Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[ymu]

There are quite a lot of people who have no trouble finding the misogynistic abuse. I'm sure you genuinely haven't noticed it but, have you tried looking for it? Or do you think that these comments get left up forever on people's blogs and articles because, you know, it's not only the internet and leaving violent sexual fantasies up is considered bad form for publishers and it's frankly fucking creepy having to read that shit, let alone forcing anyone else to.

I'd be astonished if she hadn't received abuse of the type and volume that she claims because it would not fit with any lived experience for me or any woman I know, speaking out on the internet or anywhere else.

 

[love detective]

There are quite a lot of people who have no trouble finding the misogynistic abuse. I'm sure you genuinely haven't noticed it but, have you tried looking for it?

I can just copy & paste bits from previous replies now as you clearly aren't reading them:-

I have never denied that she receives actual sexist & misogynistic abuse from others

I'd be astonished if she hadn't received abuse of the type and volume that she claims because it would not fit with any lived experience for me or any woman I know, speaking out on the internet or anywhere else.

so you and every other woman that you know who speak on the internet (or anywhere else) gets abuse on a daily basis, every single day, of the type below? :-

There's nothing wrong with her that a couple of hours of cunt kicking, garrotting and burying in a shallow grave wouldn't sort out

Seriously? (genuine question by the way)

 

[Delroy Booth]

I wish this much of a fuss had been made about Redwatch for the last, ooh I dunno, 15 years. But I suppose anti-fascists don't count.

My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit well seems to me like intersectional feminism focuses quite narrowly on the concerns of middle-class, mainly white, 1st world uni graduates and pays nothing more than occasional tokenistic lip-service to issues outside of that group's sectional concerns. Hence the lack of interest in Redwatch. And I certainly don't think that the MRA's of this country, disgusting as they are, have a track record of terrorism and violence that Combat 18 and the rest of Adolf Hitler's political descendants have.

I've been asking for days for someone to provide me with an intersectional analysis of the Syrian conflict, y'know so I can work out who are the oppressed and who I ought to be allies with, but alas, there doesn't seem to be one. I guess arabs don't count.

If I was really spiteful I'd go through all the blogs that invoke intersectionality as a easy-to-say buzzword and do a statistical study of which issues get the most prominence. Number of articles written using an intersectional analysis of who's saying what in the New Statesman this week: Over 9000. Number of articles about redwatch over the last 15 years? 0. Number of articles about Syria this week. 0. And so on.

Could it be that the intersectional analysis would fall flat on it's face when used in a situation like Syria, so it's much easier to stick to safer territory with debating the ethics of twitter hashtags and policing language in comment is free?

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

What on earth does or could 'working class culture has certainly dwindled' ever mean?

 

[ymu]

Maybe you don't realise how this looks:

if i got a fuckton of abuse, i'd discuss it under my terms, not yours. I'd probably pick an exemplar quote rather than memorizing a few dozen rape threats to make you happy.

it's not about making me happy

she has form for lying, she lies regularly, she's been caught out lying many times, many of us on this very thread have been the victim of her lying, so when she lies about something, regardless of what the topic is, i'm not going to apologise for pointing it out. she's a journalist for fuck's sake, she regularly lies about her life experiences and uses that to push her work and promote her brand. Most people are happy to pull her up on it in relation to her lies on other topics, and while I can understand/appreciate the sensitive nature of this, i don't see why she should get a free pass to lie about it. The truth of the matter is bad enough, there's no need to exaggerate/lie when talking about it, as it allows her (sexist, abusive) opponents to claim that she's talking a load of shite (in general) and diminish/belittle the actual real lived experience of her and others like her

i couldn't give a shit what pointing this out makes me 'look like'

It's not about making you happy, no, It's about you being allowed to call a woman a liar whenever you feel like it, even when she is talking about threats of sexual violence of which you know nothing.

Because women do that kind of thing, in your head. And only monsters rape, of course. Nothing you do or say could influence a rapist or stop a woman reporting them or a copper or a jury member. Not your fucking problem is it?

If you're going to call her a liar, make sure it is about things you can prove and not simply your failure to read sites run by women and/or give a shit about how men behave in the comments.

 

[ymu]

I wish this much of a fuss had been made about Redwatch for the last, ooh I dunno, 15 years. But I suppose anti-fascists don't count.

