What Twitter pile on are you watching right now (3 Viewers)

[Cormcolash]

When the media incessantly just becomes about the media and it's all a competition to work out who is the real victim here, the losers are the readers.

I read that piece, bits I agree with, bits I disagree with, but the general tone was that in fact she is the victim, not them.

Everyone just flinging their personal essays at each other.

An open letter to Lili Marlene

 

[Cormcolash]

this implies the existence of a toxic rabbit

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[ann post]

I mostly posted it because it popped up when I got a chance to read the conversation about different writers and went back checking and was like ohhhh spicy this will add to the conversation.

I agree with bits of it, particularly around twitter/discourse. A lot of people are on a weekly self appointed spokesperson for virtue buzz with issues that are not about *them* specifically on twitter - like you cant tell me the the 338 signatories are all first person source as trans... Like to look at myself i *could* qualify saying things about the trans experience using my social circle but I'm never gonna be a first hand source - which leads me to the whole 'nothing about us without us' tag that goes with disability advocacy, which i can do first hand and have at times.

There are a lot people who are happy to appoint themselves as a source if that is the way the wind is blowing on a particular day om twitter and trade in social capital on that. It is allyship to a point. I get being an ally, I think the most important part of being an ally is in the day to day stuff, the workplace, the (currently non existant) social spaces. I'm a useful prop in being a tallish male with northern accent in that sense.

The primary response I get in my industry around twitter, being on twitter, usage of twitter is that 'its' a great source of news'. That is true, it is faster than any other current stream for news events. So the printhouses and the content houses are all very aware from their internet hit counters that articles disseminate outside their extant followers via twitter, which leads to advertising revenue, so while twitter is at best 10% of Ireland in terms of usage, the reason someone is sharing something is very often originating through that conduit. I've spend a not too extensive amount of time recently trying to hop into other bubbles on twitter to see how they live. They are similar. There are similar right wing bubbles.

I think the value in her response which i'm not seing quoted by todays spokespeople for trans who are not trans twitter stream is that the gender struggle she grew up in was the ground on which space for more gender struggles was built, I think she is trying to convey that along with a few other things. Once someone becomes a valid target they will have their whole past vetted by twitter in real time, by a deluge of people who are not being vetted in any way.I have seen a few examples spanning years where you get the whole saga of twitter elevating someone beyond where they should be, followed by twitter tearing the ground from under that person as it wasn't the same crucible. I suppose thats life, etc, but the sheild of virtue is weilded all too casually in that.

What i see in the twitter virtue machine is valid causes getting inadvertently crushed by the wheels of other valid causes. First hand i've seen people put months into things and on the day they try to bring it to the public, some cat or something pushes it down the charts and out of sight and they are left dejected to some extent.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

Like isn't part of the issue also that she says she's being cancelled or silenced or whatever yet she's been profiled or interviewed or written an article about it in The Daily Mail, Unherd, The Guardian, The Spectator and The New Statesman among others.

 

[Lili Marlene]

Like isn't part of the issue also that she says she's being cancelled or silenced or whatever yet she's been profiled or interviewed or written an article about it in The Daily Mail, Unherd, The Guardian, The Spectator and The New Statesman among others.

also that the article is 6000 fucking words or something. Get to the point you who is so proud of your brevity that you were able to write for THE DAILY MAIL.

 

[YoungHearts]

I mostly posted it because it popped up when I got a chance to read the conversation about different writers and went back checking and was like ohhhh spicy this will add to the conversation.

I agree with bits of it, particularly around twitter/discourse. A lot of people are on a weekly self appointed spokesperson for virtue buzz with issues that are not about *them* specifically on twitter - like you cant tell me the the 338 signatories are all first person source as trans... Like to look at myself i *could* qualify saying things about the trans experience using my social circle but I'm never gonna be a first hand source - which leads me to the whole 'nothing about us without us' tag that goes with disability advocacy, which i can do first hand and have at times.

