Thanks everyone for their messages here and elsewhere, when I took a bit of a breather from the trials and tribulations of being that – er- notorious ’internet troll’ Quiet Riot Girl.
But friends, enemies, frenemies and strangers. I’m back.
How’ve you been?
Xx
Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play
And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It’s always darkest before the dawn
-Florence and the Machine
This is a short note to say I won’t be around much in the public rooms of the internet for a while. I’m not able to speak/write freely or tell of my present situation so, in those circumstances, I am ‘going dark’ for a bit.
Friends can always find me in the usual ways.
See you soon, in the full light of day. It’s always darkest before the dawn.
XXQRG
Over at Cyborgology blog, Whitney Erin Boesel has written a critical post about gender representation in Digital Dualism Debates. To really engage with what she writes, if you’re not part of the discussion already, you might have to read some of the posts she links to. Here I show the begining para of her piece, followed by my comments BTL and her reply to me. Then I will see if I can ‘widen’ out this topic to be relevant to more than just the digital dualists (and their opponents).
Whitney ( @Phenatypical) wrote:
‘If you’re a regular reader of Cyborgology, chances are good that you caught the most recent “brouLOL” (yes, that’s like a 21st century brouhaha) over digital dualism and augmented reality. If you’re a careful reader of Cyborgology, chances are good you also caught (at least) one glaring omission in much of the writing featured in this wave of commentary. What was missing?
Ladies, gentlemen, and cyborgs, allow me to (re)introduce you to Jenny Davis (@Jup83) and Sarah Wanenchak (@dynamicsymmetry)—oh yeah, and my name’s Whitney Erin Boesel (I’m @phenatypical). None of us identify as men, and all of us have written about digital dualism. In fact, you may have seen our work referenced recently under our collective noms de plume: “the other digital dualism denialists,” “others on this blog,” “others,” “other Cyborgologists,” “other regular contributors,” etc. If you’re a crotchety sociologist with a penchant for picking apart language (ahem: guilty), it doesn’t get much better than this. Per the conversation earlier this month, there are two groups of people who write about digital dualism on Cyborgology: there are named men, and there are unnamed Others’
I responed:
‘I too notcied the debate being framed as between what I termed – a bit sarcastically – ‘men of ideas’.
But I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say women are being ‘silenced’. Your post is not silence for a start. And in the piece by Machine Starts about Jurgenson v Carr the writer also mentioned Sherry Turkle at least. And at the #ttw13 there were loads of women talking, tweeting, organising, questioning etc.
Here’s my take. I believe that the ‘where are the women?’ statements are PART OF THE PROBLEM. They give too much credit to the ‘white men’ and their ‘pissing contests’ and present women as innocent victims of their lack of ‘voice’.
I believe gender inequalities are a problem in the realms in which you are focussing on – academia, journalism, tech, entrepreneurship etc. But I dont think these inequalities are as simple as a ‘lack’ of women and a ‘dominance’ of men. You mention trans people and people from diverse ethnicities, but as an afterthought, or as subservient to ‘women’.
I am a woman. And, as I have said before, the people who have ‘silenced’ or attempted to silence me the most have been feminist women.’
Whitney replied:
‘hi QRG – thanks for your comment. i agree with you that there were a good number of women engaging in dialogue around #TtW13; in fact, that’s part of why i think there *must* be more women writing about these issues, too!
we both know there’s a lot of gender stuff we’ll never agree on (though i like to think we have our points of agreement as well 
, but there are two points in your comment i wanted to address:
first, i certainly have not intended to treat transpeople and people of color as afterthoughts. my focus in *this post* is the way women theorists were overlooked in a particular conversation (everyone writing for cyborgology at present is white, as is everyone who’s engaged in the early march 2013 debate so far as i know); what i want to do in my *future post* is highlight work done by a range of non-white-men. there are probably more non-white-men doing this type of work; i just don’t know about them yet. wanting to know is part of why i wrote this piece.
second, there’s a big difference between “speaking” and “being listened to.” women ARE speaking about digital dualism, as i’ve illustrated! but if no one’s listening (or if most of everyone is ignoring), that’s being silenced-in-effect–and i think it’s important to recognize that.’
I replied:
‘I do not think ‘white men’ is an accurate description of those who dominate debates on digital dualism or anything else. I suspect they have other characteristics in common. Because in USA for example, many ‘white men’ are INCREDIBLY disadvantaged in terms of economics, education etc. Are they writing about digital dualism? I doubt it. Once we start looking at ‘the academy’ we are already talking about some very ‘well off’ people in many ways.
also, as for ‘not being listened to’ = ‘silencing’ I see where you’re coming from. But not sure its an exact fit. and again, it is feminist women who have ‘not listened’ to me the most, in groups, on blogs, twitter etc and who have banned and blocked me to high heaven. so ‘silencing’ is not just something those big bad ‘white men’ do.’
