meta: tl;dr because this is what I *do*

So I finished putting together the thing I want to do a challenge for, because I feel my interaction with the community should be a.) more than stories about cheese building and b.) rentboy John fic, As a sideline, I came to the horrified realization I have now officially written about someone prostituting themselves enough to add that as an actual interest.

And I don't even like rentboy fic.

The question will never be "Jenn, are you a hypocrite?" We are now at the enviable stage where "But no one beat them! ....until part sixteen." I don't even know where I set the bar anymore. I keep getting freaked out by my del.icio.us tags.

This Is a World of Women

Challenge, right. As soon as we have all recovered sufficiently from Election Drama and WisCon, which for the first time I want to attend, because any group of women who can walk away from the kind of shit that was thrown are pretty much the epitome of what we should try to be.

See A Response to Hate by purplefrog26:

So not only do you face the challenges of dealing with society but you tell yourself that you are ugly, worthless and disgusting. So it becomes a radical act when you choose to live your life and love yourself despite the negativity that we swim thorough every day.

I’m not sure what this person’s objective was in posting these pathetic attempts at humor. But I know that they did not change my commitment to living my life joyfully and abundantly. And I prefer pictures to include my face.

And this fantastic response at Fatshionista:

Do it. Take it. Take my picture and eviscerate me online. It’s just a public, out-loud, communal version of what people do to me inside their heads every single day. It’s happened to me before, online and off. It’ll happen again. It’ll happen every day I leave the house, for the rest of my life.

I am still fat, and I am still not sorry. And nothing you can say, nothing you can post, nothing you can do will change that. No matter how many times you try to humiliate me. No matter how much you want me to hate myself. Because it’s my fucking body. And I don’t owe you a damn thing.

That.

And This Is Community Standards

It's odd; the idiotic open source molestation for fun and profit, the backup project, the election, WisCon hit each after the other. I don't think there's less drama, believe it or not; I'm not even sure it's that I'm noticing it more. I just didn't pay attention.

There are a lot of parents on my flist. I'll take even odds half of us will have a child turned troll. I'll say the percentage is higher for boys, but as we have seen, the girls are catching up.



My son's a white male, relatively attractive, and going to a school that specializes in science and math with a mother who pays for the fastest internet access she can get without a government permit and studying for a degree in computer science with a kink for new technology. He's been web-enabled since his first birthday and can generally google for what he wants to know. He's started simple scripting with robot games and he likes things that blow up and horror movies and very large snakes.

I have about three years, maybe four if I'm lucky and I can keep his computer hobbled (you'd be surprised how much you can do with the registry and a few days of free time). Then goatse and two girls one cup and the myriad split penises will be everywhere all over again, because it's all new for him and my cache will never be the same. And it's not that I won't watch him. It's just the places he'll go for that after the first time won't be places I can follow.

Child's a potential of SA and it's not the first time I realized that or understood the inevitability there will come a moment where I will trace his cache and find something that I can't accept. What I didn't know is what to do about it. I'd like to thank UFB for this one; I would have avoided this train of thought until he hit puberty at least.

We didn't cover this. We didn't. We know what to do when it's slash, a flamewar, a convention fight over a pairing, what to do when the racism debates reach critical levels, when misogyny gets so hot everyone's eyeing the flist with trepidation. We know to go to metafandom to see what people are saying and to go to fandon-wank to see what they are talking about and to combine them to decide what people mean. We even have a hazy idea of what to do when RL breakups fracture an flist or long term friendships turn sour (hint: hide. Really).

Child is second generation fen; he'll know the culture by proxy, by the friends I introduce him to, by the world I expose to him. Who the hell knows where he'll end up; it could be anywhere. He watches anime and Dr. Who and wants to clone dinosaurs; wherever he goes, he'll take what I teach him in netiquette and the standards I apply to my online life and choose to accept them or reject him.

(He might become a conservative banker. I expect a pony if that happens. I'll need it.)

And one day, I might get an email from a friend with a link to an account that I didn't know existed and behavior I cannot condone with the silent question of whether community standards apply.

(Someone better sure as fuck email me, by the way. That part had better be community standards for minors; if it's not, can I declare it now?)

Rachel Moss wasn't a test case. And to tell the truth, she wasn't even the first. She's just the opening salvo of what we had to know what was coming, and she's not the worst. And I can say without fear of contradiction, one day it'll be one that is our own the way she wasn't and couldn't ever be. That will be our test case.

Comments

[tienriu.livejournal.com]

I - can never quite understand what you are (and will) go through with your son since I don't have children (and at this stage of my life, don't intend to). But I think I can sympathise a little with what you see in the future. My eldest nephew is 8 this year and because of me he's been exposed to that core of fandom: sci-fi, anime, fantasy, gaming and anime.

He's been on the internet playing on sites since he was old enough to figure out how to read and found a mouse small enough to fit his hand on. We watched and there's security and filters everywhere, and, where I can, I try and explain to his parents what they might want to watch out for (Bionicles and Pokemon, fine and he'll eventually mostly out grow - Magic the Gathering, not so much).

But he's going to be in fandom one day - and he's going to be a teenager out there. Maybe there should be an amnesty for those of us who were trolls when we were young - stupidity, youth and all that. But - I don't want him to go there, don't want him to cause that sort of hurt. And in all our family I'm the only one who knows what it's like out there (or is that 'in here').

I'm not sure what to do - he's not even my son (!). But I wish that community standards for minors really did exist - though a part of me remembers the amount of adults who wanted to monitor what I was doing on the internet or reading at a library and finds myself trying to walk that line between what would be censorship and what I hope is something like passing on cultural mores to the next internet generation.

What I've tried to do, when I can, is to teach him the things that you can use on or off the internet: from not using words like "gay" as an insult (god, they start so frickin' young - 8 years old! Where the heck do they pick this up?) to not seeing girls as in any way lesser (that one is easy, he's got six aunts-by-blood, five of them on his mother's side), to not insulting people because of the way they act or dress or talk or walk or behave. And hope that at the end I never find him trolling or doing things just for the 'luls' (which by the way was the reason why I disliked Jameth - things for the 'luls'? When it HURTS people? WTF).

And also of course, hope that his parents don't think I'm interfering (thus far they don't mind since it's mostly story books, cartoons and discussions over superheroes [Batman over Superman but Bionicles wins] and building things that can climb up and down the stairs [not yet but I have hope for all those gears]).

I think when it comes to community standards, we'd be better off saying that we (in the singular, rather that *I*) will uphold a basic code of behaviour or ethics. If a large enough group of us follow that code, it will become the basis for correct behaviour in fandom - a part of fandom's cultural mores. After all, on the internet, as it exists now, there is no way to police a community standard. Rather, if it can exist, it'll have to be done the old fashion way: per person.