When I first started reading the Ms. Magazine message boards (three years ago? Four?), it was with a mixture of awe and disgust. Some of what I saw going on there was amazing, awe-inspiring--it was online feminism, women connecting with one another with no regard for the boundaries of race or age or nationality or physical proximity. It was wonderful. Usually, the disgust followed the awe pretty closely, though, because the nasty undercurrent was there from the beginning. However, I was so enraptured by what I was seeing that my initial skepticism wore off and after awhile I felt like a real member of the community. I put my shyness and feelings of inadequacy aside and I jumped in and started posting.
I was an active member there for two and a half years, and much as I hate to say this, much as I know it makes me sound like a Republican pundit on TV talking about the decline of family values in America, I watched it decline. What had been a pervasive but generally ignorable undertone of racism, misogyny, and joy in the pain of other women when I started out became something much darker, and it clouded the waters over and over again. Every time there was clarity or a brief reprieve, I hoped that my community was on the way back up, and every time I was disappointed.
I could spend thousands and thousands of words giving examples of the horrible things that went down at Ms., but I'll limit myself for your sake as well as my own. Basically, a small group of women calling themselves "radical feminists" made their presence known in nearly every thread, and they made it known in the most hurtful and vile of ways possible. There are only half a dozen to a dozen of these women there, but they have for years now spewed hatred with a consistency and determination that would be laudable if it were dedicated to actual feminist activity. Lowlights include various racist and anti-Semitic comments, horrible class bias, and intolerance bordering on hatred of women with non-lesbian sexualities, but the worst thing was always the general nastiness pointed towards posters who had been deemed "non-radical" and apparently not fit for human form. Examples of this include telling a board member the world would be better of if she committed suicide, referring to mothers on the board as "breeders" and worse, questioning not only the feminism, but the humanity of nearly every post some of us made for months. There is no way I can count the number of times one of the few women in this destructive pod wrote something to me that had me in tears, and I don't cry easily. And I am not alone, either. I am one among dozens of women who were routinely abused in exactly this fashion in what they had come to depend upon as their community online.
After months of attempting to fight this and seeing more and more of the posters I really respected wisely jump from the boards like they were a sinking ship, in October of last year I finally gave up, left, and started The Phoenix. The Phoenix has been wonderful for these past months, providing me and a lot of other women with a safe feminist space. It doesn't and probably never will have half the traffic Ms. did, so it suffers from a greater skewing in age, race, nationality, etc. that I regret and want to try to fix, but the environment there is almost wholly positive and I am proud to have created it.
Since I left, things at Ms. seem only to have gotten worse. I have lurked there from time to time but haven't posted much if it all. The moderation was always spotty--sometimes there daily, sometimes no presence for weeks, etc.--but it seems to have worsened considerably, including the bannings of some wonderful long-time posters for infractions that were retaliatory, at worst. Having lost contact with some of these women, I truly hope that they have found better communities elsewhere. The moderators have also persistently refused to hear complaints about the core group of so-called "radical feminists" who have caused all of these problems.
Recently, the situation escalated in a way I wouldn't have thought possible. A long-time board poster committed suicide, and board members turned this tragedy into one more excuse for in-fighting, back-stabbing and brutality towards one another. My level of disgust now is as high as it was when I left, even after having six months to cool down. This is NOT a feminist space. It is quite simply a catfight. If the patriarchy had planned it themselves they couldn't have done it any better--it's women as women's worst enemy, and when we're all busy destroying each other, who is left to destroy them?
For these past months, I've had this back-of-my-mind hope that the place would return to the mostly-good state in which I found it years ago, and that all of us who abandoned ship could go back and rebuild it. But that's not going to happen. What could be a locus of hope, communication, strength, activism and friendship for women from all walks of life, worldwide, is nothing more than a mud pit, where women go to beat up on each other, sling filth at one another, and generally participate in the destruction of their own sex, all for the pleasure of what I really hope is an imaginary audience. But what if it's not? These boards are open, and the women there are happy to give any lurkers all the inside help they need in defeating a feminist movement that still--perhaps now more than ever--desperately needs all of our strength.
This is the part where I'm supposed to say what I have learned from all this and how it's made me a better person, but I'm honestly not sure it has. Because of the creation of The Phoenix, and because of the excellent friends I've made through Ms., I do feel as if something good has come out of it, but as far as my growth as a feminist, I suspect my participation there has been counterproductive. I used to trust other women more than I do now. I used to like other women more than I do now. And I want my old self back.
As anyone who has been anywhere near me recently is undoubtably sick of hearing, I just read this really great book. It's called Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls. Basically, a writer took the time to talk to a bunch of groups of elementary-to-high school aged girls about how and why they are mean to each other. Teaching girls not to be aggressive, the author postulates (and I think she's right), backfires into girls putting their aggressions into all of this underhanded, backbiting meanness. Rather than just getting in an argument or a even a fight and getting it over with, girls spread rumors, exclude, keep secrets, use particular kinds of body language, "kill with kindness," etc. And it causes psychological damage that haunts us for the rest of our lives, sometimes sutble ways, sometimes in clear-cut ones, like abusive romantic relationships, self injury, and eating disorders.