Dreamwidth.org (please feel free to repost)
For those of you who haven't heard, there's a new LJ-style player in town called Dreamwidth.org, and I honestly think they're going to be successful. Their platform is based on the LJ codebase, and all the changes they've made are available under an Open Source license.
They have a pretty fantastic Diversity Statement on their website. But when I looked at it, they had gender and sexual orientation listed, but not gender identity and expression. So I wrote them an email.
To my great surprise, I received a response within 48 hours. It was not a form letter. It was from Denise Paolucci, co-owner of Dreamwidth Studies. Here's some of what she said:
Someone else actually pointed this problem out to us today as well, and the minute they did, it was a moment of "sudden and horrible realization that what I actually meant didn't survive the transition from my brain to the screen". When we wrote the diversity statement, we actually did mean for "gender" to cover not just cisgender individuals, but also transgender, genderqueer, and other non-cisgendered expressions and presentations as well.
It took hearing feedback from someone else to realize that just saying "gender" wasn't sufficiently inclusive, since most people see "gender" and automatically assume it to intend only cisgender/binary-gendered presentation. I actually and honestly did not realize that it could be read like that -- which I know is not an excuse! -- and the minute it was pointed out to me, it was a case of "head, meet desk". I do sincerely apologize for both the oversight and the accidental exclusion, and thank you very much for also bringing it to our attention.
I'm talking with a couple of our transgender and genderqueer project contributors to see what the best and most inclusive phrasing would be. Right now, our semi-consensus is that the best solution would be to change the diversity statement from "people of any gender" to "people of any gender identity or expression". I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on that alternate phrasing and whether you think that would be a good way to rectify our accidental exclusion -- and, of course, if you can think of something better than that, I'd love to hear that, as well!
We actually have made many changes from the LiveJournal code that we forked from to actively bring it more in line with our diversity policy, and one of the changes was to specifically be more welcoming of our transgender and genderqueer users. LiveJournal's code (the code our site is based on) offered "Male", "Female", and "Unspecified" as gender options; we've changed those to "Male", "Female", "Other", and "Decline to State".
We thought long and hard about offering specific non-binary gender choices, to avoid the risk that people would feel *more* marginalized by having an "Other" option instead of their preferred gender identity or expression, but our eventual conclusion was that we couldn't possibly list all of the choices that people self-identify as; we thought that it could wind up feeling more exclusionary for someone to be confronted with a long list of options, none of which they identified with. So we decided to go with a single non-binary choice, while letting people use the Bio section on their profile to explain their self-identity if they choose.
We're completely open to re-visiting that decision in the future, but right now the gender option actually doesn't affect anything; the site doesn't customize pronouns for each individual user, and the gender option doesn't appear on the profile anywhere. The only place it appears is in aggregate form on our site statistics page, http://www.dreamwidth.org/stats . If we ever do anything like offer the option to display your gender on your profile, or offer the option to allow your self-identified gender to affect the pronouns the site uses to refer to you, we will absolutely offer a free-text box for people to self-identify their gender expression however they're most comfortable with and offer a choice of pronouns (most likely totally independent of the gender drop-down option, even) including not only the "standard" gendered pronouns but as many of the "alternate" sets of pronouns as we can.
We aren't currently planning anything like this, but if we do, remembering to be inclusive is definitely a top priority. Our official pronoun policy for matters of existing site copy is actually to rephrase things whenever possible so that the text is plural, which neatly sidesteps the pronoun issue altogether!
I'm really glad you brought this to my attention. Please let me apologize again for our accidental exclusion. Diversity and respect -- and having a broad range of opinions, experiences, and self-identifications represented and welcomed in our community -- are very important, both to me and Mark as the owners of Dreamwidth Studios, and to the entire community that's been contributing to the Dreamwidth project. We want to make sure that everyone feels welcomed, included, and respected here, no matter what their self-identification happens to be (on so many different possible axes, not just gender!), because we think that's the way to build a healthy and vibrant online community. Thank you for helping to point out our accidental failure, and I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on how to fix things so that the language in our diversity statement is closer to the ideal that we're striving towards.
Needless to say, I'm creating a Dreamwidth account. All the functionality of LJ, PLUS they share my values around creation, openness and inclusion. Here are just the first two paragraphs of their Diversity Statement, as it currently stands:
We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, size, nationality, sexual orientation, ability level, religion, culture, subculture, and political opinion. We welcome activists, artists, bloggers, crafters, dilettantes, musicians, photographers, readers, writers, ordinary people, extraordinary people, and everyone in between. We welcome people who want to change the world, people who want to keep in touch with friends, people who want to make great art, and people who just need a break after work. We welcome fans, geeks, nerds, and pixel-stained technopeasant wretches. We welcome Internet beginners who aren't sure what any of those terms refer to.
We welcome you. You may wear a baby sling, hijab, a kippah, leather, piercings, a pentacle, a political badge, a rainbow, a rosary, tattoos, or something we can only dream of. You may carry a guitar or knitting needles or a sketchbook. Conservative or liberal, libertarian or socialist - we believe it's possible for people of all viewpoints and persuasions to come together and learn from each other. We believe in the broad spectrum of human experience. We believe that amazing things come when people from different worlds and world-views approach each other to create a conversation.
That's hard to beat. They're set up for cross functionality, so it's going to be easy to mirror my posts here, too, at least until everybody moves to Dreamwidth. If you have an invite code, go check it out. And if you don't, they'll be offering paid accounts in 5 days!
