Best price on heirloom tomatoes

[Deleted]

Ok, I'm ready to share my dirty pirate whore story. If you were here on Friday you would know the context but essentially I wrote on an author's facebook wall calling her a dirty pirate whore. I predicted that 70% of you would totally agree with me but based on the outcome of the Starbucks cup post I don't know.


Read the following blog post about (not by) the dirty pirare whore, clicking on appropriate links. Know also that after this happened and the author took major heat for her comments she laughed it off on Twitter.

Also note that the original article was published on the day of Binchy's funeral.

Know also that I loved Maeve Binchy and I'm a childless wannabee writer.

Read the whole thing and vote. Poll coming right after this.

Maeve Binchy’s Infertility Still Biting Her in the Ass After Death

by Lollipop Goldstein


Amanda Craig’s article about writer Maeve Binchy popped up in my Reader while I was in the middle of writing myself, and I decided not to read it until I had put a few projects to bed because the title alone filled me with disbelief: “If Maeve Binchy Had Been a Mother.”

Maeve Binchy wasn’t a mother due to infertility and she explained in the Daily Mail years ago,

Of course I wanted children. Bright, gorgeous, loving children. I could almost see them. But it was not to be and 30 years ago things were very different. Fertility drugs were not as developed and adoption was impossible after the age of 40. So my husband and I went through the sad, disappointed bit and then decided to count the blessings that we already had and ‘get on with it’.

She tells the story of how her friends lent her their children, sending them to London to stay with her, and how these children grew up with Binchy and her husband serving as an extra set of grandparents, a role they played well into those childrens’ adulthoods when they had children of their own.

I bless those good friends and family who lent us their children, and never minded that we played the roles of ageing enfants terribles, allowing them more freedom in some ways than parents ever would, but yet indulging our own anxieties under the cover of having bad nerves. Our many ‘children’ and ‘grandchildren’ will never really understand what a great role they played in filling a gap that could have been sad and destructive but in the end turned out to be so joyful.

So now that we have established why Maeve Binchy had no children and how this affected her emotionally. And from the article, it sounds that while she obviously did not have daily parenting responsibilities, she spent a considerable amount of time standing in as a guardian once the children were older and could travel for a visit. Not exactly the life Craig envisions for childless writers (who apparently are just oozing with free time like snails leaving trails across the pavement) in her article.

So I need to start (before I touch the actual content) by saying that this article is unnecessarily cruel. The woman was infertile. It was a source of great sadness for her during her life. Asking whether she could have been a better writer if she had been a mother is thoughtless at best and hateful at worst. It was a medical condition, entirely outside her control.

Could you imagine someone writing an obit for John Lennon and saying, “yeah, sure he was a great songwriter, but since he grew up without a father from the age of five on, he couldn’t really write realistic songs about being a son. Maybe if he had grown up with a father, he could stretch beyond writing songs about love to write songs about familial relationships as Cat Stevens so eloquently did in ‘Fathers and Sons’ or Harry Chapin did in ‘Cats in the Cradle.’ Two song writers with fathers. It’s really too bad that Lennon was so limited in his song writing and never knew the deep love between a father and son.”

You know why you’d never read an obit like that? Because it’s fucking cruel.

And it’s equally cruel to take Maeve Binchy’s medical condition — something entirely outside her control — and use it to muse on how much better she could have been as a writer if she didn’t have it. But beyond doing a disservice directly to Maeve Binchy, Craig demeans all women by reducing us to the capabilities of our uteri. Can you procreate? Then perhaps you won’t be so limited to such boring subject matter as (yawn) relationships. As Craig states,

Maeve Binchy’s warmth and interest in other people included their families, but I can’t help but feel that her detailed portraits of ordinary life might not have been so predicated on the relationships between men and women had she had a child.

Her insensitivity doesn’t just extend to Binchy. Jane Austen, she muses, maybe would have gotten off that limited topic of romantic love and moved on to more important things if she had just parented a child. After all, “No matter what your experience of adult love, there is nothing as strong as the bond between a mother and a child.”

The reality is that every writer, every piece of art can be done better. Art is never static; there is always a word that can be tweaked, a brush stroke that can be changed. Writers will tell you that they keep editing until their publisher pulls the manuscript out of their hands, and even then, when I read aloud from my book, I still tweak sentences here and there rather than reciting what is on the page. So this article serves no purpose — of course a different life may have brought with it the influence of different subject matter. I think we can all agree that our experiences (or lack of experiences) changes how we see the world, and we bring that with us into our art.

But to predicate all women’s writing on the event of childbirth is — again — reductive and insulting to women. Parenting can change a person’s writing focus, or it might not. And there are plenty of things including caring for an aging parent, an ill partner, or tending to one’s own poor health that affects the amount of time a person can dedicate to writing; the divide isn’t between parents and non-parents, but those who are able to make time and those who are not regardless of the why behind those time constraints. Parenting doesn’t trump all in being the sole timesuck.

