A challenging post by Deborah over at In a Strange Land turned up in my RSS this week, and I wanted to talk about it. In fact, I got out of bed to do so. The good news is that I wasn’t compelled at 3am, which occasionally happens…
I’ll say that I agree with Deborah (via Tze Ming) that PA System is a community, and one dominated by liberal-left-of-centre voices. I agree to this because I’m complicit. Since its inception it has increasingly formed an alternative voice to places like Kiwiblog that pose an explicitly aggressive and right-wing dialogue (and at times, monologue).
I’d also like to say that I’ve also been extremely disappointed by conversations going on in there. The willingness of too many to entirely believe the police line over Te Qaeda was shocking to me. Many, many people jumped directly from “where’s the truth in all the spin?” to “these people are threatening me and my family!!”, and therein lost a lot of their rationality.
On the other hand, some fantastic stuff has happened there. The formation of the PAS Women’s XV, for which I proudly believe I provided the theme music, was an event.
What seems to be the actual issue with PA System is that it’s not become the bastion of “the Left” that many seemed to expect it to. Before System there was nowhere for the centre-left to air and talk about issues. I frequently discussed this online with people, and we agreed that it weakened the blogosphere as a whole.
Then along came System, and expectations were high. Obviously, as the community has settled, a particular voice has emerged. A rather middle of the road voice, but one that does have a strong left-lean. Basically, Russell’s ‘journalist’ voice.
And… I can’t actually see what’s wrong with that.
It’s at this point that I think I’ll say that I whole-heartedly disagree with Deborah and Tze Ming’s assertion that PA System is a place where feminism and difference isn’t welcome. System is a place that actively seeks to highlight and discuss difference.
As I say, my own opinion is that PA System doesn’t reject difference, it just behaves in exactly the same way the ‘real-world’ New Zealand centre-left does. It listens to difference, and gets a bit awkward and uncomfortable when those voices get too loud, too direct, or too challenging. And that different voice can be feminist, activist, anti-racist, socialist, anarchist, whatever. System displays, in effect, “normal” behaviour for New Zealand.
I think what’s lost in the disappointment with System is the reality that the feminist-activist voice is a minority. It is a minority in cyberspace, and it is a minority in real-space. The marginalisation of that voice, and I am not denying that it happens, mirrors the real world.
So the question I ask myself is, why beat up on PA System when all it’s doing is mirroring reality? The issue is the marginalization of women’s voices, not System itself.
I’m also inclined to think that there’s a further crisis of expectation wrapped up in this issue. When the net itself was first coming into the public consciousness there was an expectation that it would allow a “new form of communication”, one freed up from barriers of race, class, gender. It quickly became apparent though that people bring their socio-cultural political agenda with them to cyberspace. There quite simply is no genuinely neutral voice in which to speak (this is a philosophically Liberal argument I could harp on about. There is no such thing as “the individual”. We’re all nothing greater than the sum of our experiences. Experiences which are, inherently, gendered, acculturated, socialised, etc). Again, this means that cyberspace is mirroring real-word politics.
I dread to say this, but perhaps what’s needed is cyberspace in which these alternate voices can be aired. I say ‘dread’, because that sounds like I’m suggesting feminist-activism is further marginalized into “somewhere it belongs”. But what I’m actually saying is that there’s plenty of room in cyberspace for everyone. If PA System isn’t reflecting your values or thoughts, then you needn’t inhabit it. And if you need a place to inhabit, then don’t complain because what exists doesn’t suit you. Just go out and build one, and bring like-minded people into your community.
The number of people who have delurked and posted their first comment to say goodbye to Tze Ming is a strong indication that there where plenty of readers directly interested in feminist and activist writers. If I remember correctly, Russell has pointed out that all Tze Ming’s posts were marked by high numbers of lurkers. This is a fairly strong indication to me that a market exists for these ideas, it just needs to find the right venue.
I, for one, used to go over to Span when I wanted to read a feminist or women’s perspective on issues. And now, I go to In a Strange Land.
8 December, 2007 at 10:38 am
I always enjoyed Yellow Peril because it gave me an insight into a very different perspective from my own, a view of life that I could quite simply never have. I really appreciate that.
