A Plea: Monstrous Blog Wars
This is another short post. I wanted to keep this very serious moment separate from my discussion of YouTube and so forth.
People do not come to the Internet to watch one group of writers berating another group. It’s been very hard for me to figure out how to respond constructively to some recent remarks in the otherwise excellent Lolita thread at the Valve. At the end of the day, if the inessential Internet (like blogs) isn’t capable of restoring us to our senses, and leaving us refreshed for the rest of the battles to be won, then we don’t need it and readers will look elsewhere.
All of the political and social blogging circles were wracked again this year by in-fighting. I’m not talking about links with which one disagrees; I’m talking about a weird textual version of war, complete with defections and alliances. Again: readers hate this if they’re not themselves possessed by it.
Very recently, Truly Outrageous linked to a post on the “feminism of the monstrous” which I (and many other people) found wonderful. Then a blogger named Heart took it into her head to accuse LittleLight (who wrote the post) of plagiarism. I’m a teacher, and I have to be able to recognize plagiarism, and this claim just wasn’t founded. The reaction to it, however, has been so furious that we’re back in the land of “Oh God, I can’t bear to watch.”
This is a promise: I am going to try to be a more pro-active blogger myself. Reactive blogging is the kindling of blog wars.
This is an observation: letting irritation motivate what you respond to is natural, but it’s a bad kind of natural, like unlimited cravings.
Finally, it’s a plea. Let’s all do what we can to make this the sort of blogosphere we’d want to read, even if we had no idea how to post anything. I’m too new to blogging to hear this post echoing in many other posts, elsewhere. I’m sad about the waste, is all.
I, for one, apologize for my own contribution to the negativity. I have tried throughout these arguments to stay calm and simply respond by opening new, more constructive discussions and largely disengage from the more venomous levels of discourse.
And then I poured my heart and soul into this piece and had this petty attack leveled at me. It was hard to figure out how to respond without just counter-attacking. My intention wasn’t to snap back and get nasty in return, certainly, but, well. It looks like a lot of people are willing to come to my defense, and I’m hardly inclined to tell them no, you know?
Anyhow. I will keep trying to host constructive conversations. Thank you for your contributions.
LittleLight, for what it’s worth, I didn’t think the way you yourself responded was extreme. Nor do I think you have a responsibility to try to moderate the whole blogosphere, even that part of it that is fighting for you. My post was about the way that unhingedness is equated with self-expression, and about this: a pretty well-established set of siege-and-flame tactics exist that nobody should be using.
I kind of wish I hadn’t found out about this battle, it’s distressing and has kept me up too late. It seems that it is not really about plagiarism, but about a political issue I’m not “in”. But LL’s post wasn’t plagiarized, and you can’t expect people to cite everything
in a blog post, I say! And yes – the reason to blog (at least as far as I’m concerned) is not to do war.
Profacero, thanks! I really liked the quotations from Allende and King on your blog, and the Weavers make me smile nostalgically (somewhere, with my parents, is the book I had Seeger autograph as a little boy).
Anyhow, I could use some good political commentary in the blogroll, so I’m adding you with distinct pleasure.
Joseph,
Thanks for the link. I appreciate the thoughts.
But…I’m uncertain what to make of this. Here you’re positioning uninvolved casual outside readers as the best judges of the worth or perhaps even healthiness of discourse. As pretty much anyone involved in the trans/feminism debates will remind us, sometimes it’s supposed to be hard – or whatever’s on the table might not be happening at all. Because that thread happened, we now know how many different political and literary influences people read into one piece of otherwise-marginalized writing.
It all depends on why you’re writing; how safe it is to write. We presume the purposes of writing too easily. If I had a nickel for every time an IRL academic just wanted everything to appear nice and collegial, precisely at the times their words could count more…well, I wouldn’t need a job.
One of the most helpful thoughts about tearing down the apparent “inessential” aspect of the internet I’ve read lately was from Queer Dewd, and I don’t remember what comments thread it came from so I guess I am going to lift and plagiarize:
i saw that happening in the burqagates threads when BlackAmazon identified what she calls “smug”. that sense that it’s only about scoring points. when the people you’re appealing to errect their bulwarks to defend themselves do so by treating it as a game, you can easily get sucked into playing by those rules. that’s a consequence of my privilege in that debate, because had it been about my issues, i couldn’t have seen it as a game.
That’s when I said, “woah” and backed off, with a woman named Veronique acknowledging that she was worried about the same. I wonder if anyone’s written about this?
Whether or not you have to talk through people to just say what you want – I suppose, to be proactive in the first place – totally depends on where you are. I’ve been through hell based on people using language as a socially acceptable weapon to silence me, such that everything appears to be smooth [as long as I'm not authentically proactive]. When someone else says they’re experiencing the same, I put my attention on it.
