House of Eratosthenes

The time is right for these words. Our floggers deserve them. Read some non-feminist blogs…then read some feminist blogs. The tone is very, very different.

To ponder why this might be, let’s consider what the word “feminist” means. It’s a deliberately vague term. You can’t explore what it really means, without spending some energy examining how we got to this point.

Sometime in the late seventies, it became fashionable for men to announce, with no small amount of theatrical irony, that they were feminists. It was a term intended to shock. I’m a male nurse…I’m a male bellydancer…I’m a male feminist. By design, this was supposed to lead into a conversation about what exactly a feminist was — the answer to which, of course, was that a feminist believed in equality between the sexes. A man might go to sports bars and strip bars, he might drink beer and eat meat, he might work on a 1965 Dodge charger on the weekends in an old tee shirt twenty years out of style — but if he believed women should be paid the same as men, that there was a feminist, no two ways about it.

The rumor persists to this day. I say, I AM A FEMINIST — and I might mean…equal pay for equal worth. I might be pro-choice. Or, I might be a transgender who hates men. Or anything in between. There’s just no telling what that word means…

…outside of the computer.

In cyberspace, it’s a different story. Someone with a feminist blog says she’s a feminist — you can safely assume a lot of things.

Everybody who’s hit such a site, knows what I’m talking about. I can string tangential embellishments on my definition all day long…and it’ll still work.

On the web, a feminist blog has some incandescent indication that the person who runs the blog is female. And “progressive.”

Which means negative. The feminist blog makes itself known to new arrivals, exactly what the theme song is. It is dark. It is acrid. There are pictorial representations, large-font headlines and sub-headlines, leaving no room for doubt whatsoever: The CEO of this blog is a woman, and she has pet peeves.

The feminist blog is not like the political blog. Surely you’ve noticed by now — a conservative blog, and a liberal blog, will make it a point to highlight what is to be deplored, and what is to be adored. Permanently. On the masthead. In the sidebar. Someplace that won’t move. This guy’s a fool…that other guy is a hero. Three cheers for so-and-so…boos and hisses to such-and-such. And the positive stuff will always at least be somewhat present. Usually, it’s an invitation to join a webring, hosted by like-minded people.

Not so with the feminist blog. These are not out-of-computer feminists, who on occasion at least pretend to like things or people. No, in Internet-land, the feminist blog is a decidedly negative fountainhead of bile. It exists to find things reprehensible, and to broadcast such findings frequently, voluminously, and with grandeur and gusto. The feminist blog is like the siren luring Jason and the Argonauts to certain doom, with tones screeching rather than dulcet. All other purposes are secondary.

This is a meaningful transformation. In my lifetime, orthodox feminism has clung to a veneer of plausible deniability — never straying far from the “Who, Me?” motif. Every insinuation that feminism had something to do with caustic things…even legitimately cynical things…was invariably answered with a peevish counterinsinuation — hey, no, we’re just here to assure fair play. No man regards us as an attack or a threat — no man has any need to — unless he is somehow “insecure.” A level playing field is all we’re about. Like what, you got a problem with that?

The Internet feminist labors under no such motif. Chalk it up to the sinister, anti-socially shading effect of the Internet itself. The cyber-feminist is a decidedly darker version of her flesh-and-blood sister. She is acrimonious, jaded, angry, petulant. She makes no apology for being so. Not only that, but if a day is spent and no nastiness has managed to bubble to the surface, it seems the day has been a waste. It’s part of the identity. The kitty has claws — or else she’s not worth the trouble of being.

Check out masthead after masthead after masthead on some feminist blogs if you have trouble envisioning this. You’ll see what I mean. The “author” is represented by silhouette, or by avatar, or by an actual photograph. There is no smile…not unless it’s been made up into some misshapen sneer. Read the actual posts — and the problem is more pronounced still. Time after time, the theme is left intact, unshaken, unwrinkled, unmoved.

It is this: Somewhere, something is, and it ought not be. That’s it. Overall, it seems the fem-blog hasn’t much else to say. Sensors have detected something somewhere that exists, that we think should be banished to oblivion. Can we get an ‘Amen’ here?

The salty language highlights another key difference. Our flesh-and-blood feminists out here in the real world, use language unfit for a mixed audience — the same way we use it here at The Blog That Nobody Reads. When they think it will add to the point they seek to make. Of course, someone else will always disagree about that, but that’s how we do things here. If a swear-word contributes nothing, we leave it alone, and if it contributes something, we’ll go ahead and toss it in. The same methodology is used by your face-to-face feminists, the comediennes, the water-cooler advocates. Use the PG-13 language with some discretion. It’s a measure of how comfortable they feel with the present audience, and occasionally is used as a testament to how infuriated they are but the topic under discussion.

But outside the cyberworld, I’ve noticed the feminist is careful to avoid wearing it out.

Not so with the fem-blog. The swear words are gratuitous. They have to be on the front page somewhere, and in the scroll format, that means a G-rated post is something tripped across seldom-to-never. “Floggers,” we are left to conclude, use this as a calling card to visitors in cyberspace. Or more like a welcome mat. Rest ye weary bones, Sister In Perpetual Anger; here you’ll find all the solvent acid dripped at the oppressive patriarchy your little heart desires to see dripped.

But they aren’t all bad. It was thanks to a “flog” that I found out about this.

[…] Feigning Interest I Made a New Word II Feelings First, Education Second VII Crisis in Omaha Right-Wing Fraud toRepudiate George Bush Supercar On Revolutions How Not To Use Powerpoint A Not-Illegal Bad Guy Imitation is the Sincerest Form XVIII Friends and Family II Jokes That’ll Get You Arrested I’m a Slithering Reptile […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/10/2007 @ 11:49
[…] Now if anyone would like to call this into question, or challenge any of it, then a great place to point them as the discussion kicks into high gear would be right…about…here. At Feministing. One of my favorite flogs. …to say that the “second shift” is because of women’s genetic predisposition to housework is just absurd. And it lets men off the hook. Rena might be satisfied to spend her adult life as the happy homemaker, but the vast majority of us are not. See, those of us who manage to part with our Swiffers long enough to venture outside for a paycheck know that, as Rena notes, there are indeed minute-to-minute unpleasant tasks in the work world. But they add up to a lot more than a sparkling toilet. They allow women to have influence in the public sphere — the world beyond the “little kingdom,” where important decisions are made about the direction of society, and where money and power change hands. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/09/2007 @ 09:46
[…] …one of the angriest, bitchiest flogs around, if indeed it isn’t on the very top of the stack. But now we see the uppity, screeching flog makes some good sense. Stopped clocks, twice daily, and all that. The ultimate in victim-blaming? […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/07/2008 @ 10:45
[…] mess of hot wings. We briefly reflected on this Internet dust-up, and how the owner of the flog is threatening to ban me. It was then I realized […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/12/2010 @ 22:54
[…] Valenti, angry creator of the celebrated flog, which is here…is moving on. Cassy Fiano gives us a run-down of what we’ll be missing. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/12/2011 @ 08:52

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I Made a New Word IISunday, June 10th, 2007

I Made a New Word II
Sunday, June 10th, 2007