What I learned from blogging this year, a cautionary tale

Confession: I have not had tons of fun blogging this year. I've had repeated troll invasions and I've been banned from other blogs, because of things I've said here. People are getting testy. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Etc.

During President's Obama's ascent, everyone on the left was very lovey-dovey. Now that it appears his administration may well be going to shit, tensions are rising. People are showing their true colors. And as I said, this year hasn't been as much fun.

My New Year's Resolution is to remember why I started this thing: to have an outlet for MY OWN opinions, whether they are popular and well-liked or not. And to have fun doing it.

I promise to be ever-more frivolous, whimsical and self-centered in the coming year. I will write about more old movies and similar silly things that are special to me.

I also promise to ban the trolls forthwith, instead of letting them get the upper hand. My deepest apologies for bad moderation.

~*~

What I have learned from blogging this year, in no particular order:


1) "Activists" you have defended in arguments on the net, will not necessarily defend you in return. In fact, you can usually count on them not doing it.

I haven't figured out the reason for this, unless it's because most internet "activists" have not done any actual activism in real life. They believe blogging/online-brawling equal 'activism' (hence the quote marks). They don't really know what is required by activism in the real world, where day-to-day compromises and coalitions are crucial and necessary for progress.

What we unequivocally learn in real-life activism is that you must defend your allies in return; this is not an option. But online? No such understanding exists.

The bottom line: blogging is consequently reduced to social networking, not political networking. We should probably not be surprised it replicates the pettiness of high school cliques, rather than the expedience and cohesion of a political party, group or collective.

Still, it is terribly disappointing.

2) Ageism is so prevalent and accepted in Blogdonia, nobody is allowed to mention it.

Any time you say anything about this on ANY feminist blog? i.e.: Gee, where are the old women? Why aren't any women over 50 [1] ever linked/quoted/asked to guest-blog? Why are most of your participants so young? Why is the 802456th thread about Joss Whedon necessary again? Etc... these questions are not welcome or considered relevant or important. You will be told to shut the fuck up in various and sundry ways... even down to outright banning and blacklisting. Ageism is not a political issue, it is some damn grandma bitching. (As many feminists and progressives have proudly placed the concerns of young people OVER those of old people in the recent health care debate, we should probably not be surprised at this phenomenon either.)

For these reasons, I do not ask these questions any more, on any blogs, of any blogger. I confine my criticisms to my own blog, since I am likely to be edited, censored and/or banned whenever the issue is brought up.

3) It's okay for feminists to brag about their connections to influential men... even right in the front-page sidebars of their blogs! (boggle)

I know, shocking. Back in the day, such "male identification" would get you tarred and feathered in short order. If your daddy, husband, boyfriend or significant male-other was important, rich, influential, well-known, etc. you kept your mouth shut at all costs. If this fact should be belatedly discovered, you had to bring the goods, girlfriend. Your husband is the production manager of an alternative newspaper? Then you owe us an article and a mention! Your daddy is a rich banker? Then we expect a donation! Your boyfriend is a local rock and roll star? We expect him to play a benefit! Etc. And yes, you did this without argument if you wanted to belong to the collective. (It was the LEAST we could do, after all, as feminists obviously benefiting from male/heterosexual privilege.)

Nowadays, it appears this feminist-based privilege-sharing has been lost. These new feminists just want you to know who their fella is, as sheer proof of their wonderfulness: "My boyfriend is ____, am I hot or what?"--again, hearkening back to high school, and how cool one must be to get a date with the most popular dudes.

(sigh)

At left: Daisy discovers many Big Bloggers think she is a nuisance.

(4) Welcome to the camp, I guess you all know why we're here...

Links are the coin of the realm in Blogdonia. If you go and offend the wrong people, the Big Bloggers will put you on the unofficial master-blacklist [2] and refuse to link you. They usually only link multi-degreed, highly-connected folk like themselves, but occasionally, they will mix with the rabble, and deign to link someone from the lower echelons. If you want to BE one of those lucky people the blogging-royalty shines their (very limited) light on, you'd better behave yourself. Do not inform them they are full of shit (even when they are), on your blog or theirs. Do not point out their mistakes or correct them. They don't want to hear it. (By contrast, lower-echelon bloggers are usually grateful for the attention, any attention.)

Kiss ass. Tell them how wonderful they are, how insightful, how politically right-on. Remember in the 70s, how everyone was nicest to the neighborhood dope dealer, even when he became obsessed with conspiracy theories and didn't seem quite right? Same thing here, only now it's the Big Bloggers, and instead of handing out joints, it's linkage.

Keep this in mind and you won't go wrong.

5) "Of course I'm respectable. I'm OLD. Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."--John Huston as Noah Cross in Chinatown.

This year saw the passing of a rich, white, famous, privileged heterosexual male politician from one of the world's most influential and well-known families. Everybody went into spasms of grief, while your humble narrator was rude enough to point out that he had let a young woman die in his car in 1969 (whom he possibly had impregnated, so the rumor went), and so, fuck him.

Good God, the torrent unleashed.

