[jordo37]

1) that joke was sexist, and Brad Feld's follow up after she called him out was more sexist. She may have a relationship with Brad which supersedes the joke itself and that makes it okay in the narrow context of their relationship, but that was a sexist joke.

2) I don't view men as oppressors, but I do think we as men have privilege and that is why we need to work with each other on the issue of sexism. I do not find her language condemning, but I have been working on issues of gender for several years now.

In all honesty, I would love to hear more about why Shanley's language does not work for you as I think her core points are excellent and I would love to know what language to help share this with others.

[gfodor]

Why do you get to define if a comment is sexist, and not the people who made and, more importantly heard, said comment? Herein lies the problem, people are all too willing to label language they dislike as 'sexist', regardless of the intent behind it or even the reaction to it by those who it was intended for. Language is a communication tool and a means to an end, not an end in itself, and to try to pin labels on it as an end in itself without context of what it was trying to accomplish and the effect it had on the listener seems backwards to me. The unfortunate effect here is that by focusing so much on "problematic" language we end up diluting the communication value of language itself, where the words someone chooses have negative consequences because they have been defined to do so by others, even if previously they would not have. Sometimes a dick joke is just a dick joke, and it's funny and people should laugh. It's not yet another example of the patriarchy eroding away a woman's agency.

I posted above my issues with Shanley's language, in general I am strongly against the tumblr-ization of language for a number of reasons.

[revdinosaur]

I find your frequent use of "tumblr-isation" as a negative to be alarmingly anti-intellectual for this site. Do you realize that the terms you pick out, "privilege" and "patriarchy" are of academic origin from Gender Studies and that they have been co-opted by Tumblr? It seems that your entire case against Shanley is that they write in the convention of their academic peers.