Misc. comments 55:
To a locked post, on my and the poster’s different attitudes toward people who read our journals but never comment:
Thinking about this a little: I do use filters, and I post some things friends-only, so it doesn't feel like being stalked, more like a shy person finding me interesting. I like the idea that my old acquaintances still want to hear about my life. (What feels like stalking is my sister's ex sending me a Facebook friends request right after she died of cancer: he knew who I was, but apparently hadn't thought through that I knew she had dumped him, even if he didn't expect her to have told me details of why she did.)
The other thing is that apparently I notice "I've got a comment from Debbie" or "Sam has posted something interesting," but I don't seem to notice "Liz hasn't posted or commented to me in ages."
It may help that I know people who, having been absent for ages, will post something like "Sorry it's been so long, but work got crazy and then $brief_details_of_personal_crisis, and I realized I missed people" or "it's been ages, but I need someplace a bit more private than Twitter to talk about X," rather than three years of silence and then a few sentences about a recent movie.
On File 770, responding to Mike Glyer’s post about K. Tempest Bradford’s tweet suggesting that white cishet men should not be moderating con panels. (Her tweet was prompted by a specific example of someone Doing It Aggressively Wrong.):
If "not being able to moderate panels on a specific range of subjects" is a major restriction on your fanac, it’s equally a restriction on everyone else who doesn’t get invited to moderate panels on everything they might be interested in. And that’s most people.
From another angle, Tempest’s advice is "no cishet white male moderators" on those minority/subordinated group panels, not "no cishet white male participants." If everyone a con could find to talk about disability access, or a minority religion, was a cishet male, I’d wonder why. How hard are they looking? Not all disabled people are white cishet males. Nor are all Jews, or all Muslims, or all of any other relevant group I can think of ("living ex-presidents of the United States" might well qualify, but there are only half a dozen of them, none of whom is likely to turn up at a con and want to moderate a panel).
I also know that some cons find themselves with a shortage of competent moderators—that is, people who are willing to do it, can manage a conversation without dominating it or letting one or two other people dominate it. The sort of "basics of moderating a panel" panels I’ve seen at Wiscon are useful there, even if you think you know what you’re doing—but they won’t make someone want to steer a panel discussion rather than talk over everyone else.
My first time moderating was out of desperation, on a panel that included on person who seemed to think that she was supposed to do all the talking for the entire hour. I decided I’d rather have be the only panelist who didn’t state their opinion, interrupted*, and started calling on the other panelists and the audience. But that was also the con where I walked into a panel and was surprised to be introduced to someone as "Vicki Rosenzweig, your fellow panelist."
In better-organized situations, where they designate a moderator ahead of time, I don’t offer to/accept the request to moderate if I would mind spending a lot more time on "So, Kyra/Mike/Ursula, what do you think about this?" and "how do you all think such-and-such character fits in here?" than on my own thoughts.
*sometimes being from New York City and willing and able to talk loud and fast is useful.
And maybe it’s a grumpy morning as well as a somewhat long-winded one: There’s a post at the Captain Awkward blog offering advice on fendng off intrusive questions about a tattoo and "but what does it mean?" Goat Lady and a number of commenters offered good suggestions. And then there was someone who led in with saying she didn’t understand tattooing, and whose questions were things like "Yes, I get that response to public art on your body might be annoying or invasive, but, why are you carrying that art around if you don’t want anyone to notice it?" She may be genuinely curious, and I started trying to answer what might be real questions, but then I went back and reread the comment I was answering:
(I had started this answer with "two parts" but it’s now up to four.) First, do you wear glasses or contact lenses? I can choose one or another style of eyeglass frame, but what my glasses "mean" is that I want to be able to see. And how would you feel if random strangers kept asking what your hairstyle means, since you choose to go out in public with it so you must expect reactions in public?
Second: there’s such a thing as an excluded middle. I didn’t get my tattoos primarily for my partners, but I have one tattoo that few people other than them see now that I’ve stopped going to a gym and using the changing room. Don’t think "hiding the art in the closet," think "I don’t invite everyone in to see what I’ve got on the bedroom wall."
Third: have you tried googling “reasons for tattoos” or "history of tattooing"?
Fourth: if you must say something like "I apologize in advance for the possible rudeness," at least before you say the thing you realize may be rude. That gives people a chance to stop you if it’s in person, or to scroll past or click "back" if its online. You’ve just proclaimed that you wouldn’t do something rude, then done something you realize may have been rude, and then thrown in the "oh, but I apologize after the fact for what I just said, so you shouldn’t be upset with me."
