anonymous bloggers, in general. like she has this idea that they’re/we’re some sort of threat to Feminism or something, i dunno. it’s a bit weird.
i forgot to come out, too. ho well. not like i’m not uh out there enough already, i guess; in any number of ways, now. i.e. i am a vindictive and vituperative asshole, when i care to be, yes.
“but I’m good company.”
and yeah; there is a difference between saying nasty shit on the Internets, even misrepresenting peoples’ arguments on the Internets (which was part of the source of above-cited nastiness, i.e. my complaint, as i said less harshly in a number of places before that, but well nevermind that now) and threatening to out someone; and it is the height of disingenuousness for her to suggest otherwise, if that’s what she’s doing.
anyhoo as i said to AB, it’s not like it’d be that frigging difficult to find out my identity if one really wanted to.
I wasn’t angry about that CC post; in fact i realize i came really close to outing myself because of it. Still not angry at it, but i do think it’s rather bogus; and yes that is making more or less the same sort of argument as i think AB is making (although she doesn’t stop there): that somehow there’s more “honesty” in using one’s real name online.
As I’ve said elsewhere, possibly in taht same Stone Court thread: some of the most vile people on the Internets use their real name. Michelle Malkin, for instance. doesn’t make her any more “honest.” and the reasons she’s arguably safer than some other people in saying outrageous shit is because she’s got plenty of resources at her disposal; it’s really not got much to do with the name at all.
which was the other problem i had with the whole “outing” business, as I said: it’s not a level playing field. Someone who’s a respected professional with job security (tenure, say) and plenty of financial resources and friends in high places can take a lot more risks than someone who’s blogging as, o i don’t know, an illegal immigrant? a sex worker? someone who’s already got an abusive ex stalking hir? just plain someone who really really really can’t afford to risk the boss seeing it and thus losing hir job as sie has absolutely no backup at all if sie does?
From what I can tell, it’s less of a threat of outing and more a way to point out that the noisy, trolling BL crew might be a little bit off when characterizing themselves as working class fighters while tossing words like “bougie” at those of us who have fewer degrees.
Not that I have anything against the middle class. Lord knows I would be lying if I thought there was anything romantic about working too hard and living in a trailer. Everyone I knew who could got as far the fuck away from that as their feet could take them.
The Alas thing–although I wouldn’t characterize “Please stop the lying” the way you would–wasn’t the whole story according to BL, although I do think it’s a little bit threatening. BL was really creeped out, and I think for good reason. I’d be creeped out, too. Plus, now Ann is going around arguing that “Ann Bartow” is supposed to keep Ann Bartow from pulling that kind of shit.
Okay,
1) the AB thing has nothing to do with the current problems i and others have with you and your’n, Amanda.
2) “Those of us who have fewer degrees?” wtf? jesus christ, is THAT what you’ve been on about all this time? god, who cares? I ffs certainly don’t. and have never said anything that would suggest that i do as far as i know. neither has BL as far as that goes; neither has anyone that i know.
>Plus, now Ann is going around arguing that “Ann Bartow” is supposed to keep Ann Bartow from pulling that kind of shit.
say wha?
and I do not characterize myself as a working class fighter, p.s.
then again, I’m not a rape porn apologist either. as long as we’re throwing in everything but the damn kitchen sink.
nor am I anyone’s sock puppet; nor nor am I anyone other than who I’ve claimed to be. I am me. By any other name; and if someone has a problem with me, you know where to find me.
That’s her thesis: Pseudonymous blogging (not anonymous blogging, either; she’s unwilling to acknowledge the difference between trolly mctrollerson and the sockpuppet quartet and iamcuriouscerise.blogspot.com) is supposed to control “nasty personal attacks,” and make it more difficult for vicious people to be vicious. Which is horseshit. I’m sure it makes it more difficult for people to, say, threaten to abduct your children–although she did come right back and argue that anyone who blogs pseudonymously is just fooling themselves, and none of that information is really hidden, soooo–but it doesn’t make it more difficult to snot off at someone whose stance on fellatio is not satisfactory.
Ann believed that B/L was attempting to hide her academic background and interest–which is kind of bizarre; it’d be like me claiming to be cissexual on a comments thread that links back to my own blog–and believed that B/L was therefore a big liar.
BL characterizes herself as having an insider-position in some ways, and I think she has good reason to do so (that is, if she isn’t actually a high-powered corporate attorney with a summer house in Vermont). I don’t think, however, that her arguments have to do with class history so much as a perceived inability to recognize class issues.
I should clarify–I think that it might make give people a disincentive to speak bluntly, or to use swears, or to offend anyone for any reason, but not because they’re afraid of being held accountable so much as being harassed.
yes, that’s been her argument all along: about how to frame the -discussion.- or broaden it, rather. shame a lot of people don’t seem to see it that way.
but yeah, misrepresentation. Being distorted into funny straw-filled shapes for one’s own purposes. No one likes it, do they. No.
Hell, for all I know, “bougie” is the new term for working class schmoes that people in academia like to fling at us while they snigger into their martinis. It throws us off. We used to think it was just “rubes” and “yahoos”.
back to the anon thing, then:
or, well, as BL put it: lookit, what happens if I put my real name on (nasty comment)? So and so who lives three thousand miles away is gonna come over and beat the crap out of me? Well, anything’s possible i -guess;- but frankly if anyone’s -that-, well, crazy? they’re gonna find a way to track you down even without the light illusion of a pseudonym, frankly.
Because that’s what it is, ultimately, and that’s why i disagree with CC, at the end of the day; it’s also why i was considering going the full outing route. which, as i told AB, i may well do, but i’ll do it when -i- feel good and goddam ready; meanwhile, back off. (she did something similar over at Happy Feminist, p.s.; not the I-know-where-you-live crap, but blahblah it’d be -so much better if you did-. god, go *away.*) that is: that’s exactly what it is, -real- privacy and anonymity: an illusion. anyone who thinks otherwise in this day n age is simply kidding hirself. you pays your money and you takes your choice. as zuzu suggests: mostly, at least one tries to make the fuckwads work a little harder; at minimum it ensures one might get a -better class- of stalker/trolls.
I’ve never heard or used “bougie” without putting a heavily ironic gloss on it, as far as i know. fuck knows -i’m- bougie to the core.
as far as degrees: i’ve got an MFA in fucking playwriting, and let me tell you, has that ever served me well in the career track!
Though nobody likes it when someone tries to guilt-trip them about something pointless and stupid, I suppose. And hell, you could also call we “bougies” by the common slur “rednecks” and then it’s all that much easier to pretend that we’re the second coming of “Deliverance”.
MFA in playwriting is definitely the working class “cred” required to snot at people for being privileged, huh?
You know, I can think of at least two instances on this blog where commenters have called me out for making arguments that render transgender identities invisible. They were right, too.
jesus.
Amanda:
egghhh.
You know. First of all, if you’re referring to what I think you’re referring to (well, one of two things): it wasn’t meant to be a *guilt-trip.* It was and is: it isn’t pointless and stupid -to other people,- and I feel badly for those other people, because they seem to be expressing rather clearly that they do not feel heard. Guilt is really beside the point. -Listening- was the point.
one tends to get rather nasty when one feels that one and/or people one cares about and respect aren’t being heard.
In some ways I -am- privileged. And so are you. In other ways I’m -not- privileged. And thus with you. You may or may not share in all of either of those. All I do know (at least, i think i know) is:
1) We’re both women
2) We’re both white.
Class is one complicating factor. Sexual orientation is another. There are probably others.
Mostly, my own stuff here has been about: well, it started with Random Bird, and that really had nothing to do with “privilege” or any of this other shit at all.
I just thought it was really nasty.
This latest deal: you know, other people have their own take. I said at the time that i for one appreciate someone having the good grace to apologize -at all,- and meant it.
What was less cool was when other people started backpedalling and going “no no, there’s nothing to apologize for,” and yaddada yaddada yah…
Fuck, I don’t know. I think other people are interesting. I don’t see all of this as one-up one-down, ultimately, or at least I -try- not to.
Which isn’t to say that BD was; I don’t think your feminism is bougie, ironically or otherwise. If anything, it is primarily informed by women whose circumstances are not bourgeois. But I’m not sure it’s so much about your background or belledame’s. R. Mildred has said nasty things about your white privilege, and she’s not implying that she isn’t also white.
I love you, BD, but I think we all need to let Random Bird die.
So you were called out for something else and I have to what? Tolerate a bunch of multi-degreed asswipes taking turns insinuating I’m uneducated on one hand and then a fucking yuppie on the other? Is that “calling out”?
