Postcards from the Imagination

Ginger,

As I've told you privately, it's possible I misread what you wrote and misunderstood what your words implied. While I don't feel I did, in fact all I claimed yesterday to you was that my view was "colorable" (i.e. a "reasonable" perspective, if not accurate to a certainty). Yet you seem to be insisting my reading was a willful assault on you, an interpretation of text, that is, made in bad faith. You have implied, moreover, off-board, that sexism (however buried and inadvertant) was at the bottom of what you consider my lack of reading comprehension yesterday. You've suggested I'm not willing to respond to all this on your blog, so here I am, responding.

Reb unambiguously attacked Reginald Shepherd on her blog, and it was that attack which, for better or worse, you hitched your wagon to in making your comments. Reb's words are not open for interpretation; she did not mention Reginald by name, yet everything she said applied uniquely, singularly, and conspicuously to events he'd been involved in during the last ten days or so. You haven't contested this, either--you acknowledge that Reb was talking about Reginald Shepherd and that just as me not mentioning you by name on Reginald's blog doesn't somehow make my comments "not about you [and Reb]," likewise Reb can't claim her comments were "not about Reginald" simply because she didn't name him. So, here's what Reb Livingston said about Reginald Shepherd yesterday:

"Nothing is more annoying than someone bitching on his blog about what someone else is doing on his blog. If you don't want to know what someone ate for breakfast, go peruse the latest issue of Very Intellectual Poetry Criticism until you absorb your daily brilliance requirement. And why does anyone feel the need to announce on his blog that he's not going to write about what he had for breakfast or how she won't be posting any kitty cat pictures? Why establish jackassery from the get-go?....After one short week of posting well-thought and considered ideas, your serious poetry blogger credentials will be firmly established and not a soul will dare confuse you with the wretched mommy-blogger scourge."

Reb having proposed that Reginald a) was a jackass or at least acting like one, b) was "bitching" on his blog and that that "bitching" was "annoying" her, c) was a snob who required his "daily brilliance requirement" from "Very Intellectual Poetry Criticism", d) that Reginald wanted, more than anything else, to be a "serious poetry blogger," and e) that he considered women who blog about their families to be a "wretched scourge," I took some additional and necessary corollaries from her words.

That is, right there, the average reader's going to take a few things as certain: Reb's annoyed with Reginald, she thinks he's a whiny snob, and she believes the has a serious personal problem with women who blog about their families.

You respond to those stridently angry comments about Reginald (a guy who's only been blogging ten days and is being called out by Reb not because of any post he made, but because of the header of his blog!):

"I come back to the idea--discussed in blogland several months ago, I believe--that sexism plays a role in the scorn heaped on us for our particular style of blogging. If it were simply uninteresting we'd be ignored. But when people get angry, I suspect it's because they're uncomfortable--uncomfortable that the personal and emotional are making inroads into the public discourse.

Fuck those people...."

So, as a lawyer I draw a line of comparison between the two reference points available here:

Reb: "[Reginald detests] the wretched mommy-blogger scourge."

You: "...[S]exism plays a role in the scorn heaped on us [women] for our particular style of blogging."

Kind of sounds like you think "sexism plays a role" in Reginald's alleged "scorn" for mommy-bloggers, right? But you continue, clearly referencing Reb's allegation that Reginald was "bitching" (i.e. angry about mommy-bloggers) on his blog:

"[W]hen people get angry [about women's "particular style of blogging"], I suspect it's because they're uncomfortable--uncomfortable that the personal and emotional are making inroads into the public discourse. Fuck those people...."

[Emphasis supplied].

So, I'm sorry Ginger, I did read your comments as agreeing with Reb's claims about Reginald, and I read them, morever, as suggesting Reginald was acting in a sexist fashion and should, to fairly closely paraphrase you, go fuck himself. I disagreed vehemently with that entire analysis--as well as what Reb had said, which likewise implies virulent sexism on Reginald's part (women who blog about their children a "scourge"? Who the hell believes that except Jim, who's copped to that opinion in cartoons many times?)--and thus said the following on Reginald's blog:

"Elsewhere, Reginald, you are being called a "sexist" because you explicitly indicate that you don't intend to talk about what you had for breakfast or what music you listen to, which some have taken as an indictment of female bloggers."

That reading was consistent with what you and Reb said, in my opinion. I then went on to make a number of ancillary points, such as:

a) any attempt to make synonymous the notion of "mommy-blogging" (what Reb was talking about) and the "particular style of blogging [employed by women]" (the way you, Ginger, categorized what Reb had said) is false and unfair to women;

b) anecdotal evidence (at the very, very least) is available to draw a distinction between the two;

c) these sorts of categorizations about how or why men blog (Ginger: "pseudo-intellectual blogs do little more than allow men to bond in the way they find most comfortable: through competition") and how or why women blog (Ginger: [women are more likely to blog about] "the personal and emotional") are unhelpful to either men or women, as they run the risk of pigeon-holing men and women into their "expected" roles (as well as their "expected" views on the roles to be played by the other gender).

I stand by this reading of what you and Reb said, Ginger, but I said yesterday and I'll say again today: I apologize if I misread, and I apologize for saying something on a third-party blog (i.e., neither yours nor mine) which felt like an attack on you. The only thing I can say--and this is by no means a justification--is that I wasn't intending to hide what I did from you, and made the comments I made truly believing I had understood you aright.

S.

