(I'm going camping over the weekend, no posts.)
So Twisty Faster called a columnist a "cuntalina" for saying some admittedly ridiculous things about how women without kids are defective or something. Various people observed that calling a woman "cunt" for not being feminist was not entirely awesome.
Does Twisty say:
A) "Whoa, yeah, I screwed up and went too far, that's not acceptable language for a feminist and I'm sorry."
B) (which I am not making up) Twisty Faster is a fictional character. I'm just a writer named Jill who happens to have everything in common with her. So if you like something I said, I really meant it, but if you didn't like it it was just a fictional thought exercise and you're dumb for taking it seriously.
Also, hilariously, she complains that Internet feminists these days are too strict and hypersensitive, and she just can't take it anymore, wahhh.
Fortunately, 99% of the comments (well, of the comments that got through screening) pretty much amount to "we love you Twisty no matter what, of course it's different when you use sexual slurs, we understand! besides, women who aren't with the program really are cunts! hugs!"
For clarification, I am actually Holly and I'm barely smart enough to remember what I think, let alone make up entirely fictional points of view that I will present and defend as totally serious for years on end. Unless I piss you off, then that was my secret magical friend Molly. Molly's a bitch.
Meh. I feel like you're kind of misrepresenting what she said for part of her entry. She admitted to being human and making mistakes! But yeah, the part where she whined about internet feminists being too sensitive was kind of, uh, rich. Also, I think she was making of fun of her more uncritical followers in her final two lines.
ReplyDeletebraaaiiins - Not really. She admitted to being human, but her admission of making mistakes was more like "Yeah, so you jerks made me make a 'mistake' which wasn't really a mistake anyway."
ReplyDeleteI can't tell when Twisty is being serious and when she's not, but I'm not going to get sucked into the "I'm serious when I'm right and silly when I'm wrong, you should know that" game, that's bullshit even if she's 100% fake.
Although, really, if she did turn out to be an incredibly dedicated social experiment in creating an online cult following, I would be impressed.
The cuntalinagate page is now a 404. Huh.
ReplyDeleteI don't really understand the character/person dichotomy thing. I thought when the post in question was put up on IBTP, it was the character Twisty speaking, but then the author went back & said something like, "No it's just me saying that, really."
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger, I used to do some online roleplay. When you said something "Out of character," you were supposed to make some indication that you were doing so or else it was still part of the game.
But I didn't see any indication that the author was speaking OOC as Jill rather than as Twisty.
So to me it looks more like the author is trying to protect her character from appearing, well, ... human. Because I don't know why. Maybe something about, not being perfect is going to make it harder to emulate.
But then just by going OOC to clarify this, well that action makes me wonder if maybe the whole IBPT site is a marvelous work of Satire & the author doesn't believe a word of it at all. She's using an archetype character and then exaggerating everything an archetype would say & do.
I'm just left with more questions now than I had before I read those posts.
The correct link is to http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2009/05/28/cuntalinagate/
ReplyDeleteMy favorite line: "But seriously, get off my fucking case already with this hypervigilant radfem hall monitor shit."
And someone managed to call her on it without getting banned? "You are the goddamn hall monitor. You wrote the feminist archetype you now find so stultifying."
Also: "I am enjoying the way you’ve engineered your radical feminist commenters into singing the praises of calling women the c-word though. That has to take quite a bit of skill."
You know what, I hate this woman's writing style. It's so overwritten & "quirky" & faux-self-deprecating. This from her stupid "how to be a commenter section: "While I make every effort to ensure that the comments precisely mirror my own unassailable views, sometimes crap sneaks by while I’m out doing the butt-dance down Congress Ave." Aaaaargh. "I'm so self-aware! Aren't I fascinating?!" That isn't real humility, it's fucking lazy bullshit designed to conceal the writer's lack of thought about which of her views *might* deserve to be assailed.
ReplyDeleteWhy is calling a woman a cunt more offensive intrinsically than calling a man a dick? They both refer to an odious or offensive member of the respective genders, right?
ReplyDeleteAnd don't say it's like honky vs. nigger, because it isn't.
Anonymous - They both refer to a delightful member, thank you very much.
ReplyDeleteAnd personally, I have no big beef with "cunt", although I do note that it's usually used with a lot more viciousness than "dick" is and has a considerably worse connotation. No, my problem is about 10% with the hypocrisy of a very language-aware touchy radfem using "cunt", and 90% with the fact that she responded to criticism with neither an apology nor a defense but with babbling crazytalk.