Mashable Radical Hysterectomy
May 12th, 2008 by Chantelle Oliver in Web 2.0 Museum
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Here Mashable, take my vagina. I’m obviously not using it right.
According to Mashable, the In Touch of the social networking scene (bold and uppity upstart with a handsome Twitterface), I am not actually a woman.
On Mother’s Day Mashable churned out another one of their highly-re-bloggable social networking list of links. The focus of this new list is a bizarre niche group rarely mentioned on Mashable—women!
I felt special. All past slights undone. Mashable was finally compensating for their status quo sexism by exploring “some of the most popular social networking sites for women.” If felt like maybe the Mashable Twitterhead (aka Pete Cashmore) cared about me after all.
But I was wrong. I got all amped up for nothing.
And I was not alone:
I (Rubybeck) agree with AskFrasco. I was excited to see a post focusing on women, but sorely disappointed with the content. This post should be more aptly titled “Top 10 Social Networking Sites for Moms.”
Indeed. It seems that to Mashable a woman is defined by her incubating and birthing abilities. I, socialnet czarina, had only heard of one of the sites they listed. One! And the sites listed would be better placed on an April Fool’s Day post than on one for Mother’s Day. Cafemom was bad enough, but ParentsConnect? WTF.
And then it dawned on me. According to Mashable logic I must not really be a woman. I should just hand my vagina, my uterus—heck my whole endocrine system—over to Mashable because I am not using it right. Even if I did pop out a kid, I would never–ever–use these sites. My main life interests would not shift from historicization and social-net culture to parenting and motherhood. So obviously, even if I bore children, my lack of monomaniacal focus on child-rearing would make me a horrible mother.
In the end, Mashable would be doing the entire world a favour taking these simultaneously useless and dangerous organ-weapons off my hands. Or, um, out of my body.
The single problem here is that the Mashable Men assume that, once birthing, female interests shift to some generic, home-based mother category from whomever they might have been before. Even if this new breed of thin-framed, notebook-totting patriarch uses 43 Folders for excellent file system organization, a devalued housewife is still a devalued housewife.
So thanks Mashable Men for using Mother’s Day to remind me of how insignificant I am to the denizens of social networking because my destiny is to sacrifice my identity for the production of others greater than me. The men can then be free of my menacing feminist critiques to handily carve up the cultural landscape in the mirror image of themselves. I’ll never forget how special you’ve made me feel.
Tags: social network sites
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Posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 9:21 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Slow news day, or you really just that angry with yourself?
First of all, after skimming thru your diatribe, it’s probably a good thing you’ll never have a kid. If you’re not interested in parenting, then why read a post about Mother’s Day? seriously. Only to complain - trying to sound all hip and cool along the way.
Secondly, not all of those sites listed were sites for moms - Sugar, Glam, etc. Those are sites for all women, single, married, and moms. Caution: they may talk about parenting and having children. Celebrity moms are hot these days…
Fortunately, most women don’t feel the way you express. And I certainly wouldn’t use a tech blog post like Mashable’s to assert my skewed sense of femininity and how far from bearing children I’d ever want to be. One can be a feminist without losing femininity. You’re trying to hard, sister.
On a positive note, that’s a pretty funny photoshop you did of Pete Cashmore. Is the collage of your vagina and beside his extended tongue meant to suggest something? Perhaps therein lies some of the frustration.
Get well soon.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Lisa,
In truth, I don’t read posts about Mother’s Day. I do receive a Twitterfeed of Mashable (ironically not a site that is for women). And so unfortunately was exposed to the post.
My least favourite thing about patriarchy is just this. Internalized sexism. Essentialism. Women dragging themselves into mud-slinging fests for public entertaintment.
The issue of men running the show is of monumental importance to women in tech, whom have twittered numerously to me that they appreciate my post, because it makes something we love - electronic communication technology - dangerous to us. At any given moment we can be dragged into fights we didn’t start and don’t want; like a fight with you.
Reducing this argument down to problems with a specific person -me - is something I would heartily embrace. Why? Because I’d rather be a lunatic sex-starved cock-thirsting maniac who is plagued by paranoid womb-phobia. I’d happily be that, own it and enjoy it if - if the everyday reality were so goddamn persistent. And systemic.
Lisa B.: We live in a system wherein we have a choice: Be a mother. Be a whore. Ghettoizing “women” into a narrow interest group who only cares about parenting OR Glam and Sugar is eliminates so many possibilities in my life, in yours..in all women’s lives. Have you seen the Hilary Clinton Nutcracker? It’s a best seller. Do you wonder why there has never been another presidential nutcracker? It is because women who dare transgress gender-lines get punished.
Thank-you for your beat down. I take it as high compliment that I am violating gendered social rules. And that you are thoroughly confused by me not being a whore nor a mother that you think I’m sick.
July 15th, 2008 at 11:59 am
[...] I, on the other hand, adore haters. I am, after all, a hating hater myself! Â Nothing inspires me to write or analyze more than some hate. And so, in honour of Crybaby Calcanis and to salute hate, I present my first Chantelle Hating Haters award to Lisa B. who responded to my own hateful post (how perfect!)Â Â against Mashable: Lisa B. Says:May 13th, 2008 at 2:07 pm [...]
August 27th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
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