“Woman-baiting” continues unchecked on Guardian’s Comment is Free
Jane Da Vall
Ex-Guardian reader
Some time ago, I accused the British newspaper, the Guardian, of excluding women from its discussion forum, so they barred me.
I find myself torn between outrage at the decision, appreciation of its irony and a certain thrill at being declared too offensive to be let loose in the cesspit that is the Guardian’s Comment is Free.
I have made the charge before that Comment is Free is a publicity machine for the men’s rights lobby, to which the Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott, responded that women must ‘battle through any perceived misogyny’ if they want to be heard.
Men have no such condition placed on their right to speak, but feminists ought already to know that life isn’t fair.
In any event, the rare pro-feminist male ‘CiFer’ gets at least as much grief as women. He is vilified for what he says, however, and not what he is.
Having experienced both, there is no more dispiriting feeling than the pointless frustration of engaging a bigot whose metier is you.
It is only the misogynists who really feel at home in the Guardian’s Women section. My interest was piqued initially because the situation reminded me of the Emperor’s New Clothes. It all seems so wrong, but no-one says anything.
The section of the website headed Women is occupied almost exclusively by men. Articles published there are written as if to women and feminists, but there is a near universal rejection of feminism in response and a barely discernible female presence at all.
The repeated claim of feminist credentials by the men present is ludicrous but rarely challenged. Occasionally, a newcomer will ask what the Daily Mail’s readership is doing there and where all the Guardian readers have gone, but the question is quickly buried beneath a mountain of spite.
Freelance journalist and feminist activist, Julie Bindel, who wrote an article this week on the team kit for women’s beach volleyball at the Olympics said:
“I don’t think it would be a great idea for me to join in this thread at the moment, although hopefully I will be able to later. many of the comments are so vitriolic and plain woman-baiting that I am a little lost for words.”
Julie
And then she was gone. It is an (almost) complete and full explanation of why female readers are absent from the Guardian online.
How can the Guardian justify making women’s right to speak conditional upon their ‘battling through’ when the most battle-hardened journalists are unable to do so? They cannot justify it, they do not try.
On this point, they too are silent. It is not even clear if an acknowledgement by Julie Bindel has elevated the misogyny from the unreliable ‘perception’ of female readers to an existence in real life.
I say it is an almost complete explanation because I now know the Guardian is not simply responsible, but is actively contributing to the problem. Moderation of the site is based upon user-generated abuse reporting.
It is, therefore, heavily weighted against women by reason of the gender disparity among users and the dominance of anti-feminist beliefs.
The moderators, constantly wading through a sea of bile, seem not to have noticed. To their dulled senses, standing against bigotry looks more egregious than the rape apology which they publish as fair comment.
But, really, isn’t this the worst kind of navel gazing? Who cares about gender representation in the media when the country is erupting?
What has failing to make public space for the voices of women to do with hoodies looting HD televisions?
We hear about these young men on the street, raised by single mothers, with no responsible father figures in their lives, no role models, no community to instil shared values, no jobs or bosses or workmates.
Who does know these boys? The answer is obvious, yet nowhere in the media do I see the mothers being asked their opinion.
Maybe the Guardian would have thought to do so if there were more women there to notice their absence in the first place.
Quick note to tell you I love your piece on The Guardian’s “comment is free”.
I have always found it strange that the Women’s section falls under the “Life and Style” category on the site. Yes, yes, right there next to “dating” and “showbiz”, because that’s all that really interests me, right?
Three cheers to you, Jane! It needed to be said!
Totally agree, and have put in an official complaint about why a couple of observations I made about 500,000 female foetuses aborted a year in India looks like femicide were deemed too offensive to even print even though I’d framed them just as above. Also, the constant blaming of hoodie behaviour on single mothers is blatantly sexist – where’s the debate on the absence of fathers and how their very absence is telling the majority of boys that men have no accountability for their behaviour – they can absent themselves from responsibility for their every action whether it be fathering children they have no intention of bringing up or putting a wheelie bin through a shop window and somehow it will the nearest female that will get the blame. Berating and blaming the parent that has stayed to look after their child is hardly a solution to absent parenting.
Vicki, I’m just waiting for the Guardian to start calling single mothers feckless and their transition into the Daily Mail will be complete.
Thank you, Sabine. In fact, this has been said countless times, by hundreds of women and a fair number of men, on the Guardian’s site over a period of years. The most astonishing thing of all to me is the breathtaking contempt displayed by the Guardian in completely ignoring its female readership.
