When I really screw up at being inclusive and welcoming
So, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cypher posted about the DOINK! signup form and some more general issues surrounding gift exchanges, porn, and kinks. I like and am grateful for hir post and the commentary/discussion both there and in the comment thread. I highly recommend giving it a read and a think.
It also leaves me and my fellow mods with a pretty disheartening situation: our signup form is not nearly as welcoming and inclusive as it should be. For reference, a run-down of the form as it currently stands is here: DOINK! 2011 Signup Form Preview
[ETA 2011-03-11 The wording of the form has been edited. The new version is up in the proxy/signup preview posts: DW | LJ. The previous wording and screenshots are preserved in a comment on each post: DW | LJ]
[ETA 2011-03-12![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
regann has an interesting post providing a different perspective/experience on fandom expectations surrounding kink and porn.]
I want to, first thing, apologize to anyone who has felt othered, unwelcome, or alienated by the form. I am so, so sorry. This is the farthest thing from whatrenay, seventhe, and I intended, but we collectively did not make improving this aspect of the form/exchange experience a priority, and that was wrong of us. I'm sorry.
One of the sadder things for me about this, especially as a kinky and genderqueer person, is that we worried about this and tried to work in into our system from the inception of the sign-up form, before it went public for the first time last round. We discussed this, specifically, back then -- does our ship/gender combinations list welcome non-binary, poly, and gen options? We want to account for both kinks and squicks, what do we do? We were aware from the start, but the system we came up with was skewed more to making our lives easy as mods than making our participants welcome in every part of their identities. I have fretted about it ever since, and the other mods have also been uncomfortable -- but we didn't do anything about it between rounds. And that was wrong. We should have.
We focused too much on letting people opt OUT — and it's interesting, isn't it, which areas we chose for opting IN vs. opting OUT? You know, one of the initial drafts of the form had EVERYTHING as opt-in? But we looked at it and we worried about how people would feel being presented with that same list and being asked to opt in — we worried about squicks. We also thought that opting out would mean the opposite of assuming vanilla and thus be more exclusive — by assumption, you're okay with anything you don't say no to. (Not only did this not work as intended, we still left vanilla off the list, giving people no real way to opt in or out of that besides the freeform text boxes.) So we changed part to opt out, as trying to account for both felt beyond our coding abilities/resources at the time. And looking over all this, I feel deeply uncomfortable that our form does not include a model for enthusiastic consent.
We also mixed genres and kinks together — on purpose. We were hoping that putting the two together would lessen the potential for stigma. I'm still not sure if this was a good approach;threewalls's response indicates that separating out genres may be better.
In looking at a couple specific parts of that post/comment thread, I see one probable point/cause for where and how we screwed up.
And trying to encourage more porn in the more general exchanges is tricky; it's hard to find a way to say "if you're comfortable with this, it's what I'd really like you to do," without leaving a writer/artist who's NOT comfortable with it in a bad spot.
And this fromlassarina: I think *particularly* for an exchange, where people are making requests, it's important to let them say things they really do not want to receive.
This is where we erred too far on the side of caution, and we ended up normalizing things we'd... really rather not normalize. This helps explain a lot of our thinking, but it still means we erred.
I hope it's okay if I discuss our internal atmosphere a little bit — I am not trying to display our kink/kink-ally cred (ufff) but instead want to focus on how this disconnect between internal attitude and external perception happens. Because within the exchange, among us mods, we're kink-positive and, I believe, all kinky ourselves, and we definitely try to match for kinks when they come up as well as for squicks. When communicating on a personal level with our participants, the atmosphere around porn feels pretty open and friendly — we had a pretty good intermoogle (between participants, mediated by us to preserve anonymity) exchange last round asking whether the request welcomed a specific kink and getting a positive response, and we really like that.
But it doesn't show through in how we present ourselves. And our failure there really bothers me — and it bothers me more that it makes others feel judged or unwelcome. I'm not sure how the disconnect happened — obviously some of the locations of the greatest mistakes are obvious now, and I'm grateful that people are willing to point these issues out — but it bothers me that somehow this positivity disappeared between our minds and what our participants — or potential participants that hit the back button — encounter. I think it got lost somewhere in trying to make matching easier for US — but easier for US does not necessarily mean easier for the PEOPLE WE MATCH. We should do better. We CAN do better. And as soon as we can— we will.
