So, here’s the thing: Yesterday, we put up a guest post. A seriously fucking amazing guest post! Which sparked a seriously fucking amazing discussion! And yet, in that seriously fucking amazing discussion, there were sadly, some people who chose to act a fool — like, here’s a hint: When we’re talking about sexism, maybe don’t pitch in with the “but NOT ALL DUDES ARE LIKE THAAAAAAAAAT” defense — and get themselves deleted.
These people were very angry! They disliked the CENSORSHIP! And one of them went so far as to say that she would Never! Read! Tiger Beatdown! AGAIN!
Well, since she is never reading the blog again (NEVERRRRRR), she probably will not read this little meta-post of mine. But some of you might! And I think it is time to explain some things to you.
People who guest post and contribute to Tiger Beatdown ARE DOING TIGER BEATDOWN A FAVOR. They are making it better. They are making my blog less narcissistic and All About Me, allowing me to represent a wider variety of human experience. They are providing more perspectives, and donating their expertise on topics that fit into the general “media, pop culture, and marginalization” focus of the blog. Typically, I ask them to guest post because they know about topics that I don’t. So, they are enriching both the variety of the coverage and the variety of perspectives and voices available on this site. They are helping me to model what I consider to be the only feminism worth feministing: One based on human community, where all sorts of people — NOT just young, white, abled, cis, creative-class ladies, such as myself — get together and talk about the shit that matters, conveying the idea that humanity is commonly shared, and not to be denied to anyone for any reason. Tiger Beatdown can’t just TALK about that feminism (using, uh, Liz Lemon as an example of how not to do it? I AM A SERIOUS THEORIST, OKAY; I TALK ABOUT SERIOUS TOPICS); we have to DO it. The shape and content of the blog itself has to reflect it.
So, there’s one point. And the other one is: People who guest post and contribute to Tiger Beatdown are doing ME, PERSONALLY a favor. This lady, right here. Me. They are allowing me to work on the Giant Mystery Project, and to pitch other publications, and to write for those other publications, and to meet my deadlines, and to do a lot of things that I simply can’t do otherwise. If I am posting lengthy essays (and they’re ALL lengthy essays) to Tiger Beatdown every day, AND single-handedly screening and answering all of the e-mails sent to Tiger Beatdown (there are a lot of them! And I seriously CAN’T answer them all, at this point, but I do answer a fairly large portion and feel guilty about the ones I don’t answer, and then the people I actually care about, who are not writing to Tiger Beatdown but to Sady, are like, “where is my e-mail from you Sady? Also, you didn’t come to my party/show/whatever. And also, I hate you.” There was seriously a time when my mother came into town to visit me, and I didn’t know she was coming, or that she was here, for twenty-four hours, because I saw all the Tiger Beatdown e-mails, and my mom’s e-mails, and I was like, “Mom’s e-mails can wait!”) AND single-handedly going through each and every one of the comments that this site gets, which at this point routinely number from thirty to over one hundred per day, AND marking/deleting the spam AND deleting the overtly hostile ones before they get published AND moderating the ones that do get published, well: I literally cannot do anything else. Nothing. I can’t clean the house, make dinner, sleep, go out with you this weekend, have other jobs. Ido Tiger Beatdown, and that is what I do, and I do nothing else, and everything and everyone else in my life suffers. For example: I used to live with someone who HATED it when I smoked cigarettes in the house. And this person was like, “for fuck’s sake, just smoke outside.” And I was like, “DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH BLOG-ADMINISTRATING TIME I WOULD LOSE IF I PUT ON MY COAT AND WALKED DOWN A FLIGHT OF STAIRS?? Not to mention the FLAGRANT TIME-WASTE of SMOKING WITHOUT DOING ANYTHING ELSE AT THE SAME TIME, Jesus.” (You: “Quit smoking, Sady!” Me: “Right. Because you want me to be MORE irritable. That’s a good idea!”) This isn’t complaining: It’s my fault for trying to do everything myself, and for not realizing how MUCH of everything there could be.
So, yeah: I bring on guest posters, and contributors, and I love them. So, so much. Which is why it is a continual source of frustration to me that, on nearly every guest post we do, nearly every time someone guest-posts on TBD for the first time, the comments get nasty and disrespectful. It happened to Garland. It happened, I do believe, to C.L. It happened to B. Michael (and oh, did it EVER happen to B. Michael — and I got e-mails, actual e-mails, about how I had sold out by publishing a man). And it happened, despite the OBVIOUS FABULOUSNESS OF HER POST, despite the fact that she has BEEN IN THE FEMINIST BLOGGING BUSINESS, AND WORKING ON A POPULAR FEMINIST BLOG, for FAR LONGER THAN I HAVE, to Silvana.