You’re right, that was a shallow thing to say. This isn’t just about your arguments, but (inaccurately) about your circumstances, and it is unfair. It’d be more like saying that I’m too privileged to be queer and too queer to be feminist, I suppose.
What on earth are you talking about? And again with the degrees. AM, this is at this point -your- mishegos, you know, the degree/uneducated business.
and i’m happy to let RB die (i mean, not literally); i am just trying to trace my own shit with Amanda here (because i can’t speak for anyone else) back to the origins, here. so, okay.
The point wrt this latest burqa flap, AM, in particular, is, I’ve said it before: *it really wasn’t about you at all.* That’s kind of, you know, the point?
as per who AB dragged this up: I have no idea. as i said: as far as i’m concerned one has nothing to do with the other.
slippage. not that it probably matters much.
and “why AB dragged this up,” not “who.”
for that matter: I don’t know who-all the “asswipes” in question are here, but if they’re some of the people i rather suspect they are, some of them to my knowledge aren’t especially formally educated at all. They do tend to be a very -smart- and well-read lot; it is however possible to read on one’s own time, point o’fact. Mostly, they’re -curious- about other people, about things they don’t already know; which is what I like about them.
For that matter, AB’s got a rather formidable set of academic creds on her, but that doesn’t especially mean she’s all that -smarter- than anyone else, especially. and in fact may not even be as well-informed or articulate as some other people who -aren’t- (as? or even at all?) formally edjumacated.
which is come to think of it perhaps what her problem has been all along.
i can but speculate, really.
all i know is: knowledge, unlike so much else i can think of, is not, in fact, a scarce commodity.
neither is empathy. or attention. or the ability to listen.
point o’fact.
Belledame, bougois means someone with capital that carries them above the working class, which these days mostly means intellectual capital. If Amanda’s ability to think has nothing to do with her education, it isn’t consistent to throw around terms that usually do refer to things like level of education.
Besides, I think that most of us are at least too edumacated to engage in reverse anything.
And I do know how to spell bourgeoise.
…You know, I’ve had similar interactions in a slightly different context, with a guy who just would not acknowledge that “Yes, you’re a medical professional who knows his shit,” was distinct from, “Your interpersonal/ethical skills are sorely lacking.” There was this same tendency to belabor legal points that aren’t really part of the general calculus; medical breakroom discourse in his; legal privacy expectation in hers.
Okay. I take back “bougie” from the above rant. (duh, -that’s- where i used it; i honestly wasn’t…well, never mind).
I expect it would have been more honest to just sum up that whole thing thusly:
“I am very angry at you.”
Well, what’s done is done.
At any rate: this is not for me now, nor never was, about anyone’s formal education. Where that came from was:
serious anger and frustration. not just at Amanda either. at what seems -to me- like a kind of…myopia.
And no, it’s unfair to make a straw-caricature of someone based on only a few posts here and there, that’s quite true. Or to project one’s own shit onto them, for that matter.
And no doubt simply doing as one feels one was done to one (along with to others) doesn’t really solve anything.
That said:
That rant, that -anger-, didn’t come out of nowhere, either. That much, at least. That much.
Well, “Ann Bartow” needs to crack down on Ann Bartow, then. I have been made aware that she’s figured out who I am, and the only way I can think that she’s done it is by having access to databases not available to the general public. I spent quite a bit of time in a good deal of terror of being outed myself after my post on the outing of a photographer stringer over a Times Travel Section story on Donald Rumsfeld’s vacation home got picked up by Atrios and then attracted the attention of J*** G******** and his flying monkeys. And then Bartow does that. Why, I don’t know — because we’ve disagreed about Go Fug Yourself, I suppose.
btw, I don’t agree at all that
>capital that carries them above the working class, which these days mostly means intellectual capital.
wrt class; but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of poisson.
as for the term itself (“bourgeois”) as far as i’m concerned it pretty much is about at the same level as “imperialist pig-dog;” no one talks like this anymore; i used it there because…well, who the fuck knows what i was thinking, really, I was wicked pissed.
if anything, it’s been used as a kind of fatuous way of stereotyping a… mindset. which, as I’ve said, i grew up thoroughly steeped in. and class, i am, as i’ve been quite clear about, hardly Jane Prole here. i have learned a lot from BL and others, however (i mean theory among other things).
btw, I don’t agree at all that
>capital that carries them above the working class, which these days mostly means intellectual capital.
wrt class; but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of poisson.
as for the term itself (“bourgeois”) as far as i’m concerned it pretty much is about at the same level as “imperialist pig-dog;” no one talks like this anymore; i used it there because…well, who the fuck knows what i was thinking, really, I was wicked pissed.
if anything, it’s been used as a kind of fatuous way of stereotyping a… mindset. which, as I’ve said, i grew up thoroughly steeped in. and class, i am, as i’ve been quite clear about, hardly Jane Prole here. i have learned a lot from BL and others, however (i mean theory among other things).
..woosp, sorry for the double-post.
jesus, zuzu, she’s pulled this crap on you as well?
well and you know, wuz gonna say: that she picked out that quote of mine at all was kind of weird in itself; i mean she -might- have been following along at bfp’s all along, but somehow i doubt it. certainly she hasn’t said anything if so. so she, what, went googling for what she thought was the nastiest piece of “evidence” she could find “on me?” ffs. whatever else, again: it had fuckall to do with my problem with her there, as piny notes: nasty shit (even if it had been nasty shit which directly concerned her, AB, which it was not) =! the anonymity business.
very strange.
…”go fug yourself?” the hell?
Heh. This is one of those times when I should back far, far away from the keyboard before I get myself hurt over kerfluffles I know nothing about.
I’ll go with a few thoughts, not even vaguely specifically aimed:
-Privilege isn’t a measurable quantity. Sometimes I feel like everybody forgets that for a while. While I grew up distinctly middle class, I’m now very, very poor. I have a level of privilege in this country related to being white, but then again I’m also queer as hell, for which I pay a heavy social price. It is quite possible for other people who are not particularly “privileged” in an overall sense to be insensitive to the ways in which I am not privileged. It happens all the time, and while I won’t defend calling it “bourgeois” or anything else out of anger, I also think it’s a perfectly fair thing to point out.
Heterosexism isn’t made okay because you’re working class. And being an academic snob isn’t made okay because you’re queer. And being long-winded isn’t made okay because… oh wait, that’s me. Nevermind.
-Internet outing sucks. For me, it doesn’t matter even a tiny bit — I stick with my online persona entirely because I Don’t Like Crazies, but the personal repurcussions would be insanely minor if somebody figured out (gasp) who the hell I am. That said, I figure that people have reasons for keeping some level of anonymity, and so long as they don’t play sockpuppet games or what have you, I just don’t give a shit and I don’t really see why anybody does. IMO, pseudonyms are a great way for bringing people into the discussion who would otherwise be too sheepish or constrained by work/home/family. And for Dog’s sake, it’s the internet — take everything with four or five grains of salt anyway.
- I don’t give a rat’s ass about somebody’s level of education, and I cannot stand pretentious snobs — but I will say that the counter problem also doesn’t make me happy, you know, the one where we play the “well, you’re all just too *sniff* academic and ivory-tower” game. I am a theory fan, I think big ideas are worth thinking about, though they’re not the whole story. I also have zero degrees; hell, I don’t even have a high school diploma. That does not absolve me from the responsibility of learning what the hell I’m talking about, or having a scrap or two of modesty when I’m talking out my ass, though it also doesn’t mean I have to tolerate people treating me like an idiot because I don’t have some piece of paper that has dubious meaning anyway (really, when I finally have my degree, it will fundamentally mean “this person can show up to class and jump through variously positioned hoops”).
That’s all I’m going to say on topics about which, again, I know virtually nothing.
>And being long-winded isn’t made okay because… oh wait, that’s me. Nevermind.
Heh.
whereas i am the very model of pithiness, really.
>but I will say that the counter problem also doesn’t make me happy, you know, the one where we play the “well, you’re all just too *sniff* academic and ivory-tower” game. I am a theory fan, I think big ideas are worth thinking about, though they’re not the whole story…
This has actually been BL’s deal all along, p.s. Theory matters. It’s not about status or the degree or the piece of paper on your wall or who’s yer alma, blah blah.
There is a big anti-intellectual strain in the U.S. Sometimes it dovetails with class snobbery, and certainly it’s been a great tool of the right wing to wedge that puppy for all its worth (“cultural elite! cultural elite!!”), but you know, not always. In fact sometimes it’s exactly the opposite: well. Look at Geeb. Look at Reagan. The image: “just folks.” We don’t need no education. Too much book larnin’ makes you soft in the spine and (we suspect) limp in the wrist.
