Cynical Kitten

My first impressions on the substance of the article that was on DN’s internet front page in the morning of 7^th July 2009:

1. From my knowledge of C.G.s public persona I safely deduce that this is obviously a publicity stunt! She is going to cash in big time on this trick. There is going to be an all time high of hits to her blog, giving her reason for her to turn to advertisers and claim that her views went up from 100.000 hits a day to 500.000 or whatever. She will milk the fact that she got coverage by a serious mainstream paper like DN, and they will pay her accordingly (kudos for her btw! I’m not a player hater when it comes to bringing in the dough; it’s the crazy “Hatred against ‘independent’ women propaganda” that gets me).
   
2. It is not newsworthy, and such a non-story! I can’t believe DN fell for this. Svenska Dagbladet didn’t cover it, even Aftonbladet didn’t make that its front news (and btw they did a far better job reporting it), and Expressen preferred to cover the fact that C.G. likes to have her fortune told by psychics.
3. Yay! IF she actually takes down her blog at the end of the month, there is one less person that chips away at girls’ self worth in the name of feminism and equality between the sexes on a daily basis.
   

I will now make general remarks about the article:

1. Aside from all that is wrong with this article (which I will deal with below), is the fact that it victimizes women. Quotes like:

   “[...]jag fått en massa elaka kommentarer. De säger bland annat att jag är en vidrig och ful människa[...]“

   really make the existence of this article redundant. Do women need to be treated like glass dolls? This sort of rhetoric strengthens the idea that women have the emotional stability of a 10 year-old. A 30 year old woman should be impervious to petty insults from strangers… so Man Up!

2. The article was poorly executed; it relied on fallacious rhetoric and propaganda rather than facts as arguments. A blatant example is this quote:

   “Hillevi Ganetz berättar att det främst var kommentarer signerade med manliga namn som skrev negativt om Spice Girls. Och hon tror att samma sak gäller de kränkande kommentarerna på många kvinnors bloggar.”

   1. There is no known correlation between an alias on the internet and its owner’s sex. And this assumption is coming from a researcher! I will be disinclined to trust her studies based on that comment. The fact that is known however, is that on the internet anyone can give themselves any alias they want, so the alias of a male name does not necessarily mean that the person is male. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.
   2. She uses a hasty generalization when she makes an analogy between anti-Spice Girls sites and female bloggers that get hate-comments. There is no evidence that “male” aliases post more hate-comments, and therefore no reason for H.G. to think that except that she is biased against men.
   3. There is NO (nothing, nada, zilch!) empirical data or even a rudimentary trend observation to back up the accusative statements above. Linéa Jonjons did not actually document trends from other female bloggers, or even interview other female bloggers.
   4. The journalist does not attempt to introduce a nuanced, and critically challenging debate, instead she feeds into the “Hate against women” propaganda over and over. But the world is not so simple, and as a journalist it is her job to portray the complexity of the world. So let me help her along a little:

      -There is no mention that C.G. and her blog are contributors to (if not promoters) the problem that many teen girls are confronted with nowadays. She is part of the problem as she has had a hand in ruining girls’ perception of their self worth. Just look at the screen shot of the banner of her blog below:

      

      She posts an image like that and then whines about sexual harassment on her comments? Bitch please! I feel insulted and humiliated just by looking at that picture! This is the first thing you see when you enter her blog, and in this case that picture says more than a thousand worded hate-comments from random strangers. The fact that the man in the picture is pulling her t-shirt like that (…and her submissive position, naked and the man’s domineering seated position, dressed) sort of hints others that she doesn’t mind if the emotion that picture expresses is put into words. How is it that she breaks because of trolls but can allow herself to be photographed like that and then publish it? The hypocrisy is nauseating.

3. Because of personal bias of the journalist, lack of creditable research and general poor execution, the article obviously reaches incorrect and simplistic conclusions. It is not an acknowledged truth that female bloggers are victims of sexual harassment on the internet because they are women. In fact this accredited female blogger: http://www.newsmill.se/artikel/2009/07/07/sexistiska-kommentarer-vanligare-i-verkligheten-pa-natet proves the opposite.

