Feministing and Unchecked Prejudice
I really would like to like Feministing. I’ve tried to. As others have called for boycotts to draw attention to transphobia there, or organised open letters to point out the ableism, blogged about the racism, I kept reading, kept wanting to find good in it. Thing is that sometimes there is. It’s a big site and in Community posts that don’t draw a lot of attention it can be possible to have interesting, civil and respectful conversations. However any post that draws in more than a fringe is no safe place for anyone who is not part of the dominant group. It’s quite clear that the success of Feministing is such that the editors have absolutely no ability to control, moderate or otherwise address the problems they have with their commenters and have pretty much given up trying to, relying instead on readers using the report a post mechanism.
This, however, is not working. The about page states:
“the Feministing editors believe that racism, classism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, and hate speech constitute anti-feminism and have no place on the site.”
but a very quick trawl through any community post covering issues where these might be relevant will bring up comments, often many comments, that express exactly those kinds of views, often very directly, often in conversation with the very people against whom the prejudice is aimed.
The Feministing community is dominated by middle class, North American, white, young women who often appear to be new to feminism and often have rarely, knowingly, come across any minority other than gay and lesbian people. They are not used to conversations about privilege, not used to the idea they have any and are not really in a position to learn from being called on it without reacting very negatively. With such a group any open and large scale community blogging and commenting is going to need moderating. It is going to need blog authors to step in and call privilege, to turn threads that go off into discrimination and prejudice into teaching moments for these young feminists. Without this kind of intervention a culture of tacit agreement by silence is created. Now, I’m not suggesting that the Feministing editors support such prejudice, but by never intervening, by allowing it to continue unchecked and unchallenged on their site they appear to be condoning it by silence. As a result the commenters feel justified in their opinions and never do gain insight into the lives of people different to themselves. They continue to feel secure and safe in their privilege.
The editors have have been called on this a few times, asked to do something about the situation which, to me, appears to be increasingly bad. They have pointed out that what they do is unpaid and that they don’t have the time to carry out that degree of moderation on such a large number of postings and comments and it is a fair point. However to me the answer ought not to be to just cut moderation loose entirely. The Community posting section is rapidly becoming so vociferously transphobic (along with other forms of prejudice) that any voice that is not is very, very rapidly completely drowned out.
Take the comments in these three threads, all started by the same author. The first two did not attract a large audience and some interesting discussion was had. Not everyone agreed and personally I do think there was privilege and transphobia expressed. However it was a dialogue and as someone in the minority being discussed I did at least feel like people were listening and learning. By the third one, however, the subject or title gained attention and as threads sometimes do went critical and attracted a wider audience. And what an audience. The thread is essentially one long dehumanising, transphobic and trans misogynist, fear and loathing filled ode to why nice people should feel violated at the very idea of fucking a trans woman. Right down to suggestions that being attracted to trans people is a specific sexuality and that passing is deceptive for goodness sake. Without any sense of irony there are comments there that utterly reproduce those used in trans panic defenses in legal cases to justify violence against a trans person. I think it is also significant that a set of conversations about a trans man very quickly became only about trans women and our gender performance, sexuality and desirability as a romantic partner, or not.
There are voices arguing against the prejudice and calls in thread to consider that they are discussing real people, that we are actually there and actually reading what they are saying about us. However those are steam rollered under the jugernaught of transphobia and privilege. At no point, despite two comments being deleted after being reported, does an editor step in to say anything. It amounts to tacit approval of the comments, whether intended to be or not.
Just a couple of days after the the third of those comment threads another post in community managed to be utterly transphobic with the phrase (emphasis mine):
Why do bisexuals still feel so alienated, even when LGBT culture is becoming so mainstream? Afterall, there we are right there in the acronym, in between the gays and the trannies.
No one challenged it, no moderator checked it, it’s still there. I’m not surprised no trans person challenged it coming hot on the heels of the transphobic melt down just past.
Feministing faces a choice. With increasing criticism from feminists who sit at the intersections of other prejudices it seems to me to be slowly losing credibility as a serious feminist website. If the editors do have a desire for it to be seen as a serious feminist forum that has a real commitment to challenging prejudice – and here I mean beyond that addressed by middle class, able bodied, white, cis, North American, feminism – then they urgently need to address the state of their community.
If they don’t have time to do so then they need to consider ways to limit, remove or otherwise bring it to a manageable state. They need to find ways to educate the young feminists they have attracted. They have the audience, now they need to do something with it to live up to the goals they have stated. Their other choice is to continue to go for popularity and readers eyes and to increasingly been seen as only paying lip service to intersectionality and minority rights. Indeed, if they are not careful then the editors themselves will become linked to the kind of unchecked prejudice they are seen to allow on Feministing.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Hi, I’m the author of two of those posts. The post about transphobia in 17 magazine was actually written by someone else, I wrote the other two posts in response. Given the absolute amount of FAIL in the most recent thread, I’m working on a 3rd post… *sigh*
Anyway, I just wanted to send hugs your direction, and in the direction of everyone else participating in the feministing boycott.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Thanks for stopping by, Elana, to clarify, and for putting your posts there in the first place! And not least for your words of support
November 6th, 2009 at 9:32 am
I got here via the posts you’re talking about on feministing. The transphobia and unchecked privilege was awful in all of them.
