by Molly Ivors
Things were kind of, shall we say, meta on Liberal Mountain last night, when I sat down with my delightful family and had Thers tell me that he had been charged by Miss Havisham herself to rein me in.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!
I am not making this up. Observe:
You ought to be responsible about what you put up on your blog before you put it up. Did you realize the subject of the post written by your coblogger is a former student of mine? I think that as a reader of this blog you had to know that. Yet you presented it as a big joke as if I am just a ridiculous fictional character who simply doesn't count as a real person who could be stalked. I suppose I don't count to you because you disagree with me politically.
If you were a decent person, you would say now that you didn't understand, and you should have been more careful and you would apologize to me. If you still don't understand, then you need to think about why I am unable to tell you more in this format.
..........
Apparently, you have a wife. Does she care about feminism? Does she care about the problem of women being stalked over the internet?
And your references to female fictional characters are sexist. Of course, you'll deny it. You think you're a good liberal, but as a man, you have to think harder than that lame self-congratulation. Those fictional characters have nothing to do with me except as sexist stereotypes that fit with your ideas about me because it seems that you have a psycho-sexual problem that urges you to belittle a strong, successful woman who doesn't accept direction from men. You ought to be embarrassed to play out your little problem in public, but you continue to do it, and I continue to think of you as a low, immoral, sexist loser.
Dayum!
Let me explain, very simply, how a weblog (or "blog") works. One person is generally the proprietor, and others, if they like them or trust them are often given posting privileges (or "the keys"). When Thers traveled last June, he gave them to me and a couple other people; when he returned, he encouraged me to keep them, and to post more often. Miss Havisham, who likes nobody and trusts nobody, does not share her keys, as far as I know.
(Thers notes that it was I who coined the term Miss Havisham for Queen Winebox, and I stand by it. I see her sitting at her computer, a mouldering wedding cake in the corner, waiting for Glenn Reynolds to link to her again. But it's not sexist, it's literary. You know, from books. My handle is also taken from a literary character, as is Thers's. We chose these names because we like what the characters represent in their own texts, because they fit. And so does this one. "Miss Havisham" wouldn't have taken hold if it didn't.)
The post to which she is referring is here, and I think it's pretty clear that my concerns, such as they were, were pedagogical. Yes, it was obvious to me that the young person in question was a student of hers--she said so herself even as she encouraged her readers to flagellate the young woman in public. I fail to see how pointing that out is sexist. I do see that it's crappy pedagogy, designed to foster dislike and mistrust between students and professors.
I blog pseudonymously, but it really wouldn't be all that hard for my students to figure out who I am, should they choose to do so, particularly after the comic stylings of the paste-eating business hippie. Should they find their way here, I would converse with them as with anyone else, because I (gasp!) respect them. As I noted in my original post, I am sympathetic to the problem, but I think the handling of it--allowing others to attack, deleting comments, and finally a batshit insane all-caps post--was, shall we say, inelegant. And crappy pedagogy.
Let me take a moment to define feminism, as I understand it, particularly since the beginning of Miss Havisham's temper tantrums about Left Blogistan began there. Feminism is about legal standards insuring equal access to the resources of our society. It is about fighting for political leaders and judicial candidates who will support such access (not Sam fucking Alito, thank you very much). It's about taking responsibility for yourself. It's about making sure that other women have the same options you did even (gasp!) without making some of the same sacrifices--because leaving the world a better, more equitable place is a good thing, not a bad one. It's about the right to control our own bodies and our own minds and understand that ultimately, we need to make those decisions for ourselves, and deal with the repercussions.
But the connection between feminism and stalking is tenuous at best. (Particularly in this case, where stalker and stalkee are both female.) Am I supposed to take responsibility for the fact that Ann is a fool with a uterus in the name of some vague sisterhood? Umm, okay, but if our shared plumbing means I have to stick up for her, she's got a metric assload of hit pieces on Hillary Clinton to apologize for.
My favorite part is in the last paragraph: "it seems that you have a psycho-sexual problem that urges you to belittle a strong, successful woman who doesn't accept direction from men." And then she tells him to tell me what to do.
Why, it's just like rain on Miss Havisham's wedding day.