November 18, 2010
On the slightest change you haven’t yet been introduced, let me urge you to check out Privilege Denying Dude.
Image: A smug-looking white guy with arms crossed, captioned “Why should I take Women’s Studies? What about Men’s Studies?”
For all your why-isn’t-it-the-weekend-yet stress-relief needs.
November 16, 2010
Last Thursday I made a post about the Newlands College dean and her many fans who think it’s totally reasonable to call a pupil under her authority a slut.
My points were pretty basic feminist analysis: slut-shaming is a phenomenon of using sex to control women’s behaviour; skirt length rules in school uniforms are inherently sexist and based on the same notions of policing women’s appearance and behaviour.
But oh my, did that piss some people off.
Ladles and jellyspoons, the QoT semi-annual How Stupid Are You? awards!
First up, to the whinger who started it all, I present the Male Privilege: Lurkers Support Me On Facebook award to
Chris
Chris just wanted to clear things up, people! He just felt there were important matters to be address about how, um, the girl in question is evil! And her parents cried to the media! And, um, how dare you question the school which he totally has no connection to, except that he knows all the people involved and … oh shit, there I go Googling things and blowing his cover.
Then your beloved QoT looked at her blog stats and holy shit was she getting a lot of traffic from Facebook, and all of it to one post … and then other people posted using their real names and whaddaya know if they were all friends on Facebook too … and then I bemoaned the fact that apparently all of those mass-panic docos about young adults being oblivious to the consequences and lack of privacy of the internet were correct all along.
Once I started moderating all comments and posted to that effect, what do you know but Chris came along again to let us all know it totally wasn’t his fault and he totally didn’t condone the trolling of my blog by his friends.
And if we had any doubts about Chris’ privilege? Well, there went that.
Chris, it must be wonderful to live in a dreamworld where just posting a link to a person’s blog, presumably with some kind of “this horrid person is totes denying me my freedom of speech!” has absolutely no predictable, negative consequences.* It must be great to have such a sunny view of your Facebook friends that you honestly thought they would truck along here and say “Gracious QoT, I do humbly beseech you consider the most eloquent commentary of Chris, for he is verily a man of good heart”.
I would frankly love to live in this world of yours, where it somehow comes as a surprise, in the context of a post about women being attacked using sexist language, that the people on the side of the person using sexist language might also use sexist language.
But Chris need not have any fear of a double-award evening today, for the Do You Even Know Where You Are? award goes to his pal
Jordan
who decided that the problem Chris was having was obviously down to me not being able to read or something, so he repeated Chris’ but-she-was-evil-and-she-did-break-the-rules post down to a T. Please note that’s “repeated”, not “summarised”, because dear Christ do these people wax lyrical.
I say it again because apparently this can’t be said enough: anyone can start a blog. It is quick and easy and free and then you can talk shit about whatever to your heart’s content. How the hell do you think Ideologically Impure got started?
Jordan’s crimes went on to include having a moan about “just” wanting an “open-minded” discussion and all the usual “it’s not derailment if it’s me derailing” excuses, but he earned a special place in my heart when this popped up in my inbox:
QoT do you have a feminist stance?
And that’s why he’s a winner tonight, for achieving that perfect balance between obliviousness and trollbait, leaving the moderator to ponder, “Is this a joke? But it sounds so sincere. But … surely a joke? Maybe he hasn’t read any other posts. But … what about the tag cloud? Or the other comments? Or the actual post he IS commenting on? SO CONFUSED.”
Jordan, you should be very proud right now. With such subtle trollery you have a great career as a privileged asshole in front of you. Alternatively, with such massive obliviousness you must lead a charmed life.
Our final category recognises that some people have great potential but just can’t go the distance without attention from enemies and peers alike. The Is That All? award goes to
Bob
for sending 8 identical comments in 48 minutes trying to make your blogger feel self-conscious about being a righteously angry feminist (using much smaller words, of course).
