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.
