Friday, February 07, 2014

the faux coalitions and artificial negativity of the cathedral are fragile as hell...,


thenation | 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 isn’t 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 weren’t prepared, though, for the wave of coruscating anger and contempt that greeted their work. Online, the Barnard group—nine of whom were women of color—was savaged as a cabal of white opportunists. People were upset that the meeting had excluded those who don’t live in New York (Martin and Valenti had no travel budget). There was fury expressed on behalf of everyone—indigenous women, feminist mothers, veterans—whose 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 aren’t online. “Where is the space in all of these #femfuture movements for people who don’t have internet access?” tweeted Mikki Kendall, a feminist writer who, months later, would come up with the influential hashtag #solidarityisforwhitewomen.

Martin was floored. She’s long believed that it’s incumbent on feminists to be open to critique—but 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.

Beyond bruised feelings, the reaction made it harder to use the paper to garner support for online feminist efforts. The controversy was all most people knew of the project, and it left a lasting taint. “Almost anyone who asks us about it wants to know what happened, including editors that I’ve worked with,” says Samhita Mukhopadhyay, an activist and freelance writer who was then the editor of Feministing.com. “It’s like you’ve been backed into a corner.”

11 comments:

Constructive_Feedback said...

Vic78:

YOU CLEARLY have not listened to Bill Nye / Richard Dawkins and the slight of hand that they practice when confronted with a SKILLED DEBATER and not a "Jesus Freak".

THEY LOSE.

Bill Nye - latches on to the mis-interpretation of some Christians who claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old by pointing out the HALF-LIFE of radioactive materials - thus proving the Earth is billions of years old. His inference - since FISSION can transform one element into another - we should accept that these elements can synergize into LIFE - in due time.

Let us stop right there for a minute Vic78. How is it that a SCIENTIST could bring up an argument that establishes the fact about transformation among ELEMENTS - yet extend it into EVOLUTION?

When Richard Dawkins was pitted against Ben Stein - Dawkins faced something that he had clearly never faced before _ A STRONG DEBATER.

Stein - who believes in "Intelligent Design" rather than "Biblical Creation" - KEPT DAWKINS ON TRIAL.
Dawkins first dismissed "RELIGIOUS MAGIC' as having no place in science.

Dawkins affirmed "The Big Bang" as the source of all matter in the universe and our interplanetary alignment.

As Stein kept drilling down upon him - it was DAWKINS who eventually had to rely on "Elfin Magic".

After stating that the EARTH was formed in "the Big Bang" and subsequent volatility - when Stein asked him "SO WHERE DID LIFE ON EARTH COME FROM?" - Dawkins said "FROM ORGANISMS DELIVERED TO THE EARTH IN THE 'SLUSHY CENTER' OF A COMET.

So get this.
The EARTH was a lifeless mass.
But LIFE - which must have passed through THE BIG BANG AS WELL - remained as MAGIC - since Dawkins was never taken to the point in a debate where HE had to answer.

Vic78 said...

God's existence is an unfalsifiable proposition. So one really can't have a reasonable debate on something that can't be proven.

CNu said...

You must never attempt to debate con-men/entertainers spouting nonsense. Instead, you simply beat them at their own game http://reason.com/blog/2014/02/05/how-really-to-debate-creationists-bill-n

Constructive_Feedback said...

Even in your attempted rebuttal you fail to see how much your theory echos that of Bill Nye and Dawkins.

The COMPUTER that I am typing on has EVOLVED from 1950 to 2014. This is an ESTABLISHED POINT OF FACT.

Likewise it would be patently IGNORANT for a 3rd party researcher to come along a few hundred years from now from another world and claim that the incumbent materials within the computer REFORMED THEMSELVES toward a more capable order - when the rule of the universe is entropy.

It is the evolutionary scientist that relies upon "Elfin Magic" called "The Magic Of Infinite Time" that allows them to insert the notion that elemental matter, GIVEN TIME, will transmutate into LIFE.

Vic78 said...

God is unfalsifiable. Accepting evolution and saying God did it would be moving the goalpost and make a debate fruitless. The debate goes from evolution being an established fact to God's existence. Moving the goalpost is a dishonest tactic.

CNu said...

a simple explanation...,

Tom said...

Yeah, unfalsifiable is the problem. When folks go ahead and pop magic into their understanding of physical phenomena (the sunset itself is the physical phenomenon), they shove a stick through teh spokes of science. And they do it happily, in part because "science people" keep claiming they have access to a supernatural revelation of the absense of God.

When folks pop an understanding of simple physical phenomena into their grasp of what it means to be human (what it means to see a sunset), that's a different error. Also a serious error, I believe. Constructive pointed that out the other day. But because C.F. speaks in tongues we all pretend we can get away with ignoring his points.

The debate shouldn't be called Creation vs Evolution it should be "Unfalsifiable Proposition vs Foolish Extrapolation." Then maybe more people would at least stay away.

Tom said...

Yeah, upvoted; true to xkcd and MIT. Still there's no person in the diagram. We could put cornea, lens, retina, but we can't put a person. Our ideas about ourselves are more grounded than our ideas about God ... but still full of lots of unfalsifiability.

ken said...

Hey, I don't want to get back into another debate, but back at that other discussion, when it was determined that mutation is out along with fossil evidence showing gradual changes and symbiogenesis and I would guess, although you didn't push the term, punctuated equilibrium, are in. The one little area of your theory I wanted to work back in was: when I was making the point about the very long odds of having opposite sex mates for the new species each time with the new species lifetime, you countered that at times A can mate with B and B with C but C cannot mate with A. That appears to be an argument for gradual change. Are you still arguing for a gradual change without the fossil evidence or is there an explanation in the theory how for each macro change there were opposite sexes available to reproduce the species?

CNu said...

Hey, I don't want to get back into another debate, butpriceless.comedy.gold....,

CNu said...

You haven't placed a hold on any of Margulis bibliography there with the Minneapolis public library consortium as you were previously counseled to do, correct?

But pretending for a moment that you're sincerely disinterested in further debate - if you had only even casually considered the primary alternative to mutation I proffered, http://subrealism.blogspot.com/search?q=nutrient+seeking there should be no question in your mind how opposite sexes would be subject to the metamorphic effects of coming into contact with new nutrient supplies, as well as, any parasites and symbionts that those new supplies entailed, correct?

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