Ann posted nine (!) different links about "bullying" in that thread - some about alleged blog comment bullying, some not.
Clearly a sensitive subject with her.
Someone please notify Ann that I have mentioned her.
I'm just going to take a moment to ponder a world where you had to personally notify someone every time you quoted them by name. I'm curious as to whether it would be better for her if you quoted her without naming her? I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume she doesn't want you outright plagiarizing her.
Perhaps her internet is simply very small.
The more I read, the more confused I get. The links she provided appear to directly contradict her point.
At this point, I'm mostly left with the question of how worthwhile it is to conflate the issue of workplace bullying with gender inequality.
Ann Bartow is a petty tyrant. And a bully herself.
I think this is the link you wanted in the main post?
A shame that Bartow diverted the conversation away from the original (and appalling) Anita Bernstein proposition.
And the funny thing is that her premise is technologically illiterate: a Google Blogs alert does a much better job notifying people than a comment. I get pinged every time someone tries to troll me, whether or not it links to a post I wrote.
It reminds me of those people who claimed that you needed to have their permission to link to their website. Technologically illiterate, yes, as well as substantively wrong.
I was going to say, she sounds like she's still in that stage of Internet infancy where she thinks her (unlocked) LiveJournal is only read by her five friends and is TOTALLY APPALLED that someone else would dare to respond to it elsewhere. I understand not having thought through the implications of publication in a forum that feels limited in audience but actually isn't; that's a casual mistake anyone can make out of inexperience. And, frankly, I understand why the average dimwitted citizen is incapable of following basic logic like "I made a comment in public, thus I must expect other people to respond to it in varying ways that I can't control." But in someone who's supposed to possess a basic degree of intellectual sophistication, it's pretty embarrassing.
The use of the word "bullying" is also quite odd. Presumably the objection here to lack of notice is that the original poster doesn't know about the response and can't respond. But surely you can't be bullied unawares; bullying depends on the victim being conscious of being subjected to the threat of force. The only potential bullying would come from the original poster's feeling criticized, and that would come into play however the original poster learned of the criticism. In fact, depending on the circumstances, my sending you a personal email saying "I'm about to call you a total waste of space in my blog in response to your post on Snape's eating habits" might actually intensify your feelings of being under assault.
Does she ask people to do this in classrooms that use her scholarship, too?
"If you are going to discuss a paper I wrote, please provide me the opportunity to respond to your lecture via speakerphone." Otherwise you are a BULLY.
The comments section over at PB shows why Bartow is a bad person.
First, she makes a radical claim. People ask her to support her claim. She offers a bunch of links that don't prove support claim. At all.
When Markel et al. trip over themselves to be nice to the evil nit-wit, but still ask her to support her claim, she storms off: "Also, I'm now embroiled in a large number of e-mail conversations about this thread with people who want to discuss this issue with me, but emphatically NOT HERE. I don't have all day to devote to this, so I'm out."
Like a child, she takes the ball and goes home. Waaaaah!
Bartow truly is a bad person of limited intellectual ability. It's a testament to political correctness that the Prawfs bloggers treated her "idea" so gently. If she had been a man rather than a "feminist" making such ludicrous statements, I doubt the velvet on the gloves would have been as thick.
Mike writes:
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When Markel et al. trip over themselves to be nice to the evil nit-wit, but still ask her to support her claim, she storms off: "Also, I'm now embroiled in a large number of e-mail conversations about this thread with people who want to discuss this issue with me, but emphatically NOT HERE. I don't have all day to devote to this, so I'm out."
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I disagree. It looks like Bartow tried to make a point and unwittingly attracted a bunch of comments from people. She took a few cracks at elaborating, then gave up when she got too many questions to keep up with.
I think her opinion is wrong, ignorant and really strange. She's otherwise intelligent, which is why I found her comment perplexing. I assume that the "velvet gloves" were because the prawfs people were initially equally perplexed--basically "Ann's smart and knows how to use the internet; is she saying what I think she is or have I missed something?"