Other observations:

1. There is a simple solution to her hate-comment problem: Disable the comment function (although quitting the blog is the best alternative by my view, but don’t whine about it). Personally, I think that C.G. has issues with herself that she needs to deal with, instead of pushing them on to anonymous haters. It is unfortunate that haters can hide behind their anonymity, but as it is, they do have the freedom to write whatever comments they want, because as she herself put it “it’s a free blog”. It’s also a public blog (she could have made it a private blog!) so she must accept the fact that there are people that don’t like her and want to express their views (however crudely). You can’t have the cake and eat it. This is not about being a woman, it’s a fact of life for all of us that some people will not like you. It seems to me that C.G. has self-worth issues (but that is her problem, not the commentator’s), that is why she gets so bothered by what strangers think of her. The fact is that she keeps the comment function because she wants validation from others that she is awesome, and sexy, and cool etc. Most blog readers hardly ever check the comments to a post, the comment function is so the reader can communicate with the blogger, and the blogger makes those public because most of the time he is happy that someone thinks the blog is worthwhile reading. In short, display of comments is a vanity thing.
2. People comment on her family because she exposes them on her blog. She should have foreseen negative comments about her friends and family before she posted things about them. It’s is C.G. that crossed the line by exposing others other than herself on her blog. When you have a public blog, people will have opinions on everything you write. A blog is not a diary.
3. I couldn’t disagree more with H.G. regarding this quote:

   “Så fort en kvinna vistas i offentligheten blir hon sexualiserad. Så har det alltid varit historiskt sett för kvinnliga musiker, skådespelerskor, artister och så vidare.”

   Let’s consider C.G.s case: She is famous for having sex on camera on Big Brother, and for naked pictures on various Men’s magazines. She made herself a sex symbol for the general public, and that is why she is sexualized by the general public. I cannot agree that just by exposing her person to the general public a woman becomes sexualized. There are lots of women who are public figures that are not sexualized:

   -musicians: Norah Jones, Laleh, Björk,

   -actors: Reese Witherspoon, Whoopi Goldberg, Ellen Page, Sarah Jessica Parker (despite Sex and the City!)

   -others: Maud Olofsson, Michelle Obama, Oprah, Karolina Klüft

   I think sexualization of women has a lot to do with the fact that some women use it as a marketing tool for themselves (i.e. in C.G.s case). That has its ups and downs. I will point out that what all the women in the list above have in common is that they hardly ever use sex or their appearance to market themselves.

4. A comment on this quote:

   “Så fort en kommentar om en folkgrupp eller liknande kommer upp är folk duktiga på att anmäla den kommentaren till oss redaktörer, och då går vi in och rensar. Men ingen anmäler kommentarer som innehåller kvinnohat.” – Karin Eder Ekman

   The fact that nobody reports hateful comments against women is to a sizable extent due to the fact that women themselves are reluctant to report said comments perhaps because they are so used to them that they just ignore them/ agree with said comments/ are the ones that write said comments.

   Rest assured that if there is a hateful comment against Muslims/Christians/Left-wingers/Blacks (or other races or nationalities) the people who belong/ have sympathies within that group will report the comment. This isn’t the case for women: unfortunately, most women do not feel as strongly about being women as about politics or race for example.

5. Finally:

   “Det är tragiskt, där ser man yttrandefrihetens gränser – den väjer inte för kön.”

   It is a pity that this sentence was inappropriately included in this article. I do believe that the above statement in itself is true. Sexual harassment against women is taken more lightly than other forms of discrimination/ harassment in today’s society (and yesterdays for that matter). So perhaps what is needed is a more profound debate the issue of sexual harassment against women instead of using that statement to attack Carolina Gynning’s monster that she herself helped to create. We need to explore the reasons why women are thus harassed and instill in women the conviction akin to that of a Muslim/Christian when he doesn’t accept the criticism of Mohamed/Jesus. But we must deal with this problem in a through and serious manner in real life before we start witch hunts on the internet.