Well that's a loaded question isn't it.
Yes, in the sense that it's fairly specific but difficult to answer in an exhaustive way.
Despite not really expecting barbelith to fall behind any moderation policies I can think of one policy change that seems clear cut to me and complicated to everyone I suggest it to. Primarily next time someone suggests that all female attorneys advise their female clients to accuse men of abuse we ban them rather than engaging with five pages of repetition.
That would be the ShadowSax thread, yes?
I'd say that ridding barbelith of absolute and overt misogyny would be helpful but I don't actually expect anyone to agree with me on this as it's a hard line response.
I think that, as you say, "absolute and overt misogyny" is clear cut to you but not as clear cut to others. That's the problem as I see it, and the reason why there will always be discussion among moderators - and one concrete way to up the quality of discussion (assuming female moderators are more likely than male to accurately assess and pronounce on "absolute and overt misogyny") is to increase the number of female moderators, hence my suggestion above.
I think that it's unhelpful when dealing with less overt sexism and misogyny that we allow posters to make statements about women that are so clearly biased against them. To then try to wheedle some kind of concession out of members of the board who are stubbornly refusing to discuss the misogynistic statements that they have made is really to scupper any statements that we make to the contrary. It demonstrates that we don't have a serious attitude to the generalisation of females as evil or the vicious undermining of their intelligence. It also demonstrates that we don't accept them as a group with a problem in wider society.
All of which strikes me as fair and reasonable, but again, how do we ensure that the 'line in the sand' re: misogyny is where it should be? If (a big part of) the problem is that those coming out with "absolute and overt misogyny" are not banned, and that leads to a casual attitude toward lesser variations, then how best to convince the one person able to ban (Tom) that Poster X making Statement Y ought to result in their being kicked off the board? Following the previous logic, more female moderators.
I would like this to be a policy decision that was not structured simply around women but applied in any case where someone grossly generalises a community or any group that is accepted as having been confined and denied human rights in some way. The denial of the reality of that confinement or infringement should be a banning offense for anyone unless they retract that statement or apologise for it. I'm not talking about slipping up on language use, I'm talking about statements that attack and are derogatory towards people with no justification whatsoever. I think it's clear when they're being made and we should have the same attitude towards them as a board that we do towards holocaust denial.
See, although I agree that Tom's ruling on the holocaust denial threads, past and present, set a precedent of sorts, I'm not sure that it is clear when posters are making "statements that attack and are derogatory towards people with no justification whatsoever", particularly when we're talking banning. The one element which does spring to mind is repetition - someone repeatedly espousing a viewpoint, as Hawksmoor did, with the homophobic stuff - and there's very probably a good case to be made, IMHO, for banning ShadowSax. If we're talking individual statements, though, I can't think of an example of what sort of homophobic statement I, as a gay man, would view as unequivocal kick-em-out material. Even with Hawksmoor, I think it was more his flamey rudeness more than his childish U R AL GAY!!1ery that led to his being punted.
That's a tangent, though. |
I can't really think of anything better, sorry. Trying to inorganically 'equalize' things is just going to accentuate existing problems, I think, and maybe make people (id est, male posters) bitter.)