——————-
So how does this exchange fit into wider debates on gender, academia, and the ‘digital society’ we live in? Firstly I have noticed before that the rather loaded question, Where Are The Women? is asked frequently and insistently. Where are the women in politics? science? celebrity chef land? music industry? etc. And the answer usually seems to be that they are cowering under the weight and dominance of those beasts – men. I find it is normally white, middle class feminist women, who already have some ‘power’ in life, who ask this question. And that they blame their brothers and husbands and colleagues - white middle class men, for the lack of parity in gender representation in their fields. Boesel says in her piece she is not looking here for reasons for gender inequalities in digital dualism debates. But I think she is. And I think she finds reasons – ‘white men’. But as I said in the comments, many many ‘white men’ are far more disadvantaged and far more ‘silent’ in the media, academia, technology, than the women she is championing. Because inequality doesn’t cut down a binary line. It’s complicated! The calls of ‘where are the women’ just reinforce the binary, and maintain the ‘silence’ of those not ‘represented’ by it in my view.
Secondly, the notion of ‘divides’ in digital cultures is not always helpful. In his #ttw13 talk, ’Urban Libraries and the Control of Access’ Daniel Greene ( @greene_dm ) critiqued the concept of the ‘digital divide’. He – yes, he is as far as I can tell a ‘white man’ – suggested this binary presentation of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ in digital culture is simplistic and misleading. The myriad ways in which we access technology or are excluded from technological activities, are not expressed by this phrase. And I think the ‘where are the women?’ phrase similarly simplifies and obfuscates the complex issues of gender, opportunity, ‘silence’ and voice in digital dualism debates. At one point in her piece Whitney asked for us to send her links of work by ‘non white men’ on digital dualism, including people from various ethnic minority backgrounds, and trans people. I dont think this is the answer either. Trans people in particular, I think, may have huge problems in having a voice and being visible in academic cultures, digital or otherwise. For them, ‘visibility’ can be hugely distressing, difficult, linked to medical and financial issues around transition, and, can even be a matter of life or death. I don’t think it is any coincidence, for example, that Professor Raewyn Connell became ‘visible’ as a trans woman after she had developed her career and name as an academic in her assigned gender identity. As a trans person I dont think she’d have been able to achieve what she did, at least not without all sorts of very hard personal and political battles. Maybe some of the men and women writing on digital dualism are trans? But haven’t ‘come out’? And why should they? Boesel is not advocating ‘outing’ trans academics, but I think she may be assuming more of them are ’out and proud’ than there probably are.
I have more to say on this. And, I am glad that, the group at cyborgology won’t try to ‘silence’ me. I have found them welcoming and open in their style of engagement. However, one of the issues I do intend to tease out is, illustrated by Boesel’s post, some of the gender politics these exciting young academics espouse, are lagging behind their more forward thinking 21st century ideas on digital societies and digital dualism. Donna Haraway was, in some ways ahead of her time with her cyborg feminism. But in other ways she was very much of her time, and she held up ‘women’ to be special flowers in my opinion, oppressed by those big bad wolves, men. I dont see the world like that. And I don’t think cyborgology has room for gender or any other form of binaries.
Hashtags are used for all sorts of things on twitter. From the tweetalong telly tags such as #splash, #bbcqt and #masterchef, to marking cultural phenomena such as #metrosexual, to the personal esoteric ones like my #blueonblue and #FoucaultsDaughter. But it is in gender politics – where else? – where a hashtag war has broken out.
Funnily enough, this particular game of tag began with the twitter classic #bbcqt. The historian (and tweeter) Mary Beard appeared on the programme last month. That night and the next day she got a lot of shit on twitter from what are known in the business as ‘haterz’. From what I can see, and from my own modest status as @Notorious_QRG, I think once you have a certain number of followers on twitter, you start to get some random crap thrown at you. But Ms Beard is also a feminist, and what do feminists tend to do when they get stick? That’s right, she wrote an article about the ‘misogyny’ and ‘abuse’ she was suffering, in the Guardian.
This brave stand against her ‘abusers’ by the lowly professor and TV personality led to an expression of sisterly solidarity: the #silentnomore hashtag. Feminist women began to break their silence and tell twitter about all the misogyny and abuse they too suffer. I made some criticisms of this hashtag, and was told by one feminist to get out of their ‘space’ and stop ‘abusing’ them!