Let me explain something to you: I personally choose every guest poster or contributor on this site. I personally edit their pieces. Sometimes, I edit their pieces really hard: Telling them each and every one of the ways that someone could, potentially, dismantle or derail their argument, and how to make it better, telling them completely honestly what flaws I can perceive in their posts, and asking them to flesh out their arguments if I personally find them unconvincing. B. Michael’s latest piece had about a thousand words cut, and the headline changed, and it was held in the queue until I’d personally looked into and read the people and blogs he was talking about, and one of his arguments (about the whole “no homo” thing of engaging in homoerotic behavior for awesome straight-dude kicks) was more or less eliminated, because, I told him, he was coming hard at a specific writer, and two specific blogs, and if someone from either of those blogs came hard at us (and someone did) we needed to be able to defend every point in the post based on specific textual examples, and to be able to defend ourselves from charges of unfair ad hominem (and we could). I don’t do this to make their lives harder; I don’t do it because I’m a control freak; I do it because I care about the people who write for me, and want them to do well and to have a pleasant blogging experience, and if someone comes after them, I want to be able to defend them. But, in case you are missing the point, the point is this: By the time something shows up on Tiger Beatdown, I have personally required it to be something of which I like and approve. I have put substantial work into it my very own self.
So, considering that these people are doing my blog a favor, and doing me a HUGE favor, and considering the fact that I consider publishing something on Tiger Beatdown to be, in effect, a statement along the lines of “I, Sady Doyle, personally like and approve this blog post,” it drives me UP THE FUCKING WALL when people start pulling shit in the comment section. And they always do.
I am hard on people when they disrespect me in my own posts. You may have noticed! But I am WAY, WAY HARDER ON PEOPLE when they disrespect my guest posters. There are bans; there are deletions; there are people getting smacked the fuck down. The comment section is moderated more closely, and with more of an eye for disrespect, than it is on my own posts. This is because I know I’m in charge here, and if people have a bad time because they blogged with Tiger Beatdown, it’s my fault. And it’s also because I think a favor deserves a favor. And it’s also because I value loyalty and compassion more than just about anything, and one of the ways I tell you that I like and appreciate you is to GET INTO IT with people who are mean to you. Seriously: If I start fighting your fights, you can tell that I want to be your friend. And if you can’t handle this, if you can’t deal with the fact that you’re not allowed to disrespect people who are not Sady on Sady’s blog, well? Maybe you should just Never! Read! Tiger Beatdown! EVER AGAIN! Because none of that is going to change.
16 Comments
Tiger Beatdown. It’s like a cage fight with footnotes.
I very much don’t like that Silvana felt direspected, or that there was any disrespect present. Absolutely people should be always called out on their moments of obliviousness. Otherwise your commitment is to the status quo, and you could better spend the time filing your nails into a perfect half moon or what have you.
you are sady fucking doyle and any guest poster on this sight automatically has at least a large portion of your awesomeness transferred over. Thankfully awesomeness is self renewing usually
Sady, I just have to tell you that I look on every single word you write here as a huge favor to me. Without fail, every post (both yours and guest posts) teaches me something, makes me laugh, makes me cry, or reaches out and grabs me by the throat and shakes me into a better incarnation. Usually all of the above. So thank you thank you thank you thank you for making Tiger Beatdown the site that I check first every day. I will never! Stop! Reading!
It’s interesting how common that feeling is: “You can be rude to me and I’ll put up with it or maybe argue with you, but if you’re rude to my other guests I will throw you out so fast and hard you’ll bounce three times.”
Sometimes I wonder how much this has to do with growing up female and being socialized as such. (Since I’ve never surveyed people about it, I don’t know how common this feeling is among men reared as men, and no idea how trans* folks experience it.)
Lexica: there was actually a recent psych article suggesting precisely that–that women aren’t judged as harshly for being assertive as long as they’re sticking up for someone *else*; as a result, anticipating this, women tend to be more assertive on others’ behalf.
NOTE: This in no way negates the validity of Sady’s advocacy! Which is totally reasonable! I’m just following up on Lexica’s interesting segue!
(The article: “Negotiating Gender Roles: Gender Differences in Assertive Negotiating Are Mediated by Women’s Fear of Backlash and Attenuated When Negotiating on Behalf of Others” Amanatullah, Emily T.; Morris, Michael W.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 98(2), Feb 2010, 256-267.
