I Blame The Patriarchy

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Comments Guidelines

These simple rules will improve your prose and make you rich, famous and lovable.

• Commenters should strive for excellence.

• Commenters should exhibit advanced patriarchy-blaming skills. If you don’t know what this means, don’t post here. The degree of advancement expressed by any given comment is to be determined by me, entirely subjectively.

• A unique screen name is required. Comments with the following screen names will auto-delete:

anon
anonymous
none
nobody
noone
anybody
anyone
fuckyou

• Comments with the following screen name will also auto-delete:

The Patriarch

• Commenters who append the number 69 to their screen names are not old enough to post here.

• Commenters should make as many jokes as possible.

• Commenters should write opinion before they “share experience.”

• The anecdote (and its poor relation, the synopsis of an acquaintance’s views) can have entertainment value, but is rarely, if ever, effective as evidence in an argument, cf. “some of my best friends are strippers, and they are rich, happy, and empowerfulized, therefore your views on porn are wrong.”

• Particularly, commenters should carefully consider whether a description of their personal sex lives is in fact absolutely vital to their analysis. Because it isn’t.

• Be brief. One or two short paragraphs should about cover it. Got more to say? Get your own blog.

• Avoid beginning your remarks with

– the word “I”
– the word “i”
– any lowercase letter, for that matter
– the phrase “I think that ___.”
– the phrase “I haven’t read the post you’re all talking about, but ____”
– either “um” or “er,” particularly in an effort to convey sarcasm. You are not an edgy young character in a sitcom.
– the phrase “Off-topic, but ___.”

• Post no abusive language. ‘Abusive language’ means racist, sexist, ableist, anti-straight, anti-fat, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-mother, anti-kid, or antifeminist language.

• Kindly note that when feminists of whiteness exercise white feminist privilege, even when unintended, it is experienced by feminists of color as racism.

One thing I have learned from doing this blog lo these past 5 years is that when a reasonable person tells you you’re oppressin’em, you’re oppressin’em. The only rational course of action is a) to stop being defensive and b) to cop to it, already. Because if you’re white, it is a foregone conclusion that your whiteness accrues benefits not offered to anyone else, and that these benefits will often be invisible to you. A foregone conclusion, I tell you.

Suspect this whenever the “Dear god, what about the white chicks?” motif shows up in your comment.

• Cite your sources. I Blame the Patriarchy isn’t a scholarly work, so you don’t have to do a formal footnote, but if you’re going to make some remark like “1 in 4 Indonesian women are addicted to Cool Whip,” we’re gonna need that link.

• Yeah, and don’t plagiarize, either.

• Comments proceeding from “the unique male perspective” will be deleted. If you don’t know what this means, do not post here.

• I have not forced you to read this blog against your will. If patriarchy-blaming particularly displeases you, bugger off, asshole.

• Bear in mind that these essays reflect my personal views. They are opinion, not doctrine. I am not in charge of all the feminists. I can’t change anybody’s mind. I can’t “outlaw” anything. I don’t lead a cult.

• Your comments appear on my blog at my pleasure. I have not solicited your participation. I don’t care if you disagree with me. You do not have a “right” to be heard on this or any other blog. Neither do I “owe” you the slightest respect, courtesy or explanation. I may delete any of your comments I choose, for whatever reason I choose. I generally delete comments that

– do not exhibit sufficient patriarchy-blaming chops
– do not exhibit philosophic value
– are off-topic
– are unintelligible
– are spam
– are antifeminist
– are godbaggy
– are creepy
– are “what about the men?”
– annoy me in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on
– suck

• Commenters should avoid being annoying in a way that I can put my finger on. Some examples of annoying commentarianism are

– ignoring the Guidelines for Commenters
– blaming women for their own oppression
– posting “Hey check out this totally unrelated link!” as a comment (send it in an email instead)
– using the old “how dare you discuss [this frivolous topic] when people are dying in Transylvania?” gambit
– self-righteousism (see above)
– shameonyouism (see above)
– dudes paraphrasing their girlfriends’ supposed opinions
– baby talk (e.g. “teh widdle menz”)
– a single long, poorly punctuated paragraph
– many long, poorly punctuated paragraphs
– many long paragraphs, period
– any number of paragraphs describing your personal heterosexual sex life
– re-stating the thesis of the post without adding to the discussion or at least making a joke
– stating “I second what Picklenose said” without adding to the discussion or at least making a joke
– using an ellipsis
– using an ellipsis in the middle
– using an ellipsis at the end
– using an ellipsis in the middle and another at the end
– using two or four or eight dots instead of an ellipsis
– using two dots here, four dots there instead of two ellipses

• Occasionally my real life prevents me from spending 24 hours a day monitoring the blog. Sometimes I don’t read it at all. Thus, what may be perceived as my ‘knowing silence’ or ‘tacit approval’ of obvious bullshit commentary is nothing of the kind. In other words, while I make every effort to ensure that the comments precisely mirror my own unassailable views, sometimes crap sneaks by while I’m out doing the butt-dance down Congress Ave. This is too bad, but I refute categorically the notion that I am responsible for the unsolicited asinine remarks that happen to show up this blog when I’m not looking. You get what you pay for here at I Blame the Patriarchy.

• A troll is a teenage boy who employs abusive, misspelled language expressly to disrupt. Don’t respond to trolls.

• If you find yourself commenting more than 2 or 3 times on a given post, please consider shutting the old piehole.

• Once in a while I actually put a little work into these posts. Kindly do me the favor of refraining from derailing the discussion with off-topicality. This is my personal blog, not a message board.

• In the interest of intelligibility, try to use words. Random typing is no substitute. Here are a few examples of random typing:

IMHO
b/c
ROTFL
:)
definately

• Kindly employ decent grammar, syntax, punctuation, and spelling, both when commenting, and during the course of your daily life.

• While you’re at it, you might as well avoid clichés, too.

• Ain’t got no dictionary handy? Download CleverKeys, an application for Mac and Windows that lets you right-click your way to precision and profundity in the English language. It’s no OED, but it’s better than nothing.

• Emoticons: is anything sadder? :(

• And for the lova god, use the fucking shift key! Anti-Capitalites will be spurned.