Women Matrix

September 23rd, 2011 / 6:49 pm LS—

note: spelling of “bipolor”

September 23rd, 2011 / 6:58 pm Anonymous—

Dare I ask where Meyer would fit?

September 23rd, 2011 / 7:05 pm lorian long—

lol ‘didion’

September 23rd, 2011 / 7:45 pm Jimmy Chen—

this morning, in response to my ‘men matrix,’ catherine lacey and ‘g.’ asked me to do a women matrix, and so i did. i feel htmlgiant is special b/c commenters can influence contributors, that there’s no impenetrable editorial wall.

making fun of men is cool, but 4 hrs later, doing the exact same thing to women is not cool. as a person who doesn’t really care about gender, i don’t understand this.

also many of these names were proposed and positioned by a woman, who incidentally studied feminism. so now what? and i know bipolar very well. the ‘high/mania’ and ‘low/depression’ are both ‘crazy,’ like the ‘low’ isn’t ‘chill’ so i don’t think there’s any flaw in my dichotomy there.

as for the bigger picture, the one were you ‘put me down,’ i’ve been writing free for this site since its inception, at work, at times getting behind in work (which pays) for this site, in order to maybe make some ppl smile, or something. this is called ‘being productive,’ ‘doing something,’ ‘creating.’ i like misogyny. i like racism. keeps people honest. keeps people humble maybe. but of course, you have your 1/2 minute of comment composition, and judgement, to be with you. let’s both sleep horribly 2nite.

September 23rd, 2011 / 8:20 pm mimi—

hey! mr. MFBN&Improved (like your handle, actually, hey, yo)
you’re correct in that ‘that’s just silly’!
but it’s friday evening
and some of us around here are trying to have fun!

(and it’s still light out and gorgeous here in the bay area – yo yo yo – hey jimmy – and i haven’t eaten dinner yet but i’m approaching nirvana/three sheets to the wind/the white buffalo – )
so
do. you. mind.
?

ps – the divine miss flannery o’ is hovering somewhere above it all and above that matrix so, yeah, hey, whatever, yo

September 23rd, 2011 / 8:27 pm Guest who—

this… is just kind of wrong all over. rand is neither chill nor mother. unless, i suppose, you happen to subscribe to her me-first-and-ask-questions-later junk philosophy.

and i’m surprised you didn’t just put ‘hysterical’ in place of ‘bipolar’.

September 23rd, 2011 / 8:39 pm MFBNewandImproved—

I’m going to play a game. Here’s a game. I’m going to open a word document and paste all the typical, standard responses to a post like mine and then see how close I am when I check-in back here at around midnight. Should be fun.

September 23rd, 2011 / 8:50 pm mimi—

tryin reel hard not to be typical standard herr

September 23rd, 2011 / 10:00 pm MB—

Hey, guys. Y’all know who this is. I ran across the street to a friend’s house to post this. Wanna know why? Because one of the HTMLGiant admins banned me shortly after my last post on this thread, which means a) this comment will probably be deleted soon; b) I won’t be able to reply to any replies to my other posts on this thread and c) censorship here is alive and well.

It’s all good, though–it sort of confirms what I’ve always thought about The Suburban Boys Club in charge here.

But just in case you thought it was impossible to be IP-banned and censored from a site that makes jokes out of female “hysteria” and menstrual cycles, well, I’m here to prove otherwise–my posts on this thread prove that it is indeed possible to be banned on a site that is offended by my posts yet manages to cracks PMS-jokes at the expense of women! (it’s okay though, because Jimmy Chen ran the post by a few women and we all know that all women have an inherent ability to sniff out sexism because they are women…and in a future post, Jimmy Chen will run a potentially racist post by one of this black “friends” before hitting, “send.”)

For those of you who actually see writing as a way to serve your communities, who don’t “like” sexism and racism, and who unfashionably see writing as a way to better humanity, you might want to reconsider what some of these “funny” boys have to offer you and your artistic development. There has to be a better place.

Admins: please keep my ban intact. We’re cool–it’s all about “honesty,” right? I know how are you are now, and you know how I am, and so there’s no need to make this anything more than it is, so thanks for the blessing-in-disguise, since I obviously want no part of a place that advocates censorship. Adios!

September 23rd, 2011 / 11:08 pm Guest who—

you’re the 3rd person i personally know of to be banned here.