I’m definitely not writing hoping to reproduce my real-world experience as an academic. I came to the internet for an alternative. I don’t even know whether an alternative can work.
And I don’t think I’m really disagreeing with you, either. Proactive blogging is unequivocally important, a separate matter, kudos to those who feel they can do it. But I find it more important to recognize that reacting, or rather responding, to uncomfortable things going on elsewhere is not a diametrically opposed “waste.” The waste, I think, is that there even exists a distraction from important non-articulated invisible issues such that people’s words became a war, but I don’t want to feel guilty about choosing to address what’s already compromising someone’s reality, ya know?
I agree with you that these fights sometimes should be fought, and that anger is a legitimate starting-place for a lot of writing. Writing shouldn’t be toned down or smoothed out when that changes the message; and, as you write, a lot of “polite” writing can be a problem.
For my part, the alternative I came looking for on the internet was an engagement with the content of everyday life. That engagement includes your recent writing, and LittleLight on the monstrous. If there’s a common theme to my own upset posts in the past day, it’s been about things that detract from content.
Calling somebody an “envious shitbag” isn’t accomplishing anything. The word “shitbag” is just a very harsh word for “bad person.” However we might envision the need for a strong and fearless response, falling into patterns of verbal abuse surely isn’t the best a blog can do.
One final note: some of my feelings on this matter are borrowed from my own recent experience managing a thread where I watched people getting picked on, and found out later that yes, indeed, their feelings were hurt and they were pushed back into lurker silence. That makes me really angry.
You’re right, your post does start off about verbal abuse, and I read right past that. I got up on the wrong side of the bed and nothing is getting read carefully enough or coming out as it should. I probably should not have talked about my motives in comments at all. My apologies for that.
Yeah, definitely, verbal abuse is bad. Yep.
I still don’t get the impression that’s the primary thing you’re talking about here. I think it’s your last three paragraphs that really threw me off. Aren’t those all saying how to respond to things that have already taken place? (Rather than: “don’t be violent?”) Based on your post, it seemed you were arguing against continuing to blog about existing situations with the rationale that there’s a “good” blogging that attempts to please new readers looking for a story or something like that.
Yes, you’ve got a point (that is, several), Namaroopa! One of the most irritating things about academia is that *some* people have the luxury of *seeming* above the fray and all … they get to seem calm and objective … because they have privilege (not acknowledged by them, that’s one of the attributes of privilege, it seems ‘natural’ to those who have it).
That leaves others jumping up and down saying, “but my experience is different” while the privileged types say, essentially, “if you notice that, you’re irrational.” When they are in fact being totally rational, they’re just having to deal with problems that the privileged types are shielded from.
It’s complicated and I don’t know how much sense I am making. My instant reaction as academic to the LL thing was, it’s not plagiarism and anyway, it’s a blog post, not a dissertation (where one would want full contextualization and so on). But then I also do not know the backstory to the political debate.
My thoughts so far on the womensspace post are that it mixed several issues in perhaps too little space, hence the firestorm:
a) should LL have cited Morgan? (not necessarily, I say)
b) Heart is interested in bringing greater attention to feminists of Morgan’s generation (that’s a fine project, I say)
c) there is a huge debate, it seems, between and among radfems and transwomen on feminism
(which will be ongoing…I do not know enough about it to opine but it reminds me of moderns vs. postmoderns, in a way).
It seems a lot of people took sides on issue
c), and that those sides then predicated their stands on issues b) and a).
I can’t figure it out because I don’t have a
clear point of view on c). I am supportive of b), but I don’t think that means I also have to vote yes on a).
Anyway, I’m rambling – the results of wondering last night about the sorts of questions Namroopa is raising, and the questions of alternative venue for speech, blogging as a way to try out thoughts and engage “otherwise,” and then of course the way verbal abuse can spread across the internet sometimes like a virus.
So I’ll stop rambling and say, hi Kugelmass, I’m from Santa Barbara originally, so I know the coastline near UI! :-)
P.S. not UI, I mean UCI – how could I have forgotten that C, for California?!
Namaroopa, I see what you’re saying, and the best answer I can give is “sort of.” A really complex debate hosted on two or more blogs does strike me as the kind of thing I’d want to read even if I wasn’t a blogger, and I’m all in favor of people using other blog posts as springboards.
At the same time, it’s very hard to know what to do when you come to a blog for the first time, or check back after a break of some indeterminate length, and find it impossible to pick up the thread. A certain amount of discontinuity seems to me to be valuable, personally, in terms of the readers I want and the relationship I want to have with them (which I don’t want defined by any one debate in particular, or even by “debate” itself).
