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

[shyder.livejournal.com]

I'm a young teen who's been in fandom since shortly after reaching double-digits, and on the internet since the age of four. However, I didn't have parents in fandom. (At all. My parents, I love them, fit the conservative banker scene much better than they fit fandom.) I didn't have any idea what the rules were or what acceptable community standards might be. And I honestly didn't have anyone to ask.

I made mistakes when I was younger. Fortunately, my mistakes were not very public and not on a very large scale. But here's the thing: people let me know. Oh, how they let me know. And I wish I could go back and thank them for it. When I crossed a line (usually one I wasn't aware of), those around me simply told me that what I was doing or saying was not acceptable. And I learned. I learned things that have made me a better person, in fandom and out.

I didn't have the opportunity to learn those lessons from family or friends. I just had to sink or swim in fandom, so to speak. Second generation fen know (to some degree) the world they're getting into, and what some of the rules are. But the day may come when they're on their own in fandom, and they have to make a choice about how they're going to behave. And even with knowledge and a support system, they're still going to have to sink or swim. They'll follow the advice of those who've been there, or they won't. But even if they won't, they'll learn. If we're doing our job, they'll learn. They'll learn what kind of behavior flies, and what behavior doesn't. It might not be fun, for the young fen or their parents. Some of us will fight the lessons more and take longer to learn them. Some of us may leave. But the majority of us will end up learning proper behavior through some combination of knowledge from advice and knowledge from experience.

Hopefully, some of us will even end up being the next generation to speak up in defense of community standards in fandom.

[azurelunatic]

Yes.

My internet-raising was almost ten years ago now, and while my dad was more conversant with online stuff than most people, being as he was in computer science with the local university, an online culture really had yet to develop.

I was lucky enough to be fandom-raised and online-raised by a wonderful e-mail list with very good community standards, so it was a shock getting out into the rest of the internet and discovering that not everybody made the effort to try and chill out heated discussions by discussing everyone's favorite pizza.

[cleverthylacine]

I remember when you thought *I* was one of the Mean Girlz. *fondly*

Though that list has got considerably calmer since people started realising that if you really can't handle anything a certain person says, just don't read them. And now it is REALLY child-proofed.

[azurelunatic]

Heh. Yes. You were a little more volatile then, and I was a lot more sensitive.