Even though she's an academic, I can sympathize with being too busy to respond comprehensively to an avalanche of comments and e-mails.
She's wrong, but not a "bad person."
Also, re: the substance of Ann's point, I think Sarah has it about right.
She took a few cracks at elaborating, then gave up when she got too many questions to keep up with.
She reprinted a bunch of links about bulling in general that did not even begin to support her "notice and opportunity to respond" assertion.
Once people pointed that out, she left the discussion.
There weren't "too many questions." Rather, Bartow made an assertion that many people agreed with her. All she had to do was substantiate this.
She couldn't even make a simple show of proof.
If Bartow qualifies as intelligent these days, then the state of the Academy is dire.
By the way, do you realize that Bartow threatened to out and sue an anonymous feminist blogger, right? If anyone was surprised by Bartow's comments, they should have been. They should have been surprised to be lectured about bullying by a bully such as Bartow.
By the way, do you realize that Bartow threatened to out and sue an anonymous feminist blogger, right?
No. There are only 6 or so blogs I find interesting enough to read regularly. What was the anonymous blogger's offense?
Even though she's an academic, I can sympathize with being too busy to respond comprehensively to an avalanche of comments and e-mails.
Ironically, this started because she advocated sending an email to someone every time you respond to one of someone's arguments anywhere on the web.
I basically limit my blog-reading to the 6 or so that I find interesting.
Presumably you read PTN. 
Here's the post: http://bamber.blogspot.com/2006/10/i-dont-like-
ann-bartow.html
Hadn't read that one. I just read Zuzu's post and the update, and it all sounds way too boring to go through the links and figure out precisely what happened.
Maybe Ann's a bad person for that, but she's not a bad person for expressing a stupid opinion at prawfsblawg and then not exhaustively explaining/defending it.
I just save myself a lot of wasted time and mental energy by never reading Feministing or similar sites.
Every time I look at one, it's a complete waste - and my sample size is greater than one (though in retrospect it shouldn't have been).
It's honestly a mystery to me anymore why anyone bothers, kinda like reading Andrew Sullivan.
(Just as the idea of letting only the Elect even read a discussion thread boggles my mind.
Apart from obviously irrelevant issues of trade secrets or the like, the only motivation I can imagine is "worrying that someone somewhere might actually disagree if they knew what you were saying"... and is anyone that wilting-flower sensitive?
Really?
What worldview could cause anyone to think that the ability of white women, or god forbid men to even read some words was something to even worry about?
[If, taking from the linked thread, one dare not write what one thinks on racial topics if The Other Side might even read it, might that not be a wake-up call to oneself that the problem is, well, internal?
Or that one shouldn't write it at all, since nobody can prevent it being republished by a hostile participant, even if it's "secret" on the forum?]
And the other obvious question is, would they be offended by a "white men only" thread somewhere else? A few of the more consistent people might not be, but I can't help, from my experiences with race-and-gender-obsessed people, believe that the allowance for discrimination would be for most participants decidedly one-sided.)
I hate to be cranky about someone who quotes me, but ... golly ... is the fact that people have been posting opinions and engaging in debate on the Internet for almost 30 years really such a well-kept secret? Are more members of the legal blogging community of the opinion that they need to develop the relevant norms afresh?
Hi Sarah,
If this is about me quoting you, sorry if I mis-characterized anything. And, to answer your question, um, no. I was trying to be very neutral in my discussion, and my questions about competing norms was mostly academic and more of a "theory of norms" variety. I agree with you (and pretty much any comment you have ever made here). Granted, I'm only 27, but for as long as I've been on the internet, I've been of the "it's all fair game" mindset.
I just find it frustrating to see this argued out as if, say, Usenet never existed. Of course, if I found it that frustrating, I would invest more time in posting about it, I suppose!
(P.S. No mischaracterization, no worries.)
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