Okay, but now this is all dodging my point.
Bluntly: I’m saying that I don’t care what you want to read. I don’t want instructions about how to feel for blogging in such a manner. I am not in any way central to this discussion, but a lot of other bloggers I can’t speak for have said similar things before. To me, the topics people are flaming about are not a debate game. Debating other people’s choices subjects them to the possibility of losing.
The original post read that way to me especially because you describe “bad” irritation, the example of doing something better, and the “we” assumed about readers’ positions.
I have been trying to figure out if I agree with this post or not. Mostly, I think not.
It’s not that I love ‘flame wars’ or anything, although I do think a good, even if sometimes heated, debate is fun and certainly can be used to inform, hone arguments, establish political boundaries and so on, even if it’s across various blogs. I am not sure if that qualifies as a ‘flame war’?
I know that sometimes blogs convulse and post after post and comment after comment is written on things that just don’t interest me – such as the blow job wars, lipstick and high heels wars and Jessica’s boobs – and so I just pass on to something else, or a different blog. I’m sure the matters were very important to the people involved, I am not denigrating anyone to whom these were the issues of the day, but I simply paid little attention.
Then a blogger named Heart took it into her head to accuse LittleLight (who wrote the post) of plagiarism. I’m a teacher, and I have to be able to recognize plagiarism, and this claim just wasn’t founded. The reaction to it, however, has been so furious that we’re back in the land of “Oh God, I can’t bear to watch.”
This probably gets into the area of infrequent visitors to a blog or someone coming in right in the middle of things and not always being able to catch up (or not having any interest in doing so, which is okay) as, in order to understand the reaction, you’d have to understand the basis for it. I think had this just been a matter of one person accusing another of plagiarism out of the blue instead of something deeply rooted in bigotry, denial of humanity, denial of experience, with the added little and deliberate kick of faux confusion over the gender of the person addressed… well not even directly addressed but referenced, then the reaction would have been more of ‘what in the world?’ as opposed to “this is the last straw!”
I am not into reactive blogging (or into blogging at all, sigh), but I’m afraid that I absolutely think that the push back against racism and bigotry of even our supposed allies should be swift and strong. I don’t really care about the politics of it or if it’s considered a ‘flame war’ – which term I often think is just an attempt to marginalize real issues and relegate them to the realm of “Stuff I don’t think is important”.
I do, most times, attempt to firmly, politely and courteously state my objections to someone’s bigotry – without, of course, backing off an inch from the fact that it is bigotry – but after a time there is not much left to say, or a more perfect way to say it than to just declare certain persons to be “pretentious, solipsistic, noxious, gasbag[s]” and have done with it.
Namaroopa: Wait, I don’t understand what you mean about debate games and the possibility of losing.
:) OK, you don’t care what I want to read. I’m actually talking about what you want to read…would you say that you define that differently than I have so far?
I see that you feel that you, as a reader, have been assumed to be “on my side.” Actually, I was talking more about stuff I’d heard from friends…for example, I’d spend a lot of time writing an even-handed response on a tough, sometimes nasty thread, and the friend would say, “Sorry, I didn’t read what you wrote, the whole thread was getting too mean and ridiculous.”
So I was speaking for them, but I understand your desire not to be roped in too.
Nanette, yeah, it seems like Heart may not be the best blogger, and that her response to LittleLight may be part of a larger pattern.
I want to highlight what might be the difference between how you perceive the blogfight and how the participants perceive it. You see the fight, feel uninvolved, and move on. On the other hand, the participants feel like it is precisely the “convulsions” that prove the discussion is important and can change minds.
In other words, I think that the sense that the people doing battle have that their fight is crucial, and deserves the continued attention to which you refer, comes partly out of a feeling of doing a service for the lurkers. I’m thinking that actually the effect on lurkers is much more alienating and intimidating than inspiring. (This is not a statistical analysis, it’s based on a bunch of conversations with friends in the real world. So I could certainly be wrong.)
My responses to namaroopa, and the new post, might help clarify some of this.
Nanette:
“This probably gets into the area of infrequent visitors to a blog or someone coming in right in the middle of things and not always being able to catch up (or not having any interest in doing so, which is okay) as, in order to understand the reaction, you’d have to understand the basis for it.”
That is key.
This probably gets into the area of infrequent visitors to a blog or someone coming in right in the middle of things and not always being able to catch up (or not having any interest in doing so, which is okay) as, in order to understand the reaction, you’d have to understand the basis for it.
