Shame on you, Amanda Marcotte
I had been a regular reader of both BFP and Pandagon, and unlike a few of the other Pandagon readers who’ve posted, I can’t say I much like or respect Amanda Marcotte after this.
For those who aren’t aware, you can read the story here and here and here and here: long story short, Amanda Marcotte recently published an article referencing a ton of stuff that BFP has been covering for a long time… without, you know, referencing her. Whether she copied and pasted with word changes or just appropriated the extensive writing BFP has done isn’t the issue; it’s that she didn’t reference at all. When I grade a paper, my students will get in trouble for not citing whether they copied an entire Wikipedia article or paraphrased a whole bunch of articles. I’m genuinely disappointed in Amanda, and I join many other bloggers who are, not merely disappointed, but angry. I’m angry that this is the kind of feminism Amanda seems to be okay with peddling, and I’m angry that, even if it was a complete oversight and Amanda genuinely didn’t think she was appropriating, she was apparently too lazy to do the legwork to find who might have come before. Amp makes some good points, but in the end this is what really speaks to me: that whether she “intended” to or not, Amanda appropriated BFP’s work, didn’t credit her, benefited off her work and then effectively silenced her. This is not the kind of feminism that I want to be a part of, and for someone who is supposed to be a role model for so many young women, this is not the kind of feminism Marcotte should be promoting.
ETA: A gentle reminder that calling anyone a “douchebag” is spam-alicious, and will get you the SPAMHAMMAR around Seeworthy.
Also, I didn’t read the comments at Feministe, so thanks to Mercurial Georgia for pointing out this gem of Marcotte’s: “The larger picture is something I can only care about if the people who want to draw attention to it don’t put their need to tear up someone’s career to get some frustration first. Sorry.” Boy, it’s good she can ignore “the larger picture” because she thinks/feels the people who said it were being mean. That… that makes a lot of sense.
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The criticisms of my students would serve as a good warning to visitors of Seeworthy: she talks too fast, she's too hard on us, she assigns too much work, and you have to be a dyke to get a good grade.
In other words, I'm a big, fat, queer, feminist meanie, and I am totally out to get you. Graaagh!
When I first started reading up on it the other day, I was all, “well, mistakes can happen” and willing to give her the benefit of the doubt as far as her intent but then I read her comments on the Feministe thread and she utterly flipped her shit. I do not see how her response, such as it is given the lack of any posting at Pandagon, in any way acknowledges the work of those who went before her, which would have been the proper fucking response. Instead, she claims people are out to get her, out of jealousy, and plays the martyr.
I can’t believe her but I’m ultimately not surprised…
When I learned about this, from Feministe, I was waiting for Ms.Marcotte to address this in Pandagon, she never did. Ignoring the issue when one has the more popular medium is a tactic of the white patriarchy. I then took Pandagon off my favourites with the intent to check back in a month to see if she would address it.
THEN I read her comments at Feministe, and wow, screw Pandagon, it can crash and burn;
//# Amanda Marcotte says:
April 10th, 2008 at 9:41 pm - Edit
The larger picture is something I can only care about if the people who want to draw attention to it don’t put their need to tear up someone’s career to get some frustration first. Sorry. The only reason the “big picture” has come into this, it seems to me, is that it quickly became evident that accusing me of plagiarism wasn’t going to fly, because it’s an unprovable assertion. Then it became “appropriation”, which only makes sense if you think immigration is a topic not covered in the media or conferences. In all honesty, my views on this were mostly drawn from speakers I’ve seen at the NOW conference and the ACLU conference, but not BFP.
Holly, I understand your points. But seriously? Piggybacking this on a direct attack on my ability to make a living as a writer is distressing. This isn’t theoretical. People are trying to hurt me personally. Now, it didn’t work when right wingers did it, and it won’t work now, I’m sure. But I’m really disappointed to see the Bill Donohue smoke-there’s-fire thing going on here.//
Career Politicians, Career Feminists, it’s just a cold /business/ to Marcotte. I Can’t Believe It, I thought that with her awareness of humour like Stuff White People Like, she would have been aware that she was becoming a parody, but she’s doing it;
How Can I Use Feminism To My Advantage? | The Onion - America’s …
Knowledge is power. In this competitive, male-dominated world, a woman must take advantage of all the resources at her disposal.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33858
…and I thought Marcotte was joking about starting her own religion, when did she get the right to decide who’s on the side of angels?
What I simply cannot understand reading all this is how EASY it would be to fix…or perhaps not fix, but begin to heal.
All that Ms. Marcotte needed to do the whole time was to address it early. It would only need to go something like this.
“I recently wrote an article dealing with issues that have long been dealt with by an important, but perhaps too often ignored, voice in feminism, and more importantly, feminism through the important perspective of a woman of color. While I did not intend to appropriate her, and others’, voices, I did so unintentionally, and that is not acceptable. We must all examine our privilege, even me.”
There! See? I don’t get what’s so goddamn hard about that. True, people screaming “plagiarism” inevitably got her writer’s hackles raised, but to focus on THAT as if it were the bigger point is ridiculous.
I’m so disheartened right now. This whole thing has really revealed an ugly side to the feminist blogosphere that I have grown to know and depend on.
[…] and unsolicited opinion Posted by spacedcowgirl under Feminism The Rotund and Sheana recently summarized a very bad situation, in which a prolific and respected woman of color […]
http://letters.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2008/04/11/seal_press/view/?show=all
From “Ethos Bared”;
//But in the following threads you can see feminists of all sorts, white, women of color, straight, gay, transgendered talk about the evil Marcotte stealing and misappropriating their work. And you can see a bunch of white feminists say, no, not true, you are reverse racismsimsing us! You are repressing us! And it’s not just teh white grrls, doing this, Hugh Schywtzer, the guy who had been married three times, the guy who admits to being an abuser in the past, and the most sensitive guy ever now, gets in on the business of defending marcotte.
And the pimp, Barry Deutsch of Amptoons, who created a feminsit blog and then sold the domain to pornographers, and who is still considered a feminist sweetheart, well he gets into defending Marcotte as well from teh evil women of color bloggers.//
I remember what the Amptoons dude did, but I didn’t know about Hugh Schywtzer.
You think the fact these issues are being raised in various venues would be a cause for celebration. Instead, it’s just a mess of ridiculous, provincial in-fighting. Immigration and sexism are issues that all of humanity has dealt with FOREVER. These aren’t new or niche issues. Near verbatim lifting without citation is one thing, but to claim that a blogger must be referenced simply because they write a lot about the issues under examination is bizarre. No one is the be all, end all authority or source on an issue this massive and prevalent. If I write an article on the ills of the Iraq invasion, do I need to link to every blogger I’ve ever seen discuss the topic? These are wholesale ideas. Lots of people think them up.
It’s no wonder BFP asked people to let the issue go. It’s embarrassing. It’s like people arguing over who ‘discovered’ musical group XYZ first. Racism and sexism come to a head for immigrant women. This isn’t a secret. Instead of saying, “Well I was the first person to talk about how immigrants are abused, give me credit!” just be happy that more people are talking about the issue. The people who are actually advocating for justice and solving problems don’t have time to stake a claim in blog squabbles.
Regarding Marcotte and the IMBRA debacle, these guys just will not let up –
http://www.online-dating-rights.com/forum/index.php?topic=1394.msg5086
Referring to her as a crook and liar is way out of line
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