Hi Jane
Alison thought you might enjoy the response I got back from CiF moderators this morning:
Dear Vicki,
The original comment which was moderated stated:
What … not a single comment from all the trolls who regularly hang out on comment is free? Why so quiet – surely you have some explanation that will put the blame for aborting female babies on feminists and feminism? Speak up now …
Which as I stated in the previous email was considered to off topic and an invitation for trolling.
The comment which you refer to in your email started with a complaint about moderation which is why it was removed:
Last comment was deleted by moderators … strange … but I say again, 500,000 girls aborted in just one year seems like cleansing of a single group of people on a scale not seen since the 1940s. If this was an ethnic group of people rather than a gendered group of people it would be classed as a crime against humanity … but it’s not … when are females going to achieve human status in the eyes of the world …
Kind regards
Ed
And my response to his:
Ed
That seems a really poor excuse for suppressing my comments/freedom of speech when you look at the women baiting that is a routine component of CiF. Why is noting the scale and volume of aborted foetuses selected on gender to similar numbers of people selected for death because of their race likely to drive the piece off-topic? Surely that is a very relevant point to be making and one that has been made with regard to ethnic cleansing in Serbia, Rwanda and Sri Lanka when done on race, but apparently it is not allowed to be said about cleansing of members of one gender. Why not?
I kind of agree with Ed about the first one, you were calling them out. 🙂 Mind you, I have seen plenty of other comments in a similar vein, still there, not moderated. Perhaps if you had couched your comment in a ‘witty’ one-liner or ‘knowing dig’ at some other paper’s comments or something…? 😉 The second comment rejection sounds churlish. No one must speak of the moderators at CiF? Interesting.
I wonder if opening a conversation about their own forum guidelines would be helpful? They make big about not tolerating all sorts of ‘-isms’, sexism being one of them. The guidelines sound like the very model of a good comment space, actually. If only. 😉
Hi Halla
I thought I was being witty! To be honest, I don’t think there’s any point in discussing this any further with the moderators or even the editor – it’s like trying to get a member of the BNP to see they’re racist. I think we should complain to the Guardian editor in chief – after all, this shit is being published under their watch. What do you think Jane?
Hi Vicki – so did I, sorry. 😉 I was being a bit snide I suppose, meaning that there are a lot of people in CiF glancing askance at a lot of things in a knowing way and being generally, well, snide. I don’t think you’ve quite sunk to the level required to be a prolific commenter there, so your comments get rejected.
It is a really poor excuse, Vicki, I cannot explain the free pass given to sexism and I have asked them many times without response. If women respond to it with anything other than stoic forbearance, they are removed. There are very few women left, the Guardian is misrepresenting the demographics under cover of anonymity.
Look at this thread (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/14/slutwalk-female-dress-no-ones-business?commentpage=all#start-of-comments), some of the comments are frightening, little short of incitement to violence. The moderators didn’t miss it, they approved these comments. Instead they delete you and me. Here is what the Guardian considers less offensive than we are, Vicki:
“So go ahead, carry on exciting the opposite sex without spending the time to consider the consequences because you are more interested in how to get the new best handbag. Just don’t come bleating when things get too hot for you.”
Does The Guardian think it is being brave and daring? Standing up against those all-powerful rape victims? I don’t understand it.
Jane, do you think it’s worth complaining to the editor in chief rather than Chris ‘just battle through the bullying’ Elliott? After all, this shit is in direct breach of their guidelines and there seems no point having them if they themselves don’t adhere to them. Better to take them off entirely and admit the site is to fair debate what Croydon is to civic harmony.
Certainly, it is worth it. If they are not responding to their own values then they must be responding to what they believe is popular. It must be nice to be No. 2 in the charts, and the obvious route to the No. 1 spot is to be more Daily Mail than the Daily Mail. The more people that disabuse Alan Rusbridger of that idea the better. It is correct, but surely not what the Guardian should be doing.
The reason that I started writing to the reader’s editor in the first place is because I thought my case would be made by the core values of that newspaper, and that those values were applied. The Guardian is no worse than the Daily Mail, as far as the commissioned publishing is concerned, they are the feminists they claim to be.
I could complain to the Daily Mail about sexism until the end of time (I hope not) and get nowhere. Their editorial line is no secret, nor do I begrudge them it, contrary to I read about my motives, I do believe in free speech. The Guardian has a different editorial line, and their online publishing ignores it.