So I want to discuss some possible changes we could make to improve the experience, because the current situation is untenable.
Unfortunately — or, more accurately, due to us not managing our time better to address this earlier — very little time remains until the signup form goes live, and the amount of work it would take to restructure the form is not feasible for us. We mods and our programmer between us have agreed to work on a general restructuring this summer. But until then, here are the things we can change: the wording on any part of the form and arrangement of options.
Short-Term Ideas [ETA 2011-03-11 These have been implemented; please see ETA at top of page]
These are undeniably purely cosmetic changes to a deeply flawed system. But I think any little bit of improvement — any small thing we can do to lessen the alienation — is better than nothing. So here are some ideas:
Long-Term Changes
These are I think more universally applicable than he above, but cannot be implemented until next round.
This is all I can think of for now, but we will definitely continue to give this careful thought throughout this round and will begin working on improvements as soon as we can after this round is over. Further suggestions for improvement, or general discussion of these issues, are definitely welcome!
cypher posted about the DOINK! signup form and some more general issues surrounding gift exchanges, porn, and kinks. I like and am grateful for hir post and the commentary/discussion both there and in the comment thread. I highly recommend giving it a read and a think.It also leaves me and my fellow mods with a pretty disheartening situation: our signup form is not nearly as welcoming and inclusive as it should be. For reference, a run-down of the form as it currently stands is here: DOINK! 2011 Signup Form Preview
[ETA 2011-03-11 The wording of the form has been edited. The new version is up in the proxy/signup preview posts: DW | LJ. The previous wording and screenshots are preserved in a comment on each post: DW | LJ]
[ETA 2011-03-12
regann has an interesting post providing a different perspective/experience on fandom expectations surrounding kink and porn.]I want to, first thing, apologize to anyone who has felt othered, unwelcome, or alienated by the form. I am so, so sorry. This is the farthest thing from what
renay, seventhe, and I intended, but we collectively did not make improving this aspect of the form/exchange experience a priority, and that was wrong of us. I'm sorry.One of the sadder things for me about this, especially as a kinky and genderqueer person, is that we worried about this and tried to work in into our system from the inception of the sign-up form, before it went public for the first time last round. We discussed this, specifically, back then -- does our ship/gender combinations list welcome non-binary, poly, and gen options? We want to account for both kinks and squicks, what do we do? We were aware from the start, but the system we came up with was skewed more to making our lives easy as mods than making our participants welcome in every part of their identities. I have fretted about it ever since, and the other mods have also been uncomfortable -- but we didn't do anything about it between rounds. And that was wrong. We should have.
We focused too much on letting people opt OUT — and it's interesting, isn't it, which areas we chose for opting IN vs. opting OUT? You know, one of the initial drafts of the form had EVERYTHING as opt-in? But we looked at it and we worried about how people would feel being presented with that same list and being asked to opt in — we worried about squicks. We also thought that opting out would mean the opposite of assuming vanilla and thus be more exclusive — by assumption, you're okay with anything you don't say no to. (Not only did this not work as intended, we still left vanilla off the list, giving people no real way to opt in or out of that besides the freeform text boxes.) So we changed part to opt out, as trying to account for both felt beyond our coding abilities/resources at the time. And looking over all this, I feel deeply uncomfortable that our form does not include a model for enthusiastic consent.
We also mixed genres and kinks together — on purpose. We were hoping that putting the two together would lessen the potential for stigma. I'm still not sure if this was a good approach;
threewalls's response indicates that separating out genres may be better.In looking at a couple specific parts of that post/comment thread, I see one probable point/cause for where and how we screwed up.
And trying to encourage more porn in the more general exchanges is tricky; it's hard to find a way to say "if you're comfortable with this, it's what I'd really like you to do," without leaving a writer/artist who's NOT comfortable with it in a bad spot.
