Reminder: Feministing and disability
This is a reminder: There has still been no response, from Courtney or any other Feministing contributor, to the issues raised regarding this shit post. The thread is dead. There has been no response. We know that Courtney read the thread, because she commented twice, giving a slap on the wrist to a regular Feministing troll. She did not respond to Amandaw’s request, both times, for her to comment more substantially on the thread.
Are we to understand that Feministing has gone back to its policy of ignore, ignore, ignore? What, after just one failed attempt to address abled privilege?
Contact Courtney, Miriam, and Jessica to ask them why there has been no response on the thread or in a new post.
Emails:
Courtney: courtneyemartin@yahoo.com (edit: initially I had this address wrong–left out the middle initial e)
Miriam: miriam@feministing.com
Jessica: jessica@feministing.com
kaninchenzero said,
November 6, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I’m not going anywhere near Feministing and not emailing anybody there. They seem just fine with their site being a festering shithole.
quixotess said,
November 6, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Well I certainly don’t have anything bad to say about that decision.
There ought be a “new feminists” website that’s, like, better. Finally Feminism101 is great for what it does but not quite the same…
Ouyang Dan said,
November 7, 2009 at 5:29 am
You. Are. Awesome.
I don’t think anyone is interested in apologizing to Amadaw, or in making a correction to appropriately crediting the work in that post to the proper source, or anything. Once again, I think inaction speaks more loudly than action. All I think Courtney cares about at this point is her possibility to be WaPo’s next pundit. Not how she treats people, especially people less privileged than she is.
Molly said,
November 7, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Took me a while to phrase my e-mail, but I finally decided I wasn’t going to get any less angry, so I might as well just write it. I quoted (with attribution and link) your line:
“Progressive blogs attract readers who feel safe at that blog. Trolls and hate-mailers aside, you have the commenters you have because you regularly challenge privilege they wish to see challenged, and you do not challenge privilege they do not wish to see challenged.”
I hope that’s all right. It was just such a clear-cut description of the problem they need to face up to that I couldn’t hope to phrase it better.
quixotess said,
November 7, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Thanks so much for writing the e-mails! And that’s totally fine, yes, definitely.
Molly said,
November 9, 2009 at 4:32 pm
You will, I’m sure, be absolutely SHOCKED to hear that I haven’t heard back from any of them. Maybe if I had started the e-mail with all the privileges I have that they like. “Hey ableists, I’m a young cis white TAB (etc)! You know, one of those people whose opinions you take seriously!”
(NB I did not actually start the e-mail with “Hey ableists.”
quixotess said,
November 9, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Hmm, I have a response from Courtney and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. She says:
I don’t know amandaw at all, so, hmm.
Anna said,
November 10, 2009 at 5:14 am
Perhaps you should tell her you don’t know Amandaw, and she should email Amandaw and discuss it with her, rather than waiting for Amandaw to do it?
I don’t know. *sigh*
quixotess said,
November 10, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I dunno either. Any response seems kinda pointless since she so explicitly rejected further engagement with me. I might send one off anyway, though.
amandaw said,
November 11, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Interesting.
I will be responding in time.
Thank you for continuing to push on this.
amandaw said,
November 11, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Also, it’s pretty clearly a redirection tactic. I have reached out to her in public, and she hasn’t so much as acknowledged my existence. But when someone pushes her in private, she says to someone who has never exchanged a single word with me that she would have talked to me if I would have emailed her.
That’s not responding to me. That’s just getting the other person to shut up about the matter. That’s all it’s about.
(Incidentally, hi.
)
lauredhel said,
November 10, 2009 at 1:59 am
Her “tone in the chat”? It had nothing whatsoever to do with her tone in the chat. It had everything to do with her attempting to call amandaw out for “tone”, and this has been 100% perfectly crystal clear.
And a private matter? Again, it was made absolutely 100% perfectly crystal clear before the chat took place that it would be public, and published, and Courtney explicitly agreed to this, in advance.
Ouyang Dan said,
November 10, 2009 at 5:25 am
How about her misappropriation of ideas that were not Feministing’s independently, and were left on that post in a confusing manner so that it appeared that they were? Even after it was pointed out and clarification asked for. Not even quotation marks. But I guess appropriation of other people’s ideas are par for the course for big named feminists, or is it only when dealing w/ marginalized women, because I need to update my chart. WoC, OK, disabled women, OK, but who isn’t fair game? She feels it was misinterpreted? How could it be interpreted any other way?
This was always a public issue. That was always clear. Amandaw shouldn’t have to beg privately for something that she was embarrassed about in public. That was ridiculous. People feel entitled to behave the way they do at Feministing because this is the way they see the bloggers behave. I don’t speak for amandaw, but as someone who cares about her I believe she deserves a public apology for a public belittling by a big named feminist who knows better, and who loves to throw tone arguments around.
Messing up isn’t a huge deal, Courtney. Failing to own your mistakes and apologize for them is… we’ve been telling Conservatives and fauxgressives that for ages now.
meloukhia said,
November 10, 2009 at 6:16 am
It’s interesting that the original open letter was public, and the participants continually referenced the idea that they wanted an open, transparent dialogue, and there seem to be attempts to drag it back into private.
This is not private. This is a public matter. (And I’m sorry what we are all taking over your blog to rant, quixotess.) Once something is public, it needs to stay public, because the classic move with things like this, when a marginalized group calls a privileged group, is to move it to backroom meetings and attempt to hush it up.
We will not be hushed. We will not be silent. Some unacceptable things were said in that chat. The chat which is public, by agreement from all parties. The fact that our words were used without attribution in that post at Feministing is unacceptable; and, from an academic, shocking. Courtney should know the importance of attribution. The fact that none of us, or our blog, were mentioned by name, is silencing and disgusting.
Appropriation and silencing should not and will not be tolerated.
This demonstrates, to me, that Feministing is not and never was in good faith. We were used as free media consultants and then discarded.
quixotess said,
November 10, 2009 at 1:57 pm
No need to be sorry at all! Truth be told I’m a little amused at this aspect of it–somehow I suspected that I didn’t need to actually contact any of you for you to see this.
What are your ideas?
meloukhia said,
November 11, 2009 at 10:38 am
I think that posts like this are a good start; making it clear that, as a collective community, we hold people accountable for their actions. I noticed this in particular with the open letter. One voice was not heeded, but a sea of voices could not be ignored. Talking about the issue drew attention to the issue, and made it clear that it was not going to go away.
I think another big problem for people working in social justice advocacy is burnout. We cannot expect everyone to see everything all the way through, and we need to structure things to allow for the distribution of duties so that when people burnout, people are available to take their places and to keep things moving.
Personally, I would really like to see a boycott of Feministing; I still see people linking to them or keeping them in their blogrolls, including people who expressed support for (and cosigned) the open letter. Sending a clear message that we will not be engaging with or promoting the site until it cleans up its act could be a next step.
quixotess said,
November 11, 2009 at 12:17 pm
As it happens, I agreed so much that I wrote another post about it. See here.
Please boycott Feministing « Reconcile said,
November 13, 2009 at 10:26 pm
[...] I e-mailed Courtney, Jessica, and Miriam to ask for an explanation, only Courtney e-mailed me back (see comment thread), to say that she was [...]