September 23rd, 2011 / 11:58 pm William VanDenBerg—

Can we start referring to Blake Butler as the “impenetrable editorial wall”?

September 24th, 2011 / 1:36 am BeMightee—

for what its worth i like the matrices. keep’em comin’!

September 24th, 2011 / 2:59 am Darby Larson—

oh here is the woman one. looks good. i like saying “misogyny.”

September 24th, 2011 / 7:32 am Pat the guest—

I too had my comment deleted and was blocked / just saying I blame Chen that Jackie Wang doesn’t post here anymore / nobody thinks that’s sad? / the best contributor @ HTML / also want to know where Chen Chen would place his mother and wife in the matrix? / w/ love

September 24th, 2011 / 10:42 am Anonymous—

There must not have been room for an x or y to indicate “Batshit looney.”

September 24th, 2011 / 10:48 am Christa—

Wow. Is this html magazine or Maxim? And why does html publish this tripe. Do they have any standards at all? What will the next graph be? A graph on black writers where the poles will be “angry black” to “stepin fetchit?” Would this be “keeping it honest?” The stupidity of this graph is astonishing on all levels. If we’re comparing this to your odiously dumb men’s graph, wouldn’t it be girly/butch? Many of the women writers you mention are so outside the mother/whore paradigm — in fact, that’s why they’re interesting. It’s because they subverted those stereotypes or avoided them altogether. Why don’t you try to counteract your sexist reputation, html? Just a little?

September 24th, 2011 / 12:20 pm Jimmy Chen—

that’s not fair, srsly. i read wang’s blog post about not wanting to write here because of me, which was kind of low, to publicly say that, because you should write either for yourself or your readership, and not in silent protest or opposition of someone. if jacky wang doesn’t write here, it’s because of jackie wang, not me. it’s just so cheap — this goes beyond this feminism/misogyny issue — to call out someone in public and try to make them feel guilty like that. how about this? how about i stop writing here if jackie promises to write here in my place? if jackie publicly says that (not in a comment because i need to know it’s her, but in a post) then i’ll humbly leave this place in concession to her. okay? im serious: if jackie posts that she’ll come back to hmtlg on the condition that i resign, then we have our deal. but i want it publicly acknowledged right here, for every one to know. don’t fuck with me, i get serious.

September 24th, 2011 / 2:02 pm deadgod—

MB, I think you’ve reacted to a non-issue. The site occasionally fritzes and stops commenters from commenting on individual threads – that pale-orange strip appears at the top of the thread, there’s no “Reply” or “New Comment” operation, “you” are “blocked”. It’s sometimes just the one thread, and, in my case at least, it’s ‘all clear’ in half a day. Truly, this happened to me just now on this thread, and, going back to the master thread and coming back here in maybe ten seconds, the “ban” was/is off. –so maybe this thread is, eh, jumpy.

–or maybe somebody at HTMLG hates or fears you. Neither of those possibilities sounds rational to me.

September 24th, 2011 / 2:18 pm deadgod—

It would be badly stupid if the transgressians hounded Chen out on account of identity hysteria.

One could fault the “Matri[ces]” on account of not being funny enough; okay, whatever.

–but anybody who thinks Jimmy Chen’s mockery is misogynistic or racist isn’t getting out of the house enough.

September 24th, 2011 / 2:22 pm Matt Tyler—

wow html writers really, really, really, really like their own opinions

September 24th, 2011 / 2:28 pm Roxane—

People reacting to this or similar posts is not identity hysteria or a case of not getting out enough and you know that. People are going to have opinions any time gender or other matters of difference are invoked and anyone who writes about such topics, whether seriously or sarcastically or humorously is well aware of that fact.

September 24th, 2011 / 2:58 pm crackerscum—

Just another example of the “barbarism of white people” right Jackie?

September 24th, 2011 / 3:07 pm deadgod—

Oh, there’s no doubt from me about that. I’m just wondering if MB actually was “blocked”, or whether a glitch I’ve experienced – unless I’ve been “banned” and re-admitted within several minutes/hours several times! – isn’t what happened to MB.

September 24th, 2011 / 3:37 pm MBB—

deadgod,

My laptop’s IP is definitely banned–I can’t post on other topics and the yellow strip appears when I click on Kitchell’s post, so yes, Jimmy Chen–the likely culprit–has decided that I shouldn’t be allowed to post on HTMLGiant without using another computer.

And I’m biting my tongue on the silence about my banning from a particular prominent poster with some clout around who I thought was cool w/ me.

