Blamers may have noticed my awkward silence on the topic of Amandagate. Not that the entire bloggofemispheriat has been chewing its nails down to unsightly nubs awaiting my pronouncements on the subject, but I hope it’s not too fanciful to surmise that some of you may have wondered if and when I was gonna step up.
That day is today.
It turns out I am not an advanced patriarchy blamer. I may have to stop commenting on this blog.
If I am to be taken seriously as a spinster aunt — which may or may not be possible or even desirable, as I am a person who has taken to eating Funyuns for lunch — it is incumbent on me to stay informed on various current bloggofeminist ideologies. Which I ain’t sufficiently done.
I grasp the necessity of doing so, however, and not just in view of recent events; fluency in feminist ideology is precisely what I require of progressive dude bloggers who flit around the World Wide Web claiming to be down with women’s issues. Invariably, with these guys, a pie fight ad shows up in their sidebar, some feminist readers raise a stink, and the white dudes summarily shout’em down. Then one of their progressive buds writes a “Where are all the women bloggers?” post, and someone says, “Dude! Ana Marie Cox!” and they all go back to Hillary-bashing. If I’ve seen it once I’ve seen it eight times.
It’s the same thing with the women of color feminist bloggers and the white feminist bloggers. A white feminist blogger, for example, cannot plug a book written by another white feminist blogger (who is currently under the gun for failing to cite precedent work by women of color), and simultaneously ignore the implications this has for women of color, without it appearing as an act of open hostility. Doing this more or less says, “This author has no fluency. You might as well be reading Perez Hilton.”
It seems so obvious now, so why didn’t I see it before?
That’s right! White privilege! It’s just like male privilege, except in this context it’s just for white chicks. Where dude bloggers may exercise control over women according to their status, white feminist bloggers may exercise control over women of color according to their status.
[Although if I may, in an aside, remark on how absurd it feels to claim “status” of any kind in the feminist blogosphere, which is a community in which I am generally reviled as a sex-hating lesbo nutjob outcast. But I digress.]
In the example cited above, the one where I allude to having posted a pro-Marcotte book dealio, the “control” aspect was expressed in my failure to address the current controversy. In so failing, I effectively endorsed white privilege in feminist bloggery, and closed down a potential avenue of discussion. That this was unintentional is of no consequence; it was perceived by many, and rightly so, as an example of what has been popularly referred to as “circling the wagons.”
The sad irony is that I never cut dudes the tiniest bit of slack in the male privilege department. They write in and say, “But Twisty, I never rape my girlfriend, aren’t you being just a little shrill?”
And I always reply (well, I always used to reply; I just ignore’em now, they make me so tired, especially when they go into minute, graphic detail about their sex lives. Why do they all do that?), “You might,” I used to tell them, “be the nicest male dude on 9 planets, but the fact remains that you’re a dude, so you automatically benefit from male privilege whether you actively choose to or not, and unfortunately this privilege, though it may be invisible to you, is experienced by women as misogyny, again, whether you like it or not.”
It’s the same exact thing with white privilege. So, if you’re a white feminist blogger: you may not choose it, you may hate it, you may ignore it, or you may not even see it, but you do exercise your white privilege daily, and it is absurd to expect that this exercise would be perceived by women of color as anything but racism. Because it is racism, dum-dum.
I know, I know! We don’t mean it! We’ve blogged against racism a hundred times. It is our fondest wish to support women of color. Why are these WOC harping on that one little thing we said in our last post that, OK, in retrospect, might seem a bit patronizing? Why are they being so mean? Can’t they see we’re on their side, overall? And anyway, can we help it if we blog about white feminist things? After all, that’s what we are.
Well, if you’ll permit an analogy: there’ve been pro-abortion posts aplenty at DKos, but after that pie-fight shit I wouldn’t read that blog again with a 10-foot pole. As I wrote back then, a spinster aunt comes to expect from one’s supposedly progressive bloggers a certain level of fluency in rudimentary feminist thought, so when they come out all “Yay pornography! Screw you if you can’t take a joke, you shrill harpy cunt!” you tend to view them with a jaundiced eye. Obviously they’ll throw you to the wolves the minute you start telling’em shit they don’t want to hear.
You feel that, white feminists? That’s your obstreperal lobe telling you that feminism and good intentions do not a get-out-of-racism-free card make.
For the second half of this discussion I am indebted to PhysioProf, who, like 10 days ago, wrote an excellent (and strangely light-on-the-expletives) post “Intellectual Appropriation, Attribution of Credit, and Privilege.” In his essay PP outlines the basic cornerstones of fair play in scholarship, what he considers a “really important self-regulating feature of traditional intellectual discourse in academia that [he thinks] bloggers could stand to learn a few things from.”
In praxis I am loath to adopt anything labeled “traditional in academia,” since academic tradition is one of patriarchy’s most reliable methods of self-replication. However, short of revolution and a new world order wherein intellectual property is nothing but a quaint historical footnote, I’m gonna have give this one to PhysioProf.
The crux on the gist of his nub is this: “Ignorance is not an excuse.”
Now. Some bloggers say Amanda appropriated material from Brownfemipower for a piece on women ‘n immigration that appeared at RH Reality Check and AlterNet; Amanda says no, she came up with the analysis on her own after attending an ACLU conference.
But PhysioProf intimates, and I agree, that if A and B expound similarly, and A’s work pre-dates B’s, the onus is on B to sniff A out and give the props. This no-excuse thing extends from “accidental” ignorance of pre-existing work, such as might describe the Amanda/BFP situation, to “intentional” ignorance, such as purposely avoiding exposure to certain bloggofeminist oeuvres despite, or even because of, their relevance to one’s own work.
In other words, even if Amanda had never heard of Brownfemipower in all her life, and had arrived in an intellectual vacuum at the conclusions she published at RH Reality Check/AlterNet, hard upon her subsequent discovery of Brownfemipower’s pre-existing work — the existence of which appears to be a fact — good scholarship suggests that an acknowledgment of those prior efforts should have hove into view toot sweet. Yet — and please correct me if I’m wrong — so far as I know, no such acknowledgment appears.
So where does sloppy research intersect with white privilege? In this case, right in the old book tour. Amanda’s purported appropriation, whether accidental, intentional, real or imagined, of BFP’s analysis, combined with her book’s debut and an altercation involving some women of color and the book’s publisher, is a stunning example of the exercise of white privilege resonating as racism throughout the blogular RWOC community. Because of Amanda’s A-list status — which status magnifies both her privilege and her responsibility whether she likes it or not — the event has transcended the usual fucque-up du blogue. Her continued disavowals now join with the uncomfortable silence of certain spinster aunts to grandiloquently underscore a problem endemic to feminism since its inception: the invisibility of women of color.
So not only would the aforementioned acknowledgment of Brownfemipower’s work satisfy PhysioProf’s academic protocols, it would be a great opportunity to expose to a wide audience the hideous inclination of white privilege to sabotage, bias, and encrapulate the pitiful, ineffectual, condescending efforts of white feminists to “support” women of color. As Huck Finn says, “a little thing like that don’t cost nothing, and it’s just the little things that makes a feminist blogger to be looked up to and liked.”
