Commenting Rules for the FSF Blog

This is a first draft of the posting rules for FeministSF - The Blog!

COMMENT GUIDELINES FOR THE FEMINIST SF BLOG

(See below for original)

This is a feminist SF blog. The people who have posting privileges here are all feminist SF fans. We are here to discuss feminism/sf/feminist sf/sf and feminism.

We are interested in open discussions of all things related to Feminist SF. However, in order to facilitate open, productive, and intelligent discussions we do ask that you follow a few guidelines when participating:

1. Feminism, on a very basic level, is the idea that women are people and deserve equal treatment before the law, at the workplace, and within the family. If you believe women are human beings and deserve to be treated as such, you’re probably a feminist.

2. As this is a feminist SF blog, there are many topics that we will discuss related to SF and feminism. Some of you may think that these are not the topics most important to the advancement of feminism. They are, however, topics that the posters deemed relevant for discussion. If these topics are not of interest to you, please feel free not to engage with them.

3. In some cases, you may find yourself in discussions with people who have a broader knowledge of feminist texts and theories than you have, perhaps, had access to. At the end of this post, you'll find a short reading list of texts you may be interested in familiarizing yourself with before engaging with these posters.

4. Sadly, we live in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is the term used to define the social condition in which male members of a society predominate in positions of power – political, social, economic. When we speak here about “the patriarchy” please understand that we are not “blaming” all men or all women for this condition. We are speaking of it as a condition that simply “is,” a condition that many of us are trying very to alter. No society can be truly equal that values the thoughts, opinions, and deeds of one gender above the other.

5. Feminism, being a loose collection of many theories and sets of beliefs, is not a monolith. There is plenty of room for disagreement between and among feminists about what feminism is, what it means to be a feminist, and how knowledge of feminism is best disseminated. This means that you may well see a great many of us disagreeing with one another. This is encouraged. Feminism is not a Hive Mind.

6. In order to provide a productive space for discussion, the use of abusive, sexist, or racist language will not be tolerated. If you engage in hate speech on this blog, your posts may be deleted, and/or you may be banned from our forum.

7. If you are not familiar with basic feminist theory, you may encounter some feminists in this forum who are interested in recommending literature to you and/or educating you about feminist values. However, it is not the primary responsibility of any commenter or poster on this blog to educate you about feminist principles, and each individual has the right to choose whether or not they're interested in engaging with you.

8. Everyone is different. It is the right of each poster and commenter to define what they want and what they believe. Please do not assert that you know "what feminists believe,” “what women what” or “who feminists really are.”

9. If you happen to have been born a man or chosen to become of the male gender, it may be helpful to remember that, as a man, you have acquired a set of privileges that you may not be aware of. Please see: <a href="http://colours.mahost.org/org/maleprivilege.html">The Male Privilege Checklist</a>.

10. In general, please keep all discussions of women’s experiences about women and their experiences. It benefits no one to derail a conversation about, say, women and rape to a conversation about men who’ve been raped. Those discussions can be better held on another forum where issues of masculinity are handled in detail. If you cannot find such a forum, create one!

11. Attempting to excuse bad behaviour – yours or anyone else’s – with “That’s just the way men/women/black people/white people/gay people/straight people/rich people/poor people are” is not an acceptable excuse or argument for why such behaviour exists.

12. Be aware of the language you’re using to communicate. Not everyone is going to be flattered by being told "You've really got balls!" or denigrated by being told they’re a “pussy.” Such language attaches cultural values to gendered sets of genitalia, and not everyone thinks having a pussy is a bad, weak, or stupid thing or that having balls is terribly desirable.

13. In general, please avoid endearments such as "honey" or "sweetie" when arguing. Such overly familiar sentiments are condescending and infuriating, and strongly imply that you do not take that person's views seriously.

14. If you find yourself in a situation in which all of the commenters in a post seem to understand each other, but you can’t follow the discussion, you have three legitimate options: (1) Continue to read the conversation, and try to understand without derailing it. (2) E-mail one of the people off-blog and ask - politely - for clarification. She or he may or may not choose to explain. (3) Stop reading the conversation. Do not interrupt the conversation to demand clarification.