September 24th, 2011 / 3:50 pm adam strauss—

“as a person who doesn’t really care about gender, i don’t understand this”–I’d call this a post-structural mysogynist logical fallacy; I understand that it appears like this view gets past gender dynamics at their worst, but a strong case cld be made that this position is not moving beyond but instead erasure–and erasure has a very different set of registers/potentials. It is not an accident that a man writes not interested in gender: the more your subject position is enfranchised, the less daily necessity there is for contemplation. As well, thinking it ironic the male graph doesn’t get as much shit is a logical fallacy: calling hypocrisy only works if the two elements have identical social capital/if each group is equally culturally enfranchised. In other words, the different responses/or lack of are not reverse binaries.

Are there nuances I am not delving into: yes. But I think as preliminary points these make sense.

September 24th, 2011 / 4:13 pm Roxane—

Are you referring to my silence? I was out last night, because it was Friday and wasn’t going to think about this while drinking and dancing. In general, we are cool, but yesterday you told a guy in a different comment thread, who was commenting in much the same fashion you do, “Fuck you,” like that level of response was at all warranted. That bothered me, a lot. I wanted to delete the comment but I didn’t. If you want to know why you were banned, talk to the managing editor. I do not run this site. I am not sure what I’m supposed to say? Do you want me to get you unbanned? Furthermore, this morning, I saw you wrote me last night and said, “I don’t want to draw more attention to the situation than it deserves.” Which is it, then? Don’t accuse me of silence when you wrote me and said not to say anything. Jimmy didn’t ban you, nor did he ask that you be banned, nor did I.

September 24th, 2011 / 4:44 pm Mary Miller—

I’m wondering about Jean Rhys’s placement. How much Rhys have you read? She should definitely be in the “whore” category.

September 24th, 2011 / 5:30 pm shaun gannon—

so are these people bitching about being banned & censorship just messing around or are they really that new to the internet

September 24th, 2011 / 6:07 pm Youknowwhothisis—

maybe it’s because you talk to people in a condescending way, nest comments within comments within comments to “prove” yr point, spend all hours of the day on htmlg arguing with people, say things like “you know who this is” and run to a friend’s house to post the “truth” about getting banned, then drop two responses after saying it’ll be the last time you respond. and then try to turn all yr bullshit and the ensuing ban on you into some “this place condones racism and misogyny and is a boy’s club” strawman. yeah, no idea why you’d be banned, “bro.” money on the fact that you’ll run to yr friend’s house to post another final response.

September 24th, 2011 / 6:56 pm D .—

In the future there will be no difference between feeling provoked and being provoked. Best not to listen. Wear your helmets. The geese fly south with rounded tips. Ba-dum-shit.

It really is a very bizarre comment thread. It’s like we all went ice skating and decided to call it skinny-dipping.

September 24th, 2011 / 8:37 pm deadgod—

Well, I think that, in the future, reported “feelings” will continue to be as subject to skepticism as any other report. People correct – or would – my sense of things all the time – and why should they not?

Slightly provocative blogicle (Rand is motherly and chill?? —that is offensive, bro); outraged “feelings”; staunch defenses; side issues issuing. –a normal thread, no?

September 24th, 2011 / 9:02 pm D .—

Did it sound like I was saying they should not?

Doesn’t seem so to me–and by ‘bizarre’ I don’t think myself or Roxane intended to indicate that it was totally unique or without precedent. But it is bizarre. It’s a thread where everyone’s discussion almost exclusively centers around subtexts: the subtexts of previous threads, the subtext to responses to previous threads, and the subtext inherent in a post of this nature having been made by a person like Jimmy Chen at a time like this. It’s not an actual discussion, even by internet comment thread standards, nor is it even a continuation of a previous discussion–it’s an imposition on a situation to coherently sustain an exchange of ideas it very probably can’t.Which is something, I think, like what Roxane meant.

September 24th, 2011 / 10:16 pm JacktheGiantKiller—

It’s Jack mate, a clever internet name, no relation to Jackie the writer. I don’t know how to respond to your question btw.

September 24th, 2011 / 10:35 pm John Minichillo—

I love what Jimmy Chen does time and again. He’s a bright star. But this one not so much. Pretty offensive and not so smart. The commentary is entertaining but has nothing to do with the post. I’m going to sniff some paint so there’s no memory of this. Eagerly looking forward to the next Jimmy Chen.

