Why was I sent to this blog?

AKA: I asked some feminists a question, and instead of answering they sent me here. Why?

Your question probably covered ground they have gone over many times before, and they didn’t want to derail the interesting discussion they were already having. [1]

  • People find questions that do not further the current discussion frustrating. Questioners find being ignored at least as frustrating, and such mutual dissatisfaction can totally disrupt a discussion. By sending you here the feminists hope to avoid such disruption, yet are also not completely ignoring your question(s). [2]
  • Maybe you didn’t ask a question at all, but asserted/argued a point that denied the factuality/importance of the topic being discussed. Nobody cheers at the thought of trying to run another through reams of introductory material before that person gains the grounding to argue a topic knowledgeably.

Either way, educating you on the basics would derail the discussion about the actual topic the feminists are interested in, just for you. That’s an awful lot to ask of people on the net who don’t even know you, isn’t it?

This blog exists to give you a few pointers to places you can find more information to answer your question (although we’re only in early days yet, FAQs will continue to be added until the basics are covered). Once you are better informed you will be able to contribute to lively feminist discussions productively, armed with facts and theory, even if/when you don’t end up agreeing with feminist opinions.

First:

Second:

Use the sidebar links to navigate through the Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ).[3]

  • Peruse the FAQ Roundup post, which is irregularly updated.
  • The Introductory archive is here.
  • If you have a more theoretically-advanced question, try the Clarifying Concepts archive here.
  • Scroll down to the category listings to find posts discussing particular topics.

Third:

If your question is not yet amongst the FAQs, please add it to the Open Suggestion Thread(and if you read through the comments there you may find that someone else has suggested a link that fits the bill). Read the comments policy before commenting, please.

OK, then. Welcome to the blog.

Notes:

  1. You weren’t asking a question in a feminist forum, so you weren’t disrupting anything, but someone sent you here anyway? If you’re not a disruptive commentor, then that reason doesn’t apply to you. The person probably felt that you were looking for a general information resource on feminism for another reason. [back]
  2. If you had a specific question rather than a general question, and the person who sent you here didn’t give you a link to a specific FAQ that answers your question, then you may be feeling somewhat aggrieved. Fair enough, too. Polite persistence (”That’s a large resource - which particular FAQ should I be reading?”) should make the point that a little bit of effort on their part as well can be fairly expected, without derailing the discussion. Hopefully what you read here can generate on-topic discussion in good time. [back]
  3. The FAQs attempt to be descriptive from a reasonably neutral position. There are other posts on this blog which are not FAQs which are intended as general feminist resources and op-eds: these posts are not intended to be neutral documents. [back]