Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter shout-out to the ladies of Feministing for “creating online feminism,” the more pissed off I get. Feministing was created in 2004, and while I don’t claim to be an expert on the early history of feminism on the internet, I was on the internet prior to 2004, and I know there were feminist spaces and communities here long before Jessica Valenti, et al. A tiny amount of research backs me up:
- Here’s an article about trolling in feminist spaces that discusses online feminist communities in the 80s.
- Here’s an article discussing feminist Usenet communities, online mailing lists, CIS forums, and bulletin boards in the 80s, as early as 1982 when Jessica Valenti was a whopping 4 years old.
- Here’s an article discussing feminist Usenet communities in the mid-90s.
I get tired of these self-absorbed, self-promoting women being the face of feminists in my generation. They can’t be bothered to look beyond themselves even when it comes to the history of other white, well-educated, upper middle class feminists. They certainly can’t be bothered to think about how their brand of feminism might apply to others, if it applies to others at all. And while they are fantastic voices when it comes to the social problems that affect them, they have routinely proven themselves to be willfully oblivious to issues that impact women and human beings unlike themselves or how their views on the world might actually negatively impact other people, including many women.
The idea that these women get credit for creating feminism anywhere, much less on the web, where feminism took root before some of these women were even born is offensive, ignorant, and arrogant.