Feminist writers besieged by online abuse? Washington Post overlooks conservative women completely

Twitchy itself received a shout out — more of a whispered aside, actually — in a piece by Michelle Goldberg published in the Washington Post Friday that claims feminists are beginning to retire from social media rather than endure the “nonstop harassment that feminist writers face online.”

Spring-boarding from Susan Faludi’s 1991 book “Backlash,” Goldberg writes about the transition from print to the digital media of today.

Today’s online backlash may be even more draining. It saps morale and leads to burnout. “You can’t get called a c— day in, day out for 10 years and not have that make a really serious impact on your psyche,” says [Guardian columnist Jennifer] Valenti, who thinks about quitting “all the time.” Just how long can this generation of feminists endure?

Twitchy readers have likely (and correctly) by now assumed that there’s no concern shown for women writers who don’t consider themselves feminists and face an online backlash from both misogynists and feminists. Michelle Malkin certainly receives her share of vulgar name calling from both, with the execrable addition of racist remarks.

But rather than quit from the stress, Malkin founded Twitchy as a means of pushing back against the liberal narrative, rather than ceding the online world of social media to the same voices who dominate the mainstream media.

Once again, MSM sheds tears for Internet abuse of lib women. Prog h8 against conservative women ignored==> http://t.co/uecTGQWKLd

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) February 21, 2015

@michellemalkin LOL, they mentioned feminists called out by Twitchy but not the woman who created the site…

— Taxpayer1234 ?????? (@Taxpayers1234) February 21, 2015

That’s a good point. The Washington Post might not be aware that the New York Times published an almost identical piece less than a year ago, in which GQ contributor Amy Wallace complained of being called “a prostitute and the C-word” for being a woman writing about controversial subjects. Easier still: click to travel back less than a month to when conservatives including Dana Loesch and Katie Pavlich demonstrated with easily available examples to the “smartest thinkers” at Vox that there’s plenty of hate directed toward conservative women.

The C-word is inexcusable; unfortunately, the other C-word — conservative — can falsely connote to feminists a betrayal of one’s own gender rather a pursuit of one’s own values, a myth that requires an enduring effort to counter and correct. No quitting Twitter here, though; conservative women will fight like girls to ensure their voices are heard over the haters.

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Feminist writers besieged by online abuse? Washington Post overlooks conservative women completely

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