It works great as a double-edged sword: cut public education more and more savagely, dumb down media, jack up higher education prices and cut aid at all levels. Then go to “the people” with “psst. Those guys? Those latte-sipping, French-speaking snobs? They -make fun of you.-” Works like a charm. Because, sadly, there’s just enough truth to that (“they make fun of you”) that it sticks. Never mind that the good ol’ boys are not only “making fun of you” but screwing you mercilessly as well. At least they don’t…put on airs, is it? something.
…and (for the likes of Geeb) treat college as just one more fancy set of hoops to jump through; just one more name brand. Hoops, we get. name brands, we get. Winkie winkie, if I can do it, you can do it. Hey, I don’t care about this -book- shit any more than you do…Well of -course- hardly anyone -else- can do what he did; -his- privilege is beyond contest; and yet, well, good ol’ boy, bright but not -too- bright, and that’s the way we like it. Too (obviously) smart/educated=show-off. Whether you drop credentials or not. Maybe even especially if you don’t, come to it. who knows.
I keep meaning to write a post about all this, something like
“YOUYOUYOUYOUYOU just think you are so smarrrrrrt, don’t you???” Some other people have written about it from other perspectives. The thing that keeps happening where (online, “out,” and oh yeah hell wicked sharp) POC get talked down to and sometimes outright -told- that they’re not as smart as the others and “mind your betters” and oh yeah, spelling and grammar, there -is- a double standard, you betcha.
but also: don’t be -too- smart, either, or you’re a show-off. depending on who you are. and what context. Nappy as I want to be had a great post about being made fun of by her peers for being too book-learn-y; it becomes…there’s all sorts of shit wrapped up in it, I guess, and it’s slightly different for all of us and yet at the same time…
anyway fuck knows i got that all through my yoot. “show off, stuck up.” (when it wasn’t just plain “nerd,” of course). and eventually the “snob” thing became a self-fulfilling prophecy: I simply hated everyone for a good long while. (and tbh, i see this a fair amount in certain adult…demographics, not so much here, am thinking of other spaces. “residual smart kid syndrome.” guys seem to have it more often, but not exclusively.) but originally of course i was painfully shy and a big ol’ nerd, sure. and bookworm. that, still am, natch. it’s just how i was raised.
and yeah, you know, one more thing: i never did tweak until much much later that in fact there was a connection between my knowing the right answer and the boy next to me (a proto-neocon if ever there was one, he was one of the banes of my existence) calling me, for no reason that i could see, (our very first day, hadn’t even spoken to him yet), “Bitch!”
subtle shit. sure, it’s fine to be smart. get good grades. just not -too- smart. *you think you’re better than us, don’t you.*
which, well, yer the one with the mind-reading abilities, so…
I can relate.
I remember clearly in Grade 9 (my first year back in public school after 4 years of home schooling) in Math class. I had yet another right answer (and I’m a hand-raiser, I can’t blame them for hating me a bit), and the girl sitting beside me said “can’t you let somebody else get an education for once?”
Thankfully I had the grace, even at that age and bitchiness, not to ask her if she knew the answer.
Hey, like I said, I don’t think being middle class or going to grad school is a *bad* thing. Hell, all my friends growing up who never had that chance would have killed for the opportunity to get an MFA or whatever. Not the issue. Nothing wrong with being “bougie”, just something wrong with really being that to a motherfucking T and then tossing that word at other people who really, truly don’t embody it like you.
My thought is to really be “bougie”, it helps to have a condescending, self-aggrandizing attitude about class and actually have the nerve to toss that word at people.
Is it ok, then, to molest or assault a man? Or anyone of any other gender identity?
Yes, Amanda, that is the bottom line to take away from all of this. Yes. Well done you.
And you’ve not been condescending or self-aggrandizing; no, not in the least little bit.
Back on topic: just in case anyone was still wondering about what kind of consequences “outing” could result in:
http://progressivegoldbeta.blogspot.com/
Man has throat slashed in ‘web rage’ By Fran Yeoman
Police have warned chat-room users not to include personal details after a poster was tracked down.
POLICE warned internet users to protect their real identities after a man was convicted yesterday of Britain’s first “web rage” attack.
Paul Gibbons, 47, of Bermondsey, southeast London, attacked John Jones with a pickaxe handle and knife, slitting his throat, after tracing Mr Jones to his house after an argument in an online chat room…
for the record, i have only one degree from a working-class oriented college that operates like the British Open University in many ways. I often used to crack that I got the phone number from the back of a matchbook cover.
i’m not going to explain my life, i’ve done it enough on the blog. It is an assinine game of more working class than thou, for the reasons piny notes. cultural capital and actual earning power do not coalecse in any straightforward way. a degree from podunk state is the equivalent of a high school education, these days. if you don’t have the networks from college, you’re shit outta. if you don’t have family and professional networks, you’re shit outta. if your parents don’t have money or cultural capital, you’re shit outta. etc.
i do not swing much of a culural capital bat in the terms that matter. it hasn’t managed to get me a job — which, as the research shows, is generally something one obtains from weak networks. (see Bitch flaunt superior knowledge: Mark Granovetter’s work on sociology of economy.)
As belledame notes, most of what i happen to talk about on my blog is from study i’ve done on my own. if i were to have focused on my coursework, i’d be talking about habermas, citizenship, sociology of work and the economy, ethnographic methodology, and social theoretical developments around the Frankfurt school of critical social theory and its critics.
Things like Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, even most feminist theory, I learned outside of the formal classroom by my involvement in political discussion lists where there are some very smart folks, most not multi-degreed who seem to like to keep their minds honed. My partner, for instance, has a h.s degree, but he one of two men I’ve know, both working class, who bothered to read a thing I wrote and were proud of my mind, and not in the “trophy-brain’ way upper-middle class het men I’ve known are, where I was a threat to their male privilege.
I was introduced to those theories in a general, smorgasbord way in school, but any in-depth knowledge i pursued on my own. Philosophy, for example, I learned on my own when it b/c clear that i couldn’t afford college. I started going to the library to learn. I figured when i finally saved up enough money to go to school, I’d be one step ahead. Thus, at my college, I sat for exams based on that reading when I was 19-22 and collected 8 degrees credit for spewing out one short essay after another for 8 hours on the history of western phil. up to Kant.
sanctimoniously,
asswipe with so much cultural capital i’ve never had health insurance or a paid vacation, let alone retirement bennies.
p.s. multi-degrees or even a hint at it, esp. in a field like sociology, is likely to get you tossed into the circular file as folks generallly know. you will typically be advised to play that down in the job hunting game.
p.s. I’m white, too.
Just in case anyone was wondering.
doesn’t particularly mean i’m gonna land on any one side in any given argument, however; i tend to like to, you know, pay attention what’s actually being said, or try to. I mean also stuff that -isn’t- about mememe. Occasionally.
part of that multi-degreed asswipery, no doubt. oh, wait, no, actually, i already did that.
To illustrate that edjumacation and knowledge are not always equivalent, I offer myself as an example. I’m working on a post-baccalaureate degree (well, that’s what I tell myself I’m doing), and I don’t know a thing about any of those things BL mentioned. :)
Well, yeah. A bit.
Look. Your post about Amanda was spectacularly nasty, and it was wrong. Amanda’s perspective is not “bougie”: it’s that of someone who grew up working-class in small-town West Texas and who has achieved a foothold in the middle class. If you’d read her blog regularly, you’d know that. That perspective absolutely informs what she writes, and sometimes I think it informs what she writes in pretty negative and annoying ways. (Amanda’s take on cities, for instance, irks the hell out of me, which is definitely a topic for another time.)
But you know, all of us have experiences and perspectives that inform what we write. My take on the hijab issue is totally, totally informed by the fact that I’m Jewish and have family that wears distinctive, religiously-sanctioned clothing. If I pretended that didn’t inform my perspective, I’d be lying. Similarly, your background informs your positions just as much as Amanda’s informs hers. That’s why you projected your own feelings about your “bougie” upbringing onto her. You haven’t escaped your subject position any more than Amanda has escaped hers.
You claim that the post that AB cited wasn’t really about Amanda, but it named her again and again. You did not direct those words towards some hypothetical manifestation of mainstream white feminism. You directed them towards an actual person, who read them and was hurt by them. And now she’s upset at you. She’s not being condescending (and that’s a reverse classism charge, no? She’s being condescending by pointing out rightly that your background is middle-class and hers isn’t?) or self-aggrandizing. She’s expressing the fact that she’s angry at you. Which I think is a pretty reasonable response to that comment. I suspect it’s something you could get around by actually apologizing, but I guess I don’t see that happening.
