three rivers fog » Open letter to Feministing

Open letter to Feministing

Oct 28, 2009 NOTE FOR NEW VISITORS: Please visit this post first (it’s short). Thanks.

***

[The amazing abbyjean sent me annotations. Annotations! So now: Open Letter To Feministing With Links. We proceed.]

This includes the contributors and the commentariat.

We have a problem. We have had a problem for a long, long time.

You traffick in ableism. Your entire site reeks of it. I have spoken with many disabled feminists who find it impossible to read and participate in your community. They feel excluded. The culture is thick with unexamined ableism. We encounter common slurs and problematic cultural concepts at every turn, and are met with hostility when we bring it up. Some people have wasted energy on emailing you, requesting that you address it, so that they might safely participate in the community. You never bothered to respond. To any of them.

You’ve lost a lot of readers this way. But I’m sure, because that’s the way it usually goes, you lose less readers due to ableism than you gain due to same — because you never challenge their privilege, in fact defend it, passively and actively.

That’s nice for you and all, but the rest of us would, at best, like to play too. As for the worst — we would deeply appreciate it if you would stop deliberately (and don’t you dare say otherwise, you have heard our complaints and ignored them, making your actions deliberate) reinforcing a culture which marginalizes us, leaves us vulnerable to violence (including sexual violence), ostracization, institutionalization and death.¹

I viewed enough of this happening at your site — (years ago, when I was just getting into the feminist blogosphere; disappointingly, you haven’t changed a single bit in the intervening years) — that I never even bothered trying with your site. I’d love to have been able to. But your site has never felt like a safe space for me. Ever. Exactly the opposite. Your site has felt like a hostile and scary place to myself and other women.

W-O-M-E-N.

You can read, right? Spell it with me.

You cannot claim to care about my condition as a woman if you refuse to address the discrimination I face as a disabled woman.

As far as “what issues affect women”: I am a woman. Presumably, feminists care about the oppression women face.

But you cannot address the oppression I, a woman, face, without addressing the oppression so graciously given me on the basis of my disability.

For example, I face discrimination in the workplace. But if we are only to address the male-female pay gap, and ignore the obstacles I face because I am disabled, then you are not helping me as a woman. I am still left behind, still oppressed, as a woman. All you have done is alleviated the issues which affect you. Which means you aren’t helping women; you are helping healthy, abled women exclusively.

This is the basic framework I work from in my feminism. I am not helping women if I am not also out there addressing classism, transphobia, racism, homophobia, and all of the other oppressions that women face.

The reason “Sean Bell is a feminist issue” is because you must address the oppression which killed him to be able to address the oppression of women. If you cannot address that oppression — even though it affected a man this time — you cannot help the women who are also facing that oppression.

And if feminists are ok with not helping women on that level, then feminism isn’t about helping women, it is about helping white women. (me@tumblr)

And I am sick and fucking tired of having to explain this to the likes of all of you. If you are not there to help me in the problems I face because of my disability, you are not helping me as a woman. I am a whole person, not fragmented little bits. You have to help all of me to help any of me.

And if you aren’t all-in, for helping ALL of me, you are therefore declaring that you are only interested in helping ABLED WOMEN. You can cut out this bullshit about being “feminist,” as though you are working on behalf of “women.” Because you aren’t, at that point, working on the basis of gender: you are working on the basis of women with a certain ability status. Period.

A few days ago, meloukhia at this ain’t livin’ heard us complaining, and got sick of it herself. So she posted her Open Letter to Feministing and began promoting it. And it got some attention.

Apparently, Courtney has emailed her back, as of this writing. They are “in the generalities stage.”

I have absolutely zero interest in personally emailing with any of you, but I want to make sure people know that we — disabled feminists — aren’t stupid enough to be placated with a generic private apology. And I want you to know this. What it is that I, one particular disabled feminist, want from you.

1. Just posting about ableism-in-general, while a huge step for you (considering you never engage with disability in even a token capacity), IS NOT ENOUGH.²

2. Feminists have a long history of only ever speaking the dreaded d-word when it comes to reproductive rights, particularly (almost exclusively) the right to an abortion. Yeah, I know, you thought this would be easy. THAT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH.

3. As far as I’m concerned, you are dead to the cause if you never put up a post addressing your own ableism. Not ableism-in-general. THOSE POSTS ARE STILL NECESSARY. BUT THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH TO ANSWER OUR CRIES. You must put up a post examining your own personal ableism, and particularly the ableism you deliberately condone in your comments section.