From the left, from the right, from feminists, from all kinds of people. I had to delete a FEMINIST (!) from my blog over it. I was told that because this rich white man had done so much for the peepul, for da wimminz, for the poor bedraggled masses, that it was horrendous of me to say "fuck him"--as if my comment had any power at all, compared to his and his family's considerable power. I was also repeatedly informed that one possibly-pregnant Catholic secretary dying a horrifically-slow death, drowning inch-by-inch over 12 hours, was a small price to pay for having a solid liberal in the Senate.

Don't I realize that?

Others reminded me that I was being a rude redneck, reminding everyone of such things at the time of the man's DEATH. (And what about HER death? When do we talk about THAT?)

I was stunned by this display. Beyond stunned, I almost wondered if the right wing was correct, that the Left has no moral compass. (The New York Times dutifully censored all reader-comments that mentioned said young woman on the Senator's obit page!)

How can anyone justify and/or write off the slow-death of an innocent woman? I am still stunned over these reactions, these lengthy equivocations.

Obviously, some people's deaths are more important than others. Women's deaths are automatically less important; working-class deaths hardly rate the newsprint. And young women labeled "sluts" for partying with married senators? Even less. We see the points being taken off; her value lessening and lessening in the eyes of the media, as well as Blogdonia. Meanwhile, I wondered, what does it take for the dead senator [3] to get points off? As far as I could see, he was untouchable.

This was a very educational experience for me.

Some, we see, are more human than others.

At left: Daisy reacts to repeated troll invasions.

6) You must never, I repeat, never, engage the gun freaks.

They will not leave you alone.

I was stalked for a solid month by one in particular, who then brought along his like-minded droogs. And I am pretty libertarian when it comes to guns--own as many as you like, I don't care. What I did was question the common sense of GIVING OUT AN ASSAULT RIFLE at a political rally, as well as make a nasty vegetarian remark about BBQ going perfectly with the whole violent motif of the event. And BAM, they were all over me like proverbial flies on shit, as if I had said I wanted to ban ALL guns.

I think the Second Amendment rocks, but it's Larry Flynt syndrome all over again: We like the First Amendment, but we also wish scumbags like Flynt were not the poster children for it. Unfortunately, they are exactly the people who WILL be the poster children, since they ARE the scumbags. The question becomes, do you want to make an exception for Larry Flynt? I say, no.

Do I want to make an exception for assault rifles? Well, I haven't decided, or at least, I certainly hadn't decided until meeting up with these rightwing gun freaks. Now, I am inclined to say: Full Second Amendment rights for everyone who has not engaged in any hate speech or stalking. If you have, we should rightly take away your guns, for safety's sake.

If you can't decently handle the First Amendment, why should we believe you can handle the Second?

7) Women all over the world are tired of sweaty boobs!

Yes, my most overwhelmingly-popular post this year was about how women aren't allowed to take off our shirts, due to the almighty sacred titties, which must be covered up always, amen. A hugely popular post (for me, anyway)--I stopped counting after about 10,000 hits. But I guess I struck a nerve! The post was linked on sites like Reddit and StumbleUpon, where the women were uniformly, screamingly positive. I guess I'm not the first gal who ever wished she could shed her shirt to simply duck under the sprinkler for a second...

It's notable that the post just got a new round of linkage in Australia, where the women are enduring a long hot summer right now... the original post was written in July. As summer entered the Southern Hemisphere, the post was widely shared once again. I am deeply honored that I have voiced the feelings of so many women, of all ages, classes, races, countries and backgrounds.

And for the record, the men are still complaining. While they love love love to look at the boobs, they seem very distraught over the idea that seeing them everywhere might become commonplace... they may actually catch sight of old, wrinkly, fat or weirdly-shaped ones. (The fact that we have historically been forced to look at their old, wrinkly, fat or weirdly-shaped boobs, doesn't seem to occur to them.) They want women without shirts, of course, but... do you mean... ALL WOMEN? It seems to terrify them.

Obviously, we're on the right track!

~*~

Thanks to all my regulars who have supported me in the past year, particularly as the trolls periodically invaded. My Christmas Facebook Friendship Drive is officially over, but please let me know if you'd like to friend me anyway... I was delighted to meet so many new readers!

Happy New Year to you all!

~*~




[1] The standard reply to this complaint is: But we have women over 40! I have no idea why they consistently employ this rather inane non sequitur, as if it makes any sense at all. It's like saying, wow, we don't have any people from New York, but we have people from Canada! We don't have any green beans, but we have popcorn! Um, okay.

[2] Of course, this master-blacklist doesn't really exist. ("The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.") From what I have been able to discern, the non-existent blacklist is mostly drawn up over obscenely-expensive drinks in trendy Manhattan/DC/Los Angeles/other-coastal-area bars. Thus, if you live in one of these cool areas, you can worm your way into an invitation and actually get to talk to these people in person! And you can then have significant input on the makeup of the master-blacklist (that doesn't really exist, of course).

[3] I almost used a rock-band name here (Dead Kennedy), but decided that would be disrespectful, so I refrained. Footnote because I want credit for wit anyway!