That’s right. Nothing new here. Just getting stuff off my hairy boobless chest.
NOTE: No endemic problem is the fault of a single person. Only a chumpass would blame Amanda personally for engendering some monumental schism in the very fabric of feminism. Therefore, anyone who cares to comment on this post should be advised that any ad feminam attacks will be deleted.
ANOTHER NOTE: I trust it will withstand denuciations of wagon-circling if I wish a fellow blogger, whose talent I admire, continued success with her book, which, I hear, is already in its 2nd printing. “Woot!”, as it were.
*breaks into spontaneous applause*
Wait. I can hear it now. “But what if we use our white privilege to uplift the WOC? Because they need uplifting! So we shouldn’t give up our privileges because then we couldn’t uplift them!”
This is the first post on this whole mess that made absolute sense to me.
I just read BFP’s last post a few days ago regarding this whole mess, and I was so sad that she closed her blog and left the blogosphere. I hope that maybe she’ll come back. Because her blog was just amazing and she was one of the only people to blog and write about immigrant women’s rights (or lack thereof) in America. I am also sick and tired of white feminists denying their participation in racism and the exclusion of RWOC. And I hate when people imply that feminism is “originally” or “essentially” white, because if it wasn’t for women of color, specifically Black women, feminism would not have existed in the U.S.:
http://www.genderracepower.com/?p=158
I have just started a feminist group several months ago in the Virginia/DC area, one of the few of its kind. I am the main organizer, I am Egyptian-American. My two co-organizers are both women of color, one of who is a Radical Woman of Color. I am also a RWOC.
It’s refreshing to hear you, Twisty, calling out white feminists for their racism because they ignored the efforts and feminist work of women of color. White feminists will not “save” RWOC, RWOC were already activists and feminists from the beginning. White feminists should be giving credit to RWOC for initiating and reviving one of the most awesome movements in human herstory: the feminist movement(s).
Here’s another essay I found on the topic in Amy’s archives at feminist reprise. Y’all might find it interesting (I know I did):
http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/leeblacksep.htm
IBTP.
Thank you for the simple and powerful analogies between male privilege and white privilege. The inequalities between economic and ethnic classes in the US are symbiotic with gender inequality, and are almost as pervasive and invidious. You did quite the masterful expose on gender and economics in your post about the Pink Ribbons, Inc. book, and I am glad to see you return to the subject.
Thank you for writing this, Twisty. I’m relieved to see your laser-language blame turned on white privilege and appropriation.
But PhysioProf intimates, and I agree, that if A and B expound similarly, and A’s work pre-dates B’s, the onus is on B to sniff A out and give the props.
The problem is that BFP didn’t always do this either, at least with non-blog legal research. In most fields — law being the notable exception — once a concept has been cited 10,000 times, everyone knows it was initially articulated by Matsuda/Williams/Peller/whoever, and you stop formally footnoting it. (Despite PhysioProf’s claims, science and medicine function the same way.)
I’m actually not surprised that Amanda could come to the same conclusion from the ACLU conference. Immigration lawyers have been making the arguments in roughly the same form for over a decade — and I’m told that some very, very prominent immigration attorneys were at the ACLU conference.
Besides, people are more likely to really listen if you meet them in person than if you simply read their writings. It’s why attorneys go out of our way to conduct negotiations in person instead of via email or over the phone.
Twisty, not all women of color are feeling alienated from the supposedly white feminist movement/blogosphere. I actually feel much more alienated from the brown feminists who make the most noise in the blogosphere AND the white feminists who pander to them to the point of not forcefully criticizing deeply patriarchal brown cultures — because it might be perceived as “imperialist.”
PhysioProf’s post, though excellent in itself, displayed ignorance of the interpersonal history that ended up in the mess that this blogwar was. It would have been simple if all Amanda had to do was acknowledge a blogger’s work — but this blogger, as part of this community? There are other issues here that most people are not acknowledging.
Anyway, this brown woman — apparently disavowed by all feminists of any hue.
That said, I do agree with the bulk of your post. I just haven’t seen anyone explore the personal vs. online interaction angle. (Then again, I only read a handful of blogs, so I probably missed it.)
Good try. The only problem is that it doesn’t fit perfectly with bfp’s words. It fits with the myth about the dust-up, not the actual dust-up. You’re relying on someone’s else’s version of events and meaning, not the words of the people involved.
In bfp’s words:
from http://bfpfinal.wordpress.com/2008/04/16/3/
And she wrote:
from: http://ajkenn-rgclub.com/SDChronBlog2dot5/2008/04/09/brownfemipower-amanda-and-thieving-wocs-efforts-publicity-or-plagarism/
I can’t stress this enough: It’s really, really, really important to listen to the people you seek to protect and help. You cannot be an ally simply by making up your own version of events and applying your analysis. You cannot be an ally by speaking for women of color. You can only be an ally by listening to them and by providing them with space to be heard.
Why, when talking about bfp did you not quote her words?
(PS - This is the same criticism I make of your analysis of sex work and sex workers. I don’t feel like you actually listen to sex workers. Your ‘all porn is evil’ lens actually erases the voices of women in the porn industry who don’t see it that way.)
“Encrapulation” was my one significant word brainstrom of the last few years.* And now Twisty has come up with it on her own, and will be the one to push it into the discourse. How fitting that it came up in a post on ideas and where they come from.
If Twisty starts using my hyphenate adjective “thought-resistant”, I may quit.
* Nope, I have not checked that no one else thought of it first. I can at least meet the non-bar of having never heard it before I said it, though.
I’m not disavowing you, Apostate, for what it’s worth. I wish to pander to nobody. In giving what may have be an inaccurate synopsis of recent events, I merely wish to acknowledge that white privilege goes unexamined an awful lot, by women who ought to know better. No doubt there are faults on both sides. There usually are.
“I actually feel much more alienated from the brown feminists who make the most noise in the blogosphere AND the white feminists who pander to them to the point of not forcefully criticizing deeply patriarchal brown cultures — because it might be perceived as “imperialist.””
Apostate, reading on your own blog how much you hate Muslims I am not surprised you would make a comment like that. Yes, I know you used to be a Muslim. And, furthermore, I find that a lot of Muslim and Middle Eastern people are too quick to identify with whites and spit down on other brown people in the process. I would know, I am Egyptian. I could be making some assumptions but by reading your blog and how you think Islam is the cause for all that’s wrong with the world I am taking what you say with a grain of salt, to put it lightly.
Feminists of color are not “making the most noise” for nothing. Too many times women of color are accused of “complaining too much” or “being too loud” about certain issues. Their concerns matter. Period. When white feminists shut up and listen to them for once it doesn’t mean that they are “pandering” to women of color and not asking relevant questions. I actually find that white feminists who take RWOC’s perspectives seriously contribute more to the discussion and recognize their own white privilege, which is essential in feminism.
