Barbelith Underground > Policy & Help > What exactly does get you banned on Barbelith?

toksik:

could you give us a handful of links to that attitude [the idea that you can express any opinion, you just have to do so in the right way] on display?

Well for one thing, dude, it's in the FAQ:

You can pretty much get away with arguing any position in the world on Barbelith, which is as it should be. What's more important is the spirit in which you do it.

Now, whether "the spirit in which you do it" is the same thing as "the language, register, etc. in which you do it" is another question - but I'm not sure I know what else "the spirit in which you do it" could mean on a text-based forum. Come to think of it I don't really know what "the spirit in which you do it" means, and I think it's fairly unhelpful. I also don't believe it's true, and said so here. People have been banned for the opinions they expressed, not the way they expressed them, and if you follow that link and scroll down you'll see Tom confirms this, although he also makes some very good points about how things that have been done before don't necessarily have to set precedents.

I think a reflection of the fact that those two sentences
from the FAQ are neither helpful nor true is the sentence that follows them:

Presenting a thread in the Laboratory on whether women's brains are less suitable for work in the sciences (for example) which invites people to talk around the issue might get some people's backs up (it's a dangerous area) but if you do it openly and honestly and present the question fairly, then you'll generally get intelligent responses.

The crucial thing to notice here is that "Presenting a thread in the Laboratory on whether women's brains are less suitable for work in the sciences... which invites people to talk around the issue" is NOT the same thing as "Presenting a thread in the Laboratory in which you argue that women's brains are less suitable for work in the sciences and then invite people to talk around the issue". And yet that would be the relevant example, one that would demonstrate that "you can pretty much get away with arguing any position in the world on Barbelith". So why the fudge?

The answer lies elsewhere in the same section of the FAQ:

Our rule of thumb is that other members shouldn't feel harrassed, and aggressive statements about types of people who might be represented on the board may be considered direct harrassment of the individuals concerned

In other words, if you were to actually argue that women's brains are less suitable for work in the sciences, this could be considered direct harrassment of every female-identifying member of the board.

In other words, the situation is more complicated than the distinction between Shadowsax and 33 that Deva presents here. 33 has directly addressed members of the board in a belittling and rude fashion; Shadowsax consistently belittled every female-identifying member, whether they felt harrassed by him or not.

It's my contention that the two bits of the FAQ I've quoted are going to rub up against each other over and over again if they remain two principles under which the board tries to operate. While it's true that trying to operate under conflicting principles can lead to a workable balance, it's also true that it can lead to people feeling frustrated, confused, and that things are unfair.