MOGAI bonus video: DNIs and Hollow Safe Spaces
Added 2021-01-18 18:00:00 +0000 UTCThe first Patron exclusive video is now here! A discussion of Tumblr users' attempts to create safe spaces, and why I think they usually fail.
This video will be publicly viewable for one week, to attract new patrons to the page. After that, it'll be hidden, so only patrons can see it!
Comments
Yeah, this is one of the reasons I decided to stop using Tumblr. I had many(to keep it brief, I had a really bad experience on Twitter that made me think about my relationship with the site. I came to the conclusion it was making me a worse, less intelligent person and I decided to delete my account. The same day, I decided Tumblr was having a similar effect on me so I deleted my account on it too). The overall culture of "activist" Tumblr(and the "activist" side of many other websites)is so toxic. Misusing/abusing certain loaded terms("bootlicker" is a fantastic example), demonizing people in their own community for disagreeing with them on relatively insignificant things(such as claiming people who are against overly skimpy outfits at Pride events are homophobes, TERFs, or bootlickers, which some people have actually done), performative activism, armchair activism, quippy hot takes that have no research or care put into them, spending more time mocking and bashing bigots than doing anything productive(I'm all about bashing bigots, but saying "fuck terfs" isn't actual activism because it doesn't do anything), perpetuating sexist stereotypes by demonizing men and idealizing women(trust me, it happens and it happens way too much), "if you do X, you are Y"(fill in the blanks with anything you see fit), legitimately infantilizing minority groups(whenever they're not straight up stereotyping them), I could go on for years. I get why it's like that. A lot of these people are kids who want to be activists, but who can't vote or sign petitions or go to rallies or donate and who don't have enough life experience to understand problems like systemic prejudice. With that said, some are adults who are just chronically online or unintelligent. Not all activists on websites like Tumblr or Twitter are like this obviously, you can find some genuinely good and thoughtful activism if you shift through the bs. Above all else, it's a rather smug, self-congratulatory environment where everyone, even the most well meaning people, wants to give themselves a pat on the back for being such a good person.
ValentinesStar
2021-08-29 20:05:13 +0000 UTC"The facade of never hurting or invalidating anyone" THIS. I feel that this idea has stayed on tumblr but also migrated into queer Facebook groups. When you enter a group you're met with a list of banned words and things you're not even allowed to talk about for fear of making someone feel invalidated. And because each group has often conflicting opinions on what is invalidating, it can make queer spaces very difficult to navigate and participate in. Especially in nonbinary spaces, as I think MOGAI ideas have mostly migrated into that space. For an example, there's no way to abbreviate nonbinary without pissing *someone* off, and if you forget which group has what rule about how you're allowed to abbreviate it, you're met with mockery, hundreds of comments passively aggressively correcting you, and if you put up any resistance and question it, you are quickly excised from that community as hundreds cheer on the admins for bringing you down.
Jasper Rose
2021-03-17 16:32:05 +0000 UTC"Being unproblematic has effectively become a brand..." YES. Absolutely this. I came back to tumblr after 7-ish years away and tried to join a fandom I was excited about. At first, everything looked very squeaky clean. Then I started seeing the call-outs and was absolutely shocked at the hostility. Initially I took them at face value. "Wow, apparently there are a lot of toxic people in this community." ...And then *I* got a callout lol. (For writing dirty, properly tagged fanfiction, of course). It was very unpleasant, and over a year later people are still kicked out of discord servers for supporting my fanworks. But it's so wild how the people who are "purity policing", as it's come to be called, are literally just virtue signaling, as you said. They don't really care about creating safe spaces or eliminating problematic content. It's about grappling for what little control they can manage to scrape together. And confused teenagers on the internet (in a world as volatile as ours) will take any little bit of control they can get, even if it means tearing apart their own communities to get it. (Anyways, I'm really stoked to be your patron - Thanks for making really thoughtful, quality content).
Topsy
2021-02-26 02:41:27 +0000 UTCVERY true on that last point! And yeah, I can certainly see the confrontational nature of it being unpleasant for many ppl.
Lily Alexandre
2021-02-25 21:46:15 +0000 UTCWatching this following the metastability video: for people who find conflict/aggression triggering, you can feel way LESS safe when someone spends half their profile spewing DNIs. I especially get this on dating sites. Like I perversely feel far less comfortable around people with "no TERFs/no SWERFs" on their profile. In my epxerience it has very little actual bearing on whether they'll be good dating a trans woman or a sex worker.
Ariel Goodbody
2021-02-25 21:42:20 +0000 UTCThat’s so interesting - I hadn’t thought of it like that but I totally agree. Thank you for the link, I’ll give it a look! :)
Lily Alexandre
2021-02-14 13:35:40 +0000 UTCLoved this video! Some of your points about virtue signaling without actually confronting the implicit bias everyone has reminded me of a reading I did in college, about how "safe spaces" actually discourage meaningful conversation and true understanding. Because everyone is too scared to speak up and disrupt the "safe space", nobody asks important questions and nobody learns anything. The reading is from Brian Arao & Kristi Clemens' book "Facilitation Designs and Techniques", unfortunately all I have is a bad sideways photocopy but here's the link if you're interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RoVmn802W6NzCAa3drjVWVndtnspVMH2/view?usp=sharing Thanks again for the great videos! :)
Basil Bennett-Levy
2021-02-14 02:32:58 +0000 UTCGreat video, you hit the nail on the head again.
Ruby Landau-Pincus
2021-02-11 22:58:54 +0000 UTC