“Deeply patriarchal brown cultures”?? As if “White cultures” weren’t deeply patriarchal? The sexism of Islam or Christianity, of the “West” or the “East” are peas in a pod, two sides of the same coin. And besides, what we know as “White culture” today (Christianity, renaissance architecture, mathematics) all come originally from Arabs and the Middle East. Singling out “brown cultures” (what the hell does that mean? are all “brown cultures” the same??) as exceptionally sexist is just plain racist and overlooks the ways the patriarchy operates in “the West.” I just had a tiff online with a white feminist the other day, who lectured me about how “exceptionally oppressive” “Middle Eastern” culture is, how it’s so much worse than American sexism. Blah blah. You hear that perspective all the time in the mainstream media and among many white feminists. I am sick of it.
Feminists of color are sick of being marginalized and silenced by white feminists. Why you have a problem with this concern is beyond me. Stop trying to identify with White people.
Elaine, I do not propose to “protect” women of color. You do come up with the most amazing ideas. I merely propose to fess up to certain of my own shortcomings, and to sound a general call for white chick awareness re: same. Clearly the minutiae of the Amanda/BFP melodrama are much too complex for even one of my longer posts to accommodate properly.
One funny thing I’ve noticed lately is that amid the constant clamor of honky chick “allies” enjoining unenlightened honky chicks to “listen” to women of color, it is harder than ever before to hear much of anything except honky chicks clamoring at other honky chicks. Plus ça change, plus c’est la m^eme fucking chose.
And guilty of my own charge!
I swear, the reason I will ALWAYS read what you write is that you’re so damned good about holding yourself up to your own standards. That is way too fucking rare in the progressive/feminist blogosphere. Count me as one of the readers who was wondering when (though not if) you’d speak up about this. I admire a lot of what Amanda has done, but I wish to hell that she’d write a post just a little like this one. It’s *so* important to be as intellectually honest with ourselves as we possibly can be - else how can anyone else take what we say seriously?
Anonymous lawyer, I’m not contending that Amanda appropriated anything. How the hell would I know that one way or another? I’m saying she’s a popular white feminist writer who’s had the apparently bad luck to have mainstreamed ideas more pertinent to a more marginalized group; therefore, contende I, it’s simply good form to give a shout-out to members of that group who have not been given the same opportunity. Not doing so seems kind of, I dunno, anti.
Why I don’t just write this stuff in the original posts remains one of the great mysteries of the intersection of spinster auntdom with Argentinian chardonnay.
Thanks, I read you all the time and I don’t comment, mostly because I don’t have anything useful to add. On this I really appreciate what you’ve said. The thing I’ve found really dissapointing on so many other blogs is that nobody seems willing to just respond to what happened.
Muchas gracias.
Well, granted, but I’d put that down to that wacky white privilege phenomenon you mentioned, which gets in the way of the listening, which increases the “allies’” perceived need to shout, and away we go off to the races.
As for the resultant difficulty in hearing much of anything else, that is also partly due to so many women-of-color bloggers having gone quiet, at least to the internet at large (I have no doubt they’re raising ruckuses elsewhere, in less honkified spaces). And that quiet is partly the result of honky chicks staying silent when they ought to have clamored, no matter what din it makes.
I like this post for your honesty about staying silent and your unparalleled ability to blow past the crap and go straight to the heart of things. I don’t like the honky-chick-”allies” sneering. Bottom line, Twisty, they spoke up when you didn’t have shit-all to say, even if sometimes it was Elaine speaking. They didn’t wait through three or four iterations of what’s really one big long blogular fuckup before issuing a royal proclamation on the matter. I’m not saying that to commit ad feminam, but as a plea: Please, drop the from-on-high vantage point and let me like this post.
Ilyka,
I just have to say that I don’t know if there’s a difference posting this today or two weeks ago. This is not to negate the good that possibly could have come, this is to recognize that there were dozens of voices arguing several distinct and many contradictory lines of arguments. If it takes two weeks for the forest to be apparent from the trees, you know? I recognize the forest had been there all along, but the reason it was getting talked about was particular trees.
If Twisty’s blog voice is off-putting, there we go, that sounds like a tree to me.
I know TF can take the shots, and I’m not fighting, I hope you know that.
PP
It must be a cold day in hell, because I’m sitting here and agreeing with Lara.
Obviously, apostate, you have been through a lot, and it is not my place to frame or re-frame your experiences.
I am presently living in an Arab country. The issues you discuss on your blog are not exactly things that I take lightly.
But here’s the thing - this situation? It most definitely hasn’t been an issue of pandering to anyone’s sexism. You say:
//”I actually feel much more alienated from the brown feminists who make the most noise in the blogosphere AND the white feminists who pander to them to the point of not forcefully criticizing deeply patriarchal brown cultures — because it might be perceived as “imperialist.”//
But where have the people commenting on the appropriation situation done *that*? Who is pandering? Where?
Oh, and thank you for continuing this discussion on your blog, Twisty. It is true that white privilege is used in ways that are eerily similar to the way male privilege is used.
Seems a little odd to complain about Twisty’s tone now. It’s not new.
What amazes me about all these blowups is that they all involve the same names, many of which are only peripherally related to the topic at hand. No matter what the subject is it seems to come down to the same white people yelling at each other.
White knights riding in to the rescue on both sides obscures the issues and turns legitimate grievances into these constant melodramas. Hugo arguing with Ilyka? Jack Goff calling everyone a racist? What the hell does that have to do with anything?
Intentional or not the immediate stakeholders are being drowned out by the usual suspects, many of whom seem to simply enjoy internet fisticuffs.
I’d love to see a thread that was ONLY for Amanda and WOC, with lurkers (of color) encouraged to post. White proxies arguing with each other is getting absurd, as is white people saying “this is what the WOC really mean!” How about we hear from people who work with immigrant communities, and from immigrants themselves? Seems like the less relevant experience someone has and the further removed from the situation they are the more they have to say. Backwards no?
The solution to every problem is not white people talking more and louder. It’s noble to show your support for WOC but there has got be a way to do it without talking over them. To me that smacks of white privilege in the worst way, here comes the white people to fix everything!
I’m a little concerned that in only 20 comments there is already nitpicking. “Well actually the history of referencing is… “, “Well bfp did this….”, “Why didn’t you quote this…”, “Well what actually happened was this, why don’t you understand the subtleties…”, “This is how much time that passed between A and B and when you…”, “What should have happened is…”
So fucking what?
I know that sounds aggressive and I don’t mean to discredit the views of anyone who has issues with some elements of Twisty’s original post. In fact in regards to what the content of the original post is I think it is excellent that people are making calls on elements they may find problematic. But is what is being mentioned really, really, really the point?
To me the point is: racism exists. White privilege, whether desired or not, exists. If you are white you benefit from this privilege (hence the name, white privilege) and POC experience this privilege as racism. Whether white people agree with this or not doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist (and, really, they should wake up and get a dose of reality, you know the one that exists outside of their privileged world.) This is similar to sexism. It exists. Male privilege, whether desired or not, exists. If you are male you benefit from this privilege (hence the name, male privilege) and women experience this as sexism. Whether men agree with this or not doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Just because you recognise to an enormous degree and fight (for want of a better word) against the second set of privileges doesn’t mean that you’re excused from doing the same with the first set. If you’re benefitting from white privilege and doing fuck all to recognise it and act on it how can you say you believe in feminism and ‘blame the patriarchy’ and still hold your head up high? There are no excuses, excuses are racism.