To![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amaebi, in response to her posting a quote from J. K. Rowling, and questioning the claim that humans unique in that we “can learn and understand without having experienced”:
I (snarkily) suspect that the thing that makes humans unlike any other organism is the continued search for some, any, trait that is unique to us. Bipedalism went long ago, they've given up on tool use as unique, and language looks more and more like a continuum.
I said this this in a comment thread on the Captain Awkward blog, about the possibility of relatives taking out loans in someone’s name without their consent:
You can also change your mother’s maiden name, your first pet’s name, your favorite movie, what city you were born in, and anything else that’s in there as a "security" question. The bank or credit union isn’t going to care or notice that your mother’s maiden name isn’t "Bugs Bunny," the Mets aren’t a city, and nobody names their pet "867-5309"; all they’ll care about is that the string of characters you enter is the one you gave them last time. (I started doing this when I was pushed to pick answers to security questions that didn’t apply, like the model of my first car.)
Response to DW user tim’s post on "Why do cis people need the concept of ‘biological sex’?"
It may be partly about insecurity:
One thing that might be going on is that some cis people think about gender long enough to get from "that person who was told ever since infancy that he was a girl knows he's male" to "so how do I know I'm a woman?" Throw in a culture that tells many people they aren't good enough/trying hard enough at being the gender they identify with—"girls don't like math" and "boys don't cry" and all the rest of that crap—I think people are looking for proof that they really are the gender they were raised in and identify with.
If the piece of paper from the hospital you were born in or the state or city Board of Health isn't proof against uncertainty, insults, or gatekeepers who say things like "you're not man enough for this activity" or "this is only for girls," what is? It's a bureaucratic as well as scientific and scientistic culture, and I think that means people are looking to a karyotype or a report from 23andme as a more convincing piece of paper.
(I also have a vague hunch that this question connects to biphobia, but that's going to take quite a bit more thought.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alatefeline was wondering what neighboring volcanoes might say to each other:
That reminds me of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, the part where Estraven and Genly Ai are crossing the ice: "The Ice says there is nothing but ice, but that young volcano has a word it thinks of saying." [From memory, because that book is still in a packing box.]
In Seattle it always looked as though the Rainier was saying "look at me!" and the Cascades to the north of it (closer to me) might be going to talk about snow. The Olympics definitely wanted to talk about snow, but they aren't volcanic. Now I'm back in one of the parts of the world with no active or even dormant volcanoes or other recent interesting tectonics. Mount Washington will leave you alone if you leave it alone; Rainier usually does, but there's always the vague possibility that it will start smoking, or worse.
This was in response to somethingbelennen said about someone having taken them off their friendslist when they didn’t post for a while:
I really don't grok the reasoning of "this person doesn't post/comment often/enough/anymore, so I'm unfriending them," because it costs literally nothing to have someone on my friendslist. It may take a bit of time or executive function to decide whether to add someone, or what filters to put them in, but once someone is there, it's removing them that takes a decision.
Yes, my friendslist is full of people who have left LJ altogether, extremely dusty accounts in the personas of no-longer-functioning space probes, and a few people who have died (there is no way I am ever takingroadnotes off my friendslist), but I don't see why this would be a problem.
When I say "I don't grok this," I don't mean "there's something wrong with these people." What they're doing works for them.
[Yes, the above overlaps with the first comment reprinted here. So:]
-30-
To a locked post, on my and the poster’s different attitudes toward people who read our journals but never comment:
Thinking about this a little: I do use filters, and I post some things friends-only, so it doesn't feel like being stalked, more like a shy person finding me interesting. I like the idea that my old acquaintances still want to hear about my life. (What feels like stalking is my sister's ex sending me a Facebook friends request right after she died of cancer: he knew who I was, but apparently hadn't thought through that I knew she had dumped him, even if he didn't expect her to have told me details of why she did.)
The other thing is that apparently I notice "I've got a comment from Debbie" or "Sam has posted something interesting," but I don't seem to notice "Liz hasn't posted or commented to me in ages."
It may help that I know people who, having been absent for ages, will post something like "Sorry it's been so long, but work got crazy and then $brief_details_of_personal_crisis, and I realized I missed people" or "it's been ages, but I need someplace a bit more private than Twitter to talk about X," rather than three years of silence and then a few sentences about a recent movie.
On File 770, responding to Mike Glyer’s post about K. Tempest Bradford’s tweet suggesting that white cishet men should not be moderating con panels. (Her tweet was prompted by a specific example of someone Doing It Aggressively Wrong.):
If "not being able to moderate panels on a specific range of subjects" is a major restriction on your fanac, it’s equally a restriction on everyone else who doesn’t get invited to moderate panels on everything they might be interested in. And that’s most people.
