harborshore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
harborshore) wrote2010-09-17 06:41 pm
harborshore) wrote2010-09-17 06:41 pm
oh, tell me that didn't happen.
So sometimes you're backreading your flist because you're stuck on a section of your thesis that you have to rewrite and you come across fandom-related things that get you angry enough to need to say something before you can go back to work.
Look, my thesis is partly on gendered language and how faily it can be, alright? This is not a time where I'm terribly inclined to be lenient. Please keep the discussion polite and on topic.
So apparently one of MCR's current album-related Twitter accounts called a fan a cunt. There are two reasons for why this pissed me off.
One is that gendered insults are not on. Ever. Period. Just don't do it. It's like--the way we use language holds a lot of ways that women and minority groups are pointed out as Not As Interesting or Good or Stupid or--yeah, you get the picture. The most vicious kind of gendered insults, racial insults or homophobic insults are the most extreme version of that, because it is as if the very thing that you are makes you lesser.
Two is that however appealing the rock star image is, your fans pay your bills. Insulting them, especially in this way, isn't edgy or anything even close to that, it's catering to a pretty wretched stereotype of the macho rock musician. Stop it.
ETA from a comment I made further down:
I wrote this post because there are things that make me so furious that I can't keep quiet, and the shittiness of gendered insults (and the corresponding racist ones and homophobic ones) is one of them. It wasn't intended to curb someone's fannishness, but I'm not particularly interested in the reasons why MCR has been doing this, I'm interested (or infuriated) because it's been going on for a while in different forms, and sure, it puts them with the majority of other rock bands (the next person who tells me rap is the only sexist music genre will be yelled at) but that doesn't make it excusable.
Like I said, this wasn't written to curb squee, this was written because the issue and the larger patriarchal bullshit framework it fits into, the way the scene sucks so much for girls and this is one of the reasons, that's always worth discussing. It's not about this band as much as it's about sexism in the scene--but it's also a little bit about this band because they used to sound like they knew what that was, sort of, and like they opposed it. We compromise every day, being women and listening to music or watching movies or what-have-you, but there are things we shouldn't have to hear, period.
Look, my thesis is partly on gendered language and how faily it can be, alright? This is not a time where I'm terribly inclined to be lenient. Please keep the discussion polite and on topic.
So apparently one of MCR's current album-related Twitter accounts called a fan a cunt. There are two reasons for why this pissed me off.
One is that gendered insults are not on. Ever. Period. Just don't do it. It's like--the way we use language holds a lot of ways that women and minority groups are pointed out as Not As Interesting or Good or Stupid or--yeah, you get the picture. The most vicious kind of gendered insults, racial insults or homophobic insults are the most extreme version of that, because it is as if the very thing that you are makes you lesser.
Two is that however appealing the rock star image is, your fans pay your bills. Insulting them, especially in this way, isn't edgy or anything even close to that, it's catering to a pretty wretched stereotype of the macho rock musician. Stop it.
ETA from a comment I made further down:
I wrote this post because there are things that make me so furious that I can't keep quiet, and the shittiness of gendered insults (and the corresponding racist ones and homophobic ones) is one of them. It wasn't intended to curb someone's fannishness, but I'm not particularly interested in the reasons why MCR has been doing this, I'm interested (or infuriated) because it's been going on for a while in different forms, and sure, it puts them with the majority of other rock bands (the next person who tells me rap is the only sexist music genre will be yelled at) but that doesn't make it excusable.
Like I said, this wasn't written to curb squee, this was written because the issue and the larger patriarchal bullshit framework it fits into, the way the scene sucks so much for girls and this is one of the reasons, that's always worth discussing. It's not about this band as much as it's about sexism in the scene--but it's also a little bit about this band because they used to sound like they knew what that was, sort of, and like they opposed it. We compromise every day, being women and listening to music or watching movies or what-have-you, but there are things we shouldn't have to hear, period.