My response to Hollaback's Critical Post about My response about Ryanne's response to the callers :)

Hollabacktalk's Brittany and Hillary wrote a very critical post about my response on Ryanne's cat call video. They felt I was out of line for questioning what Ryanne did and they didn't think I made valid points and did not understand her method.  I tried to post my response to what they wrote, but they deleted my comment. That's too bad. this is public conversation - so why censor some people's opinions?  Especially when I am the subject of their post - shouldn't I have the right to response?
I am happy that blogging makes this all transparent and that responses like Hollaback's have an audience.  Everyone can see the kind of exchanges that are taking place and I think its great for the purposes of dialoguing.
At the same time,  I felt that my writing was not interpreted correctly, so I wrote this response to to their post.

RESPONSE TO HOLLABACKTALK:
1. You say "When women start questioning other women's experiences like Tricia felt so compelled to do, we do nothing but work backwards and against one another."  Are you suggesting that as a woman, I am not allowed to express my own opinions? Opinions that may represent a different point of view?  

2. you say that I shouldn't compare the video to lynching, a "period of state-sponsored racism."   Actually, lynching in the south was never state sponsored.  It was completely ignored by the state.  The KKK was a citizen vigilante group that took justice into their own hands.  

I did not say the video is the same as lynching -  I draw parallels to lynching and I think the culture around vigilantism can turn into mob actions perpertrated for the wrong reasons.  I was concerned about how many of ryanne's commentators took on a mob mentality and didn't see them as human beings  - calling the cat callers "morons," "assholes", and judging their work as "shitty" brick chopping, and that they didn't get an education in 6th grade on acceptable behavior.  It really made me upset - b.c being a cat caller does not correlate  to bad education and low levels of intelligence.  The cat call itself is sexist, but it was out of line for the commentators to jump on the bandwagon of making a value judgements on the character of these 4 men - who are black - as morons and doing un-valuable work.  This is what I am worried about when I saw web 2.0 vigilantism - that unchecked vlogging vigilantism can lead to a mob mentality, which parallels other periods of mob mentality in the US.  

A true example of state sponsored racism is South Africa.  In such an extremely racist aparteid society, lynching culture never developed because the state sanctioned and institutionalized racism through a high degree of bureacracy.   therefore, citzens didn't have to overtly dirty their hands, the state did it for them.  for more on this argument, please read Ivan Evan's book, Bureaucracy and Race: Native Administration in South Africa.  

3. Where is it that I "claims to be concerned for the rights of the unrepresented men on sites like HollaBackBoston?"  I believe its important to hold men accountable for their actions.   Taking someone's pic, unless their penis is hanging out, isn't that effective in stopping the action. But sites like yours empower the woman who is posting the picture - which is an important part of the process of stopping sexism.  

Actually, I believe  recording video is more effective, like what ryanne did - I was just concerned about the tone - which I clarified in my e-mail to Ryanne.  

From my e-mail exchanges with Ryanne, she is planning on doing some follow video to show what has come out of this - and I think that's incredibly empowering - to confront the cat caller, and then to come to some understanding with the cat caller (This was also suggested by kenyatta).  

If its really about revenge and public humilation of men who cat call, harrass and threaten women, you should encourage your partipants to shoot video on their phones of men cat calling and being violent,  and post it to youtube or blip.tv.  There's a much greater chance men and their friends/families will see these videos than the still pictures on your site.  And it's a lot more powerful when you can record men being sexist, then just a picture of their face.  With so many cell phones that have video cameras, this is quite feasible for your audience.