What Nanette says above reminds me of another blog fight I’ve seen recently, one where a reasonable point of disagreement got someone completely unhinged. (Linking to it would make this clearer, but that would lead to more animosity of the kind Joe is pleading for us to let up on.) During the blog fight I have in mind (and in many others I’ve seen), Angry Responder isn’t just responding to Offending Commenter; he or she is responding to the entire host of people who have previously expressed the offending opinion. The commenter is not just expressing a conservative viewpoint; he or she is now All Republicans. I don’t mean that the commenter is never to blame—we all know about trolls, and this plagiarism thing certainly sounds like it would reasonably make people mad—but you see the point: the facelessness of the internet, it seems to me, makes it easy for smart and good-natured people to unreasonably attack an individual with little or no connection to their ideological bugbear. Since we’re almost all strangers on the internet, this is an argument for conducting arguments professionally (which is not the same as saying they should be conducted meekly or without conviction).
Thank you, Nanette.
As I just said over at QD’s: I appreciate the general sentiment, but you know, I am not always playing to the balcony; sometimes i am rather expressing solidarity with the people who have been hurt; i am at that moment more concerned with them than with the casual bystander.
if someone comes along and says, “damn, i’ve never met you before, but what the hell was THAT all about? why so angry?? what’s all the hubbub, bub?” well, barring the possibility that said person has just done the online equivalent of wandering blithely into the middle of a bar brawl just as my fist or the bouncer’s stick is arcing toward someone’s head (or was, before person stepped in between), i can then adapt to that person and talk like a nice normal person, ’cause, you know, I am large, I contain multitudes.
not infrequently it has happened that someone has had an unfavorable first impression of me, or indeed vice versa; subsequent encounters in other contexts made both of us radically reassess our perceptions of each other.
shorter version: I yam what I yam. i can and have been mindful of various peoples’ feedback (formal and otherwise), that they may see blind spots i don’t; and if a bunch of people who don’t know each other start saying similar things to me, in particular, i consider it seriously, at least.
but you know; i am not a professional politician, I don’t feel the need or desire to be always “on.” in fact to be perfectly honest I don’t always entirely trust people who always have their polite pants on; perhaps it’s a cultural thing. maybe it’s just me. shrug.
>c) there is a huge debate, it seems, between and among radfems and transwomen on feminism
(which will be ongoing…I do not know enough about it to opine but it reminds me of moderns vs. postmoderns, in a way).>
Not really wanting to go back into the content in what looks to be a “meta” discussion, but just briefly: I do not, and I do not think the transfolk in question, see the “debate” as equal. It really isn’t about two theories/ideologies; it is about theory/ideology about how some people ought to live their lives versus the actual people living their actual lives.
“I’m cold; put on a sweater.”
Or to put it in parallel terms that maybe may “click” more: it is, a number of us have noted, rather equivalent to the “debate” over gay marriage, between gay people who don’t have the option and straight people whose own marriages aren’t going to be really threatened (though they may claim they are defending the Institution of Marriage, in a vague sort of way) no matter what happens with gay marriage.
so, no; it isn’t just an academic debate, I don’t think. the stakes are too high, and i would say actually quite a bit higher for some of the participants than others.
and, in fact: the fury (on both sides) is because in point of fact, as you can see maybe more clearly if you’re still following along at Heart’s and at LL’s, is -not- because people are primarily upset over -literary- plagiarism–
–and I understand why this would be a point of confusion particularly among academic bystanders, and particularly who are not members of either/any of the, well, to be blunt, minority groups and/or ideologies in question–
–but, in fact, it is -not- about copyright or anything of that sort. What’s really being claimed to have been appropriated, stolen, is 1) LL’s claim to a feminism, any feminism 2) this is a problem because the radical feminists in question are challenging her claim to be a -woman.-
In other words, that she is “plagiarizing” womanhood, and thus taking away from them, the “real” women, when she lays claim to the title “woman,” to “feminism,” to the pronoun “she,” and above all i think the experience of oppression, her cries of pain, her self-affirmation; both because she is laying claim to it as a -woman- (albeit, yep, a transgendered woman, it is a very particular experience she is describing) and because Heart & co. have interpreted it as an attack on themselves, on account of she might just be suggesting that she, LL, is not only being oppressed but being oppressed -by them.- Since LL hadn’t particularly concerned herself with radical feminism per se before, and didn’t really know Heart, I don’t believe, this would have turned out to be one of those cases which became a self-fulfilling prophecy; if they weren’t attempting to silence/discredit her personally (and structurally, as a trans-woman-) before, i think it’s pretty damn clear that they are -now.-
Yeah?
> The word “shitbag” is just a very harsh word for “bad person.” >
And yet, it’s also pretty generic, you know?
