• they/them

plural system in Seattle, WA (b. 1974)
lots of fictives from lots of media, some horses, some dragons, I dunno. the Pnictogen Wing is poorly mapped.

host: Mx. Kris Dreemurr (they/them)

chief messenger and usual front: Mx. Chara or Χαρά (they/them)

other members:
Mx. Frisk, historian (they/them)
Monophylos Fortikos, unicorn (he/him)
Kel the Purple, smol derg (xe/xem)
Pim the Dragon, Kel's sister (she/her)


AtFruitBat
@AtFruitBat
  1. We all implicitly absorb attitudes from the status quo. That includes attitudes that suggest tone policing people speaking up about parts of the status quo that aren't working for them. That includes accessibility.

  2. Tone policing people expressing their frustration about needing better accessibility provision in order to be here, says more about you than them.

  3. It mostly says that you don't want to hear about the problem.

  4. When the time comes and you need people willing to harness the energy of frustration, and to express support for your needs in insistent (and yes, "loud") ways, in order to be heard by a status quo that doesn't want to hear about your needs - just remember that the same arguments will be used against you.

Eg: "Why are you causing well meaning leftist policy makers to burn out by banging on and on about trans rights/racism/the 'complicated' Middle East, etc. You need to understand that it's just not the right time to ask that they respond on equal marriage/abortion/puberty blockers being available for young people with gender dysphoria/refugees/climate change, or whatever."

  1. I notice people think they are doing Staff a favour by tone policing people talking about accessibility. Have Staff personally asked you to do that? Or are you projecting your own desire to push away other people's insistent needs for inclusion, parity, etc onto Staff?

  2. Because if it's you, rather than Staff, who can't stand to hear someone repeatedly saying: "dark mode stops me from having a migraine" or "alt text needs to be set up better", then you can mute/block the people asking for the things.

  3. (With the understanding that you have muted/blocked the very same people who would potentially advocate insistently for you too, when your health fails, when you suffer illness, accidental injury, when you inevitably age and lose function, etc.)

  4. Staff can decide for themselves if they listen or not. They can decide if they don't respond, or if they respond creatively (eg: share a roadmap specific to accessibility issues, maybe check in on that here once a month. Etc, etc.)

  5. I haven't seen anyone here who is talking about accessibility cussing at Staff, threatening Staff physically, etc. Yet the perception is of a great and terrible injury done to Staff by people insistently saying: "This hasn't been done yet, and it affects my and other people's ability to remain here."

  6. Some of you are projecting your own stuff onto this (previous threats you got doing customer service, which I am sorry to hear about, but this isn't that, weird racialised responses you have to minorities speaking up loudly, or whatever), and... It is actually people raising accessibility insistently because they appreciate being here enough to want to stay here. But also they get migraines from light mode, etc.

  7. It's a sign that people value the site, otherwise no one would expose themselves to ignorant or bigoted flack by carrying the issue in public. They would just quietly leave.

  8. And then what you get is a site where folks who are minoritised just quietly leave over time. And down the line you look around at the place and wonder why all the people of colour, why all the folks with disabilities, etc, why they aren't here, or why they want to go to "worse" platforms instead, lol.


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in reply to @AtFruitBat's post:

Thank you <3

I'm not engaging in the discussion at all, I just really appreciate you speaking so well about it, and really frequently on so many things <3

I'm really glad you're here, and I hope it's never not a place like that for you too, because frankly I think it means you've been failed.

big agree overall.

on point 5:
it's impossible that staff have not noticed this kind of aggressive/defensive talk-down, seeing as at least some of the people doing the tone policing tend to be in their closer orbits- typically when you see people on social media getting up in arms "on behalf"(loosely) of some party against people who really don't deserve the aggression, that party says something about it, something to the effect of "please don't go after these people? what the fuck??" - it would be extremely nice to see that kind of sentiment from staff.

....
however, not only has that not happened, past "discourse" has seen the exact opposite behavior, encouraging/agreeing with the shout-down sentiments or otherwise expressing that oh being an admin is so thankless sentiment that rallies sympathy for them at the expense of people being skewered for complaining. It's driven people away and it's continuing to do so.

Yeah, it can feel clique-y to me here as well. It would be nice if Staff were saying something like: "While we appreciate the intended support from some of you, it's more helpful if you let us field the situation ourselves", or something like that. That would at least stop people having a go at others who are speaking up.

Otherwise how are we so very far off the situation where dedicated Elon fanboys throw themselves in front of Elon as if they're taking a bullet for him, every time someone says: "Please get rid of the Nazis here, and where is the edit button?" Only it's the white, queer, leftist edition of that. 🤷‍♀️

A more robust response might be: "We realise that these issues are affecting some of you badly. Here's a roadmap for changes we want to implement. Please understand it will take a small team some time to do this. In return we also understand if the wait is too long for some of you. We hope you will check back here later when we're futher down the line with improvements. We would hate to lose you permanently."

Or something like that. It's not impossible to reply in a way that shows you've heard people, while also setting some kind of boundary wrt the speed you can work at, and helping people manage expectations accordingly.

Having well-meaning, but ultimately clumsy flying monkeys coming in to "protect" from hearing the feedback doesn't actually stop people feeling their feelings about the issue. It only makes them give side-eye to the rest of the site as well. I would hope that side-eye isn't ultimately justifiable.