Then another hashtag popped up called #INeedMasculismBecause. Some men, including Mens Rights Activists used this hashtag to start discussing some inequalities men and boys face. But the feminists swooped down and started attacking the MRAs and men in general. Jezebel suddenly developed a hitherto non-existent sense of humour, and rubbed its hands in glee, laughing at how the feminists had ‘hijacked’ the hashtag. I couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy of how feminists had claimed criticisms of the #silentnomore hash were ‘abusive’ and yet they were laughing in the aisles at their own take over of an opposing hashtag.
But it didn’t end there. Melissa McEwan another self-effacing, timid feminist blogger and tweeter, set up the rather obsequious tag #tellafeministThankYou. And guess what, some men and non-feminist women piled in with some ironic ‘thank yous’ to feminism for some of the wrongs it has committed against, oh, sex workers, boys, men, non-feminists, etc. And of course McEwan and her friends cried ‘abuse’ again, conveniently forgetting the Lulz value of hijacking hashtags pointed out by Jezebel only days before.
One of my comments on the #INeedMasculismbecause tag was that I needed ‘masculism’ or whatever you want to call what challenges feminism, because feminists dominate discussions of gender. I want to hear some other voices in the mix. But the whole affair has only proved my point. With feminists having the platform of the national press and high profile online publications to claim their ‘victimhood’, the views and perspectives of those of us who disagree with them get drowned out.
But I will be #silentnomore ! I think the feminists dealt with this hashtag war badly and cynically. I think they know they are the dominant force in gender politics, and any kind of democratic opening out of debate just makes them go into attack mode and try to ‘silence’ their critics.
#FeminismIsAwful !
This rendition of Dylan’s I Shall Be Released by Mama Cass, Joni Mitchell and Mary Travers is really quite something. Look at those outfits!
I don’t have much else to say, except it’s a song that has huge resonance for me. Maybe I will tell you why one of these days. Any day now, any day now…
Late last year there erupted a furore over an article published at the Good Men Project, by someone who admitted to having raped someone. I am not going to re-tread over that ground now. There is a good post discussing some of the issues by our very own stoner with a boner if you are interested.
I just want to draw attention to the fact that, during this hoo ha between feminists, the GMP and others, I noticed that an essay by me, Rape Culture and Other Feminist Myths, had been removed from the Good Men Project website. Along with some work by another ‘anti feminist’ woman blogger, Girl Writes What. I don’t know the exact timing of the deletions (and my other essays for GMP were shifted from the main site to their lesser known Good Life Blog). But I am slightly perturbed that whilst it was the GMP executives, Tom Matlack and Lisa Hickey, who had caused the wrath of the feminasties, Girl Writes What and I seemed to be being scapegoated. If the GMP had ‘gone too far’ and annoyed feminist readers and writers, they had to ‘make amends’ somehow. And it looks like they have done so by removing writing that has already annoyed feminists.
When Chris Floyd, photographer, agent provocateur and all round good egg (u ok, hun?) posted a link to this tumblr on twitter, my first reaction was ‘Oh God’. I am afraid I can’t add to that yet, as I am still sat here, mouth agape, going Oh. God.
But maybe in this world of total onslaught of ‘funny’, ‘shocking’, ‘interesting’, ‘thought provoking’, ‘kooky’ etc links, memes, images, jokes, viral videos, ads, avatars, pornos, statements, ‘Oh God’ means something has cut through the fog and made an actually apt comment on contemporary society.
Once, before taking the more sensible, maybe less fun route of doing a sociology PhD, before twitter, facebook and tumblr even existed, I had the idea to write an MA dissertation about ‘therapy culture’. You know, the world of Oprah, Trisha, pilates, psychotherapy, helplines, and ‘u ok hun?’ concern. I think I was onto something. And I should probably write it up.
But maybe we’ve gone beyond ‘therapy culture’ into something else, something more cloying, more mediated, more instantaneous, more cyborg. I mean, a computer, a social media network, a website, can give the impression it cares ( think of those company emails: ‘we missed you!’). Which, if you think about it, is pretty disconcerting,
U ok hun? *hugs*
There are lots of people sending out news and information about the attacks on #Gaza using social media networks. I can’t add to what they are tweeting, facebooking and blogging. Except to say that most of what I am learning is in some way due to the work of Andy Carvin. You can follow Andy Carvin on Twitter if you think, as I do, that even when most of us are pretty helpless in a situation like this, ‘bearing witness’ is still a valuable thing to do.
H/t @cathyby for tweeting this photo, copyright Dos Espiritos:
I am doing nanowrimo this year. Nanowrimo is a project where writers across the globe (or rather across the internet) commit to writing each day in November with the goal of having 50,000 words of a piece of (usually fiction) writing by the end of the month.
