Talk:Commenting Rules for the FSF Blog

Should there be a set of guidelines that apply to all?

One thing that several people came up with was "should there be a set of guidelines that apply to all?" rather than identifying a set of problems as "male behaviour" and identifying a set of problems as "non-feminist behaviour". Thoughts? Yonmei 06:46, 12 September 2006 (PDT)

• I reiterate my opinion that rules are a dangerous substitute for political action. Rules must be universal and indiscriminately applicable to be considered fair. If they require exceptions, those exceptions must be codified, otherwise their enforcers rightfully face charges of hypocrisy. Political action must adapt to the circumstances. For instance, identical treatment of unequals may perpetuate inequality, because the baseline's situation relative to each party may differ. (Taxing the rich and the poor by the same amount still leaves the rich much more money than the poor.) Yet preferential treatment, or favouritism, can either further unbalance the power relationship between people, or rectify it. Who benefits, in order to achieve one outcome or the other, is a question of politics. Anti-feminists claim that women who favour women are selfish, and that this is wrong. (Unfeminine. Lesbians. Man-haters. Separatists. And so forth.) This tactic discourages and vilifies women's liberation, and it is one of the most important forms of anti-feminist propaganda, because women favouring women jeopardises the fundation of patriarchy, which men's unrecompensed and unreciprocated access to women's time, labour and resources. On a feminist blog, what would be "fair" because it is equally applied to all can prove politically disastrous. (If you establish a rule to ban any poster for flaming someone else, you might keep "polite" anti-feminists and drive away justly infuriated feminists.) Civility is a product of political circumstances. Any change in politics will therefore entail a change in the nature of civility, and the rules of good behaviour have to be rewritten in consequence. The differences in case-by-case politics would make this unworkable, even for a tool as suited to frequent revisions as a Wiki entry. --Ide Cyan 07:44, 12 September 2006 (PDT) (NB: I started writing this before you outlined the Talk page.)

The original problem identified by me, Debbie, Pam, and others is that identifying the category "male", "feminist", "nonfeminist", etc., is difficult and won't necessarily reach the problem that we're trying to reach. For instance, guidelines for men/women references a binary that many feminist/queer activists are actively trying to question. Guidelines for "feminists" are appealing to those of us who adopt the term "feminist" to describe our views, but some people with similar views don't adopt the term "feminist" for various reasons; see, e.g., Alice Walker and "womanist". The "I'm not a feminist but..." information is great for trying to recapture and reclaim the term feminist, but I personally do not want people to segregate themselves based on a label that has come, unfortunately, to be problematic for people of color, young people, and other people for various historical and political reasons.

Hence, the suggestion that we address behaviors rather than addressing identity labels. --LQ 08:31, 12 September 2006 (PDT)

As for Ide's comment, I don't disagree; but I would say, let us see where we get. Properly constructed "guidelines" should distinguish between feminist or political rage, or intemperate speech that furthers a useful political point; and hate speech, speech aimed at derailing conversations (trolls), speech unintentionally derailing conversations thru cluelessness, etc. --LQ 08:31, 12 September 2006 (PDT)

Disruptive behaviour

People asking the same-old same-old questions, disrupting an interesting thread by challenging a basic point of feminism: do we want to point them at the guidelines and tell them "go read" or allow them to disrupt the thread further by responding to their points at length? Yonmei 06:46, 12 September 2006 (PDT)

Yes, any of us should be able to point someone to those guidelines (rules, readings, whatever) when inspired to do so. That could be out of a spirit of frustration ("you're wasting my time; go read this"), encouragement ("you've got some good ideas or a good point but you're missing some critical analyses; go read this"), or any other reason or combination of reasons. It's not a "do we want" because we are all individuals, ultimately, and if we're engaging in conversations as individuals, we will have our own levels, thresholds, and reasons for referring people to the guidelines. -- LQ 08:19, 12 September 2006 (PDT)