No web site or blog can be all things to all people, or even a panacea for one issue. It’s a form of communication media. If you’ve ever been to a Friends’ weekly religious gathering (Quakers), they spend a long time near each other in total silence. This is not exclusionary, it’s associative. And it is a form of communication. If someone demanded to be let in to make loud noises through the meeting as a matter of his rights, most reasonable folk would say that this is ridiculous.

FS is not primarily designed to promote “free speech.” Maybe the ACLU site, or somewhere else. We are attempting — very like people navigating in the dark — to get at some very specific epistemological assumptions and critique them, one of them being the assumed superior value of “intellectual production” that is part of the predominant intellectual division of labor… thus, the name feral scholar.

We have some points of view that are not “value-neutral,” or whatever the term is these days that casts pearls before swine and calls that “objectivity.” This site is pro-feminist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist. Given that the hegemonic point of view is exactly the opposite, we believe that apologia for the prevailing point of view is in great abundance… so much so that the kind of critical engagement we would like to promote is still a tiny craft in a vast sea. The idea of allowing unlimited access to the site to not only propound the prevailing ideology, but to do so abusively is a little like inviting a lynch mob to a trial.

That is not the same as saying points of view expressed here are not open to challenge. We challenge each other quite often. But abuse is not challenge, and we will not allow the site to be transformed into a loudspeaker for patriarchal, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, or imperial-capitalist phrasemongering… nor will we allow a bunch of abusive boys yet another outlet.

Free-for-alls are always dominated by the loudest and most obnoxious.

Moreover, what seems like obnoxious behavior to males is often not merely obnoxious to women. The effect is likely to be more like the feelings triggered when a woman walks past a group of loud, obnoxious males… threat and danger. Feral Scholar will not allow its good-will participants to be abused or threatened (directly or indirectly).

I am interested in the troll behaviours. The trolls appear to usually be men.

The anonymity afforded by the web, is it analogous to being in a crowd? This is how I interpret it. I am not sure why some people behave so differently once they have concealed their identity, it is sort of the opposite of Zorro or Batman, disguising themselves before fighting crime and is more like bank robbers pulling on balaclavas before committing a crime.

The answer appears to be to require a commenter to part with more of their personal information and/or be more networked into a group. In the wilderness, maybe everybody screams, and the answer is not just to silence the voices, but to work to reclaim the wilderness. I suppose I am biased towards viewing trolling behaviors as being caused by people feeling excluded or neglected, whereas the security of belonging to a group is also liable to breed another set of bad behaviors, as posts on this site demonstrate. Sooner or later, the Facebook model of networks where you can see one degree of separation and make approaches to friends-of-friends will become more prevalent, perhaps, in the blogosphere and begin to rid debate of people who only wish to employ their freedom of speech in order to stifle debate.

I hope some different methods come along, as I dislike the +/- comment rating that some sites employ, as it seems to reward people for, largely, consenting to hold the same ideas as others.

On my own site, a post I wrote became a popular link for people from the far right and they posted all kinds of offensive statements there. I let them stand and did not pass judgment on them. Later, I received an email from an African-American woman thanking me for not moderating the comments, because it showed what people really think. However, while those statements were offensive, I do not think they were trolling statements – ie: those people really think those things, whereas I think much trolling is just the troll estimating what is going to most outrage/incense/upset the image the troll has of the people who use a particular website. Sometimes it does just seem to be simple projection, as many many comments revolve around homosexual slurs, indicating that trolls tend to think that to demean another man’s masculinity is the most provocative thing you can do.

I don’t read about politics to have my opinions confirmed, but to be challenged and to learn. That is why I enjoy reading this site. Thank you.

Gender is a multi-dimensional concept which defies purely biological, social, or other constructs. Anyone who says one’s identity is the sole determinant either doesn’t understand the meanings and ways in which the word is used, or isn’t dealing with reality. However, the same could be said of the person who completely discounts the role gender identity plays in shaping our world. BTW, the idea of a gender binary, though pervasive in Westerners, is not the reality in other cultures both previously existing or in other parts of the world today, and it is certainly not the biological reality any more than it is the experience of individuals. Within the gender (variant) community, there are certainly those who try to offer alternative, although equally over-simplified definitions, and therefore similarly invalid.

I don’t purport to offer some set of definitive answers, more I am looking to get people thinking. If feminism is not pluralistic and can be claimed by a single group, then certainly that group will be Christian, heterosexual, white, cisgender, well-to-do, citizenship holders. If it is to be pluralistic, then there must be a recognition that our identities and experience are more than simply the intersection of race and gender, sexual orientation and gender, etc.

Bringing this back to pornography, if the hallmark/membership fee of female class status is being a target of violence and hypersexualization, then speaking for my own class of wymyn (m2f transgenders), one need look no further than the rate at which we are murdered or at the disproportionate numbers of us advertising for sex work in the back of one’s local entertainment weekly to see that not only are we dues paying members, we’re major stakeholders. But try telling that to the Michigan Wymyn’s Music Festival.

Still, I don’t want some guy to follow me into the ladies’ room just because he’s feeling especially in touch with his feminine side at that moment.

