Red Mosquito

Alex wrote:

theplatypus wrote:It makes me happy that I genuinely believe that Alex is seriously scared of McParadigm.

can i be the subject of your first RM interview sequel?

McParadigm wrote:And can I be the SUBJECT of your first RM interview sequel?

http://www.thenation.com/article/178140 ... itter-wars

Feminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars

Empowered by social media, feminists are calling one another out for ideological offenses. Is it good for the movement? And whose movement is it?

Michelle Goldberg

In the summer of 2012, twenty-one feminist bloggers and online activists gathered at Barnard College for a meeting that would soon become infamous. Convened by activists Courtney Martin and Vanessa Valenti, the women came together to talk about ways to leverage institutional and philanthropic support for online feminism. Afterward, Martin and Valenti used the discussion as the basis for a report, “#Femfuture: Online Revolution,” which called on funders to support the largely unpaid work that feminists do on the Internet. “An unfunded online feminist movement isn’t merely a threat to the livelihood of these hard-working activists, but a threat to the larger feminist movement itself,” they wrote.

#Femfuture was earnest and studiously politically correct. An important reason to put resources into online feminism, Martin and Valenti wrote, was to bolster the voices of writers from marginalized communities. “Women of color and other groups are already overlooked for adequate media attention and already struggle disproportionately in this culture of scarcity,” they noted. The pair discussed the way online activism has highlighted the particular injustices suffered by transgender women of color and celebrated the ability of the Internet to hold white feminists accountable for their unwitting displays of racial privilege. “A lot of feminist dialogue online has focused on recognizing the complex ways that privilege shapes our approach to work and community,” they wrote.

The women involved with #Femfuture knew that many would contest at least some of their conclusions. They weren’t prepared, though, for the wave of coruscating anger and contempt that greeted their work. Online, the Barnard group—nine of whom were women of color—was savaged as a cabal of white opportunists. People were upset that the meeting had excluded those who don’t live in New York (Martin and Valenti had no travel budget). There was fury expressed on behalf of everyone—indigenous women, feminist mothers, veterans—whose concerns were not explicitly addressed. Some were outraged that tweets were quoted without the explicit permission of the tweeters. Others were incensed that a report about online feminism left out women who aren’t online. “Where is the space in all of these #femfuture movements for people who don’t have internet access?” tweeted Mikki Kendall, a feminist writer who, months later, would come up with the influential hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

Martin was floored. She’s long believed that it’s incumbent on feminists to be open to critique—but the response was so vitriolic, so full of bad faith and stubborn misinformation, that it felt like some sort of Maoist hazing. Kendall, for example, compared #Femfuture to Rebecca Latimer Felton, a viciously racist Southern suffragist who supported lynching because she said it protected white women from rape. “It was really hard to engage in processing real critique because so much of it was couched in an absolute disavowal of my intentions and my person,” Martin says.

Beyond bruised feelings, the reaction made it harder to use the paper to garner support for online feminist efforts. The controversy was all most people knew of the project, and it left a lasting taint. “Almost anyone who asks us about it wants to know what happened, including editors that I’ve worked with,” says Samhita Mukhopadhyay, an activist and freelance writer who was then the editor of Feministing.com. “It’s like you’ve been backed into a corner.”

Though Mukhopadhyay continues to believe in the empowering potential of online feminism, she sees that much of it is becoming dysfunctional, even unhealthy. “Everyone is so scared to speak right now,” she says.

* * *

Just a few years ago, the feminist blogosphere seemed an insouciant, freewheeling place, revivifying women’s liberation for a new generation. “It felt like there was fun and possibility…a momentum or excitement that was building,” says Anna Holmes, who founded Jezebel, Gawker Media’s influential women’s website, in 2007. In 2011, critic Emily Nussbaum celebrated the feminist blogosphere in New York magazine: “Freed from the boundaries of print, writers could blur the lines between formal and casual writing; between a call to arms, a confession, and a stand-up routine—and this new looseness of form in turn emboldened readers to join in, to take risks in the safety of the shared spotlight.”

The Internet also became a crucial place for feminist organizing. When the breast cancer organization Komen for the Cure decided to defund Planned Parenthood in 2012, the overwhelming online backlash led to a reversal of the policy and the departure of the executive who had pushed it. Last year, Women, Action & the Media and the Everyday Sexism Project spearheaded a successful online campaign to get Facebook to ban pro-rape content.

Yet even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists. On January 3, for example, Katherine Cross, a Puerto Rican trans woman working on a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote about how often she hesitates to publish articles or blog posts out of fear of inadvertently stepping on an ideological land mine and bringing down the wrath of the online enforcers. “I fear being cast suddenly as one of the ‘bad guys’ for being insufficiently radical, too nuanced or too forgiving, or for simply writing something whose offensive dimensions would be unknown to me at the time of publication,” she wrote.

In some ways, the fact that people are being mean to each other on Twitter is hardly worthy of comment. Still, as the #Femfuture report attempted to point out, the Internet is where a lot of contemporary feminist activism is happening......