I thought the editors must be unaware of what was being said, and repeated, over and over, ‘below the line’, which was drowning anything the journalists had to say. So, I told them, and told them, and told them.
Now, I have to accept that they do know, and they do nothing. So my quest changed – I wanted an explanation. Please explain, I asked, how I, and so many other women, have misunderstood what you are doing at Comment is Free. What are we missing?
But, I got no answer. No-one gets an answer. At this, I must conclude that the editors know they are doing something wrong, unjustifiable by their standards, but cannot admit it.
That is where I am today. So write to Alan Rusbridger by all means, but he does already know.
I like the way Chris Elliott thinks the misogyny is only ‘perceived’ – as if we women cannot really tell that we’re being insulted, ridiculed and dismissed. I wonder what he’d say if he allowed comments on thick lipped black people or hook nosed Jews to be printed – would that negative stereotyping ie racism be just ‘perceived’ and it would be up to him and his superior editorial team to work out if the insult was meant or just a bit of sport for the baiters in which case something for the victims to ‘battle through’. Doesn’t he realise that that’s what sexism/racism is, a life surrounded by people who want to make your existence a battle? Guess he’s too young and not well read enough to remember Enoch Powell or 20 years back when rape in marriage was a man’s right.
Quite – what does anyone have but their perceptions, after all? If people perceive sexism *all the time* perhaps the person speaking should consider examining what it is they are saying to see why it keeps being mentioned.
Didn’t David Starkey have an Enoch Powell moment the other day? The riots were caused because Britain isn’t British enough, or some such rot?
The riots were because ‘the whites have become black’, in that now infamous quote, and also because white men have starting imitating Jamaican patois. Yes it was as ridiculous as that sounds, this isn’t selective quoting.
Yes. Saw the clip after I posted that. Head-clutchingly bad, wasn’t it? Suppose it was a quick way for him to shoot his credibility right out of the water.
Chris Elliott is not young, he is the Reader’s Editor. He is supposed to be an experienced news man that the readers can trust.
The “perceived” slur shows his instinct is to question the judgment of the women, all of them, and dismiss them without investigation. He may be someone male readers can trust but women had better not. The opinion of women on what constitututes sexism is not only not dispositive, it is to be discounted entirely.
Unfortuantely the CIF section of the Guardian Website has always attracted a strong number of Trolls who like nothing more than to argue for the sake of it, no matter what you’re posting. I admit there is a horrendous amount of right-wing rhetoric, racism, mysogny and homophobia on display from people leaving comments on CIF. However, that is surely the point of the Comment being ‘Free’? And in defence of the Guardian, it does a fair amount of coverage when it comes to Feminism and Gender Issues and does so without the sneery parochialism or conservative dogma of the telegraph or times.
It is certainly the point of Comment is Free, my point is that it is worthless, no, it is harmful. The freedom of speech it allows racists and misogynists comes at the expense of the speech of women, (and, I full expect, minorities too – nobody likes to be surrounded by people who hate them).
The Guardian gives a voice to a handful of protected feminist journalists, it has allowed hate to drive away almost the entirety of its female readership and to silence ordinary women in any discussion about their own rights.
Should women have to suffer hatred to speak? Why? Why is it more important that misogynists and racists are heard than women? The Guardian is making that choice.
And if the Guardian does not give ordinary women a voice in the media, who does?
The problem with the experiment at Comment is Free is that no-one is collecting data from it and analysing that data. The Guardian staff are not scientists, they do not know how to run an experiment.
No-one has said, at any point in the last 5 years, “Is Comment is Free, in practice, a good thing?”
Someone (not me!) must have the time necessary to trawl through it all and collect some data. Might make a good dissertation topic in a relevant subject.
I agree, I think CiF is actually harmful – it allows debate to turn into pure baiting, which is so far away from Voltaire’s original principle of free speech – the freedom to speak about things that are thought heretical such as the Earth being round etc – not to shout at Leonardo that he’s a hairy faced gimp until he gets exhausted at the abuse and shuts up. That is not freedom of speech – and women’s freedom to voice their experiences of life is being radically curtailed by men all around them who have become, over the past 20 years of lads mags, increasingly aggressive at any woman who does not blow smoke up their a*** permanently. Its like The Stepford Wives but with domestic or verbal violence attending our every step.
In fact, even the few women who do stick it out are not expressing an opinion, for the most part. They are firefighting, responding to the vitriol around them, rather than actually initiating a discussion on their own thoughts on the article.
