oooo jessica, you are one saucy lady and i like it!

Yikes! I am trying to write a paper for school about this and I have so much research material that my notebook is about to explode.

It's so mind-boggling to me that this group, Independent Women's Forum, is actually all about putting women in their place and reinforcing male dominance. The women who belong to it think women are stupid and inferior.

i sent an e-mail -- i hope other people do too.. I am very interested in the response.

To: info@iwf.org
Subject: "Women's Aren't Very Bright

Hello,

I have recently found your site and I am intrigued by your mission statement. I was wondering if the International Women's Forum has a response regarding Charlotte Allen's column "Women's Aren't Very Bright" and its representation of female intelligence?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/29/AR2008022902992_pf.html

I did leave a message on one of your blogs, but I thought that an actual e-mail would be more appropriate.
I look forward to hearing from you.

So, I sent an e-mail to Allen herself yesterday - I believe I found the address at the bottom of the original article. I'm sure it's been posted here. Her reponse was, "You have a nice day, too." I don't know why I was so surprised. Admittedly, my e-mail was highly sarcastic, but Allen claims to understand satire, so I didn't think there would be a problem. I even politely invited her to come watch Grey's Anatomy with me.

More seriously, perhaps expecting adult-level discussion from someone who is so hateful towards herself and her own sex was pushing it. Nevertheless, angry e-mails are important (and sometimes fun to write!), and I will get to work on one for the IWF.

I also wrote to Allen herself and to the Washington post reader rep. Hopefully I'll get a response from either and when I do, I will post it.

This article was beyond insulting. I have lost respect for the Post and as an aspiring journalist, have rethought ambitions to work there. I can't believe they would print something like this. There is no excuse.

I say contact them and leave comments in their blog posts until we get an answer.

Fascinating. You seem to be telling your readers to post off-topic comments at another website's forum. I am not to sure how you would react to that, except of course, we know how you apologized for the MRA Trolls that came to visit in a post from last week and you promised to clean up and delete posts that they had left, and never considered they may have had something legitimate to say.

Pot, kettle, relative ethics?

There's a big difference between acting like a troll and asking a forum what their stance is on an issue that seems to be within their mission statement.

Liza, by the usual standards of netiquette, asking off topic questions in a forum is usually considered worse than asking on topic questions in ways that annoy some members of the thread.

Repeatedly asking off topic questions is rude, badgering, harassment. Creating a hostile environment. Abusing the hosts bandwidth. Something you would not do in their living room. Threatening. Abusive. Violent. You know all the buzzwords.

Well, feminising.com has been very quiet about the ass-kicking that was recently handed to them in the Huffington Post, so I suppose it all balances out.

Well, Feminsting is eerily silent on the smackdown Huffington Post delivered, so it's about even.

Surprisingly, my last post about this hypocrisy disappeared, but I'm sure that was just a server hiccup. I know that the Feministing mods wouldn't delete a comment like this, seeing how BOLD and BRAVE they are as feminists...right? I'm sure they have emails and responses galore to such a public thrashing.

*loud snickering*

Well, Feminsting is eerily silent on the smackdown Huffington Post delivered, so it's about even.

Surprisingly, my last post about this hypocrisy disappeared, but I'm sure that was just a server hiccup. I know that the Feministing mods wouldn't delete a comment like this, seeing how BOLD and BRAVE they are as feminists...right? I'm sure they have emails and responses galore to such a public thrashing.

*loud snickering*

"Surprisingly, my last post about this hypocrisy disappeared, but I'm sure that was just a server hiccup. I know that the Feministing mods wouldn't delete a comment like this, seeing how BOLD and BRAVE they are as feminists...right?"

Did you give the server at least a few minutes to process the post then reload the page? If you didn't, then no wonder you didn't see your post get through. The server for this site is slow no matter what one's trying to post.

Meanwhile, non-regulars can come here and post what they like. The mods here can keep or delete each comment as they wish. Regulars here can go to forums where we're not regulars and post what we like. The mods there can keep or delete each of our comments as they wish. There's nothing hypocritical about encouraging that. :)

"Well, Feminsting is eerily silent on the smackdown Huffington Post delivered"

What smackdown? Walker's answering Valenti's questions, not whining about a website Valenti shares. I read the article and it's really good. :) I like the way Walker acknowledges the many different kinds of feminism and clarifies when she's talking about all of those and when she's talking about one of the middle-class white Baby Boomer movements.

Re: smackdown.

Since, as Ms. Walker's article acknowledges, Ms. Valenti is in the midst of writing a post for the Nation, I'm sure we will know her views soon enough.

Thank you for posting that link, incidentally, I really don't want to be part of the problem that makes feminism unpalatable to people who need it the most, and who are less privileged in the current culture than I am.

Jennifer, I find your gleeful snarkiness kind of hilarious, because the Walker piece is actually the answers she gave me in an interview I did with her for an article I'm writing for The Nation. There's no smackdown to get excited about!

If I was in someone's living room and I wanted to know where they stood on an issue, I'd ask them. If they ignored me, I'd ask them again. It's rude to ignore someone when they ask you a direct question.

And asking a question doesn't have to be hostile. That's an issue with how it's asked.

"Surprisingly, my last post about this hypocrisy disappeared, but I'm sure that was just a server hiccup. I know that the Feministing mods wouldn't delete a comment like this, seeing how BOLD and BRAVE they are as feminists...right?"

Uh, yeah, basically. This server pretty much sucks. Hence the impending re-design. It takes a long time to load a comment, and sometimes they get eaten. But you know, thanks for the input. And the snicker. The snicker makes it that much better that your failed attempt to make Feministing look like hypocrites that much more entertaining.

Oops. I mean "The snicker makes your failed attempt to make Feministing look like hypocrites that much more entertaining"

Two thoughts converged into one royally fucked up sentence.

"The snicker makes your failed attempt to make Feministing look like hypocrites that much more entertaining"

Especially combined with "Surprisingly, my last post about this hypocrisy disappeared" appearing right after the appearance of said last post. ;)

In all seriousness:

I do not think MRAs ever have anything legitimate to say. You may lump the IWF in with the MRAs, as well.

I question how the IWF define "independent". What? They "independently" chose to celebrate sexism, misogyny, and "keeping women in their place"?

Carrie Lukas responded:

http://www.iwf.org/inkwell/show/20176.html