"Quit Fucking Asking Me Questions: A Refresher Course"
It seems like this important message is in need of further clarification.
So here's another take.
...
Frank Bruni's op-ed on Monday, titled "Sexism's Puzzling Stamina," was painful in its simplicity. It's comforting to hear gender inequality stated so plainly—accepted so calmly and wholly—by someone outside of the feminist blogosphere. The fact is, our culture is still dealing with the same basic shit that was outraging kitchen-table progressives 20 years ago. We confuse comfort for freedom and then lambast women for complaining. We blame victims and apologize for predators. We dictate, to exacting standards, how women's bodies should look and move. We see nothing wrong with asking a female professional how her kids handle her frequent business trips, and whether or not she's considered staying home. We do not ask the same of men.
While racism and homophobia are treated, in mainstream discourse, like abominations (however meekly we might combat them and however aggressively they go to ground), sexism is still something of a grey area. Here's Bruni:
I keep flashing back more than two decades, to 1991. That was the year of the Tailhook incident, in which some 100 Navy and Marine aviators were accused of sexually assaulting scores of women. It was the year of Susan Faludi’s runaway best seller, “Backlash,” on the “war against American women,” as the subtitle said. It was when the issue of sexual harassment took center stage in Clarence Thomas’s confirmation hearings.
All in all it was a festival of teachable moments, raising our consciousness into the stratosphere. So where are we, fully 22 years later?
We’re listening to Saxby Chambliss, a senator from Georgia, attribute sexual abuse in the military to the ineluctable “hormone level” of virile young men in proximity to nubile young women.
And:
Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect.
Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed.
...
Maybe I shouldn't be so hostile. If you've been on the receiving end of a "hush, the grown-ups are talking" or a crying cat gif, and that was painful for you, my bad. After all you're just asking, and wasn't I just saying that I'm committed to discourse and critical thinking? Yes. I am. But here's the thing: you're not. This isn't a new derailing tactic—it's ancient. One million people have written about it before me. But if my Twitter feed is any indication, plenty of people haven't read up on their own bad behavior (weird) and need a goddamn refresher. So here's the late, great Derailing for Dummies on the subject. (Sometimes I just read Derailing for Dummies over and over again instead of therapy.)
By insisting you can only learn if they right then and there sacrifice further hours of time going over the same ground they have so often in the past, you may also make them give up and go away altogether, enabling you to win by default.
But further, you give the impression that you really want to learn, but they’re holding you back! That’s right, using this tactic you can suggest that full understanding is what you crave – you want to be a better, more connected and compassionate person – but it’s not your fault! Nobody ever gave you the education! And now that someone is here who is so obviously qualified, they’re denying you your Privilege® given right to have everything you want handed to you on a platter!
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http://jezebel.com/quit-fucking-asking-me-questions-a-refresher-course-512810149
I'm sure feminists are well aware of the difference between someone who is genuinely interested in engaging with feminists about feminism and feminist issues, and someone who is not.
There are differing opinions about the benefit of feeding such trolls. Sure some who are just reading the discussions might learn stuff and if so that's great.
The point is that a refusal to do so should not be misconstrued as a feminist 'not doing her job' or 'not being a good activist'... this is a derailing tactic and anyone who ignores these requests is most certainly not acting in bad faith by doing so.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bing-fucking-O.
Others know exactly what they are doing and see feigning ignorance as a tactic to undermine feminist efforts. And they can fuck right off.
People in the other thread were talking about trusting women to know the difference.
Here's the thing though, even if they're wrong and they ignore some well meaning soul's expectation to be spoon fed some basic information, so what? Will the world end?
Why so much outrage over the fact that women might not be picture-perfect ambassadors for feminism?
... but in view of the other thread, which this one caused me to review, that would be a truly asinine statement.
Hell, the very fact that "some people" have such a low opinion of you as to believe you'll swallow their crap, tells you all you need to know about them.
-- Mal
to a man, "Explain to me exactly why it is that I need to treat you like an equal." When we imagine a man saying it to another man, it is easy to imagine that the next action would be that the man who is required to justify his equality would slug the one demanding the explanation.
The epic rudeness of the act of requiring someone to justify their equality somehow never made it through my socialization brain fog before. Neither did the abasement that we put ourselves through just by the act of answering the demands for that justification.
Men (probably I should qualify that by saying "white men"
are never asked to justify their relative worth. The requirement of that justification from women is a statement in itself. And it is a statement in which the following is tacitly understood: "You need to explain and justify this to me, because there is nothing I have ever run across before that convinces me of it."
I never once required a man to explain to me why I should not be treating them as a second class. And yet somehow I learned not to treat them that way. I never once demanded that a single one of them justify to me why I should not treat them with a fundamental disrespect based on their gender. And yet somehow I know how not to do that. Because I am a decent person.
If you need to have this explained to you over and over and over, you are either really very dim or you are not a decent person.
And speaks to me in my heart. Thanks for this find. 
I considered not doing so cause this piece is more hostile. But it seems to have helped so yay!
I find the discussion on this OP very helpful. I hope others who like myself who had issues with the earlier post on this issue read not just the OP but the kind and thoughtful discussion of it.
