May’s comments up now
By Jess McCabe | 26 June 2008, 23:27
Comments on features and reviews for May are up.
This time round, there was plenty of discussion about Kit’s piece on abortion, Jennifer’s piece on vulnerability and Anji’s report on the launch of the ‘stripping the illusion’ campaign, among other things.
I’ve changed the layout slightly, as we’ve had a couple of people emailing in who couldn’t figure out which article matched with which comment.
Photo by hebedesign, shared under a Creative Commons license
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Feeds
Jennifer-Ruth said:
I was just reading through all the comments and wondered - do you guys get a lot of misogynistic emails like a few of the comments there? Are there more than the ones that you choose to publish? If so, why did you pick those ones to publish?
I'm just wondering, because they just sit there amongst everything else with no rebuttal. I understand that you are perhaps trying to show a diversity of opinion...but I felt that certain comments such as from David re' "Feminism is not man-hating" and from Joel re' "Feminists are sexists" do not add anything to the discussion. It seemed pretty apparant that they didn't read the articles and there was no reply to them.
Honestly, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have published those emails, because I have to admit I am interested. I was just wondering what your reasons and purpose where...
Posted on 27 June 2008 at 11:49 AM
Jess McCabe said:
Hi Jennifer-Ruth,
We publish almost everything. Comments on specific articles get forwarded to the authors - if it's really abusive, I won't forward usually. The authors therefore get a chance to reply, but not everyone wants to.
Sometimes if I am in the mood and have time, I'll write a response, but most of the time I think that the comments speak for themselves. It's actually, for me, more about demonstrating the sort of responses that feminists get, than anything to do with diversity of opinion.
Comments on this blog are subject to moderation, but I think that our monthly comments round up has a bit of a different identity - they're seperate from the features and reviews themselves, so you don't have to read any of them if you don't want. So I'm more willing to post these messages.
Posted on June 27, 2008 12:12 PM
Jess McCabe said:
For example, that comment by 'David' about Abby's post on 'Feminists are not man-hating' compares feminists apparently being sexist against men to the Holocaust. It's so ridiculous and offensive, I don't think that even really needs a commentary from me to point it out.
Posted on June 27, 2008 12:20 PM
Jennifer-Ruth said:
Thanks for answering my question Jess. I can see your point about publishing a wide representation to the comments you get - both offensive and supportive. (I wonder how people like David find themselves here in the first place?!)
Posted on 27 June 2008 at 1:52 PM