Language, Sexism, Left and Right

Ann Althouse has posted about language and feminism. Yes, Prof. Althouse, this feminist at least gets irritated when she reads denigrating language on the web. It even annoys me when people on Crooks & Liars start going on about "Mann Coulter," or proposing things like "How'd it feel when she fell out of heaven?" or "Can I have a date?" as potential interview questions for Katrina van Heuvel. And I don't even like Ann Coulter! Even if I were a conservative, her professed opinions on the First Amendment would put me off severely. But it still bothers me to see the gender-specific rhetoric that's often used against her. (I could give other examples, but the left is of course not alone here. Prof. Althouse ran into this difficulty with Little Green Footballs, a conservative site, and, well, I still don't understand some conservatives' vituperative hate of Hillary Clinton.)

Women in sports media are particular targets. It makes me angry when people say that Dana Jacobson is ugly or "Jay [her male co-host] in drag," even if she did go to Michigan and I'm proudly sporting my "In Poland they tell Michigan jokes" T-shirt today. I read this piece and its comments about Sam Ryan made me feel actual fury.

We get to go down to Sam Ryan on the sideline. Between her name and voice, I think she was recently a man, but she's got that "10 beers later she's the hottest chick I've ever seen" thing going on for sure. I've had 16, so everything's A-OK here ...

So, yeah, Prof. Althouse. We know. We care. It bothers us.

I'd even been contemplating a post about this even before Prof. Althouse's comments, which is part of the reason I have links and examples fairly ready to hand. Sexist language is certainly a sign of (if I may appropriate some historically meaningful phrases) the problem with no name and gender trouble in our society, and in the blogosphere.

Feminists and others who run blogs and other sites bear responsibility for the discourse there. We can't do much about other sites but not patronize them and speak out against sexist language in general. Someone could, I suppose, organize a campaign against sexist language in the blogosphere. I'd probably support that.

But at the same time, the bigger symptoms of the problem — people who would be love to make abortion illegal and declare it equivalent to murder without providing alternatives or support (public or private), "ethnic cleansing" or genocide including rape in the Sudan, the high number of women around the world who have no viable economic alternative to sexual servitude — seem to be, well, a better use of time and words and energy.

Overlooking and marginalizing women in progressive (and other) movements is not a new thing. It goes all the way back to Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, who were abolitionists before they were suffragists. It happened again in the progressive and civil rights movements in the '60s. I'd argue that the language problem in the blogosphere is the same problem, writ smaller.

I can understand why she's skeptical about Democrats. My personal opinion is that all politicians have feet of clay. I don't see anything better coming out of the political right. Neither party has all the answers. Sometimes I feel like no party has any answers.

At some point I apparently read a poem that went something like "Every man was for his party, and no one was for the state." That line has been running through my head for some days now, but I can't seem to locate the source.