So Jessica Valenti of Feministing is upset at mean-girl-turned-author Nina Power, who had some criticisms of Valenti's writing cited in a brief Guardian review of Power's book One Dimensional Woman. And Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, joined by Amanda Hess, neither of whom apparently have read more than the Guardian review, decides that Valenti's response was right on except it was too polite and proceeds to mock Nina Power, who she seems to assume is a) old, and b) dour, and c) just jealous. As Doyle elaborates in the comments:


Um, right, that's exactly what this is about -- indie hipster record-collector shit, in the guise of an accessible vs. elitist faux debate.

I've been reading Tiger Beatdown for almost a year now, because it's smart and sharp and funny, but I think Doyle's on the wrong side of this one, to the extent that accepting the "Jessica Valenti vs. Nina Power / accessible vs. elitist" framework in the first place is the wrong side.

For me, Power herself comes off best of them all in her own blog post -- her blog infinite thought makes her seem pretty cool in general, even if she is big on Badiou (my lack of thoughts on Badiou) -- and reviews of her book like this one (which, surprise!, doesn't mention Valenti at all) make me think that her book's well worth reading. (See also this interview Power did with taz).

danah boyd, Public by Default, Private when Necessary:


I keep my pseudonymous journal mostly public with the occasional private entry, and searchable by Google et al. I'm not looking for a lot of traffic -- I like the sense of writing for a small audience, since it means I can be pretty informal and assume that people reading generally acquire some context of where I'm coming from, so I don't need to spell everything out or get bogged down in qualifications.

I also like to keep enough of an open house that I occasionally meet new people, and sometimes get a comment back from someone who's post I've linked to. But not so open that I use my real name or disclose potentially identifying details about myself in public posts -- I use Facebook differently than LiveJournal/Dreamwidth.

So, yeah -- for teens, and fandom, and all kinds of groups, full participation requires a foundation of granular options for both privacy and publicity.