Last week, I wrote a piece on Performance Feminism for a popular site. In it, I talked about the many ways high profile feminists shit on their sisters in their quest for fame, glory, and book deals. Hopefully, you’ll see it in a few days.

Yesterday, The Onion posted a really fucked up joke about Chris Brown and Rihanna. I’m not reposting it here because it doesn’t need to be seen again. All you need to know is that it’s another joke at the expense of a young woman who is a DV survivor. While the satirical site caught a lot of flack from POC feminists (and their allies) over it, the usual suspects were either eerily silent or yakking it up. And when they were called on their lack of fucks, what did they do? They played the victim card. Again.

At some point, this shit gets tired. Because all we’ve been asking for—in discussions of diversity and inclusion—is for you, Ms. High Profile Performance Feminist, to recognize the fucking humanity of women who are not white, able-bodied, straight, cisgendered and middle-class. ALL women deserve to be respected, whether you like them, their shitty albums/shows/movies/coke habits or not.

But I’m done saying shit y’all already know. I’m done holding out hope and olive branches in hopes that y’all will get it fucking right. You won’t. And that’s cool. We don’t need you. We’ll continue to be our own fucking heroes.

eyan-j asked: Hi JG! Love you JG!

<3 you back, E. :)

In a past life, I was a journalist. I pissed off people big and small. I pissed off people I liked. I pissed off people I didn’t like. I did so because it was part of the job. Because if you’re going to call yourself a journalist, you have to ask the questions that people don’t want to answer, and you have to hold folks accountable, even when they don’t want to be held accountable. It’s a tough job. A thankless one. You work long hours, getting paid in Ramen to make lifelong enemies, and some of those enemies may be pretty influential ones, including the ones you like.

Last week, I read Pia Glenn’s interview with Lisa Lampanelli. It is quite possibly the worst interview in the history of journalism, not including Toure’s R. Kelly BET interview and George Stephanopoulos’s masturbatory session with former New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani on Good Morning America. There are key points in this discussion with Lampanelli that begged for a follow up question or some pushback, but perhaps we were too starstruck to locate our balls. That’s cool. Imagine my surprise, though, when I read Glenn’s “open letter” to The Onion.

Yeah. Not only did this thing need an editor, it also needed more people.

The fact that Glenn patted herself on the back for “going to the source” with regards to Lampanelli is well, laughable, considering what happened after. But it’s also an indicator of what’s wrong with online journalism today. (Also, if Toure is giving you kudos? Know that you’re doing it wrong.)
Today you have writers—er, bloggers—with little to no journalism training given all sorts of real estate on respected sites that should know better. This isn’t to say that seasoned journalists don’t have their “oh, fuck” moments (let’s not pretend Mitzi Miller’s tweet about Fantasia was anything resembling professional), but training is what keeps those moments happening few and far between. Training is what prevents writers like Anna North from making rookie mistakes, like not contacting the people about whom she’s writing.

In our quest to make journalism more accessible, some fundamentals of the game keep getting lost. And it’s not just xoJane. It’s The Root. It’s WaPo. It’s Jezebel. And Gawker. And well, anything Nick Denton owns. It’s HuffPo. It’s ESPN. It’s EbonyJet. Essence. Clutch. Madame Noire.

It’s also why I’m out the game. Because until we get back to the fundamentals of journalism, be it print or digital, it will continue to circle the drain.