To expound upon the potentially misrepresented details of a particular set of circumstances that are really only being used as and example (although an incredibly important and recent one) is besides the point.
That’s my academic voice!
Maybe by the time certain concepts reach the level of textbook fodder, this could be true. But it is certainly not true for concepts that are still being developed and subject to vigorous ongoing intellectual discourse and debate. The fact that your links to examples of this in practice were to books, and not the original literature, sort of exemplifies this point.
And in relation to whoever noted my ignorance of the personal and blogular back-story, absolutely I was and remain totally ignorant of that stuff. While certainly relevant to understanding the Marcotte/BFP situation as a whole, it is not relevant to understanding how academics handle analogous situations, with the analogy limited solely to the intellectual content angle.
Crikey. I have some questions.
Nota bene: I’m middle aged and knew all about Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth when I was a schoolgirl of 8, because I read their biographies in the ordinary old public school library, along with Nat Turner’s Rebellion. I am unacquainted with any white women who for one moment genuinely think WOC weren’t part of feminism from its inceptions, which I date from the writings of Christine de Pisan (1405), acknowledging that there are probably even earlier feminist writers whose names I have forgetten or never knew. I also know of various references from political and literary works of the 17th and 18th centuries by both women and men which are feminist and known to have influenced 19th and 20th century feminism.
From my perspective no racial group necessarily can claim feminism as their own. Thinking it started in the 19th centruy is datist and - in my view - arrogant about people of the past.
Listening to and giving a space for RWOC or other marginalised persons, = being an ally, yes. Not speaking for said persons, yes. How is the Proper Feminist Who Happens To Be White supposed to engage further with whatever is expressed, if even opening one’s mouth is in itself some kind of Privileged Honky Chick Chat?
Thinking from an academic perspective: one of the great truths of life is that every generation has to rediscover for itself the truths previous generations held to be both valid and obvious. This Amanda person seems to me to be classifiable as having valid insights at times, but to be intellectually young and ignorant, and not up to speed in her subject. So for her to go away for a while and have a think is no bad thing.
But what’s with the vitriol, and are there any terms in which it is valid to engage with discussions of feminism if the participants happen to have different skin colours and different experiences of life?
Delurking to say I’m a WOC and a feminist, and I pretty much agree with what Apostate wrote.
Twisty, from what I’ve read, Amanda has linked to WOC bloggers on her blog in the past. And, I think I also read over at Feministe that she actually references BfP in her most recent book. Which is why, I’m not on the same side as the WOC bloggers. I think I get what they’re saying about appropriation and white privilege. I’m just not comfortable making Amanda the poster child for it based on what I’ve read.
Oh, and I blame the patriarchy for the whole damn situation! Somehow, I feel like your quote about “women hating women is just men hating women by proxy” might be in play here somehow.
I think your analysis is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. I especially appreciated your reminder not to blame Amanda for a systemic problem at the end.
I was also intrigued by this bit in your post:
However, short of revolution and a new world order wherein intellectual property is nothing but a quaint historical footnote, I’m gonna have give this one to PhysioProf.
If I’m understanding this correctly, you’re proposing a complete end to trademarks, copyright, and patents. I agree that all three need reform, although trademark law is considerably less problematic than the latter two. But completely eliminated? I would be fascinated to read how, post-revolution, publishers would have sufficient incentive to publish books; after all, any other publisher could simply take the finished product, avoid all the costs in developing the book, retype it, reprint it, and sell it at a huge discount. Similarly, how would you know the funions you were buying for lunch were really funions, if trademark law didn’t prevent other companies from making inferior chips and putting them in identical bags?
If you’re in a mood to write it, I’m sure the Twisty Intellectual Property Post would go down as a classic.
It occurs to me in passing–and please correct me if I’m wrong–that in “artistic” fields like music or movies, for example, part of the defense against charges of plagiarism is that one has never been exposed to the work one is supposed to have plagiarized. Thus, unsolicited works go unread, protecting the artist from charges of plagiarism. In other words, in some fields of play, one MUST be able to argue that one could not have stolen an idea/musical phrase/whatever because one was not exposed to it. This, of course, is directly counter to the requirements of scholarship (and other arenas), where one is expected to be familiar with every single work ever written anywhere.
I have no clue whether it has any bearing on this dustup (whatever “this dustup” is; this is the first I’ve heard of it, given the limited amount of time I have for blogularly enlightening myself these days), but thought I’d throw it out there.
Great post, though, Twisty.
Twisty, at least you acknowledge where you may fall short and make the attempt to grow. That’s more important than anything else, in my humble opinion. Every one of us is a work in progress, even advanced patriarchy blamers.
On a related subject (and the real reason I came here to comment): I want to thank you. I am an intermediate-level patriarchy blamer who sometimes has difficulty articulating my arguments at a more mature level than, “Because it’s sexist idiocy, asshole!” Your blog and your forums have given me a vocabulary. You and other advanced blamers have cracked the code for me. You take an amorphous, all-pervading patriarchy and break it down to discrete chunks that can be recognized, examined and rebutted intelligently. Things that used to make me uncomfortable, or make me froth at the mouth, without me understanding exactly why (except the gut reaction that it’s WRONG), now make sense to me, and I can articulate my displeasure and rebuttal. And I am doing so, and by doing so I am showing those around me that they can do so as well.
Thanks to you and your fellow blamers, I am Passing It On. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I am also intrigued by that comment. My point about academic practice really has nothing to with intellectual property, which is basically the right of an owner of such property to restrict what others can do with it. Rather, it is really about intellectual honesty and courtesy, which requires acknowledging the pre-existing intellectual context within which one’s new work resides. These things have nothing to do with property rights in intellectual work product.
So even after the Revolution, and even if there no longer exist any legally enforceable intellectual property rights, I suspect that intellectual workers will still follow the attribution practices I have outlined.
Apostate: Twisty, not all women of color are feeling alienated from the supposedly white feminist movement/blogosphere. I actually feel much more alienated from the brown feminists who make the most noise in the blogosphere AND the white feminists who pander to them to the point of not forcefully criticizing deeply patriarchal brown cultures — because it might be perceived as “imperialist.”
Seconded. Just as you can’t be a pro-life feminist, you can’t be a feminist who supports sati.
Elaine V: I’m not white. The only reason why I noticed that BFP didn’t appropriately cite immigration law is because I wrote one of the articles she didn’t cite. (Hell, the only reason why I noticed is because I read about her posts and went through Google cache after she took her site down. Curiosity and cats and whatnot.) After re-reading the post that sparked this blogwar, I’m not convinced by the statements in her final post.
PhysioProf: The books I cited describe how scientists didn’t cite ideas while the ideas were still being developed. But that’s tangential.
Twisty: Could you elaborate on how it’s not appropriation? I thought appropriation was the mechanism through which white privilege was functioning in the context of acknowledging the source of ideas, which was why you cited PhysioProf.
