Many women have seemingly jumped ship and have left Dkos over not feeling appreciated and not being listened to.
I have to tell you that the message has gotten through and I believe that everyone recognizes that the abortion issue as well as womens concerns are major Democratic issues.
What I am concerned about is a fracturing of the Democratic lobbying machine that has been created. We pushed back on judges, Bolton, torture, war issues, legislative issues with some success.
More below the fold:
The success we have had is because we were unified. Dkos is by far the largest blog and has become a powerful lobbying tool.
If we are divided we are all weaker. I would encourage everyone to think about the big picture and how we must be united to win back a majority.
A majority cannot be had by dismissing women or men or any other group and we must fight the fight together.
I hope those who have felt betrayed by their recent experience at dkos can put it behind them and consider coming back to kos and cross posting at kos. The community misses you all and the community is not complete without your contribution.
I have to tell you that the message has gotten through …
In what way would that be, Richard? I checked DKos just now, to be sure I hadn’t missed something. Doesn’t look like I did.
P.S. Always good to see you.
I don’t know which diary you checked – there have been quite a few on this issue, but I think that most posts have been sympathetic to the concerns of the dkos women.
Armando put on the front page a diary about the Democratic party being dedicated to a womens right to choose. I believe he was doing this as an olive branch essentially saying that we do care.
I understand the concerns you and many others have, but I think that this issue can be worked through and that we can get back to being a unified group.
I personally miss your diaries on dkos and hope that you and the many others do come back soon.
Oh, wait, there it is, way down at the bottom of the page below all those graphics Kos put up immediately afterward, no wonder I couldn’t see it! Thanks for the heads up.
Good to hear from you.
I was looking at the front page, Richard. It’s up to Kos to make a statement. Armando’s statement isn’t the same, particularly when it’s forced down the page by three other stories from Kos, one of them with a long graphic.
Richard, I haven’t left DKos. I haven’t said I did. I’m in limbo at the moment…. I’m old enough to know the dangers of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
That said, I find that your urging – which I know you mean sincerely — doesn’t account for how women would have perceived, and felt, about the situation.
My head has been full of the ugliest memories for the past two days – memories of being humiliated, put down, marginalized, ridiculed, simply because I’m female.
And from what I’ve read, a lot of other women are experiencing the same rush of bad memories and intense concurrent feelings.
I find the urging of the others in this thread to be unwarranted. I only learned about this problem yesterday, and that’s not a very long time. And, believe me, I’ve been told TOO MANY TIMES in my life to “just get over it” and “ignore this” for the sake of the group, etc., etc. Not this time.
I appreciate you coming here to mend fences, and I acknowledge that we are stronger together than alone.
Some of us women who were bloodied in the fights of the last few weeks saw responses that we never thought could come from liberal men. From Democrats.
When we expressed disagreement on gender issues, we might as well have been talking to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton.
The stance taken by the hyper-macho crowd was:
YOU can’t control me.
YOU can’t tell me what to do.
I don’t have to answer to you.
MY way or the highway.
You’re with is or against us.
How DARE you question me.
You are DISLOYAL.
You are STUPID.
You’re a sex-hating fundie.
You want to make me WEAK.
You’re a prissy prude who wants to RUIN MY FUN.
You’re the reason people HATE LIBERALS.
The viciousness of the over-reactions was stunning.
No matter how carefully we framed our disagreement and agreed to disagree, we were vilified for trying to undermine them. Nothing was acceptable but that we fall into line, Yes, Sir, and support their opinions.
For those of us who have experienced/witnessed domestic violence and workplace bullying, the tone of these arguments was familiar and menacing. Every instinct said, “Get out, get out now.”
Here’s what I think.
Bush’s presidency has alienated a LOT of folks who are politically moderate or a bit liberal. It has made them question the GOP and re-examine the Democrats.
But these folks have not shed their illiberal ideas, on anything from unions to immigration to gender issues. You see it at dKos – folks who rip Bush a new one in one comment turn around and say something asinine about women, for example, in another.
I think it is a terrible idea to simply walk away when we see that. We all have a GOLDEN opportunity to snap these idiots out of their illiberal ideas and help rebuild a progressive coalition.
But simply abandoning dKos to those folks – when the vast majority of Kossacks remain progressive and supportive of women’s rights – strikes me as a very, very bad idea.
Have a 4 for your wisdom.
Apart from the recent issue that made many women leave DKos, there is the fact that DKos may have reached its optimum number of members. What is it now? 45K-50K.
The optimum population for a city is 300,000. After that, the experts say that there is a great loss of control.
The optimum for a blog – I haven’t a clue, but I would guess half of its present membership would be good. That way, very good diaries would not disappear within seconds. The refresh of the pages would not be so slow.
Just a thought. A non gender, non partisan thought.
I for one haven’t said I’m abandoning DKos.
I sense the panic in the posts in this diary, and empathize.
But, instead of urging us to get with the program — just like women have been told for millenia — we are deserving of a serious, heartfelt apology. Particularly not one from one’s sidekick, and one that gets buried right away.