Again, i wonder if maybe some of this isn’t partly cultural. I mean, i think one of my first spoken phrases (as I’m told) was “oh, shit.” I don’t consider “fuck you” to be the equivalent of “pistols at dawn.” I realize some people do. If I say that to someone I like and respect, and I realize i’ve offended hir, then, well, we can talk, and i can apologize, if necessary.
and then, too, there are those who think that calls for “civility” can in fact be a subtle or not so subtle form of control.
has anyone linked to Kevin Andre Elliot’s “Fuck your civility” yet?
at any rate, i gotta say, I do bridle at the suggestion that i am “unhinged” because i use terms like “fuck you, shitbag.” particularly when those phrases are directed at people who in fact have been incredibly, sweetly venomous, without so much as raising their voice. That casual observers don’t see the poison behind the reasonable sounding language is 1) why it’s so bloody effective and 2) why some of us lose our shit every so often, out of sheer frustration. I am sure that it would be more -politically- effective for me to manage to not lose my shit ever, and you know, i’ve been working on it? but at the same time: yeah. I really don’t want to lose any more sleep over the idea that somewhere, someone who hasn’t spoken up and never will, might be offended.
I mean, if you want to talk about “verbal abuse,” it’s actually a subject I know a fair amount about, that and its relation “emotional abuse.” It’s fairly standard knowledge that in fact it’s not all about shouting and cursing; the ever so carefully placed, ever so well hidden sharp sharp blade, inserted just so, does so much more damage than the open round of fisticuffs. We can talk more about this, if you like; this is a subject that interests me a great deal, you might say.
belledame ^^ is a fucking genius.
in fact to be perfectly honest I don’t always entirely trust people who always have their polite pants on; perhaps it’s a cultural thing. maybe it’s just me. shrug.
uh, no way you’re the only one. The cultural control around polite-as-hell language is my #1 problem with academe, like you wouldn’t even believe. Whoever’s better with the dominant language can get away with literally anything and self-exonerate from any responsibility because they successfully constructed innocence. Problem is, everything still comes outta my mouth bluntly in a world where everyone is SO FUCKIN COLLEGIAL. I’m LUCKY if they don’t hear me.
And this among people who supposedly study class & inequality. The issue of cultural rules for civilized language is usually discussed in those terms, but it goes way beyond specific dimensions like race or geography – it’s a plain control mechanism. Whoever actuallky has the least power ends up screaming, whether it’s out loud or not.
but anyway, reread the transpeople points. Damn, I am not nearly as patient as belledame with the language stuff. I mean, really. To try to explain this on intellectual terms is to me the equivalent of going into work every day and asking, “may I justify the reasons I should be allowed to speak?” And mostly being told “no, but why thank you ever so much for asking.” Doesn’t take long til you’re confused so much that you pretty much agree that you’re horseshit…according to the terms of a game that are considered no more than a debate for the recreational benefit of an outsider. At the end of the day, it’s so exhausting that there’s no room left for anything that was supposed to be happening in your head, which becomes one more reason for you to be blamed (“see, people who talk bluntly are incompetent; let’s not let any more of them exist here”). *buries head in sand*
thanks naroompa.
of course, now i have just finished watching two people i really like (and probably am more in alignment with ideologically on this) blow up all over two other people I really like, and in this case i gotta say i think the two people (actually three, one of them is also on my “side,” sigh, or actually well we never really determined what the first blown-up-at-person’s position meant in any practical sense because we were too busy blowing up) were, well, not seeing or hearing her in the name of the -belief-, which is exactly what’s pissed me off so bad in lo these other battles, and although in this case -unlike in most of the others- i agreed with teh people who i felt were, well? going into lockdown mode? still: no. and: no.
what pissed me off so much about the Heart thing, you know, wasn’t even that she was being transphobic–shit, she’s said such things in a general way a zillion times, this wasn’t news, i knew what she was like.
but this was different because it was so, well, gratuitous. so…heartless. so -ideologue.- here is an actual specific person, standing–well, virtually, but her presence, her voice is there–in front of you with an open vein, and all you can think to do is stomp on her and try to put out her light, all in the name of your -righteousness.- and your own wounds, which apparently cannot co-exist with anyone else’s wounds, because it is a competition, not a healing process.
that to me goes beyond “bigotry” or “ignorance;” that, yah, actually crosses the line into actual -evil.-
this blowup that happened between the people i like, i don’t think it was anything like that–i think it was the usual sort of Net flameout over really contentious issues where people don’t know each other and at least one side feels very very very strongly about it.
and yeah: upset.