There are a lot people who are happy to appoint themselves as a source if that is the way the wind is blowing on a particular day om twitter and trade in social capital on that. It is allyship to a point. I get being an ally, I think the most important part of being an ally is in the day to day stuff, the workplace, the (currently non existant) social spaces. I'm a useful prop in being a tallish male with northern accent in that sense.

The primary response I get in my industry around twitter, being on twitter, usage of twitter is that 'its' a great source of news'. That is true, it is faster than any other current stream for news events. So the printhouses and the content houses are all very aware from their internet hit counters that articles disseminate outside their extant followers via twitter, which leads to advertising revenue, so while twitter is at best 10% of Ireland in terms of usage, the reason someone is sharing something is very often originating through that conduit. I've spend a not too extensive amount of time recently trying to hop into other bubbles on twitter to see how they live. They are similar. There are similar right wing bubbles.

I think the value in her response which i'm not seing quoted by todays spokespeople for trans who are not trans twitter stream is that the gender struggle she grew up in was the ground on which space for more gender struggles was built, I think she is trying to convey that along with a few other things. Once someone becomes a valid target they will have their whole past vetted by twitter in real time, by a deluge of people who are not being vetted in any way.I have seen a few examples spanning years where you get the whole saga of twitter elevating someone beyond where they should be, followed by twitter tearing the ground from under that person as it wasn't the same crucible. I suppose thats life, etc, but the sheild of virtue is weilded all too casually in that.

What i see in the twitter virtue machine is valid causes getting inadvertently crushed by the wheels of other valid causes. First hand i've seen people put months into things and on the day they try to bring it to the public, some cat or something pushes it down the charts and out of sight and they are left dejected to some extent.

Thanks for this, very informative

 

[YoungHearts]

S

Like isn't part of the issue also that she says she's being cancelled or silenced or whatever yet she's been profiled or interviewed or written an article about it in The Daily Mail, Unherd, The Guardian, The Spectator and The New Statesman among others.

She mentions bullying-and some censorious editors, and a climate of that at work.

 

[YoungHearts]

also that the article is 6000 fucking words or something. Get to the point you who is so proud of your brevity that you were able to write for THE DAILY MAIL.

I liked the many thousands of words.

 

[Lili Marlene]

I liked the many thousands of words.

If it had been 500 words I would have moaned that it was too short for such a serious subject.

 

[YoungHearts]

If it has been 500 words I would have moaned that it was too short for such a serious subject.

hahaha

 

[David Kronenbourg]

This is what Suzanne Moore's so sore about really, imo: "My fellow staff were gunning for me: time to hand over my job to the young Corbyn crew who spend their lives slagging off the mainstream media but cannot wait to be part of it. Could they write a good sentence? Say something from the heart? Does that matter? Apparently not, they simply think the right things."

 

[ann post]

This is what Suzanne Moore's so sore about really, imo: "My fellow staff were gunning for me: time to hand over my job to the young Corbyn crew who spend their lives slagging off the mainstream media but cannot wait to be part of it. Could they write a good sentence? Say something from the heart? Does that matter? Apparently not, they simply think the right things."

I thought that was particularly pointed at yer man. But yes I agree with you.

 

[ann post]

I go out for an hour and had a quick peek into twitter.

The article is now widespread on my TL. People who have read it and see the challenges in it, people who refuse to read it because of the events that lead to it, people who are calling out people for reading it.

 

[ann post]

I think the comments here represent almost all possible reactions:

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[egg_]

I think the comments here represent almost all possible reactions:

Haha, maybe that's what twitter is, essentially - a machine for generating all possible combinations

 

[ann post]

Meanwhile in problematic ann post lines of questioning:

Spoiler: its a question

Why does feminisim own transexual representation? Like the term TERF, which like or not is both acronym and slur delinieates both conditions to be co-dependent. Theoretically half of trans people are men at whatever stage of transition they might be at. Is it completely unfathomable that some end up being complete mysogonists, or just want a quite life in a male body and not be radical feminist?

