The blasted Vision Statement (being part 4)

[zeborah]

Okay, try this one:

1) We will focus on discussing the process of writing speculative fiction (science-fiction, fantasy, and related genres).

2 a) We know that writers write in various genres, at various lengths, on various topics, in various orders, with various technologies, varyingly planned or unplanned, etc, according to their personal style and needs.
  b) We want to share what works for us, and we want other writers to feel free and safe to share what works for them.
  c) Therefore we will avoid implying either that any particular technique is obligatory, or that any particular technique is wrong - though there might be times when a particular technique is wrong for a particular author or for a particular story.

3 a) We know that society in general and speculative-fiction in specific contain many stereotypes and biases that are racist, sexist, homophobic, ablist, and/or intolerant of people in non-nuclear family structures, people of different religions or of no religion, and others.
  b) We don't want to unwittingly perpetuate such stereotypes and biases in our own fiction. We also don't want to unwittingly perpetuate them in real life and/or hurt a fellow human being.
  c) Therefore we want other members to feel free and safe to point out to us if we've said something that accidentally perpetuates stereotypes or biases or is otherwise hurtful; and we will take it as a favour and learn from it if they do.

4) Therefore, on-topic discussions will include but not be limited to:

  a) dragon biology, alien speech patterns, how horses differ from motorcycles, ways to show/confuse chronology in time travel stories, etc;
  b) outlines, punctuation, use of themes, infodumps, RSI, pen porn, etc;
  c) cultural appropriation, sexist language, homophobic tropes, depictions of religion, etc; and
  d) pun cascades, cats and chocolate, etc; because frivolity is the mortar that binds together a community.

5) The group will be moderated by a panel in order to keep it friendly and safe for all members.

If you're still not happy with it, it would be of great help to me if you could note precisely what you disagree with and/or offer alternative wordings.

But please note that I consider it very important to explicitly include:
a) the groups that have been implicitly sidelined by the sf community in general and rasfc in particular; and
b) the topics which were theoretically allowed on rasfc but which in practise more than one of us was afraid to talk about.

Comments

[painoarvokas.livejournal.com]

This one no longer gives me a "not my thing" reaction. Looks fine.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

It's getting better, though I'm still wary of anything called a "Vision Statement" because I feel it might be intimidating to potential members. Will people hesitate to post because they're afraid that what they have to say is either too trivial or they're afraid of inadvertently offending?

I do believe that a more general Equal Opportunities policy, plus a Code of Conduct will cover everything without being so specific. It has served me perfectly well during 15 years of teaching quite a mixed bunch of students.

I feel there are all sorts of problems with no. 3 above. It could end up serving as troll bait -- ooo, look! There's a group that will be easy to wind up! -- and, if you read it one way, it could be considered patronising to the very people it's claiming to encourage. By specifically mentioning these groups, it implies that we're graciously opening our doors to them and letting them come and explain their quaint ways to us and set us right about how we should write our stories. Sorry. That's putting it very crudely, but there is something about it that sets my teeth on edge.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I agree, both on the general "Vision Statement" thing and your specific reservations on item 3.

I think that item 5 covers most of it . . .

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Me too.I agree with Helen on all counts.

[nycshelly.livejournal.com]

Personally, I have a problem with #3, but that's because I feel it's my right to write about what I want and if stereotypes are included, so be it. They do exist for a reason and they do have their place and for me, getting past stereotypes includes treating stereotypical characters as any other characters. If I post something that others find stereotypical and point that out to me, my best course of action, given this vision statement would be to ignore the comment. Or to not post about that sort of thing at all, which means I'll be self-censoring. Which is fine. I'm just pointing out that such vision statements, meant to be welcoming and all-inclusive, can also be off-putting. Just my 2 cents, and probably worth less than that these days. Which is why I didn't participate in the recent race fail upset.

[karinfromnosund.livejournal.com]

Jumping in a bit late, I know, but...

This one works for me.

I agree with what some others say about §3 (esp 3a), but I'm not sure what could make it better, short of writing something completely different.

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

I find this a lot better and not at all offputting to me (well, I can only speak about myself).