No. I didn’t say the post AB cited wasn’t about Amanda. I said, or was intending to say:
1) the problem I and others had been having with AB had had nothing to do with Amanda, until AB dragged it up for her own obscure purposes
2) the problems that are -behind- my admittedly spectacularly nasty attack on Amanda originally were not in fact about Amanda at all. At least: there is backstory here, lots of it. But part of the frustration I was expressing in that post was that I am of the opinion that Amanda had taken a legitimate complaint a bunch (no, not just three, even the white ones, no) of people had with something she did (because it was a flashpoint for a much deeper and bigger problem across the Internets) and did and continues to make it primarily about herself. as in: not really hearing anyone else here at all. Which is, imho, why that particular battle keeps going and going and going. Mileage of course may vary.
of course what happened -now- is that i was -also- grinding my own very personal axe because i do not appreciate having one of my posts taken and used as a straw-stuffed trampoline, seriously misrepresenting who -i- am and where -i- am coming from in the process. Which is what Amanda had done, recently.
And here again: now it all becomes about me and my “bougie” snark and my meen meen meenerton-ness toward Amanda. because there is -nothing else- behind this; i did it for -no reason at all.- -No one- here has any legitimate complaint here at all. Except, apparently, Amanda. Somehow. People just keep inexplicably attacking because they’re, what, jealous? internalized misogyny? i’ve been seeing/getting all that and more.
I mean, seriously: what part of “I’m sorry, I fucked up, period end, let’s move on” is so FRIGGING difficult? I’d do it myself wrt this if I weren’t so bloody pissed off by now. Fuck knows I’ve done it before for far less.
and the condescension i refer to was not anything said in this thread, p.s. No, I’m not a regular reader, but I’ve read enough to say that much with some confidence, at least.
anyway, speaking of self-aggrandizing (because i have no problem with that myself, either), and back on topic more or less, i had actually been writing on the general subject of “outing” off that same thread, without the names, a few days ago:
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2006/10/full-disclosure.html
>You directed them towards an actual person, who read them and was hurt by them. And now she’s upset at you.
Oh, the irony. Yes. I know nothing about this transaction. Fuck yes. no one else has had any hurt feelings at anything this woman has said, ever. Not me, not anyone. Not personally, and not on a structural level either. And they have no right to complain. For fuck’s sake.
You know what: no, I’m not going to apologize. Not this time. I’m not gonna backpedal and crawfish and try to paint it as -not- petty and nasty and ill-considered and even hypocritical, too. It was. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m gonna be the bad one while you get off the hook, Amanda. -Again.- Fuck that noise.
And finally: zero in on the class business all you like, Amanda, if that makes you feel any better. Truth is, I knew fuckall about where you were coming from. And didn’t much care. Still don’t, tbh. All I knew was the words from you I’ve seen on my screen. And it was from that that i made those judgments. If you find them to not be particularly descriptive of you, well, then there it is. Move along, nothing to see here.
But as per the charges of intellect, lightweight, yadda, and so on:
I have not now, nor have ever, (once again) connected this with anyone’s formal schooling. The reason I said this: it seems to me, Amanda, that you are profoundly -incurious.- Which is, it also seems to me, the heart of the -multiple- fronts you’re fighting right now.
But ultimately, perhaps, that’s not my concern either.
Just, you know: don’t look up the source. Don’t verify what you’re saying. Don’t go out of your way to read other people who might say things you find uncomfortable, much less take their arguments on good faith. You need all that energy to defend defend defend, right? After all, “asswipes” are on your case, and for no reason at all except -they’re all out to get you.- And hurt your feelings. Yes. And we should all take the time to really get to know you, the real you, because you’ve done such a -great- job of doing it for everyone you’ve been engaging here; it’s only fair, right?
For fuck’s sake.
belledame: “i tend to like to, you know, pay attention what’s actually being said, or try to.”
If only that were true.
Actually, belledame, you specialize in misconstruing other people, insulting them to the nines based on your faulty “analysis”, and then acting incredulous when they get tired of your crap.
You must think you’re really super hot shit to say this to _anyone_ not named Jeff Goldstein: “You are a prancing lightweight. A birdbath-deep mediocre intellect with a serious Daddy complex and an even more serious “I am constitutionally incapable of paying attention to anything that doesn’t have MEMEME in it.” complex.” . That really broke the ‘asshole’ scale, and that you dare sum up your rant with “well, I was mad at you” shows just how impossible it is to take you seriously.
Yeah. Can of worms, right? Sure why not, just open that puppy and dump it to the winds, let ‘em land where they may; hey, what would you be if not -provocative?- And o here comes AB to throw in her own slimy invertebrates into the mix, and here we are. Worms all around, and oh what a time trying to pick the little fuckers back up! Enjoying ourselves yet, are we?
slip. What the flying fuck does Goldstein have to do with the price of beans in Peru? oh wait, I get it: Amanda’s on “my side,” Goldstein is the Enemy. Something like that?
“With friends like this…”
Yeah, Marc, no one likes being misconstrued. Including, -but not limited to,- one’s -friends,- sometimes.
Actually, the whole point of the post was that there’s a categorical difference between being a vituperative asshole online and threatening to out, harass, or otherwise punish someone offline. So AB’s deal is a whole nother matter. (Although I did spend a few paragraphs excoriating her defensiveness, as well.)
I’d appreciate it very much if we could talk about privacy rather than turning this into yet another iteration of, “You’re the troll! No, you’re the troll!” Amanda has decided to leave the thread, so far as I can tell. Belle, you’ve explained your original comment and responded to Amanda, Sally, and Marc.
>shows just how impossible it is to take you seriously.
“The burden of your yoke of disapproval is light.”
Yes, piny, you’re quite right. My apologies. Nothing more to be said here.
Thank you.
So, how ’bout that guy in England, huh?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2409469_2,00.html
I was weaned on YM articles about teenage girls victimized by older men they met online, so this is not exactly a new feature in my psychic landscape.
Something that occurred to me overnight:
One of the other places where I encounter this kind of privacy disparity is on CL. The women (at least in W4W) tend to be much more cautious. They meet in a public place beforehand, have a date before the real date, stuff like that. The guys in M4M, on the other hand, are a lot more likely to be all, “Be at my front door in half an hour.” It’s been difficult to negotiate, since I’m still very attached to the former safety standard, and don’t see myself ever changing.
I can’t tell you what to do, of course, and if you’re afraid I wouldn’t blame you, but I think it would be wonderful if you did wear a “Nobody knows I’m a Transsexual” shirt next year. Many fewer transsexuals are out than gay people, and it might give somebody courage.
Actually, I’ve got a post in the works about that, too.
piny — I think the safety standard is a much better idea, frankly. I’ve known some guys who got into some very bad situations related to not being very careful on the ‘nets. On the other hand, having a high safety standard also makes it pretty hard to do the casual hookup-without-dating thing, which is a totally fine thing to be after — and also is inherently a little less safe regardless of whether it’s starting on the internet or in a bar somewhere. We all sacrifice safety sometimes, I guess I just wish more people put some thought into it first.
I tend to think this is another of those situations where we pretend as a culture that men are safer from predation than they are, and women are less safe from predation than they are. I don’t say that to minimize the very real threat to women, but rather to emphasize that part of the “you can take care of yourself in any situation” attitude we have about men is both a privilege (permission to do unsafe-thing-X without people batting an eye, while I get lectured for walking home from work at night) and a dangerous mind-fuck.
Completely irrelevant data point from a mostly non-existant irregular commenter: At least part of my crowd does. Of course, we’re mostly tongue in cheek when we do it, but dammit we exist! We are not nobody! (I’ve been known to call my roommate a capitalist pigdog when she finishes all the coffee I’ve brewed before I get a chance to pour myself a cup.)
That’s all.
Piny, sorry if this is OT, but how much of that do you think is privacy/safety, and how much is different approaches to seeking sex? For example, there are IME a lot more men than women having sex-on-sight at cruising spots and clubs than women. How many women do you know, het or queer, who like to nod, wink and get down?
Thomas — not speaking for piny, but I know rather a lot of women (mostly lesbians, but that’s pretty much my personal sample) who like to “nod, wink, and get down”. And a surprising number of straight men who don’t really.
I’m not planning to dump it anytime soon, believe me; and, of course, casual is not something I can do for other, unrelated reasons. I just wish fewer guys were all, “But I’m horny now!”
Yeah, I don’t actually see much difference in criteria for getting down, just in precautions about picking people up online.
On the other hand, having a high safety standard also makes it pretty hard to do the casual hookup-without-dating thing
I am amazed, really, at how safe a lot of men seem to feel doing the casual hookup-without-dating thing. Safe enough for sleeping with someone who hasn’t revealed being transsexual to actually be high on their list of casual sex worries.
