February 16, 2012

A friend sent me the correspondence she had with a man after calling him out - he responded with a somewhat bitter message along the lines of “I guess we can’t all keep up with you intellectually. You humiliated me and in the future you need to be more careful with other people’s feelings”. I responded “I find it very interesting that he feels the need to refer to your big big brain. Something about women engaging in conversations that he can’t immediately access, or doesn’t care to access etc. I guess I read his comment as a way to just CUT ACROSS and void the discussion that was happening”.

Which got me thinking about this man I know - sometimes when things get tense or we argue, he will refer to my tumblr as a way of insinuating something about my personality. Pointing to performative blogging as an inherently self obsessed thing to do etc. The comments will usually include something about the “nature” of my tumblr - men, dating, my sex life, making the very private public etc. Why he feels the need to prick at this I don’t fully understand. Something like disdain for what he feels is an intensely curated space? That any curated space is performative in a self centered kind of way. Comments like “you’re going to make me out like just another asshole on your tumblr”. Something about anxiety around representation? And a touch of something vaguely slut-shaming - the references to the “leagues of men” - sometimes affectionately and sometimes with a sharpness. My perceived “need” to diarise everything as adolescent and attention-seeking. That feminist performative blogging is not an inherently radical activity, which again makes me think of anxiety surrounding women engaging in conversations that he can’t immediately access, or doesn’t care to access etc.

notes #feminist oversharing 
  1. golden-notebook reblogged this from roadsidelions and added:
    few years ago when I was in NYC...Tumblr Famous Mucky Muck asked my crap boyfriend at the...
  2. alinapleskova said: HEARD. I can relate to this entirely too well. Like, so well that I can’t think of how to respond; it feels as though my prior thoughts along similar lines just got zapped out of my brain. Thank you so much for writing this.
  3. heyfatchick said: Online communities and brain-stretching discussions are SOOOOO self-obsessed!
  4. roadsidelions posted this