Sex, lies and the Internet: The tale of Lena Chen

Do you want police and courts in your internet? I don't. It's enough we have government spies and government malware here.

She was explictly told by google to sort this out herself and police ignored her. Civil lawsuit? I don't think she's rich enough to provide for all the lawers.

Besides did I say anything about justice or punishing the guy? I was talking about problem solving.

The first one - thinking that all prostitution is inherently bad for the women and that there cannot be anyone working in prostitution out of his/her own will - is basically a mandatory part of being feminist here in the UK. Essentially every major feminist activist organisation thinks this way, and they refuse to accept groups or individuals who disagree as feminists. If you go looking for a feminist group near you, you'll find a list set up by UK Feminista, a joint effort between all the major feminist organisations which refuses to list any group which doesn't think this way. Oh, and they're the feminists who have all the contacts in the press, which they use to smear women who disagree with them.

Interestingly, I've basically never seen anyone refuse to accept feminists who think this way as feminists, except when it's inconvenient for some argument they're making about feminism being all sunshine and roses and equality. The net effect of this is that nominally reasonable feminists - like presumably yourself - are actually supporting these extremists by protecting them from criticism.

While you are correct that people looking to discredit feminism often cast aspersions and claim that xyz behavior is the work of the feminist movement, which it is clearly not, there are plenty of self proclaimed feminists who are nutters. I doubt they want to discredit feminism, but by their acts they certainly fall into what people might call "extreme feminism". I call them what they are, which is man hating. Feminism (as I know it) is about establishing both sexes on equal footing.

A prime example of the nutters below; If you are not familiar with Dworkin, she is famous for many stupid, stupid things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin#Intercourse

"In the book, she argues that all heterosexual sex in our patriarchal society is coercive and degrading to women, and sexual penetration may by its very nature doom women to inferiority and submission, and "may be immune to reform""

"Well that's not feminism"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman

It's the extremists who self-identify as feminists who create that association, not "someone who wants to discredit feminism".

While it is disingenuous of critics to treat those as representative of feminism in general, it is equally disingenuous for feminists to act like they don't exist.

I get what you're trying to say, but the people were discussing self identify as feminists. And IMO poison the well for actual feminists.

So who gets to make the official definition of what "feminism" means? And how do you enforce that nobody uses it any other way?

Good luck with that... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription

The goal for some self-proclaimed feminists is not gender equality, but raising women above men. They still call themselves feminists for political reasons, so some deserve the hate.

The problem is real feminism got stained.

Not only do feminists who hate trans people exist, from what I can tell they're more widely supported and considered more feminist than trans women who criticise them for it. Even some of the more prominent trans feminists[1] think that way, presumably because the ones that don't get rather less support from other feminists.

[1] See for instance Natalie Reed's blog post: http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/12/13/complicit... Bear in mind that Cathy Brennan publicly outs trans women, encourages others to harass them, contacts their workplaces in order to try and get fired and their doctors in order to get them denied treatment. Somehow this is less objectionable - and more feminist - than the people she's targetting complaining about it.

Yes and it's loathsome (speaking as a woman and 'feminist/humanist' who isn't interested in elevating any gender upon another).

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200311/?read=article_tea

http://www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2013/05/28/it-w...

Yes, they exist. I Follow people on Twitter who have made me aware of that issue. There's one prominent columnist in particular whose name I can't recall that seems to have it in for trans people and restrooms, for example.

> Such feminists exist?

Yes, the range of people with radically divergent, often incompatible, and sometimes nearly diametrically opposed views fighting for control of the word "feminism" is pretty broad.

You see the same thing with, say, "socialism". Or "Christianity". Or, really, lots of other things.

"Feminism" is sometimes somewhat more problematic than many of the rest because, for a variety of reasons, there hasn't been as much development of secondary terminology that is less contentious which helps discuss and identify the various competing factions clearly, so, when we try to discuss them, we end up having to say things like "Feminists who believe x, y, and z" and then half or more the discussion gets sidetracked into an argument of whether or not belief x, y, or z is necessary to, compatible with, or opposed to "true feminism" and whether, therefore, it is correct to use "feminist" to describe people with that view (or, OTOH, whether it is redundant to qualify "feminist" with reference to those beliefs.)

All kinds of feminists exist. Valerie Solanas and Luce Irigaray should have thought you that.

I think you might be letting your opinions about 'michaelochurch unfairly affect the way you parsed his comment. You have to read pretty deeply between the lines (and his mentions of "alpha"/"omega"/"Game") to get to any point about "having a hard time finding a date". What he does directly refer to is "a culture of casual sex" and although I'm far from a prude and ideologically believe that what happens in someone's bedroom is their own business, I don't think it's "horseshit" to suggest that a culture of casual sex (or even a culture which glorified that idea, without it necessarily being a reflection of the way things actually are) could negatively affect social norms with regard to male-female interactions.

I also take issue with the assumptions 'michaelochurch has made about the mental welfare of someone who is completely foreign to me (and presumably, him, and... you?) and if that was your only original issue, you should have said so. (Then again, it could be argued that you repeatedly make assumptions about his mental welfare publicly, so I guess that would have been a strange comment for you to make.)