Well I have been. I like stats, it’s why I love baseball. The form that human interaction and communication is taking online is fascinating, and also frightening. It is incredibly irresponsible of the owners of global meeting places like guardian.co.uk not to monitor those spaces, particularly where they are providing the cover of anonymity.
The internet is not like the ‘real world’, where extremists are contained by the sheer difficulty of amassing strength in numbers. This can be done in moments online and extremism graduates to the centre of these online public spaces by driving the moderates out. Who wants to spend time with nazis?
The trouble is that extremists then gain strength in their perceived numbers and support on line – which cannot but help perpetuate and support those views out in the real world – that’s how propoganda works … and I’ve never seen a cause that used propoganda to suppress a particular viewpoint that didn’t also use violence and intimidation too. I will write to Alan Rusbridger – as this seems just another case of corrupted values in the media. I have also written to my local MP about women’s portrayal in the media too – am thinking the only thing they won’t be able to dismiss is if we start burning ourselves outside Parliament as per Afghanistan women etc.
Yes, didn’t we just get a taste of extremism fostered online and released.
They will stop dismissing us when we force them to, not by pointless displays of victimhood but by using the enormous powers that we have. Women hold the majority voting power in the UK and we buy everything. Those are considerable assets. Watch the Guardian try and survive with no target female audience to sell to advertisers. They may be able to snow them right now with demographics from the print newspaper but that’s not a plan with a future. Aside from anything else, the form the Guardian has taken online is such bad business.
What makes you think they couldn’t dismiss that? (well, more cynical than usual, that is)
My fake HTML tags vanished on that so the part in brackets doesn’t make a lot of sense, sorry. 🙂
I think the lack of instant non-vocal feedback plays a part in this process too. People are free to come up with ever more extreme views because they can’t see the reactions of all those reading. Without that they can filter out disagreement a lot more easily.
Well, it’s a theory, anyway. 🙂
Not being in the same roomas the target of their venom, allows people to misunderstand its impact, possibly. It also allows cowards to say whatever they like without fear of being held accountable.
Many of the moms are abused women. I have worked with mothers of angry lawless boys and some girls and these women have their money taken, are physically and verbally abused and some even raped by their children and children’s friends. Speaking out would bring more abuse on them.
I bet it would, and that’s the last thing one would want to do. Surely, though, there are ways of making their situation, and their opinions, known without exposing individuals? Isn’t it logical, and in all our interests, to make these women a priority in any government response to the riots. They don’t want their children to riot or sell drugs,they are the natural allies of law and order and they are being ignored.
As long as our culture uses violence and abuse with males who have no empathy and women who confront and work with the males on their level as entertainment stopping the abuse is almost impossible.
David Cameron saying some parts of our society are not just broken they are sick is exactly right – but he’s looking at the wrong people. It’s the rich and the leaders that are sick – the rioters are just the symptoms of the sickness. We have leaders who collude with a media that portrays all single mothers as benefit thieves, who foster a male media that promotes a fuck and dump approach to women and the children they father and then the Government berates those same women for the fact that their ex-partners and children have no respect for them either. Its known as scapegoating. Single mothers have no respect in society and are totally undermined by every media institution and in turn, this allows boys and men to help create the phenomenon of single mothers, to treat them like shit, to treat others like shit and to get away with it scott free until they start rioting and behaving like this outside the home at which point they are locked up. But considering only 8% of the rioters were girls, I think that females seem to be being given a much larger share of the blame than men.
I think the worst thing our modern society has done has made us suspicious and cynical of one another. Between government and tabloid press we’re fed certain narratives and it’s too easy to fall into those thought patterns. All teenaged males are hoody louts. All men are bastards and potential rapists. All women are money-grabbing, looks-obsessed castrating bitches. All teenage females are out to get knocked up to get a free house and trap a guy. All young fathers are desperate to abandon their kids and their kids’ mothers. Everyone on benefits is a cheat and out to milk the system. Every politician is a cheat and out to milk the system. Everyone is obsessed with money and no longer cares about their community. Every banker is rolling in our money and whining about their bonus being a bit lean this year. And so on, and so forth. It’s really depressing, and it’s not true.
I wish we could move away from the sort of blame and ‘counter blame’ discussions that happen in the news and instead always ask first ‘how do we make it better?’
I want to post a Youtube link but my PC won’t play sound at the moment so I can’t check it’s the one I’m after. Look up Charlie Veitch/Love Police (cveitch) on Youtube if you haven’t seen them before. Rather good stuff. 🙂 Particularly ‘Everything is OK’.
