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From the darkmatter banning thread:
Petey Shaftoe: "I don't think we should start somehow expecting there to be lower standards for what's acceptable in the Temple."
Haus: " I certainly don't think the Temple should have different standards from the rest of the board on what's acceptable. However, I also think that it quite frequently has. Correcting that is one of the things it might be worth trying to do with threads like this."
Aunt Beast: "One reason I increasingly find myself having to really fight not to lose it completely with these guys is partly because I do not see why the Temple should have the kind of low or shoddy standards that would allow them to post unhindered. If "Meta-Rape" turned up as a topic anywhere else on the board, I really fucking hope there'd be a hue and cry."
Can we sort this out now? Here?
I propose that a collective decision is made that, whatever its checkered history since the days of the Nexus, the Temple is not a place where a lower standard of debate is at all tolerated. Certain fairly prolific long-term posters to the Temple, myself included, have spent years putting loads of energy into trying to make the temple into a space where this sort of stuff is both unwelcome and mercilessly unpacked wherever it rears its head. It kind of fucks me off that there is still the perception floating around that the temple is some sort of kiddies playpen where its OK to bang on about meta-rape, the protocols of zion or any other stupid, offensive shit. It is not. At least not in my perception of it.
If membership is going to be opened up, I really think a decision needs to be made about what sort of place we collectively want the temple to be. I have always seen it as a place where the same kind of rigour you might find in the headshop (at its best) is applied to matters of religion and spirituality. Where any unsupported statements about these areas will be unpacked and interrogated, and where people are expected to contribute either from their own honest personal experience or from solid academic research. As well as obviously being a space where racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, etc are not tolerated for one moment, as per the rest of barbelith.
If anyone takes issue with this particular vision, and wants it to be a space where your darkmatters and your fetches can have free reign to post whatever they want - then I think we should have that discussion here and now. Because I strongly think temple moderators and anyone invested in the temple as a space for intelligent discourse on magic and spirituality, ought to think about setting down some loose guidelines for the sort of space we want the temple to be, how we would like to see it develop, what we want to get out of it, what we want to encourage and what we want to discourage. |
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