I made the original callout and it was definitely very disheartening to see people debating me on whether it was call-out worthy.
I will note that in the original fatphobia thread, I tried multiple times to redirect as boundaries became clear that I had not originally made clear, only to get lots of pushback. My mental health was utter shit until I split the thread and finally ended up muting the original.
Worth noting that fatphobia is so pervasive that most fat people are themselves fatphobic (I was terribly fatphobic until having a big awakening this year, and still struggle all the time with internalized fatphpbia), so identity group is not enough.
I decided to call out (neutral tone, what I thought was polite) because there was not yet a clear decision on flag versus polite call out) and I certainly don’t want to put everything on lily until more mods are made.
I read it more as “please help me because I don’t want to see this but I feel like I see it and have to be the one to take action towards getting it to go away every damn time.”
It’s also worth pointing out that fatphobia is NOT just an identity-group oppression (though of course that’s part of it). Our cultural obsession with thinness is because of fatphobia, and that obsession harms literally everyone.
Edit: another way of saying this is to say that thin privilege is scant armor against fatphobia. Much less than, say, white privilege is armor against being affected by racism.
One quirk I’ll note is that you’ll keep getting an unread post notification in a thread if a hidden user has the last post in a thread until someone else posts and then you can scroll post the hidden post
I’m glad that the discussion around building clear forum guidelines is happening.
Something that I want to mention, and which will muddy the waters, is that in our culture humour is a last bastion of acceptable exclusion and derision. To the point where we are taught very clearly in many cases to accept it, and “not having a sense of humour” is used as a way to shut down people are from an oppressed group. People making or reposting a joke might not even be conscious of the structure of their joke and it’s reliance on finding cruelty funny. @FIFoFum made an insightful comment the other day about rarely finding sarcasm funny because it rests on cruelty (someone, I believe meowkins also countered that adult consensual teasing and sarcasm can be okay, but adults can consensually do a lot of things in private that aren’t nice).
Jean Harvey wrote a delightful but possibly now dated book called Civilized Oppression that changed everything for me. Someone agreed with me about kindness vs cruelty and explained all the pieces I couldn’t! I wouldn’t be surprised if she has more recent work that could help us (individuals) steer our online civility.
In counterpoint, two of the people I respect the most have expressed concerns about homogeneity, loss of community for marginalized groups, loss of sense of identity in marginalized groups, alienation of the less informed, loss of resilience and creating a breeding ground (locally and worldwide not on one forum) for extreme right wing oppressive groups. I understand these fears. I don’t know where the safe space is that alleviates them is. I suspect it may involve swallowing our discomfort and engaging with education and kindness (hopefully by creating a thread with links and stuff instead of on an individual basis).
As someone who very recently caused very hurt feelings with a “call out” I can say that my entry into call out culture was unpleasant and unkind and left me with a lot to mull over. I avoid situations where I practice unkindness as part of my own discipline and belief system.
I wholly advocate for and support those who feel that the time for kindness is over and that they need to fight with a stronger sharper message. There are a number of causes who have splintered this way recently and I am proud of the strength and passion of those warriors.
I do think that deciding where the lines are drawn and the approach to take in this corner of the internet is a terrible burden and hope that Lilly finds people and resources to help ease the burden. If we go the route of developing a few education (locked) threads, I’d be happy to help find resources for some of them. I don’t have space in life right now to help the two or three known mods
I don’t think there is a clear decision yet, just so you know. Some people seem much more comfortable with one on one convos or flagging/asking mods to step in and others feel it is important to call out publicly.
Regarding the meme thread, the original callout you made was polite and fine. Once again debating the intent via the impact is where we got massively derailed. I do wonder if it had been flagged (which would’ve pulled it down temporarily until a mod looked at it) if it would’ve had any spiral effect - but I appreciate that the conversation we are having about how to handle such things would’ve not hit a boiling point and I am glad we are establishing community norms.
The forums see over 5k posts a week. I will never see every thread as they unfold. So we need standards.
There’s a place to include the message if you flag it as anything.
Our community guidelines are mentioned and they ask people to flag instead of reply. I did NOT write these for the most part, they are boilerplate but might be a good starting point. (I am required to have these for GDPR, etc)
I completely missed yesterday’s discussion. My thoughts, which are still forming and will probably change over time:
I’d like clear guidelines about what is and isn’t OK to post.
If someone is called out and removes the offending post, I’d like the callout post(s) to be subsequently removed.
I value this space because I get to hear about a wide range of experiences from a wide range of people. I have learned so much here. Lately it feels like it’s moved towards a space where people are actively discouraged from sharing their experiences about certain topics. That doesn’t feel good to me.
I valued this space because it felt safe. The callout culture that’s evolved has made it feel less safe. I first noticed it several months ago and decided to spend less time here and post less often. The recent conversations have me wondering if it’s time to step back even more.
This is exactly the situation that I’m concerned about and I’ve seen play out countless times in DMs. The amount of hurt happening in the public thread is in addition to the long back and forth I’ve had with people who feel hurt by people they considered friends, who were telling them that their own experiences weren’t valid to talk about. Many have disengaged and several have left the forums.
I’ve seen several times “anytime I call out [xyx] thing, it is valid because I have the lived experience of this identity group” - even when they are calling out someone with that same lived experience. As @druidessie said, systemic oppression affects all of society. Systemic oppression is important to fight. The burden to fight it shouldn’t be on a single small group.
But the discussion about ANY type of oppression is constantly changing and is different based on lived experience. What is fatphobic, transphobic, and islamophobic is not always clear cut and it is not always defined the same within the same groups. OMD is not a PHD program on systemic oppression. So we need a system that keeps everyone safe, since we’ll never agree on content.
The discussions and back and forth we’re getting into - ESPECIALLY when regularly the discussion are people just trying to describe their own lived experiences are making people feel like the original purpose of these forums (to be a friendly place to talk about finance - and cats, and plants) is being lost.
So, based on the convo thus far I recommend:
adapting the community guidelines to be more precise and updating the code of conduct with specifics about creating new threads and establishing boundaries
creating a template for all new threads created that shows how to ask for boundaries, and a standard type for spoilers and mandating it so it easy to find
making it so people can flag posts to have spoilers included if you don’t know how (you can flag your own posts, many people do)
moving towards a flagging system and removing offending content and any subsequent callouts from the thread, with a general note about the content and a link to the educational resource pages
opening up a few educational moderated threads for resources lists on different kinds of systemic oppression - these will be locked but new resource submissions can be submitted and added.
moving towards a no-dogpiling rule (this is both ways - both good and bad dogpiling) so as to not derail threads
establishing a group of 7 mods by application (or invitation?) - one for each day of the week (?? help if there are better suggestions for making sure this isn’t unsustainable)
having a little mod training night, and resource guide to help them better identify these things
I would agree to this - while I can handle the call out, it certainly doesn’t make me feel good reading them and doesn’t make you feel welcome. My preference would be for a mod flag or standard response/direct to a thread.
I’m hopeful we can implement guidelines and we will all feel better/safer soon.