The last nanowrimo I took part in was a resounding success – for me anyway – because I wrote the bulk of what became my novella, Scribbling On Foucault’s Walls. I ‘m very proud of that book, and not least because it marks my first completed piece of full, or at least novella length fiction. I, like many of you I expect, have sat around in various bedrooms and living rooms through my life, imagining myself as a novelist. Of writing THAT book. Of being A WRITER. Like ‘Jonathan’ in Teddy Thompson’s song, I have spent almost as much time in those same bedrooms and living rooms with nothing to show for my fantasy. For that is what it often is.
It’s not that now, having written my novella I am full of confidence, or of self-worth based on my secure identity as ‘writer’. I still sit around dreaming, chewing my proverbial pencil, and not making my ideas into tangible characters and stories. I still feel like a failure as a writer relatively often. But I have a kind of reference point, a starting block. I know what it feels like and looks like to write a book of fiction. I know I can do it again. But. Well. I am not sure I can do it this November. 50,000 words are stubbornly refusing to flow from my fingers and my mind. Ideas are falling flat on their faces. Metaphors are flying too near to the sun and coming crashing down in front of me. This time, nanowrimo is as hard as it was natural last time, as frustrating as it was enjoyable, as disappointing as it was satsifying.
I am quite an ‘all or nothing’ person with creative writing. This contrasts with my approach to other aspects of life, such as work, and even non-fiction blogging, where I tend to plod along, keep doing it, until something valuable appears. But with fiction (and poetry) I am impatient, wild, lazy, moody, dramatic, non-commital, insecure. Maybe a bit like how I am in ‘romantic’ relationships. And you may guess I’m not exactly brilliant at them.
So rather than do what I have done before, and throw a strop, chuck my writing implements at the wall, and storm off into the sunset, I have come up with a couple of ways to keep at it, to plod along, when I am really not feeling it. The things I am doing instead of giving up nanowrimo are:
1) Keeping a journal. I started writing a journal this summer, when something happened to me that just had to be written down. And I realised the writing down helped me deal with what was happening. So I carried on writing things down, events, thoughts, feelings, tweets, conversations, the occasional idea, all in the privacy of my notebook. Now I am onto book three and this journal-writing lark has become a habit.
2) Practising Mindfulness I have been aware with some of the principles of meditation for a long time. I have done a little bit (before throwing one of my strops and giving up) and read round the philosophy it is part of. Mindfulness, a key aspect of meditation, is ’paying attention to present moment experiences with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to be with what is. It is an excellent antidote to the stresses of modern times. It invites us to stop, breathe, observe, and connect with one’s inner experience’. So far I mainly practise it on my walk to and from work. I pass through a park and make a point of slowing down (my sister often complains I walk too fast) and noticing what is around me – the changing colours of the autumn leaves, a shock of cold air, a man placing a poppy wreath on a memorial. And I am already feeling some beneficial effects. I am beginning to notice I am less stressed, and more leaning towards feelings of contentment, sometimes even joy. I have a lot on my plate at the moment, some of which has the potential to bring me down. So mindfulness is one strategy I have found for staying, wherever possible, up.
3) Being social Another tendency I have as a writer, and a person (there is only one of me), is obsessiveness. I personally don’t think that is such a bad thing. Foucault’s Daughter wouldn’t exist without my obsession and my ability to spend long periods of time focused on one thing. But once I get into a project, a thought, a book, a PhD, I find I lose track of other people sometimes. My need for human contact, and my responsibilities to my friends and family. So, whilst I am not gripped with The Best Idea In The World, I am making sure I get out and see people. So if and when inspiration does strike, I hope I will have built in some kind of social life, in the new place I am living and working, and elsewhere. And who knows? Maybe some of my social interactions will find their way into my stories. Don’t worry I won’t tape our conversations. But well, you know what writers are like. Everything is material to us.
So if you’re doing nanowrimo, but aren’t doing it, maybe these notes will help you get out and stay out of the rut. Or maybe you have some tips for me. I would love to hear how you deal with that lack of spark when it inevitably descends.
I first knew of Caroline Hagood as a journalist and blogger, who came up with some rather interesting angles on metrosexuality. I enjoyed her non-fiction prose, and especially her blog, aptly entitled (but sadly no longer with us) ‘Culture Sandwich’. I featured her work on my blog and admired from afar her seemingly effortless mixing of styles, genres and forms (she is also an enthusiastic photographer).
But whatever she was creating, a poetic stream always ran through her work. Individual examples of her poetry have been published in various places, but I am delighted that she has now brought out a whole collection of poems. Lunatic Speaks is a very confident, and vibrant debut, from what is obviously a talented poet.
