Yeah, I too understand BFP’s decision - she’s such a fantastic blogger, but there’s only so many brickbats one can take from ignorant idiots who should know better. I do wish though that she’d at least put the archives back up, even if she has indeed had it with blogging. She’s been one of the most significant people in the entire history of the feminist blogosphere, and that’s a lot of great material, and a huge amount of discussions going back years that’s potentially been lost.

The other thought that I had is — wow, Melissa, that’s quite a thing to say right on the heels of, ahem, [X]’s “article” on Alternet and her storming around the ‘net when called on it.

I see that bfp has taken her blog down. That’s sad, but I can certainly understand her decision.

After people called her on it, she posted further down in that thread giving a huge long list of groups of women that she included in her definition of women, but it’s just - surely it isn’t that hard to get that if queer issues are not included, then queer women are not equal, or if racial issues are excluded, then women of colour are not equal. You can ensure everyone has abortion rights, but if some women can’t marry their lovers, or some women still have to deal with racist shit every day, *they’re not fucking equal*. This is not rocket science, well, at least outside of big white blogger bizarro world it’s not.

I think there is such a thing as community, but I don’t believe that the feminist movement in its entirety (or god forbid the trans movement either) will ever be great examples of that. Instead, I kinda see that in things like what I call the altfem blogsphere, the coalitions of WoC/queer/trans/disabled/sex worker/etc feminist bloggers - here, there is community. These people, I admire, and from what I’ve seen, we all more or less generally tend to have each others back when the stupid arises.

Oops, I meant “…in its entirety”.

She was responding to Jeff (not Jeff Fecke, but the other Jeff), who was blathering on about being a ‘humanist’, instead of a feminist (and who had said some extremely insulting things to other commenters).

Every time I see someone claiming that they’re a ‘humanist’, that sets off big alarm bells in my head - namely, that the dude is absolutely, resolutely, openly dismissive of looking at male privilege. Rape apologism is sure to follow shortly, if not in that thread, then in some other thread.

When someone pulls that crap with me, I will go off on them. And I think that is what Melissa did. She’s seen this crap time and time again on her blog, and so have I.

Unfortunately, her response was just awful. I wish she had addressed that asshole directly, or at least narrowed the focus of her rant. Sadly, she made it pretty damned obvious that she’s a hetero white person. I’m quite disappointed, because I’ve never seen her assert her privilege like that before, at least not so blatantly. But maybe I’m just not remembering, or I’m blind myself (I’m sure not hetero, but I sure am white). I felt pretty damned insulted, like she’s doing us queer / trans / neurotypical folk a favor.

And, yeah, great way to “universalize” women’s experience. I thought she was way, way past that shit.

I don’t know. Between the divisiveness in the Philadelphia trans community that I wrote about a few days ago, this kind of shit, the Feminist Sex Wars (and I am –so– with Ren on this one), I’m starting to think that there is no such thing as community. It’s depressing. –sigh–