You knew it was on the way – another Jaclyn Glenn video about the horrors of what she chooses to call (without defining it) “Extreme Feminism.” This time (oh the honor) she goes after me, although without naming me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbRwe9srFfA
She starts by saying she’s going to talk about all the drama that’s been going on for the past couple of weeks. There’s disdain in the way she says “drama” – which is a bit rich, considering how much “drama” there is about her own videos. Does she think they’re calm and cool and carefully reasoned?
She talks about “not all priests!” and “not all Tea Partiers!” and being defensive, and says it’s better to acknowledge faults rather than shout “not all.” That’s true enough, but then it’s also better to be precise about what the faults are and who has them, which she hasn’t done in the anti-feminism videos of hers that I’ve seen so far.
She says people were “offended” by her last video, which shows her she “hit pretty close to home.” No it doesn’t; not necessarily. It could be that it was just a shit video attacking feminism, and that that’s why people thought it was bad and wrong.
About eight minutes in is the bit where she gets to me.
One of my pet peeves is a lack of direct communication, if you’re a friend or a friend of a friend I wish that they would try to actually talk to me before making things a public issue – don’t assume that you know my intentions. I’m actually not that difficult to get a hold of and one of these bloggers fits that description but didn’t make an attempt to contact me directly because I have this exaggerated number of fans – [she shows an image of a comment of mine on my post about last week's video] – you know what you didn’t try, you didn’t want to, you said it yourself, you’re a writer, not a diplomat [picture of dictionary definition of diplomat] well that’s pretty clear because a definition of a diplomat is a person who can deal with people in a sensitive and effective way, well sensitive is one thing but effective is the key word here, she’s not necessarily concerned with being effective because she’s a writer, they like stories and plots are lame without a villain, my hair’s already pretty dark so why not, they’ll use any method to bring me down, they’ll attack me with other things, they will focus on things totally irrelevant to my criticism of extreme feminism because it’s easier to bring me down than to actually address my points because remember, admitting error is demonized.
The transcription is as is – there are no periods because there are none in the video, she doesn’t punctuate her own speech.
So anyway. One, no, I don’t fit that description: I don’t have any friends who are friends with her. Two – what she argues there makes no sense. She put out her video in public, so why shouldn’t I or anyone write about it in public? Why on earth does she expect people to have a personal conversation with her first? I don’t know her, I don’t have any friends who know her that I’m aware of, I don’t have connections with her, I don’t have a history of talking to her – why would I try to talk to her before I write about a YouTube video of hers? She has two hundred thousand subscribers – that’s the population of a small city. Why would I have to ask her what she meant in her video when her video is already out there? What is made public is what is made public; it doesn’t matter what the intentions were, what matters is what is made public. If she didn’t make herself clear, she can make another video to make herself clear, but it’s not my job or any critic’s job to interview her before criticizing her video. She didn’t interview me before bashing feminism, did she.
Later she sums up her approach again.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with disagreeing with someone as long as you keep it respectful and make an attempt to work past your differences. That’s all I’m asking for; I think all the drama that’s been going on recently is pathetic because like we’ve seen – they’re writers, not diplomats.
That’s ridiculous. She doesn’t “keep it respectful” herself – she mocks and jeers and sneers and dons a wig. It’s absurd for her to complain about “drama” and lack of respect.
(This is a syndicated post. Read the original at FreeThoughtBlogs.)