I really ought to be asleep and thought I should preface this with that disclaimer, but what about creating a thread that can serve as a place to learn/ask questions/get clarification on these topics?
There have been times that I have seen something called out, didn’t understand the call-out and only after some follow-up comments/discussion did I see the problem. If step 1 was all I saw, I wouldn’t have had a chance to learn and would have stayed in that sort of mindset of “I don’t see this as a problem, maybe the call outer is making a stretch.” By making it its own thread it could be somewhere people deliberately go to seek understanding or when they have the emotional spoons to handle that work. Also it gives a place for the discussion to happen where it doesn’t take over the meme thread or complaints thread to keep things on topic.
ETA: also sometimes the person who calls something out did get it wrong. Their frame of reference and the OP frame of reference were different and OP was actually not being problematic and call outer was reading something into a thing that was not there. This sort of miscommunication sucks for everyone involved too!
I can make an admin flag with a note, and my thought will be standard message that links to the locked education master list for the topic for any deleted comment or resolved flag.
I have one forum I am on that often has to delete well- meaning but against safety rule posts and they have this, and I find it is helpful because it prevents the community and the mods from having the same discussions over and over with new forumers or forumers who didn’t realized they stepped wrong
In terms of content, this is how I feel about it for myself (others are welcome to disagree):
Tier 1 offense: Someone is personally offended by a personally directed -ism statement. “You are/aren’t X because you’re a woman.” Obviously not ok, even if accidental, delete.
Tier 2 offense: Someone is personally offended by a general statement (meme, joke, reference, philosophical, etc). “Women are/aren’t X.” Not ok, may be accidental, learning/teaching/growing opportunity. Probably delete unless really productive educational discussion happens?
Tier 3 offense: Someone is personally offended by another’s individual, personal experience. “As a woman, I have found I am X compared to most men.” I think this is where a lot of conflict has been and I think at most this deserves to be spoilered (unless on someone’s journal and they don’t want it). The person offended may be correctly identifying the statement as internalized -ism and right that it’s hurting the poster. But I find that someone speaking to their own experience takes precedence over the presence of ingrained bias/-ism/-phobia in their post, if it isn’t actively lashing out at others or over-generalizing.
Side note, appropriateness of venue is obviously important here. Journal threads are obviously very op moderated. In fact, that tends to be true for most threads, I would say. I think if you frame a thread as “discussing of anti-insect sentiments” or even “anti-killing insects” someone will come and ask/share that they don’t kill spiders but will slap a mosquito that landed on them, does this count? And how to avoid having to slap mosquitos without also getting bit? So if any mention of killing insects is unacceptable and it is not intended as a venue for debate, that should be stated very clearly up front to avoid misunderstandings?
[Note: I tried to come up with a pretty ridiculous example and it’s not meant to diminish the weight of triggering topics at all, but to make an analogy without engaging in those topics here…]
I think a lot of times when a joke/meme is deleted, an educational opportunity is lost. Especially when it’s related to fatphobia which is so culturally pervasive and not instinctual for a lot of people to notice. I think seeing examples is really important to reaffirm what it looks like and recognize it going forward.
I guess what I struggle with, is when something is really borderline - say a meme, and it may not be causing anyone offence but gets called out because someone somewhere might be offended?
I have found myself reluctant to post lately (including even this post). Some of that is being a cis gendered, heterosexual, white, male, able bodied person and trying to be respectful of everyone.
But we also care about other people on this forum and don’t want to leave them isolated either, right?
The nuance I’m trying to add to this is that it’s dependant on where you want to post about it. Some threads are not the place for me to share my experiences. Posts praising weight loss are not necessary in a thread about fatphobia.
If what you’re saying is that the forum rule is that we can always post our personal experiences, full stop, regardless of context, I’ll respect that.
I think it’s a tough call, because if the presence of the content is hurting someone and they see it being left up as approval/support you don’t want to keep doing that. But maybe public acknowledgement that it’s problematic takes the sting out. It may be person or content dependent and can only be evaluated case by case.
I’m actually a terrible person to evaluate this because I can totally be like “yeah that’s misogynist but knowing you don’t mean it that’s also pretty funny.”