P.S. There's a typo above. What I had apologized for yesterday was for the possibility that I "misunderstood," not "misread." While I may well have "misread" the intention behind what you wrote, Ginger--in fact, more than that, because I know you so well I take at face value, without question, that you meant what you say you meant--I can't claim I think my reading was entirely unfair, given what was on the page before me and that it seemed you and Reb were talking to (not past) one another about the same series of circumstances: all of which involved Reginald Shepherd in the particular (i.e., this wasn't some sort of academic discussion being had here, in lofty theoretical terms).
S.

Seth,

I was making fun of bloggers who I consider take themselves way too seriously. No single blogger.

"The Very Intellectual Poetry Criticism" comment was referring to those who criticizing that meme in the past week (something I haven't read on Reginald's blog) -- there were at least 5 bloggers who did that over the past week. I also mentioned a blogger who made a kitty cat picture comments (also not Reginald). And yes, there was a reference to a breakfast comment made on Reginald's blog. I lumped that comment in with a number of other comments made on a number of blogs by a number of bloggers. I was commenting on a trend. That was very clear -- and hardly an "attack." "Breakfast" was mentioned because I found that HILARIOUS. The "ugh mommy-blogger scourge" comment was referring a series of comments and articles that appeared in about ten thousand places over the past couple years. Another "trend." Hardly a reference to Reginald.

Your assertions and accusations are bizarre and twisted. You are hardly an "average" reader, definitely not reasonable -- you're carrying some very heavy baggage portraying what people say in an extremely skewed and often dishonest light.

My post and comments are up on my blog -- anyone can go there and see what I wrote. I hope they would do that instead taking your verbose breakdown of my intentions and words.

Ginger,

I also want to say--because not everyone who reads here knows you well--that you are the most scrupulously honest, sincere, generous, caring, and fundamentally engaged person I've ever met, which are just a few of the reasons I love you. To the extent you say I misinterpreted what you read, I believe you without reservation--I believe you meant something entirely different from what I took from your words. You're the sort of person (as Jess was telling me just today) who, if you drop a quarter at a seventy five-cent highway toll and can't find it, honk your horn until an attendant comes over so you can explain the situation. What I am most sorry for, of all the things I said, is that I didn't have the confidence I should have had in you that you would never be needlessly cruel, unjust, hurtful, or reactionary. I love you and I owe you my deepest apology for forgetting, even for a second, what type of person you are.

Love,
Seth

*****

Reb,

I don't know you at all, so I can only judge you from your blog, and the bizarre persecution complex and acerbic tone often in evidence there. If I knew you better I'd have more to go on and could judge you by something other than the words you put down on the page (i.e., your blog), but as I don't know you better, I really don't have more to say to you, sorry.

Seth

Seth, you haven't apologized for what I was upset about in the first place--namely, "inventing between the lines" to get to an interpretation that justified your nasty response. As I told you privately, you need to look at the phrases you inserted into my text to make that interpretation work (here in brackets and boldface type):

"the scorn heaped on us [women]"

"[W]hen people get angry [about women's "particular style of blogging"]

"[women are more likely to blog about] "the personal and emotional"

Those are hardly modest alterations, and I'm surprised you expect me to believe they were reasonable presumptions.

Moreover, Reb's post begins, "...after reading a number of blog posts expressing scorn for this meme, I'm quite pleased to be tagged. Nothing is more annoying than someone bitching on his blog about what someone else is doing on his blog." But you interpret "a number of blog posts" to mean "what Reginald Shepherd said." And I'm supposed to believe that's a fair and honest interpretation? From that misinterpretation you go on to characterize Reb as having said, "[Reginald detests] the wretched mommy-blogger scourge," and me as saying, "'sexism plays a role' in Reginald's alleged 'scorn' for mommy-bloggers." Both of those statments are patently ridiculous.

You're not apologizing for getting so carried away that you read things that simply weren't there. In fact, you continue to insist that your interpretations were "reasonable," which shifts responsibility back to me for not making myself clearer.

And I'm not going to let you save face by admitting it was reasonable to construe my post as personally attacking R.S. (or men generally). On principle I'm not going to accept an apology offered on that basis, regardless how fruitful compromise may be in other situations. I don't need to--and won't--tailor my discourses on the issue to account for the fact that some men still feel threatened by feminism.

I'm certainly not going to do so when the misreading comes from someone who routinely makes inflammatory generalizations on his own blog.

P.S. On your blog, you recently recalled, "one of the more harrowing experiences...of my undergraduate career at Dartmouth"--i.e. the time a "strident, even militant" feminist professor gave you your only B+ on a college paper. I find it incredibly difficult to believe that this experience, and your recent recollection of it, had nothing to do with the way you read my post.

Ginger,

I understand how you feel about this. Your words were perfectly clear, they were not open to interpretation. Any man who misconstrued them had an ill motive and/or suffers from such deeply-seeded sexism it can only be sussed out by a woman. Anyone who says they believed Reb was talking about Reginald Shepherd more than in passing is dishonest. The appropriate punishment for reading what you wrote differently than you intended it is public flagellation and an admission that "some men still feel threatened by feminism." My own blog is reprehensible and therefore I am exempt from commenting on X's blog about things said on Y's blog by A and B. Message received.

I've apologized for everything I'll apologize for, though.

There is no grace in trying to batter an apology out of someone, nor in asserting your words could not be misread while in no way addressing the arguments that they were quite susceptible to being misread by at least some portion of your readership (I notice you assail my bracketed readings of your text, but do not indicate what should be in those brackets, instead).

Love,
Seth

I'm not going to be brow-beat into accepting an apology that's 1,095 words of self-justification, and 175 words of "I'm sorry."