#sorryfeminist

As ever, I'm late to the party on this. By the time I came across the #sorryfeminist Twitter hashtag it was already dominated by anti-feminist and anti-woman rhetoric. It was just another way to bash women. After all, we wouldn't want the MRAs to get bored or, you know, try to work on their creativity. 

Anyway, the hashtag got off to an ironic start taking the piss about Deborah Needleman, the new editor of T: The New York Times Style Magazine which I, as ever, have never heard of. Needleman tweeted this:

deborah needleman@debbieneedles

The sexy (sorry, feminists), smart, sassy Katie Roiphe live on stage @nypl on Wednesday night. slate.me/T6IA3g

8 Oct 12

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Now, I can see why Feminists started a hashtag to ridicule this tweet. It's rude. But, come on, did no one see this going badly from the start? No one? Really?

Because, the moment I saw it, my heart sank. I just knew it would be full of MRAs and handmaidens being deliberately malicious and hurtful. It's pretty obvious that a lot of the people currently using the hashtag don't know why it started. But, the damage has been done. It's so full of anti-feminist rhetoric that its just another pathetic woman-bashing exercise: predictable, tedious and lacking any humour. 

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@BBCSuffolk : Misogyny or Hack? They Still Need to Work on Their Apologies

So, @BBCSuffolk has found themselves tweeting this little gem: "The Weirder Rihanna's tattoos get the less I blame Chris Brown". Now, I just assumed that they have some misogynistic nincompoop in their employ. After all, there isn't exactly a world shortage of misogynistic nincompoops and the BBC does have a tendency to hire them. I give you Niall Ferguson as a prime example. So, when the tweet hit and the Feminist smackdown ensued; I just retweeted. Because, misogyny is endemic and the BBC is hardly immune. But, turns out that @BBCSuffolk could have been hacked or something called a meme [but I couldn't tell you what one of those is].

I'm going to reserve judgement on whether or not they've got a misogynist working for them in light of the possible hack evidence; although I have no problem with the misogynist theory what the whole if it quacks like a duck theory of the universe. Where I do think @BBCSuffolk needs some work is with their apology for the somewhat unfortunate booboo. As a general rule of thumb, the phrase "Apologies, it appears something is up with our feed. Thanks to those who pointed it out to us" is not the way to apologise. As apologies go, its pretty piss-poor and lacking some serious awareness of the power of social media and misogynistic discourse. A simple "Our twitter feed appears to have been hacked. We apologise unreservedly for offence caused due to the previous tweet" and then a what actually happened tweet either giving evidence of the hack or stating that an internal inquiry would happen [and the employee responsible suspended pending investigation in my universe where misogynists get punished immediately as opposed to being given standing ovations for Oscars like Roman Polanski].

So, here's a big hint @BBCSuffolk, whatever turns out to be the cause of the gaffe, do take 10 minutes to give your employees a quick less on apologising tomorrow. It will make the rest of us less cranky.

UPDATE: As I wrote this, @BBCSuffolk tweeted this: The recent offensive tweet has been deleted. It was unsanctioned by BBC Suffolk and in no way condoned. Sincere apologies . That would be an apology. Not the previous twattishness.

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