« They Call Him Flipper, Flipper, Faster than Lightning… | Main | Stop–Power Time »
Serendipity
By Jeff Fecke | March 8, 2007
Today is Blog Against Sexism Day. Being a good feminist-friendly blogger, I’d planned to blog…well, against sexism. I mean, that’s what the day is about.
But what to blog, of course, is always the question. It’s difficult to find just the right example to hang your post on, especially when you’re talking about as omnipresent an issue as sexism.
So it was with a mix of relief and dismay that I read this story, which seems a perfect distillation of what sexism is, and how it seeps into the cracks in society. Relief because…well, I had a good hook. Dismay because that good hook is that female law students are being cyberstalked by a bunch of male law students, including Jill from Feministe.
I’d say my dismay overtook my relief by about the second paragraph.
At any rate, here’s what’s going on:
The law-school board, one of several message boards on AutoAdmit, bills itself as “the most prestigious law school admissions discussion board in the world.” It contains many useful insights on schools and firms. But there are also hundreds of chats posted by anonymous users that feature derisive statements about women, gays, blacks, Asians and Jews. In scores of messages, the users disparage individuals by name or other personally identifying information. Some of the messages included false claims about sexual activity and diseases. To the targets’ dismay, the comments bubble up through the Internet into the public domain via Google’s powerful search engine.
The site’s founder, Jarret Cohen, the insurance agent, said the site merely provides a forum for free speech. “I want it to be a place where people can express themselves freely, just as if they were to go to a town square and say whatever brilliant or foolish thoughts they have,” Cohen said.
Yes, because typically when I go into a town square, I disguise myself (for all AutoAdmit users are pseudonymymous), walk up to the corner, and shout, “Let me tell you who I’d like to fuck: Jill Bagadonutz! I’d like to fuck her if she didn’t have the clap, that is!” Then I’d hold up her picture, and shout, “Doesn’t she have nice titties?”
Certainly nobody would object to that, right?
At any rate, Jill’s tangled with these clowns before, and has a bit to add:
They’ve disliked me ever since last year, when I posted in response to the dozens of threads about me. After a pretty heated back and forth, we finally called a truce, and Anthony Ciolli agreed to ask them to stop writing about me. At that point, I stopped reading their site, and hadn’t gone back in more than a year — until a few weeks ago, when I got an email from a fellow law student (who I’ve never met, but whose email was very nice) saying, “Have you seen this?” and speculating that I probably had not, and had probably not agreed to have my pictures up. I clicked the link he provided, and was taken to The “Most Appealing” Women @ Top Law Schools. And under “The Girls,” there was J.F. at NYU, along with a dozen other women from top law schools. Three pictures of me were posted — one taken by a semi-professional photographer at a fashion show put on by my feminist fashion designer friend Kate, one from the same show taken by someone else, and one of me at the beach in Santorini, where I’m in a bathing suit.
I received several other emails, IMs, and “heads ups” from friends, acquaintances, and classmates I had never spoken to alerting me to the contest.
Now, these pictures are all online in my Flickr account. Kate posted the two fashion show pictures on Facebook. It’s not that they’re any huge secret — but I didn’t post them (or let them be posted) so that they could be used to enroll me in a law school beauty contest without my permission. I have more than 4,000 photos on my Flickr account, more than half of which are travel pictures. I try and travel as much as I can, and until a month ago had an ancient laptop that was constantly on the verge of crashing. So I paid to store all of my pictures online so that I wouldn’t lose them, and I keep them there because I’d rather not eat up all the memory on my new computer.
[...]
I emailed the contest site owners (who are anonymous, naturally) and asked to be taken out of the contest. They didn’t even bother to respond — except by posting a clarification on the contest site that they would not be taking down any pictures until after the contest was over. I emailed them again, reiterating my request, and letting them know that I have rights to the pictures they posted, and would be taking further action if they didn’t take me out of the running. Again, no response — except that they copied my email onto their message board, where commenters roundly attacked me for being a bitch and a whore, and began speculating as to how many abortions I’ve had. At that point I started browsing their other threads, and found similar comments about all the women who had asked to have their pictures removed. Another NYU contest nominee, who is a very sweet and smart woman and whom I know fairly well, took the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” tactic, and emailed the contest creators offering to send on better pictures of herself (they took some of the pictures of her from my Flickr account, and posted one of the two of us). They posted her email on the message board as well, and a long debate ensued over whether she was cool and laid-back, or a stupid slut who employers shouldn’t hire since she is immature and insecure enough to voluntarily participate in this contest.
