That sound you hear is this week sucking the life out of me. It’s been … not great. Apparently my karmic retribution for being in a horrible mood midweek was to turn the tail end of the week into my own private failfest at work. <\/p>\n
I got called on the carpet for my participation in this conversation<\/a>, and I can’t say I don’t see why. I’m an asshole! I don’t mince words! I speak to commenters with the same amount of respect they use when speaking to me and others! I’m a horrible diplomat! But, I know. Put the word “staff” in red allcaps by my name and I guess I seem like a MAJOR asshole. To quote Le Tigre: I get it, I get it, I get it. So I will voluntarily resume shutting the fuck up in story comments since I know I can’t just suddenly get nicer, and I’ve been told that my not niceness isn’t going to fly. Fair enough. I’m a big (biiiiig<\/i>, according to some critics) girl. <\/p>\n It’s humiliating, though. I hate knowing I’ve done something wrong enough to get in trouble for. Makes me feel like an eight-year-old again, like everyone’s looking at me and thinking about what a fuckup I am. The only difference is that this time I was standing up for something I believe and I don’t have an ounce of regret about it. I am grossed out by the pervasive idea that dudes have the right to gaze at Hot ChicksTM<\/sup> on demand and at all times, including on a NEWSPAPER’S website. And if you don’t think that’s where that comment thread was heading, then maybe you don’t know the internet very well. Ugh, I need a shower now. <\/p>\n Oh, and compounding my failure rate for the week was the fact that I lost the “forced sex”\/”rape” word battle<\/a> again in this story<\/a>. Editors are still sticking by the notion that we can’t call it rape if the court isn’t calling it rape. (Related:<\/b> We used the word “rape” without hesitation over “coerced sex” in this story<\/a>.) No one seems to really want to acknowledge the point I’m trying to make: That the court terminology is necessarily muddied because it’s motherfucking COURT and there are all KINDS of shenanigans happening there that laypeople don’t get. In a news story, it is possible to both describe what a person is pleading to\/charged with AND what he admitted to doing. Are we afraid of being sued for libel at saying the officer raped a woman? Because, uh, he admitted to it, even if he didn’t technically plead to it. Therefore it’s true and libel-proof. Where does our fear of calling a spade a spade come from?<\/p>\n I don’t know. I love my job. I love journalism as an entity and what it can do for a community. I love working for a newspaper and being a total newspaper wonk. But it’s a lonely life being a shrill feminist harpy bitch hag who raises these questions repeatedly and sometimes to ridicule, not just at work but from everyone<\/i>. <\/p>\n But hey, I’m not a feminist to make friends, you know? <\/p>\n On a decidedly more positive note, I won an award of excellence from SND<\/a> for two True Crime packages (this one<\/a> and this one<\/a>). I’ll finally make it into the SND yearbook. So at least there’s that to stanch the flow of fail this week, I guess. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" That sound you hear is this week sucking the life out of me. It’s been … not great. Apparently my karmic retribution for being in a horrible mood midweek was to turn the tail end of the week into my own private failfest at work. I got called on the carpet for my participation in this conversation, and I can’t say I don’t see why. I’m an asshole! I don’t mince words! I speak to… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41,245,57],"tags":[2155,435,2242,2210,700,2172],"class_list":["post-3235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feminism","category-shameless-self-promotion","category-work","tag-design","tag-internet","tag-rape","tag-sexism","tag-the-commercial-appeal","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1jWWl-Qb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3237,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3235\/revisions\/3237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theogeo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}