Lupi

yeah we have for sure seen the thing where any system of rigid rules gets used to reinforce existing fracture lines in society, including race.

Cohost happens to be a queer-majority social space (unless we've somehow managed to totally fail to notice a large non-queer clique or something, which is possible), so race does wind up being one of the more noticeable fractures, as often happens in minority-majority spaces. it's a big deal, and the burden is very much on white people such as ourselves to fix it. (by "ourselves" we mean just Irenes, we're not intending to guess anyone else's demographics)

our personal position has been, and continues to be, that this means any social norms we hold ourselves to have to be formed in ways that embody justice

that means we have to do the hard work of making decisions not on surface structure but on actual harms (reinforcing oppressive dynamics counts as a harm in our view, despite being long-term rather than immediate) and on a comprehensive understanding of the social and political context in which things happen. we don't get to take shortcuts or be dogmatic about stuff

sorry this is such dense jargon, we're writing it in kind of a hurry but we hope it makes some sense at least