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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFeminism’s Toxic Twitter Wars
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 isnt 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 werent prepared, though, for the wave of coruscating anger and contempt that greeted their work. Online, the Barnard groupnine of whom were women of colorwas savaged as a cabal of white opportunists. People were upset that the meeting had excluded those who dont live in New York (Martin and Valenti had no travel budget). There was fury expressed on behalf of everyoneindigenous women, feminist mothers, veteranswhose 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 arent online. Where is the space in all of these #femfuture movements for people who dont have internet access? tweeted Mikki Kendall, a feminist writer who, months later, would come up with the influential hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen.
Martin was floored. Shes long believed that its incumbent on feminists to be open to critiquebut 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.
http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars
Warpy
(113,032 posts)taking his lack of success out on any woman he finds online. That includes the ones who never progressed emotionally beyond their teens.
i keep all my online names gender neutral. It doesn't stop all of them, nothing does, but at least it keeps the numbers manageable.
Response to Warpy (Reply #1)
AngryAmish This message was self-deleted by its author.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)Unless I am reading it wrong, the OP seems to be about feminist infighting, not internet harassment of women by men
Shandris
(3,447 posts)It's actually very well-written (and dispenses with the troll argument at the bottom of the first page) and addresses what I see to be a huge problem. Toxic is one of those words that's being used a lot these days to describe things, but darned if it isn't accurate. To see some of the things that cross various comments sections, web pages, and Twitters streams -- not to mention things taken WAY the hell out of context in threads on DU from time to time -- is enough to make your heart break.
Lunacee_2013
(529 posts)Some people think all feminists are just uppity white women complaining that they don't have enough privilege (never mind the black feminist blogs), or that trans-women don't belong, or straight women are sleeping with the enemy, so to speak. I hate the I'm more feminist then you game, it only holds us back. Basically I think anyone who believes that women are the equals of men, and that a woman's body is her's alone, is a feminist. It doesn't mean that I don't go any further into feminist theory, just that I try not to judge other women's feminist cred.
The "night of a thousand vaginas" part, were someone complained that the name of the benefit hurt transgendered men, was just silly. It was a pro-choice rally, choice as in give birth or have an abortion and you need a vagina for that, which clearly explains the name. That's the in-fighting I'm talking about. Sometimes, some events just can't include everyone's different issue. And sometimes, issues other then the one(s) you (or I) are into aren't the ones being debated. And that's ok.
Thankfully though, most feminist spaces I visit are open and supportive.
leeroysphitz
(10,462 posts)Orrex
(63,871 posts)Lunacee_2013
(529 posts)while there is plenty of debate between different branches of feminism, some of the completely anonymous comments on feminist blogs may just be trolls who have figured out yet another way to be disruptive. Not saying that all, or even most, of the in-fighting is caused by that, just something to think about.