Yeah, well, that’s the nice thing about a double standard, innit?
piny, my two CL experiences (responding to interesting M4W posts) have been very very safe: e-mails exchanged, public-date-before-date-before-falling-into-bed, sorta thing.
I know that anecdote is not the singular of data, but precedent does exist.
>Completely irrelevant data point from a mostly non-existant irregular commenter: At least part of my crowd does. Of course, we’re mostly tongue in cheek when we do it, but dammit we exist! We are not nobody! (I’ve been known to call my roommate a capitalist pigdog when she finishes all the coffee I’ve brewed before I get a chance to pour myself a cup.)>
So noted.
(resisting the urge to add, Comrade!)
That story, btw–I hadn’t even connected it with “hooking up,” per se, more like “crazy-ass dude decides to make some other dude respect his auTHORitah for once and for all.
but yes, crazier shit happens offline as well, obviously; one could take that as another ” ‘ware the Internets! ‘WARRRRREE!” i suppose.
I love it when people declare victory because you drop out of a thread because you have to actually live your life, or, in my case, go to work to pay the bills.
FWIW, I don’t try to confuse or bewilder or mislead anyone about my past. Lower middle class West Texas, went to high school in a town that’s the dictionary definition of rural. And I’m deeply amused by people who feel guilty and weird about being college educated middle class folks and project it out on me. But then again, being accused of being “incurious” (aka, unwilling to read tedious blogs of regurgitated theory) or “anti-intelletual” (since “bougie” won’t stick, we’re flipping it around and busting out the redneck white Southerner stereotype, I suppose) with “Daddy issues”—-well, after awhile it seems that someone’s just flinging out any random insult that comes to mind and hoping something sticks. And not working. Here’s some actual things I am, so you can improve your insult skills: flat-chested, frizzy-haired, loud-mouthed, and probably kinda trashy, but not in the fun “let’s play at being stereotypes of working class people we think have raw, earnest sex” kind of way, but the more boring spits-on-the-sidewalk way. Tres hot, no?
Don’t forget shitkicker.
Dude, my boots smell like roses. Harumph.
I didn’t mean anything of the kind, just for the record. But also for the record: “I have a job,” is as insufferable a red herring as “bougie,” okay? I don’t think anyone here is independently wealthy.
I can’t jump into flame wars at work, fun as it would be to pass the time that way.
No, I know. You weren’t implying that everyone else is unemployed and/or lazy. Don’t mind my sniping. I’m in a bad mood. I mostly have a bad history with it from livejournal, when certain people would post flame novels and then be all, “I’m leaving, now that I’ve got the last word in, because I have a job and a life and important things to do, but you dorito-crumb-sprinkled losers can stay and beat this dead horse, because everyone who comments after my comment is just whining.” Very popular rhetorical tack, actually.
Thanks. And sorry. Not trying to do that. Seriously, I’m a huge nerd. If I had my way, I’d be on it all day.
Same here. That’s probably the only reason I didn’t do it myself: I never left for long enough. I’m, like, the terrier of the internets.
Well, it’s not like my methodology–casual scanning of craigslist ads plus some blind dates–is all that much more reliable, really. It’s just something I’ve noticed, and it makes me wonder whether this privacy thing is gendered here, too. Mother, May I Chat with Danger? in other words.
I think it’s important to note that physical safety isn’t the only concern here. I wouldn’t talk about my health stuff in a googleable forum, because I’m worried about job discrimination. I suppose AB might say that this is cowardly, but that’s easy to say when you have tenure. I’m hoping to be on the market next year. I’d really like to be the one to control what I disclose and when and how. I couldn’t do that if I posted under my real name, which means that I couldn’t talk about an important aspect of my life and my feminism if I posted under my real name.
I do, however, think that pseudonymity gives people permission to be nastier than they would be if their words were traceable back to them. And I don’t know whether that’s a problem or not, honestly. But I do think it’s completely inseperable from the other thing, which is that pseudonymity allows people to talk about things that aren’t safe to talk about otherwise. And I really believe that the good that comes from that is definitely bigger than that bad that might come from the license to be obnoxious.
That’s another thing: pseudonymity gives people freedom to talk about things they wouldn’t discuss otherwise, like say their HIV status or their abusive ex.
I don’t actually think that the nastiness arises from the pseudonyms so much as it arises from — well, it’s hard, I think, for people to remember that these words typed in on a screen actually involve real life people with their own issues, bad days, mood swings, whatever. It makes it very easy to react with your own incredibly angry post, saying things you would never say to an actual person even if it were never going to be “traceable” to you, without stopping to think “hey, is this snark over a line? Am I being way too bitchy here?”. You don’t see their feelings get hurt, or their hackles get raised.
Because I know I’ve said things on the net I would never, ever say to a stranger face-to-face. And when those things get said, they’re saved for all posterity, can be read over and over again. Tempers have always flared on the web and even before the web, it’s nothing new.
I agree that pseudonyms help people talk about “unsafe” subjects, though, and I think this medium, whether you’ve got a pseudonym or no, can show you facets of people you probably wouldn’t see in real life unless you knew them really well. Really, I’m insanely quiet, for example. But stick me on a blog, and everybody wishes I’d just shut up. ;)
Frankly, I think the larger point has been missed. Ann Bartow is engaged in conspiracy theory, arguing that the people who are most angry are not really feminists in real life. She seems to think that they are ruling a mob of sock puppets or are agent provacateurs — as she implied with me by claiming I was really an academic and lying about it. apparently to seduce folks feminist theory that, true, most people find boring and antithetical to progressive social change.
As far as I’m concerned, the attempt to explain heated disagreement away by chalking it up to conspiracy theory is more vicious that calling people asswipes or bougie.
(Ann, if you read her again, is ok with the typical snark, etc. She just happens to think some of us aren’t real feminists and she wants a way to have a feminist smell test online. Whatever.)
I will say that being out about my identity reduces the fear factor in a significant way—no wingnut can threaten to out me. They’ve sent me my home address, published my work info on the net, all that. And once that didn’t work to silence me, they were out of tricks.
I have frizzy hair, too.
Aside from my desire to keep my real name more difficult to search on — for work-related, job-hunting, and current/potential client reasons — there is my desire to avoid stalking, which I’ve been through before. Over the years, a few folks, both men and women, have been obsessed and one incident did spill over in to my real life. The other, spilled over into my worklife when, as part of my job, I had to participate in techy forums where a lot of people knew how to hack web sites. That meant that, instead of blantant web site hackery, he engaged in very subtle things, like changing my contact name on the site to the latin phrase for a skin disease. Same guy had it in for me so badly that he waited two years to disrupt my online life, patiently pretending that hatchets had been buried. He just looked like a fool.
Still, it’s worth it to avoid the drive-by obsessives, though as zuzu points out, you can’t much do anything about someone who wants to know. Ann’s claims about lack of “real ID” though are undermined by two important points:
1. I’ve been riding the Internets since 1994. Then, most people had university or work accounts, which meant you could easily figure out who the person was, their job, their course of study, major, and even residence and phone number since that info was often exposed to the public before Unis started clueing to the fact that this was a bad idea.
Even in 2000 when my employer hooked me up with cable to work from home (he didn’t have office space for me), my billing address and legal name was listed on the ISP’s user pages.
Nothing stopped those arguments from breaking out into horrible, vituperative, and often vindicative flame wars. People would go so far as to hack into other people’s computers, mailbomb them, hack web sites, you name it. All over often petty arguments. I belong to the oldest Political Forum on the ‘net (been around since 1981 on BITNET), there have been many instances of vile behavior spilling into real life, including several attempts to get people fired. One guy got so pissed of, he set off a mail loop from Cornell and it sent hundreds and hundreds of message to the discussion list. All over a petty flame war.
2. The history of the women’s liberation movement is also testament to the fact that women, even in real-life with movement credentials to maintain, we no less vituperative and punishing than they are online. They engaged in shunning and outright dismissal from organizations at times, leaving many women very bitter. E.g., if you go to Jo Freeman’site, she has a long essay about how horrifying the experience of shunning and backstabbing were. Ti Grace Atkinson divorced the movement. Shortly before that, Robin Morgan wrote a kiss off to Ti-Grace and others, ‘Good bye to all that” published in Sisterhood is Powerful.
The idea that our real names will make online discussion any more productive seems silly at best, a dangerous denial of our own recent history at worst.
All right, look. Amanda. For my own part: I apologize. That was over the top nasty, yes.
That doesn’t change the substance of the reasons why i went into that level of attack mode. And I think you’ve got some other people to answer to out there, honestly. But you’re right: it was an unfairly grotesque caricature. There’s been way too much of that about already.
Back on topic, more or less:
1) I use my real name on a BBS I belong to. I’ve been in my share of flame wars there, too, ftr. including with some people i’ve met online (before or since). but yes, the nature of online probably contributes.
