This latest email is from an admirer who has all the answers as to why I'm a feminist. He also has some interesting questions. (A question of my own: Why is it that I have yet to meet a misogynist who can write an understandable sentence?)
To Jessica, I think your into feminism because your boyfriend dumped you when you least expected it. Maybe you thought that you were his gift from heaven ? Between you and me the girls today are far more maturer than they were 15-20 years ago at the height of feminism. Anyway your wrong, this feminism you preach is all about the same old thing and thats hatred towards men, which works well if your a lesbian. But as in all things what comes around goes around. But will you want what you will get ?
Deep questions indeed: Will I want what I'll get? Am I gift from heaven? (The answer to that one is obvious - yes, naturally.) All I know is that I'm so incredibly grateful that random dudes care enough to take the time to email me with these existential conundrums. Nothing but love for you, guys!
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I'm going start dismissing misogyny the same way:
"You're only a misogynist because your girlfriend dumped you when you least expected it. Maybe you thought that you were her gift from heaven ? Between you and me the boys today are far more maturer than they were 15-20 years ago at the height of misogyny. Anyway your wrong, this misogyny you preach is all about the same old thing and thats hatred towards women. But as in all things what comes around goes around. But will you want what you will get?"
Yes! I am brilliant!
I'm convinced that is what happened to this person
Equality = Hatred? Brilliant!
Someone should inform the Dalai Lama to stop preaching so much hate, I mean honestly! Or does equality only sound like hatred when it comes out of the mouths of ball-cutting cybersuccubi?
I love the Dalai Lama. My high school speech teacher got to meet him. He spent our entire finals period talking about it.
YOU'RE = YOU ARE
Thank You
Is it wrong that what bothers me most about that letter is the bad grammar? It's hard to take the content seriously when the writer can't even manage to get his/her spelling right.
If hating on the bad grammar is wrong, I don't want to be right.
I usually let those type of grammar errors go because I make those mistakes too. Awhile back I shared a comment I got on one of my video blogs that was really dumb. As I said in the posting, I couldn't be mad because it was so stupid.
http://community.feministing.com/2009/01/anti-feminist-mailbag-youtube.html
Few things make me more angrier!
I think this sums up my feelings on that e-mail perfectly.
May I suggest a grammar textbook made specifically for misogynists?
Please identify the subject of this sentence:
"Feminists are just man-haters."
You're vs. your:
"You're a ball-cutting cybersuccubi."
"Please stop bothering me with your silly notions of equality."
I see a business opportunity here y'all...
I'm definitely dropping netslut and switching to cybersuccubi from now on.
I hope you can forgive the grammar nitpick since it's kind of in the spirit of the post...
"Cybersuccubi" is plural. "Cybersuccubus" is singular. Awesome in either form :)
My hate runs so deep I'm plural.
I think that hating on someones English skills is petty... but that was hilarious.
Oops! I copied and pasted because I wasn't sure how to spell cybersuccubus.
This is why I would need help editing The Misogynist's Grammar Workbook.
So.."into feminism", "wrong" and "a lesbian" all belong to Jessica! One can own adjectives! Amazing!
All your abstraction are belong to Jessica.
I almost think the mutilation of language is pissing me off more than the misogyny.
I feel like going at the letter with a red pen.
It's an e-mail. Try red font.
Were all maturer than we were 15-20 year's ago.
Seriously. I was the immaturest when I was 5 years old.
On twoth think, I were so many older than, Im more youther know.
Heh heh. Oh, you gave me a funny!
My eyes are bleeding. The grammar. It hurts.
>>Between you and me the girls today are far more maturer than they were 15-20 years ago at the height of feminism. >>
I'm so confused. Is he referencing specific girls who are currently 15-20 years older than they were 15-20 years ago? And when did 1989-1994 become the height of feminism?
And shame on you, Jessica. The "between you and me" indicates that this piece of information was supposed to be kept confidential. You've gone and broadcasted it all over the interwebs! You feminists are not to be trusted.
im going to just say this...i know there are a zillion reasons to hate on this asshole who fucking took the time to write this out. but it feels SO not cool to me to perpetuate education and class and ability privilege by hating on this person's grammatical errors. i feel like that might be alienating to readers who might not speak english as their first language or who havent had the best traditional education or who have any kind of learning disabilities. so yeah, the person who wrote that letter is gross and a huge jerk, but not because of their grammar.
The thing is, most of the time people who use grammar like this speak English (as their first language).
The people I have talked to on the Internet from other countries whose first language is not English try very hard to speak correctly, and ask if they are not.
Just my two cents on it. It seems the people who want to mutilate language should be speaking it correctly.