only point being i guess: i’m not upset because “can’t we all play nicely in the sandbox” so much as, there was this thing that happened that was depressingly familiar from when I’ve been on the other side: someone is trying to express some kind of ambiguity and gets steamrolled right over in the other person’s need to immediately determine, are you WITH us or AGAINST us? schnell, schnell! –oh! AGAINST! Right! Well then: SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME SHAME…
i mean seriously, okay, you want to vent, so vent; but, interpersonally? that doesn’t help shit, and yah, it matters, even if the person in question has said, “you can’t change my mind,” that still doesn’t automatically mean, “right then, blowtorch out and full speed ahead.”
i am biased because i -like- this person, yes. And what pissed me off most about the whole thing was the suggestion that her “niceness” is irrelevant; that because she has the ideological position that she (more or less, probably, whatever this actually means) has, she can’t REALLY be nice; she is one of THEM, end of discussion.
that blew chunks.
i said it before and i am saying it again. really like you guys, but i think that was fucked. and i am not happy, and whatever else you say i really REALLY do not want to hear sneering about how my being not happy because my friend, my “pro-life” friend, is hurt, on account of her BELIEFS hurt so many more…
no. it matters.
I have spoken.
>Doesn’t take long til you’re confused so much that you pretty much agree that you’re horseshit…according to the terms of a game that are considered no more than a debate for the recreational benefit of an outsider. At the end of the day, it’s so exhausting that there’s no room left for anything that was supposed to be happening in your head, which becomes one more reason for you to be blamed (”see, people who talk bluntly are incompetent; let’s not let any more of them exist here”). *buries head in sand*>
fucking word.
and THAT, my friends, is why some of us scream. even though, yes, as n notes, it is often an expression of impotence; politically, if you wanna play with the big boys, it behooves you to learn to speak softly and carry a big stick, sometimes.
and yet: yes, some of us still scream.
because at the end of the day some things are still more important than fucking politics.
like your own sanity.
better out than in.
(gah, sorry: namaroompa. why am i still awake? why, god, why?)
(namaroopa!! anyway, thank you. for the props. -wanders off in search of Rootie’s previously offered Xanax-)
AND another thing:
this whole, the Internets are a constant mess of warfare and so on:
please tell me what large-scale structure in human life -isn’t.-
yeah, not always pleasant. perhaps not inevitable.
on the other hand:
you know what, as a species, we’re really just not all that peaceful and pleasant. gotta say.
so consider this:
maybe it’s a good thing to do it verbally, on the Internets.
maybe if we all do it enough there might be a let-up eventually in actual physical war, you know.
not so much because we’ll all have gotten so good at conflict resolution and brilliant idea breakthroughs and so on through the dialogue;
*because none of us will ever leave the house ever again.*
hey, who needs real bombs when you have Minesweeper?
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namaroopa, I’m the one who introduced the term “unhinged,” and I assure you it was on a different matter. I used it to refer to a case where, while the respondent could reasonably disagree, he or she chose to disagree extremely UNreasonably, with anger so disproportionate to the matter at hand that no reasonable discussion could follow.
The reason not to use profanity against people, online or in person, isn’t because curse words are terrible and evil, or because it reveals you as lowborn, or something. It’s the same as the reason not to end every sentence with five exclamation points: it’s meaningless emphasis, it replaces volume for depth. There’s nothing to say in response (except perhaps more swearing), which means that flaming, far from being more courageous or honest than civility, is a way of shielding oneself from reasoned critique. On the schoolyard, bullies are the first ones to understand this.
Belledame, the problem I see with your “blog wars for world peace” plan is that anger is not a zero-sum game: we don’t have a limited store that we can use up either on the internet or on the battlefield. Anger is cathartic, but it’s also addictive; it gives us a physiological response which is exciting, and to which we become habituated. Habitually engaging in furious disagreement will encourage one to look for such disagreement everywhere, on- or off-line, and will lead to more hostility, tribalism, and alienation, not less.
Posted this over at BD’s, but I think it also applies to this conversation:
BD, not ignoring the rest of what you’ve said regarding the ‘pro-life’ thread. You make some insightful points as always. Frankly, though, I’m done talking about it – and if rifts need mending, I’ll deal with that.
Belledame, thanks for these thoughtful replies.
Heart treated LittleLight miserably, and the comment thread over at her site, including the responses to comments by me and Renegade Evolution, makes me ill. I read a few pages down and had to give up.
There are definitely differences in culture when it comes to words like “fuck,” but phrases like “fuck you” are less ambiguous on the Internet. The best you can say is that they don’t add anything. People who are well-acquainted with each other in real life sometimes say “fuck you” without causing any harm to the dicussion or argument, but blogging is its own medium, and one (like e-mail) where trying to use unsubtle language in a subtle or personal way rarely works.
