In addition to problematic apologies…

I recently read these two posts:  "Dear Community Bloggers: Stop Apologizing" and "Stop Apologizing!", both piece published in the community section of Feministing.  While I thought that both pieces were excellent, I’d like to take those ideas a step farther.  After reading another community piece, "Own Your Space!" I thought more about how we as women try to be as non-invasive as possible.

I’ve noticed that many community bloggers end their pieces with comments like, "thanks for reading, if you got that far," or "I don’t even know if I make sense anymore," or, "that was WAY too long."  This is another way that women try to be less forceful.

To me, it’s like, you have something really good to say, and then you get to wrapping the piece up and suddenly become self-conscious about the spotlight that’s on you.  It’s like when women are speaking in class or anytime in public for that matter, and they conclude with awkward stammering, shifting their weight, and lowering their eyes.  All these gestures are made to take the edge off of your force as a woman.  These movements are made to make you seem like less of a confrontation to power.

Community bloggers, when you write a piece, recognize that YOU JUST SAID SOMETHING VALUABLE!   I understand that, for those of you who have studied journalism, it is statistically significant if someone continues after the jump in order to finish reading the piece.  But these kind of wavering comments give validation to the people challenging you.  We shouldn’t be waiting to cave in at the first sign of disagreement or debate.  Or worse, trying to avoid those confrontations all together.  Those moments of conflict are GREAT learning opportunities.  Besides that, the community posts are really pretty freaking awesome .  If you check out some other community blogs, you’ll see that rarely are a group of random internet surfers so articulate and knowledgeable.  Even those of you who aren’t writing researched current events pieces, (i.e. someone asking a question about how to deal with a misogynist friend) you’re still asking important questions and making important analysis!

I will repeat what Kala said so well in the first post I mentioned, “So this is a call to make your posts bold, kick-ass, and, most importantly, unapologetic.”

So I have a proposal.  In order to make ourselves more aware of this awkward, non-confrontational, apologetic-ness, can we please start a community-posting fad by ending our posts with something like the following:
“I totally kick ass.”
“I did my research and what I just wrote is awesome.”
“Basically that post was a punch in the face to patriarchy.”

For the commenters, suggestions??