Halla, I couldn’t agree more. Normal people who engage with the outside world every day don’t think this way, of course they don’t. As you say, this is how the media likes its public opinion, and it is dangerous. The government looks at the Guardian online for the views of a certain section of the public, men and women, left leaning and liberal. What they see isn’t that at all. It’s a misrepresentation and that has consequences.
I looked at the Mail Online forum recently and I have to say it was a much less hostile environment than CiF for women, right, left or none.
Which in itself is not encouraging, is it? I suppose there’s also the (mistaken) assumption that a more liberal paper will have more liberal and thoughtful commenters than the average tabloid paper. Is this what ‘hubris’ means?
I don’t know if it is or not, Halla. I know there is nothing encouraging about the Mail above the line.
I think in general people like to see their own opinions validated, and choose their news sources accordingly. WThe Telegraph, Times and Mail don’t have too many left wing commenters. I wouldn’t be surprised if any of those sites moderate according to its political agenda but I doubt moderation is dictating the general conservative slant of the comment community.
What none of the proprietors of those newpsapers would allow, I am sure, is for their sites to be invaded and turned into a propaganda machine for a wholly conflicting political agenda to their own. Can you imagine the Telegraph allowing the Socialist Workers Party to take up residence on their website and bombard every comment page with left wing rhetoric?
It is all very well for the Guardian to accept the volleys of contempt hurled at the Guardian, in the name of free speech, but the the Guardian is not the only target. It has taken away the platform it gave in print to otherwise marginalised interests and given it over instead to hate campaigns against those interests. If they hadn’t already been doing it for years, I’m sure they wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.
Incidentally, guardian.co.uk has a new editor, Georgina Henry. Georgina was I think the first editor of Comment is Free, back in 2006.
Looking back when she left, she said the staff had been caught by surprise by the hate; they didn’t have any moderators to start with and had no budget to speak of, I gather. They were then playing catch up, and the results can be seen today. The absence of any change at all since that time speaks to the pitiful response both then and now.
I would urge everyone to write to Georgina and ask her what immediate action she is taking now hat she is back in charge. She has had plenty of time to consider her move.
I’m banned form commenting on Comment is Free – frankly I’m quite proud of it. A lot of the articles are utterly vile.
I’m banned because the rule seems to be that you can criticise anyone you like – as long as they aren’t a Guardian journalist. Querstion their impeccably high standards of accuracy and balance and that’s it – barred for life.
Why bother with the wretched rag anyway?
Cif is utterly beneath contempt. It appeals to the extremists and people who are of low self esteem.
Avoid!
No, Georgina, don’t avoid, please. By which I mean, don’t go there, I wouldn’t ask that of anyone, but don’t ignore it.
The Guardian was the only mainstream news organisation that gave women a voice in the media. Without a voice, bad things will happen, the government will do bad things. They care little about, and/or cannot see, women’s interests – budget cuts, criminal justice, equal pay, jobs, pensions – you name it, it will be rolled back.
If the media space is not there for women to make a lot of noise, they will be marginalised. Don’t let that happen.
You don’t have to have anything to do with the rabble. You have to get in the editor’s face, Paul Rusbridger. You can try Georgina Henry, guardian.co.uk editor, too. You aren’t her, are you? If you are her, ignore my first advice. Bloody well get over to CiF; see what you have done. Pull the plug, please!
A campaign that got the editors name wrong might be effectively annoying. His name is Alan
Or you could address him “awright, daaahlin’?” and give him a friendly slap on the rump. I’m sure that would be acceptable, no?
So, the Guardian is now adding misogynism to its repertoire, to accompany the well-documented anti-Semitism it has been putting out. No wonder they’re so friendly towards groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.
A lot of the postmodernist, liberal-left self-proclaimed “intelligentsia” use their fashionable cultural-relativist arguments to mitigate and justify the crimes of religious lunatics and totalitarian regimes elsewhere in the world because, deep down, they drool at the thought of beating women into submission, torturing and murdering their political opponents and, of course, finishing the job Hitler started on the Jews. They can’t do it themselves, but they can get a vicarious thrill from watching others doing it, and feeling like they’re taking part by arguing (all dressed up in PC terminology, of course) that we shouldn’t judge the Taliban/Hamas/the Iranian government etc., because, supposedly, “that’s their culture, and we have to respect that”, all with an almost masturbatory relish.
