Guidelines for Participation

by Laura Q

— General Guidelines for Participation, for Commenters & Bloggers —

Our aim: No homophobia, racism, misogyny, transphobia, or hate speech. This applies to our bloggers and also to our commenters. We are aware that this is an aspirational rather than a realized goal for people in a society rife with discrimination.

Within those constraints, which make a safe space for all to speak openly and honestly, we promote vigorous & open discussion, from a broadly feminist and anti-racist perspective.

While a diversity of experiences & opinions can lead to different perspectives on particular issues, good faith experiences and views, expressed honestly and in good faith, are important to share. Sometimes there will be no right answer. Sometimes there will be a right answer and someone will be wrong. Sometimes there will be anger and disagreement, but that’s okay. We anticipate intense discussions and disagreements. The core principle is respect for each other as individuals, who are entitled to their own statements of their experiences, intentions, and beliefs — even if you do not respect the belief itself, or question their representation of their intentions. For example:

• Name-calling is almost always simply disrespectful, and not helpful (“You’re not a feminist!” “You’re racist!”).
• Seeing and pointing out sexism, racism, heterosexism, in action or statement, is constructive although sometimes difficult to say or painful to hear.
• What to do when someone says your comment is racist or sexist. (See: How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People) at Alas (a blog), which applies to men accused of sexism, straight people accused of heterosexism, and so on)
• (more examples plus bibliography links)

We strongly promote and welcome perspectives and voices that may be marginalized in public discourse: Meaning, the voices of women, youth, and people of color, particularly, and other identified perspectives.

— Process & Processing —

The rules of the road: What will get you kicked off as a commenter, or a blogger, and how it’s decided. In process, but the final will probably really obvious things like (a) prejudice & hate speech (“you’re going to hell for your poly lifestyle!” “Jews control the media”); (b) demonstrated inability to interact respectfully; or (c) irreconcilable differences.

Process will probably be something like emergency removals by blog admins; permanent banishings or shunnings based on consensus of the group bloggers.

Individual posters control their own threads. This means that, beyond what is stated here, there are no set rules for the blog, as a whole, but individual posters may have individual limits or tolerance levels. Some bloggers may allow comment threads to run on well past the point at which some people feel comfortable; other bloggers may cut short any comments they feel are unproductive. That’s okay. We thought it was more important to have a diversity of feminist opinions, and conversations, even if we couldn’t all agree on how to moderate threads.

What that means is that some bloggers may get or understand what you’re trying to say, and others may not. And what they do with your comment is up to that blogger, whether or not she/he “gets” your comment, or not. A number of the bloggers here follow Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s guidelines (available at BoingBoing), which include some useful behavioral and communication suggestions. A number of them also follow her practice of disemvowelling. The two groups sometimes but not always overlap.

— Feedback —

Thoughts & reactions to this document are welcome. Send to lquilter at feministsf.org .

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