Cycles of feminist internet herstory

[sillage]

I was around the feminist internet in 1998-2004ish when the Ms. Magazine forum was a thriving hotbed of activist contributions. That was where I learned to change my mind about prostitution being a choice and first encountered smart quotes from Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon posted in women's signatures.

Transgender activists loudly complained about feminists not accepting their lies with such angry consistency that the Ms. Magazine forum moderators shut the forums down completely one day without warning, leaving us posters who built the place with our freely-added content scrambling to find each other online (no Facebook then) and start our own forums and blogs.

A few years later, transgender activist bullying pressured Twisty Faster of the blog I Blame the Patriarchy to collapse the community there as well.

Things change, and the internet changes faster than most things. Mumnset may continue to be what women built it to be, or it may go extinct like others that seemed too big to fail but were very much not.

Any other internet feminist oldies like me still on here? I used to post as Samman on the Ms. Magazine boards.

I used to post on Jezebel as a libfem. They closed down the general chat.

I remember those days.... Not the Ms boards so much but the early 00's when there was such a vibrant community of UK radfem bloggers. We formed strong friendships through real life meetings and actions and regular commenters - some of them have lasted over time. I loved IBTP before the trans issue arrived there - and several other US bloggers were inspirational too.

If women make connections on boards such as MN I think it's vital to have other ways of keeping in contact with one another purely because of the capacity for plugs to be pulled overnight. I can imagine the sense of loss and bewilderment when finding out the Ms boards had gone sillage - loss of community, loss of all that work, that place... It's shocking that they could do that without warning.

I was not on the Ms boards though some of my friends were.
I mostly spent time on political blogs until the pie fight meltdown at the great orange satan when I went looking for Feminists to talk with cuz I was so effing sick of trying to educate willfully ignorant men.
I found easy persiflage at Twisty's place and it was just what I needed for online balance.
So many Feminist forums, blogs, and FB pages, have been destroyed since then by MRAs that I think a lot of women have learned to recognize the signs.
Offers to welcome sillage.

I was not on the Ms boards either but heard quite a bit about them from radical feminists online. I used to keep a small blog in the late 00's and chat to other bloggers via comments sections, and posted on a few message boards. I never really posted at twisty's, just read there. I liked the smaller blogs tbh, and there were lots of those then.