They have a pretty fantastic Diversity Statement on their website. But when I looked at it, they had gender and sexual orientation listed, but not gender identity and expression. So I wrote them an email.
To my great surprise, I received a response within 48 hours. It was not a form letter. It was from Denise Paolucci, co-owner of Dreamwidth Studies. Here's some of what she said:
Someone else actually pointed this problem out to us today as well, and the minute they did, it was a moment of "sudden and horrible realization that what I actually meant didn't survive the transition from my brain to the screen". When we wrote the diversity statement, we actually did mean for "gender" to cover not just cisgender individuals, but also transgender, genderqueer, and other non-cisgendered expressions and presentations as well.
It took hearing feedback from someone else to realize that just saying "gender" wasn't sufficiently inclusive, since most people see "gender" and automatically assume it to intend only cisgender/binary-gendered presentation. I actually and honestly did not realize that it could be read like that -- which I know is not an excuse! -- and the minute it was pointed out to me, it was a case of "head, meet desk". I do sincerely apologize for both the oversight and the accidental exclusion, and thank you very much for also bringing it to our attention.
I'm talking with a couple of our transgender and genderqueer project contributors to see what the best and most inclusive phrasing would be. Right now, our semi-consensus is that the best solution would be to change the diversity statement from "people of any gender" to "people of any gender identity or expression". I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on that alternate phrasing and whether you think that would be a good way to rectify our accidental exclusion -- and, of course, if you can think of something better than that, I'd love to hear that, as well!
We actually have made many changes from the LiveJournal code that we forked from to actively bring it more in line with our diversity policy, and one of the changes was to specifically be more welcoming of our transgender and genderqueer users. LiveJournal's code (the code our site is based on) offered "Male", "Female", and "Unspecified" as gender options; we've changed those to "Male", "Female", "Other", and "Decline to State".
We thought long and hard about offering specific non-binary gender choices, to avoid the risk that people would feel *more* marginalized by having an "Other" option instead of their preferred gender identity or expression, but our eventual conclusion was that we couldn't possibly list all of the choices that people self-identify as; we thought that it could wind up feeling more exclusionary for someone to be confronted with a long list of options, none of which they identified with. So we decided to go with a single non-binary choice, while letting people use the Bio section on their profile to explain their self-identity if they choose.
We're completely open to re-visiting that decision in the future, but right now the gender option actually doesn't affect anything; the site doesn't customize pronouns for each individual user, and the gender option doesn't appear on the profile anywhere. The only place it appears is in aggregate form on our site statistics page, http://www.dreamwidth.org/stats . If we ever do anything like offer the option to display your gender on your profile, or offer the option to allow your self-identified gender to affect the pronouns the site uses to refer to you, we will absolutely offer a free-text box for people to self-identify their gender expression however they're most comfortable with and offer a choice of pronouns (most likely totally independent of the gender drop-down option, even) including not only the "standard" gendered pronouns but as many of the "alternate" sets of pronouns as we can.
We aren't currently planning anything like this, but if we do, remembering to be inclusive is definitely a top priority. Our official pronoun policy for matters of existing site copy is actually to rephrase things whenever possible so that the text is plural, which neatly sidesteps the pronoun issue altogether!
I'm really glad you brought this to my attention. Please let me apologize again for our accidental exclusion. Diversity and respect -- and having a broad range of opinions, experiences, and self-identifications represented and welcomed in our community -- are very important, both to me and Mark as the owners of Dreamwidth Studios, and to the entire community that's been contributing to the Dreamwidth project. We want to make sure that everyone feels welcomed, included, and respected here, no matter what their self-identification happens to be (on so many different possible axes, not just gender!), because we think that's the way to build a healthy and vibrant online community. Thank you for helping to point out our accidental failure, and I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on how to fix things so that the language in our diversity statement is closer to the ideal that we're striving towards.
Needless to say, I'm creating a Dreamwidth account. All the functionality of LJ, PLUS they share my values around creation, openness and inclusion. Here are just the first two paragraphs of their Diversity Statement, as it currently stands:
We welcome people of any gender identity or expression, race, ethnicity, size, nationality, sexual orientation, ability level, religion, culture, subculture, and political opinion. We welcome activists, artists, bloggers, crafters, dilettantes, musicians, photographers, readers, writers, ordinary people, extraordinary people, and everyone in between. We welcome people who want to change the world, people who want to keep in touch with friends, people who want to make great art, and people who just need a break after work. We welcome fans, geeks, nerds, and pixel-stained technopeasant wretches. We welcome Internet beginners who aren't sure what any of those terms refer to.
We welcome you. You may wear a baby sling, hijab, a kippah, leather, piercings, a pentacle, a political badge, a rainbow, a rosary, tattoos, or something we can only dream of. You may carry a guitar or knitting needles or a sketchbook. Conservative or liberal, libertarian or socialist - we believe it's possible for people of all viewpoints and persuasions to come together and learn from each other. We believe in the broad spectrum of human experience. We believe that amazing things come when people from different worlds and world-views approach each other to create a conversation.
That's hard to beat. They're set up for cross functionality, so it's going to be easy to mirror my posts here, too, at least until everybody moves to Dreamwidth. If you have an invite code, go check it out. And if you don't, they'll be offering paid accounts in 5 days!