I wrote a big long post, but your spam detector didn’t like it. So I’ll summarize.

1: In the spirit of loving criticism, I criticize your reluctance to speak from the heart. When you do it, it speaks to people. It’s real. The more to speak from the heart, the better this world will get. Don’t forget that.

2: I’ve been away from reading blogs for a while, but recently I poked back into my old favourite, Feministe. I’ve been, unfortunately not suprised, but greatly disappointed at how the recent flare-up has played out. There are a handful of bigger-name bloggers who have many times shown themselves to be weak at detecting privilege (I should mention that I don’t consider Jill to be one of them), and I generally expect them to learn from their mistakes because they’re intelligent people who care. Evidently that’s not good enough.

3: In my disappointment with the bigger-name bloggers, I’ve gone out of my way to read the bloggers who’ve criticized the bigger-name bloggers, and I’ve been delighted with what I’ve seen. I have you (and Sudy, and belledame, and BFP, and BlackAmazon, and on and on) to thank for it. Thank you.

You know, this issue is NOT just about her book, but also about her other writings and essays where she shows a complete disregard for the reputation of others in feminism, while demanding everyone fluffs her reputation.

In her blog, she doesn’t retract anything, even if she got the facts wrong before entering an entertaining tirade. She’s even denied writing things, yet you go to the cache, and there it is plain as sight. People make mistakes typing something and sometimes leap to conclusions, but responsible bloggers say “I was wrong.” She doesn’t and even censors or flames those that points out the errors.

I agree with the recent letter written, telling white feminists to please stop fucking up. I think we should be more particular because they all aren’t. Just a few. And we have to have the stomach to call them on it without falling apart at the conflict or Amanda’s ugly reaction.

You’re right, and while I’ve commented in some of the “shitstorm threads,” I’ve never expressly said that I don’t think it’s ok. So I’ll say it here. I’ll never know what went through Amanda Marcotte’s mind when she was writing book or article, and I’ll never be in a position to render an opinion on whether she appropriated anything.

BUT

She and her main defenders strawed-up concerns about appropriation into accusations of plagarism (and have managed to get a lot of people to believe it) and again as jealous spite, all the while throwing around a lot of racist framing and dismissiveness. And that’s not ok.

We all fuck up. When I fuck up, I don’t think that letting me get away with it is respect. I read somewhere earlier this week — and I apologize because I looked everywhere and could not find it again — that we need to stop looking at criticism and using criticism as an attack, and instead see and use it as love. And I think that love is precisely the right word to describe demanding accountability and improvement from your community.

That’s a lovely sentiment; I really like the way you approached this.

I do have a question, though:

Thanks for this. It has disturbed me deeply to see the white, “mainstream” feminist blogosphere fall into line behind “one of their own.”

I confess that there are probably posts I haven’t read on this, but… well… my impression was that most people were agreeing that AM’s behavior was inappropriate at best, with the exception of a tiny group of ardent AM supporters. I remember three people in the feministe thread who were on about how AM didn’t steal, etc, but most of the comments I saw were disagreeing with that stance.

I guess I’m just a little puzzled- I’ve seen many, many blogs expressing support for BFP, and expressing the opinion that AM should have linked to some of the many, many WoC who were doing this work for far longer, and very few blogs that have clamored to “fall in line” behind AM, but I keep seeing comments suggesting the opposite.

I hate naming names, but, outside of Hugo and Lindsey, who else was jumping up to defend AM? At over 100 comments in, there were only 5 people, including AM, falling in line, and two of them left single line comments like “I support you, AM”. There were lots of people saying things like “I like you, AM, but you didn’t handle this properly”, and even more saying “You were totally wrong about this, AM.”

I’m not trying to be contrary, but I’m just surprised, because my reading of this particular controversy was that this was one of the few times that it felt like most people weren’t just siding with the white, “mainstream” feminist blogger, but were paying attention to some of the bigger, underlying issues. Was I wrong on that?

Amandaw:

It’s been rather obvious the entire damn time that the whole WOC community, bfp included, was seen as an outsider. That is how they were able to be compartmentalized. It wasn’t a sister pushing a sister to pay attention to how her actions affect the family. It was a group of outsiders who colluded together to take down an Important Person, and the issue was irrelevant.

Yes! It was so dismissive.