September 25th, 2011 / 12:06 am Anonymous—

The silly chart followed by all the fake comments parodying internet outrage? Killing it, champ.

September 25th, 2011 / 4:33 am Cremistress—

I came here acting like a total maniac. Wonder why I didn’t get “banned” lol

September 25th, 2011 / 5:36 am David Fishkind—

“My mother is a whore.” – Faulkner

September 25th, 2011 / 2:47 pm deadgod—

I took your remark to be a dismissal of the difference between “feeling and being provoked”. I think that difference is worth preserving “in the future” in those cases where the “feeling” is – or is ‘felt’ by another to be – a mistaken understanding (and not rather a different, equally accurate understanding). It did sound (to me!) like you might be saying that, when someone “feels” that they’re being provoked, their understanding of the source of that feeling is beyond question (from their point of view). The emphasis would be, not on the “feeling” of provocation, but rather, on the understanding (or mis-) of it.

The thread definitely is not concentrated on the social construction of gender. That – particularly, the ethics entailed in and by that constructing – has been plainly addressed, pro and contra the blogicle–a bit, anyway. The discussion has wandered, and somewhat in accord with the indulgence of extraneous agendas. It’s not the self-disciplined conversation about gender and justice that I’d “like to be having” in a venue more conducive to that self-disciplining, but it is not at all a “bizarre” conversation here.

September 25th, 2011 / 3:32 pm Zombie Virginia Woolf—

Ironic misogyny is lazy, boring, and lazy. That said, I must admit I lollied at the Didion. But mainly, boo. Be braver.

September 26th, 2011 / 3:29 am D .—

Then it’s as I suspected, and you’ve railroaded my irony right out of the post. I was being dismissive of an attitude which I saw as dismissive of that difference. That difference is in fact what I see as crucial and worth maintaining. I was being highly sarcastic and not a little snotty.

The question of which conversation you’d like to be having wasn’t about this thread, and the conversation within it–it was about whether or not you’d like to be talking to me about whether or not the conversation in this thread is bizarre, or coherent, or whether I was right in making a comment in passing which expressed a belief that it was the one, and wasn’t the other. Which, I repeat, I have no interest in.

September 26th, 2011 / 2:48 pm Mr. Ian M. Belcurry—

Dislike

September 26th, 2011 / 2:59 pm Mr. Ian M. Belcurry—

JC is awesome. Fuck the haters!

September 26th, 2011 / 6:55 pm Lilzed—

Mr. Ian M. Belle Curry

I am calling you a FEMINAZI on the internet.

So, that’s it. The free flow of dialogue is officially over. Everything that comes after this comment is a free flow of something else (my ass).

September 26th, 2011 / 9:21 pm deadgod—

I think you mean that Mr. Ian is a MASCULINAZI.

September 27th, 2011 / 11:41 am Lilzed—

2.5 Oz, For Her and For Him. Haha.

Ian my better point would be that most people here are not interested in whether Jimmy is a misogynist, as his post clearly is misogynistic.

September 27th, 2011 / 12:59 pm GVWriter—

Jimmy Chen, no thank you for making men look bad. Many layers of ignorance here.

September 27th, 2011 / 4:30 pm Lilzed—

Expressing opinions about women, as a class, is sexist. Expressing negative opinions about women, as a class, is misogynistic. This is the English language we’re using here.

September 27th, 2011 / 5:59 pm Lilzed—

Positive comments about women, as a class, are also sexist.

Some people / communities are more sensitive to these things than others.

There is a man-hating word version of misogyny, it’s misandry.

I and some others think it’s bad that HTML Giant would not be sensitive to the misogyny in Chen’s post.

September 27th, 2011 / 7:12 pm Lilzed—

yes and being indignant is tedious. many of us would rather just take the laugh. but that’s why this stuff is so pernicious.

September 27th, 2011 / 9:00 pm elizabeth ellen—

seriously? first they run off chelsea martin. now you? come on, jimmy. you’re like the only person left on here with a sense of humor. wtf. everything went downhill when paula “left” back in ’09.

September 29th, 2011 / 11:55 am Mr. Ian M. Belcurry—

I was just agreeing to disagree. Some ppl feel it’s misogynistic. It’s how they see it. I don’t agree, but it’s all good.

Thanks to Lorian for counsel, and deflecting any calls of misogyny.

102 Comments

Archives

Meta