All that Glinners is not gold

Another shit thing happened today and tedious as it is documenting every twist and turn of this debacle, it is what I am going to do.  I understand it is difficult to have a nuanced conversation on Twitter so I’ll just put my version of events up here. You don’t have to read it.

Last night I found a tweet calling me a ‘vile paki cis cunt’. My initial response was a spike in adrenalin, as always the p word has this kind of effect. I am lucky in that I had my wonderful friends close and so was able to talk through my emotions and recognise them so they didn’t take over. As the rush subsided, I felt like I didn’t want to exist. That’s a common comedown from racial abuse, it’s not something I can do anything about, I can’t paint myself white, I am stuck. When you have complex PTSD these feelings are amplified. Why should I have to feel near suicidal every time a white person controls me in this way? It is control because they KNOW the history of that word. They KNOW they are powerful. They KNOW they can reduce us to an anxious nervous mess because of the history of subjugation that they still maintain today. WE’RE not stupid.

This is serious abuse. Most decent people surely recognise this? So when I tweeted various members of the cis commentariat clan, it was for some recognition that I am subjected to abuse too, especially in light of their ridiculous Twitter silence. It was bitter but rightly so, I cannot understand this double standard they have going on. So imagine my surprise when @Glinner responded “I know! Somehow blame Caitlin Moran!” No acknowledgment of the hateful racism and misogyny, no consideration for what I was actually asking, just another opportunity to prove a point. Firstly, ‘Glinner’, we don’t ‘blame’ Caitlin Moran for things she hasn’t done. It’s not her fault that my bus was late today. However, she does quite often say some horrendous shit that most people of the same generation grew out of before they finished their GCSEs. It’s something I wish ‘comedians’ were more honest about, that somehow saying something outrageous boost the ratings cos they’re so radical and interesting when in fact they are just a bit bigoted. It’s not about being ‘politically correct’. It is treating people with human decency. What puts them above the rest of us?

For an avid supporter of all things Caitlin related and the Twit silence, how we must tackle trolls yadda yadda, I was seriously underwhelmed by his reaction. When I asked for some consistency, this was what I got as a reply.

“I have *nothing* to do with you receiving abuse. Please leave me alone and stop attacking people who are anti-abuse.”

Mate, if you’re so anti-abuse, would it hurt you to condemn the shit I have to deal with every day? Was the sarcasm really necessary? Why is it so difficult for these people to understand what we are demanding? Why is equality such a difficult concept to understand? When white women get death threats, the clan disappear in an arrogant show of white solidarity. I get accused of ‘attacking’ them when they say stupid things.

How is this fair?

Also interesting to note, my white cisters have not responded personally at all. Teh white menz do all of the talking.

Why I Won’t Shut Up

One of Helen Lewis’ little soldiers, Jonathan Haynes asked if I ever got bored of my own tweets today and if I’m honest, yes Jonathan, I do get tired of having to defend myself against a load of dishonest bullshit that should have been laid to rest months ago. I’ve had people accuse me of keeping it alive when a quick Google search of my name will show that actually, it’s the boyskep fanclub keeping it going these days. Not to mention the edited Storify version of events that was republished in April even though Helen herself said on the 23^rd January 2012 at 2.57pm:

“Sorry to hear that Sam. I’ve made my point, so I’m happy to take the Storify down if you want.”

She apologised because she acknowledged at that point that I was on some industrial strength pain relief and had accepted my mistake without prompt and furthermore the matter had been clarified and resolved by way of an apology. It should have ended there, no? Well now, if it was Caitlin Moran who’d made (one of her truly horrendous) booboos, we should accept the incident without question and move on cos that’s the decent thing to do.. So why was I not afforded the same decency? I was deeply embarrassed by my false allegation. I also understood what it meant. But it doesn’t change the way they’ve written the script does it?

When Caitlin apologises it’s because thousands of people have to call her out on it. She, or one of her many minions, will then dole out a half arsed explanation for why she said something and how she’s sorry people feel that way but ultimately she’s right and we all need to chillax. Without prompt this was the apology I issued to Mary Beard on realising my catastrophic mistake.

“Ok. I’m gonna apologise to @wmarybeard because I cannot find any evidence online of racism. I sent out a reactionary tweet & I apologise”

When Mary gracefully accepted, I responded, “my pleasure. It’s easy to spin out on twitter but that’s no excuse. Sincere apology.”

That should have been the end shouldn’t it?

But it wasn’t. Now tell me why not? When I ask if it cos I’m brown or a woman or any of the things that usually mean I’m disregarded, people are happy to point out it’s cos I’m thick as pig shit. If they thought they could bully me in this way, accuse me of being an attention seeker when all I’ve wanted is for people to be FUCKING HONEST, then they were wrong. See, I don’t care if there are some people out there who think that’s what I’m about. They don’t know me, they don’t know what I get up to, frankly I do not do the things I do for them.

I have a solution to all this aggro. I am quite happy to accept that a person may have learnt from their mistakes and to let them move on. Heck, if I hear a sincere enough apology from any of these people, I’m willing to live and let live. BUT that’s not the way it works and we all know this. My demands for an equal and just society mean we are treated in the same way. Being as equality right now means sharing oppression as opposed to sharing in privilege, I for one will not go away quietly when they fuck up, as they will, because when all is said and done, despite their reservations, we are all in fact, human. And deeply fallible.

My demands are clear, Helen: Delete the Storify as you reassured would be the case, apologise for republishing with malicious intent and publicly condemn the boyskep fanboys and their intense trolling of me, just like you would any other feminist.