I too was uncomfortable with the almost instant middle-class flocking over the Te Qaeda arrests, the dismissal of people’s genuine trauma over the way the police had behaved, but apparently like a lot of other people who were also uncomfortable, I didn’t speak up on that thread. So if those dissenting voices weren’t there, I’m as much to blame as anyone else.
Despite having been politically active since I was fifteen, I’ve never felt a sense of belonging to an amorphous ‘left’. I’ve never subscribed to anyone’s whole platform, so I’m used to feeling a little on the outer. I tend to vote Green, but I’m in favour of GE, for instance.
And that’s okay. On System, when I want to speak up, I can, and I know I’m not going to get flamed. And if I don’t speak up, I take the responsibility for that, I don’t try to pass it off by whining about having a ‘community’ that doesn’t agree with me about everything all the time. And that includes arguing my corner against the ‘feminist’ because hey, not all women speak with one voice, either.
When I want to read the sort of feminism that makes me go ‘YES!’, I go here (NSFW)
8 December, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Deborah’s post appears to overlay Deborah’s views very heavily over what TM wrote. I’m not really sure what Deborah expects from a main stream site like System in the first place.
The comment,
“I would love to get in there and be provocative, but I have been slapped down a couple of times, and I’m just not up for it again.” – just sounds like I want to provoke people but don’t want to be provoked.
If she wants a place to express an opinion without being challenged she had best stay away from any forum, internet or otherwise, that allows debate.
8 December, 2007 at 2:17 pm
See but che
you are an amazing guy who can converse with someone, hear them, disagree with them and then engage in discussion with them. At no time do you make it personal or get nasty.
Hell i don’t know if you still do, but in the early days of system you were the one who called ‘theatre’ a good chunk of time. Because you can have an amazing sense of fairness.
But can you say that everyone in PA system, is even half of you.
9 December, 2007 at 8:12 am
hmmm… ok sue, how much do you need to borrow?
10 December, 2007 at 12:47 am
[...] Tibby, himself an ex-PA writer, says this in his lead into talking about Tze Ming Mok’s farewell. Since its inception it has increasingly formed an alternative voice to places like Kiwiblog that [...]
10 December, 2007 at 1:17 pm
My sister’s a feminist! So am I! Wanna come over and wash our dishes you hot hunk o’ stuff?
10 December, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Response on its way, Che. But in the meantime, it’s not just that feminist voices are marginalised, but that they are shouted down. The large number of lurkers doesn’t just show that Tze Ming had a lot of support – it also shows that the lurkers were for some reason, too damned scared to post. Why?
On the other hand, some fantastic stuff has happened there. The formation of the PAS Women’s XV, for which I proudly believe I provided the theme music, was an event.
Yes. And I was the person who suggested it in the first place.
But very roughly, I suggest that the formation of the team lovely piece of silliness, that was a result of feminism, not an outpouring of feminist sentiment itself.
I think I would want to say much the same thing to Ghet with his NSFW link above. Roughly, that sort of thing is possible because of feminism. I’m not sure that it’s feminist in itself. I wouldn’t want to make too strong a claim about that though, without working through some of the feminist analyses of pr0n that I know about. I need to get to a university library to get hold of a particular article, and re-read it. So if you are prepared to wait, I will get something onto my own site about it sometime next year, maybe by about March…
Happy to keep talking…
10 December, 2007 at 4:13 pm
While I’ll let Ghet out herself, she’s a woman PAS poster. Although possibly really a dog; after all it is the Internet.
10 December, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Ooops! Sorry – bad assumption. I tend to assume male when I’m not sure, given the preponderance of men on-line.
10 December, 2007 at 5:47 pm
no worries deborah, am awaiting reply. oh, and must get that book back to you.
but currently drafting reply to shea, who seems to assume that reading misogynist, racist, homophobic authors like sir humphries is preferable to pa system…
10 December, 2007 at 5:52 pm
@gemma.
what the hell are you talking there my old friend! the last time you came round you disappeared before washing up time.
(PS. you’re already on the list for easter feast.)
