a... coda? since the debate seems to have died down mostly.

[cimorene]

After being late to work a couple of times early this week I resolved not to get on the computer before I left anymore, and thus Thursday and Friday passed without me checking my email. Then I logged in to lj from Brother Windows's house (alternative to Watching Dudes Play Video Games, one of my least favourite activities) and saw a bunch of comments from people arguing with a troll in the comments of my second-to-last post.

Although I probably wouldn't have known quite what to say to the troll if I'd seen the comments sooner anyway, because I'm always baffled by people putting forward baldly ridiculous claims that don't seem to be answering the things they're purportedly in answer to. So thank you very much to the people who said it far better than I would have anyway, notably folklorefanatic and zillah975, who engaged at length. Though I've been reading voraciously and commenting regularly in the current debate, I certainly didn't expect much response to my brief and uncomplicated single-point post. It's not like I had called out a profic BNF or anything (from the level of crazy discovered in folklorefanatic's superficial investigations, it's possible that the troll didn't grasp that I wasn't attacking EB, though).

Comments

[futureperfect.livejournal.com]

I very nearly pointed out to your troll (http://cimness.livejournal.com/2643247.html?thread=8057391#t8057391) that I have a friend who despises being called black and much prefers person of colour (or African as that's what she is). But I lost all interest in any kind of dialogue whatsoever when they seemed to use "African American" as a catch-all term for PoCs in one of the posts folklorefanatic linked to.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

LOLL. Inorite? How do you even start to argue with someone who claims that "darker-skinned" is good and "POC" is racist? It's somewhat like saying that it's racist to say "Inuit" instead of "Eskimo".

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

I saw a couple of those comments when the troll first appeared, but I hadn't seen the rest of them. Wow. That's definitely the extreme end of the hysterical "zomg I don't see color!" spectrum. If you even mention someone being other than white, you're a racist! *eyeroll*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I love the people who always HAVE to bring up genocide as a reason to not engage in race debates on the Internet. It's like Godwin's Law met Those People Just Sit on Their Ass and Eat Doritos and they exploded together in the house of I'm Rubber, You're Glue.

[suaine.livejournal.com]

That was endlessly fascinating, from a psychological point of view.

EDIT: Reading the troll's journal is really disturbing. I want to be able to quote Tolkien on social issues without batting an eyelash. No really.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

AHAHHAHAHAH. Inorite? Tolkien as the arbiter of social justice seems *really* popular in the current debate. Like, yes, good, that was really progressive... 60 years ago.

[suaine.livejournal.com]

But you don't understand! *Tolkien* understood life!

I need to go play with my orc dolls now.

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

Oh, ugh.

And if I never again see someone saying that 'as a Brit', that something is racist or not racist, it will still be too soon. BITE MY PASTY ENGLISH ARSE

[miriam-heddy.livejournal.com]

You must be a very important person to draw the really wacky trolls. I mean, most trolls are so boring that they hardly even merit BINGO cards. But this one--she actually made me want to get out a new card, customized just for her particulary brand of "I'mcolorblindyouwouldn'tunderstandyouracistyou."

Weed the trolls.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I guess you don't have to be noteworthy to draw the wacky trolls! I had thought trolls were given out on merit alone. APPARENTLY NOT.

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

Luckily, by reading your post, I was able to pre-ban before they could make it over to mine!

I've really lost my tolerance for crazy trolling the last few weeks.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, or even just crazy racist arguing in general! I hope it doesn't come around again for a while.

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

btw, ysgawan = laura holt pi = kerravongenius = somebody else I can't remember right now. You might want to ban all of them.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

What, *really*? But laura_holt_pi is so vehement that only liars and cowards have multiple pseuds, and the only reason you'd ever separate parts of your life (say, your RL from your fannish identity) would be if you were ASHAMED of those parts of your life. She made a huge fuss about it during the last round of Laura Hale wank. Well, actually, counting the bot scraper and the faux-pology, I guess it was the third-to-last round of Laura Hale wank.

What a hypocrite!

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

I'm extremely sure. If you go and read, you'll notice they all talk alike and share the exact same life and interests (right up to an anti-EU anti-choice Christian Druid) and they've all felt the need recently to make pissed off posts in their journal about this whole thing and how POC is an offensive term and blah blah blah. Also, they all have each other friended.

I think she was pissed because people thought she was Laura Hale. I can't even tell though. She's so freaking wanky.

I left her alone before this, because I thought she was Jewish (I think at least part of her is - the lhp part) and she's commented politely on some of my posts. She's never been wanky or trolled me. But she showed up this time just to express her beef with rydra (and amusingly, I got like five warning pms about her within fifteen minutes) and then people started talking elsewhere about how they've had her show up and agree with one sock and then troll with another sock - in the same post. After that, I lost all goodwill.

I wish I could remember who her fourth sock is! I want to ban it as well!

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I think she was pissed because people thought she was Laura Hale.

I think one or two people did accuse her of being a Laura sock... but they only thought that *because* she showed up in multiple journals being crazily vehement that Laura hadn't done anything wrong, and the only reason people were criticising her was that they were part of the evil OTW clique witch-hunt, blah blah blah. I wish I could find some of those threads now.

Oh, I did find this classic (http://chime.livejournal.com/147619.html?thread=815523#t815523), though, where she says that the feminist movement is misogynist because it implies women *need help* to get ahead and men don't. (Since she's never encountered institutional sexism, the only reason women would "need help to get ahead" would be because they're inherently weak, therefore feminists are the REAL misogynists.)

Based on that I'm kinda unsurprised that her opinions about racism are also completely off the wall.