GINMAR, I love what you write!

I am sitting here smiling, nodding, and wishing I had your way with words.

I like you. Alot.

I'm so glad I have an opportunity to read your thoughts, and I'm glad Heart made this possible through her site.

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/

Heart

"I think before any radical feminists post here Ampersand needs to apologise to Ginmar for the way he has treated her.

In fact, by posting here women are giving Ampersand endorsement that he doesn’t deserve. He hasn’t displayed any interest in standing up for women when it really matters, what he has done is ban women or dismiss their feminist criticisms of his actions.

Why aren’t feminist women standing up for Ginmar? Why didn’t more women leave here in disgust when Paige and Funnie were banned?"

Yeah, NO SHIT.

Do we want our message, our politics, out there? Or not.

Heart

Why is his space important?

He may have begun as a man who was pro-women, but it seems that engaging on his site really is more of a problem than it is worth.

Is his site that valuable that it is critical for feminist to preserve it?

I have read over there sporadically, it never hooked me as a place that I wanted to be, as a woman, dyke, and feminist. I am really just asking why this guy’s space is even bothered with. I am wondering if he has any influence in regards to women’s issues, and the education of the regular man.

Heart

Good for you, Heart. I'm a bit tapped on energy right now for a few reasons but I support you and am grateful you have taken the effort to demand a space for radicals and defend your beliefs.

The idea brought up there that anti-feminist misogynists and radical feminists are somehow equal and opposite poles surrounding the "middle ground" of liberal feminism is repellent. It reminds me how far feminism as a whole has been weakened in the past decade by co-optation and, as I think it was ginmar said, the untrue illusion that there are at least two equal sides to every issue. All feminism is the opposite of "men's rights", radical feminism is very much not opposite feminism, and I don't like the dissmisive juxtaposition putting radical feminism in essentially the same categorical place as anti-feminism.

Ampersand is only "important", or his blog is only important vis-a-vis feminism, because men don't read women's blogs. And because he allows anti-feminist trolls to post with nearly no limitation, both upping his traffic articially and casting women's feminist blogs who don't tolerate the same troll activity as "fringe" and "nutty". And because the women in his life front for him, even as they venture some mild criticisms.

Ginmar had a post up about how if men are going to be feminists, they have to be prepared to be outcasts. Go to the above link to see it.

But Ampersand isn't prepared to do that. Instead, he parlays his asserted feminism into *more* credibility with the boys by allowing them to come into his blog and slag women under the guise that he's a feminist. He shuts off criticism of this by saying, in effect, that because he's a feminist nothing he does can be bad for women or feminism. This allows him to position himself as "middle of the road", and a protector of "free speech," thus giving him even more credibility in the mainstream. His credibility is based on slagging women, or allowing slagging of women, under the guise of "liberal" feminism and "free speech".

His feminist "credentials" are never called into real question, because too many women are fronting for him *as if* he's a feminist. His allowance of some criticism of his methods, for example his piss-poor and biased moderation, means that whether he's a feminist or not gets backburnered. Few people seem to connect the dots: that he allows such trashing of women on his site, both individuals and women as a whole, because he's *not* a feminist.

No?

Heart

I don't know. I wasn't really thinking about that. Maybe it will work that way. Or maybe you're Ampersand's latest sacrificial lamb to prove his feminist credentials.

Why did Pseudo-Adrienne leave? Why doesn't Bean post there anymore?

And why put any effort into *his* project, rather than your own? Why would you want *Ampersand's* piece of shit, anti-feminist blog, to be a place for feminists to gather?

And, generally, I don't support women-only ghettoes created by men. Women-only space which is created *by* and *for* women is different than women's ghettoes created by men so that they can have the rest of the world for themselves. And it seems to me, that's what you're asking (asking!) Ampersand to do: create a radical feminist ghetto for all the fringy weirdo anti-male feminists so that the rest of the blog can be left to the boys.

It's the difference between going to the New York Times and asking for a "women's page" -- instead of full and equal coverage of women as human beings and equal hiring of women reporters, commenters, etc., and starting Ms. Magazine.

And, you're asking him to make us the moral equivalent of the MRAs -- "okay, you intolerant crazies over *here*, and *you* intolerant crazies over *here*."

Why the heck do you think he allowed you to post that?

I have to say, Little Violet hit it head-on.