10 December, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Che i’m inlcined to agree with Deborah, and even if, in the unlikely event, it is true that PAS reflects the RL, i’m not sure that’s what it should be. i thought it was going to be better than that.
but really the gender bias of respondents, together with the anonymity factor, means it isn’t like RL anyway.
to my mind, what has squashed its flair in recent times is it’s being policed by certain martinettes since the time i coined ‘theatre’. yes i said coined. lots of school project, very little room for humour, difference or flexibilty of thought. it has become very conservative in the most stifling of ways.
11 December, 2007 at 9:15 am
[...] gotten some support for my Tze Ming Mok memorial post, and some criticism. None of it unreasoned, or [...]
11 December, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Heh, yes, I’m a girl. I’m the annoying girl. Or a very clever dog. David Haywood was convinced I was a guy for a long time. Which in and of itself, surely, says something about demands for ‘female voices’, if you can’t spot them when you hear them.
Deborah, to be devil’s advocaat for a moment, the woman who writes the Ms Naughty Blog calls herself a feminist. So… why do you get to decide whether she is or not?
I tend to assume male when I’m not sure, given the preponderance of men on-line.
Which surely increases your feeling that there are a preponderance of men, if you assume every pseudonym is a male.
The thing is, PA can’t be all things to all people, and still be a community or have a distinctive voice. There are plenty of women on the net, have a look at Xanga or livejournal. Where women are under-represented is politics, so maybe it’s simply the mainly political nature of PA that puts some women off. I don’t know, because I’ve always been heavily into politics and polly blogs.
I do hope Russell gets some women who post frequently. I’d also like to see more representation of people over sixty, and under twenty-five because I get the impression they’re almost entirely missing. But I still really enjoy the site as it is, and I’d like to think in some very tiny way, my participation helps to shape that community.
11 December, 2007 at 2:48 pm
for sure your participation helps shape the community – i think the totality of participants’ comment contributions shape a blog more than the article authors.
i think if PA were to be more inclusive, the commentors need to be cultivated more than the authors.
11 December, 2007 at 3:27 pm
i know that went PS system started all i wanted to see was a blog where left-leaning people could participate in comments without fear of being verbally assaulted by socially dysfunctional weirdos.
my theory was that if you have a calm, reasonable comments thread, people will delurk and feel comfortable participating.
and i think that system has been eminently successful against that measure. it bucks the trend of comments threads being full of bile and vitriol, and it allows people to speak their minds.
i for one am glad that the sprout participated in things like ‘theatre’ becoming part of the culture on system. and it’s just a pity that in setting up a tolerant commenting culture that system has become a little calm for some, a little too bland for others.
i know that i’m losing interest in the commenting, if not only because new zealand politics is so, damn, boring.
11 December, 2007 at 3:57 pm
cheers Che
11 December, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Deborah, to be devil’s advocaat for a moment, the woman who writes the Ms Naughty Blog calls herself a feminist. So… why do you get to decide whether she is or not?
I don’t! When I say that I’m not sure that it’s feminist, it’s because I’m in epistemic doubt. I mean that I really don’t know.
I also think that just laying claim to the title “feminist” doesn’t make something feminist. And again, that’s why I want to take some time to think long and hard about what I think about MsNaughty.
I enjoy PAS too. But as I have said over at my own place, I don’t think it is livng up to its ideals. Or maybe, the better way to put that is, that if it wants to live up to its ideals, then it would be good to have more women posting there.
I agree about NZ politics being boring. But maybe that’s a good thing.
Three blog conversations. Lovely fun.
11 December, 2007 at 7:09 pm
i’m sticking to my only bit of knowledge on feminism.
no less than g.greer once said, “the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy, it is fraternity”.
maybe the ideal of fraternity system tries to live up to is a virtue that needs to be warmly regarded?
11 December, 2007 at 7:48 pm
maybe the ideal of fraternity system tries to live up to is a virtue that needs to be warmly regarded?
That gives me a warm fuzzy. Of course, it’s nearly nine o’clock and still twenty-five degrees, so it’s more like a hot-sweaty.
I also think that just laying claim to the title “feminist” doesn’t make something feminist.
And this in itself kind of fascinates me. Because what, then, is a ‘feminist voice’? How do you define feminism, especially if it can’t be done by someone just saying they’re a feminist?
