Who gets remembered? Who gets paid?
December 13, 2019 10:01 PM Subscribe
Soraya Roberts recounts the complicated history and enduring legacy of the feminist blogosphere (2001-2009).
“Some of the most prominent feminists who have survived the blog years and still have careers are a little bit more me-focused than others,” said Latoya Peterson, the editor of Racialicious. “Let’s just put it that way.” I’m not as diplomatic as she is, so I’ll just put it straight: While a group of mostly white, mostly New York-based feminist bloggers were making their names in the aughts, it was the radical selfless activists on the margins of the blogosphere who erected the scaffolding for the feminist internet as we now know it today. As Brittney Cooper, co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective, told me, “The wokeness that we see in this generation is indeed a direct result of all of this labor.”
When you go to read this article, please ignore the terrible title ("The Internet killed Feminism") given to it by the editor at Jezebel, which seems intended to stir up a lot of knee-jerk hot-take reactions. It's really a personally-opinionated history of feminist blogs and their fights in the '00s.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:00 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:00 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
There are some odd omissions in this article. How do you talk about intersectional feminism and talk to Sady Doyle and about Tiger Beatdown without even mentioning Flavia Dzodan and My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit?
How did it take 3/4 of the piece to mention that Anna Holmes who founded Jezebel is a black woman and worked hard to bring voices of color to the site?
Where is Pam's House Blend? Pam Spaulding is a black woman from North Carolina who had one of the very first awesome feminist blogs that became an amazing instructional feminist community.
Pam also wrote on Pandagon with Amanda Marcotte for several years, but to read this, you would think that Jesse, Ezra, Pam, and the host of others who wrote there over the years never existed. (and you would think Amanda was always just some media elite from NYC, not a fairly normal person from Texas who just started a blog one day).
I also didn't like the slights to Shakesville. Melissa was writing from Indiana (and in the last year or two, Pennsylvania), not New York. She was also not a young skinny white woman in NYC, and ignoring how her being fat affected the trajectory of everything is a big omission. She also closed down the blog for her health, not because of an idiotic hit piece.
My guess is the author is either very young or just wasn't involved in the feminist blogosphere at the time. It's a shame that they didn't get Latoya Peterson to write the damn thing herself.
Finally, damn I miss bfp
posted by hydropsyche at 4:21 AM on December 14, 2019 [27 favorites]
How did it take 3/4 of the piece to mention that Anna Holmes who founded Jezebel is a black woman and worked hard to bring voices of color to the site?
Where is Pam's House Blend? Pam Spaulding is a black woman from North Carolina who had one of the very first awesome feminist blogs that became an amazing instructional feminist community.
Pam also wrote on Pandagon with Amanda Marcotte for several years, but to read this, you would think that Jesse, Ezra, Pam, and the host of others who wrote there over the years never existed. (and you would think Amanda was always just some media elite from NYC, not a fairly normal person from Texas who just started a blog one day).
I also didn't like the slights to Shakesville. Melissa was writing from Indiana (and in the last year or two, Pennsylvania), not New York. She was also not a young skinny white woman in NYC, and ignoring how her being fat affected the trajectory of everything is a big omission. She also closed down the blog for her health, not because of an idiotic hit piece.
My guess is the author is either very young or just wasn't involved in the feminist blogosphere at the time. It's a shame that they didn't get Latoya Peterson to write the damn thing herself.
Finally, damn I miss bfp
posted by hydropsyche at 4:21 AM on December 14, 2019 [27 favorites]
Dooce was fired for blogging, yes. But time (and the huge amount of money she eventually made after reinventing herself) washed away that she was fired after she wrote some decidedly unwoke things about her coworkers. Previously.
posted by kimberussell at 4:57 AM on December 14, 2019
posted by kimberussell at 4:57 AM on December 14, 2019
hydropsyche, the article doesn’t say that Shakesville was closed down because of the critical piece. It says that Shakesville’s closing down was followed by the critical piece. As in, the blog closed down, and then afterwards, the piece ran.
Also, I don’t find that piece (linked from the article) an “idiotic hit piece” at all. It grapples with some genuinely toxic, abusive, harmful patterns that arose in the Shakesville community in its final few years. I was there and I remember. I wasn’t imagining those things or making them up, nor am I a troll who just wants to whine about “SJWs” or “PC culture.”
Even reading about it now is putting me back in that terrifying gaslit, mirror-maze state of mind where I think maybe my perception of reality is completely wrong and broken, and maybe I’m really a bad, horrible person after all. Familiar to anyone who has experienced an emotionally abusive relationship, by the way. (I have experienced one IRL too.)
…I think I have to step away from this article.
posted by snowmentality at 5:00 AM on December 14, 2019 [18 favorites]
Also, I don’t find that piece (linked from the article) an “idiotic hit piece” at all. It grapples with some genuinely toxic, abusive, harmful patterns that arose in the Shakesville community in its final few years. I was there and I remember. I wasn’t imagining those things or making them up, nor am I a troll who just wants to whine about “SJWs” or “PC culture.”