Oh I very much agree with you about Kos. I didn’t think he ever really retracted his deeply offensive statement from a few days back, he just sort of backed off of it when everyone lit into him.
In the end a lot of this is Kos’ fault, as he enabled an anti-woman culture to sprout there when he went after NARAL and women’s issues in general. Still, the beauty of dKos is that Kos himself is really only one voice, and the site can be used as a powerful transmitter of progressive ideas to folks who are finally, after many years, in a position to be changed in their ideas.
I think the panic stems from a deeper sense of drift that we’re all feeling. Just when we need to be working together on a long-term reform program, we’re fighting with each other over small issues that reflect deeper concerns – “we” meaning everyone from us bloggers to the Democratic leadership.
how detrimental a migration away will be. First of all, Booman and Kos are already linked via a number of users, and via lots of lefty/liberal/Democratic blogs. Much of the same information will be conveyed, action will still be mobilized. Who knows, it could even build another point of power. If we can proliferate the power on the left instead of concentrating it, we might be better off….
just a few thoughts to be contrarian. 🙂
I very much agree with the positives of building multiple sources of power, as it were. I just also think that there is an opportunity at dKos to shape the discourse in a very effective way. I consider it a 100,000 megawatt transmitter as opposed to these other micropower efforts we have going on so far. And transmitters ARE very useful and important, as Orcinus reminds us.
And then there’s the part of me that rarely strays from a fight, and rarely likes to cede the ground to my enemy – especially when dKos is still filled with a vast majority of folks who are my allies, on every issue. It’s a feeling of not wanting to let something I value fall to the barbarians.
Is there something about BooMan we ought to know? 🙂
The problem, for me, is that there are people inside the gates who sound like my allies when I talk about their issues and who sound like the barbarians when I try to talk about mine.
And this ain’t my first time at the rodeo. I’ve been told all my life that as soon as The Current Crisis is over they’ll take my little problems under consideration. Meantime, sit down and stop rocking the boat. Oh, and could you keep bailing, while you’re at it?
I don’t see effective discourse, for my definition of effective, coming out of a place where slang terms for women’s genitalia are popular insults, where sexist trash talk is tolerated and where the concerns of half the world’s population are dismissed as special interests. No, everyone on dKos doesn’t do that. It’s a portion of the community there, a very loud portion I’m sorry to say.
Perhaps they can come to OUR place and learn, if they really want to learn and IF they are willing to play by the rules of civility and respect for others.
Their place has set the boundaries and we listened, even though it was hard to hear over the shouting, and it felt like a very good idea “not to let the door hit us in the ass on the way out.”
When you have been fighting this same fucking battle for more than 45 years like I have, there comes a time you are not willing to stay and allow the abusers to abuse you any longer.
They can just get over it. They can find us if they want to, we gave our forwarding address.
Well, I was just over there skimming through a few of the current diaries on the issue, and I was really shocked at the immaturity of the comments, so nothing looks like it’s changed to me. Sounded to me like a bunch of the “frat” crowd who just don’t get it and can’t seem to move on.
The usual snips about pooty and porn and who cares of they’re gone.
I’ve been at kos almost from the beginning, reading a lot, commenting a little. Early on, I tried writing a few diaries, but soon quit that as they proliferated so fast it seemed pointless. Over my time there, I now pick and choose what I read and what I rate, and I limit myself to diaries that foster intelligent discussion. Those have gotten fewer and further between…too many disintegrate into snark and snip wars. Another bunch are nothing but “chat rooms” with little to no intelligent discussion. I don’t even bother wading through all that.
I think I’ll be spending more time over here myself, probably mainly reading and learning.
what I considered to be a generally wonderful thread over there just now, started by paradox. (For all I know it could already have degenerated since I left, so I make no guarantees.) I was really tempted to comment, or just say thanks for the sentiments, but I decided not to do even that much.
I think, dear RichardG, that many women are feeling a bit battered about the head and shoulders. You’re asking us to walk into the room where there are men with sticks. Think I’m exaggerating? Ask the women who’ve come over here how relieved they feel to be away from that treatment and they’ll probably tell you the relief is an actual physical sensation.
You just don’t ask people who feel beat up to walk back into the fight so easily. Many women (and some men?) are saying they need some breathing time, at the very least, and maybe some healing time. There are bruises and breaks and some people are still getting hit, both men and women. The bully boys are still on the loose and they will continue to flail until the leader corrals them again.
Personally, I think it’s wise to keep a safe distance, at least for now.
I walked away from the abusive behavior on dKos.
And you know what? I don’t think it’s my job to go back and make nice until they stop hitting and maybe promise not to do it again. They can stop first and apologize and maybe I’ll consider it.
There are some good people over there. But I can’t hear them over the jeering cat calls and insults and trash talk. As a woman with fifty long strange years in the US I’ve had my fill of it. I can be called shrill or frigid or prudish or ‘one of those bad feminists’ almost anywhere. I don’t have to seek it out, and drive up Markos’ page count to get that.