***continued here****

broken iris wrote:“Where is the space in all of these #femfuture movements for people who don’t have internet access?” tweeted Mikki Kendall, a feminist writer who, months later, would come up with the influential hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

simple schoolboy wrote:"Oppression, as outlined in SSMU’s Equity Policy, means the exercise of power by a group of people over another group of people with specific consideration of cultural, historical and living legacies. The image in question was an extension of the cultural, historical and living legacy surrounding people of color—particularly young men---being portrayed as violent in contemporary culture and media. By using this particular image of President Obama, I unknowingly perpetuated this living legacy and subsequently allowed a medium of SSMU’s communication to become the site of a microaggression; for this, I am deeply sorry."

BurtReynolds wrote:"Maoist hazing" is a good term for it. There seems to be this new poison infecting the various movements that cause them to attack everyone, friends and foes alike, with screams of "BIGOT!@@!!!11!" over the most minor of disagreements.

“I actually think there’s a subset of black women who really do get off on white women being prostrate,” Cooper says. “It’s about feeling disempowered and always feeling at the mercy of white authority, and wanting to feel like for once the things you’re saying are being given credibility and authority. And to have white folks do that is powerful, particularly in a world where white women often deploy power against black women in ways that are really problematic.”

“What’s disgusting and disturbing to me is that I see some of the more intellectually dishonest arguments put forth by women of color being legitimized and performed by white feminists, who seem to be in some sort of competition to exhibit how intersectional they are,” says Jezebel founder Holmes, who is black. “There are these Olympian attempts on the part of white feminists to underscore and display their ally-ship in a way that feels gross and dishonest and, yes, patronizing.”

broken iris wrote:Harm, I' realized I've reverted to asshole-mode, so I'm taking the weekend off posting. I might reply on Monday.

harmless wrote:
But none of this matters, obviously, I'm just in a cult and I'm totally deluded, until I've left the thread and suddenly you want to talk about the subject on your own terms.

broken iris wrote:Harmless, I haven't forgotten this one, and as you suggested I have been doing some online reading about the topics, I am just not sure how to respond yet in a way that makes sense of what I've learned.

@SkitchP wrote:

broken iris wrote:Harmless, I haven't forgotten this one, and as you suggested I have been doing some online reading about the topics, I am just not sure how to respond yet in a way that makes sense of what I've learned.

He left because you broke him. We're all quite sad about this.

broken iris wrote:

@SkitchP wrote:

broken iris wrote:Harmless, I haven't forgotten this one, and as you suggested I have been doing some online reading about the topics, I am just not sure how to respond yet in a way that makes sense of what I've learned.

He left because you broke him. We're all quite sad about this.

Pretty sure it was Burt's "cult" thing, but I'll accept responsibility if you want. I'm mostly out the door anyway.

BurtReynolds wrote:

broken iris wrote:

@SkitchP wrote:

broken iris wrote:Harmless, I haven't forgotten this one, and as you suggested I have been doing some online reading about the topics, I am just not sure how to respond yet in a way that makes sense of what I've learned.

He left because you broke him. We're all quite sad about this.

Pretty sure it was Burt's "cult" thing, but I'll accept responsibility if you want. I'm mostly out the door anyway.

I think it was Chad Smith's fault.

Record number of women make 28th annual Forbes billionaires list
Women make up 10% of global super-rich and 172 women, 25% more than in 2013, are in renowned club of billionaires

From Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg to a British online gambling entrepreneur, a record number of women have entered the global club of billionaires.

A total of 172 women, up 25% on 2013, have made Forbes 28th annual billionaires' list. Women now make up 10% of the global super-rich, thanks to a huge influx of female wealth, led by Sandberg. With a personal fortune worth more than $1bn (£599m), she became one of the highest-profile new entrants to the Forbes list, joining Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard as the only other female tech billionaire.

The self-made businesswoman Folorunsho Alakija, Nigeria's first female billionaire, also made the Forbes list for the first time, as her oil investments netted her a $2.5bn fortune. One of the top UK entrants was Denise Coates, the British online gambling queen who, along with her brother, owns Bet365. Coates was at school when she started working as a cashier in her father's betting shops and has now amassed $1.6bn in personal wealth.

According to Forbes, a record number of 42 women broke into the list for the first time, although only 32 female billionaires (1.9% of the total) built their own fortune, rather than inheriting it from a parent or husband.

The world's richest woman is Christy Walton, who shares a $36.7bn chunk of the Walmart fortune, edging out one of L'Oréal's principal shareholders, Liliane Bettencourt.

Bill Gates reclaimed his crown as the world's richest man, after a surge in the value of Microsoft shares increased his wealth by $9bn to $76bn. Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim, who held the title for the previous four years, was nudged into second place with a fortune of $72bn. The Spanish clothing tycoon Amancio Ortega, behind fast fashion chain Zara, stayed in third place, extending his lead over investor Warren Buffett at four.

The biggest riser was Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortune almost doubled to $28.bn, as shares in the social network soared. He is joined by other tech wizards, with the Dropbox chief executive, Drew Houston, and WhatsApp founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, making the list for the first time.

Some emerging markets buffeted by currency instability saw a crop of super-wealthy fall out of the Forbes list. Turkey lost 19 billionaires to inflation, while Indonesia saw eight of its wealthy drop out of the list, after its currency plummeted 20% against the dollar. But 2013 will be remembered as a good year for the world's super-rich, who now have collective wealth of $6.4 trillion, up from $5.4 trillion the previous year.