It's spring break officially. I don't get to go anywhere, and my pleasure in 500 post long comment threads about fat jokes has diminished. Sadly No also weighs in. I think folks at Sadly No need to realize that lightening up is anti many people's MO. (a side note: piny is a man. Let's not cause offense with gender confusion. If it's OK, I assume that people on feminist blogs are all female until I am told otherwise too) On one hand, this is admirable- you can't let up on those isms. On the other hand, sometimes you can get sidetracked into the terrible wilderness of concern trolling, which is bad.

How can you tell if you've verred from the admirable area of fighting an ism to the bad concern trolling? You have to understand what concern trolling is first: a type of manipulation. Instead of going up, and saying I'm offended that you said X because (it hurt my feelings/it perpetuated an ism/it was against facts and logic) you try to get the argument on your side by bringing in some random people who could speak for themselves if they were really so offended about X.

A common example is the imaginary Cosmo girl, who apparently lurks on feminist blogs, waiting to be offended if anyone ever criticizes traditional femininity. If this imaginary young woman who is on the fence about feminism, but who instead of going to her local library and reading up on the subject, gets all her information on feminism from blog arguments, really is that offended, why can't she just go and speak up herself? And do we really want that sort of person on our side?

So yea, I statements and facts are better than trying to manipulate other people. Also, I need to actually read the thread if I want to write up the wank report. This sounds like legendary wank here.