I take your point about not playing to the balcony; that’s a reasonable decision to make, on a specific issue or in general with a blog. I believe in always playing to the balcony, by which I mean the “stranger” to the site or debate, because that makes blogs more inclusive. I’ve been blogging seriously for six months, and devoting time and energy to it daily, and I still feel like a stranger to most blogs and conversations. I imagine many lurkers are even less able to be “comprehensive” or “knowledgeable.”
In some places in these comments you’ve reiterated the actual content of the debates, or made new observations about Heart and transpeople, and once again there I agree with you.
Heart may employ a false sweetness when she makes an attack. I really just don’t like what I’ve seen of her blog.
Reasoned argument, and the willingness to do without irrelevant attacks (say, people making fun of the name Kugelmass, which has happened several times), is sometimes accused of being strained or sneaky. That is a distortion. It is harder to dismiss a reasonable argument (something I wrote in my new post), but that does not make a flame war somehow more tolerant or honest, as though one were “putting one’s cards on the table.” Flame wars are just less effective at changing minds.
I really agree with Tomemos that comment threads are not a solution to the problem of anger, just because they’re verbal rather than physical. First of all, anger doesn’t have to be solved if it’s based on a legitimate grievance. If it was actually true that blogging vented anger away, then bloggers would have less energy for fighting for political causes in the real world, which would be a bad thing. It happens to be the case that you and I have had the most contact over matters of debate (Twisty several months ago, and this now), but I’ve also gotten other things from your blog (things as frivolously excellent as Pink, or as thought-provoking as discussions of totalitarian thinking). Most of the relationships that I have with the people on my blogroll are based on sharing ideas and references, and beyond that on mutual appreciation.
Something you seem to be saying in your later comments: anger should not be the cause of disempowerment. Writers like James Baldwin or Virginia Woolf were capable of intense, sustained anger, and found ways of reconciling their desire to express that anger with the possibilities and limits of media (e.g. the long-form essay). The same is true of King’s anger, Plath’s anger, or Marquez’s anger, in their chosen mediums.
I strongly agree with your comments about the need to handle interpersonal exchanges wisely, and think you have done so in response to this post and in thread after thread across the Net.
Namaroopa, I am completely in sympathy with the angry posts you’ve written over at your blog about the narrow-mindedness you’ve encountered. That’s why I’m doing what I can (which is, of course, very little) to publicize your blog, comment on it, and so forth. I am interested in what you have to say. There is a gulf between the way I have written about flame wars, and the kinds of repression you face, as you describe them.
Postscript: Let’s not exaggerate the degree to which I’m some sort of innocent, clueless, disinterested onlooker. I’ve been following feminist blogs for months now. I wrote responses to Heart on Heart’s blog, showed my support for LitteLight, and in general care about all the issues at stake: gender, authorship, identity rights, and the rest. I’m writing about all this because I care about it, and I wouldn’t have felt right posting about it here without joining the fray over at Heart’s. (As annoying as the responses to my comment, by her and her crowd, surely were.)
Interested readers may want to look at N. Pepperell’s post on this and other recent threads. My response follows.
You know, I was being at least half sarcastic with the “blog for world peace.” just notin’.
petitpoussin: ‘scool.
and yes, I certainly wouldn’t try to argue that “fuck you” is, like, helpful to advancing an idea or nothin’. It’s just, well?
Thanks for the feedback. But, sometimes, there are times when a hearty “fuck you!” is exactly what i’m gonna say, because goddamit, it’s exactly what i -mean.-
and you know: you’re right that verbal abuse is not necessarily “less harmful” than physical abuse.
but. I would say that in both cases–well, I am coming from someone who engages in BDSM, okay, and perhaps anyone who’s ever boxed or engaged in any sort of professional sports understands what I am about to say here: there are still rules. They’re just a different sort of rule from that of polite debate. And no, I don’t think it’s realistic or even desirable to suggest that the Internets should be all polite debate, all the time.
To me, “fuck you!” “No, fuck -you!- is–well, you know, we’ll live. Hell, maybe we’ll laugh and go out for a beer afterwards.
I don’t think anger, fighting, is something that can or even should be always processed into, let’s sit down and process this like swivilize adults; it’s just not where a lot of people are at, or will be. And frankly: them’s are some powerful feelings being stirred up by these subjects; and sometimes “I disagree with your assessment of me as an ‘it’ akin to Buffalo Bill who shouldn’t be allowed in womens’ bathrooms, and here’s why, with a Powerpoint slide show” just is not a realistic expectation, you know.
and JK: no one is suggesting that you don’t care. I don’t think we’d be here engaging with you if we did think that. I certainly wouldn’t be. Nonetheless, it is a different proposition to note, as any good humanistic person would, “hey, that’s bigoted and hateful, and i find that distressing, and wrong,” and feel the sock right to your core as it triggers the sense-memory of the last person who spit those words at you, backed up with a lead pipe. For example.
