Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie apparently helped two writers who went on to insult her online (her full essay is here).
And what particularly ratchets the whole thing up is that one of these writers apparently, and without asking or even telling her, used her name for publicity purposes for her own book (if her publishers dunnit, she could have said no, ( Read more... )

Yes, it's the detailed deconstruction of the Freeman-Mead controversy, which I always feel Freeman basically cheated on in the first place by only starting it once Margaret Mead was safely dead. This book does nothing to change my feelings that Freeman's case was always a bit dodgy (different informants, different periods, different genders, and ( Read more... )

Time was, if poets were involved in controversy, they did it in, you know, actual poetry. (MacFlecknoe! The Dunciad! Lady Mary Wortley Montagu on Swift! Robert Browning codslapping Edward Fitzgerald over an insult to EBB!)

The wrangle over the Oxford Professorship of Poetry is thus fearfully disappointing.

Latest links.

And Zoe Williams comments, ( Read more... )

I just received a comment notification for a vitriolic anonymous response to a comment I made on this post of coffeeandink's.*

Accusing me of being someone who had deployed my white-woman privilege to take my white-women posse into some WoC's blog to persecute and trash her.

And at first I thought WTF? is this another oursin I wot not of?

And then I realised ( Read more... )

As this was posted deep in comments and latish last night, some of you may have missed wolfinthewood's terrific bit of sleuthing here, in which the rather complex identities of my 'victim' are revealed, including the fact that they have this lj friended as follyfibble, although as far as I can see, have never commented in that persona (only under one of the other ( Read more... )

Have just found this vitriolic attack on the posts I made, linking to someone else's article, about the 'publishers reject lightly disguised Jane Austen novels' silly-seasonal hoohah.

I think the writer is actually either misreading what I'm saying there, or attributing to me the opinions expressed in the article I linked to.

But I may be wrong, so ( Read more... )

Even jetlagged as I am, my palaeography skillz totally ROOOL: had reader today who wanted help in deciphering various bits of C19th scientist's correspondence, and in all but one instance (which took a bit longer) I got the words Just Like That, to reader's enormous admiration.

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What is that phenomenon whereby people think that praising one ( Read more... )

Or at least, doing that lj thing of turning something adverse into the basis of a post.

An accusation that one does not give enough attention to burning global issues like world poverty and the environment, is, I think we can all agree, somewhat vitiated when the source is a vitriolic anonymous troll comment in ones's lj [deleted], by someone who ( Read more... )

Have been musing since getting involved in rather tangential argument in someone else's lj about whether a strongly-feminist mother who objects to her highly-educated daughter getting married and having a baby instead of a career is a dreadful example of how feminism is not about enabling women to have real choices but just about expecting them to ( Read more... )