The book begins with a kind of poem ‘foreword’ . ‘Rewriting Red’ is an incantation, a poet’s manifesto, that lays down Hagood’s ‘Lunatic’ gauntlet.
‘Red is that place beneath my skin that knows
What I really am, the anger I stuffed in a shoebox
Under my bed’
As all poets – and some wannabe poets like me – know, it is madness to reveal the inner workings of your mind and heart to strangers. But we do it anyway. ’Rewriting Red’ also reminds us of the crazy way poets treat language, as it runs through a list of things and words that have nothing in common but their colour, and the images they conjur up in our minds. The stop sign, bar room fights, ‘the rouged faces of alpha mandrills’, Chinese wedding dresses, raw hamburger meat, overcooked lobsters.
So as we read through the four sections of the book, we can’t say we weren’t advised of their contents. And yet, I still found myself surprised by some of the poems. As I read them in a rather unpoetic PDF format on my laptop on the train home from work, I am sure the other passengers noticed a lunatic chuckling and smiling and gasping alone to herself in their carriage.
There are some broad themes which reappear throughout Hagood’s work. And her poetry is no exception. One reason I am drawn to her writing must be her interest in gender, and the impossibility of us ever living up to its laws. Her poem ‘Becoming A Woman’ echoes some of my experiences and feelings about growing up into one ‘gender role’ whilst always furtively looking over my shoulder to another. Hagood didn’t become a woman she says, when she got her first period, or kissed a boy for the first time, those expected rites of passage into femininity, no
It was when you saw yourself
In a steam-cleared mirror and knew
You had a bit of danger in you.
And the young Hagood didn’t just look to her mother for tips on being the woman she now is, of course she also watched her father, shaving and doing ‘man’ things:
It wasn’t only boys
Who wanted a little shaver all their own
To understand their fathers through the removal
Of stubborn pieces of themselves they didn’t yet have.
This poem reminds me of ‘The Boy’ by Marilyn Hacker, another beautiful gender bending treatise on childhood.
Other poems dealing with gender in an unusual and arresting way include ‘What Lolita Wishes She Could Say’, ‘On Duty and Motherhood’, ‘Gender Studies’ and ‘All About My Mother’.
As ‘Rewriting Red’ hints at from the start, one aspect of Hagood’s ‘lunacy’ is her attraction to the surreal and the ridiculous. Whether she is channelling ‘Andy Warhol With A Ukelele’ or writing her ‘Inner David Lynch Movie’ the poet is always playing with language, mining her subconscious and, whether it is deliberate or not, making the reader laugh. And yet even at her silliest she manages to make some quite profound philosophical points. Take ‘A Poem About Poop’ for example, where Hagood asks
Why do we always talk weather?
I want to talk bowel movements,
Walk straight up to the next well-bred woman I see,
Ask her if she’s been regular lately,
Whether she works very hard for the lone pellet
This is what really unites us.
Could that be the human condition summed up? However I found some of the ‘straight’, serious poems about love, lust and relationships the most moving, and devoid of the cynicism that creeps into many poems on this thorny topic. But I will leave you to discover ‘Word Pornography’ and ‘The Truth About Marriage’ for yourselves.
An aspect of good poetry that I am always drawn to is ‘dissonance’. A sense of unease as you realise that things aren’t always what they seem, and that contradictions are what makes life interesting. A key element of ‘dissonance’ in Hagood’s poetry, I think, is her honest portrayal of a woman who on one hand seems pretty ‘together’ and stable, but who has another, more chaotic, disturbing side to her. She is married, but she thinks about poop, she does jury service like a good citizen, but is kept awake at night by the demons in her mind. She writes quite controlled, structured verse, but splices it with crazy metaphors and dadaist jokes. I probably identify with this dissonance myself.
In looking at the process of writing, though, Hagood reveals something that separates her from me, and possibly a ‘dissonance’ in most writers. For she sees herself as a writer ‘Failing At Fiction’ : ‘my mind’s motor/runs only in miniature’. Whereas I am very much failing at poetry these days, but have managed to write and finish some works of fiction. This feeling of ‘failure’ and inability to express ourselves fully is probably what spurs many of us ‘lunatic’ writers on.
But ‘failure’ is not something that Hagood needs to worry about as a poet at least. Lunatic Speaks is a (warning?) sign of much more spectacular lunacy to come. Going back to ‘Rewriting Red’, that poem encapsulates the strongest message I took away from Hagood’s book:
Do not turn away
When the shucked mess gapes at you
Ask for its skin back. Speak.
