Ok, so, I'm done with harping on the article

"Harping"--what do I mean by that? That I'm a harpy?

I probably do mean that.

I think what we've all be talking about is not only really interesting, but it's something some of us have been talking about offline for a while now and frankly have been hesitant to discuss here. I can understand why some of our peers would feel a little wary of joining the discussion, or feel that some of the comments made in some of the subthreads have been sexist in their own way against our male peers. I would like to just state here, as I have in all the threads I've participated in, that generally speaking, since entering the blogosphere in mid 2003 I've been encouraged, cheered, welcomed, criticized in a warm and/or genuinely constructive way, flirted with, treated as an intellectual equal, and affectionately accepted as a friend by many many many people, male & female I would otherwise never have known. In general, I have been thrilled by the the interactions I've had with male & female peers in the blogosphere, who by and large I've found even more sensitive and less awkward in their navigation and creation of an egalitarian (in all senses) social space. I've defended you from others who don't quite trust you yet, for reasons that are no fault of yours but social/historical. Anyway, you, this, all of this is why I remain "out here." My complaint (if you could call it that rather than an observation) is that there's a darker side to being out here, just as there is a darker side to participating in any scene. Unfortunately, some of the darkness seems to hover around issues of gender. I'm about to make the same generalization I made in one of Jessica's comment threads, but I'll qualify it first as I did there. This has been my personal experience: That, of all the nasty personal attacks, anonymous/pseudonymous baiting, blogwars, email flaming, harassment, morally-superior schoolings, outright dismissals, rumormongering, and sexually inappropriate/uncomfortable attention I have felt the brush of, almost all of it was directed my way by men. There's no way, for me at least, to respond to this kind of thing in a constructive way. I've got issues, people. I have learned the hard way and from a young age to defend myself by turning off the tap of attention, and eliminating toxic, bullying people from my life. (I make no prescriptions. What works best for me may seem insane to anybody else. Issues. I said it.)

To make another generalization, also based on my personal experience: in practically every instance of disagreement between myself and another woman/women online the conversation has remained fairly civil, even when things have been heated. That's not always the case, of course, as in Craig Teicher's comment box yesterday. I'm not perfect, and a couple of times in the past I have been drawn in enough to act in ways I regret. Not in this case. But I understand from experience how it can happen. Now that I know which Brenda Brenda is and what her relationship to Craig is, I can understand why she felt hurt by my criticism of the article. I apologize for hurting those feelings. I'd like to point out again here, that I don't believe anything I said could be read as a personal attack, nor sexist against men at large, & none of it was intended to feel like an attack. Craig for his part, seems not to have taken it that way. I'm glad.

The absence of women poetry bloggers in Craig's article really is minor when swatched against the larger fabric of social power dynamics in the blogosphere, but it came up (independently I should stress) at the same time as the conversation at Jessica Smith's, which is also related to a conversation (see Stephanie Y., Tony T. & Josh C.) that came out of a blogging panel at AWP in Austin a few weeks ago. [Everybody is linked in the blogroll to your right, if you need the links.]

OK, one more poem to write to catch up with NaPoWriMo.

UPDATE: This post is off the main page now, but people are still visiting, so I thought I'd update it in place, rather than start another one. The discussion continues at Jessica's, Reb's, and Josh's, with related comments at Seth Abramson's blog, Jeffery Bahr's place & Barbara Jane Reyes's relocated blog here. A more recent spinoff conversation that moves beyond gender into race & other issues in the poetry blogosphere is happening over here at C. S. Perez's blog. (It's quite possible that threads are also taking place elsewhere & I've missed them, but I'm doing my best to keep up.)

I just added the following comment to the thread at Jessica's today (Saturday, April 15), and think it's a good idea to reprint it here: I think we're all a little uncomfortable with ["women are this way, men are that way"] generalizations. For myself, I will say that my experience (as elaborated [in the thread at Jessica's] and [here] ) with agression online seems to have a gender component, tho it's not all been necessarily sexist in flavor. In other words, my womanhood hasn't always been the provocation, but the agressors have been more often male than female.

I hope I'm being more clear. I really do love me some dudes.