No comments are complete without a *flounce* or two.
Silvana rocked the bejesus out of that post, handful of dolts aside (and I use “rock” advisedly).
Silvana rocks. Sady rocks. This blog, and others, help keep me sane through the mire of conservatives that is my state.
So thanks so much for everything. And do ask for help when you need it.
X. Trapnel! Hi! Your point is very well taken. I have that same attitude on my own blog about my fellow posters.
I also noticed that the thing that first made me able to stick up for myself in the face of sexual harassment was the practice that I got through protecting my friends from same.
Lot easier to say “leave her alone, you prick,” than “leave me alone, you prick.” But if you say the first one enough times it becomes easier to say the second.
Tiger Beatdown. It’s like a cage fight with footnotes.
LOL! It seems like thats how it goes for most blogs worth reading.
Silvana – X. Trapnel – exactly! It’s almost socially unacceptable for a woman to say ‘I don’t want this in my life’ – it is assumed that you, YOU, WOMAN, are selfishly DISREGARDING all your friends and relations who also have things they don’t want in their lives that you should probably have PUT FIRST, but you DIDN’T because you probably had your PERIOD or an ill-fitting BRA or something.
S, I experienced sexual harassment at work and was advised by the (female) boss not to take my case higher, because I would look like I was ‘whining’ and she didn’t want her company to look ‘humourless and PC.’
I was so flabbergasted I had to look it up – and yes, it was still 2009.
I quit.
Lexica: there was actually a recent psych article suggesting precisely that–that women aren’t judged as harshly for being assertive as long as they’re sticking up for someone *else*; as a result, anticipating this, women tend to be more assertive on others’ behalf.
NOTE: This in no way negates the validity of Sady’s advocacy! Which is totally reasonable! I’m just following up on Lexica’s interesting segue!
(The article: “Negotiating Gender Roles: Gender Differences in Assertive Negotiating Are Mediated by Women’s Fear of Backlash and Attenuated When Negotiating on Behalf of Others” Amanatullah, Emily T.; Morris, Michael W.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 98(2), Feb 2010, 256-267.
Sady, I just have to tell you that I look on every single word you write here as a huge favor to me. Without fail, every post (both yours and guest posts) teaches me something, makes me laugh, makes me cry, or reaches out and grabs me by the throat and shakes me into a better incarnation. Usually all of the above. So thank you thank you thank you thank you for making Tiger Beatdown the site that I check first every day. I will never! Stop! Reading!
It’s interesting how common that feeling is: “You can be rude to me and I’ll put up with it or maybe argue with you, but if you’re rude to my other guests I will throw you out so fast and hard you’ll bounce three times.”
Sometimes I wonder how much this has to do with growing up female and being socialized as such. (Since I’ve never surveyed people about it, I don’t know how common this feeling is among men reared as men, and no idea how trans* folks experience it.)
Lexica: there was actually a recent psych article suggesting precisely that–that women aren’t judged as harshly for being assertive as long as they’re sticking up for someone *else*; as a result, anticipating this, women tend to be more assertive on others’ behalf.
NOTE: This in no way negates the validity of Sady’s advocacy! Which is totally reasonable! I’m just following up on Lexica’s interesting segue!
(The article: “Negotiating Gender Roles: Gender Differences in Assertive Negotiating Are Mediated by Women’s Fear of Backlash and Attenuated When Negotiating on Behalf of Others” Amanatullah, Emily T.; Morris, Michael W.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 98(2), Feb 2010, 256-267.
I can honestly not believe that people would insult you and/or bother you about any of this. You are, hands down, the awesomest thing to happen to the internet. You’re an unbelievably good writer, a strong moderator, and a woman I’d totally like to go out for drinks with and possibly do laundry for.
Messing with guest posters is so rude I don’t know what to say. It’s worse than pissing on someone’s carpet – it’s pissing on the leg of someone who happens to be standing on said carpet, giving the owner a hug.
It’s also terribly irrational. Given that there’s a handy [Back] button and a nice [Close Window] button, and a cute little bar that tells you where you are, and key combinations that will let you do all of those things and more … why the fuck would you stay here and be in the presence of something that’s making you upset? You don’t have to stay. You don’t have to see us all in a meeting tomorrow, or have that awkward moment where you’re passing someone on the street and OH HELL, THEY’RE LOOKING AT ME AND NOW WHAT DO I DO? If you show up later, no one will jump on you for your tardiness or truancy. Avoiding stuff-you-don’t-like, it’s easy! And free!