Even reading about it now is putting me back in that terrifying gaslit, mirror-maze state of mind where I think maybe my perception of reality is completely wrong and broken, and maybe I’m really a bad, horrible person after all. Familiar to anyone who has experienced an emotionally abusive relationship, by the way. (I have experienced one IRL too.)
…I think I have to step away from this article.
posted by snowmentality at 5:00 AM on December 14, 2019 [18 favorites]
Today I learned that Echidne of the Snakes is still maintaining her blogspot blog.
Ooof. I don't know. I have such complicated feelings about that scene. I think it was pretty toxic in a lot of ways, and I also think that a lot of the critiques of it are weird and distorted and resort to a lot of cherrypicking. (There's a fair amount of erasing of women of color who wrote for the big feminist blogs, for instance, including some, like Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who went from the feminist blogosphere to mainstream media success.) And the New York thing is really complicated, because the feminist blogosphere gave a voice to a lot of women who weren't in New York and who weren't in the kind of spaces that typically make it possible to get noticed by mainstream media outlets. Amanda Marcotte was an administrative assistant in Austin, Texas when she started blogging at Pandagon. Lauren was a teen mother in Indiana when she started Feministe. What is true, I think, is that the mainstream media didn't really change, and you had to be able to play by its rules to jockey feminist blogosphere success into a media career. So Amanda, who was able to pick up and move to New York, was able to do that, but Lauren, who had a kid and other responsibilities keeping her in her day job in Indiana, wasn't. But that's not because of the feminist blogosphere. That's because of everything else in the world.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:54 AM on December 14, 2019 [9 favorites]
No mention of Dooce? Or was getting fired for blogging not woke enough?The article discusses a pretty specific set of blogs that were in conversation with each other, and Dooce wasn't part of that scene. This isn't about every early blogger who was a feminist.
Ooof. I don't know. I have such complicated feelings about that scene. I think it was pretty toxic in a lot of ways, and I also think that a lot of the critiques of it are weird and distorted and resort to a lot of cherrypicking. (There's a fair amount of erasing of women of color who wrote for the big feminist blogs, for instance, including some, like Samhita Mukhopadhyay, who went from the feminist blogosphere to mainstream media success.) And the New York thing is really complicated, because the feminist blogosphere gave a voice to a lot of women who weren't in New York and who weren't in the kind of spaces that typically make it possible to get noticed by mainstream media outlets. Amanda Marcotte was an administrative assistant in Austin, Texas when she started blogging at Pandagon. Lauren was a teen mother in Indiana when she started Feministe. What is true, I think, is that the mainstream media didn't really change, and you had to be able to play by its rules to jockey feminist blogosphere success into a media career. So Amanda, who was able to pick up and move to New York, was able to do that, but Lauren, who had a kid and other responsibilities keeping her in her day job in Indiana, wasn't. But that's not because of the feminist blogosphere. That's because of everything else in the world.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:54 AM on December 14, 2019 [9 favorites]
Today I learned that Echidne of the Snakes is still maintaining her blogspot blog.
See y'all in a few days after I read a couple years worth of posts that I missed...
posted by hydropsyche at 10:43 AM on December 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
See y'all in a few days after I read a couple years worth of posts that I missed...
posted by hydropsyche at 10:43 AM on December 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
The one 2000s-era feminist blogger I really miss is the non-young, non-hip and non-NYC but monumentally incisive Violet Socks, aka Reclusive Leftist.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 11:02 AM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Ralston McTodd at 11:02 AM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
Didn't mention the pretty horribly racist imagery in Marcotte's book, the weird interactions with so called allies (good old Hugo) . . . Probably just as well.
Also I am delighted to hear echidne is still blogging.
posted by jeather at 1:23 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
Also I am delighted to hear echidne is still blogging.
posted by jeather at 1:23 PM on December 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wow, yeah, this is a heck of a walk down memory lane.
I stumbled across Shakesville back when it was called Shakespeare’s Sister (I'd been looking up an obscure 90s pop duo of the same name). I found my way to Feministing because of the fuss some people made online about Jessica Valenti daring to be photographed in proximity to Bill Clinton while being an attractive woman in her late twenties we bears a passing resemblance to Monica Lewinsky.
When Feministing did its first North American campus tour I was at their inaugural event (not because I was an obsessive fan, but because for some reason they started their tour at a mid-size Canadian University and how could I not go when it was being held mere blocks from my home?).
I used to regularly read Shakesville, Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel, Tiger Beatdown, XX, Pandagon, Racialicious, Sociological Images, Feminist Frequency... The last ~15 years have been a weird journey.
