Amanda Flashes Her “Porn-Liberal” (Racist????) Self….Again
Asshattery, Blogging While Black/Latin@, Love Me, I'm A Liberal...NOT!!!, Stop Reading Your Fax, Fool!! April 25th, 2008
Update: Amanda has now fully apologized, and Seal Press has announced that they will recall the book and remove the offending images. Probably a day late and a dollar short, though, for most WoC bloggers, who are openly questioning their faith in the overall feminist project. The damage may have already been done.
Original Post:
Way to go again, Amanda Marcotte.
It’s not anyone who can continuously get herself in to heaps of trouble pissing off people pretending to be so hip and liberal, while masking a much more devious side.
Maybe it wasn’t your idea to include these totally unacceptable images as title covers for your latest book; and maybe it’s just your publishers at Seal Press being either such tin-eared assholes or deliberately mocking those Women of Color bloggers who have been on their asses for so long about their dissing of WoC beliefs and authors.
But the fact remains the same: It’s your freakin’ book; and until you change those images and issue a full apology and retraction (and I highly recommend that for their own good, Seal Press do the same and withdraw the book until they come up with some less racist images), you will be the one to carry the responsibility and the blame.
Perhaps, you might seek some comfort from the inevitable firestorm from your newly found friends at the GenderBorg Collective….they seem to have taken a liking of you recently. Take for instance, this brief blast by Heart(less) on the folks of “Alas, a Blog” criticizing that particular choice of imagery (reposted here):
On the day that Ampersand, of Alas a Blog, gets taken to task for — every single blessed day – benefitting from the sale of blatantly racist, misogynist pornography on his website, advertised not just by way of text but with pornographic imagery, photographs, maybe on that day I’ll take all of this outrage against Amanda, by people who suck up to Ampersand (and others who share Amp’s views) every single day, posting or commenting to his blog like they have some shred of sense, decency, or concern for female persons, seriously.
…On the day that Maia recognizes the seriousness of the presence of misogynist, racist pornographic images and text on Alas – where she regularly blogs – I’ll take her concerns about Seal Press and Amanda’s book seriously. When any of the crowd currently excoriating Amanda Marcotte begins to take racist, misogynist male pornographers and their apologists to task, I’ll view them as possibly having some shred of credibility, a leg to stand on, in criticizing Amanda Marcotte.
(The background on all the “Alas, a Porn Portal” controversy can be found here and here.)
Never mind the merits of the arguments or the subject matter….to Heart(less) and the Collective it will all come back to porn and its evol male essence.
Oh…and why select a heroine with such a “patriarchial” body type. ehhhh?? I thought that big boobs were anathema to your “hip, liberal”, naturally small-breasted self.
Goodness.
[I'll just leave it to the many responses by WoC to this controversy; here and here would be a good start-up for background.)
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