2) so, I’m still curious: what did “go fug yourself” have to do with anything?
As per the notion about real names making discourse more productive: well, yah, it’s silly. I guess i’ll take AB on the level that she really believes that; but well, after her last responses over there…yeah, i don’t know.
It’s one thing to say, “let’s all show our throats together.” It’s another to keep constantly warning about danger danger! throat-cutters abound! (sorry, i just realized that was literal after that article, the metaphor was automatic) whilst simultaneously imploring people to show their throats; what can this mean?
I mean, and i’ve said stuff to this effect before, but if you want “safe,” you don’t do it by creating an atmosphere of paranoia and hints and insinuations and…
Ann Bartow is engaged in conspiracy theory, arguing that the people who are most angry are not really feminists in real life.
Uh, it’s not “conspiracy theory” to suggest that people online are often (gasp!) not who they claim to be. It’s not conspiracy theory to suggest that people very often create elaborate lies about themselves or that they create online personae that have nothing to do with their real lives. That’s one of the primary attractions of the Internet. Recently among the fannish online community there was a case where a Harry Potter fan went to a great deal of trouble with multiple sockpuppets and phony IPs just so that she could gain entrance to a popular fannish clique and become a “big name fan.”
So yes, telling people about your real life does improve your credibility. That’s not to say there are no legitimate reasons to be anonymous. I would never say that, and I myself remain anonymous. But, especially on feminist issues and other issues where personal identity comes into play, I’m more inclined to trust the words of people who blog under their real names. ESPECIALLY if they then go on to launch personal attacks against other bloggers. Because why should I give any credence to your attacks on someone else based on their gender, race, class, sexuality or nationality when I don’t know a thing about your gender, race, class, sexuality or nationality?
And that quoted post about Amanda is just plain vile and I’m surprised to see a defense of it. And no, Amanda doesn’t launch personal attacks like that every day, or at least I haven’t seen any, and I skim over Pandagon pretty regularly. I would remember that level of nastiness.
P.S.–you don’t have to rely on my sole example of the Harry Potter fan for proof that it can be risky to trust anonymous commenters. Go to Ann Bartow’s blog, scroll down a little to find the relevant post, and read what she actually says rather than jumping on an excuse to attack her. Read her links about astroturfing and anonymity.
As I said, there are plenty of wonderful reasons to remain anonymous. There are also plenty of weird and/or pernicious reasons, which is why it’s better to just be a cynic when an anonymous commenter refers to his/her identity or experiences.
The suggestion is that people are doing it as anti-feminists is more thansimply chalking it up to the odd sod. it suggests someone is actually being paid to stir up trouble.
Because people are screwed up, bored, whatever? That’s another kettle of fish. HER emphasis is on the claim that they are here to damage and harm feminists and feminism
To immediately reach for that as an explanation is just plain vicious and a refusal to understand why the debates become heated. REfusing to try to understand them is not going to help us solve the problem or at least works on ways to negotiate it. E.g., by writing off women of color concerns, she just insulted a lot of people who must deal daily with people who ignore them. Now, their heated arguments are written off as anti-feminist? The people debating onthe threads at Feministe and Molly Saves the Day — they are fakers there to cause trouble and break up feminism?
Please. It’s vicious.
I have no idea who launched attacks based on identity issues but I sure would like you to name nyms!
Laila,
you’ll forgive me, but she acccused me of being an academic and lying about it. i don’t give a shit what she has to say.
as for BD’s attack being mean, I agree. She and I have often disagreed on this very issue and it’s one reason we ever get in arguments: i don’t like psychologizing in the course of debates. (She knows how I feel, so this isn’t news). That said, Belledame is aware that it was mean and she apologized — she didn’t spend countless points saying “nuh uh.”
Ahhh. I started reading the comments from the bottom up and wondered why someone was being called a candle (bougie). Then I went up a bit to see that everyone meant “bourgie” for bourgeois.
Ann’s given me crap about being anti-feminist because she disagreed with me, and she’s also let me know, through others, that she knows who I am. I don’t doubt she does, since she has access to information others don’t. But there are other people with my name in New York, two of whom are attorneys and one of whom lives in Brooklyn and, unlike me, is listed.
I’d really hate it if any of these women caught hell in their personal lives because someone got obsessed by something I did or said.
Not really. Sockpuppets do that, and anonymous comments do that. But if you’ve built up an online persona, you’re going to be fairly consistent with it. It’s a brand, in a way, and the last thing you want to do is dilute that brand. Whether it’s your real name or not, the name is a way of indentifying a persona.
And, Jeebus, hasn’t anyone heard that pseudonymous tracts were very common during the Revolution — are very common when word needs to get out but the person behind the words doesn’t want to or can’t afford to get themselved arrested? Wasn’t “Publius” one of those pseuds?
Recently among the fannish online community there was a case where a Harry Potter fan went to a great deal of trouble with multiple sockpuppets and phony IPs just so that she could gain entrance to a popular fannish clique and become a “big name fan.”
And then there’s the Mystery Bullshipper, a Church of England priest who created two sock puppets to favorably review his own singing and vestments.
Still, I’m with zuzu that sock puppets are a different thing from a stable pseudonymous identity.
And that quoted post about Amanda is just plain vile and I’m surprised to see a defense of it.
Well, since belledame’s just apologized, you can now go back to being unsurprised. I still don’t see any reason to suppose the various pseudonymous feminist bloggers, even the occasionally nasty ones, are mostly pretending to be feminist.
I’m just non-pseudonymous because, a) I’ve been on the net, and established commenting as my real self, since back when it was under everyone’s radar, and, b) I figure anyone who cared enough could puncture my pseudonym anyway. But it does mean that absolutely everything I blog about, say, sex is available to anyone who wants to Google me if I should interview for a job. And everyone in my real life, from my family to my Quaker meeting to my boss, knows just where my blog is.
The people debating onthe threads at Feministe and Molly Saves the Day — they are fakers there to cause trouble and break up feminism?
What always gets me about that argument — and it pops up pretty often these days — is that the ensuing consistent screaming and paranoia about “trolls in our midst” (in this case, anti-feminists, I suppose) manages to turn everything frighteningly, well, kind of McCarthyesque within a matter of days. In this way discussion spaces are ruined by “trolls” that don’t even exist.
Because why should I give any credence to your attacks on someone else based on their gender, race, class, sexuality or nationality when I don’t know a thing about your gender, race, class, sexuality or nationality?
Well, first off, attacks on someone else based on their gender, race, class, sexuality or nationality don’t get very much credence from me regardless. Discussion in which those things are involved, fine, and the best I can do is give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re representing themselves more or less honestly.
Seriously, even if we weren’t all using pseudonyms, would you actually research my life just to make sure I’m not lying about being a 27 year old white queer in Sacramento? I mean, I can change “Spit” to the name I go by in real life, and chances are, nobody would ever prove the above statement right or wrong, less because it’s not possible and more because it’s time consuming. Frankly, if anybody did go to all that effort, it’d probably be a bad sign for their mental health.
I guess I just don’t see the point to all this. I mean, I don’t trust random people I’ve never seen before online. But if I interact with somebody over and over, I either respect what they’re saying or I don’t particularly pay much attention to it — and that has very little to do, in the long run, with concrete aspects of their personal identity (or whether or not I agree with them on most things, BTW).
Re: belldame’s apology, I thought it contained not a little defensiveness and excuse-making (“that doesn’t change the substance of my reasons”? Yeah, what the fuck ever), but then my satisfaction with her apology isn’t what matters, so I’ll leave it at that.
HER emphasis is on the claim that they are here to damage and harm feminists and feminism
Okay, but that’s not a self-evidently ridiculous possibility. As I said, Bartow has plenty of support for her claim that astroturfing is really common. And people stirring up shit on the blogs of people whose ideologies they find repugnant/amusing/annoying is also pretty common.
To immediately reach for that as an explanation is just plain vicious and a refusal to understand why the debates become heated.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. For me, at least, pseudonymity/anonymity are problems that underly many online debates, heated or not. Especially debates that involve identity. Now, I don’t know what AB’s motives are in bringing up the sockpuppet theory in this particular incident, since I don’t follow her blog or have any idea of her overall viewpoint. But no, I don’t think it’s vicious to constantly question anonymous/pseudonymous comments. That, to me, seemed like the thrust of AB’s argument: be an extreme skeptic about anonymous commenters. And, while I fully acknowledge people’s legitimate reasons to remain pseudonymous, I also think skepticism is a damn good policy.
by writing off women of color concerns, she just insulted a lot of people who must deal daily with people who ignore them.