And this from
lassarina: I think *particularly* for an exchange, where people are making requests, it's important to let them say things they really do not want to receive.This is where we erred too far on the side of caution, and we ended up normalizing things we'd... really rather not normalize. This helps explain a lot of our thinking, but it still means we erred.
I hope it's okay if I discuss our internal atmosphere a little bit — I am not trying to display our kink/kink-ally cred (ufff) but instead want to focus on how this disconnect between internal attitude and external perception happens. Because within the exchange, among us mods, we're kink-positive and, I believe, all kinky ourselves, and we definitely try to match for kinks when they come up as well as for squicks. When communicating on a personal level with our participants, the atmosphere around porn feels pretty open and friendly — we had a pretty good intermoogle (between participants, mediated by us to preserve anonymity) exchange last round asking whether the request welcomed a specific kink and getting a positive response, and we really like that.
But it doesn't show through in how we present ourselves. And our failure there really bothers me — and it bothers me more that it makes others feel judged or unwelcome. I'm not sure how the disconnect happened — obviously some of the locations of the greatest mistakes are obvious now, and I'm grateful that people are willing to point these issues out — but it bothers me that somehow this positivity disappeared between our minds and what our participants — or potential participants that hit the back button — encounter. I think it got lost somewhere in trying to make matching easier for US — but easier for US does not necessarily mean easier for the PEOPLE WE MATCH. We should do better. We CAN do better. And as soon as we can— we will.
So I want to discuss some possible changes we could make to improve the experience, because the current situation is untenable.
Unfortunately — or, more accurately, due to us not managing our time better to address this earlier — very little time remains until the signup form goes live, and the amount of work it would take to restructure the form is not feasible for us. We mods and our programmer between us have agreed to work on a general restructuring this summer. But until then, here are the things we can change: the wording on any part of the form and arrangement of options.
Short-Term Ideas [ETA 2011-03-11 These have been implemented; please see ETA at top of page]
These are undeniably purely cosmetic changes to a deeply flawed system. But I think any little bit of improvement — any small thing we can do to lessen the alienation — is better than nothing. So here are some ideas:
- Rename the area to "Content Preferences" or similar instead of "Do Not Want"
- We have some language at the top that tries to make clear that the exchange is kink-friendly but not kink-only, and how we came up with this list. Obviously, this language is insufficient or downright unhelpful. We can change this language to reflect some of the worries and explain that while we are aware there is not an option to opt in, we are aware of the lack and will correct it next year and that, for now, people are encouraged to give opt-ins in the freeform area
- We can change the wording of any particular item — not only in the current DNW area, but in the gender/ship preferences as well. If you think anything could do with a revision, we definitely welcome critique on this front.
- Offer more hintboxes or other explanatory text showing a broader range of signup possibilities, like something by the freeform area explicitly inviting people to opt in to kinks or genres
Long-Term Changes
These are I think more universally applicable than he above, but cannot be implemented until next round.
- Offer ways to opt IN to kinks and genres as well as opting OUT; have both available. I am not sure if a neutral option is feasible in terms of matching -- the more variables and variations we have, the harder to match -- but I am also leery of reducing this to a binary. Any feedback on this idea would be welcome.
- Add, remove, or rearrange options
- Re-examine the way we handle ratings and gender/ship preferences
This is all I can think of for now, but we will definitely continue to give this careful thought throughout this round and will begin working on improvements as soon as we can after this round is over. Further suggestions for improvement, or general discussion of these issues, are definitely welcome!
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I absolutely think it's unfortunate that people feel alienated but I also don't understand it so I'm afraid I'm not really being that sympathetic. I know what signups were like the first year, and I know how the current format evolved. I know that if it was more kink positive you'd have the same backlash in the opposite direction with people not wanting to participate because they're afraid of getting tentacles or something.
Anyway, I felt really frustrated reading this post because I know how careful you guys try to be so I just wanted you to know that you have my support, no matter what.
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I see both sides of this challenge (oops puns), and to a certain extent, I'm a bit offput when I get DNW stuff that is made up, um, solely of my own kinks and preferences. It doesn't make me alienated but it does make me uncomfortable. (I've never had that with FFEX but I have definitely had it in other exchanges.)