In your comments section, a few disgusting, prejudiced, DANGEROUS memes are repeated with not an ounce of pushback:

* that health can be obtained by Doing The Right Things (eating right, exercising, being upper-class privileged enough to live the perfect little high-class life that is correlated with that definition of “health”) and that if you don’t Do The Right Things, any conditions that come up are Your Own Damn Fault, Don’t Come Crying To Us For Help

* attitudes expressed that fat people, smokers, and sick people should be paying more for healthcare because their illness is dragging the abled world down

* that disability is an awful tragedy and disabled people deserve only your pity, never your respect, and who knows why disabled people are segregated away in decrepit institutions, it couldn’t be connected to the way we regard disability as the end of meaningful life as we know it, nuh uh

* that having a disabled child would be such an abomination they must be screened out at all costs, and there is nothing at all problematic with this oh no oh no (DISCLAIMER, FOR GOD’S SAKE, I DO NOT PROPOSE LIMITING WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, BUT I DO THINK YOUR PRIVILEGED ASSES NEED TO CONSIDER YOUR COMPLICITY IN OTHER PEOPLE’S SUFFERING) ³

* that Disability Is Objectively Bad, everyone knows that, duh, who would ever want a disability, of course life is going to be worse with one, and that is just because disability is (of course) inherently awful, and could never (of course) be because we make it worse by the way we treat disability[4.
* Even more frightening, the number of women who are on antidepressants ... why the hell are they having children anyway ... fuck if you can't cope with life, how the hell does one expect to raise a child! http://www.feministing.com/archives/005359.html#comment-47387

* I do think that for the sake of society, people who's severe disability roots from their genes should be prevented from reproduction. I'm not sure what that means, and I know the slippery slope that kind of thought can lead to, but I think somehow it's the most utilitarian thing to do. Not to put a blow against the I Am Sam or anything, but I think some people really don't have the capacity to raise their kids (certainly there are plenty of non-disabled parents who fit this description), but my main concern is that the children are more likely to have those same disabilities. I think society's attitude should be to respect and accept the disabled but not to encourage its increase. Certainly we don't want to always be making decisions for people who can't make them for themselves, right? http://www.feministing.com/archives/007889.html#comment-107733]

* words like “lame” and “retard” and “cripple” and “crazy” are totally ok to use — and their conceptual meanings as well — because disability is objectively bad so it makes sense to use something objectively bad to say that something else is bad, or because no one ever uses that word that way anymore (that I hear, because I as an abled person am the ultimate arbiter of how often certain things are said to certain people, the vast majority of whom I never encounter because they are segregated away from me) and it has lost its derogatory connotation, or that I have a cousin who’s retarded and I love him to death so that means I’m allowed to use the word because that totally eliminates my abled privilege, or it’s just too much of an imposition to change my language and have to lose that one concept to express that is based on harmful prejudice, or or…[5.
LAME

* God. Jennifer's body looks soooo lame. The stupidity dripping from the trailers is so overwhelming, I can't even imagine too many dumb and sexist stereotypical males going to see it. http://www.feministing.com/archives/017815.html#comment-298306

* lame. So fucking lame. http://www.feministing.com/archives/011318.html#comment-182734

* Samhita, 11/07: “Forget immigration, reproductive rights, health care or any other issue we feminists are reading up on for the upcoming election. It is all about getting a hot chick in the white house as first lady. Does that not count potential first dude, Bill? Forget you men.style.com, you are totally lame.

In that thread, someone raises the problem, and another commenter dismisses: “It's been so long since "lame" was used for people with disabilties that I really don't think it's an issue anymore. Besids, it's used as a synonym for "loser", not "defective" (which also isn't a synonym for people with disabilities anymore).” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008086.html#comment-114144

* 1/07, Courtney headlines an article “Can I Get a L-A-M-E”. again, someone calls it out in comments but no response from mods, although mods respond to other posts. http://www.feministing.com/archives/006368.html

* “LAME. Excuse me while I barf in the corner.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html

someone calls it out in comments and response: “Please don't spread prescriptivist poppycock on any site.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html#comment-257102

* “Lame-ass beer ads are a dime a dozen.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017741.html

RETARDED

* Victoria Beckham is so retarded, I think she almost belongs in that shopping bag. http://www.feministing.com/archives/008985.html#comment-144542

* Commenter asks “Am I retarded, or can't you reverse a tubal ligation?”http://www.feministing.com/archives/007454.html#comment-93573

response is “No, you're not retarded. There are two types of ligations…” later in thread, commenter raises, no mod response though mods active in thread.

