For Those of You Who Like to Keep Score at Home

One of the things that gets especially tedious about reading any feminist thought, especially on blogs, is the comments. I always feel like, especially if there are a number of comments, that I ought to see what people are saying and take into consideration their responses to the post as I shape my response. Unfortunately, for every insightful and thought-provoking comment, there seem to be five that are not. Worse than that, once you read enough of these comments, you can start to guess what people's objections are going to be. Still, I feel compelled to read the comments. How do I get through? I keep score at home. Here, let's try it out with the "controversy" playing itself out in the big blogs here in Nashville. Egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Woman makes a post about how she's grossed out by a characterization of Senator Clinton in a story in the Nashville Scene by Roger Abramson in which the senator is described as "the breasted Clinton." (No, for some reason, she didn't point out that both men and women have breasts, and sometimes even round and supple breast tissue, and so describing Senator Clinton as "the breasted Clinton" wasn't accurate and instead traded on the sloppy shorthand that "breasts" are a female sex characteristic instead of a physical characteristic of everyone with nipples. But anyway, accusing the Scene of being sloppy? Not that inspiring a thing to post on.) You'd think that would have been the end of it. After all Egalia posts on a lot of things and the world keeps on turning. But no, Bruce Barry at the Scene posts about it at the Scene's blog, Pith in the Wind, and Abramson goes over to Egalia's to defend himself and before you know it, Brittney's got to sum things up for people who can't follow who's fighting where. Is it worth it to even try to catch up now? No, not unless you are doing so purely for the humor, because the whole thing has now degenerated into the same mess almost every feminist "controversy" ends up in. Lucky for me, this means you can re-use this post over and over. Okay, see if you can find the following:

1. Someone seems to be personally hurt by the remarks of a total stranger.
2. Someone uses the term "hysterical," without being aware of the word's history, to describe the poster.
3. Someone refers to her own femaleness or the femaleness of someone she knows as being proof that her actions or opinions are unimpeachable.
4. Someone is being deliberately obtuse.
5. Someone trots out the treatment of African Americans or homosexuals.
6. The person personally hurt by the remarks of a stranger tries to find a parallel way to critique the poster.
7. It falls flat after others point out that the word s/he's chosen to critique is actually less loaded than s/he'd hoped.
8. Someone steps in thinking he can end the discussion by calling it "liberal silliness."
9. Someone else tries to shut down the discussion by calling it "politically correct bullshit."
10. Many posts later, someone else tries to shut down the discussion by again calling out the "hypersensitive liberals."
11. Things derail while folks belittle the latest attempt to end the discussion.
12. Someone attempts to ingratiate him/herself to the parties that seem more powerful by suggesting that the initial poster was just looking for a way to bring traffic to her blog.
13. Someone accuses the poster of "censorship" and/or "fascism."
14. The post is taken as proof of the ridiculousness of the monolithic feminist position.
15. The original poster tries to regain control of the discussion, only to be met with hostility.