And when we read between the lines, what Craig is doing is taking a caregiving role — parenting — and making that the focus of womanhood. And when we do that, we limit ourselves. Women do not have to be caregivers nor should men be shunted away from the role and told it’s too “feminine.” What Craig has done is take a truth of womanhood (we often fall into the role of caregiver both due to societal norms or biology) and make it a limit for womanhood (women should serve as caregivers because it makes them more well-rounded, far-reaching writers). And while I expect men to build the glass ceiling over my head, I hardly think women need to step into that role of constructor of limits for other women.

Craig’s article was such a huge disappointment for women writers. We could take the time to hold each other up; to support one another in producing books. Or we can take Craig’s lead and muse on why someone else was just so damn limited in their writing abilities (not like Craig, mother that she is!). On one path, we fill bookstores with quality fiction that reflects aspects of society. On the other path, we shriek like harpies and our male counterparts notice and ask why women feel as if they need to yank on the backs of other women in order to feel as if they’re rising to the top of the pack.

Men, you have probably noticed, are not writing similar articles asking if Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Truman Capote, or Philip Roth (sorry to knock you off prematurely, Mr. Roth) could have been better writers if they had just experienced fatherhood.

And interestingly enough, women also aren’t writing articles asking if Franz Kafka, Jean-Paul Sartre, Truman Capote, or Philip Roth could have been better writers if they had been fathers.

We only seem to write these types of articles about ourselves.


>>>>>

The original article for reference:

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9446816/If-Maeve-Binchy-had-been-a-mother-....html

[Deleted]

Why are you so passionate about criticizing journalists?

[thedash]

So wait, Craig is the dirty pirate whore?

Personally I did not find her article to be offensively written. But I have never experienced IF and think someone could very legitimately feel offended by it if they have.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:05:03 GMT -5 @redbellpeppers said:

Why are you so passionate about criticizing journalists?

I'm really now, I swear. I just read a ton of articles and both those things set me off this week. And I just started birth control that makes me ragey so there's that as well.

[Deleted]

Who did you call a pirate whore, the author of the article you posted or the author of the article you linked?

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:06:57 GMT -5 @kirkette said:

Whoa! I'll need a Spark Notes version of the OP. I couldn't get through the 1st paragraph.

Ok Maeve Binchy was a writer (Circle of Friends). She died.

On the day of her funeral another writer wrote an article saying that Binchy's writing would have had more depth had she been a mother.

Commence Internet outlash (not just by me!).

Craig makes fun of trolls on her Twitter.

I call Craig a dirty pirate whore.

The end.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:08:46 GMT -5 @ameliapond said:

Who did you call a pirate whore, the author of the article you posted or the author of the article you linked?

The latter.

[dexteroni]

I think the article is kind of "STFU parents" worthy but not "flaming attack on her FB page" worthy. "Dirty pirate whore" isn't even really an appropriate choice of words. If I'm understanding your point of view (you think she's pulling the "you're not a parent so you don't understand" card?), then "self-centered cunt" would have been better. I mean if you're out to use words that sting, why mess around? Dirty pirate whore is more "wha?" than "woah." Well, it's "woah, crazy lady alert" but not "woah, she got you."

And I don't get why you pasted this third-party column here but only linked the original one written by the alleged DPW. That is really the one on which people should be basing their judgments.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:09:28 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

Aug 21, 2012 21:08:46 GMT -5 @ameliapond said:

Who did you call a pirate whore, the author of the article you posted or the author of the article you linked?

The latter.

Okay, I changed my vote then, I was skimming the first part and it wasn't really clear.

I don't really think calling a woman a whore is the best way to make your point about an article like this.

[niq]

Aug 21, 2012 21:05:03 GMT -5 @redbellpeppers said:

Why are you so passionate about criticizing journalists?

we've all seen "Someone is wrong on the internet" , right?

Via mobile doohickey

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:12:25 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

I think the article is kind of "STFU parents" worthy but not "flaming attack on her FB page" worthy. "Dirty pirate whore" isn't even really an appropriate choice of words. "Self-centered cunt" would have been better. I mean if you're out to use words that sting, why mess around? Dirty pirate whore is more "wha?" than "woah." Well, it's "woah, crazy lady alert" but not "woah, she got you."

And I don't get why you pasted this third-party column instead of the original one written by the alleged DPW. That one can be found here for anyone who's interested: www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9446816/If-Maeve-Binchy-had-been-a-mother-....html

I posted that link too. I just felt that blogger summed up my opinion.

And dirty pirate whore just kinda came to me. She was making fun of trolls so she was ripe for trolling.

[dexteroni]

Aug 21, 2012 21:14:06 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

I posted that link too. I just felt that blogger summed up my opinion.

And dirty pirate whore just kinda came to me. She was making fun of trolls so she was ripe for trolling.

Yeah, I noticed that afterward and edited my post.