Well, that’s the real catch, isn’t it? Because how does she know they’re really women of color?
Discussion in which those things are involved, fine, and the best I can do is give people the benefit of the doubt that they’re representing themselves more or less honestly.
I was speaking specifically about discussions in which those things are involved. It appears that there have been plenty of discussions in the feminist blogosphere recently that involve people’s personal/racial/sexual/class identities.
would you actually research my life just to make sure I’m not lying about being a 27 year old white queer in Sacramento?
Well, maybe, if I really followed your blog regularly the way some people follow their favorite bloggers.
But more importantly, I’d figure that if (for instance) Ann Bartow wasn’t really Ann Bartow the law professor but was instead a 53-year-old trapezoid artist named Earl impersonating her, the real Ann Bartow or the institution affiliated with her would step forward and say “uh, this person’s not real.” Or, if the identity was not stolen but was instead completely fictitious, I would presume that any institutions the blogger claimed a connection with (the way lots of “out” bloggers claim connections with schools, newspapers, etc.) would disclaim and disavow the blogger. Not a perfect system, no, but it’s something.
Or, if the identity was not stolen but was instead completely fictitious, I would presume that any institutions the blogger claimed a connection with (the way lots of “out” bloggers claim connections with schools, newspapers, etc.) would disclaim and disavow the blogger.
No problem, then, they could just avoid claiming specific connections. We still wouldn’t have any proof one way or the other as to, say, whether they were trapeze artists named Earl or whether they were women of color or whether they were trans-identified 15 year olds from Nome, Alaska.
It’s the internet; I take it all with a grain of salt. Or five. Frankly, there’s no way around this problem, and pseudonyms and the like aren’t really at the base of it, IMO.
I actually have known of a couple of cases where someone took over someone else’s name for a while as a posting identity, generally students playing pranks on other students. In one case, the student who was thus spoofed was said to have been devastated when she found out what “she” had been saying to the local online GLBT discussion group at her university.
Ok…I’m really sorry, but as someone who has been the most critical of both Ann Bartow and Amanda Marcotte, and has been involved in this whole controversy from the very beginning, I simply can’t let this go without intervening my two cents.
First, to Amanda: No, ma’am, the real issue should not be what Bitch | Lab or R Mildred of PunkAss or Belledame made about your cred as a working class or middle class feminist; it should really be your responsiblility to face up to what Blackamazon and Brownfeminpower and other Black and Brown feminsts have said about your little burqa (not-so) joke…and the repercussions about how it used and misused the real sufferings of Muslim and Arab women of color to score mere brownie points against other White privileged women.
In my view, everything that B | L has posted is absolutely right on the button about how you have attempted to crawfish your way from actually dealing with the WOC critique by attacking their proxies….I mean, couldn’t you at the very least give respect to WOC bloggers who make what I see as an very appropriate and legitimate complaint about your actions and counteractions? The reason why they believe that your apologies run hollow is not because they are paranoid or out to get you, but because you simply won’t even acknowledge their legitimacy or even existence….based on that, why should they think of you as anything other than a typical White elitist liberal feminist who cares more about worshiping disco balls than the genuine concerns of real women?
And before you break out the “I’m just a sockpuppet for B | L” line, you should know that we ( B|L and I) have had many a significant disagreements on many an issue, especially considering my own views on sexuality and feminism….but on this issue, she is absolutely correct to point out the deficiencies of mainstream feminism in putting their own personal vendettas ahead of the concerns of real women…especially those women who are the real victims of imperialist acts of war.
To compare the smackdown of Jessica Valenti by conservatives for her breasts to be the equivalent of the Taliban’s repression of women by using a symbol of genuine religious faith; thusly cloaking real life suffering and genocide of the real women who wear that burqa, is nothing less than illfounded at best, and an implied support of racist genocide and imperialism at worst. The fact that you still don’t seem to get that fact, Amanda, is proof that you haven’t yet learned to challenge your own racial privilege….however working-class you may be.
Now, to the Ann Bartow case: To me, it’s clear and simple: intimidating and threatening to “out” someone and reveal their real names against their stated consent and will merely because you can’t stand their opposing views is just plain low down, wrong, and unconscious. What AB threatened to do to Bitch | Lab — merely because B|L happened to call AB out publically on the views and writings of AB’s mentors Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin — wasn’t merely intended to counter her points; they were to directly and deliberately silence B|L (and other feminists who dare to disagree with her views) and punish her for her supposed lack of “academic experience”. Even worse, AB’s attempts to justify her actions by hypocritically fudging the difference between “anonymity” and “pseudonymity” (as if people using their real names wouldn’t be as willing to engage in personal flaming and ad hominem attacks) seriously erodes any credibility on her part…and her attempts to drag the Burqagate controversy into her personal vendetta against B|L only coarsens the debate that much more. In my view, AB has no right to claim to be anyone’s victim for what she did…and Laila’s ceaseless attempts to justify and defend her actions by smearing Belledame and B|L just ring hollow to my ears.
The bottom line for me is this: there is nothing wrong at all with “coming out”…provided that it is done voluntarily and with full knowledge of the challenges that follow. But there is a difference between coming out of the closet willingly, and being pushed, dragged, and beaten out of it with veiled threats. Respect for individual privacy and understanding the effects of your actions on others are still basic values to live by….as is doing no harm to people who do you know harm. If only some who call themselves radicals and feminists could actually apply that Golden Rule, rather than the bastardize alternative: “[S]he with the most gold makes the rules.”
These are my views, and mine alone, and I take full responsibility for them.
Anthony
Errata:
The correct phrase should be: “..do no harm to other people who do you NO harm”…
Shouldn’t let my fingers get the better of me.
Anthony
Yeah, but you’re not allowed to be skeptical about creepy personal remarks from someone who thinks that, “You, Ann Bartow, have not been all that responsible under your real name,” is a “personal attack” and totally unfair? D’you think that might create a chilling effect, or perhaps keep her from being totally accountable?
You can’t conflate pseudonymity with anonymity; different practices, different results, different motives. An anonymous commenter is someone who wants to make it impossible to connect words with their owner, to converse with someone as a stable personality. A pseudonymous commenter is someone who wants to make it impossible to connect, say, “I went to an orgy last night,” with their real name.
Like I said on the BitchLab thread, I probably have very different standards around all of this. I’m queer, and a transsexual, and very accustomed to strict privacy and protected space. I observe personal privacy rules around blogging here and conducting discussions in transrelated communities elsewhere, because those places are support groups and this is my blog. Most of the people I interact with are pseudonymous, and most of the trolls I’ve encountered are people like Ann.
…I think that’s a red herring, honestly. We could very well be interacting with mutual online figments, but if a blogger ignores other bloggers not because their personae are being rejected but because they apparently are all too believable, it doesn’t really matter. For all I really know, Brownfemipower could be an eighty-year-old childless Mormon attorney; she’s being engaged or rejected as the Brownfemipower she’s described.
Plus, Ann Bartow is likely engaging in self-censorship on another level; few people who blog under their own names, Susie Bright excepted, will introduce posts with, “So I was at an orgy last night….” AB’s political views and basic circumstances are accounted for, but she practices aporia in other aspects of her online persona.
Like I said: I’d really prefer it if we could talk about anonymity, pseudonymity, and privacy. I appreciate that you’re late to the conversation, but this is a derail.
>Ann’s given me crap about being anti-feminist because she disagreed with me, and she’s also let me know, through others, that she knows who I am.>
See, and -this- is the creepy part. And this is exactly what happened with BL. “I know where you live.” (well, “I know who you are.”) And it only comes up -when she’s angry about something someone’s said.- -That- has fuckall to do with what she claims this is all about–i.e. sockpuppets, anonymity make the discourse less honest or whatever. That is a -veiled threat.-
Because, well let’s just start with: if she knows who you “really” are (zuzu, BL, whomever) then gee golly i guess she knows you -aren’t- a sockpuppet for some MRA think tank or whatever it’s supposed to be, after all, now doesn’t she?
And, okay, the last comments i saw from her at Stone Court were along the lines of, people get very very very angry at things people say online. Also brought up my flame of AM, which as far as AB herself and that argument went, was completely irrelevant: she should damn well have known better. And I think she did, and does. But in the context of all this, it’s sort of interesting, after all: It was a power move. As in, far more important, letting nym’d people know that she knows their real name. The insinuation is: stop saying these things that I don’t like (which in -her book,- not necessarily other feminists’, yes, “real” ones), or, well, bad things might happen.
I mean, this is what she said to BL:
“Really, I mean you no harm, but…[something like] stop attacking feminism. Make your living doing something else.”
Well first of all, since she just got finished saying she -does- know who BL is, she knows damn well (as i said then) that she doesn’t make her damn “living” doing any such thing.