15. If you make a comment and are told you have misunderstood, accept that you have misunderstood. As the adage goes, it’s often wiser to listen twice as much as we speak.

16. With these guidelines in mind, comment away! We look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions.

Posting rules for non-feminists (YONMEI VERSION)

This is a feminist sf blog. The people who have posting privileges here are all feminist SF fans. We are here to discuss feminism/sf/feminist sf/sf and feminism. We are not here to educate you about feminism. If, as a result of reading this blog, you are educated about feminism, we're happy for you: but it's not our primary purpose in life to do so.

You are most likely to have been directed here because you asked a question or made a comment indicating that you are a non-feminist in need of reading these guidelines in order to be allowed to continue to participate on this blog. If you decide you'd rather not participate, the door is that way, and you can be on the other side of it.

1. You may in fact be a feminist, even if you prefer not to identify as one. If you find yourself formulating statements on the lines of "I'm not a feminist, but - " you should go read the essay Yes, you are. And then you should think about why endorsing feminist values is okay, but it feels scary or wrong to identify as a feminist.

2. Don't come back to us and say "Feminism is putting women first: I am a humanist, I put human beings first". Women are human beings: feminists put human beings first. Do not, also, come back to us and say "How can you care about X" where X is a feminist value, "when thisshit is happening?" It is not impossible that some of the feminists you are talking to are also passionately involved in actually doing something about thisshit: activists tend to care passionately about a lot of things, and you will look like a fool. But also, this is a feminist sf blog. Do not presume that because people here are not talking, here, about thisshit, and won't let you talk, here, about thisshit, that it's something they don't care about: it just means that we won't let you morph a feminist sf blog into a generalist all-issues blog.

3. Feminism cannot be packed into a short set of rules. At the end of this post, you'll find a short reading list, of books we all agree are essential to feminist sf, and a long reading list, of books all of us have agreed are good background reading for feminist sf. If you're truly interested in learning more about feminism/feminist sf, those book lists are a good starting point.

4. We live in a patriarchal society. Patriarchy is the anthropological term used to define the sociological condition where male members of a society tend to predominate in positions of power; with the more powerful the position, the more likely it is that a male will hold that position. Some non-feminists assume that when they hear feminists talking about the patriarchy, this means we're blaming "all men" or we're claiming that "all men are better off in this culture than any woman" or some other confusion of "all men" with the patriarchy. This is a common, and completely wrong, confusion. We won't bother telling you twice.

5. You may well see feminists disagreeing with each other in discussion. Don't think that "because X disagrees with Y about what the feminist position is on Z, either X is not a feminist or Y is not a feminist. Feminism is not monolithic. Though X and Y disagree in this instance, they probably agree with each other on many other issues.

6. Abusive or sexist language will not be tolerated. What does that mean? Means if you call people names, or abuse them, instead of arguing civilly, we'll ban you. Means if you try to denigrate a person because she's female or an idea because it's a feminist one, we'll warn you and then ban you. We don't like racist or homophobic or any other kind of abusive or denigratory language, either.

7. We're not here to argue with anti-feminists or misogynists about our basic values, or even to explain to you what our basic values are. We do not feel the need to defend feminism to you, or to explain to you what we mean by feminism, or to argue the case for our being feminists. We might be interested in doing that on other forums, but not here.

• Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority. Mary Wollstonecraft
• Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Susan B. Anthony
• I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. Rebecca West
• What I am proud of, what seems so simply clear, is that feminism is a way to fight for justice, always in short supply. Barbara Strickland
• I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. Sally Kempton
• Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings. Cheris Kramerae

8. There's a moment in C.J. Cherryh's Cuckoo's Egg where the adult trainer (who comes from a species with no handedness) says to his human student, "You feinted left, went right," and the student says defensively "I thought this time I'd surprise you!" and his teacher retorts, "Not when you do it every time!" Some tropes in fiction - women being raped - girl children being sexually abused - women submitting themselves to men, women finding joy and satisfaction in becoming a good wife and mother and giving up independence - are like that: they aren't "surprising", or "interesting", or "revolutionary", and it makes no difference if the incident is presented positively or negatively: they're just another patriarchal trope in fiction.