‘Semite’ and ‘Jew’ are not interchangable words, Thomas Venner.
Nonsense, some people just have difficulty keeping two thoughts in their heads at the same time. Life has to be one long game of top trumps.
The misogynist contributions that appear on the Guardian’s Cif are not, I would argue, Guardian readers. From the other nonsense these idiots post it is clear they take their cues from right-wing rags like the Mail. We must all spell out that a misogynist is someone who is quite rightly rejected by women routinely but has a deluded sense of his own importance and an ego that simply can’t cope with a woman disregard. I’ve noticed that these ‘men’ invariably have very small penises. Sad really
David, aside from a small wondering about how you’ve managed to notice this, I’d suggest that attempting to insult someone’s body isn’t a good grown-up tactic really. 😉
“The misogynist contributions that appear on the Guardian’s Cif are not, I would argue, Guardian readers.”
David,
These people have been there for years at the Guardian’s pleasure. This is a conscious decision of the paper. I know this because I have been banned and the misogynists have not been banned. It is past time you revisited your definition of Guardian reader.
I did not attempt to insult someone’s body In fact I actually & deliberately insulted someone’s body. Get it right. Re the Guardian’s policy on Cif. If the contributor does not break their ‘community standards’ it’s hard to see how they can keep these phallically challenged twerps off their site. Although I do of course accept, that the Guardian right-onners are not immune from the feelings of pathetic inadequacy associated with misogyny, I’ve met these sad ‘men’ in alarming numbers, most of whom seem to be in denial about how they really feel about women and especially expressions of female power. I submit that ridicule is the best method of challenging misogyny. Hence allusions to penis size which is one thing these ‘men’ cannot abide. Viz Collective noun for misogynists – ‘a piccolo of misogynists’ and ‘a chipolata of misogynists.’ I suggest ridicule works, because short of shooting them, it’s hard to see what else might.
Why did you deliberately insult someone’s body? I don’t see the logic of your argument. Why would they feel inadequate and why would attempting to demean them by suggesting they are more inadequate in a way which is recognised as being a significant indicator of cis-male self worth make them change their ways?
tl;dr – I’m not into body snarking.
Dear Halla, I’m sorry you don’t get it but perhaps you don’t have much experience of what it is to be male. Why do men put down women? What is misogyny? Where or what does it arise from? What provokes misogyny? I suggest men have had power over women for all of history, but in the past 60 years there has been a significant power shift in favour of women for two principal reasons. 1)Many women are now able to control their fertility and 2) Many have economic independence. Misogynist men don’t like either of these advances. Some men feel so inadequate that the only power they have ever enjoyed – over women – has now been taken away. Hence their anger, cruelty and spitefulness. So I reiterate, the best way to get someone to change their mind is to ridicule what they say or undermine the basis of their thinking. Men who feel so deludedly superior to women are especially sensitive to any suggestion that they might be inadequate in the shagging department. I do hope this is clear. If you have a better way of getting misogynist men to see the folly of their position, I’d be more than happy to hear it. Best wishes.
I am not interested in getting misogynists to see anything, I just want them turned off. They are not saying anything of value. They do not have any right to a platform. They specifically do not have any right to a platform that may not, under the terms of its founding trust, publish hate speech.
Making them angry and resentful seems counterproductive. I have no experience of what it’s like to be male. I couldn’t accurately describe what ‘male’ is, to be honest with you. I’d be surprised if you (or any male – not singling you out here) could.
Still don’t see the logic of your argument. Try this: ‘You are failing to state your case clearly because you have a tiny dick, which is of course a major hindrance to satisfying sex’. Hmm… nope, still not seeing the merits of such an argument. But you feel free to go around pointing and laughing if you like, it’s not like I’m going to stop you.
i understand a fair amount of male psychology, but i dont agree that fighting sexism with sexism will end misogyny because both of these forms of sexism use the patriachal structures to assert their power.
“Re the Guardian’s policy on Cif. If the contributor does not break their ‘community standards’ it’s hard to see how they can keep these phallically challenged twerps off their site”
David,
What can you mean by this? The Guardian owns the site. It runs it. It writes the community standards. It decides who is on the site and who is not. It is the God of CiF. It can do whatever it wants. That is and has been my whole point. The Guardian has decided to run a misogynist website. They don’t have to do that. Ask them why they are doing it David.
i think my issue with it isnt that comment is free isnt regulated enough, but that most posts concerning women and thought on women are posted in comment for free up for grabs discussions, all questionable, rather than serious and authoritative, and if youre going to evade censorship, keep it consistent rather than allowing sexism but not criticism of the moderators. dont have moderators. simples.
