*nods* Yep, this should go in the comm profile as required reading. Maybe into a post with a poll, where someone has to acknowledge having read it before being able to join the community - a'la EULA? :)
I trust your next post, about the recent "unpleasantness", will help differentiate pointing out privilege from personal attack and how the former is expected and encouraged while the latter is to be eschewed, shunned and may be ban-provoking.
I'm not sure if this is quite the place to put this comment, but I've noticed a lot of posts about women. More specifically about the place of women within patriarchy
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Hear, hear. Most forums would rightly discourage that but it could be a good thing to take on in this comm. We'd want good guidelines to keep that stuff properly focused, though. How does this sound to folks?This forum takes it as a given that society systemically oppresses women and privileges men. Posts and comments claiming otherwise are forbidden. Posts and comments which derail discussions of women's oppression with questions of men's challenges, or which dismiss women's experiences as irrelevant, are forbidden. But discussion looking critically at men and masculinity in the context of the systemic oppression of women, including the ways in which men are hurt by patriarchy, is encouraged.
There is quite a bit men can learn about their role as the creators and maintainers of the patriarchy by learning about the ways in which it impacts women. You cannot exactly erase the impact on women and still be talking about sexism.
That is certainly true, but just as women aren't all that excited to have the main focus of a feminist LJ community pulled to focus on men, I would prefer a community that is supposedly about debunking male to have its focus on debunking male. There are lots and lots of communities that focus primarily on the ways the women are impacted negatively by patriarchy. Indeed, the majority of feminist communities focus on that
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A ground rules proposal (1)jonathankormanOctober 22 2011, 16:48:33 UTC
Here's a start at an attempt to codify the kind of ethic of discussion that I've been advocating. I hope that folks will either help to sharpen these terms, or reject them and offer a comparably explicit alternative.Ground rules: principlesDiscussing social injustice is emotionally demanding. This itself perpetuates injustice
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A ground rules proposal (2)jonathankormanOctober 22 2011, 16:50:19 UTC
Continuing:
Ground rules: specifics The privileged are permitted to question the oppressed about their experiences and comments. The privileged are not permitted to question the validity of oppressed participants' experiences. The oppressed are encouraged to answer, but privileged may not insist on answers
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Re: A ground rules proposal (2)trooper6October 22 2011, 17:36:28 UTC
Your ground rules make it seem like what you want this community to be is a place were men and women (and people of other genders) dialogue about sexism together...which will probably end up being women educating men on sexism.
Is that the goal of this community? It doesn't seem to jive with this from the User Info: "The focus is primarily for male-identified folks who consider themselves feminists and would like to discuss their work in challenging power dynamics in our own day-to-day encounters."
You're reading me right. The mandate as it exists now has unclear implications for actual discussion, IMHO. I think you can see in it the ghost of the comm's original conception, which was more explicitly directed to the education of men ... though on rather different terms than what I'm proposing.
Again, I'm making a proposal not to describe what is, or even necessarily what should be, but what could be. There are plenty other things we could do with this comm.
I expect that we won't adopt my proposal; a lot of participants look at my perspective with a very jaundiced eye. But given that I've commented extensively on the last few posts, and pointed to the lack of ground rules in the userinfo, I thought it was only fair that if I'm going to throw stones I should at least clarify what my recent comments imply for potential forum standards. If there's something in my proposal that turns out to be useful to include, or to edit into a useful form, so much the better.
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I trust your next post, about the recent "unpleasantness", will help differentiate pointing out privilege from personal attack and how the former is expected and encouraged while the latter is to be eschewed, shunned and may be ban-provoking.
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Ground rules: specifics
The privileged are permitted to question the oppressed about their experiences and comments. The privileged are not permitted to question the validity of oppressed participants' experiences. The oppressed are encouraged to answer, but privileged may not insist on answers ( ... )
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Is that the goal of this community? It doesn't seem to jive with this from the User Info: "The focus is primarily for male-identified folks who consider themselves feminists and would like to discuss their work in challenging power dynamics in our own day-to-day encounters."
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Again, I'm making a proposal not to describe what is, or even necessarily what should be, but what could be. There are plenty other things we could do with this comm.
I expect that we won't adopt my proposal; a lot of participants look at my perspective with a very jaundiced eye. But given that I've commented extensively on the last few posts, and pointed to the lack of ground rules in the userinfo, I thought it was only fair that if I'm going to throw stones I should at least clarify what my recent comments imply for potential forum standards. If there's something in my proposal that turns out to be useful to include, or to edit into a useful form, so much the better.
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