It’s not a judgment on you. It’s just how it is. It helps to get that out on the table, frankly. I think.
>I strongly agree with your comments about the need to handle interpersonal exchanges wisely, and think you have done so in response to this post and in thread after thread across the Net.>
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Check on your being half-sarcastic; the reference to minesweeper was funny.
I try to be realistic about the fact that sometimes, polite debate can lead to boring, constrained writing (which means ineffective writing). I also try to be realistic about the fact that invective can be frightening, and not only to its targets…actually, I think we both agree about that, though we may disagree about when it’s time to use which approach.
I think you’ve put the issue well when you compare a sincere interest, with a sincere interest and a lot of sometimes traumatic personal experience of something lived daily, and experience of the hate it generates in others. There is a difference there, and of course that has implications for how an argument proceeds.
tomemos, you are right about anger being addictive as well, yes.
it’s just–well, at this particular juncture, i am hesitant to tell anyone -else-, something that will sound like,
“Don’t get angry.”
or,
“You’re too angry. You’re being irrational.”
because, people tend to interpret that as a power move–which you know it is, even if a benignly meant one. I do think that yes, sometimes people react to a benignly meant something-like-that a lot more strongly than the person anticipated; and that goes about quadruple for big free-for-all discussions on the Intranets, and quintuple again when there are loaded subjects on the table, (as with many such in the political blogosphere).
generally, well, this is the therapy-speak kickin’ in, but y’know, “I statements” are always good; and that goes for even meta discussions like this as well, I find.
f’r instance:
well.
When I said above, “this upsets me,” (wrt the fight w/pp–no i don’t want to go into the actual details, just for point of ref), I was attempting to, how you say, “own my shit.” I was trying to walk a line between the necessary “you” stuff I did need to say in order to defend rootie, but at the same time, i was really trying to not say to anyone, “you shouldn’t get angry.” At least, that. Acknowledge that yah, people do have a reason for being angry, and they may very well stay angry no matter what an onlooker says, and they do have the right to that, at least.
slip, and yeah, JK, I think you’re a bit closer to it when you say:
“Invective can be frightening.”
Thing is, some of us find it more frightening than others, I think; or, depending on context.
But I do agree with you to the point that, okay, especially in the leftie political ‘sphere, there is this assumption that any strong defensive reaction to expressions of blatant anger are an expression of some kind of -structural- political control. And the thing is, often enough, it -does- work that way; as n was noting, as Kevin Elliot has noted, as a number of people have noted and when i am less lazy i will go hunt up some particularly apropos posts of theirs, if i can remember where the hell they are.
on the other hand, i do think that it’s not often enough talked about in these circles, at least, that -sometimes,- the person is simply (or also) reacting because -personally,- the person finds anger, well? frightening. Not just anger from a member of xyz group, but -any- anger. Because it’s well, -upsetting.- And, some people (and i do think this cuts across class, cultural etc. backgrounds to a large degree) have experiences of anger outbursts as, as you say, blatantly abusive; so anyone else expressing anger is going to at least partly trigger that memory.
Belledame,
Exactly. Nothing to add, that gets it just right.
Belledame, I’m excited to read the Elliott piece if you manage to track it down (am I right in thinking he’s the writer for Slant Truth?).
Over at Queer Dewd’s site, I wrote about symmetry vs. asymmetry — the traditional association of the left with asymmetrical tactics like nonviolent civil disobedience, or even guerrila warfare. Responding asymmetrically to flaming, through respectful argument or silence, is neither a renunciation of power nor a “sneaky” way of being powerful. It stems from the belief that legitimate power is the best and most enduring kind.
Thus I would never say to an opponent “you’re a flamer” or “you’re a troll.” If their response demonstrates such qualities, I either delete the comment, ignore them, or satirize them. I would only want to think through such questions with friends and allies, out of a desire for greater efficacy not incompatible with anger.
That is not to re-hash the whole thread, of course; I think what has been said so far provides a number of useful points of difference, and caveats.
H’m. I keep getting an error message for the post by that title on his blog. This one may or may not be the same one; it’s a similar theme, anyway.
http://www.slanttruth.com/anger-as-a-form-of-resistance
and this is sort of on related themes:
http://www.slanttruth.com/rules-for-radicals
…oh, i found it. actually though i think the first one might be more useful, this one was actually just a couple of lines in response to an intrablog thrash; you’d need to go spelunking in the backtrack’d archives to make sense of it in context. still, might be worth it for the comments:
http://www.slanttruth.com/fuck-your-civility
i had my own thoughts on the subject, somewhere around then:
http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2006/06/some-fleeting-thoughts-on-civil.html