No, actually. That’s incorrect.
So far’s I can tell, this is how it goes:
Sister writes moderately feminist (not especially radical feminist) piece about gender shit in dancing.
Some of her peeps read it, link it up. Word circulates. Peeps get to chatting. Tumblr gets a-whirring. Discourse, discussion, grown up talk and thinking happens. All is cool.
A high profile blogger/aggregator finally gets to that feminist piece in their rss. They link it up on their well-trafficked fb page with some sort of provocative line about feminists or boobs or gender wars or who-fucking-knows-what-just-make-it-shit-stirry.
The sister’s piece gets nine million billion hits, and a squillion really nasty emails/comments from dickwads who didn’t bother to read the post, but came in swinging because they were primed that way by the high profile blogger/aggregator. Shitstorm ensues. High profile blogger/aggregator’s stats go through the roof.
Sister feels a bit low. Blames herself for speaking louder than a whisper in public.
Peeps with brains send that sister emails or messages on fb or whatevs voicing their support. Remind her that her word is legit and important and valuable.
High profile blogger/aggregator carries on, business as usual. Unless someone calls them on their bullshit. Then they sook.
For fuck’s sake, people. You know there are too many fuckwit blokes out there in the online dancing world, just itching to get up there and blow some uppity female away for, oh, I don’t know, being out in the internet on her own at night wearing something inappropriate (like an independent thought). Think about how you prime your readers before you send them off to linkbomb, k? Maybe even have a think about writing your own piece calling fuckwits on their bullshit behaviour?
If you have a problem with someone, you should try talking to that person directly. Or at least talking about them directly. It might end up being more effective.
It ain’t my job to police the internet. Just to comment on it.
If there’s been anything recently with the way that I’ve been reposting things, then I’m not aware of it. I’m in fairly frequent contact with several bloggers who talk about feminist issues in the dance community and they haven’t noted anything to me.
If you’re still referring to that one earlier in the year, then I’ve pretty much said what I have to say about that. I didn’t respond to your message because it at times seemed to be responding to a whole range of others issues that I had no context for.
I do think about being one of the more senior members of the blogging community, and I wish I had more time to be involved writing wise, but I don’t. Because of the nature of this community and my personality, my first instinct is to tend to be amusing and sarcastic with my postings. Since our conversation I’ve been trying to be more even handed in some of these more hot button topics, but if you want me to take a more activist stance, then that’s not going to happen. I barely have the time for the things I do want to talk about, so there’s little chance that I’m going to make the time to write anything worthwhile about things that I just agree with. I do my best by re-posting things that I find interesting or helpful. If you have an idea of how I can do it better, then I’m open to more specific suggestions.