My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit well seems to me like intersectional feminism focuses quite narrowly on the concerns of middle-class, mainly white, 1st world uni graduates and pays nothing more than occasional tokenistic lip-service to issues outside of that group's sectional concerns. Hence the lack of interest in Redwatch. And I certainly don't think that the MRA's of this country, disgusting as they are, have a track record of terrorism and violence that Combat 18 and the rest of Adolf Hitler's political descendants have.

I've been asking for days for someone to provide me with an intersectional analysis of the Syrian conflict, y'know so I can work out who are the oppressed and who I ought to be allies with, but alas, there doesn't seem to be one. I guess arabs don't count.

If I was really spiteful I'd go through all the blogs that invoke intersectionality as a easy-to-say buzzword and do a statistical study of which issues get the most prominence. Number of articles written using an intersectional analysis of who's saying what in the New Statesman this week: Over 9000. Number of articles about redwatch over the last 15 years? 0. Number of articles about Syria this week. 0. And so on.

Could it be that the intersectional analysis would fall flat on it's face when used in a situation like Syria, so it's much easier to stick to safer territory with debating the ethics of twitter hashtags and policing language in comment is free?

Can you research some statistics before you make that kind of claim please? It's not hard to find stuff, if you want to know about it.

http://www.un.org/en/women/endviolence/pdf/VAW.pdf

http://www.svri.org/RapePerpetration.pdf

And it would cause an awful lot less offence.

 

[Delroy Booth]

Can you research some statistics before you make that kind of claim please? It's not hard to find stuff, if you want to know about it.

http://www.un.org/en/women/endviolence/pdf/VAW.pdf

http://www.svri.org/RapePerpetration.pdf

And it would cause an awful lot less offence.

Yeah ok you research this then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I've been asking for days for someone to provide me with an intersectional analysis of the Syrian conflict, y'know so I can work out who are the oppressed and who I ought to be allies with, but alas, there doesn't seem to be one. I guess arabs don't count.

I've been enjoying your work on that particular issue. Unfortunately, I tend to think that you are being a bit too subtle for the people you are trolling.

 

[smokedout]

Because women do that kind of thing, in your head.

I don't think thats fair, I can't speak for ld, but there are some quite unique factors in this issue and i dont think its fair to assume someones entire attitude towards rape and sexual violence can be deduced from it

she does have a well documented history of accusing people of mysogynist abuse when it isnt true

other journalists have made up (and over-stated if you accept some of the arguments around suzanne moore) threats of violence recently to deflect criticism and get a story out of it

her entire new book is based on her claims, now i actually happen to think thats a good thing for her to be writing, but if it is based on over-stated claims then that should be open to scrutiny.

finally I did look, shes not actually that active online out of twitter where she has 60,000 followers. I didn't find evidence of what she claims there, she gets a lot of shit, and quite a lot of sexist shit, but not the kind detailed in the emails she claims to get everyday.

and I know you'll slaughter me for saying this, but I have had a lot of online shit over the years, more than enough to be a reasonable sample. now i am sure lp gets a lot more than me, and its a lot nastier, i fully recognise that online misogyny is a problem as ive said many times, but in my experience, as a male blogger, it never comes to my email, i can think of maybe a handful of times out of eight years and hundreds of everything from derogatory (usually classist or conspiracy rants accusing me of being cia/mossad etc) comments to a couple of cases threats of violence that were verging on credible

and tbh that was what made me a bit suspicious. ive accepted i may be wrong, ive accepted i shouldnt have based this around accusing laurie of lying but on what she said about what women bloggers can expect to receive and given the responses from posters on here I respect then it looks like i might be wrong about that as well - although to clarify if you had asked me prior to this i would have been the first to argue that women bloggers (and elsewhere online) get a lot of misogynist shit, way above the shit men get and its something that needs to be challenged - i read a lot of feminist blogs and know a lot of female bloggers

but i found it surprising as i said the scale of it that lp claimed, which it sounds like i might be wrong about, but also the medium, why doesnt it come on twitter where she is most active

thats why i initially posted what i did, i sort of regret it, i wasnt wholly comfortable with it, and i could well be wrong, but it was for the reasons above and not because it is my attitude towards women reporting abuse generally

 

[weepiper]

