Sorry for bothering you.

I am sorry if I seemed dismissive. This was not my intention. You wrote:

Like you, I’m so protected from real sexual discrimination that I can be alarmed at the appearance of sexism on a pic pile.

This was a misinterpretation of the impact sexual discrimination has on my thinking. Since it was about the dozenth such misinterpretation over the course of a few days (I exaggerate, but only a little), I wanted to make my stance very clear.

I’m not that interested in the maxxer community. I never was. To me, it’s an illustration of the larger social patterns, good and bad. What I’d like is for this post to stop discussing the maxxer community, to stop having people insult me and/or bicker with each other on my blog, and to go on with my life. If you want to keep reading my blog and commenting on it, you’re most welcome to it, as is Jabberwock, Bertram, hork and whatsisname, MeatFarley. The one who called me Ethan’s “handler.” Or is he Bertram? I can’t keep up.

This has all been very surreal. Instead of discussing sexism, I’m going to go futz around with XSLT, if you don’t mind.

I’ll repeat that.

I’m not protected from real sexual discrimination. I am also not alarmed at witnessing sexism on the internet.”

What was that? I still don’t get it.

(off snappishness)

I believe we think very similarly, but communicate differently. I apologize for exaggeration, but it’s important to recognize our own faults first, especially projecting one’s own faults on others, and I never want to mistake myself for being totally knowledgable, much as I may play the part to others. Perhaps we can agree that people cannot understand each other totally, but that would be a logical contradiction.

If you want more data on the maxxer community, please ask about my observations. It can’t all have been wasted time, I hope. If you simply want me to get out of your blog, just say so without having to dismiss my viewpoint.

Like you, I’m so protected from real sexual discrimination that I can be alarmed at the appearance of sexism on a pic pile.

I am neither protected from real sexual discrimination nor alarmed at witnessing sexism on the internet.

I’ll repeat that.

I’m not protected from real sexual discrimination. I am also not alarmed at witnessing sexism on the internet.

I feel this is important to get across. My interest is anthropological. I like watching the way people behave and perceiving patterns. I also like perceiving patterns in communities. The fact that it’s sexism, and we should probably work to get it out of whose-ever system, is tangential to my interests.

Some of the maxxers seem to perceive being looked at as a community as a threat. Well, tough: most of the communities I take part in dissect their own behavior and others’ as well, in an attempt to understand how we work as human beings.

So again, thank you for taking the time to write; but I think we may be incongruous in where our focal points lie.

I freely admit that I’ve read only a fraction of the relevent arguments here. Since the relevent arguments have almost nothing to do with your blog, I can hope that Mindlace opens his up to comments.

I clicked to submit, and it ended up going to a blank page. I tried

the “refresh->resubmit POSTdata” thing, but it didn’t work. There

needs to be a way for browsers to, like, display the data that’s being submitted in case transmission fails.

Anyway, points noted. This apology comes not in response to what Janet said above (as I said, I’d written most of it at work today and lost it), but sincerely and genuinely from my own thoughts, independent from the opinions of others.

I, too, have been misdirecting some things at you that were intended for mindlace, as I was initially slightly misled by his linking to your livejournal from the commentary, an action which led me to believe you had been wanting to give input on this as opposed to being dragged into it. (I was confused about the order of events when I made my initial post: I thought mindlace first linked to this page, and Bertram came to comment. It /did/ strike me as odd that the blog entry to be commented on had nothing to do with the conversation, but it took me until somewhere around your second reply to me to work out the actual chronology.)

I don’t agree with Bertram’s actions, and I apologize for any hostility in my initial post. I now completely understand your confusion, and how some of my references were ambiguous enough to be construed as referencing other, unrelated things. I feel it was rude of Bertram to search you out and needlessly comment on your blog, and that he was out of line.

Many of the things I said (especially paragraphs 2, 5, and 6 of my original post) were directed at both you and Ethan (and even then, really more at Ethan than you), as I felt at the time that his link to your blog indicated support. I, too, was ambiguous with my direction and I apologize.

Now fully aware of the circumstances, I realize you’ve been extremely reasonable, and, again, I apologize for my hostility and misdirected commentary.

So, now that we’ve done well to eliminate most of the confusion, I think we can finally discuss the actual root of the topic–sexism–independently from the original conversation on mindlace’s post or TheMaxx, and your subsequently being dragged into all of this. But I’ll leave that for later, as I’m hungry and have had literally nothing to eat all day.

Janet, please refrain from /constantly/, just /ceaselessly/ using the “I have more education” thing to belittle me, because it’s /extremely/ irritating and insulting, more than I feel you’re really aware. This is part of the reason I became defensive: you said you were “saying things about [me] [...] that [I] wouldn’t like”, and when you do so, it’s often this “you don’t have a full college education” bullshit that you know I adore so much. Had my mother not been a lowly bank teller and my father not been a financial disaster, perhaps I could’ve afforded the private school education that you’ve had, but I don’t think I’ve failed intellectually just because I went to public school and dropped out of college. In fact, I think I’ve done quite well in spite of it. Often, you’ll even admit that your continued education has taught you nothing. So please, please, please stop using that as a deus ex machina for every argument. It really is starting to become cliche. Note that I’m not trying to censor you, and your opposing viewpoints are fully welcome, but not when their only support ends up ultimately being my lack of formal education.

As Jabberwock’s Counterpart, I’ve been mostly following what he has to say on this topic and regarding full research into the discussion as mostly a waste of my time. Now that I’m actually reading what he wrote in context, I see what an asshole he’s being. He tries to be civil, but he wouldn’t know a non-polarizing conversation if it kicked him in… (actually, that second post is much more intelligent; my apologies for exaggerating) the shin, then. I swear, he has creative outputs other than harassing reasonable people on the internet, but damned if he doesn’t avoid them entirely. In his defense, he hasn’t been getting much sleep lately, and doesn’t have your theoretical background, or even mine. I’m an undergraduate with much earlier exposure to graduate-level feminist theory. I regard myself as a feminist. Like you, I’m so protected from real sexual discrimination that I can be alarmed at the appearance of sexism on a pic pile.

I feel very much the way you do about culture on themaxx (The Mean and Measure of the Internet), although having “been around since before the dawn of time” I’ve grown used to subliminating outrage into apathy because it’s just the place I go to procrastinate… and to experiment with public reception for artwork, and with exhibitionism, and so on. The mindset really creeps in. There’s very little one can do about stupid people, as far as I can tell. I would be alarmed, but I usually can’t summon even enough care to, say, vote like funkynut (especially considering that I don’t like funkynut and don’t want to be associated with her attitude). I accept that in a mostly male community there will be a lot of what men like, and about half of it is actually quite tasteful. I apologize for Bertram trolling you, and regret that you both drawing attention to it exacerbated the problem. I can’t remember what I was trying to say, now, because Jabberwock has woken up and began loudly defending myself at me before even reading this post.

I would love to discuss this more, and will, as soon as I can keep from taking on Jabberwock’s verbal bloat.

FUCK.