* One commenter uses the term: “It's like when you try to control a teenager and shelter them from reality - when they go into the real world, they often rebel and make a lot of retarded decisions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239116,
only response is another commenter pre-ridiculing any response: “Uh-oh, you said "retarded!" Get ready to duck the flying tomatoes! :P” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239125

* “Lindsay Lohan doesn't have curves like Marilyn Monroe did so to even do this shoot was a retarded idea in the first place.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008637.html

* “So still being able to marry but being offended by something has the same impact as two gay people not being able to marry? What are they, retarded?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/011095.html#comment-179668

CRIPPLE

* “but the idea of marriage cripples my aspirations in life.” http://community.feministing.com/2009/07/what-to-do-when-you-want-to-ma.html#comment-282211

* “When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006861.html#comment-73327

* Canadian reactions are a little different from American ones, very negative or hostile actions can really ruin you (Do not make fun of a cripple, or call someone a Kitten Eater, for instance). http://community.feministing.com/2009/04/women-prefer-polite-politician.html#comment-244108

* “I'm not sure this guy built a robot just to sexually abuse. I think he's an emotionally crippled individual who can't relate to the opposite sex.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/012670.html

CRAZY

* Jessica titles post “Fun with feminist flickr (crazy billboard edition)” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006229.html

* Vanessa titles post “Randall Terry’s Crazy Road Show” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017413.html

* Vanessa titles post “Sen. Tom Coburn's chief of staff reaches new level of crazy” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017876.html

* Jessica titles post “What Double Standards Drive you Crazy?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/007551.html

* “I would be all for the feminists for life if they weren't so schizophrenic about their positions. They won't take a position on birth control but they don't want women to have abortions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/002804.html#comment-13883

(amandaw's note: good Lord, I can only imagine what you'd find if you searched for "insane" "loony/loonytunes/etc." "unhinged" "psycho" and so forth - again, it's not just the word that's the problem)]

* that if one person, especially a person who has a disability, says something isn’t hurtful or problematic, you can call the whole thing off, because all those other people who DO have a problem with it and have suffered the consequences of it just cease to exist, poof!

* the sense of supremacy over others because you are (choose any or none, thin, abled, upper class, pretty, educated) and fully abled, which makes you totes better than everyone else, but you never CONSCIOUSLY think that so it’s totally ok that you still avoid Those People whenever possible because they scare you or squick you out, almost like they make you uncomfortable realizing your position in life is never as certain as you like to pretend it is? — nah, couldn’t be, just because they’re weird and gross and like, different and stuff

That’s just to start.

This is all shit that goes down in your comments regularly. And it makes women (spell it with me, W-O-M-E-N) feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, especially when they speak up and have other people jump back defending the exclusionary language and concepts, stating that they don’t have a problem with it and therefore there is no problem with it, saying or implying that the challenger must be oversensitive, have an agenda, looking for things to get angry about, or just doesn’t understand that the person committing the exclusionary behavior is a Good Person and that should be good enough.

Well. It’s not good enough. You are not good enough. Your whole site is not good enough. It is going to take some major changes. You are going to have to put yourself on the line, do some serious reading, reflecting, digesting, and actually change how you think and act (and not just by saying “I believe it now!” — we aren’t stupid, we can tell when there has been a true change). You are going to have to criticize yourself and your fellow writers. And – this is the fun part –

4. you are going to have to change your comment section. You will moderate and fight back against ableism (which you will recognize, because you have actually been making an effort to learn more than you do now, right?) from your own commenters. You will delete offensive comments and tell commenters to stay the fuck in line. And not just once. Every time. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

And don’t you dare cry that it takes up so much time. Because you’re already spending that time watching your space to protect the abled women in it.

We would love it if you would give us the same fucking courtesy.

All annotations abbyjean’s except where noted in parenthesis.

Women with physical disabilities also were more likely to be abused by their attendants and by health care providers. Thirteen percent of women with physical disabilities described experiencing physical or sexual abuse in the past year. Women with physical disabilities appear to be at risk for emotional, physical, and sexual abuse to the same extent as women without physical disabilities.

