Three photos from the local university campus — with written remarks about them -
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These four blog posts are about those photos -
- Sociological Images - “Defending privilege”
- Feministe - “Anti-Feminist Vandalism”
- The F-Word - “Real men and rape”
- Feministing - “Fun with Feminist Flickr (activism edition)”
There are a lot of comments on those posts.
The posts mainly are about a flyer that initially declared that “Real men do not let men rape” — until that flyer was modified to read “Real men do rape.” The Sociological Images post also included a photo of a nearby flyer about how men should respect women, as well as a photo of scraps that were left behind after most of that flyer about respect was torn down.
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After the photos were included the blog posts mentioned above, someone posted a string of anonymous anti-feminist comments on the last and the second-last of the photo pages. I responded to some of their comments… initially. Then I ended up blocking their account from my Flickr pages (which they can’t comment on from that account). I also deleted a few of their comments — but not without posting some of what had been in two of them.
Anyway, if anyone out there is inclined to object to how I didn’t take a cyber-libertarian hands-off approach, I ask that you read at least those threads before passing judgement on me. I think I made a lot of effort to avoid the deleting and banning — which was justifiable in the end though, I think, given the anti-feminist perspective that this person was promoting so persistently.
Some would, instead, conclude that I was too open to what that person was saying; but I don’t think that criticism would be fair though. It’s not as if I knew what the person was going to write before before they had posted all of it.
6 responses so far ↓
1 ash. // Feb 19, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Frankly, some of the deleted discussion is warranted. Framing the opinion as an opposition to feminism however, as was done by the author, seems ridiculous though and made it unnecessarily standoffish. Certainly feminism and “feminists” ought to be concerned with the notion of “all men as rapists” and “only women as victims” as these attitudes do exist to a certain extent, deepen conflict in gender relations and do not create space for male rape victims to be legitimized in our society. If only ‘hujo’ had chosen discussion over conflict and recognized how feminist his/her anti-feminist sentiments were!
2 Toban // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:07 am
By the way -
Thanks for writing about those comments on Flickr. I felt like I was on shakey ground (between clearer extremes and camps), so I appreciated what you said about how you thought that the discussion was worth having.
Ultimately, I wasn’t willing to help that person spread such an anti-feminist message, and I couldn’t be bothered to continue shooting down their flimsy points.
(I certainly don’t mean to reject everything that person wrote; basically I think that their constructive or insightful points were buried under harmful nonsense; so I found their posts counter-productive.)
If the person were only sending their messages to committed feminists, I think their point of view could help feminists to sharpen their arguments and re-think their assumptions, but there aren’t many of those committed feminists out there (on Flickr or elsewhere).
In this world, an anti-feminist message will tend to reinforce a very patriarchal status quo.
Anyway, I wouldn’t have removed the comments on Flickr that I ended up re-posting as quotations in my own comments if I could have left the original comments up while also shutting out the person who posted them; I couldn’t leave their comments there and block that person’s account.
3 bloggingnews01 // Mar 28, 2009 at 12:45 am
One objection that often comes from intersex activists is to dismiss those of us who are intergender as insignificant because we are a minority. First of all, how do they know this to be so? Simply looking at one’s small circle of intersex friends and extrapolating generalizations from that close-knit community is very misleading. There are many intersex people all over the world who do identify as intergender. I don’t accept the premise that those of us with intergender identities are a minority.
4 Toban // Apr 4, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Evidently that text is spam lifted from here -
http://intersexpride.blogspot.com/2006/03/why-intergender-community-is-so.html
I’ve removed the web link that was posted with the spam text.
5 cool // Mar 24, 2010 at 1:17 am
Wonderful Article…..
Thanks
Women’s Day
6 L.G. // Mar 28, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Rape is the pathogenic sequelae of our society. Spread by means of ‘popular opinion’, even if only in darkened fetid bars, where groups of men gather, and, with a few under their belt, begin to rant about women and their percieved inadequacies and injustices, while heads nod in agreement. These men take this to and from their workplaces -spreading it like a plague. Women rarely speak out against it; preferring instead to humbly accept what stings their ears and scorches their hearts.
In places where sexism and racism is rampant, such as Alberta, it is commonplace to verbally douse a woman in derogatory remarks, or, if she is ‘found to be worthy’, to persistently catcall. Either way, they wait for a reaction and grow louder till they obtain one.
That is, till someone like myself decides to take things into their own hands. I stood in front of twelve men who had just loudly put down three women as they entered the room. I pointed out numerous ‘flaws’ in each one of the men (including two foremen) - saying you have quite a beer gut, you look like you need a shave. They were actually awestruck, having just experienced the table being turned on them. There was a long pause, then one of the foremen said “Shit - I guess we’ve just been told”. They laughed and, to my surprise: never heckled anyone after that.
Management wasn’t pleased, however, because they felt these “paying customers” could easily go to the bar down the street. They didn’t.
Other groups of ‘regulars’ carried out similar vile treatments of women. Unaware of what would meet them. They got the same treatment, and management warned me again. Then, oddly, the men seemed to accept me, in spite of the wake up calls, and my tips skyrocketed. Management promoted me to assistant manager.
My point is that sexism among other societal ills, will need to be hard-fought in real time and at ground zero.
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