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Amanda Marcotte: On blogging, politics, and a feminist's place

Amanda Marcotte is at the helm of the immensely popular progressive blog, Pandagon. Her talent and success led the John Edwards presidential campaign to tap her as blogmaster, a position she served in briefly last year. Marcotte’s book, titled It’s A Jungle Out There: A Feminist Survival Guide To Politically Inhospitable Environments, will be published by Seal Press this fall. She lives and writes in Austin, Texas.

Here’s Amanda:

How did you become a writer, and why in particular did you choose the internet as your medium?
I wanted to be a writer when I was younger, but didn’t quite know how to go about it. I got into the internet by accident, basically. I loved surfing and leaving comments on blogs and eventually got to the point where I felt I could write a blog of my own. At first, I saw blogging as mostly an outlet for my various opinions, but over time, I began to realize it’s not especially different from actual writing.

Have you always fused your politics with your writing? Or did you at one time feel a divide between your creativity and your activism?
I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a difference between activism and writing, at least not in a democracy where trying to create change is best done through reaching out to the public.

In your time as a blogger with Pandagon, what has surprised you? And what have you learned?
I’ve had the good surprise of finding out there are a lot more like-minded people out there than I could have ever dreamed. I’ve had the bad surprise of learning that having the same political worldview as someone doesn’t preclude nasty disagreements about sense of humor or tastes. I’ve learned to be slower to judge people, particularly allies, who have somehow done something that might offend me and learned that you can get a lot further by extending good will and generosity to people, instead of assuming straightaway you need to lock horns over every disagreement.

Pandagon is a particularly popular blog. How did the community develop there, and why do you think readers are so deeply engaged?
Well, the credit for getting the blog off the ground goes to the founder Jesse Taylor and to his old co-blogger, Ezra Klein. They were the ones who built it up and got it high up in the ranks of progressive blogs. I came on later and helped grow the audience even more. The secret is having a strong brand. Through all the various incarnations, the one thing that’s been stable about Pandagon is a strong dose of the snark and a strong left-leaning tendency. The promise of these things brings on a steady audience.

What role are political blogs playing in the build-up to Election 2008? What could they be doing better, and what are they doing wonderfully?
Well, we’re still performing the role we played in 2004 and 2006 of fact-checking the media and fighting against the way that so much corporate media has become a right wing propaganda dispenser. We’re also moving more into the territory, with recent Democratic wins, of exerting pressure for progressive policy changes, such as pressuring for universal health care. What we need to do better is find a way to get our message out to more people. What we’re already doing well is being a thorn in the side of the mainstream media.

Not too long ago, you were the target of particularly nasty intimidation when you were hired as a blogger for the John Edwards campaign. Though Edwards committed to keeping you and your co-blogger Melissa McEwan on board, you chose to leave the job. What was it like for you to move on from that experience?
Rough, really rough. I hadn’t ever expected to get that job in the first place, much less have to resign so quickly. It put me in a rather dire employment situation, but I muddled through. It hardened me up in a lot of ways; I’m much more cynical now about human nature and opportunism than I could have dreamed of before.

What can be done to build a safer, more open space online, particularly for women writers?
I think the key is in the numbers. The more women online, the more female bloggers, the more power we have in numbers. First of all, we can fight back if we show strength in numbers, and also the anger and energy of the misogynists who want to run you offline is diffused the more targets are out there. Jessica Valenti and I used to get the bulk of the abuse aimed at feminist bloggers from disruptive men, but now those men have run themselves ragged trying to get even a little attention from the hundreds of feminist blogs.

How can feminists make better use of online tools in our larger movement?
Be open-minded and flexible about some of the unique opportunities the online world offers. A lot of feminist organizations think of the internet as a place to dispense information and organize, which is a limited view. The internet is much better as a place to hold discussions, of the consciousness-raising sort, and shaping ideas than dispensing information in a top-down fashion.

What are you working on now?
I’m finishing up a book for Seal Press that should come out in a few months called It’s A Jungle Out There: A Feminist Survival Guide To Politically Inhospitable Environments and starting a podcast and column for RH Reality Check in September.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Just buy my book when it comes out. ;) I personally think it’s a scream.

Related Article:
“Why I Had to Quit the John Edwards Campaign,” by Amanda Marcotte (Salon)

Posted by Anna on August 24, 2020 01:30 PM
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