From another angle, Tempest’s advice is "no cishet white male moderators" on those minority/subordinated group panels, not "no cishet white male participants." If everyone a con could find to talk about disability access, or a minority religion, was a cishet male, I’d wonder why. How hard are they looking? Not all disabled people are white cishet males. Nor are all Jews, or all Muslims, or all of any other relevant group I can think of ("living ex-presidents of the United States" might well qualify, but there are only half a dozen of them, none of whom is likely to turn up at a con and want to moderate a panel).
I also know that some cons find themselves with a shortage of competent moderators—that is, people who are willing to do it, can manage a conversation without dominating it or letting one or two other people dominate it. The sort of "basics of moderating a panel" panels I’ve seen at Wiscon are useful there, even if you think you know what you’re doing—but they won’t make someone want to steer a panel discussion rather than talk over everyone else.
My first time moderating was out of desperation, on a panel that included on person who seemed to think that she was supposed to do all the talking for the entire hour. I decided I’d rather have be the only panelist who didn’t state their opinion, interrupted*, and started calling on the other panelists and the audience. But that was also the con where I walked into a panel and was surprised to be introduced to someone as "Vicki Rosenzweig, your fellow panelist."
In better-organized situations, where they designate a moderator ahead of time, I don’t offer to/accept the request to moderate if I would mind spending a lot more time on "So, Kyra/Mike/Ursula, what do you think about this?" and "how do you all think such-and-such character fits in here?" than on my own thoughts.
*sometimes being from New York City and willing and able to talk loud and fast is useful.
And maybe it’s a grumpy morning as well as a somewhat long-winded one: There’s a post at the Captain Awkward blog offering advice on fendng off intrusive questions about a tattoo and "but what does it mean?" Goat Lady and a number of commenters offered good suggestions. And then there was someone who led in with saying she didn’t understand tattooing, and whose questions were things like "Yes, I get that response to public art on your body might be annoying or invasive, but, why are you carrying that art around if you don’t want anyone to notice it?" She may be genuinely curious, and I started trying to answer what might be real questions, but then I went back and reread the comment I was answering:
(I had started this answer with "two parts" but it’s now up to four.) First, do you wear glasses or contact lenses? I can choose one or another style of eyeglass frame, but what my glasses "mean" is that I want to be able to see. And how would you feel if random strangers kept asking what your hairstyle means, since you choose to go out in public with it so you must expect reactions in public?
Second: there’s such a thing as an excluded middle. I didn’t get my tattoos primarily for my partners, but I have one tattoo that few people other than them see now that I’ve stopped going to a gym and using the changing room. Don’t think "hiding the art in the closet," think "I don’t invite everyone in to see what I’ve got on the bedroom wall."
Third: have you tried googling “reasons for tattoos” or "history of tattooing"?
Fourth: if you must say something like "I apologize in advance for the possible rudeness," at least before you say the thing you realize may be rude. That gives people a chance to stop you if it’s in person, or to scroll past or click "back" if its online. You’ve just proclaimed that you wouldn’t do something rude, then done something you realize may have been rude, and then thrown in the "oh, but I apologize after the fact for what I just said, so you shouldn’t be upset with me."
To
amaebi, in response to her posting a quote from J. K. Rowling, and questioning the claim that humans unique in that we “can learn and understand without having experienced”:I (snarkily) suspect that the thing that makes humans unlike any other organism is the continued search for some, any, trait that is unique to us. Bipedalism went long ago, they've given up on tool use as unique, and language looks more and more like a continuum.
I said this this in a comment thread on the Captain Awkward blog, about the possibility of relatives taking out loans in someone’s name without their consent:
You can also change your mother’s maiden name, your first pet’s name, your favorite movie, what city you were born in, and anything else that’s in there as a "security" question. The bank or credit union isn’t going to care or notice that your mother’s maiden name isn’t "Bugs Bunny," the Mets aren’t a city, and nobody names their pet "867-5309"; all they’ll care about is that the string of characters you enter is the one you gave them last time. (I started doing this when I was pushed to pick answers to security questions that didn’t apply, like the model of my first car.)
Response to DW user tim’s post on "Why do cis people need the concept of ‘biological sex’?"
It may be partly about insecurity:
One thing that might be going on is that some cis people think about gender long enough to get from "that person who was told ever since infancy that he was a girl knows he's male" to "so how do I know I'm a woman?" Throw in a culture that tells many people they aren't good enough/trying hard enough at being the gender they identify with—"girls don't like math" and "boys don't cry" and all the rest of that crap—I think people are looking for proof that they really are the gender they were raised in and identify with.
