Something I realised I left out of Various axioms of my anti-(racism sexism etc) (this extended conversation is definitely making me express a bunch of interconnected ideas I hadn't properly articulated before ( Read more... )

So, we have group X. They have a cause (sexism, racism, the environment etc). You support this cause in principle, but don't like the way they pursue it. That's fine, but there are certain arguments which result from this situation which come up again and again and I thought I'd address them here. I've been pondering it for a while but this was a ( Read more... )

Someone at femmeconne asked me for some examples of times I'd screwed up talking about race on the internet, which I decided was justification for this tl;dr screed (which I've been working on for ages) I've done "not X" for pretty much every "Do X" listed here, this is basically everything I wish someone had told me a few years ago ( Read more... )

The next of my General principles of internet communication, once again prompted by me starting a post about something else (in fact, the same post. I will finish it one day!) and going off on a tangent :) Really obvious, yet I am constantly forgetting to do it.
( Read more... )

(A continuation of my basic principles, inspired by this discussion)

In general, if everyone from group A (women, the poor, immigrants etc) just happens to violate seemingly coincidental and objective value B then ( Read more... )

( Preamble )

This is a somewhat vague ramble through various "basic" ideas which underlie my attitudes to feminism and anti-racism etc. It started as a reply to this comment and then grew out of my control :D
( I hate injustice, not the unjust )

In any place on the internet where multiple people get together to talk (forums, communities, or even the comments to a blog post) there are going to be rules of communication. As I discussed in my Freedom of speech doesn't mean what you think it does post, the owners and maintainers of these spaces have a right to expect you to follow those rules ( Read more... )

Freedom of speech is a nice concept, and one worth fighting for. It's not something you can assume you have a legal right to on the internet, especially when you consider all the different countries' legal systems involved (my own country offers pretty patchy support) Sop when I say "right" here I just mean in the non-legally binding moral ( Read more... )

I've been thinking for some time about writing a post about the various techniques I've used to get around the difficulty of communicating with people on the internet when you're tactless.

But I've realised that before I can post that I need to lay out the necessary basic principles which I think underlie successful communication on the internet ( Read more... )