9. Related to the latter: it is a standard patriarchal trope that men's bodies just are, and women's bodies are overtly sexual. That's why Frank Miller draws drooling pictures of Wonder Woman's butt for front covers, but not Superman's crotch or Batman's butt. This is a given value for the patriarchy: it is not just something "natural" or "how women are".

10. Do not try to tell us "what feminists believe".

Posting rules for men

"The exclamation [of my friend] ... was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice his natural size." - Virgina Woolf

You are most likely to have been directed here because you asked a question or made a comment indicating that you are a man in need of reading these guidelines in order to be allowed to continue to participate on this blog. If you decide you'd rather not participate, the door is that way, and you can be on the other side of it.

1. Because you are a man, you have male privilege in this society. You are most likely unaware of how male privilege has eased your way, and in an environment where you will not be allowed to exercise male privilege, such as this blog, you will probably find yourself thinking "That's not fair!" and "Why am I being treated like that?" because that's how privileged people tend to react when privileges are removed that they are so accustomed to, they think of them as rights. Go read The Male Privilege Checklist. We are not interested in arguing with you about whether or not you have male privilege, or how that concept works in real life: we just want you to understand that here, on this blog, you are not permitted the status your male privilege gives you in the wider world.

2. In general, don't try to turn a conversation about how women experience the world into a conversation about how you, a man, experience the world. If you have nothing to contribute to any particular discussion because its focus is entirely on women's experience, read without commenting. In particular, do not attempt to derail discussions about rape with comments like "But men get raped too!", or to derail any similar discussion with equivalent attempts to turn the discussion from violence by men against women to violence where men are the victims.

3. In general, if someone makes a point about male behaviour, don't try to turn the conversation by arguing that you're not like that, or you don't do that. Maybe you aren't and you don't, but you know what? It's really not all about you. Furthermore, you may find - if you let yourself know it - that behaviour you took for granted looked very different from a woman's perspective. But, mainly: conversation about how male behaviour looks to women is not assisted by men explaining how men think of male behaviour. We already know: it's not as if men keep it a secret.

4. Do not try to excuse bad behaviour from men because "that's how men are", or trying to justify it in terms of evolutionary theory or any other BS is just another way of endorsing patriarchal values and male privilege. (If you don't grok "patriarchy", go read the posting rules for non-feminists.)

5. If someone makes a comment that assumes all the readers are women, or that everyone in a particular group is a woman, take it as an educational experience: this kind of thing happens to women all the time. Don't derail the conversation by piping up "Hey, I'm a man!"

6. Do not assume that women will be flattered by being told "You've really got balls!" or won't mind some man being denigrated by being referred to as "a pussy" or "a girl". It is not flattering to be told that a man assumes his genitals are a synonym for courage, and insulting to have a man insult another man by comparing him to a woman or a woman's genitals.

7. In general, do not use endearments such as "honey" or "sweetie" when in hot disagreement with someone. That's condescending and infuriating, as it strongly implies that you don't take that person's views seriously.

8. Sometimes women will make jokes about men or male behaviour that you don't think are funny. Think of this as an educational experience: don't interrupt to tell us you think that joke's not funny, or that it degrades men AND women for women to talk about men like that.

9. If you don’t understand what women are saying to each other, but the people involved in the conversation clearly understand each other perfectly well, you have three legitimate options: (1) Continue to read the conversation, and try to understand without derailing it. (2) E-mail one of the people offblog and ask - politely - for clarification. She may or may not choose to explain. (3) Stop reading the conversation. Do not interrupt the conversation to demand clarification.

10. If you make a comment and are told you have misunderstood, accept that you have misunderstood; don't derail the discussion by arguing at length that your interpretation is right and theirs is wrong.

11. Do not try to tell us "what women want".