stfushakesville: Comments soon to be deleted.
But this is about Melissa McEwan’s behavior (she closed the post after receiving criticisms from lesbian commentators of homophobic and lazy feminism and permitting the same on her site), male privilege/female oppression, lesbian oppression, and the stereotype of lesbians as sexual predators. [full text]
lissy on the defensive
| Commenter: | I was just being surprised at Shakesville not having posted about the riots and bing there's a post in my Google Reader! |
| Melissa: | "Shakesville" doesn't post things. The individual human people who contribute to Shakesville do. |
| Commenter: | Sorry, poor phrasing. I meant 'there hadn't been a post on Shakesville'. |
| Melissa: | Even still, to express "surprise" that something hasn't been written about in this space feels like an implicit condemnation of the content-creators (of which I am the primary) and an assertion of entitlement to certain content.This isn't semantics, and there's a reason I'm bringing it up in this thread: To casually whisk away dehumanizing language as "poor phrasing" and not acknowledge the communicated expectation embedded within that language is...troublesome. For a few reasons, not least of which is making me feel like this isn't a safe space for me. |
I read Shakesville, and their “Question of the Day” yesterday was about the zombie apocalypse….I saw it and wanted to scream, “YOU TOO?!” Like, of all places, OF ALL PLACES, the blog that prides itself on being aware of the hurdles everyone has to clear in life, and how some folks have a fuck of a lot more hurdles than others. I think it’s self-evident that an apocalypse of any kind quite literally leaves disabled people out in the cold to die. The fact that so many people treat this as a fun mental exercise is bullshit…Almost instantly I had the Wrath of Mod down on me for “commenting in bad faith.” I told her it was her right to remove the link, and also, implicitly, to ease the fuck up, because she was making me extremely anxious.
That’s where I left it last night, and incidentally, I didn’t sleep last night. I can’t explain why getting called to the principal’s office in the confines of one little blog would do such a number on me. It’s at least partially because I’ve seen good people making good points completely obliterated over there. The mods pull out the “bad faith” clause and you had better run for the hills. If you stand your ground, you can go fuck yourself…
This morning I saw, to no surprise, that the same mod clung to her bad-faith accusation, and then finished up with, “This derail is over,” which is the part that really chapped my ass. You may not like how I’ve expressed my sentiments, but that doesn’t make it a derail. A derail is when someone intentionally comes into a blog post that discusses X and says, “YES BUT WHAT ABOUT Y,” when Y is off-topic. I came into a post asking “how will you survive the apocalypse?” saying, “I won’t, and I hate this topic because of it.” That’s not a derail, no matter how you might look at it…
Then I went back to the original post and made my point entirely using “I” language, soft-pedaling my rage and frustration till it was just a soft little “no thank you.” Till it lost all the righteous anger that I’m entitled to. Still, there’s no way it can bring down the banhammer unless the mods have really and truly gone off the fucking deep end.
And now that I’m done with that, I can make myself a solemn vow to never comment over there again except in extreme circumstances. Their commenting policy takes “draconian” to a new level. It’s like even Draco is leaning back, peering at the monolith of rules and saying, “Damn, folks, well done.”
I get that in the fight to preserve a safe space for other commenters, you can’t take the Wild West approach (a.k.a. the YouTube approach). But all the truly out-there bans (and near-bans) I’ve seen at Shakesville haven’t been about keeping the space safe for the other commenters; they’ve been about treating the blog authors with kid gloves. And I don’t get that. You have no responsibility to receive abuse as an author, but genuinely felt criticism … you’re putting yourself and your opinions out there, and you should welcome that criticism. You can’t yell “bad faith!” every time someone expresses it.
It really highlights McEwan’s gross straight-person obsessions with Sassy Gay Man stereotypes, and her obvious conviction that she is an Honorary Queer because she doesn’t think homos should be burned at the stake, or whatever.
“I read for years before joining the comments. By my second comment, Melissa called me “anti-woman.” One of the other mods started going on about how I had “walked into Melissa’s blog” and disagreed with her, as if I had no right to post there. I tried to apologize and rephrase my opinion, so that they would understand my good intentions, but the more contrite I was, the more aggressive they became, calling me names and accusing me of trying to stir the pot. I’ve been around on the Internet, but this was the only time I was ever genuinely surprised and upset by an exchange I had there. I wound up walking away from the thread and never posted again.”
“I used to excuse a lot of Melissa’s behavior because we have had similar experiences related to trauma, and I know that healing can take a very long time. But I don’t have patience for it anymore. Many of Melissa’s readers have the same struggles that she does, but they are expected to treat *her* with kid gloves, read her mind, and take responsibility for her sense of safety and happiness, while she gets to run over whomever and exploit their vulnerability to get the upper hand. Why willingly participate in that? There is no value in Shakesville, except as a mechanism for feeding Melissa’s codependency. I’m out.”
"(Source: kataphatic.wordpress.com)