The reason I like Ms Naughty so much, and I mean the blog, not the pron site, which is For the Girls, is that she bears all the hallmarks of original thinking. She doesn’t regurgitate other people’s blogs or books or whatever, she’s just sat down and thought about the issue herself. And when she said
So, is it ever reasonable to dictate what kind of sex acts are “feminist”? Well, no, because then you turn into Andrea Dworkin, and none of us want that.
I felt the hugest sense of relief. Also, I laughed.
But. I’m in danger of tangenting the thread.
11 December, 2007 at 7:54 pm
meh. i think the system issue is spent. discuss away!
11 December, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Hah, no it ain’t. There are lots of things wrong with PAS. You haven’t covered the half of it.
I certainly won’t be posting there again.
12 December, 2007 at 9:53 am
And this in itself kind of fascinates me. Because what, then, is a ‘feminist voice’? How do you define feminism, especially if it can’t be done by someone just saying they’re a feminist?
Well, I could say that I’m a pig in a poke, but that doesn’t make me a pig in a poke unless the external evidence validates the claim. Maybe I could lay claim to being an clean green environmentalist, but given that I drive a big Holden, have lots of consumer goods, use town supply water to keep my garden thriving, and eat kiwi (the bird, not the fruit) for breafast, my behaviour wouldn’t stack up with the claim.
That’s why I am reluctant to accept the claim that MsNaughty is feminist at face value. But… as I have said twice now, I’m in a state of doubt about that. I really, genuinely, don’t know what I think about it, and it could take me some time before I have a considered and reasoned opinion about it.
13 December, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I do hope Russell gets some women who post frequently. I’d also like to see more representation of people over sixty, and under twenty-five because I get the impression they’re almost entirely missing. But I still really enjoy the site as it is, and I’d like to think in some very tiny way, my participation helps to shape that community.
It sure does, and not in a tiny way.
I’m both flattered and wearied by all the wider discussion since Tze Ming departed. Flattered because people seem to care about it, wearied because, dammit, I’m not a public utility.
At Tze Ming’s suggestion, I’ve posted something on Deborah’s blog, on newfreeland and now here. I’m struck by the conflicting diagnoses in the first two (too combative vs too cosy), but, as you said, PA can’t be all things to all people. It is what it is, and I just get up most mornings and try and write well.
And as Che suggested, I just can’t answer to expectations to somehow symbolise something called “The Left”. I’m wary of ideology, I didn’t go to university and it’s just not where I’m from culturally. (Apart from anything else, I’m an award-winning business writer, and thus not best placed to smash the state.)
Anyway. I think I’ll take the kids to the mall now …
13 December, 2007 at 6:06 pm
hey, ah, russell… i have to moderate this site, and i reckon i’ll have to get you to ease up the “a..rd w…ing writer” comments?
some of us are just public servants, and you’re being a little intimidating.
k thx bai.
14 December, 2007 at 12:05 am
[...] The discussion about the state of PAS over the last few days, here and here on this blog, on ObjectDart, and on New FreeLand, beautifully picked up and described and enhanced by the ineffable Jolisa [...]
14 December, 2007 at 9:05 am
“I’m wary of ideology, I didn’t go to university and it’s just not where I’m from culturally.”
Hmm. Snap. Scary. Did you profile your audience?
Tze Ming was at her best when she provoked the PA audience into howls of outrage at being “discriminated against” by some of her writing. I thought, “well maybe that gives us a tiny insight into something most of us only experience second hand.”
But one thing I will say, is that whilst her parting shots were deliberately discomforting, the reason she is departing is surely much more because of her work at [redacted] than anything that PA has done.
14 December, 2007 at 11:36 am
I take a certain amusement from being mistaken for other genders (and a variety of other “important” classifications) online. Depending on the location I think it’s good to be seen as “one of us” or “that annoying {reactionary label}”. So those of you who assume that everyone online is white, male, middle-class and educated and therefore the internet is dominated by those people… perhaps try assuming the opposite when you can and see if that makes you happier.
Some blog I looked at the other day has Maia under “communists” and Asher under some other kind of authoritarian statist. Talk about getting your labels wrong