 

[Unicron]

Meanwhile in problematic ann post lines of questioning:

Spoiler: its a question

Why does feminisim own transexual representation? Like the term TERF, which like or not is both acronym and slur delinieates both conditions to be co-dependent. Theoretically half of trans people are men at whatever stage of transition they might be at. Is it completely unfathomable that some end up being complete mysogonists, or just want a quite life in a male body and not be radical feminist?

Something to do with trans-men not being perceived as a threat to cis-men the same way that trans-women are perceived to be a threat by some cis-women?

I remember hearing a runner who has transitioned being interviewed about this, he never had to worry about the hostility towards him competing in sport the way that trans-women do. He suggested that there's an element of "misogyny" (his word*) to it, in that regardless of whether or not one recognises the gender identity of a trans-man until one comes along and is able to compete and win at the elite level no one is going to be overly vexed about them having a place in men's sport.

*Obviously "misandry" is a bit of a joke but perhaps trans-misandry is a thing and that'd be a better term.

 

[hugh]

Or in other words - "why are trans issues also Feminist issue?". I don't think Feminism "as such" would claim to "own" it but intersectional feminism would see if very much as part of its set of concerns. And that very much relates to Suzanne Moore's article where she very clearly aligns herself with what she called "good old fashioned feminism" which has many points of disagreement (around social construction of gender etc) with the more contemporary manifestations of feminism that she has a problem with.

I totally get her point of view even even though I mostly disagree with it - but I'd tend to largely keep that to myself because I don't want to be going around telling women what sort of feminism they should be aligning themselves with. But the really frustrating thing about this is that I know just about enough about this stuff to know that this is a bunch of debates that have been going on within feminism for some time. None of it should be surprising to anyone. But it has now become weaponised to advance other agendas and we end up in this mad situation where feminism (at least in it's "good old fashioned" variety) finds itself at odds with trans rights activists when you would assume they should be natural allies.

 

[Space]

Isn't feminism supposed to be about equality for everyone? Everything I've ever read has stated as much. With that in mind if you exclude a certain section of society from your feminism you can be labelled as such so ya get terms such as Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism which is simply radical feminists who don't include trans rights in their belief system or actions. I had to look up what sex based rights were earlier but it looks like feminism that excludes trans women so I can see why the term TERF gets brought up on a purely logical level. Obviously humans are much more complex than semantics and logic and I've no idea if feminism and women's sex based rights are claimed to be one and the same or something separate.

 

[ann post]

Radical Feminism, outside the basic terminology of trans rights is the movement i've seen most vocally align itself with the trans community. I'm definitely playing with definitions here but I'm just imagining someone who transitioned to male years ago, had gotten well into their life and the transition era is a memory and just turns into a ragin mysoginyst. Like why not.

I'd say the first time i got even the slightest wind of the latest wave of feminism existing was when people started going through germaine greer, who was a hero to some older feminists i knew for shortcut on twitter and that sent me back reading some more.

Then you get academic feminists, which I see a lot of who kind of practice feminism in a world of theory* - this is fine, important, but I can tell you first hand that if you sit a table of academic feminists and try to explain to them that the 19 year old hungover lad on the building site who has spoken only to building blocks and cold steel for the last two months catcalling them has actually not spent time trying to learn the difference between third and fourth wave feminism for much of his late teens in preparation for this moment and may not understand the social and emotional ramifications of his actions you will leave that table feeling very unpopular.

And the point of that is that while feminism, as a branding of equality isn't really flawed to a point that it is worth challenging, the people who rally behind it, and weaponise it have just as many blind spots as the kid on the scaffolding looking for a reaction from a woman. Maybe wave five will be intersectional consilatory feminism where the second waves and the firth waves consolidate their progress.... I'm definitely into thinking out loud with my fingertips here anywhooooo.

*i do this with things to.