Sidenote: Does anyone else find it notable that Jezebel brought up Hugo Schwyzer without mentioning his history of having sex with his female students and that he once attempted to murder an ex girlfriend? Or that non-White Feminists had been sounding alarms about other toxic behaviours of Schwyzer's for quite some time before White Feminists finally disavowed him?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 3:02 PM on December 14, 2019 [12 favorites]
I stumbled across Shakesville back when it was called Shakespeare’s Sister (I'd been looking up an obscure 90s pop duo of the same name). I found my way to Feministing because of the fuss some people made online about Jessica Valenti daring to be photographed in proximity to Bill Clinton while being an attractive woman in her late twenties we bears a passing resemblance to Monica Lewinsky.
When Feministing did its first North American campus tour I was at their inaugural event (not because I was an obsessive fan, but because for some reason they started their tour at a mid-size Canadian University and how could I not go when it was being held mere blocks from my home?).
I used to regularly read Shakesville, Feministing, Feministe, Jezebel, Tiger Beatdown, XX, Pandagon, Racialicious, Sociological Images, Feminist Frequency... The last ~15 years have been a weird journey.
Sidenote: Does anyone else find it notable that Jezebel brought up Hugo Schwyzer without mentioning his history of having sex with his female students and that he once attempted to murder an ex girlfriend? Or that non-White Feminists had been sounding alarms about other toxic behaviours of Schwyzer's for quite some time before White Feminists finally disavowed him?
posted by Secret Sparrow at 3:02 PM on December 14, 2019 [12 favorites]
I get that it was published by Jezebel so it was going to have a not-negative spin on the site, but I really don't remember Jezebel being part of the "feminist blogosphere" circa that era. And it was weird as hell, at the time, that they started publishing that "feminist" dude after others in the actual feminist blogosphere were already onto his shit. I assumed they didn't give a shit about ethics and were doing it for the clicks. And I say that as someone who went to Jezebel meetups a millions years ago and still reads/appreciates the site for what it is.
I was sad to see Shakesville go. I don't get the obsessive unpleasantness that some people had/have for Melissa McEwan. I honestly can't imagine what must be like to have someone with a tumblr devoted to calling me and the things I write stupid. Along with all of the fatphobic bs she had to endure to exist in public on the internet. Like legit I have been really close to quitting mefi because of actions and words by some the mods, but I can't imagine starting a twitter account where I pick apart the things they say after I've left.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 6:03 PM on December 14, 2019 [6 favorites]
I was sad to see Shakesville go. I don't get the obsessive unpleasantness that some people had/have for Melissa McEwan. I honestly can't imagine what must be like to have someone with a tumblr devoted to calling me and the things I write stupid. Along with all of the fatphobic bs she had to endure to exist in public on the internet. Like legit I have been really close to quitting mefi because of actions and words by some the mods, but I can't imagine starting a twitter account where I pick apart the things they say after I've left.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 6:03 PM on December 14, 2019 [6 favorites]
Glad to hear Echidne is still blogging! I’m also getting nostalgic about Bitch, PhD; Dr Isis, Shapely Prose, I blame the patriarchy, and probably several more if I can think of their names. Now I’ll go check Echidne’s blogroll to see who’s still active. I’d like to have blogrolls and Google reader back.
posted by meijusa at 7:48 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by meijusa at 7:48 AM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
I’d like to have blogrolls and Google reader back.
I've been following Echidne for several years (ever since Google Reader closed down) via Feedly.
posted by suelac at 1:00 PM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've been following Echidne for several years (ever since Google Reader closed down) via Feedly.
posted by suelac at 1:00 PM on December 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
Didn't mention the pretty horribly racist imagery in Marcotte's book, the weird interactions with so called allies (good old Hugo) . . . Probably just as well.
Both of these things were explicitly mentioned.
This article was edifying for me as someone who was a casual reader of all of these blogs for about two years in the heyday and missed basically all of this fighting, somehow. Probably because I was in grad school at the time.
The bit at the end where the author pats Feministe on the back for being “good” because no one ever made a profit is ... something, for sure. This is ALWAYS complicated because of the way white supremacy infects everything, including feminism but also, maybe the problem is not that a few people got book deals but that more people didn’t? And it seems like people are only criticized for this very modest level of success when they are women, especially if they’re also feminists.
posted by the sockening at 5:03 PM on December 15, 2019 [6 favorites]
Both of these things were explicitly mentioned.
This article was edifying for me as someone who was a casual reader of all of these blogs for about two years in the heyday and missed basically all of this fighting, somehow. Probably because I was in grad school at the time.
The bit at the end where the author pats Feministe on the back for being “good” because no one ever made a profit is ... something, for sure. This is ALWAYS complicated because of the way white supremacy infects everything, including feminism but also, maybe the problem is not that a few people got book deals but that more people didn’t? And it seems like people are only criticized for this very modest level of success when they are women, especially if they’re also feminists.
posted by the sockening at 5:03 PM on December 15, 2019 [6 favorites]
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posted by Ideefixe at 10:32 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]