blogging as a pale imitation of discourse

[sophiaserpentia]

I'm sure a fair number of you know who Twisty is: radical feminist and proud resident of Austin, Texas. I've read her blog for some time, and, like several other transpeople i know, was horrified to witness an explosion of transphobic vitriol in the comments to a post she wrote on December 15 [warning: may be upsetting!] which originally had nothing to do with transgenderism. It hurt so much because (1) of the rawness of it and (2) because it was a surprise to see the topic come up there: Twisty, by self-admission, doesn't bring up trans issues because it is not something she knows a great deal about.

As happens in the blogosphere there have been numerous echoes and responses and retrenchments and un-blogrollings and such. Even though Twisty herself has made it clear she is not transphobic and has been deeply shaken and disappointed by the conduct she witnessed in her own comment page (something with which i can comisserate), i still don't feel comfortable reading her blog. The self-preservation instinct has kicked in and is still overriding my willingness to risk being stung a second time.

The silver lining is that some truly inspired bloggery has come out of this, such as Winter's response: "I did not come to feminism for this."

But on the whole i have a bad taste in my mouth over what i saw happen in the feminist and transfeminist blogosphere in the last couple of weeks. Division between feminists always pains my heart and makes me feel like i'm dying a little. Humanity needs feminism to succeed -- possibly for its very survival.

Feminism is not a revelatory religion with a high priesthood who makes proclamations and writes scripture. There is no "perfect feminist" who is without flaw and whose utterances can be taken as inerrant gospel. There is no easy answer, no laundry list of dos and don'ts that guarantee you're on the straight and narrow. It's an ongoing process of discourse and learning and introspection, and even someone who's been walking this path for decades has room to learn and grow.

Problem is, our society is not tolerant of this kind of process. We expect illumination to come in a flash, to be able to flick a switch and go from hellbound sinner to born again saint. Admitting you might be mistaken, and then forgiving yourself for having a lapse in your insight, are hard. It takes years, and honesty, and humility. It requires that we are capable of admitting, "Oh, okay, i misunderstood, i did the wrong thing, and now i know better and will act differently in the future" -- without excoriating ourselves afterwards.

This is what discourse is: growth and evolution, not standing in a trench of static, unchanging, presumably perfect doctrine exchanging pot-shots with someone in an opposing trench clasping an opposing presumption of perfect doctrine.

But in this society, true discourse is not allowed. It is subversive; it might start off as harmless-enough navel-gazing, but eventually it means questioning the current distribution of power -- and those who have power do not think it's in their interest to encourage that. And so the baby of personal and cultural growth is thrown out with the bathwater of discourse. Discourse becomes "rational dialogue" (so-called because any first-hand accounts of trauma or experience are generally considered off-limits) in which talking points are spat back and forth with no real exchange of meaning at all. Meaning is not abstract, it requires perspective, understanding, and personal experience. "Rational dialogue" is a hamster wheel: radicals are sentenced to an eternity of having the same draining conversations with status-quo defenders over and over and over, like Sisyphus in Tartarus pushing a rock up hill all day every day and watching it roll downhill in the evening.

The internet causes discourse to lose whole dimensions of understanding and communication which are present when you're talking face to face. It encourages a "gotcha!" mindset, and Google makes it possible to dredge up any kind of dirt you need to find on someone to nail someone just that much more thoroughly. Never mind if you have matured and evolved beyond a certain point of view, if you wrote it down it can and will be dredged up to discredit you today. The internet encourages immediate gratification, and so in the blogosphere people often write things without reflection. (I've taken to avoiding posts on current issues, in part because of my concern about this.)

Interacting in the comments page of a blog can feel deceptively conversational, but all too often it is not really conversation.
Let me be plain: for fostering understanding, there just is no substitute for speaking face-to-face.

In any other mode of communication, meaning is lost. For many kinds of mundane interaction this may make no difference, but when the topic at hand is difficult and requires very deep introspection and sometimes even gazing into the soul of the person with whom you are conversing, the internet is not necessarily a boon.

As an aside, to establish the bigger picture i'm pondering: this is a big part of why walls are evil. They block off whole populations from having any contact with one another. Walls do not bring peace, they bring misunderstanding and discord. Peace does not come at the point of a law enforcement officer's gun (this is the myth the government wants you to believe), it comes from face-to-face interaction; it comes from standing beside the infidel at the market watching them haggle over the price of a toy for their kid.

