How about you don’t tell Black women and other POC how to react to racism and hate speech? No, ignoring racism doesn’t magically make it go away. Your victim blaming and paternal, condescending way of telling a Black woman and other women how to react to something you have no experience with is not needed. Stand back…

Yep. The context matters. When you spend your whole life enduring a constant stream of subtle reminders that you’re inferior because of your race/gender, having those aspects of your identity deliberately used against you as an insult is uniquely hurtful.

And besides being good business, who would want to build a platform and then have it be dominated by racist shitheads?

This has always bothered me, and while I knew of the imbalance, for some reason your comment just really solidified understanding it. There will never be words as powerfully hateful as those created to spew at minorities and women. Yet another example of cis white male privilege.

Oh, I don’t doubt it! But that says more about how they’re supremely thin-skinned and totally unused to having their race and gender used against them, rather than anything about the relative power of those words.

That’s not what I’m talking about. Being a celebrity might be considered a position of power, but it does not cancel out aspects of a person’s identity that are marginalized. A famous person’s advantages don’t magically cancel out their identities as female, or black, or, say, gay, or Muslim, or disabled, or whatever…

You’d be surprised at how many dudes online casually toss around “nigger” and “cunt” then throw a fit when you call them “cracker” or “dudebro.”

Honestly? Making your twitter avatar into a white man helps. A lot.

You know that money and fame don’t automatically cancel out racism, right? No matter what your white friends tell you.

I’m not “blaming the victim,” I’m just pointing out how this all wouldn’t have happened if she did something different. Oh, and somehow Leslie Jones is completely immune to racism and its effects because she is rich and famous. That too.

This is my new favorite thing to do. Say something purposely offensive. Then follow with a “What I thought you wanted to deal in politically incorrect language? Who am I to deny you your request?” Unsurprisingly, they don’t like having that request fulfilled.

I’ve played this card. When someone says something sketchy, I’ll reply with a mild “oh, I didn’t realize you were racist [insert other descriptor such as bigot, depending on the circumstances].” When they looked shocked, I just say “What?! I thought we were playing the game of ‘freedom of speech’.” The concept also…

As aside: I was listening to an old (old, old) CBC podcast the other day, and before the content played there was an ad... Jian Ghomeshi’s smarmy voice touting a Q episode. A creepy blast from the past! I actually shuddered.

lol fuck Milo tho

Oh, good idea!

Twitter is especially loathe to act when the targets are Black women. They only did anything because Leslie Jones is famous and it’s all over the press. But if a Black woman says the wrong thing and someone complains, a la Azaelia Banks? Banned.

Creating the conditions to get a female-fronted version of blues brothers started, probably wasn’t a goal the abusers had in mind.

You know why Twitter lets hate speech stay? User engagement. Racists and the people that fight with them are helping Twitter show that it has users who are having conversations with each other, then it takes that data and shows it to advertisers. Nobody cares if the engagement is people yelling hate speech, just so it…

I have often found that people who say offensive shit then shout “freedom of speech!” Have no idea what it actually means. Just like they don’t get the whole book of Leviticus but quote it pretty regularly. Also they’ll never understand what it means if you try to explain it to them because they refuse to understand…

“When I approached Facebook, they was on it” she said. “Twitter? I was on them...It’s like, that’s my favorite restaurant. I love the food there. Three people just shot in front of me. Y’all need to get some security.”