Laurel,
Opposing misogyny is not sexist, that is a con trick. Taking issue with a specific group of men is not sexist. I don’t want men banned, I want these men banned.
I don’t have anything to say about men in general, the size of their brains, their fitness for managerial position or anything else. These men denigrate all women, that is what sexism is. Like I said my post – it is what they say I don’t like not who they are.
To stand against these men is not to stand against men, quite the opposite. These men do not only silence women, they silence everyone who doesn’t think like them. That is the great fallacy of Comment is Free.
i dont understand what youre saying. it doesnt seem to relate to what i said at all…
oh the older post? no i dont think opposing misogyny is sexist, but i think using the patriarchy against men is childish and doesnt help. chatting about penis size of guys is sexist because it targets not only whoever youre trying to insult, but adds insecurity to all men over something which whilst promoted shouldnt really matter.
you actually took the same side as i did. im not sure why youre changing your mind now.
Hi Laurel
I think your attributing David’s jibes about penis size of misogynists to Jane, hence your confusion. Jane hasn’t changed her mind, she is not using sexism to fight sexism, David is.
David – A large number of men inflate men’s standing in the world by rubbishing women – it’s a human characteristic exhibited by a great number of people where, in order to feel secure in their position, they put down others around them. When they focus this need to rubbish another person based on their gender, race, religion or age it becomes an ‘ism’ but I don’t think ridiculing their genitals will help heal their psychological issues of inferioty. Possibly a lifetime of counselling wouldn’t. What would help if other, healthier men put boundaries around the harm misogynists can do rather than siding with them in a show of masculine superiority – how do we bring on that change?
Vicki,
You mentioned amusing responses from the Guardian moderators earlier, how about this poster’s comment to Hadley Freeman the other day:
“I’m sorry Hadley, but the way you written this is so cack-handed and frankly unintelligent. I think most right-minded people probably agree that this awful man with a predatory history forced himself on her. But to pretend that the judicial system let her down is wrong..Lets try to rise to the occasion shall we instead of writing this tripe.”
Aside from the regulation condescension and disrespect, the central point struck me as ludicrous. I responded:
‘I’m sorry, but the way you written this is so cack-handed and frankly unintelligent:
“I think most right-minded people probably agree that this awful man with a predatory history forced himself on her. But to pretend that the judicial system let her down is wrong.”
Lets try to rise to the occasion shall we instead of writing this tripe.’
My comment was deleted; the original comment was not. My comment was abusive, apparently. The original comment was fine, but my repeating it back to the person who wrote it was abusive. Figure that one out!
I thought evidencing the bias in moderation would be a more difficult task than that actually.
I think CiF moderators are not moderating, they are suppressing and working consistently and tirelessly against freedom of speech, freedom to be yourself rather than a characature (sorry spelling has deserted me this morning!) and freedom to feel safe within your own skin in your country.
That is an interesting way of putting it. I think you are right. I don’t think it is intentional. It must be a hazard of the job that people do become caricatures to the jaded observer. They are responded to, not on the basis of what they say, but what they are assumed to be saying. Anything that doesn’t fit the pattern is flagged, so moderation works to homogenise comment. The substance of the comment becomes irrelevant.
I don’t suppose they have time to read what people actually say, that would explain a lot. It is another interesting aspect of the experiment of Comment is Free, or would be if there were anyone actually conducting the experiment and collecting data from it.
I had four attempts at ‘caricature’ before the dictionary found it. That isn’t how I would spell it either.
I would say, from a psychological perspective, that these moderators do know what they’re about – and are in the business of creating propoganda and a conscensus of opinion against whatever views they want to suppress by allowing the bullying of commentators that do get through the net and the removal of anyone that stands up for themselves or voices an opinion/cites facts that are difficult to refute.
I spent 20+ years in PR and managing public opinion was what I trained in and this is exactly what these moderators are doing.
Well I can see that happening with respect to criticism directed at the Guardian and them personally but I don’t see why they would consciously be creating a concensus of opinion that conflicts with their own editorial line. I see that they are in fact doing that but I have to put it down to incompetence. It doesn’t make sense as a deliberate policy.