I've lost sleep over flame wars, i've had migraines because of them, gotten sick because of them, and did not feel that my growth was really fostered in any meaningful way. I challenge any of the people who posted transphobic comments in Twisty's blog to spend an hour or two with me, seeing my pain and sharing her pain with me, to see if they can still afterwards make the same comments they made then. (I'd challenge myself to see if i retained the same harsh opinion i have of them, too.)

I don't mean to imply that we should stop having blogs, because on the whole it is still better to have internet communication than not, but i don't know how, really, to address this concern.

Comments

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Well, the trouble is, when you get to an extremely minority viewpoint, it can be almost impossible to meet someone face to face for communication. So for groups like this, the internet can be vital. It is a step between what most outcasts used to have to do - i.e., leave their family and homes and go to the big city where they would find a greater chance of having someone to talk to.

Other than that, all I really have to say is that I find that anyone in any kind of political writing garners enemies, and all too frequently our growing inability to think beyond soundbites has led to any person's rethinking of an issue or expressing unsureness about something as weakness or "losing" the battle. I'm not sure I put that very well but I think you know what I mean.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yes, i don't want to deny how important blogging can be. I'm just wary that it can very suddenly and (seemingly) inexplicably spill over into misunderstanding and argument.

I think for this reason that people who host conversations on radical topics are entirely justified in moderating comments with an iron fist. It sounds paradoxical that this is necessary to ensure a more free flow of ideas, but status-quo defenders are so much more numerous that they are almost certain to either shout radicals down, or to co-opt and misdirect and misappropriate the conversation, if they are allowed to have free reign. Status-quo defenders have the entire rest of the world to cheer and support them.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

It does appear she banned the worst of them after that. She said something about her not being welcome anymore and then you see no further comments from her.
I am much stricter on my blog over there about comments - heck, I don't even allow them much anymore. But I never have been as popular as Twisty.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't fault Twisty in this... i just still feel unsafe and vulnerable.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand that. Just sayin - it's good to know she called her out on it.
Don't read anything you don't want to.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I have been involved in face-to-face conversations where a person was just as obnoxious and heavy handed as a blogger in a flame war. Face-to-face is no guarantee of civility or sensitivity. I have had friends I both like and respect who had other friends who were loathesome despicable pseudo-humans with no visible humanity. I dropped several friends because of the people they chose to invite to parties.

Blogging is more convenient for me. I have to put on my hat and coat before I leave a social event. I just go somewhere else with a flick of my mouse when on-line.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Oh, i know. It is no guarantee of civility... especially with so many people in thrall of the memetic talking points and inerrant doctrines bouncing around in their mind.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

On-line there is less chance I will be an asshole. In person I am likely to respond and the flame war escalates. I have never slugged anyone, but I have come close. On-line, it is easier for me to let go and just go do something else.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I don't think that this necessarily means that the process of discourse has failed. Anger has a meaningful role to play in discourse. This is part of why i am distrustful of "rational dialogue," because when we're playing the rational dialogue game we're not supposed to get angry, it's considered a failing. If we disallow anger, we cut out a whole part of the human condition.

If something another person said makes you want to break their nose, that's meaningful and should be examined.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I support personal life experience, both on-line and in person. Rational discourse is idiotic when it wants to negate personal experience. But when I discourse on-line I have time to gather my thoughts, to do research, and give URLs to the other person. In person, things get all fuss and bluster way too quickly for cogent discussion, imo. I will socialize with friends, but I will leave all disagreements to on-line discussions.

[akycha.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your thoughts on this. I don't have anything mightily coherent to say (I have been extremely incoherent for the past month or so due to stress), but I wanted to thank you both for your analysis and especially for your link to Winter. Given the anthropology that I have been doing, I have been exposed (especially during my last field trip) to an appalling amount of anti-transgender stuff (although less than has been advertised, if you will). I kept repeating to myself: I did not become a feminist in order to hate. Winter was much more eloquent than I on the subject. I shall bookmark her and use the link extensively.

I have also had migraines and been unable to sleep because of flame wars, and I also have meditated on the peculiar problems of electronic media-- the quick paths to misunderstanding and the ways in which one's conversation partners can become dehumanized (even demonized) while one remains strangely vulnerable.