I think the context thing is important and I lean towards the standards for what is/isn’t allowed in each thread and what is/isn’t expected to be spoilered is good. Even I recently saw the “maybe don’t reflect on your own experiences in someone else’s money diary” just as a decorum principle (not that it was an offensive thing, just a “stay on topic”) which is interesting, and a standard that needs to be have a common standard when making new threads.
I think we were seeing things spilling outside of the boundaries because we kind of sprawl all over the place in this forum. So I think by thread or by subcategory standards and a clear way to make the leading post have them is helpful.
Personally I have found this valuable to note because it makes me wonder who in my life I might offend or trigger with such a statement in an environment where they wouldn’t (couldn’t) call me out.
Full disclosure: I don’t recall being directly called out on anything. But I’ve had it pointed out when my reasoning has been problematic and have learned from others’ posts as well.
So if the person who starts a fatphobia thread says no pro weight loss talk, that’ll be respected and all posts praising weight loss can get flagged and deleted? Because my goodness, that would be wonderful.
I think that would be the idea but it would be standard up top how to set parameters for the thread so mods jobs are easier.
The issue with the fatphobia thread initially, from what I followed (I wasn’t following it til things started getting flagged) was that the rules of engagement and the goals of the thread were not clear, which is why we ended up making the decision to split it.
Sometimes things have been an issue because people expect certain rules/decorum in threads that aren’t established at all for that thread. So this way there are clear standards to point for.
Much of the flagging isn’t cut and dry stuff though like needing to delete or spoiler stuff, it’s more about overly aggressive or personal down thread stuff and that is where forum wide standards come in about how to talk to people. We have moved past a general “be nice” working
Yeah, I think we all need to get better about explicitly stating boundaries. I know from my own experience that it didn’t even occur to me to state “no unsolicited medical advice” on my journal until several shitty experiences though, so sometimes you don’t know what to worry about until it’s already happened and you have to implement the boundary.
But with the understanding that if something becomes an issue in a particular thread, the OP gets to determine boundaries on an ongoing basis? Because like… It never occurred to me that I needed to make “no fatphobia” a rule for my journal until someone had posted a fatphobic joke. We have to be able to learn and set boundaries as we go.
I think you said on your journal that you didn’t feel that private messages of support (e.g. people who have reached out to say thanks for speaking up) were enough? I think in this case you’re asking to be supported in a very specific way, and I really don’t feel comfortable with doing this because I feel like I’d be dog-piling on the OP. I think you’re doing important work and it’s hard, but also please remember that people have different communication methods and comfort levels! Some people would never make a public call-out, but would be okay calling out via private message. Some would not feel comfortable “confronting” a stranger via private message and would rather report to mods. And some will just acknowledge their support of a call-out with a “like”.
I hope enough people have told you that they appreciate what you’re doing that you don’t feel that you’re in this alone! But you are definitely the leader in this effort on this forum and I think it will take time to for the message to really sink in, and that takes repetition. It doesn’t mean that people aren’t trying, but it does take time for those internal scripts to be rewritten.
People have also suggested instead of deleting, hide behind a cut. That way it’s not out in the open but still there for education. A lot of times by the time I get to a discussion, the offending content has been deleted so I don’t even know what it was!
I think private messages of support are lovely. I think posting in support of the caller-outer is more effective in establishing community norms and / or where the called-out person is doubling down or choosing not to address the issue.
We’re clear on the fact that I actually hate calling people out, right? I HATE doing it. I do it because I don’t want this community destroyed by fatphobia (and selfishly, I don’t want to end up leaving due to the tolerance of fatphobia), but that doesn’t mean I like doing it or find it comfortable, at all.
I would be extremely happy to never have to call out another fatphobic post ever again.
I think some people are very supportive of my efforts. I think plenty of others think I’m unhinged, and some just wish I’d shut up.
I’ve lost at least one forum friend over calling them out for fatphobia, so it’s not exactly winning me any popularity contests. I would be 100% okay with other people doing more of the unpopular work, and I could be the one showing them support and encouragement instead.
If a person is being an asshole, I agree that additional voices are called for. But general posting in support of the caller-outer may be more effective at establishing community norms, but I think there is a cost to this that makes it not worthwhile (making the OP feel worse and unwelcome here).
Hopefully Lily’s plan to have an educational page and admin tags will help a lot. If people can use mod reporting to deal with this, hopefully it will take a lot of burden off you