Second, telling her [basically] that what she says is anti-FEMINISM is a smear. She had critical things to say about Catherine MacKinnon, is what got AB’s panties in a wad, I think. On that, just speculating of course; but then I’ve been reading BL for a while now, and the only thing i’ve ever known Last I checked that was allowed. Even among feminists, yes.
Finally, when’s the last time you heard “really, I mean you no harm?” I mean, when do people ever say this? especially when no one else has brought up the possibility of “harm” yet? and said person also keeps talking about how all those dangerous -other- people are likely to attack attack if they know yer real name? How -unsafe- it is out there? How is one supposed to take that, exactly?
“Do not run…we are your friends…” ZAP “…we come in peace…” ZAP…
but so anyway at the time when i called her out, AB, saying basically what, are you Patterico now? This is beneath you, she in her turn apologized (to me, not to BL, of course, ever): You’re right, that was wrong, [but] I was very very angry when I wrote that.
So okay, and she brings up my flame here to [most generous interpretation] suggest that we all do petty beneath-us shit when we’re angry.
But, and as was piny’s main point here, even nasty as hell flames (and yes, again, mine was one of them) are not in the same category as -implicitly threatening to out someone.-
And the fact that someone is basically kinda sorta saying that well if (I? someone?) gets -too angry-, well, what? Can’t be held responsible for what might happen? And oh by the way: I know who you are. Just saying.
bleah.
oops, cut myself off in the middle of that: what i was saying was, i have only ever known BL to write critical analyses of various feminist ideologies, based on -their own writings,- the feminists in question. Last I checked, as I said, this is 1) allowed b) hardly indicative of an “anti-feminist.” Even if one does identify with the feminists being critically dissected (via their own writings!) and/or is “very very angry” about it.
anyway, as per this:
>ew people who blog under their own names, Susie Bright excepted, will introduce posts with, “So I was at an orgy last night….” AB’s political views and basic circumstances are accounted for, but she practices aporia in other aspects of her online persona.>
well, that’s absolutely correct: as I was saying in my own thread about all this. There is a difference between a well-respected pillar of the community (and yes, any white-collar professional counts for that, I’d say) using hir real name and someone who’s say writing about the experience of being an illegal immigrant or a sex worker being “out[ed].”
and, again, even that aside, people have very good reasons for not wanting to be out: they might be more vulnerable economically and thus can’t afford to have the boss find out they’re writing at all (even if they don’t write about the job; people have all kinds of crazy employment situations); they might have an insane abusive ex on their tail whom it doesn’t even matter if you write about hir, all sie has to do is find your name through a google search and funfunfun again!
…and so on.
or, you know: people writing coming-out narratives. People like BB writing about her current situation. People writing about abuse experiences. People writing all kinds of intensely personal shit. Maybe the anonymity of the InterWebz is the first thing that’s allowed them to feel “safe” in saying -any- of this shit, like, ever. In a forum where they might get an empathetic response, that is. Even putting everything else aside, to suggest that this is not valid; or rather, once any such person perhaps like gets into i don’t know a fight with someone, over ideological issues even, all bets are off…I’m sorry, that just sucks.
“Play nice *or* (at least) use your -real name-… or else. bad things might happen. Just saying.”
fuck that.
few people who blog under their own names, Susie Bright excepted, will introduce posts with, “So I was at an orgy last night….”
Heck, I hesitated over: a) blogging about losing my virginity, in college, with a guy I loved at the time, and b) blogging about being (chastely) infatuated with a guy who was studying to be a Catholic priest. If I’d ever been to an orgy, you sure wouldn’t read about it on my blog.
No problem, then, they could just avoid claiming specific connections.
Well, sure. I’m not trying to argue that real-name blogging completely solves all these issues. I’m saying it’s a step up from pseudonymity.
And again: yes, I’m 100% aware of the benefits of remaining pseudonymous. But looking at it from the POV not of the pseudonymous commenter but the reader, I don’t think it’s irrational to prefer having a real name.
…I think that’s a red herring, honestly. We could very well be interacting with mutual online figments, but if a blogger ignores other bloggers not because their personae are being rejected but because they apparently are all too believable, it doesn’t really matter.
I’m not understanding what you mean by this. If you could explain, that would be nice, though I totally understand if you’re sick of this argument.
Well, most of us here seem to operate under a formal assumption of honesty, and few bloggers seem to ever ignore other bloggers with the stated justification that their online personae are suspect. Instead, they ignore those bloggers on the basis of their online persona: because it is identified as non-liberal, or non-conservative, or non-feminist, or non-white, or non-straight, or non-male, or non-cissexual, or non-American, or non-Western, or because it is devoted to blogging about issues important to those people or from those perspectives. So I don’t think it really matters whether you’re ignoring a fake other or a verified/verifiable other, if the constant is “other.”
If we operate under the assumption of honesty, then inconsistencies in a writer’s self-proclaimed backstory are potentially problematic. These inconsistencies are especially problematic if they are trotted out in order to bolster the writer’s claims to knowledge or expertise in a particular argument.
As piny and zuzu have said, the issue is not whether people use real names or pseuds. The issue is whether they prove themselves worthy of trust as members of the community.
I might have misstated my own point, which was just that the blogosphere seems to take dredykin’s Peace Corps reminiscences and lusciouspop’s pregnancy at face value. The response is usually, “Oh, man, uterine rupture sucks!” or, “Hey, can you point me to some good resources on low-cost travel in the balkans?”
Sometimes, inconsistencies (or in this case, perceived inconsistencies) will get pulled up as reason to suspect someone’s honesty in general–although I haven’t actually seen too many of those. I wouldn’t really have a problem with someone attempting to correct/reconcile the record, or with someone attacking a pseudonym for being inconsistent (although I still don’t think it would justify outing). If I went over to, I dunno, Alas, and represented myself as a radical lesbian feminist, I’d expect a few people to bring up the exhaustive series of posts I’ve written under a different identity.
Pretty much. I think that we’re still sorting out social etiquette online, particularly on an explicit level, and that some people still carry assumptions over from real life that might not apply.
And these are still online-online ethical issues, related to behavior through online personae in online communities, and which can usually be curtailed without resorting to any offline information.
Outing’s virtually never appropriate.
The only justified case of outing I can think of was when “Buckhead” the self-proclaimed typographical expert on the Killian memos was revealed to be a Republican operative with no discernible qualifications in typography but instantaneous access to advanced info on kerning. Knowing that who he was suggested that the Republicans knew about the memos and were feeding prefab talking points to sock puppets. That was newsworthy.
For one private citizen to threaten to out another over personal grievances is cruel, petty, and utterly reprehensible.
[...] getting out of hand. I have been made aware that Ann Bartow considers the comments I made here and here to be defamatory, and she’s asked J [...]
What Lindsay said.
Heck, if your real name is common enough, giving out fake information is essentially untrackable. With a dozen other “me’s” in my city alone, I could claim to be a lawyer, a doctor, a veteran, or practically anything else, and the odds of being detected at it are about nil. Unless somebody contacted one of the other me’s, and asked them, and they managed to make a sufficiently convincing denial, nobody would ever figure it out.
Frankly, it’s easier to track information about me under the name Tapetum. There’s only one of me on the web, and I post consistently using it. I’m less anonymous using a pseudonym than I would be under “Jane Smith”.
Ann Bartow is seriously creeping me out, though. If you want arguments against using real names on the Web, I would say the self-righteousness of the people who see it as a special virtue would be a good one.
Well, I used to publish under my own name on the Internet rather extensively from 1990 to about 1995. Why did I stop and switch to either anonymous or pseudonymous posting? Because I got stalked in real life, not once but TWICE by head cases who took an extreme dislike to my positions online.
So I have no patience with people who insist on non anonymity or who threaten to “out” anonymous or pseudonymous posters.
If there’s an issue with sock puppets, the solution is simple. Moderate anonymous comments, and punt the hell out of anything unproductive. I have no compunctions about that, and accept the occasional punt, etc for being anonymous or pseudonymous (I post either way, as the mood strikes me). It fucking beats the hell out of finding some deranged stranger is coming after your real life person.
[...] I do my best not to pay attention to intra-radical flamewars, but when they spill over to more mainstream venues, they’re too frustrating t [...]
Well for me, “hating everyone” was a defense mechanism. Because I was abused (I won’t say “teased” – I’m going to call it what it is) mercilessly in middle school and the first 2 years of high school (until I transferred to a different school) for being “smart.” For being “the nerd.” Verbal and emotional abuse up the wazoo, with a nice hearty dose of physical abuse thrown in there, too. And I’m supposed to feel bad for the kids who’re beating my ass? Sorry, no thanks.