Don’t wish this argument to become about me. Twisty, hadn’t meant that you personally were disavowing me or anyone. Just wanted to point out what I see in this situation. Owning white privilege might make white people feel better about being white but it does damn-all for brown people.
If anyone has more substantive critiques of my criticisms of Islam or Muslims, you can leave a comment at my blog.
The best thing I can do as a white woman is to listen when WOC speak. Especially if I’m in their space. I learn so much more about my own privilege by doing so.
As an aside, I too feel left out of feminist blogosphere due to my being a lesbian, and due to the big-leaguers out there being mostly hetero. Although thanks to that, I can see why WOC feel left out of the feminist blogosphere as well, since aside from being hetero, the big-leaguers are also mostly white.
Thanks for posting this, Twisty.
Oh my.
//Owning white privilege might make white people feel better about being white but it does damn-all for brown people.//
That depends on the situation. If you’re going around saying “I’m so white and clueless! Tee hee!” Well, you’re not being helpful, you’re just wasting people’s time at best.
However, as a white woman an immigrant (I have become a naturalized citizen), I *have* noticed that non-white immigrants usually have it worse than me. And I do believe this needs to be pointed out.
People might act inappropriately when they hear a hint of an accent from me, or else when they realize I have an “unusual” name, and yes, I’ve been in some scary situations as the result of that, but these same people tend to *really* go to town on foreigners who are also “dark and scary.”
I recently read Flying Close to the Sun by Cathy Wilkerson which speaks quite a bit about the difficulty of white activism being allies to people of color and how a specific aim of the weathermen was to pull heat off of the Black Panthers. At the same time, there was little to no coordination between the two groups. So while I also appreciate the importance of activists holding themselves up the standards they are trying to effect, I hope that this discussion leads to a concrete effort to understand and address the power structures that enable the oppressors rather than descend into an internal civil war that undermines the fact that the blogosphere is actually making a difference in changing and improving the conversation about oppression in society.
It occurs to me in passing–and please correct me if I’m wrong–that in “artistic” fields like music or movies, for example, part of the defense against charges of plagiarism is that one has never been exposed to the work one is supposed to have plagiarized. Thus, unsolicited works go unread, protecting the artist from charges of plagiarism.
This is true (and is in direct contrast with patent law). Of course, at a certain point, the courts simply won’t believe you; if your independent work just happens to be word-for-word, then they’ll assume you read the underlying work at some point and are lying.
That’s also why dictionaries and phonebooks include intentional mistakes. If a later copy has the same mistake, it’s pretty good evidence of copying…
I wouldn’t like to speak for twisty, but I would imagine that intellectual property wuold disappear after revolution because we wouldn’t have PROPERTY after revolution. Intellectual property is just the commodification of ideas.
That was one of the more interesting aspects of Ursula LeGuin’s “the Dispossessed”: her imagining of what people would do in an anarchist/non-propertied society, and how that would affect ideas, performances, etc. Still one of my favorite books, precisely because of that meditation.
Owning white privilege might make white people feel better about being white
It doesn’t. What an odd idea, that a person would “feel better” after grasping the scope of her own complicity in systemic oppression. I posted this for the same reason I post everything: to make everyone feel bad about patriarchy. In trying to make sense of the reality of white privilege, I allude to an experience even beginner feminists can understand: being on the receiving end of male privilege.
As for the “intellectual property” issue, I’m no smarytpants, and I used the wrong term. I couldn’t think of a term to convey “somebody else’s ideas.” It was late, and my copy editor quit to marry a drunken musician. Sue me.
Lawyer: Aha, I misspoke again! What I meant was that I have no way of knowing that Amanda deliberately ripped off a body of work with the specific intention of passing it off as her own original genius.
I’d love to discuss this all day long, but duty calls.
Excellent post, Twisty. Your analogies are great, and dead-on accurate.
Men never “mean it that way”–but it just comes out that way, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, whiteness is the same, and if we don’t “mean it that way”–it’s high time to ante up and say so.
And you did a great job.
Hey, Twisty, I’ve been waiting to hear what you had to say about all this. Cause I felt sure you’d do it with élan and sure enough:
“”when they come out all “Yay pornography! Screw you if you can’t take a joke, you shrill harpy cunt!” you tend to view them with a jaundiced eye”
May I call you my darlin? Probably not. Anyhoo, this is exactly the the right parallel drawn exactly the right way. To give previous discussions their due, it has been drawn — but not in a way that is so spot-on and so funny (if this means I’m giving a white blogger credit for someething non-white ones have said, too, I stand ready to credit everybody. But Twisty’s particular fusion of form and content is pretty darn unique).
Anyway, I don’t understand why that connection is SO HARD TO MAKE or so difficult to concede. Patriarchy blamers know the drill, we can exercise those same brain and soul muscles in pretty much the exact same way vis a vis race.
Feminist Avatar — I agree with you about property, but I think even “after the revolution” people will want to have their contributions to collective doing and thinking acknowledged, and they’ll be rightly upset if they are not. *Especially* if they aren’t just ignored but some people get celebrated for having cool ideas other people also had, first even. I don’t see the revolution doing away with the need for, like, courtesy, reciprocity, and what-not. This is pretty tangential to your point I guess but what I mean is that even in a feminist socialist postpatriarchal aracist utopia shout-outs will keep being desirable.
Daisy said
“Men never “mean it that way”–but it just comes out that way, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, whiteness is the same, and if we don’t “mean it that way”–it’s high time to ante up and say so.”
Exactly! Usually when people are racist (and even sexist), or when they have white or male privilege, they often do not consciously intend to be so. That’s the exact function of privilege, it must be invisible (even to the one who holds the privilege) to work.
Natalia said:
“It must be a cold day in hell, because I’m sitting here and agreeing with Lara.”
Hahahaha!
I don’t think this is the most insightful, thorough coverage-and-confrontation of the destructive stuff that has gone on in the last few weeks (let alone months/years), but I do appreciate that it is not being ignored here anymore.
Lastly - I used to be a full time sex worker, and have of late been doing it part time again, and Twisty and many other women, online and off, who identify as feminist, and many who are radical women of color bloggers, never have shut me up or claimed to speak for me. Wow have I had an ass full of the claim that anyone who is critical of the sex industry “doesn’t listen to sex workers and claims to speak for them.” You know what? The people who have something to say about the sex industry besides that it’s fucking horrifying for most people in it are ALSO not representative of the sex industry, and are actually more presumptive about who they speak for than any feminist I’ve ever talked to or read. Okay maybe except Heart.
Sorry, that is off topic. I just, fuck, my head’s going to explode.
It doesn’t. What an odd idea, that a person would “feel better” after grasping the scope of her own complicity in systemic oppression.
The whole white privilege thing strikes me as masturbatory and dead-ended. What is the point of feeling white guilt (usually the end result of realizing you have some degree of white privilege in some situations)? It’s about as useful as any kind of guilt ever is. If your own behavior and choices have oppressed people, be ashamed and change your ways. If you personally are blameless, there is no call to feel guilty.
I don’t think much of men who beat themselves up over their male privilege. It’s silly and pointless and self-absorbed. Just don’t be a sexist asshole. The rest is (no doubt) eminently satisfying self-flagellation.