Prevalence of abuse by husbands or live-in partners in this study is similar to estimates of lifetime occurrence of domestic violence for women living in the United States. They are also more likely to experience a longer duration of abuse than women without physical disabilities. (Prevalence of Abuse of Women with Physical Disabilities Young ME, Nosek MA, Howland CA , Chanpong G, Rintala, DH. Prevalence of abuse of women with physical disabilities. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 1997; 78 (Suppl):S34-S38. , http://www.bcm.edu/crowd/abuse_women/1PREVLNC.htm)

* The disability type most likely to receive services from an abuse program was mental illness, whereas programs were the least likely to serve those with visual or hearing impairments. On average, 10% of the women served by each program had physical impairments, 7% had mental retardation or developmental disabilities, 21% had mental illness, 2% had visual impairment, and 3% had hearing impairment. For nearly half of the programs, less than 1% of their clients served within the past year had physical impairments.

* Abuse programs on average provided two services targeted to women with disabilities; 89% of abuse programs provided less than five special services for women with disabilities.

* The most commonly provided service available to women with disabilities was accessible shelter or referral to accessible safe house or hotel room (83%). A majority of abuse programs provided individual counseling (80%), and group counseling (73%). Nearly half (47%) provided an interpreter for hearing impaired women. Less than half (40%) presented workshops or other training on recognizing potentially violent situations. Approximately one-third offered safety plan information modified for use by women with disabilities (36%), and disability awareness training for program staff (35%).

* The service least likely to be offered was personal care attendant services, available in only 6% of abuse programs.

* Sixteen percent of programs have a program staff member who is specifically assigned to provide services to women with disabilities.

(Stats from Center for Research on Women with Disabilities, from comprehensive survey of national shelters for domestic violence victims. http://www.bcm.edu/crowd/abuse_women/progfact1.htm)

Women with disabilities are significantly more likely to experience abuse than non-disabled women. It is estimated that women with disabilities are 1.5 to 10 times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled women, depending on whether they are living in the community or an institution (Public Health Agency of Canada, online).

(From: We Are Visible: Ten Years Later WARNING: PDF)

People with disabilities are one-and-a-half times more likely to be the victims of violent crime than are people without disabilities, says the first national study to compare crime rates.

(NPR health blog)

(amandaw: and see Cara’s post at Feministe for a demonstration about how you can actually try to engage with disability issues! and lightning doesn’t strike you dead on the spot!) ↩

From a 2005 post by Jessica: “The United Nations is in the process of drafting a treaty on the rights of the disabled, and subsequently debating whether or not to include a ban on the abortion of fetuses with disabilities.Is this a disability rights issue or a women’s rights issue?” (no overlap possible!!) http://www.feministing.com/archives/002663.html ↩

* “Genetically speaking, no woman over the age of 35 should be having children. Birth defects increase as the age of the woman increases. This is not discrimination, it is reality. The idea that this is a “choice” and therefore a good one is ridiculous. Just because it is “medically possible” does not mean it’s a good idea.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015536.html#comment-258385

* No birth defects are awesome, best thing ever. That’s why they’re called “birth defects” to trick suckers in to not trying to make sure they have them; sort of like the “Greenland/Iceland” naming fable. I’m spearheading an effort to re-allow the use of thalidomide and also opening an exclusive cat-feces handling clinic for expectant mothers who know better than to think there is anything wrong with birth defects. http://www.feministing.com/archives/015536.html#comment-258896

* What would would worry me is having a child whose developmental age never progresses beyond a baby or a toddler. I have seen parents struggling to cope as their tall 20 year old son has a toddlers temper tantrum, or struggling to physically care for an adult who still needs the physical and emotional care given to a baby. The strain on the whole family of coping with adults with these types of disabilities is enormous. http://www.feministing.com/archives/015536.html#comment-259084 ↩

40 responses

meloukhia

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 4:29 pm

I’m cosigning this.

It’s a list of clear, concrete directions for how Feministing can work to improve itself, from a person who has been bringing up the issue of ableism in feminist discourse for a very long time.

I would like to add a fifth request, though: Feministing, please answer your email/reports of comment abuse. Yes, Courtney responded to *me* and hopefully that is the start of a larger dialogue which will include others, but several other disabled feminists have been waiting a very long time to hear Word One from Feministing, and numerous others have reported comment abuse on ableist comments and gotten no response. This is not acceptable.

