Currently viewing the tag: "jezebel"

threw away his bag and said he had no friends

By On July 31, 2010 · 3 Comments

I’m at a bit of a loss for what to read online lately.

In May, the Autism Hub disbanded itself. One of the bloggers who had been a hub member was bullying others on the hub and many of my favourite bloggers removed themselves from the group a few days before it was officially disbanded. I’ve tracked down most of the blogs I enjoyed reading there, but find it much more difficult to keep up to date with them now. I’ve tried using an RSS reader, but I’m not very good at remembering 1. to add blogs and 2. to visit the reader to see if they’ve posted. The Autism Hub had been a really great website for a few years, a respository of science-based blogging about autism by people on the spectrum, parents of kids on the spectrum, and professional researchers and educators. It introduced me to many of my favourite blogs. After the hub came down, most of those bloggers have stopped writing.

In June, Jezebel got a new EIC. With her came bannings, destarrings, and general discord. I stopped reading. I’ve been to groupthink off and on, but I haven’t been on the main page much at all. In the past two or three days there’s been a few articles of substance, the most worthwhile writing in months. I’m really hoping that this trend will continue and Jez will return to its former glory as my absolute favourite website. In its heydey, Jez was full of smart, feminist writing with an eye to intersectionality. It discussed the political and personal with humour and research, and the commenters were snarky without being mean (except to trolls) (this is a difficult line to walk and one they’ve lost entirely). Corrections were issued if the Editors made an error, often quickly. The new EIC calls commenters assholes and seems to encourage bodysnarking.

In July, ScienceBlogs had its own implosion. I missed it; as I’ve noted before, when I’m feeling spoonless I can’t muster the energy for SciBlogs, even though it often renews my spoon pile. What appears to have happened is Pepsi bought a blog spot there without clear distinctions being made on said blog that it was a paid spot (Sciblings are invited and paid for their efforts, usually). Many of my favourite Sciblings have left the website as a result, though the Pepsi blog has been pulled. There’s a disaspora of science writing, now, and, again, RSS is not my friend.

Please, gentle readers, suggest places for me to read. I’m looking for political and sciencey blogs with a liberal, feminist bent, preferably explicitly anti-racist and anti-ableist. Hubs or group blogs are very welcome.

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I like you better when you’re not around

By On July 7, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Oh, Jezebel.

Let’s talk. You recently went through a transition of Editor in Chief, moving from Anna Holmes to Jessica Coen. Why yes, that is the Jessica who destarred me for calling out ableist language–and, yes, it’s reflective of the tone of the whole site, now.

A number of blogs have sprung up to deal with your shit, and that’s not really what I’m trying to do here. I took a whole day off yesterday–the first Day Without Jez I’ve had on purpose in about two years. And it was…great. There was less stress, less frustration over a formerly well-written website that can no longer be bothered to turn on the spelling and grammar check features in Word before posting. I didn’t see the dozens of comments using “lame” and “retarded” as insults, or an editor call anyone assholes. Again.

It’s not me, Jez, it’s you. And I think we might be done.

A lot of people are dissatisfied with the turn of the site, and leaving, and it’s led to some of the best wikipedia editing I’ve ever seen.

jez wiki

jez wiki

A full compendium of the edits are available here.

There have been mass destarrings (usually for pointing out explicitly racist language), and more than a few bannings for the same.

In conclusion, this was the best thing to come of it:

Best. Fake. Jez. Evar

(Credit for that goes to the lovely Haugenite.)

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we've got such important things to do

By On May 1, 2010 · 9 Comments

Even Blogging Against Disablism Day can’t stop the Kate lyrics.

To paraphrase Stina: either words have meaning or they don’t.

Let me flesh that out for you a little bit. I believe that words are impactful, and that our word choices reflect a combination of our backgrounds, our individual lives, and our education on a given topic. Becoming aware of one’s word choices and actively changing them requires acknolwedgement of privilege and a desire to mitigate that privilege.

There has been talk on Jezebel, a website I usually enjoy, about why words matter. We talk about why it’s not okay to use sexist language every day. There have been discussions about feminism vs womanism (especially in the comments section) and tokenism. Discussions are held about racism regularly. Fat shaming is verboten, and lengthy educational discussions are held by the commentariat regularly. It’s a pretty damn nice place to be out as queer on the internet (though it’s not quite as good about trans issues). We also talk about a specific subset of ableist language, namely eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

All of these are good things. Jezebel is a mainstream, very busy website run by paid bloggers. While there are safe-space websites to discuss these issues (Racialicious and Shapely Prose are both good places to start for racism and sizism, respectively), I think having them discussed in a busy, largely privileged place is helpful and important.

In my experience, a lot of people who are otherwise liberal and well educated don’t know a thing about ableism. Words that are ableist are part of many people’s regular vocabulary, and they never give them a second thought. This BADD, I’d like to maybe put the idea into people’s heads that these words aren’t okay.

There’s a thread of ableism in many Jez posts where other language could and should be used instead. I don’t think it would be fair to call out commenters, so I’m going to limit these references to posts which use ableist language, themselves. This is not a comprehensive list in any way–there are many words I omitted because I only returned one “official” (not commenter-written) result, and I didn’t put myself out looking for these words–if they weren’t in the first couple pages of results, I didn’t bother).

Schizophrenic: 1, 2, 3, 4

Retard/ed: 1, 2, 3, 4, (interestingly, Jez commented on the usage on Vh1 before)

Wheelchair bound: 1*, 2

Lame: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Bipolar: 1, 2, 3, (again, to be fair, there’s this, too)

Spaz and derivitives: 1, 2, (this is a very common slur among the commetariat, and I got sick of wading through those results)

Jez (rightfully!) gets upset when words associated with feminism are misused. The editors and commenters won’t stand for the misuse of words like “rape,” or “lesbian,” or “bitch.” It would certainly be nice if they would make this shift as far as ableist language goes, too. Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate that happening any time soon, since responses to noting ableist language, as recently as last week, have been angry and dismissive (to the tune of “Go find someplace else that will let you whine”).

*(A direct quote: “When you think of amputees, dwarves, people with Cerebral palsy, or wheelchair-bound individuals in sexualized situations, it seems wrong, doesn’t it?”)

For further reading:
Bitch Magazine
Feminism 101
FWD/Forward

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