And all this would be to some purpose (perhaps) if the protagonists in this drama were unevenly matched. Both are women who look white (both, from what I’ve read, have immigrant/brown lineage to some degree), both are college educated, both have (or had) wide readerships.
All this fuss is blogular politics at its finest.
And of course, this is not to say there aren’t broader issues around whites oppressing the rest of the world. It’s just a tiny little bit unfair to Amanda to conduct that discussion on her doorstep.
Twisty: What I meant was that I have no way of knowing that Amanda deliberately ripped off a body of work with the specific intention of passing it off as her own original genius.
This is what I thought you meant — and I completely agree.
I always thought that appropriation occurs when it’s considered polite — but not necessary — to cite someone. In law, we use See generally, See also and the Cf. citation (which, rumor has it, is Scalia’s legal pet peeve). In this way, it gets built into a system of appropriation.
I wonder whether my SAT analogy might help clarify how I view the issue:
prejudice:racism :: plagiarism:appropriation. In this conceptual model, “stealing” is equivalent to “plagiarism,” while influence is more closely associated with appropriation.
I suspect it’s the use of the word “stealing” which is the ultimate reason why everyone wound up talking past each other. Until I read BFP’s final post, I had never seen someone use the word “stealing” to refer to appropriation. But maybe that’s just a communication strategy limited to those of us in the legal sphere.
It’s not as satisfying as denial, actually. But it’s the only appropriate response — ignoring for a moment the glossing over of the difference between “analyzing” and “beating one’s self up over” — if one posits that the sociopolitical whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts, and that there are thus systemic ills to which individual acts of resistance pose little solution.
Besides, if I don’t confront my privilege, there’s no way to stop acting like a sexist asshole.
I’ve enjoyed your contributions to this thread, apostate, and I hope that doesn’t come off as sniping. But just felt moved to respond.
It’s very interesting to see all but a couple of people who regularly bash Twisty coming here to cheer this post.
And Lara gets to tell me how I feel and what my motivations might be, because get this! She’s Egyptian! She has special powers to speak for everyone who was, is or wants to be a Muslim!
I’m disgusted.
Sorry, Twisty - this is my last comment, won’t hijack further.
I like this post. At a certain point, I think issues about which was the most insightful post on this topic (pretty obvious - BFP’s is the primary source) and whether the timing was perfect are, to use Apostate’s word, masturbatory. The post acknowledged and didn’t try to justify the delay. Enough said.
With regard to Lara’s comment about: “Stop trying to identify with White people.” I’m surprised nobody’s called this out. All women, whether white or WOC, have a right to their views. No other women, or of course men, have the right to characterize these views as inappropriate because of that woman’s color. Who is any of us to say Apostate’s views are not actually her own, cannot be her own, because she is a WOC?
apostate said:
“The whole white privilege thing strikes me as masturbatory and dead-ended. What is the point of feeling white guilt (usually the end result of realizing you have some degree of white privilege in some situations)? It’s about as useful as any kind of guilt ever is. If your own behavior and choices have oppressed people, be ashamed and change your ways. If you personally are blameless, there is no call to feel guilty.”
Who is “you”? This is not a post about how white people should feel guilt and twiddle their thumbs apostate. Twisty is arguing that white feminists simply need to recognize that their privilege will inevitably be interpreted as racism by WOC, and that they should do the duties necessary to shut up and listen to WOC sometimes. As was mentioned here by many members on this blog, if one is white s/he immediately has white privilege whether they like it or not, whether they want it or not. The personal is political, and if you are white and/or male that means you need to acknowledge your privilege and act upon it to actively be a race/sex traitor.
I predicted that you would show how much you identify with white people. It’s like you’re scared of associating with other brown people. It’s so predictable, because I see this among North Africans, Arabs, South Asians, and people from the Middle East all the damned time. They always try to identify/sympathize with white people. It’s annoying and it capitulates to White Supremacist Patriarchy.
In order for men to stop being sexist assholes, and in order for white women to stop being racist assholes, they first have to recognize and deconstruct their own privilege, no? How else would they?
“And all this would be to some purpose (perhaps) if the protagonists in this drama were unevenly matched. Both are women who look white (both, from what I’ve read, have immigrant/brown lineage to some degree), both are college educated, both have (or had) wide readerships.”
Ah, the classic “but whites and brown people are treated equally already? what’s the fuss?” argument. And I am sorry but I have NEVER come across a photo or picture of either Amanda M. or BFP, online or anywhere. How many people here have seen pictures of them? How would their skin tones be relevant to this? The fact of the matter is that BFP identifies strongly as a WOC and Amanda is identified as White and BFP and WOC are not given the credit they deserves.
“And of course, this is not to say there aren’t broader issues around whites oppressing the rest of the world. It’s just a tiny little bit unfair to Amanda to conduct that discussion on her doorstep.”
Oh, so whites are oppressing brown peoples in “other ways” and “other people” but racism and white privilege apparently don’t exist in the blogosphere?? And Twisty said herself that she doesn’t want any ad feminim attacks on Amanda, and didn’t make any of those attacks herself.
Again, why the heck are you trying so hard to comfort white people and tell them they don’t have any privilege and that they shouldn’t thus do anything about it? You proudly (??) claim you are a “brown woman”, but the arguments you make here are eerily similar to white people’s who want to erase their own racial privilege and pretend it’s not there.
Octogalore I was not trying to say that because Apostate is a WOC she should therefore have these types of views. What I was arguing is that while Apostate was using her position as a “brown woman” to claim she is silenced by “everyone” (implying other brown women) she was trying to say that white people should not feel accountable for their white privilege. Which is false, Period. Whether you are white or of color and making that argument.
Furthermore, I am not sure what your background is or your familiarity with the Middle East and North Africa, but I have seen too many other North Africans and Arabs hating on other brown people (including themselves) and trying to identify with white people and it has a lot to do with complicated issues like colonialism, globalism, etc. I could write a whole book on it.
I was not saying that Apostate’s views are not her own. She can have any views she wants. But I also can. And I have the right to respond to her views. Isn’t that the point of a blog? Hasn’t that been what everyone else has been doing? Why are my posts being singled out for this?
The fact of the matter is that White Supremacy and Patriarchy gets white women, and men and women of color, to identify with men/whites. I was simply pointing out that Apostate’s comments support the type of ideas we hear in the mainstream: “white people don’t have any privilege, it’s an equal playing field, you people of color are too loud and are silencing me!” And I have a problem with these views.
I thought Amanda wrote the article about feminism and immigration because the liberal doodz at the ACLU gave the issue the thumbs up. Same with when she recently came out against prostitution, Nicolas Kristof had written an article about it and Melissa Farley’s work in the New York Times and suddenly Amanda knew who Farley actually was.
I guess that’s a bit mean, but it does seem striking that the coverage at the big feminist blogs generally fits in with a white male liberal agenda. But hey the doodz are against abortion and wingnuts, so can we really ask for more?
In other words I’m agreeing with you Lara:
“The fact of the matter is that White Supremacy and Patriarchy gets white women, and men and women of color, to identify with men/whites”
Ooops, for abortion. There’s an interesting slip.