...it's tricky, and I am unhelpful. :(
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One of these is uncomfortable. The other is alienating and demoralizing.
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Obviously, Ira is sympathetic to your opinion but I'm more concerned about my friends possibly feeling like crap over something that they've been working on, since the beginning, to make as equal and fair as they can. I think it's fair to express that I'm *not* alienated by the way the sign-up is right now, even if other people are.
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And of course its fair for you to express that you are not alienated, but again, there is an important difference between you being comfortable with the challenge and making it very clear that you are unsympathetic to those who are not.
There is no shame in discovering that something you have said/created has hurt someone, no matter how hard you have worked to to the contrary -- what matters is of course how you choose to deal with those concerns on an ever-evolving basis. That's why I am glad Ira made this post.
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I think we've made it to a point we've done all we can for those folks and now we have to work on a way to make it for the other half, which is good, because it means we're still growing and aiming for maximum inclusiveness. It may be screwing up, but at least it's screwing up in the right direction, which is better than saying "fuck it, that's too hard".
Self-flagellation != good. You weren't in this alone, so no hogging all the failglory.
Also, now we probably really do owe Zach some chocolate.
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I think the "enthusiastic consent" phrasing is excellent; providing options for that is always helpful, I think. I've always gone into exchanges wanting to provide something that would be as much like what my recipient wanted as possible (and I know this can't be just me, given how many people stalk Yuletide letters for all the possible details), so having more information on what people love would be awesome.
I want to comment on your suggestions, too, but I'm feeling so totally out of spoons tonight I can't get the words together. I'll do my best to get back to you soon.
Thank you again.
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I don't know what to do besides say I'm sorry over and over again and then hope we can fix it so this doesn't happen again, because this sucks and makes me not even want to run the exchange this year if so many people are going to feel hurt and alienated by it. :(
I just don't know what to do.
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My apologies if that wasn't clear, in my comments.
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And, in case it isn't clear -- I really do appreciate all the work y'all have already done; I definitely don't want to give the impression that I haven't noticed that.
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Ira's post gave me a lot of hope for a positive resolution to this, but your comments really feel like they're trying to just shut me out and dismiss my experience.
I am going to step away from this conversation for now, because this is wrecking me, but I hope we can get to a more constructive dialogue soon.
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For what it's worth, I am sorry, so sorry I've upset you trying to bumble my way around and learn. I wish this could have gone differently. Please don't judge Ira or think badly of her post based on my words. It's likely I will just step completely out of the process, anyway, so I don't cause any more trouble.
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All of which is to say that I'm probably talking out my ass here, because I personally have not felt alienated by the sign-up form and did not realize until I read this that other people do. And, yeah, that's something that should be fixed.
When you get time to recode, it might be helpful to only display the produce/receive kink preferences (separated out from genre) to people who indicate that they are comfortable producing/receiving explicit sexual content. Maybe all opt-in actually would be the better choice (adding an option for "vanilla" instead of treating it as a default), with a freeform box to elaborate and list any triggers or squicks. My thinking is that it might help to make sure that the tone is more "Tell your gifter what you like," rather than "Opt out of all these or there will be SURPRISE KINK."
Sorry if any of that is terrible/unhelpful; I am on my first cup of coffee and thinking with my fingers.
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While it is absolutely important to be inclusive and sympathetic to others, appropriating language used for the systematic and widespread poor treatment of those who are objecting to their exclusion is, I feel, inappropriate in this context. You are not being erased. You are being asked to not erase others. You were explicitly being prioritized over others, and now that they are asking to be considered you are upset by this request.
[...]not even want to run the exchange this year if so many people are going to feel hurt and alienated by it.
The only thing - the only thing - that is being asked is that people make an effort to be inclusive and open to everyone. That you would rather shut it down than make that small effort - since, of course, many people being hurt and alienated by it will only occur if no changes are made - surprises me, since you have expressed that you are pained at this conflict and the people that were hurt by it.