I may be running a much smaller site than Feministing, but I take the time to answer each and every commenter request/complaint personally, because I think it’s important. It’s doubly important when someone is reporting abuse, questioning your privilege, or asking that a space be made more inclusive.

Don’t have contact forms and “report abuse” buttons if they go nowhere.

kaninchenzero

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 4:32 pm

Thank you. Rantiness is justified. It sucks that with so little energy available that the same things keep having to be said to the same people.

Aoife

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 7:15 pm

Thanks for taking the time to articulate this shit so clearly… that this goes on, and that you’ve had to put up with it is shameful. I know it’s of no consequence to you and I feel weird pointing out how I’ve benefited from your hurt and anger, but I just wanted to thank you because I’ve learned more about feminism and privilege from this blog than anywhere else because of posts like this.

Anna

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 8:49 pm

I’m shaking and crying too much to read this.

How do we even find the energy to still get angry?

*hug* *hug* *hug*

thetroubleis

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 10:26 pm

Thank you for writing this. I often have to take breaks from there because I just can’t deal with the bullshit.

Feminism that doesn’t advance women is no feminism at all. « Zero at the Bone

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 10:38 pm

[...] should check out meloukhia’s Open Letter to Feministing, (join the co-signing) amandaw’s own Open Letter to Feministing (now with annotations by abbyjean) and Annaham’s Confessions of a Reluctant Young White Feminist, for a start. Consider [...]

Chally

| Monday, October 5, 2009 | 10:45 pm

That is some good work there, amandaw and abbyjean.

maevele

| Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | 12:08 am

cosigning this

softestbullet

| Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | 5:12 am

Damn, this is awesome. Thank you for writing this. (Those quotes are horrifying. I’m glad I don’t bother with Feministing anymore…)

Also, are we co-signing this? Co-signed!

OuyangDan

| Tuesday, October 6, 2009 | 8:24 am

Excellent.

Consider this cosigned.

Well, I guess the gloves are off… « random babble…

| Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | 4:37 am

[...] for the rest of us so be it, because, ya know, you either have room for all of us or none of us. We are not pieces who can co-opted for page hits, we are whole women and people, and we can not be appeased in back [...]

codeman38

| Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | 2:10 pm

Just for the record, something seems horribly screwed up with the HTML of this post– like an extra </div> tag that shouldn’t be there or something. It’s completely breaking the page layout not just for this post, but for all the following posts on the index page.

Edited to add: Aha, that’s what it is: each annotation ends with two </div>s, when they should end with one </div> each.

amandaw

| Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | 5:38 pm

Would this happen to be a codeman38 I know from somewhere else, by the way? :)

I’ve been at work, so I apologize for the HTML screwup. I just switched my computer to Linux and it’s been difficult getting formatting to work correctly. Just a few bumps to smooth out.

were_duck

| Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | 5:45 pm

Thank you for this exhaustive post, and wow. It really drives home why I’m not a fan of that site.

Just so you know, I’ve added this post to a link roundup.

codeman38

| Wednesday, October 7, 2009 | 11:31 pm

I am indeed most likely the codeman38 you know from elsewhere. :-)

And yay switching to Linux.

MK

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 6:17 am

Good on you for calling people out on this stuff. I do take issue with one or two of the individual instances you call out – things like “to cripple” and “to retard” have actual meanings aside from the derogatory sense they are sadly often used in (mostly as nouns and adjectives referring to people) and I think most e.g. physically disabled people would in fact make a distinction between “it’s like kicking a cripple” and “trend x cripples the movement in area y” just like I as a mentally ill person make a distinction between “don’t listen to him, he is clearly a crazy person” and “I’m just crazy about you”.

Please don’t take that the wrong way, I definitely think the phenomenon as a whole is more harmful to people with disabilities than overzealousness in fighting it is to the English language. I just think that if we cannot speak metaphorically simply because of the very multiplicity in meaning that makes metaphor effective, then we need to come up with new words that carry the useful meaning without the trappings of the derogatory connotations. On the other hand it might be more effective to call out the more egregious examples without diluting them in ambiguous cases, I don’t know. Regardless, it’s a minor issue – I’d just hope we’re capable of simultaneously questioning our own methods along with the actions of those we employ them against.

attack_laurel

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 8:47 am

awesome, awesome, awesome. I had subconsciously avoided Feministing for a while now, but this really crystalizes the issues I was having (uh, and reading the open letter comment thread of terrible fail). They’re off my blogroll for the time being, and I’m sticking with Shakesville and Hoyden.