Whatever the motivation though, it still leaves radical women of colour bloggers out in the cold of course.
Y’all might be interested in reading this. Ron linked to it today. It does not at all discuss color, but it discusses the male-privilege thing in ways that may be useful analogously. Or not, but I thought some of you blamers might enjoy it.
Thanks for this post Twisty. This is the first time I actually really understood what this argument was about. I read lots of feminist blogs and the stuff in Amanda’s article was no different than what is on dozens of white and WOC blogs. So, I never really saw the issue. Now, I do. Its just like men appropriating feminist ideas and not ever giving a heads up to the women who expressed them tirelessly over and over; even if you didn’t “steal”, you can give a nod to the women of color who have devoted themselves to these causes. I can’t believe I’ve read almost every post about this, and Twisty is the first one to make the light click on in my head. Thanks :)
Octogalore: “I’m surprised nobody’s called this out.”
Honestly, I stopped reading her posts after the first paragraph. As a general rule of thumb, I stop reading the second I see flawed ad homs used in lieu of actual arguments.
I will say, though, that despite Apostate and my different backgrounds, it sounds like we’ve had very similar experiences. My country has some very, very sexist practices. But the second I point out the sexism, I’m thanked with epithets. My field has its fair share of problems, but at least I don’t have to put up with the more asinine logical fallacies.
Lara: “I was simply pointing out that Apostate’s comments support the type of ideas we hear in the mainstream.”
How? I’ve re-read your comments, and as far as I can tell your argument is one giant non sequitur.
/threadjack
Apostate: “It’s about as useful as any kind of guilt ever is. If your own behavior and choices have oppressed people, be ashamed and change your ways. If you personally are blameless, there is no call to feel guilty.”
Ah, I knew I didn’t have a long-lost twin sister.
I actually think guilt is incredibly useful. I come from a very Leviniasian school of thought, which claims that morality and ethics ultimately hinges on empathy. How your culture leads you to define “Us” and “Them” ultimately determines how empathy spurs actions.
Guilt may not create to a time travel machine that frees my ancestors from colonial servitude, but it does corrode the boundary between Us and Them. And that, ultimately, is what really matters.
//It’s very interesting to see all but a couple of people who regularly bash Twisty coming here to cheer this post.//
What’s interesting about it? Only a real jerk would go “well, since I disagree with other things she’s said, I can’t possibly come over and say, ‘hey Twisty, I agree on this one!’ Gosh, positively engaging someone like that is just so *beneath* me!” Well… At least I think I’m not a jerk… Ha ha.
Also, feeling white guilt is not the same thing as recognizing white privilege. Obviously, it’s important to change one’s behaviour if you get to understanding that it’s awful. But that’s not all there is to it.
I apologize for the triple posting, but I think, given the topic under discussion, I should clarify something. My inspiration for my ethical views comes from a series of not-terribly-common commentaries on Levinas, but what I articulated in my post is not Levinas views. I didn’t cite the authors directly because I don’t know if their work is available in English. Levinas’s writings are available, but the English translations I’ve skimmed appear to be gobbledy-gok.
I’m just pointing out that, in Continental Philosophy, there has been a lot of discussion about “the ethics of The Other.” And frankly, it explains people’s behaviors in ways that the Analytic Queens and Kings simply can’t match.
I like what you said about academic thoroughness, and I agree that it’s a responsibility-in-research issue–probably more than an intentionality issue.
One of the problems in thorough research and citing is the explosion of information “out there” ever since the blogging world developed its intellectual communities. No thought, it seems, is fresh any more, or at least, we have to second-guess ourselves every time we want to write something down and research whether what’s going on in our heads is truly new. I’m drawing two conclusions from this: On the one hand, the “world of thoughts” is, indeed, like a palimpsets; no thought exists without having a conditioning precursor and a trace (oopsie. Derrida!). On the other hand, imposing academic demands on the blogging medium means to standardize the medium itself, or to erect the boundaries in the virtual world that have kept printed feminist discourse in the academic ivory tower for so long. Is that what we’re after?
Perhaps I should post this at PhysioProf’s comment page, but I saw the discussion here first:
At least in Mathland, the academic field I know best, an author is expected to assure that her work is new and noteworthy. This is easy-ish in Math/Physics-land: an online searchable pre-print server can find everything written with a given key-word. Presumably, one could say the same about Blogland.
However, an author never finds _everything_ that deserves citation. When one posts a pre-print, one expects numerous e-mails from other mathematicians demanding that they be cited, and one usually obliges courteously. Failure to cite an earlier author is problematic only (well, at least, primarily) after the earlier work has been pointed out.
Of course, absolutely care must be taken in that sometimes (often?) the works that get many citations are the ones written by privileged members of the white patriarchy, and it’s known that papers written by scientists with feminine or non-European (for U.S. publications) names have a harder time getting published and cited.
“But PhysioProf intimates, and I agree, that if A and B expound similarly, and A’s work pre-dates B’s, the onus is on B to sniff A out and give the props.”
How many bloggers out there and in this thread can live up to this standard? As far as I can tell this has never been the standard for blogging and online articles and newsprint/magazine articles, and if it is the standard then virtually nobody is following it.
Twisty how much research did you do to see if you were replicating anyone’s ideas before you posted this? Certainly what you wrote builds off of/ is similar to what other people have written in the past, but I don’t see any links. You certainly aren’t the first person to write about the privilege of white women.
You appear to be guilty of exactly the behavior you are denouncing. The number of WOC bloggers who have written about white privilege that you linked to is exactly zero. I’m not trying to play gotcha and this is not a condemnation, but there are far too many stones being thrown from glass houses here.
I don’t think it makes sense to selectively condemn people for violating a standard that is realistically violated as a rule by nearly everyone.
Random Observer: the point is not that every feminist blogger should have a magic sensor in her head about every thing that has ever been posted. The point is that when called out on something that is (1) demonstrably documentable as having existed and to which the blogger in question had access (AM was apparently a reader of BFM’s blog) and (2) relates to a huge society-wide pattern of “accidentally not hearing” women of color when they speak and “totally paying attention” to white women when they do, the decent, progressive, right on response would be to say, whoa, my bad, fair cop, shout out to my colleague! This is much EASIER in blogging than in academic publishing just because the format of writing is more flexible/update-able. And it is STILL POSSIBLE. The question then becomes, why does AM just not do it? And it makes other issues (the illustrations chosen for her book, for example) look less and less benign. To offer a hypothetical: I don’t doubt that if a WOC blogger wrote Twisty and said, hey, I said pretty much exactly “x” on my blog before you did on your blog and I know you read me regularly because you’ve said on your blog that you’re a reader, that Twisty would be like, wow, okay, I’ll make sure to provide that link to my readers and give them a heads up about your work! Sure, nobody is required to have a perfectly archived memory but when prompted to be generous and collegial why not be generous and collegial? Rather than scornful and dismissive, and impugning others’ motivations? In a way that fits recognizably in with a history of racism? The point is that “accidental” racism is everywhere, and it just helps to be like — oh was that *my* accident this time? I’ll help clean up! Instead of like, “I don’t see what the mess is everyone is talking about what mess what?”