I’m looking for people and a place where progress and change are inclusive ideals. And I haven’t felt that way about dKos in over a year.
Well said.
I was typing mine while you were posting yours.
You said it more succinctly: abusive behavior.
Hear, hear sister!
I am keeping tabs on what is going on there, because for me living in Texas, DKos was a sanity check for a long time. and yet, when I registered after lurking for several weeks, I chose a gender neutral name because i wanted to be considered for what i said and not any other reason.
and then we lost the election and i still stayed for sanity.
I’ve never written a diary there, but have commented a lot and almost always on gender issues.
i feel hurt, betrayed, and adrift. there are some wonderful people on that site and a lot of them are showing up on this issue. unfortunately, they are being drowned out right now.
i would like to make some sort of statement of leaving as a group. is anyone interested in that type of closure?
this is a link to the holy handgrenade’s diary. you can see how the nonsense keeps on keeping on
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/7/19113/30324
TravnTexas there, TravlnWmyn here.
i would like to make some sort of statement of leaving as a group. is anyone interested in that type of closure?
I know what you mean. I have never been important enough there for my departure to matter though, and based on what’s going on today the group would be mocked for another GBCW (goodbye cruel world) diary. And I can’t take any more mocking.
OTOH, someone over there posted about how if Maryscott O’Connor were to write a GBCW, your screen would glow from profanity. (I’m paraphrasing). I would buy tickets to that one.
another point being, who of us is important enough to matter over there? not me either
it is really nice to see so many familiar faces here
Wish Kos could stand with me in front of the room of a certain women’s study class at a certain junior college in a small town in Missouri. I’ve spoken to them once a year for several years. Each year it’s mostly a new crop of women, from young to elderly. Most of them have never talked about “women’s liberation” as they still call it before this class. They have no idea of the history of the woman’s movement in this or any other country except for vague ideas about suffragettes. They certainly know their own stories–many of them hard, quite a few of them incredibly impressive–but they haven’t spoken most of them out loud before, certainly not in public.
By the end of several weeks of class, taught by a wondeful woman, some of them have grown in confidence and poise and, dare I say it, happiness.
Santimony? Not so much. But the word “sanctified” does come to mind.
RichardG,
A couple thoughts. First of all, there are a lot of things going on. I’ve said this in a few places, but I’ve never felt like my work was a good fit for dKos. My concerns tend to be more long-term social change oriented, more theoretical and abstract, less party-oriented. I go there for the conversation with like-minded progressives. I go to hash out ideas and think through things. I don’t go to Kos for Kos. I’m not leaving Kos, but I am changing my habits. Part of that is because the people who I tend to have the most to talk about with, whose writing I enjoy and respect the most, are moving over here. I want to continue conversing with them. I’ll remain at Kos because there are folks there I want to continue this work with, but it will most likely be on a reduced level.
I was also particularly pissed at Markos’s comment. I was Program Faculty with the Women’s Studies Department when I taught at Minnesota State. He was maligning me and my colleagues. He was talking out his ass. It was belittling.
It also pointed out part of why I feel like I wasn’t a great fit there to begin with. I’m about cultural politics as much, if not more, than I am party politics. The dismissal of concerns as the relationship between gender, power, and popular culture as knee-jerk, sanctimonious, and not serious doesn’t sit well with me.
and going back without a serious soul-searching apology from Kos and his henchmen would be like the dems signing a compromise that lets them keep the filibuster so long as they never use it.
What did they get out of that again?
And, like Frist. they would nuke women again, the next time they saw fit to do so.
Come and post here. We’d love to have you.
RichardG Thank you for your post. I think our large group will need to reconvein under a webmaster that isn’t so comfortable with his mysogeny (god how I love this spellcheck). I agree that its best if our group is large. Perhaps this is a good place for us. As long as Booman doesn’t post and hot dude on dude ads.
I’ve spent a good part of the day reading about this, the reactions from the women ‘over there’ and here, and some of the diaries and comments on the diaries.
And I’ve had it.
It is the same old tired garbage I saw happening 35 years ago, “Get me a chick to do some typing.” That attitude helped kill the New Left and I’m not going to see it – if I can help it – kill what is happening now.
There is NO DEMOCRATIC COALITION without women. Wake up and smell the rosebuds, Bub. When women are expressing a serious, and to them vital, concern WE HAD BETTER FUCKING LISTEN! If the “Powers That Be” on Kos aren’t stomping down on the adolescent jeering THEN THEY ARE JUST AS CULPABLE as the ones who are doing the jeering in driving women out.
I am not refering to intellectual disagreement or even disagreement on issues but to an environment of snide and snippy comments that has led to women to take a hike. And if you don’t think women are sensitive and respond to atmosphere – as a guy who has been married since 1986 – let me tell you: you are INSANE, crackers, looney-tunes, clueless.
{Whoever} can write about “Women’s Issues” (gawd, I HATE that phrase) until the Sun goes nova and it won’t make a damn bit of difference until the louts start acting like semi-intelligent animals.
(There. I feel better.)
Thank you AT. Your family is lucky to have you.