From some other comments, I think the "unwittingly" in point 3 is not coming across, so it may need to be rephrased to make it clearer? (I say this because of something Zeborah said in an IRC conversation, which makes me think the word is important for what she's meaning to say. I may also be wrong of course.)

[zeborah]

It's getting better, though I'm still wary of anything called a "Vision Statement" because I feel it might be intimidating to potential members.

That one's easy: call it "What this group's for" instead.

For the other issues, if I start talking I'll talk too much. :-) Thank you for the feedback.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

argh, flail. Finally getting around to reading some of this. I have Opinions. I will eventually express them. But I think I'd better read everything first. (For your notice).

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I hate LJ, just swallowed my comment.

Do you want a Dreamwidth invite code (for a free account, can back up your LJ)?

I don't like 3 either (sorry you're getting the short version due to my paranoia, but I can add more detail as you ask). I'd prefer something like "all participants respect and assume good will of all other participants and respect their personal experience, regardless of background, ethnicity, gender and/or sexual identity."

[zeborah]

I can't decide if I can be bothered with Dreamwidth or not. If you've got a spare code I could poke at it, but I'm not sure that I'd poke at it very *soon* so if other people are likely to make actual use of it in the meantime then it'd be better to go to them.

Thanks for your comment. Um, more detail would be good, if you can. I do like "assume good will" but I'm wary of something general: I just feel like something like that sentence could be proposed for rasfc and the only objection would be "But we already do that!"

I want something with teeth.

My sister and I were noodling alternatives this afternoon but I can't decide whether to post here in comments, or to start yet another thread, or to just throw my hands up in the air.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I think I understand why you're flailing, and I understand you want teeth. I just don't know how to put in teeth that will actually work.

I'd argue very strongly against existing rasfc "respect and good will" - DDF treats everyone who doesn't agree with him as though we just haven't been enlightened to his way of thinking yet, or we're too stupid to understand how profound his view of the world is. I have lost respect for him, and everyone else who posts stupid homophobic evolutionary psychology speculation with no connection to actual reality and who can't even look ashamed when I mention they sound like they've never talked to a gay person. And who don't seem to think that talking to a gay person might be a prerequisite for talking about them.

I'm still flailing. I want a filter that keeps people like DDF out. I can't define one to my satisfaction (that isn't excluding of people I'd like included). That's part of what fascinates me about him. It's obvious to me there's something wrong with how he interacts with people who don't think like he does, or aspire to, but I don't know how to turn that into a generic rule that would be useful.

One of the things I did have in the comment that got eaten was that while I know you aspire to 3, and I think I do too, we're possibly about the only rasfc regulars who do (darkhawk? a few others who have already fled?) and while you need something like 3 to be welcoming to eg PoC writers (who I'd imagine would avoid rasfc like the plague) I don't see, from a purely practical point of view, that we have a line of PoC writers eager to join if only we had rules that made it a safe space for them. We do have a group of disaffected ex-rasfc'ers and I think it's more important to come up with rules that make them think it's going to be a safe space.

That will probably mean this is going to be a mainly-white-women group; that is possibly not your dream. But I'm afraid I think your chances of setting up a different group, with say lots of PoC, are Buckley's and none. You will have to find existing PoC-rich writing communities and sit around quietly and listen for a long time.

The privilege thing sucks. I don't think you can come up with rules to try to deal with privilege that won't either scare off all the people who haven't engaged with privilege or still lead to RaceFail type disasters. Because the thing about privilege is that you don't realise you have it and you will deny having it and it takes a lot of work and effort and time to accept that you do, and to change your world outlook enough to start being more aware of it, and not go into panicked self-defence every time someone with less privilege points out your arse is showing.

Look at what happened in RaceFail. At least the moments that were most striking to me were E.Bear trying to demonstrate how to be a White Writer accepting criticism from a PoC reader - I mean the fact that she wanted to demonstrate that suggests some kind of awareness of the problem but as soon as we got into it, she showed that she hadn't thought about it at all - the mere 'taking one for the team' phrase set off alarm bells in some PoC right at the beginning and now I understand much better, it sets off alarm bells in me too. And the other was PHN assuming that the people who were upsetting medievalist (or someone else?) were white males, that she and he were naturally more enlightened and less racist than anyone who could upset them, and who just never seemed to accept out loud that really, truly, there are more PoC (and women PoC) on LJ participating in racism discussions in fandom than he'd ever met or known of at conventions because conventions are racist places.