I don't think thats fair, I can't speak for ld, but there are some quite unique factors in this issue and i dont think its fair to assume someones entire attitude towards rape and sexual violence can be deduced from it

she does have a well documented history of accusing people of mysogynist abuse when it isnt true

other journalists have made up (and over-stated if you accept some of the arguments around suzanne moore) threats of violence recently to deflect criticism and get a story out of it

her entire new book is based on her claims, now i actually happen to think thats a good thing for her to be writing, but if it is based on over-stated claims then that should be open to scrutiny.

finally I did look, shes not actually that active online out of twitter where she has 60,000 followers. I didn't find evidence of what she claims there, she gets a lot of shit, and quite a lot of sexist shit, but not the kind detailed in the emails she claims to get everyday.

and I know you'll slaughter me for saying this, but I have had a lot of online shit over the years, more than enough to be a reasonable sample. now i am sure lp gets a lot more than me, and its a lot nastier, i fully recognise that online misogyny is a problem as ive said many times, but in my experience, as a male blogger, it never comes to my email, i can think of maybe a handful of times out of eight years and hundreds of everything from derogatory (usually classist or conspiracy rants accusing me of being cia/mossad etc) comments to a couple of cases threats of violence that were verging on credible

and tbh that was what made me a bit suspicious. ive accepted i may be wrong, ive accepted i shouldnt have based this around accusing laurie of lying but on what she said about what women bloggers can expect to receive and given the responses from posters on here I respect then it looks like i might be wrong about that as well - although to clarify if you had asked me prior to this i would have been the first to argue that women bloggers (and elsewhere online) get a lot of misogynist shit, way above the shit men get and its something that needs to be challenged - i read a lot of feminist blogs and know a lot of female bloggers

but i found it surprising as i said the scale of it that lp claimed, which it sounds like i might be wrong about, but also the medium, why doesnt it come on twitter where she is most active

thats why i initially posted what i did, i sort of regret it, i wasnt wholly comfortable with it, and i could well be wrong, but it was for the reasons above and not because it is my attitude towards women reporting abuse generally

If you start a tweet with @(theirusername) only the recipient and any mutual friends see it, it's not 'public'. So you can't tell what she's getting tweeted at her by looking at her feed. Also what about direct messages?

 

[cesare]

If you start a tweet with @(theirusername) only the recipient and any mutual friends see it, it's not 'public'. So you can't tell what she's getting tweeted at her by looking at her feed. Also what about direct messages?

I didn't know that, ta

 

[Nice one]

I wouldn't say it regularly veers of into verging on misogynistic abuse - but on the occasions when it does happen it's fairly quickly arrested and those responsible pulled up on it. It self polices itself in that regard, which makes her blanket dismissal of the thread itself as ongoing sexist/misogynistic abuse of her even more disingenuous

that's simply not true. There are the three examples of posters delighting in fantasising about punching her in the face. Nobody said a word apart from LLETSA who was in fact rounded upon for pointing the pretty basic ugliness directed towards laurie penny.

 

[smokedout]

If you start a tweet with @(theirusername) only the recipient and any mutual friends see it, it's not 'public'. So you can't tell what she's getting tweeted at her by looking at her feed. Also what about direct messages?

you can if you search her twitter handle, and dms means she has to follow them as well

 

[ymu]

Yeah ok you research this then http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

You think I somehow don't know what Hitler did?

Really? You think that is an appropriate answer?

Violence against women does not usually involve industrialised murder and this makes it a trivial issue regardless of the one billion women who will be raped in your lifetime. Wow.

I didn't have you down as a hierarchy of oppression type. Shame.

 

[ymu]

I don't think thats fair, I can't speak for ld, but there are some quite unique factors in this issue and i dont think its fair to assume someones entire attitude towards rape and sexual violence can be deduced from it...

Doesn't matter. He does not get to call a woman a liar about sexual threats unless he can prove it. Same as cartoonists don't get to depict Obama as a chimp and claim it's the same as depicting Bush as a chimp.

It's a trope that demeans and directly endangers more than half the people on the planet. That is the only thing you need to know before you decide that coming anywhere close to repeating it is a cunt's trick.

 

[ymu]

If you start a tweet with @(theirusername) only the recipient and any mutual friends see it, it's not 'public'. So you can't tell what she's getting tweeted at her by looking at her feed. Also what about direct messages?

You can choose replies to see those that were replies.

Searching twitter for their Name brings up everything. That has not yet been deleted.

 

[Delroy Booth]

You think I somehow don't know what Hitler did?

And you think I'm oblivious to the actions of MRA's or something?

This is a stupid conversation. I'm out.