I’ve been visiting feministing much less recently, partly because of the transphobia, partly because of other issues. In the time I’ve visited the site, I’ve lost count of the number of trans people who’ve felt they had to leave or stop commenting, or the number of community posts I’ve read on the issue. I’ve honestly begun to feel that editors don’t care, and extra-special don’t care about transphobia. Heteronormativity is rightly squished, anti-sex work feminists are positively demonised, and transphobia is never challenged.
At least that’s my thoughts, and since I saw you had a site and I agreed so much with you in the comments threads, I thought I’d stop by to offer support. Well done.
November 6th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Thanks for commenting Eliza
I tend to agree with you. It does feel like there is less caring about some groups than others. And trans people for me are definitely in that. I noticed they placed a post on the main Feministing site that was made in reply to that last… car crash of a comment thread. It doesn’t seem to have worked though and still no editor has commented or said anything. At this point I’m beginning to feel that not only is Feministing not trans friendly but that it is actively hostile, which is sad. It could be so much more than it has become, to a lot more women.
Thanks for your words! I’m off to read your own blog now
November 6th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
Hi, Mattie. Your post is right on. Thank you.
It seems as though the comment threads have been placed under moderation for the most recent two Feministing articles dealing with trans issues (These two threads.) The comments have died to less than a trickle and none of my new comments are posting… Either that, or I have been banned from those threads.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
It seems rather odd to put them into moderation without actually announcing that it has been done, and then saying why. I would guess that they are trying to work out what to do. Again. Equally it took them days to react, it’s way, way too late. It needed intervention in the threads themselves, not promoting the next post in the series by a community member to the main page without comment or support, which is what seems to have happened with the second post you linked. Instead of giving leadership, they have done nothing that requires them to stand up and actually express an opinion. I am sure they do have one, I just don’t understand why they give the appearance of ignoring these comment threads.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I agree with you. It’s pretty confusing that they put those threads on moderation—assuming that’s what actually happened—without an explanation. Their silent, lack-luster response makes me wonder if they are afraid of angering their transphobic readers—or even worse, I wonder if some of the Feministing team are on the fence over certain trans-related issues.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:48 pm
I feel, hope, it is most likely a mixture of the former and of trying to work out what to do. I suspect, would like to think, that they might be trying to come up with some unified statement and that, being in different places and times, they need time to get their collective act together. Such is the internet.
I’ve never got the impression that they might have sympathy, indeed until a few months ago they tended to publish more on trans issues. Now I think about it, they also tended to comment more themselves, which often acted as a balance on the more bitterly contested comment threads. I’d be very dissapointed in them if it was indeed fence sitting.
I think personally I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt for a little while longer, at least give them the chance to get to grips with what is clearly an ongoing and widespread problem for them.
Definitely a big issue is (and I say this as someone who has moderated online commmunities in the past) that if you do not moderate proactively then people will take that as permission, regardless of stated policy and regardless of what you say. You need to be seen to be enforcing moderation. Ironically the more you are, then the less you need to, but it does take an investment of time and effort. Time they don’t appear to have. I think they have a real problem on their hands and no easy solution in that respect.
However, this does not excuse them. These issues have been rolling on and on, and not just with trans issues of course. It is this that makes me feel it is more a problem of policy than intent. It makes no sense to me to state they wish an inclusive community if they really do not care about intersectionality, that would just set them up to fail.
All that said though, I feel they need to take action and they need to do it soon if it they wish to avoid the perception of actually having prejudice and issues of privilege themselves as a group, no matter how inclusive that group of editors themselves are.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
[...] Also: Mattie gives me more good reasons for not reading feminism and gendurr blogs anymore. It’s true, I don’t. I really can’t be fucked anymore because it makes my blood boil to be confronted with the same nonsensical arguments over and over and have people attempting to make me feel bad when I say I’m not there to answer their questions and fucking why don’t you just fucking wiki it. I am definitely not a credit to my whatever (o-ho!), but then we knew that already. Yes, I feel vaguely bad about not gendertalkin’ anymore, but it doesn’t compare to the +4 to my happiness stat I get when not confronted with people who make me want to spoon my eyes out. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Champions Online going free-to-play on Halloween weekend10 Questions For Amy Poehler [...]
November 9th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Reading feministing comments gives me a fucking headache. Yeah, why are you having sex with someone who is going to be perpetrating a hate crime against you! In the same vein, if only we could stop women having sex with rapists, we could really get that whole rape problem taken care of. Fuckin’ A, you win the logic award of the month.
I hope that discussion about the word flounce was some ultra-meta comment about the state of feminist discussion on T’internets too, because otherwise I will cry into my pillow tonight.
November 9th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
The whole flounce thing at the front kind of summed up the issue for me. Which was pretty much the way Feministing commenters come across as “Shut the fuck up trans people while we tell you what you may be and be grateful for, and if you don’t like it get lost”
November 9th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I like the combo of flounce accusation + Jesustastic “I’ll probably get banned for this *writes 50 more comments full of reading comprehension fail” martyrdom.
November 9th, 2009 at 5:04 pm
*makes sure your comment has more “likes” than any other, especially the reasoned and rational ones*
November 10th, 2009 at 3:24 am
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