Introduction
Jun. 14th, 2010 09:01 amI've been on LJ a little over eight years. Even though everybody following me here has been reading me there, I'd still like to do an introduction. An introduction to myself, of what I might want to get from this new and different venue.
When LJ did whatever inspired Dreamwidth, and a bunch of people migrated over, I didn't give it much credence. LJ had made stupid decisions before that, and people had flounced off. Some had even gone to the trouble of branching the codebase. And those things had disappeared eventually, the people who had left LJ had disappeared from my ken. But DW has persisted, and if I hadn't gotten self-righteous, I'd have probably given it a shot sooner.
But there's also the "just another mouth to feed" aspect. Another thing I have to pay attention to. And I already pay little enough attention to LJ, rarely commenting or writing long and/or thoughtful posts.
Yet here I am. The deciding factor was the difference in reaction of the respective LJ and DW WisCon communities to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wild_irises's "Open Letters" post (DW here; LJ here).
The LJ WisCon community has an annual tide that I've come to know well. Quiet for most of the year. As the con approaches, a fair amount of people releasing memberships and rooms. After the con, a lot of panel-report posts. And there's usually one post that gets a fair amount of heat. The most infamous in my memory was the one about rowdy children in the consuite. (That post was being trolled, which I should have realized sooner and acted on.)
But no one has before emailed me to say "this post is being trolled and is out of control." Even the "Offense" post, which got 230 comments and very heated, wasn't being trolled in the way the Open Letter post was. *koff*.
So here I am. What do I want from this new venue?
I want to unpack some of the privilege knapsacks that I carry around. Since I'm basically upstream of everybody (cisgendered, Anglo, Christian, boomer, upper middle class... I'm not even circumcised) that's a lot of backpacks.
I'm not looking for hand holding or patient explanations of anything. If you're a woman or a person of color, you've heard it all before, repeatedly.
My first wife tells a story about a golfer whose golfing partner died on the first hole. "Oh that's terrible," another friend says. "Yes," replies the golfer, "the entire rest of the course it was hit the ball and drag Fred, hit the ball and drag Fred." Her point was that was what it was like to work on feminist issues with men in the group. You could hit the ball, and people who knew what you were talking about would say "yes, I get it!" But then you'd have to drag Fred.
So I'm at the "drag Fred" stage of unpacking privilege. Any good communities I should join, writers I should follow, feeds I should add? Thanks in advance! (And I'm going to read "Unpacking the White Knapsack" this evening.)
When LJ did whatever inspired Dreamwidth, and a bunch of people migrated over, I didn't give it much credence. LJ had made stupid decisions before that, and people had flounced off. Some had even gone to the trouble of branching the codebase. And those things had disappeared eventually, the people who had left LJ had disappeared from my ken. But DW has persisted, and if I hadn't gotten self-righteous, I'd have probably given it a shot sooner.
But there's also the "just another mouth to feed" aspect. Another thing I have to pay attention to. And I already pay little enough attention to LJ, rarely commenting or writing long and/or thoughtful posts.
Yet here I am. The deciding factor was the difference in reaction of the respective LJ and DW WisCon communities to
wild_irises's "Open Letters" post (DW here; LJ here). The LJ WisCon community has an annual tide that I've come to know well. Quiet for most of the year. As the con approaches, a fair amount of people releasing memberships and rooms. After the con, a lot of panel-report posts. And there's usually one post that gets a fair amount of heat. The most infamous in my memory was the one about rowdy children in the consuite. (That post was being trolled, which I should have realized sooner and acted on.)
But no one has before emailed me to say "this post is being trolled and is out of control." Even the "Offense" post, which got 230 comments and very heated, wasn't being trolled in the way the Open Letter post was. *koff*.
So here I am. What do I want from this new venue?
I want to unpack some of the privilege knapsacks that I carry around. Since I'm basically upstream of everybody (cisgendered, Anglo, Christian, boomer, upper middle class... I'm not even circumcised) that's a lot of backpacks.
I'm not looking for hand holding or patient explanations of anything. If you're a woman or a person of color, you've heard it all before, repeatedly.
My first wife tells a story about a golfer whose golfing partner died on the first hole. "Oh that's terrible," another friend says. "Yes," replies the golfer, "the entire rest of the course it was hit the ball and drag Fred, hit the ball and drag Fred." Her point was that was what it was like to work on feminist issues with men in the group. You could hit the ball, and people who knew what you were talking about would say "yes, I get it!" But then you'd have to drag Fred.
So I'm at the "drag Fred" stage of unpacking privilege. Any good communities I should join, writers I should follow, feeds I should add? Thanks in advance! (And I'm going to read "Unpacking the White Knapsack" this evening.)
