Friday, July 13, 2012

Mean Girls vs Shut Those Bitches Up

In a recap: over on Goodreads (and the Amazon forums and blogs everywhere) people post reviews (opinions) about things they've read. Some of those reviews are not stellar. Some are snarky. Some are thoughtful. But they all say something like  no likey, me not recommend.

So the authors who check out what's being said about their books get their feelings hurt. And they respond. And then they get sucked into defending their preciouses against these mean girl reviewers (some of whom are teenage girls) and they get their readers and fans involved and it becomes a huge fuck-fest.

So a group of anonymous somebodies (probably writers whose feelings got hurt) started a website to stop the goodreads bullies.

Oh, are you thinking the bullies are the authors who pile on a teenager who wrote that a YA book didn't work for her? No, the bully in this situation, according to these fuckwits would be the teenage girl who posted that she didn't like a book.

Yeah, you got it. Having an opinion (and a vagina) makes you a bully, a mean girl, and a bitch who needs to be brought to shame.

WTF?

Stacia Kane's Amazing Response

The stop the bullies site is scary ass scary since they're posting personal information of the mean girls, real names, photos, where they work, places they go. I mean, are they begging someone to cause harm? Is this legal?

It isn't ethical. It isn't right. And it's so woman-hating as to be absolutely scary.

This ties in with the Tosh news about the comic suggesting a woman heckler get gang raped.

Daniel Tosh Thinks Rape Is Funny

I'm trying to get my mind around this right now. It seems that everywhere we turn it's all about attacking women for having opinions. For not being nice. A woman with a potty mouth or a strong opinion about something and God help us, a woman who stands up for herself, must be put down.

The thing is.... the woman who heckled Tosh probably should have just walked out of the club and not heckled. However, her calling out that rape jokes are never funny was not an invitation for the man on the stage to suggest she get gang raped "like right now".

It was an invitation to incite violence against a mouthy woman.

The Goodreads Hater Blog is an invitation to incite violence against mouthy women.

I'm scared. I think that unless we choose to get involved, unless we choose to be mouthy women and refuse to allow people to try to make us victims to shut us up... we will be silenced.

I don't know what we can do but I'm going to find out something. I can't sit back and say it's okay. It isn't.

These people are trying to get other people hurt because they want them silenced. We can't let that happen with our own silence.

We just can't.

10 comments:

  1. Agreed

    And the worst part is how often we do shut up to avoid becoming the next target.

    From where I sit, making noise and talking--loudly--about these things is the only thing that can be done.

    So, let's sing it some more.

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  2. Awesome post. When I saw that craptastic blog started up by some crazeball authors, my jaw dropped. Then, as I read through their complaints, they were actually honest reviews.

    Authors, if you put your book out there for others to spend their hard-earned money on, expect that not everyone is going to fall in love with it. As for me, I love reading honest reviews on my books. It shows that not only someone read my book, but they took the time and put thought into sharing their opinion with others.

    As for the bashing being focused on women, that's disconcerting, but I can see it. Women have made great strides, but we're no way close to being perceived as equals in a lot of arenas yet.

    Thanks for posting this. I'm done rambling now.

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  3. Berinn, you didn't ramble at all.

    Bad reviews are as much a part of publishing as good reviews. A smart person doesn't take critcism as a personal attack but rather a subjective view.

    But this is crazy-town. I personally think some of those people they're 'outing' are sometimes over the top and sometimes not. But love 'em or hate 'em, they have every right to post their reviews and their rants and raves and not be outed to the world at large.

    I'm scared that anyone thinks that taking a mic (or a blog) and pointing at a woman and saying "wouldn't it be ironic or funny if someone physically hurt that woman... right there" is okay. Especially another woman.

    If we don't fight a culture that thinks shaming or scaring women into silence then we're doing a huge disservice to ourselves and our children.

    I won't live in quiet shame.

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  4. Great post. And Lori, that just happened to me -- a woman I respect responded to my comment about that women being terrorized by saying, "Yeah, so terrorized she accepted comp tickets to the club." I'm still reeling.

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  5. To quote a line from one of my favourite movies - "Nobody puts Baby in a corner". I think that women once again need to shout from the rooftops

    WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED! WE WILL NOT BE MARGINALIZED! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!

    (that's my version of shouting from the internet rooftop).

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  6. I really loathe the whole "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" concept. It's a masked way of saying that women shouldn't be honest. I don't say a whole lot of negative things but that's more because that's the way I was built. But finally after years of thinking I shouldn't say anything 'mean' I now have the freedom to allow myself to do so if I choose.
    And authors who start that kind of thing are just plain scary. As soon as you put a book (or anything else really) out in public, you should absolutely expect that there will be those who don't like it. It's a given. So just accept it, sit on your hands to keep from getting into a defending contest and move on as quick as you can!

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  7. Sage advice, Kristy, and I agree completely. Now all I need are some reviews to ignore.

    ;-)

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  8. If it was just about reviews and authors being loud imbeciles, I frankly wouldn't give a flying monkey's hairy ass--we have seen that before, and for the most part we have forgotten the names of the idiots. They were special and sensitive snowflakes who had no perspective (book =/= your baby)

    But the people behind the StGRb site are endangering the people they highlight. First they give you all this personal information about them, from residence to real name, and pictures. Then they tell you how these women are lowlifes who deserve whatever comes at them.

    Do you think for a minute that there won't be people who will take that as gospel?

    It has happened before--google Anita Sarkeesian if you want to see how far it can go.

    So we need to do more than say, "authors should ignore reviews" and we should do much more than just say, "oh those authors are hypocrites and crazy and scary"

    We need to highlight stories like these, and raise awareness that the more women shut up to avoid being the targets of this type of behaviour, the less freedom we have.

    Yes, we have come far in the last fifty years, in most countries, but we have to keep fighting to retain at least a semblance of equality in our right to speak out--let alone to achieve, you know, actual equality (such as salary parity, etc.)

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