I'm just rambling again. I can't help you. I'm trying to think back to pre-racefail me, and what I'd have found acceptable and not, and what I find acceptable now and not, and I've changed so much in that respect that almost nothing means the same thing as it did back then. It's about being pulled out of your comfort zone kicking and screaming, and eventually understanding that the reward for doing the work isn't a new comfort zone, but a permanent discomfort zone.

impartial arbiters

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Ah, something I have thought of and wanted to mention (amazing how hitting the "post" button helps my memory):

One of the other things that annoys me about DDF that I'd like to get into some sort of rule/guideline form which unfortunately makes moderation about 1000 times harder (but moderation is hard): DDF when he argues is both one side of the argument, and believes he is an impartial arbiter of the argument (and that there is a position which an impartial arbiter can take). And somehow, a large fraction of rasfc agrees with him. I never saw anyone treat me like I was an impartial arbiter in any of my arguments with him (although some people found me persuasive enough that they personally stopped treating DDF as impartial arbiter although they did not scream very loudly for him to back down every time he acted as though he was an impartial arbiter).

In general, as I understand my own privilege and the whole problem around it better, I see more and more clearly that there usually is no impartial arbiter and can't be. And it is a product of white colonialist enlightenment thingy stuff that we even assume that there is an impartial arbiter viewpoint. And the fact that it's male, white, western, enlightenment thinking etc is what makes privilege privilege, or at least a big component. It's the privileged point of view.

Once there is no privileged point of view, who is an impartial arbiter for any given conflict? (Because there will be conflicts at some point). I think you should be very flattered so many people are happy with the idea of you as moderator, because in many respects you're not exactly near the middle of the distribution of views I expect the group will have. But there's a high risk you yourself will be involved in conflict, and you can't be the moderator for those. But how do you get co-moderators you trust? And then how to prevent moderators/ruling clique vs lowly underdog conflicts? Or will we just have to say "tough luck, form your own group if you don't like the rules for this one?"

(I'm thinking about this because my partner was recently the lowly underdog in a moderators vs lowly underdog conflict on a webforum he's on, and the problem with setting up his own group apart from needing the time and money to do it was that the webforum pretty much had a monopoly on that subject matter for australasia. It was made worse in that case in that as far as I could tell, the moderators were not applying rules consistently, and there was a very definite conflict between the interests of a "lowly underdog" participant and the advertisers, which was the basic problem really. But the advertisers of course were who had brought in the money to allow the forum to have the neat features etc that had led to it being the leading forum, and eventual monopoly. This by the way is part of why I'm switching to dreamwidth - no advertisers to get into conflict with.)

[zeborah]

I'm at a point where I am accepting that I have privilege, and I *think* I'm at a point where if someone tells me I'm showing my arse then I can keep my defensiveness to myself.

What I want to do is to have a "What this group's for" statement so that, once we also have a space, I won't be embarrassed to write to the moderator(s) of relevant communities and ask if it would be appropriate to post about it to their community. I'll be very thoughtful about who to approach, and what to say; and very aware that people may be sceptical, and may point out where my arse is showing; and maybe they'll say it's not appropriate, or maybe no-one will be interested; and certainly I need to keep reading more in places that are already set up; but I can still ask. Because if someone isn't asked then they don't even have the option.

(During Racefail, I thought I did see someone saying that there was a need for [some kind of group]. This doesn't mean that my kind of group is what they were after, or that they'd trust me to get it started, but... some people might be interested.

(Also I'm feeling very stupid at the moment because I could swear that, a couple of months ago before rasfc blew up for me, I saw the website of a long-ex-rasfcian who was involved in some kind of group for writers of colour. A critique group maybe? But I can't remember her name or the name of the group; when I google the person I thought I remembered, I can't find anything that rings any bells.)

Anyway. Discomfort zone, absolutely. But I'm in a mood (this may be a life-stage mood because I feel the same at work) to quit letting my discomfort hold me back from doing things that I think would be good things. At the same time I don't want my cockeyed idealism to set up a situation that'll explode for someone else. But... I don't want to support the status quo by not trying.