If the piece of paper from the hospital you were born in or the state or city Board of Health isn't proof against uncertainty, insults, or gatekeepers who say things like "you're not man enough for this activity" or "this is only for girls," what is? It's a bureaucratic as well as scientific and scientistic culture, and I think that means people are looking to a karyotype or a report from 23andme as a more convincing piece of paper.
(I also have a vague hunch that this question connects to biphobia, but that's going to take quite a bit more thought.)
alatefeline was wondering what neighboring volcanoes might say to each other:That reminds me of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, the part where Estraven and Genly Ai are crossing the ice: "The Ice says there is nothing but ice, but that young volcano has a word it thinks of saying." [From memory, because that book is still in a packing box.]
In Seattle it always looked as though the Rainier was saying "look at me!" and the Cascades to the north of it (closer to me) might be going to talk about snow. The Olympics definitely wanted to talk about snow, but they aren't volcanic. Now I'm back in one of the parts of the world with no active or even dormant volcanoes or other recent interesting tectonics. Mount Washington will leave you alone if you leave it alone; Rainier usually does, but there's always the vague possibility that it will start smoking, or worse.
This was in response to something
belennen said about someone having taken them off their friendslist when they didn’t post for a while:I really don't grok the reasoning of "this person doesn't post/comment often/enough/anymore, so I'm unfriending them," because it costs literally nothing to have someone on my friendslist. It may take a bit of time or executive function to decide whether to add someone, or what filters to put them in, but once someone is there, it's removing them that takes a decision.
Yes, my friendslist is full of people who have left LJ altogether, extremely dusty accounts in the personas of no-longer-functioning space probes, and a few people who have died (there is no way I am ever taking
roadnotes off my friendslist), but I don't see why this would be a problem. When I say "I don't grok this," I don't mean "there's something wrong with these people." What they're doing works for them.
[Yes, the above overlaps with the first comment reprinted here. So:]
-30-
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
If I may offer a counterpoint (similarly not to say there's anything wrong with what you're doing): that model seems like one in which static trust relationships are the default. There's a few flip sides that come immediately to mind for me, though I fear they may sound uncomfortably transactional:
Each subsequent post you make to a particular access list adds marginal risk of the new information being misused. (This presumes that “people having more information about me is more dangerous than less” is a default.) So there's a continual flow of small expected-value cost. If what you're getting back from that person (in terms of useful feedback, feeling of connection, access to deeper parts of their life in turn, etc.) has stopped flowing, why should you allow the cost to continue to flow as well?
Also, seeing updates from people is partly meant to be some reassurance that they're still who you think, as a bound on how much their personality has changed in ways that might lead you not to wish to give them such information in the future. (The bound is admittedly frequently somewhat illusory.) So if the error bounds in your model of another individual are assumed to decay outward over time as they go about unseen changes, and only be reined back in when they provide another concrete ping of their state, “signal lost; cannot be presumed trustworthy anymore” becomes a natural state that decays from “trusted with X” after enough silence.
(Part of the reason I'm interested to hear you describe this the way you did is that what you're describing sounds more similar to how my predecessor dealt with things.)
From:
no subject
Most of what I post friendslocked but unfiltered isn't so much private as stuff I don't want indexed by spiders or seen/commented on by complete strangers.
Thinking about this, I have moved people out of my more private filters over time, for lack of contact or if something they had said or done, or omitted to say or do, led me to trust them less. In the latter case, I was already thinking about the relationship and decided that
I'm not going to list my filters here, except to note that some are very large, one is people I know from the alt.polyamory newsgroup (a fact about the past that won't change), and the smallest contains three people.
From:
no subject
Ah, right! I only use Dreamwidth and not LiveJournal myself, so I'd forgotten that LJ had the more primitive model still; when I read “unfriend” I read it in an access control sense. (It's possible to emulate the Dreamwidth model by only ever using separate sets of filters for reading and access control and leaving the “friends list” as a whole meaningless, but it's awkward.)
As for your use of “friendslocked but unfiltered”, that sounds like it's being used as a backstop for the degradation of the private register (the liminal “not completely inaccessible to outsiders but not on the public record” region of socialization which turns out to be awkward to implement in technologies where location and access are discretized). That's not too far from how I do it, honestly.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
And how would you feel if random strangers kept asking what your hairstyle means, since you choose to go out in public with it so you must expect reactions in public?
This happens to me! The sociopolitical reasons why are left as an exercise. *snerk* And I think this underscores your point.
I love asking people about their [visible] tattoos, because most people like talking about them. I also know to back off if someone doesn't want to, because, you know, basic human decency.