Bolding mine
Jul. 1st, 2015 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shamanicshayminWhy the #AskELJames Tag Matters
I think when people comment on what happened yesterday, they see her as an author who is being savaged. Again, if people stick to critiquing the problematic themes and ideas of the book and its terrible writing “style,” then that’s truly fair game. However, I think some of her defenders, like with Vanity Fair, are unaware that E.L. James isn’t being bullied. Instead, she has seemed to behave like a bully for years. She’s been nasty to the Twilight fandom who made her famous. A May 2012 article from Crushable by Natalie Zutter, in its texts and comments, documented the history of Ms. James and her fans during her tenure in Twilight fandom. During that time, she encouraged her “Bunker Babes” or fan army to overrun Goodreads and Amazon forums (against the spirit of the terms of service) to promote her book and shout down detractors. Additionally, she would send nasty emails and publicly mock readers on Twitter who even pointed out typos or expressed genuine confusion by the text. Most appalling of all was her alleged apparent tendency to use her Twitter to post the personal addresses and information of her critics (something the Stop the Goodreads Bullies site has faced massive criticism for in the past). She even allowed her fans to harass a teenage girl in Russia who made the mistake of translating Fifty Shades of Grey, then Master of the Universe, into Russian without James’s express permission.
I’m not saying previous troll-like behavior justifies personal attacks on the #askeljames tag. It does not. Again, the minority of the comments were attacks on her and her fans personally and those weren’t okay. However, those nastier ones don’t negate the real valid comments about abuse and stalking, the retweets of quotes from the actual books that match red flag checklists, or the legitimate questions and expressed hurt of offended survivors.
...
That’s what the bulk of the hashtag was about, and that’s why it matters. In an age when celebrities can throw enough money at problems to make them go away, the Twitter tag is a small relief, a way to get thoughts out there even if they will largely stay ignored. Besides, can anyone really be so ignorant after Bill Cosby’s tar-and-feathering with the #CosbyMeme or Robin Thicke being taken to task for his creepy behavior toward his ex-wife and his terrible views on consent in “Blurred Lines” with his #AskThicke tag, that they truly believe asking Twitter for an honest conversation with a controversial celebrity is going to work well? Again, on Tuesday, Republican hopeful Bobby Jindal’s #AskBobby tag was equally as large a disaster. Oddly, you don’t see nearly as many articles in the mainstream media about it period, and so far I’ve seen none that have called what happened to him “bullying.” James is about as public a figure as Jindal now. Again, you can’t be Publishers Weekly’s “Publishing Person of the Year” in 2012 and not also live under public scrutiny. It’s a trade-off.
I think when people comment on what happened yesterday, they see her as an author who is being savaged. Again, if people stick to critiquing the problematic themes and ideas of the book and its terrible writing “style,” then that’s truly fair game. However, I think some of her defenders, like with Vanity Fair, are unaware that E.L. James isn’t being bullied. Instead, she has seemed to behave like a bully for years. She’s been nasty to the Twilight fandom who made her famous. A May 2012 article from Crushable by Natalie Zutter, in its texts and comments, documented the history of Ms. James and her fans during her tenure in Twilight fandom. During that time, she encouraged her “Bunker Babes” or fan army to overrun Goodreads and Amazon forums (against the spirit of the terms of service) to promote her book and shout down detractors. Additionally, she would send nasty emails and publicly mock readers on Twitter who even pointed out typos or expressed genuine confusion by the text. Most appalling of all was her alleged apparent tendency to use her Twitter to post the personal addresses and information of her critics (something the Stop the Goodreads Bullies site has faced massive criticism for in the past). She even allowed her fans to harass a teenage girl in Russia who made the mistake of translating Fifty Shades of Grey, then Master of the Universe, into Russian without James’s express permission.
I’m not saying previous troll-like behavior justifies personal attacks on the #askeljames tag. It does not. Again, the minority of the comments were attacks on her and her fans personally and those weren’t okay. However, those nastier ones don’t negate the real valid comments about abuse and stalking, the retweets of quotes from the actual books that match red flag checklists, or the legitimate questions and expressed hurt of offended survivors.
...
That’s what the bulk of the hashtag was about, and that’s why it matters. In an age when celebrities can throw enough money at problems to make them go away, the Twitter tag is a small relief, a way to get thoughts out there even if they will largely stay ignored. Besides, can anyone really be so ignorant after Bill Cosby’s tar-and-feathering with the #CosbyMeme or Robin Thicke being taken to task for his creepy behavior toward his ex-wife and his terrible views on consent in “Blurred Lines” with his #AskThicke tag, that they truly believe asking Twitter for an honest conversation with a controversial celebrity is going to work well? Again, on Tuesday, Republican hopeful Bobby Jindal’s #AskBobby tag was equally as large a disaster. Oddly, you don’t see nearly as many articles in the mainstream media about it period, and so far I’ve seen none that have called what happened to him “bullying.” James is about as public a figure as Jindal now. Again, you can’t be Publishers Weekly’s “Publishing Person of the Year” in 2012 and not also live under public scrutiny. It’s a trade-off.