Re: impartial arbiters

[zeborah]

This is a good point. I do, too often, think of myself as an impartial arbiter. I think sometimes there are situations where even if someone isn't an *impartial* arbiter they can still be a *useful* one. But it's an issue that I need to be more aware of in the situations where conflict arises.

In terms of moderation for this group, it's tough. Because there need to be rules for choosing the moderators, and who chooses *those* rules? Is it turtles all the way down? I do think that ultimately it *does* come down to "If you don't like these rules then this is not the group for you." I don't see any other option -- not just practically, but logically.

And I want to accommodate as many people as possible with whatever rules are set up, because a group of one would be pretty lonely. But on the other hand, the rules have to above all be something that *I'm* comfortable with. Because it'd be stupid of me to set up a group which, if I wasn't setting it up, I wouldn't join.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm at a point where I am accepting that I have privilege

The problem is, privilege is relative not absolute. In fact, in many ways, talking about "privilege" is not a helpful mode of discourse.

Unfortunately, I have 4 assignments to write and 37 to mark by 14 May, so I can't elaborate further at the moment, but I am a different generation to you and most of any apparent privilege I may now have, I have largely fought for very hard. Class, gender and ethnicity interconnect in very complex ways and people can't all be divided into the two classes of "privileged" and "oppressed". I am neither of those.

I also felt that the whole Racefail debate was, as usual, largely US-centric and very simplistic to boot. The issues are terribly complicated and, though I can't speak for the US, in the UK, the lack of black people or Asians or people from ethnic minorities at SF conventions is as much due to class and culture (with a small "c") as it is to race. I would even question whether non-white, non-geeks actually want to come to a convention such as the UK's Eastercon. They seem well represented in the media conventions, as far as I can judge from photos of the events and from attending a Babylon 5 convention some years ago.

My worry over having a very specific "What this group is for" statement is that it is likely to put off people who would fit in perfectly and still not help us deal with the arseholes.

PS Could we change the word "safe" to "comfortable"? I have never felt unsafe even during the worst spats on rasfc, but I have frequently felt very uncomfortable.

[zeborah]

Intersectionality may help. In terms of gender I'm not privileged; in terms of class, race, sexuality and some others I am.

Re Racefail, I did see people of colour from non-US countries, including the UK, talk about issues in their countries. And I didn't see any people of colour claiming that the issues were simple, either.

My worry over *not* having a specific "What this group is for" statement is that it's likely to put off people who would fit in perfectly well... Um, starting with me.

I'm pondering various alternatives on what to say and how to say it; "comfortable" comes up in one of them.

Re: impartial arbiters

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I think you're right on all this - I don't want to deny that you are doing hard work, that it is a good thing you're aiming for, and that by doing all this, you are likely to come up with something pretty good.

Just noting, because most of my comments are more about the bits I disagree with, and I don't want to give the impression Oh Noes You're Doin It Rong. I'm focussing on the bits where I think I might be able to help you get something better, both for you and the other participants.

Plus, have some cookies.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

So, I've been reading more RaceFail stuff, and dreamwidth "what we're about" stuff and one word that sprang up as useful in point 3 is "responsibility". Take responsibility for what you say, that your words may hurt or offend someone else, even if you had no intention of that. But that needs some qualification - we've had plenty of rasfc'ers saying in effect "you're an arsehole and I take full responsibility for that, because I know it's going to hurt you and I think you deserve to be hurt". Particularly when those of us arguing against sexism or homophobia or racism are framed as delicate little flowers who couldn't survive in the Real World, that PC is all about protecting people from reality - this is usually in a context where the people saying that either have never genuinely been hurt by prejudice against them as part of an arbitrary class, or have absorbed that hurt as 'just the way it is' without looking at the fairness of it.

Eg a lot of men who are all "you're delicate little flowers" about women asking for less sexism get extremely hurt when they're treated as potential rapists or otherwise threatening, because they haven't absorbed that their sexism causes that defensive, justified response in (some) women.

Actions have consequences and that's why you need to take responsibility, you know?