As an aside: if we really think someone on the internet is crazy, we can nicely suggest to them one time that they may want to speak to a professional (which I know you have already done in this case, and in an admirable fashion). After that, for a foreign commenter on a message board, the remaining options are to a) engage with the content of their posts or b) ignore them. Replying to each of their comments in disagreement without actually coming up with a good reason is what I took issue with here (not that there weren't good reasons to disagree with GP, just that I didn't think you chose one) and, of course, making further commentary about them frequently also seems problematic to me.

I actually read quite a few posts on her blog. She wasn't just writing about sex. She was writing about people she was with, sometimes in intimate detail.

No one sane has any problem with sex columnists, who write about the topic in general. "[Identifiable person] has weird genitalia" is another.

> Later downthread, the same commenter diagnoses Lena Chen as mentally ill.

Right, just like you have a habit of casually, publicly diagnosing michaelochurch as mentally ill (I think this is the fourth time I've seen you do this just in the last 2 months).

Anyway, small nitpick: Lena actually did have mental illnesses. On her blog she's spoken of substance abuse, self-image issues she had, paraphilia etc.

Is today 'purposely misread/ignore the point of posts and make a flippant content-less one-line reply' day or something? I'm a strong supporter of affirmative action programs, I go out of my way to get women and girls interested in programming, and I consider myself to be a feminist. I'm interested in getting results, and making practical and smart decisions for the day-by-day happenings.

As for you - please stop being this way, stop with the snippy replies, stop polarizing the crowds, what you're doing is unproductive. Step away from the keyboard and think about what you're doing here.

Do you keep your door locked? Yes? Why should you? After all, it's not you who needs to guard your property, it's the thieves who should be told to stop stealing!

This is the exact same logic a lot of contemporary postmodern feminists use in arguments concerning rape. It's not about bondage and discipline, it's about risk management.

Ok, on that I can agree.

Here's the issue. Kathy Sierra was attacked without provocation. Lena Chen used her sexuality in the public to gain attention (and, to a degree, social power).

My levels of sympathy are different. Kathy Sierra was the lawful driver hit by a drunk. Lena Chen was the 120-mph speeder who ended up in a crash. Everyone speeds, and no one "deserves" to be in a crash for driving 120mph, but the laws of physics are not so kind.

If we have to choose between enforcing DUI laws and redoing all our roads to make 120mph safe (which may not even be possible given the limits of most cars) then I'm going to take the former.

The "Game" culture of casual sex-- and it's important to note that it's the culture and not the sex that is so revolting; sex that isn't in other peoples' face is none of anyone else's business-- has damaged respect between the genders and proven itself to be generally toxic. The prudent thing for a young woman to do is distance herself from it entirely, date respectable men, and have a private sex life existing in the context of monogamous relationships. If you're offended by the prior sentence, then switch the genders (or extend it to gays) and note that it's equally valid. I would advise a son not to have casual sex (false rape accusations, emotional problems that can afflict both men and women, reputation risks) just as fervently as a daughter. It's just a horrible culture that is best avoided outright.

Agreed. What I do find terrible about this culture on its attitudes toward sexual misbehavior is that it's a guilt culture for men, but a shame culture for women. Guilt is feeling bad about something you did. Shame is when it's generalized to the person.

If a man does something stupid, he's told to feel bad about what he did. If a woman does something stupid sexually, she's told to feel bad about herself. That's wrong and it should change. The double standard is shitty.

I can't get on board with the Sex and the City crowd that glorifies horrible female behavior, but neither can I support the hideous double standard that exists now. The correct middle ground is not to glorify bad behavior and call it "feminist" (as the SatC people do) but for women to experience the same guilt culture (not the shame culture) that men do. It should be "that was dumb, don't do it again" (as it is for men) but not "you're a horrible person".

Of course they have the right to say how they feel.

But if they keep saying, screaming really, for 5 years when it's not really relevant to the discussion any more and only keeps damaging her life, then it's (IMO) wrong.

She is because of her irresponsibility.

Radical feminists would make horrible information security consultants, now that I think of it. "Risk management is oppressive. Don't tell me to set up firewall rules and ACLs, tell crackers not to enumerate my services!"

Is the concept of personal responsibility and analyzing the situation really that hard to comprehend for these people? You can't just scream "YOLO, I'll do whatever I want!" and expect to be unharmed.

It's bizarre for you to claim my points are directed at the victim, when I'm arguing that isn't my intention.

My point is: if someone would have internalized that, what happened would be less of a problem. However, internalizing such things is more likely if everyone around you has internalized those things, which would already go a much longer way towards making what happened less of a problem.

The train of thought starts at the first point, suggests a solution, but doesn't say that only that single point is the solution. The entirety of the post suggests a solution, in which most people would not consider what happened a problem anymore. And only the entirety is the message. That single point out of context isn't.

I'm not yet living in the world I'm advocating.

If I were an anti-Putin Russian advocating a world in which everyone could safely use real-name accounts for their anti-Putin propaganda, you wouldn't argue that my advocacy was false or insincere, just because I was using an anonymous account, now would you?