The judges felt Bob got off to a strong start, but failed to grasp that the art of the true spam-troll relies on volume and speed, not waiting to see if the fifth identical comment got deleted like the four before it before posting the sixth.
They noted however that Bob probably wasn’t helped by the utter lack of interest shown by his friends at bodybuilding.com in his surprisingly amateur “let’s troll this feminist like real men!” post. Presumably they had better things to do, like, um, talk about actual bodybuilding.
In conclusion, dear readers, one thing is clear: anti-feminist trolls and over-entitled privileged white boys are but two sides of the same coin. Each thinks that what you have to say can’t possibly be important if it’s not something they agree with, but the former merely wants to bully you into silence while the latter desperately wants you to stroke his intellect-cock and tell him he’s a clever boy.
Stunningly, both types actually think they have a right to wave their asses in your space. They don’t actually comprehend that you are the one in control, because the joys of being privileged little men mean they’re used to people bowing and scraping and letting them walk around with no pants on because they Deserve To Be Heard. And because they conflate “stating my viewpoint” with “everyone agreeing with me”, they’re never content to just comment, “I disagree and here’s why.” and then go away. As soon as someone engages with them and says “Well you’re actually wrong and off-topic”, they simply must keep talking until you agree or start deleting their comments – which has nothing to do with their behaviour, it’s obviously because you know you’re wrong but like a total girl you just can’t handle being wrong.
And of course they can’t possibly be off topic, because if they think something is relevant to the debate (usually because it Totally Proves Them Right) then it must be and how dare you point out that it’s irrelevant, it’s actually a much more important conversation to have so you must have it now!!!
The only thing we can do, dear friends, is remember that these sad little people will always find someone to pamper their egos and tell them that of course they’re allowed to walk around with their ass showing. But we do not need to pamper them or even acknowledge them, because our blogs are our spaces and there is actually no obligation on anyone to put up with asshattery or provide teaching moments to those who plainly do not see there is anything to learn.
Besides, nothing pisses off these douchebags like never letting their crap see the light of day. Poor diddumses, to never have their awesome smackdowns of the silly feminists (or people of colour or people with disabilities or any types of activist bloggers) published so everyone can say “YOU ARE SO RIGHT MR TROLL, YOU ARE AWESOME AND YOUR BLOG-COCK IS TRULY MAGNIFICENT”. Don’t you feel sorry for them?
~
*I make the assumption here, because I have no idea, that Chris’ post was somewhat innocuous and not of the “fuck this bitch is a bitch fuck her let’s spam her blog” nature, but that’s because I apparently have some faith left in humanity. Besides, oblivious male privilege fits the bill so well here that I don’t think we need put Chris on a level with his friend Bob further down.
November 14, 2010
Melissa McEwan at Shakesville sums it up nicely:
Wow. I mean, it must be nice to be so privileged that you can argue, with a straight fucking face, that progressive-conservative isn’t “the right fight,” that it’s just a made-up conflict started by CNN (!) and wildly blown out of proportion for ratings or fun or whatever.
November 13, 2010
It’s going to be a frantic weekend for me but dammit, I shall keep up this posting thing!
So a midnight snack of pointed commentary by Deborah at THM/In A Strange Land, on Chris Trotter’s amazing ability to think the merest possibility of scuttling Labour’s desperate quest for National’s votes is terrible when it’s about (whisper it) abortion, but an actual threat to Labour’s desperate quest to take the people of Mana for granted is totes cool ’cause Matt McCarten is a good staunch unionist bloke.*
~
*Which he is, of course, and fuckin’ props to the Mana move. Sorry Labourites, if you lose Mana because its voters go “fuck this, I want some actual principles with my leftism” and Parata sneaks through the split left vote you have no one to blame but yourselves – try not to pull a Prendergast, k?
November 11, 2010
A Newlands College dean told a 14-year-old young woman that her short skirt made her look like a slut.