Similarly, I'd like it if: you screw up, or change your mind, you say so. It's another thing that drives me nuts about DDF and the dishonesty of his arguing style. Eg the statistics/high distribution argument on rasfm, where eventually Brian had to come in and say "Aqua is right, David's argument makes no mathematical sense", and DDF just didn't say a peep. I know that's probably shame, but because he always says something when he disagrees with you, always has an opinion, it does give the impression he will not ever say "I was wrong" or "I changed my mind" or "I understand better now" let alone "I apologise for ...".

Maybe that's make a good rule? It's okay to make mistakes, the important thing is acknowledge them and learn from them. "I'm sorry" is not a sign of abject humiliation, particularly if you get into the habit.

responsibility and apologising

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Oh, and not to say I'm a picture of virtue over this, you know? It's something I'm recognising in myself, that I'm very reluctant to apologise when I hurt someone (particularly when it's unintentional) or to say "I was wrong", and I can tell from the little I've been able to change that the more I do it the easier it does get and the less it feels like abject humiliation to me and the better a human being I appear to other people, probably because I am becoming a better human being (at least on that axis).

So no doubt part of the reason DDF fascinates and infuriates me so much is that he shows me how certain of my own qualities can go really bad and gives me something to work away from. And I'm trying not to make this all about him, but to learn from the experience of interacting with him and the issues it's caused both for myself and for rasfc as a whole, and to pull out some general principles/guidelines for how to act. Even if most of the examples of why I like a rule or what situation I'm trying to avoid, involve DDF.

(or rather, they don't all, there's a bunch of stuff I didn't like that DDF never did, but I talk about that as "some rasfc'ers", like the PC delicate flowers stuff. DDF does things differently enough from the generic "hostile to women" rasfc atmosphere (although I do think he contributes to maintaining it, albeit sideways) that he needs to be treats as a separate case. And I'm not implying that the generic rasfc atmosphere is hostile to women, just that rasfc has a hostile to women atmosphere, which partly consists of JAD nutbaggery, partly DDF academic arrogance, and partly generic sexism, and it's that third bit I was trying to point at.)

I have to nip off and get a blood test, then I'll come back and read through your response to my first substantial comment (and following exchange) in some detail and comment there. I hope this is all the kind of discussion/thought provoking you were after. I also hope it's not too late.

If it's not quite what you're after, just try to tell me more what you're after, and I'll try to focus my energies and ideas in that direction, thanks.

warning contains racefail related ranting.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I think you're massively oversimplifying - no-one is implying that privilege is a yes-no state, as demonstrated by the fact that I'm talking about my awareness of my (white) privilege while as woman I don't have privilege.

The issue as I see it for Z is to not only make her new community welcoming to people who felt uncomfortable on rasfc, but also welcoming to people who never even considered joining rasfc. And I think they are going to include people who are going to upset the nice little white-women applecart, if they don't take one look at people like you and go elsewhere.

As for RaceFail, there were a significant number of PoC Brits who took part and who had to say again and again that yes, racism and privilege are problems in British fandom, and they're getting tired of having to tell all the white British fans that. Many of the most vocal "anti-racism" PoC voices were British, ah here's the link I wanted, and please note the date.

I think there were some really interesting things on the UK side of RaceFail, but I agree you had to make a large investment of time and effort to find it. I don't think that's the fault of the people who made rich, impassioned statements about how racism affected their lives and their experience in fandom and how hard it was to overcome their own ingrained racism to talk about it.

I think that was the fault of freaking-out white people, "oh my goodness someone called me a racist and here's my anti-racist membership card", "how can you be so mean to X as to call zir a racist", and to a significant extent, I'm afraid, people like you who spent a lot of time and effort on saying "there's nothing valuable or important happening here" or "I'm not interested, I don't care". I think that's extremely symptomatic of the problem and you're not going to get much sympathy from me pulling that line again because I'm more and more likely to just lump you in as part of the problem.