My contribution to the clueless vs. clueless discussion comes from democratic underground, which I need to stop looking at because really my head is going to explode one day from it. Anyway this is my veteran’s day offering to FS, via DU: “The troops deserve mountains of porn for the work they do.” (Comments were running about 50:1 in support of that sentiment.) I can’t boil that down neatly like Stan and De do, I get stuck at the notion of “comfort women” being something (emphasis on thing) that men “deserve.” When I try to flip it around, swapping genders and extreme work that we do, I still can’t make any sense of it. I can’t imagine hospitals handing out male porn to women in labor: “She’s in the middle of delivering a 10 pound baby and she’s been in labor for 19 hours. Quick, somebody get her a photo of a man being sexually assaulted; it’s the least we can do for her.”

My friend Nancy Meyer has been theorizing backlash as a structural part of the depoliticization of feminism: the word “reaction” doesn’t quite address the reality of the attacks on feminism, including the incorporation/assimilation/dilution of feminism a la botox feminism and other variants.
any more thoughts about how to go about a collaboration? hopefully this is the wake-up call i desperately need to re-start my writer self/political brain.. etc…

[DeA responds: sounds good, let's take this to email...]

I think reasons for the “incivility” quotient in internetlandia are many and synergistic, like everything else about subcultures. But the domination — and I do choose the word advisedly — of white, male, professional, often socially “backwards” or even mildly autistic persons in the demographic of the computer literate and the net-addicted has something to do with it.

another lifeline site for angry feminists is, of course, the redoubtable Twisty Faster, whose “I Blame the Patriarchy” takes no prisoners. Yolanda Carrington blogs infrequently, but always right to the point of the intersection of gender, race, and class. Feminist Law Professionals ia a good site. Biting Beaver used to be a visible angry feminist, but harassment and threats shut her down. FS is way overdue for another installment of our proposed series on “Enemy Women”, about the ways in which specifically misogynist attacks and threats are used to silence visible women in politics and media; how the “womanification” of male enemies is a standard-issue weapon for men sparring verbally with other male ideological opponents; and how misogyny is not only sexist but almost always specifically sexual that is, expressed pornographically, in the form of slurs against a woman’s sexual aspect or the sexualising of her public aspect. The archetypical version of this is the use of pornographic imagery or narrative involving the targeted woman.

I think it’s time for us to pick up this thread again… I’m thinking that Audrey has some original source material, KM has this excellent source material about the student newspaper, and Stan and I have an old piece of text lying around somewhere about a “funny” internet joke for lefty boys featuring Ann Coulter in a pornoganda text involving — of course — the good ol’ anal rape theme (thank goodness no images, the text was quite ugly-vicious enough). Wanna collaborate on a major frontpager?

As for why FS is a life line to me–it’s because of the rare quality of synthesizing analysis found here–analysis that is radical, intellectually in-depth and stimulating, wide in scope AND feminist. I shouldn’t have to ADD the “and feminist” but at this point it seems very very difficult to find “radical” analysis that is also strongly feminist (that names the “p” word as De puts it for example) and radically feminist writing that is also encompassing of a range of public affairs/political issues. Are there any similar blogs that I’m missing?

As for making it more available–How does one do that on the web? I still crave print media and have to admit, upon finding FS, to glimmers of fantasies about a book of some sort.. Also the radio program which I have only listened to a minute of –and will probably listen to today because of some free time. I did a short-lived feminist public affairs radio show and have a powerful feeling about the potential of this medium. hmmm.. This might seem like an obvious ridiculous question but is the web the main source of media –and reading–for people these days?

They have attempted intrusion after intrusion on this site (thank goodness for moderation-tools).

Brian — who lives more in the net community than I do — explained to me that many of these folks are Jekyll-Hydes who are mild-mannered in person.

OTOH, De reminded me that the mild manners of many men in the presence of other men is cast aside when situations throw men into the mix with women.

So, in a very powerful and concrete sense, a man like me can walk around in the same spaces as a woman and experience an entirely idfferent social reality.

Not a very original insight, but one that seems important nonetheless — for the boiz in particular, if we are to make our solidarity meaningful. I can walk a mile through some city street, with De 200 yards ahead of me. At the end of that mile, we will have dramatically different experiences to report.

Maybe a social experiment here.

At any rate, the struggle we are facing here and throughout cyberspace is how to balance the need for discourse and debate and the exchange of ideas with the need to keep those virtual spaces comfortable enough for women to participate.

Men don’t seem disinclined. But men on computers spend countless hours doing two things: jacking off to images of humiliated women, and pretending to kill people in war games. Apparently the mind-set that accompanies these activities is transferable.

One thing we are trying over at IA, though we aren’t up and running yet, aside from disallowing the trolling waters of a comment-section, is to place special emphasis on epistemology and practical skill exchange. No idea whether that will provide what is needed with a “practical strategic resource,” or whether FS is living up to its self-imposed expectations. Kathy’s note calling it a life-line is encouraging; so now it would be interesting to follow up by figuring out what specifically gives it that feel… and perhaps making it more available.

Thoughts?

PS: case in point http://www.offourbacks.org/Chilling.html

Mega-dittoes.

I like that.