There’s a conversation going on at frogblog on the topic, with the usual suspects coming out to play – “she didn’t call the girl a slut, she just said she looked like a slut!” “I see heaps of girls dressed like hookers!” and there’s even a bonus “doing Gender Studies at university is useless because it doesn’t get you a job” bit of fail!
But let’s not get distracted by the kinds of comments that are obviously misogynist – there’s a little tidbit in the Stuff article which makes it clear this is just the bit of the iceberg that’s above water:
The school’s guidelines require girls’ skirts to touch the ground when they kneel
I would delight in the quaint Victorian-ness of it all if it weren’t so infuriating. In an article about school authority figures policing young women using gendered, sex-shaming slurs, this sentence is just dropped in as though it’s completely insignificant.
But this is where it all starts.
A commenter at frogblog tries to argue that boys face “sexist” uniform regulations too, in regards to hair length. And yes, this goes to issues about masculinity and the basic premise of high school, molding us all into nice little homogeneous GDP-generating units … but no cigar. Men’s hair is simply not routinely used as a tool to control and police their actions and lives the way sexuality, and “looking” sexual, is used against women.
But QoT, they just want everyone to look uniform and neat!
Nope. The school’s regulation on skirt length is summed up as “must touch the ground when kneeling”. So are below-knee, at-knee, above-knee, mid-calf skirts permitted? What about the girls who get larger skirts which go down to their ankles to grow into in Year 9, or the poor girl who hits 5’10 sometime in the middle of Year 12 and simply cannot find a skirt to fit from the (horribly overpriced) uniform shop that goes anywhere near her knees?
Come on, QoT, the girl must be freezing in a skirt that short!
And she can take the hem down. Or wear stockings. Or maybe she’s one of those bizarre people (like many Cantabrian classmates in my past who rocked shorts and t-shirts year-round) who just doesn’t get cold as easily.
But what if the notorious Wellington wind blows it up and people see her underwear!
Only a problem if you think young women’s underwear is an inherently immoral thing. You aren’t … slut-shaming women in short skirts, are you, invisible questioner?
No! I’m just … concerned for her privacy! What if some pervert takes an upskirt photo of her???
Then that pervert is a pervert and the fault of a pervert’s actions fall … on the pervert. And probably a society that simultaneously tells young women not to look like sluts while massively hyper-sexualising The Naughty Catholic Schoolgirl archetype and idolizing youth/”innocence”.
I just want young women to look like ladies/nicely dressed/dignified!
And as soon as “ladies”, “nice” and “dignified” are set up in opposition to “sexual” … congratulations, you’re a slut-shamer using sexuality to control women’s choices!
Look, I just don’t think young women should go around dressed like hookers!
How precisely do “hookers” dress? What is inherently wrong with dressing like women who work in the sex industry? Isn’t “dressed like hookers” just a nice, anti-sex-work shorthand for “dressed in a way which is read as sexual”? So … isn’t that just slut-shaming?
Well, um … fuck you! Dogs and raw meat analogy! You are no lady! Asking for it! Childhood time of innocence! Sex bad!
The prosecution rests.
Skirt length regulations are first and foremost about making schoolgirls look “like ladies” or “respectable”, two concepts which are rooted in hiding and denying women’s sexual agency and sexual feelings. The dean at Newlands College shouldn’t be punished; she should be praised for at least being honest about their priorities.
November 8, 2010
The New Zealand Census of Women’s Participation came out today, and let me tell you I am shocked to hear that our beloved NACT government has done six-sevenths of fuck all to close the gender pay gap.
I await with bated breath the outraged responses of sexism apologists who will be quick to say that that’s totally because women are generally in lower-paid work, completely and deliberately oblivious to the fact that if these statistics weren’t balanced to ensure they’re comparing identical or similar jobs, they’d be a shit-tonne worse.
