emilygould: “I had written to express skepticism...

emilygould:

“I had written to express skepticism about the voice cultivated by women’s websites. Now I was experiencing the real problem with the community defined by that voice: the way it manages criticism. When intimacy is your model of success, it becomes easy to assume that everyone is either a friend or a traitor. I had tried to approach the ladyblogs as an observer rather than a participant, but my writing about them in an apparently impersonal public voice, as a woman—which became a woman holding myself apart from their community of women—registered as unacceptable aggression. So, was I a spinster feminist, or just out to impress boys? This was the exact corner of the internet that seemed like it ought to know better.”

—

On Ladyblogs by Molly Fischer is online!

Women continue to feel like their shared online spaces are so tenuous that any critique of them must be treated as a mortal threat. It’s easy to understand why they feel that way when you think of how recently these outlets have emerged and when you look at the blog-world outside them. But we need to spend less time defending our fortresses and more time expanding the borders of our empire.

Since I am never more eloquent than at 9:15 AM on gchat, a partial transcript of a conversation I had with a friend this morning.

i think we’re short-changing ourselves

as women

if we don’t allow ourselves to ask more / different things of the

websites that are “for us”

she’s not saying “down with the hairpin!”

or “your feminism is not for me!”

which is i feel how her original article was read

she’s saying

“i want a place where ladies can disagree with each other and also not tear each other down”

…

and i think we should be comfortable asking for that also

not instead of the hairpin

but in addition to it

In other words, co-sign Emily’s much more eloquent reaction, above. (Full disclosure: I used to live with Molly / am friends with her, which is not to say that I am unable to disagree with things she writes. But if I did disagree, I would probably tell her in person, not on the Internet.)