![\"Barnard](\"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/barnard-spam.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWhen I saw the title “Great post!” I thought of two possibilities: it could be someone who really liked one of my blog posts, or it could be a spam. But I didn’t think that it was an email from an Ivy league college promoting its president’s new book and podcast, asking for me as a “feminist thought leader” to provide free platform without offering any reciprocity. It might make sense if I was running a big mainstream feminist site, but it feels arrogant and entitled that they would approach me this way.<\/p>\n
I posted the screencap on facebook, and quickly found out that a couple of my friends who are also radical Asian women writers have been contacted by this Barnard College person. So it wasn’t a fluke that they contacted me; they are actively seeking non-mainstream, radical women of color writers to promote the work of Barnard College president, a highly successful white woman.<\/p>\n
I decided to investigate further: I looked to see if anyone has accommodated their request to publicize the book and podcast on their blog, but found something more interesting. Not only is Barnard sending emails to its chosen “feminist thought leaders,” they are also posting unsolicited, unrelated comments on dozens of other people’s blogs<\/a> that is indistinguishable from spam comments.<\/p>\n In one of the pages Barnard spammed, Feminist Forte<\/a>, author Molly responded to Barnard’s spam comment:<\/p>\n \nFrom what I have gleaned online, Debora Spar seems to be aligned with mainstream, white, NYC-centric feminism. In other words, her feminism isn’t my feminism, so I’m going to decline.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That was exactly my thought when I saw the email, but Barnard had no response.<\/p>\n They even posted the same spam comment on The TERFs<\/a>, a site dedicated to opposing a version of radical feminism that discriminates against trans people, but apparently the moderator did not approve their post. So they tried again<\/a> (it says “I do apologize – this is my second attempt to comment”), and was approved.<\/p>\n Barnard is obviously trying to tap the power of viral marketing, but they are failing miserably: despite many spam comments and emails, very few blogs seem to have accommodated their request to publicize the book and podcast. Of course, part of the problem is the idea of the book itself: we are just not interested in hearing a highly privileged woman’s view of what “young women today” need or want. But it is also about how they chose to promote the book, attempting to exploit other women’s platform for their own gain without offering anything meaningful in return.<\/p>\n (Hey, by the way Barnard, thank you for the great idea for my blog!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I received this email this week: When I saw the title “Great post!” I thought of two possibilities: it could be someone who really liked one of my blog posts, or it could be a spam. But I didn’t think that it was an email from an Ivy league college promoting its president’s new book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eminism.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}