Shaun

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 1:00 pm

[edited according to my comment policy, see my comment below ~ amandaw]

Wht bnch f BS. Thr s nthng wrng wth sng th wrd crz. n fct ths ntr thrd s crz. ts nt tht ppl r nsnstv t dsblt sss; ts tht th dnt hv tm t ngg n ths knd f nnsns. Th fct tht y mngd t bll fmnstng nt grng t hv cht wth n f y s bynd dsppntng.

getoutofmyparadigm

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 1:34 pm

Shaun, if you mean by crazy “profoundly informed by people’s experiences as people with mental illnesses and their political and personal needs”, then no shit it’s crazy.

If however, as I suspect, you mean “completely illegitimate”, then I’d have to disagree.

It’s not that people are insensitive to disability issues, it’s that they’re insensitive to disability issues and also unable to identify irony.

Shaun

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 1:47 pm

[edited according to my comment policy, see my comment below ~ amandaw]

N ctll, mn flsh, mprctcl nd snslss. Hr, lt m pst t fr y: . ffctd wth mdnss; nsn. . nfrml. Dprtng frm prprtn r mdrtn, spcll: . Pssssd b nthssm r xctmnt: Th crwd t th gm wnt crz. . mmdrtl fnd; nfttd: ws crz bt bys. . ntnsl nvlvd r prccpd: s crz bt crs nd rcng. . Flsh r mprctcl; snslss: crz schm fr mkng qck mn.

getoutofmyparadigm

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 2:08 pm

I think you just lost the self-reflection game. Thanks for playing.

Shaun

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 2:45 pm

[edited according to my comment policy, see my comment below ~ amandaw]

Wsn’t wr ths s gm, bt tht fgrs, cnsdrng hw jvnl ths whl thrd s.

Anna

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 3:11 pm

Shaun, if you’re disappointed in the decisions that the Feministing Staff have made, may I suggest you take it up with them? I’m told they respond best to emails to their main Feministing email address.

meloukhia

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 3:17 pm

Uhm, actually, Feministing asked us to chat with them.

Repeat: FEMINSTING ASKED US.

There was no bullying involved.

Tera

| Thursday, October 8, 2009 | 3:44 pm

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Co-signed.

Shaun

| Friday, October 9, 2009 | 2:17 am

[edited according to my comment policy, see my comment below ~ amandaw]

Nc t s tht y r nw cnsrng ppl wh dsgr wth yr tctcs. xpctd ths. Gd lck wnnng vr n “lls” whn y cn nly s blck nd wht.

Shm n y.

Rosa

| Friday, October 9, 2009 | 3:15 am

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I gave up on Feministing YEARS AGO because of this. I don’t have the energy to put into supposedly feminist sites that refuse to acknowledge all women, of all ages, races, and abilities. Those people are just playing at feminism as far as the majority of women in this world are concerned.

Thank you, thank you! Thank you!

amandaw

| Friday, October 9, 2009 | 7:05 am

Oh, this is rich.

For the record, I began my full time job on Wednesday and have been in a lot of pain.

I got home yesterday to a whole bunch of comments from “Shaun” (who was Sean/Shawn at other disabled feminist blogs, pasting the same initial comments?). Too exhausted to do anything about them.

I wake up this morning to a whole bunch MORE, including the above accusing me of censoring people. I, um, wasn’t around to censor anybody, for the record. Wordpress took ONE of his comments to mod because it included more than three links.

Sorry dude.

When I have the time and energy, Shaun is being disemvoweled. I wish I had been around to simply moderate his first comment before people got to it, but I wasn’t. And the reason is that 1) it is my blog, and I don’t have the energy to deal with this guy, and 2) his comments are completely ridiculous and I have made it clear that I do not accept comments that I see to be violating the sense of safe space for PWD here at my blog.

Shaun, please stop commenting here. Anybody else who decides that they are going to behave the same way as Shaun, please do not bother.

I am now moderating all comments so that I can control what gets through when I am absent for a while. Your comment should be approved by me when I am available. Nobody is being singled out. Thanks.

Kasie "mamatat" Ray

| Friday, October 9, 2009 | 9:08 am

I can’t tell you how excited I am to see ableism and classism addressed so fully. This push has been needed for far too long, and Feministing’s holier-than-thou-we’re-the-real-feminists general attitude needs to go.