No it doesn’t but its too extreme to be down to incompetence and has been flagged up too regularly and each time the editorial team shut the whistleblower down. That’s not incompetence. I wonder if the newspaper functions as a beard in gay parlance and likewise CiF in the way a gay man might marry a woman to pass himself off as straight – I had an ex that did that – and deflect attention away from what his real sexuality.
You think maybe The Mail bought up the Guardian in 2006 and Paul Dacre has been secretly pulling the strings ever since? It’s an attractive idea, but I have a very healthy respect for how incompetent people can be, and how myopic.
The fact is The Guardian online is a mess and it will be very hard to sort out. The glaring contradiction between its editorial agenda and its readership is a problem which is just getting worse as digital media overtakes print. Advertising revenue must cover future operating costs, and advertising works on the basis of giving the people what they want. The Guardian is doing exactly the opposite of that. As a business idea it has hints of Jerry Springer but no-one has ever made money simply by annoying people (ok, but only Ryanair).
It is very difficult to fix without shutting down and starting again. That’s what I would do but that is a big decision. As well as being incompetent, people can be cowards, they want to do what everyone else has done before. Liberals are the worst at this – sometimes a little Tea Party-style ‘Absolute Confidence in the Rightness of your Cause’ is a good motivator.
And let’s not forget, this mess is a roaring success. The Guardian is the most popular it has ever been, which should be telling them something. The traffic drawn to the mob will not make them any money, it must be a terminal strategy, but it looks very good to the shortsighted.
I still think that there is a basic hypocrisy in the editorial team in not standing up for their morals re human rights and equality and this is evidenced by their actions (which after all, speak louder than words and is what we need to be judging them on). They are allowing women to be denigrated and verbally abused en masse in a way that they wouldn’t publish if it was racially motivated. Ignorance was not allowed as a defence by law as everyone would use it … and I think the Guardian editor is guilty of wilfully breaking his own company’s code of conduct in much the same way as MPs have breached theirs, bankers have breached theirs etc etc. The Guardian’s editorial stance is seen throughout the country – a fundamental change has taken place in the ethics of the men in charge of this country and it has been that they are not looking to uphold the laws of this country for the good of all but rather to fiddle and undermine them for personal profit, power or influence just like any criminal.
Yes, I agree. The concept of public service as a duty has gone entirely, no matter what the chairman of Goldman Sachs might say. The Guardian nobbling the News of the World may have been a public service but that wasn’t why they were doing it. They pursue the NoW for tapping Milly Dowler’s phone and at the same time campaign tirelessly on behalf of rapists at Comment is Free. Basic Hypocrisy, as you say.
I’m not sure it’s gone entirely but those who still do things because ‘it’s the right thing do to’ are doubted by all of us cynics. I know I’ve felt a right mug a few times for not taking advantage even of things like a price ringing up too low. We seem to be in a race to the bottom, greed is all and to have morals or ethics is a weakness preventing the acquisition of more Stuff. Advertising is king. This relentless marketing to us leads us to see everything as a brand so a newspaper decrying the actions of something or other can be slagged off for being just as bad for supporting the actions of something else, when in fact it’s two seperate people who have reported on the different things. We’re in danger of seeing everything as homogenised. And then, there’s the growing attitude of ‘never back down’, which leads all sorts of people to defend their original positions come hell, high water or rational argument to the contrary. So the newspaper brand will defend their own staffers, whether or not the individuals at the paper actually agree.
History has shown us over and over that when the people in power misuse that power to further their own ends to the detriment of the masses, they sooner or later are removed from their positions by a coup d’etat, revolution or some such violence … or a war works too as another country muscles in on the corrupt country’s territory. It’s a natural progression when the wishes of the few overtake the needs of the majority … remember, you read it here first …:-(
So what will we do in the meantime? 🙂 Generations live in those gaps in history and it’s hardly our fault that someone comes along with a need to prove they’re a bigger bastard than the current crop in power, while they’re laying their plans we’re all sort of getting on with living.
We resist living unethically, and lead by example, and agitate for the return of fairness wherever, and whenever we see unfairness around us. We speak out, we try to make ourselves a thorn in the flesh – and read Masters of Nothing re banking crises … am just reading it now and it has some very pro feminist stuff in it.
I agree, it’s back to when i was a kid and if you didn’t laugh at the rape jokes you were ‘no fun’ and a ‘dried-up sexless old prune’ or just jealous because you were ugly and repressed and Freudianly forcing everyone to put up with your frigidity – you couldn’t win, even though the arguments were illogical. But i’m female and i read the guardian, just not the wimmins stuff.