I am not sure where to start with this. I guess some background. Debra Darvick is a freelance writer who was fortunate enough to land her article in the My Turn section of Newsweek mid-July 2004. My Turn is an article in Newsweek that provides a platform for the individual journalist to voice their opinions. Unfortunately many people, readers of BME, pierced, unpierced, teachers and clergy were quite put off by Ms. Darvick's opinions. She in fact received many many letters in response to the article as did Newsweek magazine themselves. All of these letters were written because she has offended a great number of people with her opinions of the pierced population in the service industry. You can see her article here.
At A Glance Author snailer Contact [email protected] When It just happened When I first read her article I was at my moms house for dinner. I was aimlessly flipping through her Newsweek when I noticed the article, I read it pretty thoroughly, my Dad and My husband were talking in the background and my Mom and I were chit chatting about school when she would come through the room but I got the point of the article and I admit I was somewhat taken aback. However be it the parental (read mildly oppressive) vibe of my environment at the time or my own nature, I took the piece with a grain of salt. I knew some people would be pissed about it but I'm not one to rock the boat.
I think it was the next night after school that I was on checking my mail when I decided to see if BME got updated. As soon as the page popped up I knew it had because the cover photo was a new and rather disturbing drawing that also looked strangely familiar. The title of the article that went with the picture was sensational to say the least, (sorry Shannon,) Debra Darvick advocates mutilating babies P.S. She's also a bigot. Now of course it got my attention but until I started reading it I didn't put together that this was about that article in my Mom's magazine. Well obviously some people did get pissed. Shannon's article piqued my interest so I linked to the internet article which was a bit shorter than the one in the printed magazine, but yup it was the same thing I had read, so lets find out more about her. I googled her name and about the 3rd site that popped up was BME (it's first today) but other than that she had many articles written on different Jewish and community sites, the Newsweek article was right next to the BME article, and her own page promoting a book was buried in the middle of the results. I decided to read some of her work, book excerpts, and articles, to decide what I really thought of her. Honestly not a bad writer, it wasn't hard to read her articles, they weren't painfully boring, I don't have a big interest in Judaism but my mind didn't wander while I read. Almost all of her writing is filled with that Sienfield-esque mid 90's sarcasm that was prevalent in the Service article but that's what is to be expected out of average American journalists.
Her article in the printed Newsweek made it more clear that she just wanted the piercing culture explained to her than did the on-line version, so since Shannon was kind enough in his article to provide her information I decided to e-mail her an explanation. Today I found that I was not one of the few but rather one of many that decided to contact her. I discovered this because to my surprise she responded to my letter, twice. The first response was what I felt to be a somewhat condescending form letter being sent to all who had written her regarding the Service article mostly aimed in response to the BME article about her. The second however was a personal response, that's what it said anyway, thanking me for my honest opinion of her and constructive criticism of her writing style as well as my explanation of beauty and fairness. I'm impressed I figured she was probably just deleting all the hate mail.
One thing that stuck out to me in both the letters though was that she had been receiving death threats and pointless e-mails that simply called names and made no argument. This surprised me. I don't want to think that many were from fellow BME readers because I believe that this is one of the more intelligent of all communities on the web but no doubt some of this type of mail probably did originate from people in this community.
My whole reason for this drawn out rambling is simply to say this: It doesn't help anyone in this community to perpetuate others view of us by slipping right into their stereotypes for us. When you are angry or disturbed or even straight up pissed you can get your point across better by writing or speaking objectively, or as neutrally as possible, than you can by yelling and screaming. This goes for everything, trying to get your parents to sign for a tattoo or piercing, writing to your congressman, debating with your professor over a test question, discussing an unfair situation with your boss, and so on. Every time one modified individual allows rudeness to take over their senses with someone who just doesn't understand us it only proves that person right, next thing you know they won't be willing to try to understand.