I’ve lurked there for a long time, never feeling comfortable because it reminds me of a clique-y high school, where the pretty skinny women who have money, full bodily ability, no chronically ill relatives for whom to care, bills that are paid and a hunky dory life, “get” to tell the rest of us poor souls how it really can be for us, if only we tried harder, worked harder, were better educated….like them.

Thank you for calling bullshit so that all of us who are disabled, are caretakers for the disabled and who are full-on feminists might possibly feel comfortable and feel that we’re not just included, but truly accepted.

Bene

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 10:55 am

Kasie, your second paragraph entirely sums up my ongoing problems with Feministing, so I had to delurk to say so. (Though I would say ‘pretty skinny white women’, personally, I really don’t feel they do much for the issues of WOC.)

DaisyDeadhead

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 3:08 pm

Co-signing, but as I have said before, Amanda (and also emailed you months ago, no reply), I have issues with the way YOU omit ageism from everything. For instance, ageism was not mentioned in your above post a single time, not even in passing… and the oldest person on your blogroll is, I am pretty sure, about 40. (After I mentioned this to you before–several times–I expected some changes. Don’t see any.) There ARE feminist bloggers over 40, really there are. And you might apply the same standards to ageism that you do to ableism; they are intricately connected.

I do not expect you to care about this any more than the other young bloggers do, but thought I would, once again, mention it. Maybe in a “popular” thread, it will at least be noticed.

amandaw

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 3:14 pm

Daisy, that is a totally fair criticism. I have been trying to make sure I bring it up but often my brain just trails off when I am trying to think of additional lines of privilege/oppression. I hate laundry lists and am still struggling with how to address the long list of *isms without leaving anyone out, because any list DOES invariably leave *someone* out, there are so many axes of oppression.

I apologize, sincerely. Cus I haven’t been good enough on that. There’s no excuse for it.

I do think about it, and especially notice the way ageism and ableism join paths for quite a distance. But I haven’t been good about really reflecting deeply on it and making sure to address it in my writing. I’m sorry.

(my blogroll is WAY out of date, fwiw, but I doubt it would really be well representative even if I tried to add everyone now. my blogroll is limited by the fact that I want to *know* the person/group before I link to them, I want that link to mean something, but I don’t even have energy to keep up with my current reading :-\ I am sorry.)

amandaw

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 3:19 pm

& Daisy… where need be, keep kicking me for it. It’s not your responsibility, but I readily accept it when and where you feel it’s appropriate. I need to improve.

amandaw

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 3:33 pm

and… this was a rant. It poured out of my brain unedited. It wasn’t long and considered; I didn’t go back and read through it or think through it…

What that indicates is what it is that comes out of that very raw state of mind.

Which means I have a lot of work to do, because these things should BE part of that core rawness.

lots of thinking to do. Daisy, I’m sorry, and thank you for taking the time to comment on it.

krismcn

| Saturday, October 10, 2009 | 11:38 pm

Thank you for taking the time and energy to lay all this out. I’ll glance over front page posts over there, mostly keeping an eye out for interesting links, but I almost never read the comments, for reasons made clear by the horrible thread fail (it’s like the commentors read a post about how NOT to derail, dismiss, or silence marginalized groups on social justice blogs and decided to try out all the techniques for themselves).

lauredhel

| Sunday, October 11, 2009 | 7:24 am

Does anyone have (or can anyone wave in the direction of) a list or blogroll or way of finding less-young feminists, disability bloggers, etc? I have two or three on my regular reading list that I know of, but I’ve no idea who else is. I’ve found that trying to google this yields poor results indeed, and it seems to me that the vast majority of bloggers don’t talk about their age in their About pages. It’s impressive how invisible people over forty are in people’s minds – I’ve added my approximate age to my bio because I found people were assuming I was in my late twenties or thirties, just by default.

this ain’t livin’ » an open letter to Feministing « Fangirl Saves the World

| Sunday, October 11, 2009 | 8:15 am

[...] and others have said. I’ve heard complaints about Feministing being classist, transphobic, ableist … all of these are feminist issues. Nobody is perfect, but when any of us are called out on [...]

QLH

| Sunday, November 1, 2009 | 5:41 pm

Thank you for posting this. I’ve had a real problem with that blog for a long time, and I’m really glad to hear such strong voices speaking up. This is greatly appreciated.