Not to mention that if one does accept their assertions and try to engage in a discussion of why women are more likely to be in lower-paying occupations – because “caring” professions are less valued than “technical”, because girls are still told they can’t do math as well as boys, because women are a vast majority of child-rearers and part-time work isn’t as worthy as a “real” career, and anyway if you’re in a “real” career you’re fucked all over again because your bosses will assume that you’re one Mr Right away from skiting off to have babies … BAM! AND THE TROLLS ARE GONE.
November 7, 2010
The 30th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival is up at Fat Lot of Good. Thirty months! Who would’ve thought it? It’s a lovely Sunday evening in Wellywood, and whatever the weather’s like in your part of the world I thoroughly recommend getting a glass of wine (or beverage of choice) and sitting down to some kickass Antipodean feministy reading.
Next month’s carnival is going home to Hoyden About Town. Don’t forget to submit your favourite posts from November!
And maaaaany moooooooooooore …
November 6, 2010
So apparently making a post entitled “I am a woman and I enjoy sex” means one’s spam filter will be clogged up with horrid spammy pingbacks from internet “relationship advice” sites until the end of time.
Clearly it thus behooves me to provide some guidance for any poor souls stumbling upon my cuss-filled rants against patriarchal power dynamics – when all they wanted was to know Why He Hasn’t Called and Am I A Slut For Putting Out On The First Date???
To deal to those first two first, he hasn’t called because he was abducted by aliens and their memory-erasure technique is still in beta so he forgot your number along with his close encounter of the fourth kind.
Or he was busy, he’s forgetful, he doesn’t want to come on too strong, he’s avoiding you, he’s a douchebag who’s already in a relationship, and the fact is you can call him and find out. And if he reads a simple “hi, just checking you’re still alive” as Being Too Pushy, he’s a fuckwit who is not worth your time.
And as someone who proudly carries the banner for Prochoice Sluts Who Like Fucking, I’m going to ignore the inherent sex-shaming women’s-behaviour-controlling aspects of the latter question and offer some reassurance: the only thing wrong with fucking on a first date is if you didn’t really want to – because you felt obliged because he picked up the tab, because he was a pushy wanker, whatever (I’m making the assumption on this one that use of the phrase “put out” implies at least a degree of consent).
If he is the kind of rectal haberdasher who will happily fuck you and then declare you’re not “relationship material” because you engaged in consensual sex? See “fuckwit, not worth your time” above.
And the same goes if you’re not a hetero woman and the person you’re worried about isn’t a hetero man. Because treating one’s partners with basic decency and respect has shit-fuck-all to do with chromosomes, genitalia, gender performance, or choice of same in partner or partners, or even with the presence or lack of romantic/sexual connection.
Stay tuned for more exciting episodes of QoT’s Dating Advice, possibly dealing with hilarious subjects like How Do I Get Her Interested in Anal?* and Self-Contradictory Advice On Bagging, Tagging, And Releasing Your Man Into The Wild For Further Study.
~
*Who me, trying to startle pron-seekers via use of Scandalous Vocabulary?
November 15, 2010
The joys of comment moderation and the misconception of free speech
Posted by QoT under Uncategorized | Tags: blogosphere, chuckles, comment policy, how stupid ARE you?, slut-shaming, troll in the dungeon |[4] Comments
Dear friends,
My blog is currently experiencing a highly flattering influx of LOL GET BACK IN THE KITCHEN comments, which I’m sure are nothing to do with a commenter on this post running away to Facebook to whinge about Being Silenced By Nasty Feminists.*
As such, comments are being moderated until the petty wankstains fuck off. Carry on!
ETA: Comment policy updated. Suck it and see what your prize will be.
~
*As stated in that post, of course I don’t give a shit what people publish, or don’t publish, on their Facebook pages; but if you’re going to try and summon an army of support, at least tell them to use creative pseudonyms that can’t be immediately traced back to you, as the impact of a half-dozen critical comments is somewhat lessened when they’re all obviously your mates.