Comments on: Ad Scortum

By: Tom Howe

Tom Howe — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 20:39:55 +0000

Hello Maggie. I came here because of your post at Popehat. Your blog is refreshingly frank about a much suppressed topic. Thank you to you and to Ken.

By: Anti-Trafficking Initiatives Hurt the Fight Against HIV/AIDS « Radical Public Health

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 21:51:37 +0000

[...] is disregarded by these groups in a variety of ways. For sex work activists like myself, I am dismissed by anti-prostitution campaigners because they describe people like me as privileged, white supremacist activists and my experience [...]

By: Maggie McNeill

Maggie McNeill — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 19:54:51 +0000

No worries.

By: valeriekeefe

valeriekeefe — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:57:07 +0000

Coercively Assigned Female at Birth.

Snark withdrawn, it’s just something that comes up again and again. I had a discussion earlier this week where I said X cis feminist was using femmephobic language, and Y cis feminist said, “I’ve never known X to be misogynistic.”

By: Maggie McNeill

Maggie McNeill — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:13:42 +0000

Point taken; Camille Paglia discusses the difference and I’ve talked about it myself. What’s CAFAB, though?

By: valeriekeefe

valeriekeefe — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:39:18 +0000

But in the early 1960s feminists coined the term ad feminam to describe attacks based specifically on the target’s femininity, e.g., “what do you know, you’re just a woman.

It is not surprising that once again a cis feminist conflates female, or CAFAB for that matter, with feminine. Femininity and femaleness are not the same thing.

By: aspasialibertine

aspasialibertine — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:38:24 +0000

Without a doubt, we’re on the same side of the argument. I’ve just read and heard about so many bad things that could have been prevented, from my p.o.v. as a partial descendant of these slaves, but weren’t even considered because the motivations didn’t allow for the post-script, you know?

Ha! Forty acres and a mule. I’ll take the land, they can keep the mule.

By: Sailor Barsoom

Sailor Barsoom — Mon, 14 May 2012 21:32:26 +0000

I got your point when you made it, and you’re right: we did a lousy job, as a nation, of handling the situation. Forty acres and a mule never happened, nor did any of a number of other things that would have been better than the whole, “OK, you’re free; let us know who that works out” way things were done.

MY point is that, even with all of that, it was better than hereditary chattel slavery. For some individual ex-slaves who had had more kindly masters and who couldn’t ride a horse very well and such it may not have been, but in general, overall, abolition, even handled badly, is better than continuing the system.

Really, aren’t we on the same side of this argument?
Slavery = bad, way the country dealt with population of former slaves = dumb.

By: aspasialibertine

aspasialibertine — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:36:51 +0000

Yes. I am well aware of the history of my folks. My point is that returning to the plantation which was supposedly the site of all horrors was not what the abolitionists counted on yet nonetheless occurred because not everyone had viable alternatives. Understand my point now?

By: Sailor Barsoom

Sailor Barsoom — Mon, 14 May 2012 18:02:21 +0000

A lot of former slaves did indeed return to the plantations. But, they had some tiny option to leave if they weren’t treated well. Doing so was a gamble, but it wasn’t a hanging offense… anymore. Some of them went west. Nearly a third of all cowboys in the period we think of as “the wild west” were black. You’d never know this from watching The Lone Ranger or Bonanza, but it’s true. Some former slaves went to Africa. Some formed contracts with former masters, trading continued labor over a period of years for land.

None of which was possible for slaves. The one advantage slavery did offer* is reliability. You didn’t have to look for work; the master would provide plenty of that. And he’d keep you fed and out of the rain, too, because you’re an expensive labor-saving device to have to replace. If he’s also a decent man who, like Thomas Jefferson, makes sure you’re better off physically than the poorest whites, well so much the better. Unless you’re sold off, of course.

* The advantages to the masters are pretty obvious: it’s always good to have a labor-saving device.