I also find it sort of offensive that you think the privilege you now have you fought for. I don't think that's privilege, and that's not what the big problems around privilege are about anyway. The privilege I know you have that you didn't fight for include having white skin, being born in a western country whose economy and modern western outlook and ability to give more rights to women, the working class, etc was partly based on colonialism and flat-out slavery. You still benefit from the results of that history, and PoC still suffer disadvantages.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm reading a lot of dreamwidth "how we organised this and why" and one of the things they keep bringing up is wanting transparent rules and process, and they explain why. I think your desire for this statement is related, and so I support your effort to come up with one, however blasted difficult it's turning out to be. So I was very much along the lines of 'too hard' to come up with a specific statement but I think you're right to want to try to have it.

You might find DW's diversity statement interesting, for inspiration, and because I suspect reading that will be more helpful to you at this point than reading me.

hard

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Anyway. Discomfort zone, absolutely. But I'm in a mood (this may be a life-stage mood because I feel the same at work) to quit letting my discomfort hold me back from doing things that I think would be good things. At the same time I don't want my cockeyed idealism to set up a situation that'll explode for someone else. But... I don't want to support the status quo by not trying.

I agree with all this. I think we want the same thing. I'm just trying to figure out how I can help you get there, and provide my 2 cents, and hope some of it is useful somehow.

And I'm worried eg with example right here that you, by trying to do the right thing, will alienate the people you do already have on-side. And I can't work out if that's a good or a bad thing - I know it was difficult to learn to deal with my privilege, and I'm sure there's rounds of it I haven't hit yet. And it's a status quo that's really really hard to not support and yet have most people (similar to current disaffected rasfc'ers) feel comfortable with, because it's putting demands on them they may not want to meet, or have the time to meet. And I know that that luxury is part of the evidence that they have privilege, and then I get all tied up in how complicated it all is.

I don't want to not make the effort. But I don't think I'm making a productive effort right now, so I should do something else until I can figure out how.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if maybe adding a bit of the "and why" might be useful in this case. If the Vision Statement included something to the effect of "some of the principles of this group are being stated explicitly in reaction to some specific bad experiences the founder(s) had Elsewhere and are trying to pre-empt here" I wonder if it might help readers to be alert to a larger context, rather than leaving them to try to puzzle it all out from the Vision Statement alone. (That is, help them during the period when they're trying to decide whether to invest some time and energy into joining.)

[zeborah]

That's a good point.

My sister was over on Sunday and we noodled and came up with an alternative phrasing/focus, which I've been hesitating about posting here because, while I don't mind constructive criticism and revision after revision, I wasn't sure this method was the most productive way to get anywhere. But hey, if one doesn't try...

So what we came up with was:

3 a) This group is especially for people who have been or felt uncomfortable, unwelcome or excluded from other writers' groups because of prejudice or bias including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, ablism, or intolerance of non-nuclear family structures, of different religions, or of no religion.
b) All other people are also, of course, welcome, provided that they respect the purpose of the group and the experiences of its other members.
c) Members will act as if they assume good will, specifically:
i) if a comment is made that is or could be hurtful, members will not accuse the commenter of being intentionally hurtful;
ii) if a member is told that a comment they've made is or could be hurtful, they therefore need not defend themself; but can, if they wish, seek respectfully to understand the other party's point of view.

---

Except I'm not sure whether or not I'm happy with the specificity of 3c. Further attempts at getting what I mean into words include:

3c) Many members want to learn to recognise stereotypes and biases so as to better control how people will react to both their fiction and their group posts, and assume that other members are similarly desirous of such knowledge. <witter>

3c) Since, in an online community, word choice is the primary vector for making people feel comfortable or uncomfortable, members are encouraged to the extent of their abilities to use inclusive language and to avoid using terms referencing specific groups of people as generic pejoratives. <witter>

3c) Members who unwittingly perpetuate stereotypes or bias about specific groups of people can expect to be informed of the error just like members who make mistakes about horses, guns, or semi-colons. <witter, and recognition that comparing people to animals is not always Optimal>

Obviously I'm not overly happy with any of these either.

---

<ponders more>

I could go with an exact mirror of 2. I started writing it, but then parallelism caused me to type something that looked dodgy so I gave up because I have to phone the tax dept, wash my hair, do dishes, cook dinner, ice cupcakes, and get to bed on time if not early, and it'd be lovely to fit some writing in there.... But anyway it felt like it was going to be a bit too generic, and I think it wouldn't do anything about incluing "and why".

Pondering shall continue; ideas continue to be appreciated.