You can’t win.
That’s the long and the short of it. It’s okay for me to objectify you, as long as you don’t like it. If you like it (or pretend to, as a coping mechanism), you’re a total slut.
Incidentally, I now picture this scene in the town square.
ME: Who’s hotter? Jill Bagadonutz or Jane Doe? Look at these pictures?
JANE DOE: Hey, where’d you get that picture?
ME: Found it at your friend Sue’s house. So, who’s hotter, everyone?
JANE: Wait–I gave that to Sue. I didn’t say you could use it.
ME: So? I think Jill’s hotter, but Jane’s got a nice ass, don’t she?
JANE: Uh–could you please not use that picture? And stop asking random passersby how hot I am?
ME: What? Why?
JANE: Because I’m interviewing for a job at that building over there, and I’d prefer not to be thought of as a sex object by my interviewer.
ME: Why are you trying to stifle my free speech!?!?!
Truly, that was what the framers intended, no?
Now, Ann Althouse has weighed in with her typically narcissistic, banal commentary. But I’m not going to get into that, as Ann surrendered any credibility she might have had on sexism when she complained that Jessica Valenti had breasts. No, I want to look at the broader issue.
When caught, the guys who do this type of crap always fall back on free speech, and how women are just too sensitive. Bollocks. First, just because you have free speech doesn’t mean you have the moral authority to abuse it. Second, nobody ever seems to run sites asking which men are fuckable, and which aren’t. If the tables were turned, these guys would have the order for protection filed within minutes.
No, what AutoAdmit–and all of the more subtle, backchannel kinds of sexism that it stands in for–does is to give women a clear message: you are not welcome here. It’s no surprise that AutoAdmit is also racist and anti-Semitic as well; it’s the place for white boys to whine about how they should be treated as special, because they’re white and boys. And to lament that they no longer live in a time when those uppity women, uppity Negroes, and uppity Jews knew their place.
Lest you think I’m exaggerating, Jill has helpfully run down a random, representative list of topics:
STICKY: 1L Job Hunt Thread 03/05/07 (632)
STICKY: TEMPORARY Mail Call Thread 03/05/07 (214)
STICKY: 2007 Summer Associate class demographics 03/07/07 (262)
STICKY: Please commnt on these xoxo redesign mock-ups [BCB] 03/07/07 (81)
STICKY: I apologize for the sluggishness 03/07/07 (14)
HLS Harvard Law Review 03/07/07 (35)
YLS 1L CGWBT [REDACTED] HAS A FELON FOR A FATHER!!! YALE LAW 03/07/07 (27)
I used XOXO for a psychology experiment 03/07/07 (9)
We need more HLS Law Review editors gossip 03/07/07 (47)
BREAKING NEWS FROM HARVARD HLS LAW REVIEW 03/07/07 (27)
Schools should seek identity of XOXO offenders 03/07/07 (12)
A rather good article on CA’s affirmative action problems: 03/07/07 (60)
Jill Filipovic: Come in here. 03/07/07 (4)
Vie Society (secret society at HLS – hysterical) 03/07/07 (213)
Dinged at Virginia :-( (TALC) 03/07/07 (2)
Now everyone knows my dad stole $ to buy me a horsie! 03/07/07 (1)
WHITE GIRLS WITH ASIAN GUYS, JEWS BEING KNIFED BY ASIANS,GULC 03/07/07 (1)
[REDACTED] should take questions here 03/07/07 (304)
Who will [REDACTED] (prestigious bitch) fuck first at Yale Law? 03/07/07 (205)
Top 30% at University of Houston, What Jobs? 03/07/07 (6)
Listen up, URMs 03/07/07 (60)
YLS-anyone got news of [REDACTED] 03/07/07 (18 )
ReputationDestroyer.googlepages.