As a person who teaches ESL and college freshman English classes, I can guarantee you that this guy is a native speaker. I've spent my professional career helping both native and non-native speakers with their English skils. This guy is definitely a native speaker of American English. He might even be in one of my classes. [looks around suspiciously]
That said, it doesn't invalidate Fatima's statement that mocking grammar can a heavily class-based issue. I cringe at the idea that others might be dissuaded from vocalizing their thoughts because of fear of education persecution. Coming from a rural background myself, I'm familiar with language insecurities.
And with that said, I'll argue that, once someone has valued their opinion and abilities to articulate hatred high enough to send it in to a popular blog, they should be prepared to accept such criticism. I mean, they are spewing hate. I think a little grammar mockery would mean little to them.
I usually agree that nitpicking someone's grammar is elitist and besides the point (and when I'm on the interwebs I'm usually a terrible speller and my grammar leaves much to be desired). But not in cases like this.
1. I'm almost positive that this is a native English speaker. I've spent a fairly good deal of time on internet community boards such as this and other not-so-friendly feminist boards and certain sentence structure and spelling gives it away when you're not a native English speaker.
2. He obviously sent this e-mail to Jessica to ENLIGHTEN her as to her misteps and idiocy. When someone is doing something so rude and asshole-like in the first place and basically shouting "I'm better than you and so much smarter because look at what I've figured out!" you can't help but knock them down a peg or two by saying that they can't even say that in proper constructed English.
3. The your vs. you're thing is a pet peeve of mine. I would've pointed it out to anyone here (even the Feministing editors had they made the mistake) although probably in a little nicer of a way, granted. Not just with one distinct post in all caps.
I for one believe that Jessica is a gift from heaven, as is Feministing!
There are many misogynists in government positions who are more than capable of putting together sentences.
Let's showcase our feminism and not our elitism.
:(
How do we educate people who haven't the tools to effectively analyze and communicate?
No high school graduating class wasn't full of students who get A's in reading comprehension, writing in general, and rhetoric in particular.
correction:
No high school graduating class I know of was full of students ....
Anyway it is a pity that most misogynists are so under educated. They might not be so misogynist if they were. Or they might have influence over more people to spread their hate. Hmm.
@fatima and geeky_girl
No one here is anti-education (hopefully, I speak for everyone at Feministing on this one).
Good grammar helps you to make good points. We're laughing because this dude obviously felt like he was sharing something groundbreaking and he did it with terrible grammar. I just don't think unwinding with a good Anti-Feminist Mailbag post and poking fun at the fact that misogynists are so often bad at constructing sentences is classist.
Fatima, I really think this guy is a native English speaker.
I've spent quite a bit of time teaching ESL and EFL, and I'm pretty sure this was written by an American. If we can't assume that, why even assume it's a dude?
Okay, fine. Maybe it isn't a dude... I dunno.
Well Jessica referred to him as a "random dude" in her post and I'm assuming she got information about his gender from the rest of the e-mail.
Oh I'm betting it's a feller. But also an American one.
Okay.. I think so too.
I'm just confused now.
I'm win!
Can't we both win this time, aleks? Or lose... since we have such a propensity for misunderstanding one another?
I'm win, and that's what is mattering to myself. Whether you've winned or lossed is four ewe too deside.
yeah, I'm on board with thinking he's a native English speaker due to the mistakes he was making. People who learn English as a Second Language tend to not make the type of grammatical mistakes seen because they learn first "you are" and then "you're" for the contraction as part of study. To make that type of mistake the word has to somehow seem like it'd be the same, which it wouldn't be to someone who artificially (as in, not in childhood language acquisition) learned the language.
I'll join the "native speaker" train; I'm sort of a native speaker of English (long story) but I sat through seven years of ESL classes and the mistakes made in this letter do not add up to ESL for me.
Dammit. Will someone photoshop some wings and halo to a pic of the Feminist editors?
I'm visualizing clouds parting, and then Jessica, Samhita, Ann, Jos, Vanessa and the gang floating down -- but in totally un-angelic form.
If I were in that picture, I'd totally far so that I could periodically bounce back up a few feet as I descended.
I love you guys. This letter reminds me of this pic
http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/n/U/moran.jpg
Haha! The fact that that guy is wearing a Cardinals t-shirt makes it even better for me.
GO CUBBIES :)
"maturer"
((eye roll))
Hey hey hey, don't you roll you're eyes at me! I'm the maturiest person of all! You think your sooo special! Dang man-hating lesbian.
I love all those man-hating lesbians! They're all just so angry all the time. I wonder how they can do that, spending all that time hating roughly 47-49% of the population.
A lot of material to work with?
Where's that troll who is going to tell the Feministing community "Well you should actually listen to this person's concerns despite the fact that they don't understand the difference between your and you're and make no valid arguments"? I always wonder if all the trolls on here are the same two or three people with different emails.
This is my only troll account. You wouldn't believe which name is my good account.