There have actually been studies done (although the studies were about homophobia, not transphobia), which showed that actually knowing the type of person in question-- in this case, a gay or lesbian person-- was far more likely than anything else to make someone view the group as a whole as human.

Sorry about the disconnectedness of my thoughts.

[apdraper2000.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[frahulettaes.livejournal.com]

In any other mode of communication, meaning is lost.

I had a very strong reaction to this. I think because, as a historian, I've read so many letters from past eras where meaning is so carefully crafted. And yet, I must admit that even in face to face dialog, meaning is lost when the definitions in play are not agreed upon. I think that the very idea the perfect understanding and communication are suspect. Which is why we have conversation of all kinds.

I don't know how to address this concern either. I've been in flame wars, and I've been socially excommunicated from whole social groups. Mostly for conveying unpopular ideas.

I think that the discomfort of communication is part of its nature.

Does it make some of us strive for greater clarity?

Striving for greater clarity isn't what everyone's goal is. In fact, generalizing seems to be a part of the problem to me.

The idea that we can know everyone's goals or assume that we're all agreed on a point of information is a gross generalization. But I don't think that moral relativity is the answer either.

We aren't all right or all wrong. We aren't all anything. It's just a hell of a lot more work taking each person, thing, situation and conversation for what it is, not for what catagory we put it/them in.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I certainly don't mean to imply that face-to-face communication is perfect, goodness knows it isn't -- or that there can even be perfect communication. (Which is certainly borne out if anyone gets the impression that i AM implying that above!!)

But i do think that there is more of a chance for thorough (and compassionate!) understanding of someone else that way than any other way.

You bring up examination of historical texts and this launches all kinds of thought trains for me, largely because of the amount of time i've spent examining ancient religious texts. I'm bothered by the modern approach which blithely -- and deliberately -- overlooks the socio-political context of religious writings. I read a terrifying essay by Karl Barth essentially justifying the deliberate erasure of historical context from biblical scholarship.

Generalizing is a fine art. It makes things too cluttered to always tack on the disclaimer, "there are exceptions of course" to every single statement one makes. I explicitly refuse to do this, because i assume that anyone able to follow my trains of thought is also capable of remembering without being told that any generalization has exceptions.

[frahulettaes.livejournal.com]

Well, hmmm. I think there's an added difficulty when studying religious texts vs purely secular (is there any?) texts. Religious texts and study carry a particular weight becuase they can be (both the text and the reader) can be very charged with emotion. Where as, the study of secular writings seems to me to allow for more detached (though not objective) study.

As to generalizing, well, I like to rule it out in conversation. Goodness knows I don't know you well enough to know that you don't generalize in a careless fashion. Knowing that you don't allows me to read your posts differently.

I'd like to add that being understood and communicating is, to my mind, an elemental process.

Would I be carelessly generalizing if I said that, we can all agree that being understood and communicating effectively, are things we all want?

Probably.

Thank you for your thoughtful post and reply.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Part of why it stung so much is that most feminist spaces i see online are, if not entirely celebratory towards transsexualism, at least tolerant.

It's unfortunate that makeup and beauty standards are such a divisive issue in feminism. It's an important issue because so many women face adverse effects to their health and financial well-being because of the beauty myth. Somehow that got translated in some spaces to, "You can't be a feminist if you wear makeup," which is unfair because, as i said above, there is no perfect feminist.

It seems to *me* that any feminist theory should recognize that women make many of their choices under the gun, so to speak. A woman who wears makeup will get praise for it, and she will get criticism. A woman who does not, will get praise for it, and will get criticism. So there is no winning for women on the makeup issue.

Secondly, my attitude is that women shouldn't have to give up a damn thing they don't want to give up.

[redslime.livejournal.com]

very nicely said

i often skip over some of the gender stuff, i mean who am i to have an opinion on it. but i really like what you said. I find it so unfortunate that there are places here and in real life that we might not feel safe being who we are.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Aww, thank you for your sweet words! Hugs! I am kind of dismayed that this has been going on a month since the initial post that started this conflagration and i am still, today, very depressed about it.

TBH i am a little uncomfortable with saying that feminists are not targets for murder. It has happened in at least one instance of which i am aware (though not in the US) and i think that violence against abortion providers counts too.