I realized long ago that examining and coming to understand white privilege made it somewhat easier to grasp male privilege. Privilege is privilege, no matter who has it or whether they are privileged in one way or another, as in being a male of color.
There is also economic privilege, which our hostess has struggled with, and understands. Coming to terms with the ineluctable facts of your own privilege can open your eyes and embolden you to call out the privileges that others hold over you, because you realize that guilt and defensiveness are the tools of the denier of privilege.
You have to stay on your toes, and be ready to admit to your own privilege whenever someone calls you on it, and move on, corrected. We live in a racist, classist, misogynist world. When someone points out my misogyny, I own it and try to correct it, but I don’t feel the slightest bit of guilt over it, since I never chose to be trained so incessantly in misogynistic behavior. Nobody I know is free of racism, either. Class anxieties are much the same, and probably more pernicious and less examined in most of us who grew up poor.
Interesting point Delphyne made about the white male establishment giving the thumbs up thing.
Kathleen this is a problem of too many people making too many different points. What you wrote is only vaguely related to what Twisty quoted from PP. I’m taking issue with what they said, not your spin on it.
Why isn’t Amanda linking to BFP now (other than the fact that it’s not actually possible)? Obvious answer: human nature.
It’s asking a lot of someone to step up and be the bigger person after they’ve been attacked. Again I see this as an example of holding people to higher standards than we hold ourselves.
When I put myself in Amanda’s shoes I understand her behavior. A lot of people have piled on to her, dredged up old grievances, accused her of things that are absolutely false, called her names and went right for the blogstorm instead of just sending an email. Were I her instead of adding a link to BFP’s blog I’d add an addendum titled “fuck all y’all.” (Maybe that’s just me)
When I put myself in BFP’s shoes I understand her behavior as well. This looks like part of a repeating pattern, Amanda is getting recognition while people who have done more in-depth work on the subject have not, etc. Were I BFP I probably wouldn’t say “ok yeah, I could have sent an email first” or tell some of my proxy warriors to dial it down a notch.
Being the first person to admit error is always tough but there is plenty of error on both sides to cop to.
A few people with the courage to step up and say “I was wrong, no ifs ands or buts about it” would do wonders. What has happened so far is textbook how not to resolve disputes.
There have been literally thousands of comments and posts on this subject and you’re still in pure attack mode. How about switching to “trying to understand” mode?
Sorry for the length of the above post but the way most people are acting it’s as if they are actively fighting any sort of reconciliation or resolution.
RO, the point is that in a context where race is at issue, it would just be really terrific if the relatively more privileged person could cop to having erred. If you think she did NOT err, that’s one thing. If you think “both sides have behaved badly, wow, life is a crazy carnival let’s all shut up about it and go home”, okey-dokey, but that take on it effectively recapitulates every faux even-handed, ignoring context of racism/sexism, willfully clueless argument made by folks of inch-deep good will about every single issue of this kind. The point is that there is a pattern at work, and if one is a person who notes such patterns as one’s modus operandi AND modus vivendi, walp, people are gonna wonder what gives when suddenly you refuse absolutely to see one in which you are personally implicated. The dots have been connected, the picture is of a rabbbit, and yet we musn’t speak of bunnies?
What is up with all the one-upMANship going on in these comments?
Just to refine this a little further–which I think I did in my original post on this topic–what is required is a reasonable effort to “sniff A out”. What is reasonable would, of course, be situation specific.
However, if one does become aware of relevant prior work–regardless of how that awareness arises, and even if that awareness is provided by someone acting like a total fucking asshole–then one is obligated to acknowledge that work going forward.
With peer-reviewed articles, you wouldn’t publish a correction for something like this, but you would clearly be obligated to cite the work in future articles as relevant. For a blogger, it is trivial to amend a post to add a reference to relevant work one finds out about after originally publishing the post.
Given that low activation energy for correction in the blog context, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to consider it discourteous to fail to do so.
Twisty,
I disagree that the substance of the disagreement is “minutiae.” It’s not superfluous information that bfp doesn’t want credit, it’s the essential point of the matter.
She didn’t call Amanda a ‘plagiarist’ and she didn’t ask to be given credit or recognition. She was angry because Amanda “exhibits no historical or contextual awareness of women of color led feminist interventions into immigration.”
You’ve missed the essence of the issue by not paying attention to bfp’s words. In actuality, you’re using this drama and thus both Amanda and bfp to promote your own ideas.
PhysioProf why didn’t you link to anyone in your post “Mike Mukasey Makes Chuck Schumer Look Like A Fucking Idiot”? Do you think you are the first person to write about that topic?
You couldn’t have thrown in a link to Glenn Greenwald or emptywheel or ThinkProgress? You link to FDL in your blogroll, so surely you must be aware that emptywheel has written on similar issues.
I don’t want to be overly antagonistic and play gotcha, my point is just that you are espousing a standard that neither you nor anyone else appears to follow.
I’e said all I want to say. Sorry for the one-upMANship.
I’m saying she’s a popular white feminist writer who’s had the apparently bad luck to have mainstreamed ideas more pertinent to a more marginalized group; therefore, contende I, it’s simply good form to give a shout-out to members of that group who have not been given the same opportunity. Not doing so seems kind of, I dunno, anti.
Twisty, thank you for that paragraph. I’ve been trying to find a way to wrap my head around this, amid the obsession with citation and attribution, and the hyperbolic charges of theft and plagiarism, and the mind-reading behind the charge of “appropriation.” I couldn’t get behind the attacks that were being made against Amanda, not simply because I’m a “fan,” but because they seemed false, but I also couldn’t escape the feeling that she had, in fact, done something wrong, and that paragraph right there put into words what I was feeling but couldn’t express. So thank you again.
Lara — I think there is a difference between accountability and guilt, and that there may be a big semantic component to this.
I don’t read a criticism of guilt to equal a criticism of accountability. In fact, the context was more that guilt is all very well but not useful IN ITSELF rather than that it isn’t useful as a starting point to activity. And that guilt that is quickly felt and quickly channeled into action is better termed accountability. Guilt may, to some, suggest languishing and subsequent inactivity. Suggesting it’s unproductive may not in fact be a quick-and-dirty way to be lazy about privilege, but in fact the opposite.
I think we could all benefit from the reminder that none of us are really in a position, here in this four cornered blogosphere, to judge each other’s real life commitments to activism.
Ultimately, my point is: as the context was affirming the need for the action portion of guilt — accountability — it seems to me that the passage you cite is not a denial of white privilege nor the need to work to alter it.
I seriously doubt that Amanda hadn’t read BFP’s work, and she must have known this was a major issue for BFP. Citing is a common practice in the blogosphere.
It doesn’t matter who gets it that white privilege exists, and it’s just like male privilege. Amanda should give up and face the consequences. Where I teach, the way we handle academic dishonesty is there is a flag in the transcript until a tutorial on academic integrity is completed. There will be a flag on this situation until it is corrected. I don’t know how, and it shouldn’t be disproportionate, but something obviously needs to be done to heal the rift.