You do realize that the only person you're harming by going full-tilt psycho when you're angry is yourself, right?

[hopecounts]

As someone who suffered through IF and was fortunate that treatment was available and successful for us Craig can DIAF.
While there is nothing like my love for my daughter my love for my husband is equally amazing if different.
Given that Binchy was open that not having children wasn't something she choose but a sad and painful part of her life keep your dumb opinion to yourself thanks

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:16:44 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Aug 21, 2012 21:14:06 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

I posted that link too. I just felt that blogger summed up my opinion.

And dirty pirate whore just kinda came to me. She was making fun of trolls so she was ripe for trolling.

Yeah, I noticed that afterward and edited my post.

You do realize that the only person you're harming by going full-tilt psycho when you're angry is yourself, right?

Yeah, I just get some sort of satisfaction from it though. But the rage has lessened a bit over the past two days. I was like full on hater a few days ago because of my shitty friend situation.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:17:22 GMT -5 hopecounts said:

Given that Binchy was open that not having children wasn't something she choose but a sad and painful part of her life keep your dumb opinion to yourself thanks

Yes I agree. I mean she spoke publicly about it and her pain. To think you're so original by writing about her hypothetical writing as influenced by motherhood you think she would have at least thrown that in instead of saying that the love between a parent and child is so much deeper than romantic love.

[Deleted]

Ok so only twelve people have voted but most of them sorta agree with me (or at least my skewed poll). I feel justified. I promise I'll stop writing hate mail now.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:24:15 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

I get why you don't like the author of the article, but I am totally confused by "dirty pirate whore." Like, I just totally don't get it.

Is that all you posted on her FB? "You're a dirty pirate whore!"?

She posted about her latest book and I said "no wants to read your book you dirty pirate whore."

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:25:41 GMT -5 mishy said:

What did Craig say on her Twitter about the negative feedback?

Amanda Craigþ@AmandaPCraig

Even discussing whether having children helps or hinders a novelist in #Telegraph apropos #MaevaBinchy gets the trolls going. Feminism 2012!

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:28:37 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

Aug 21, 2012 21:24:45 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

Ok so only twelve people have voted but most of them sorta agree with me (or at least my skewed poll). I feel justified. I promise I'll stop writing hate mail now.

LOL. You know I love you, but I'd say the poll is really about whether you calling her a dirty pirate whore was sort of crazy and over the top. And I'd say you're not winning the poll.

That's a really valid point that I'm choosing to ignore.

No but for real if you google Amanda Craig Maeve Binchy there are probably 200+ bloggers, writers, etc who published their thoughts on the article. She responded to that by calling them all trolls. Thus I didn't think a strongly worded letter would change her mind so I didn't go that route.

[gt7301b]

I need an option for I don't give a shit!

[dexteroni]

Aug 21, 2012 21:25:37 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

Aug 21, 2012 21:24:15 GMT -5 jenny1980 said:

I get why you don't like the author of the article, but I am totally confused by "dirty pirate whore." Like, I just totally don't get it.

Is that all you posted on her FB? "You're a dirty pirate whore!"?

She posted about her latest book and I said "no wants to read your book you dirty pirate whore."

So you didn't even make it about the article? Just posted a random hate comment that sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old who just learned the word whore? Oh NQB. I love ya, but I feel like you need a rage detector that shuts down your internet access if you exceed a certain level. Like a breathalyzer.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:36:03 GMT -5 dexteroni said:

Aug 21, 2012 21:25:37 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

She posted about her latest book and I said "no wants to read your book you dirty pirate whore."

So you didn't even make it about the article? Just posted a random hate comment that sounds like it was written by a 12-year-old who just learned the word whore? Oh NQB. I love ya, but I feel like you need a rage detector that shuts down your internet access if you exceed a certain level. Like a breathalyzer.

Ha, that may be true actually. That's why I waited a few days after that last post to explain this second incident. I'm over it and am able to laugh at myself now. I also just really like the phrase dirty pirate whore.

[vanillacourage]

I say this with love - you seem tense. I know you have been going through some things but please take some time for yourself, ok?

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 21:54:06 GMT -5 vanillacourage said:

I say this with love - you seem tense. I know you have been going through some things but please take some time for yourself, ok?

Thank you, I really appreciate it. Like I said a few posts up, I was doing really shitty a few days ago but I'm doing much better now. I just wanted to tell the story because I promised to a few days back.

[krystee]

I kind of admire your lack of filter. This woman is an idiot.

[thedash]

I don't get the new title.

ETA never mind I get it now. Saw thread about ML below.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2012 22:21:30 GMT -5 thedash said:

I don't get the new title.

I am just not in the mood to deal with ML tonight.

[thedash]

Aug 21, 2012 22:24:24 GMT -5 @notquiteblushing said:

Aug 21, 2012 22:21:30 GMT -5 thedash said:

I don't get the new title.

I am just not in the mood to deal with ML tonight.

Fair enough.