No Jez Here...Still

[Content note: discussions of sexual assault, harassment, and he-who-shall-not-be-named...except I'm naming him, Hugo Schwyzer]

Well over a year ago, I officially gave up Jezebel. Recent controversies involving Hugo Schwyzer brought this discussion up in full force, so I figured I'd share what I wrote on Tumblr here, when I was asked why I'm anti-Jezebel.

It’s been a long string of events for me…I was actually SUPER involved there from 2009-2012, a big time commenter and regular participant. At first I started to be off put by a lot of general rudeness way back before they rolled out their new commenting system, but then that system compounded those problem and cut down on any last remainders of good discussion for me. I started to be attacked by random newcomers who would chew me out for saying things like reminders that not all women have vaginas. 

My official last straw was the incident where they published photos of a women who had been sexually assaulted. I could no longer endorse them. I stopped linking to any of their work at my main blog or visiting the site on principle.Then they continued to hire and publish known abuser, Hugo Schwyzer, only adding to my disdain for them. I could write a novel about Schwyzer but let me summarize it by saying that he once tried to kill his female partner, he regularly harassed, silenced, and abused Women of Color online (and tried to get them fired from their writing gigs), sexted and slept with his young female students, and as of last night before he deleted his Twitter—admitted in his public meltdown that he intentionally manipulated the feminist blogosphere into attempting to being THE one feminist guy so he could get a special place at the table to get a pass on writing things like why jizzing on women’s faces is just grrrrreat. Oh and there are other horrific things. 

Despite all this, big name white “feminism” (like Jezebel but also xoJane, Feministe, Feministing) have at best ignored and not spoken out against him, at worst hired, endorsed, and peddled him as a “redemption story” to their own profit and/or write really crappy non apologies for their outright involvement in his success and shirk their culpability. When feminists still follow Jezebel and give it attention, it just makes me sad because it only further illustrates how abused and marginalized women’s voices are not being heard and the power of their platform prevails. And let’s not forget, Jezebel actively scorns the feminist label—they have said numerous times that while some of their writers are feminist (I like Lindy West) they are NOT a feminist site. ——Discussion about alternative sites, here.

All of this was before the most recent Jezablunder in which the whole #solidarityisforwhitewomen trend was initially covered by Erin Gloria Ryan highlighting her favorite tweets from it, without actually mentioning the woman of color who started it, Mikki Kendall (@karnythia)...OR acknowledging Jezebel's role in why the trend even became a thing in the first place.

So yeah, my policy is NO JEZ and even when some their writers that I do like cover awesome topics, I don't link them and I try to do everything possible to limit the traffic I send their way. They are a monolith of the online world and I realize that my clicks are just a drop in their infinitely large bucket, but given their standards (or lack thereof) I cannot and will not contribute to their success.



UNREALTED: This marks my 500th blog post. YAY MILESTONE :)

[Image text: Gif of Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development acting all happy/giddy
(because Gene Parmesan just showed up at her door)]

Please see the commenting policy before replying to this post.