I was the only Harpy who ended up making the HousingWorks/DoubleX/Sarah Haskins event on Monday night. Funnily enough, I saw a ton of people I knew there, including some people from my conservative workplace. I was impressed, I have to tell you, that they came. All of them are people I introduced to Sarah Haskins, of course, but they had found the event listing on their own. And left work to be at an event by 7 p.m., which is pretty remarkable in our profession.
The presentation (mostly a critique of advertising for what were called “femcare” products and I would call “vagina care” products) was not all Sarah Haskins all the time, which was a little sad, since the (surprisingly tall) Ms. Haskins was clearly the star attraction – after the presentation she was fighting off an army of admirers. My favourite joke of hers was when someone asked about research showing that stem cells could be harvested from menstrual blood, and she ventured that if that were shown to be true, we’d all be put in “period farms.” Funny because, umm, true, but oh well.
As Jezebel’s Anna North pointed out, the tone was kept light – very light. Which meant that there wasn’t much structural critique built into the presentation – mostly it was riffing off the ridiculousness of the advertising. Anna has an issue with it – she wanted the discussion to go deeper. But I kind of disagree. As I said above, I’ve used Sarah Haskins at work to sort of stealth-radicalize my colleagues, who, though not uniformly so, are often the kind of young women who find feminism “useless.” And by and large it’s been a huge success. We talk a lot about the strawfeminist stereotype of humorlessness, and I do still think it’s a starwfeminist stereotype. But the uses of humour and irony as feminist tools, it seems to me, are pretty damn strong, a lot of the time.
I didn’t exactly feel at liberty carrying a sign that said, “Here is the personage known as Pilgrim Soul” because I was worried about being carried off by a mob angry about my anti-Americanism, and also, you know, work people there. But… were any of you there?
yeah wasn’t that Voltaire’s tactic against the RC Church? Show that it’s ridiculous? I think it’s a good tactic.
I’m super-bummed that I missed this.
Were there any men present?
I ended up staying late at work because I really wanted to finish something, but I looked at my little clock at 6:59 and thought, “I’ve made the wrong choice.” And I didn’t get very much accomplished at work, either. :\
[...] ETA 02/24/10: There’s additional commentary from some who attended the event at Jezebel and at The Pursuit of Harpyness. [...]
Someone on Jezebel was upset about two young women who supposedly flipped out on a boy who raised his hand and wanted to speak. Can anyone who was there speak to that?
This is completely off topic, but I’ve been dealing with a concern troll in one of my blogs, who has a screaming case of Tone Argument, and who just informed me that by cussing, I’m doing Feminism wrong.
Someone, I need this, please be smart at me.
@GeekGirls: This happened to me too. Either ignore it, or tell her to fuck off. If she knows you cuss and it offends her, she can opt to not read your blog.
@GeekGirls:
You should tell her that you have thoughtfully considered her advice re: cursing, and have decided to not make any changes in your writing style at this time.
Sometimes I like an overly formal response for ending discussion.
Hmm, Hana Maru, I didn’t see or hear that. And men were called on and spoke.
@Hana Maru: That was me! (The sightor of the flipout, not the flipper.) They didn’t make a scene or anything, but they kept making comments to one another loud enough only for the people next to them to hear. Things like, “This isn’t for boys; why are you here?” or, “What is he doing here? This is for girls!”
There were quite a few guys there, of all ages. It was pretty cool to see.
Thanks!!! I actually did wind up repeatedly sending said troll links to definitions of the Tone Argument and telling them not to let the door hit them in the ass on the way out.
I just have this stupidly stubborn tendency to want people to be arguing in good faith, and when they don’t, I get flustered.