com 03/07/07 (1)
Yale Law School and WHITE GIRLS WITH ASIAN GUYS? 03/07/07 (1)
HUGE FUCKING TITTIES ON THIS HARVARD LAW SCHOOL (HLS) GRAD!!!!!! 03/07/07 (2)
I STICK MY ASIAN DICK INSIDE WHITE PUSSY AT GEORGETOWN 03/07/07 (3)
Yale Law School and WHITE GIRLS WITH ASIAN GUYS? 03/07/07 (1)
Harvard College Student plagarizes and received $500,000 03/07/07 (234)
Raped by Uncle applying to LS 03/07/07 (1)
tell me about UVA law school and INTERRACIAL DATING 03/07/07 (1)
Has this board discussed INTERRACIAL RELATIONSHIPS AT SCHOOL? 03/07/07 (1)
Mad at [REDACTED]? E-mail her at [REDACTED] 03/07/07 (40)
Hiring Reputation Defender is like… 03/07/07 (5)
Reviving the T14 Contest to Spite Reputation Defender 03/07/07 (7)
T14/xoxo press coverage round up [pauliewalnuts] 03/07/07 (2)
2L, utterly sick of law school 03/07/07 (1)
More info about Reputation Defender [pauliewalnuts] 03/07/07 (6)
WHITE GIRLS WITH ASIAN GUYS AT T14 SCHOOLS
Lovely, ain’t it? Which brings us to the second purpose of this site: it’s also a way to build a network of like-minded white boys who know what place those women, Negroes, and Jews are supposed to take, and to make damn sure they stay there.
So what can be done about this, other than handwringing? Well, sunlight is a great disinfectant. Certainly, a search on the term “AutoAdmit” is going to bring up Jill’s post, along with the WaPo article.
More than that, though, is calling this behavior out for the bullshit that it is. Yes, men are going to talk about women–and women are going to talk about men. That’s just human nature. But when you start posting personal information about those women online, you’re just flat-out crossing the line. Especially when your site is ostensibly about law school.
It’s wrong. Period. And it’s an indication of just how far we have to go until equality.
Topics: Feminism | 11 Comments »
March 8th, 2007 at 9:39 am
March 8th = Internation Women’s Day
Also, well said. You’ve already done more than handwringing by putting the information out there.
March 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
“International”
March 8th, 2007 at 9:52 am
Indeed, ’tis International Women’s Day, which leads to Blog Against Sexism Day. (Don’t ask why I went with “’tis” there. No clue.) Hopefully, people will click through the links above or mabe this helpful link I’m providing right here for more information on both.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Women post on autoadmit too. HTFH.
March 8th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
And that invalidates my point how? There are always some people who are let into the land of the oppressor. These are “tokens.” They’re left alone, and indeed praised. “Why can’t everyone be like Token Female and Token Black,” the rest of the guys harumpf.
None of that means Token Female’s really been accepted as one of the boys. When something happens and Token Female speaks up, then she’s booted to the curb, hard.
Regardless, you could have Andrea Dworkin swearing that 75% of the content on AutoAdmin was peachy keen and woman-friendly; the rest of the bile is horrific enough to taint the whole.
March 9th, 2007 at 11:27 am
OK, someone took the time to come up with “blog against sexism day”????
You know what is cool? The sun….I think more people should get up, leave the house…and spend some time in it!
March 9th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Yes, BGW…because as this post truly shows, there’s no sexism left to blog against, is there?
March 10th, 2007 at 11:25 am
No, I am not saying that there isn’t sexism….I am just saying that designating a day to blogging about ANYTHING is maybe just a bit extreme.
Silly me, there I go again thinking that there are other things in life that are more important than blogging.
I should look into rehab programs.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
A blogger will tell you that there’s nothing more important than blogging. Nothing!
March 12th, 2007 at 9:23 am
All righty then…
April 16th, 2007 at 12:26 am
[...] Kathy Sierra found this in the world of software design, a field dominated by men who felt threatened by her very presence in the boys’ club. Jill Filipovic has been repeatedly threatened with rape and sexual assault for daring to shine a light on the cesspool that is AutoAdmit. Melissa McEwan had stalkers outside her house after the Edwards blog debacle. Even Michelle Malkin, hateful as she is, has received sexualized threats from those who think they’re liberal. [...]