 

[Delroy Booth]

I've been enjoying your work on that particular issue. Unfortunately, I tend to think that you are being a bit too subtle for the people you are trolling.

Yeah I know. It's tempting to write something like "I support Al-Nusrah because the Sunni's of Syria were systematically oppressed and the Alawite privileged, and it's not for a 1st world ally to judge what the appopriate methods of confronting privilege in the field should be, only to support the oppressed, so here's a video of 12 Alawite civilians being beheaded and I enthusiastically support these actions. All other allies who do not vocally support the oppressed in their time of need are traitors and cowards" etc etc but it'd go right over the heads of those it was intended for. It'd be a total meltdown.

 

[fractionMan]

that's simply not true. There are the three examples of posters delighting in fantasising about punching her in the face. Nobody said a word apart from LLETSA who was in fact rounded upon for pointing the pretty basic ugliness directed towards laurie penny.

When did wanting to punch someone over the internet become misogynistic?

 

[Delroy Booth]

When did wanting to punch someone over the internet become misogynistic?

Listen if there's gonna be a thread like this about a high-profile female journalist, who just so happens to recieve bucketloads of misogynist abuse and violent threats, then as far as I'm concerned it needs to be absolutely free of all and any violence, no matter how jokingly or ironic it is. I think in the context it's absolutely right. There should be zero tolerance of anything with even a whiff or an undercurrent of violence - that's why Firky's cartoon got a bad reaction, coz alright it was meant as a daft meme and was meant to be an allegory for something none violent but even a trace of violence is too much.

This does not apply to Malcolm Harris, who I offered to beat up earlier on, 1) because Malcy Harris isn't subject to the same sort of abuse than LP is and 2) because he really, really deserves a punch in the face and I'd quite happily do time if I could chin him

 

[ymu]

And you think I'm oblivious to the actions of MRA's or something?

This is a stupid conversation. I'm out.

If you aren't, how could you write something as crass as this?

And I certainly don't think that the MRA's of this country, disgusting as they are, have a track record of terrorism and violence that Combat 18 and the rest of Adolf Hitler's political descendants have.

 

[Nylock]

fractionMan man threatening to punch woman is a little bit misogynistic surely?

 

[muscovyduck]

man threatening to punch woman is a little bit misogynistic surely?

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

 

[fractionMan]

Listen if there's gonna be a thread like this about a high-profile female journalist, who just so happens to recieve bucketloads of misogynist abuse and violent threats, then as far as I'm concerned it needs to be absolutely free of all and any violence, no matter how jokingly or ironic it is. I think in the context it's absolutely right. There should be zero tolerance of anything with even a whiff or an undercurrent of violence - that's why Firky's cartoon got a bad reaction, coz alright it was meant as a daft meme and was meant to be an allegory for something none violent but even a trace of violence is too much.

This does not apply to Malcolm Harris, who I offered to beat up earlier on, 1) because Malcy Harris isn't subject to the same sort of abuse than LP is and 2) because he really, really deserves a punch in the face and I'd quite happily do time if I could chin him

I get this, but I still think punching people over the internet is a unisex activity that can be enjoyed by everyone.

 

[Nylock]

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE

i tried to get the reply in to FM but clearly delroy and YMU were much quicker on the draw to each other than i was to him... (hence the edit)

 

[Nylock]

I get this, but I still think punching people over the internet is a unisex activity.

tbf, punching malcolm harris ought to be a unisex activity....

 

[Delroy Booth]

tbf, punching malcolm harris ought to be a unisex activity....

I'd like to punch him in his "psychogeographical center." Twice - because he couldn't be arsed proof-reading and ended up repeating the same parapgraph halfway though his article. That'll learn him

 

[Nylock]

 

[weepiper]

Saying she must be lying about this because she lies about other stuff just gives me a bad taste in my mouth. Searching through twitter to see if you can find what you deem to be 'enough' threats/nastiness to prove it or otherwise strikes me as very much the wrong track. That's all.

 

[toggle]

simple fact is, if she didn't get a whole fuckton of threats and abuse for being a woman, she would probably be the only 'feminist' (and yes, i know, she's not my kind of feminist) blogger/commentator/ 'reporter' that dosen't.

women get a fuckton of abuse on the net is as much a fact of our life as women get unwanted comments on their personal apearence, or women get felt up in nightclubs. it's astounding that someone can be even vaugely net savvy so unaware of how we get treated in our lives that they don't already know this