I launched an older T-shit design on TeeSpring over the weekend:
Minutes after I shared it on social media, it disappeared, with no option for me to re-launch.
So today (Monday) I emailed TeeSpring, and they replied:
There can be many things that may have caused your listing to be taken down. I’m unable to provide any insight about your listing being disabled, but I’ve forwarded your case over to our Trust & Safety Team for review. They’ll get back to you as soon as they can.
Good ol’ Trust & Safety. Yes indeed I can only guess why I was swiftly bumped off of yet another platform. However they did fix it:
It appears the listing in question was falsely removed by our image filtering system. We apologize for the error, and we have un-suspended your listing. This listing will appear in your dashboard in an ended state.
You can now relaunch your listing at any time from your dashboard.
Any bets on whether my local bike club will survive beyond this season? Emails lightly edited for brevity, all names anonymized except my own.
Sat, Mar 19, 2022
MEMBER A:
I was able to renew my membership with the link to the Website. I noticed that the application requires a “gender” designation that only includes male or female. This is now very out of date. I identify as Female, but there are many who find this restrictive. We need to replace the gender with more options for our gender-queer or LGBT or other gender options friends. I can recommend a consultant for language, or we can reach out to the UP Center.
MEMBER B:
Better yet, get rid of the “Gender” check box!
MEMBER C:
What is the purpose of the gender check box?
NINA PALEY:
There is no reason to have a gender checkbox.
If there’s a reason to know someone’s sex, there can be a checkbox for Male, Female, and Prefer Not To Say.
MEMBER D:
No boxes for me, I’m out! And, please take me off the mailing/e-mail list.
MEMBER E:
I agree with A and B.
I will be happy to renew my membership after BIKECLUB has spoken with Uniting Pride of Champaign County about how to be non-binary in the membership form and how to be a LGBTQ+ Affirming organization.
If you do away with the gender box, that might solve a small part.
Thank you A!!
Sincerely,
MEMBER E
(she/her) but related to people who identify in many other non-cis, non-binary
I have been using an app called Strava to record my bike rides for the last four years.
Recently, Strava started promoting men in women’s sports. Specifically, a male cyclist named Rachel (nee Rhys) McKinnon, who has been setting “women’s” cycling records, because mediocre males still have physical advantages over elite females.
I have been urged to quit Strava and leave a one-star review. I may end up doing that, but I really don’t want to. Changing familiar apps is a pain in the butt; I have friends on Strava I will miss following; and I like having continuous records in one place. And honestly, there’s nothing wrong with the app itself (other than harvesting and selling data in an exploitative asymmetric system, but unfortunately all fitness tracking apps do that). The problem is that the company itself is pushing anti-woman policies. I don’t want to support their woman-hating propaganda, but the price of quitting is high, for me and other women who use the platform.
So today I did this protest ride. I “wrote” the word WOMAN with my bike, and titled the result, “Woman Means Adult Human Female.” The word required about 44 miles, plus 16 miles to get to the start point, and about 5 miles to get home, making the whole ride 65 miles — just over a Metric Century.
I designed the route on a competing app called Ride With GPS, which I also used to record the ride simultaneously with Strava today. If I have to quit Strava, at least I’m familiarizing myself with an alternative.
My hope is that other Strava users will do similar protest rides, spelling the word WOMAN and titling it “Woman Means Adult Human Female.” Anyone can do it; Ride With GPS is free and its route planning tools are easy to use. It would be heartening to see people do this, and use the very same misogynistic Strava to connect with each other (I’ve already connected to 2 cool women bicyclists on it today, because of this ride!).
If you’re in Central Illinois, I’d be thrilled if you rode the same route! But beware it has 7 miles of gravel. I chose these roads because they were the only ones near me that could fit the full word, including a residential area to make the zig-zag diagonal of the “N.” Detouring around gravel wasn’t an option today, because I had to stick to the plan to “write” correctly. But if I can survive 7 miles of nasty gravel on skinny road tires, anyone can.
I also made this mini-route in Urbana that is so short (4 miles) you could even walk it. It goes through lovely, leafy West Urbana neighborhoods, and some very nice University of Illinois campus. Note that Nevada Street is quaint brick, and Lincoln Avenue is busy.
If you do your own WOMAN ride (or walk, or run, or swim, whatever) comment or tag or email me and I’ll add it to this blog.
UPDATE 9-18-2019: Another cyclist has already done a WOMAN ride!
Update: Chaz Ebert confirms Ebertfest’s decisions had nothing to do with my no-platforming in Urbana and Beligium, and they were unaware of any controversy.
+++++
Ebertfest (Roger Ebert’s Film Festival) is the big film festival in my town (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois). In October, its director told 2 film critics/scholars I know that my new feature film Seder-Masochism was “at the top of our list.” Which makes sense, since it’s by an Urbana filmmaker (me) whose last film was a star at the festival (Sita Sings the Blues) and contains my late father’s voice, which is known to much of the fest’s audience (he used to be Mayor of Urbana, as well as a math professor at the U of I). I emailed Ebertfest in January to ask if they were going to screen it, because I have to make plans in April. They didn’t reply. I emailed them again over a week later (Friday). “Sorry, we don’t have room for it.”
A week earlier Seder-Masochism was the target of a de-platforming campaign in Belgium. The women’s film festival that programmed its Belgian premiere removed all traces of it from their web site after transactivists threatened them. A few days before that, I was the target of a Twitter mob for sharing opinions with Graham Linehan.
Ebertfest’s decisions are made behind closed doors, and I’m certainly not entitled to be at any film festival. But it is my opinion that their decision is very much related to my defamation and condemnation as a “TERF“. Much of the witch-hunt against gender-critical feminists comes from Academia, and Ebertfest is an extension of the University of Illinois College of Media. Last Fall the self-described “Chair of Gender Studies” Mimi Nguyen led a campaign against me to have my film de-platformed at a local cafe.
10 years ago, the Free Web was revolutionary, democratizing, and empowering. Many of us correctly compared it to the advent of the printing press, another revolutionary technology that was inextricably linked to the Reformation that soon followed.
What I didn’t consider was that also inextricably linked to the Reformation were the European Witch Hunts. (Perhaps not inextricably linked, but simultaneous, were the European Enclosures.) Now we’re seeing online Witch Hunts (and Enclosures too, hello Social Media). So my enthusiasm for the Internet is a lot more qualified now, as is whatever I had for the Reformation.
Recommended reading (albeit in leaden academic prose – someone should rewrite it for a popular audience!): Caliban and the Witch