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When you make an environment that is unwelcoming and not inclusive, it is not surprising that people will back away and look for some place more welcoming, where they don't have to feel censured for their desires. Placing the responsibility on their shoulders, and broadly on the shoulders of the participants, is problematic.
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I've been thinking about this ever since the first time I saw a post about it (regarding Dear Yulegoat letters, I think) and I really don't have an answer. I do think that concentrating on what people DO want would be a big help. Focus on positives, downplay negatives. The world needs more positives. :)
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*nods*
...forgive my lack of originality. It's been a long day.
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However, I also want to be clear that I think to call something like this a small effort is deeply disingenuous.
These are difficult issues to navigate and it is not anyone else's place to judge how easy or hard negotiating these changes is for any of us who are actually engaged in that work. For me, this work takes massive amounts of energy and effort for a variety of reasons. Please do not make judgments about how hard or easy a thing is for anyone but yourself.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to express how bewildered and daunted one feels by these things, and I want this to be a place where it is safe for everyone to do so.
Similarly, who does and does not experience exclusion is not universal. It is true that
Our signup form was rooted in our own shared experience, which included people being very nervous about feeling obligated to write porn. We realize now that we should have looked outside our own experience; no experience is universal. It was a serious mistake. I understand that the trajectory of our failure matches that of attitudes and oppression outside of fandom; I understand how that is problematic. However, that does not allow any of us to erase one anothers' fannish experiences.
You are not being erased. You are being asked to not erase others.
Please do not inform people when they are or are not experiencing real exclusion.
You were explicitly being prioritized over others, and now that they are asking to be considered you are upset by this request.
I cannot speak for
I do not appreciate your assumption of bad faith here, especially given that all three of us have made clear in this post and in other comments that we are not objecting to the need for change.
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I would like to thank the mods for including art in the exchange. I haven't seen many that do so and it can be very difficult to find communities on lj that truly include artists rather than just making a cursory mention of them. I'd also like to thank them all for their very hard work on these exchanges. I had a blast last round and my matches were excellent. Nothing they do is a 'simple matter,' although I'm sure it's easy to assume that from the outside. I think people underestimate the hours and hours of labour they put into this exchange.
I also appreciate their quick response to the discomfort of a participant. It's great to see their concern to make the experience positive for everyone participating. Thank you, mods.
Chiming in Late, but here
I think the best idea would be a Vanilla Doink and a Kink Doink. Maybe run them in cycle to save some time and energy. In an effort to be inclusive, with something like sexuality, there will always be people who are uncomfortable and/or people who feel they are not fully represented.
A Vanilla Doink would be for people who are shy or nervous seeing a list of kinks (many of them they may not even know what they are). You could maybe have a screened comment post for people to comment on what sorts of things they'd like to see, rated R to G.
The Kink Doink should get another screened comment post, discussing what people want, and then the signup would have to be drafted and shown to the community.
I think that the best solution would be to format ticky boxes like this:
It would be the same for people making requests and for those requesting, then the matching macro should be easier to program. I could try to mock something up in Java or C++, but it would definitely be next challenge, I have Senior Project and I won't get to basically breathe till June.
Re: Chiming in Late, but here
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Perhaps two different sign up sheets, one exchange? That way the people who don't want to deal with anything over say, a PG13 rating wouldn't have to worry about it and those that do want to have a kink would be able to see themselves represented?
In the nature of working with a large group I'm trying to also think of how to get the most participants. While I'll go through and click a ton of boxes to say what I want in a kink meme, I can't expect others to want to do the same or even be comfortable with it being there.
Re: Chiming in Late, but here
By preference, I would really rather not split the exchange — for one, it's a lot more work for us -- preparing for an exchange and trying to make it inclusive is tons of work, but so is actually running one, and I don't really want to either run more often OR make anyone wait longer for the appropriate exchange.
But more importantly, I don't want to send any messages intimating that kink, vanilla, everything in between, and preferences not on that spectrum can't coexist in one community. And it can be really hard to define vanilla and kink; I would rather not ask us to try and make a hard split between the two or to ask people to decide which is the appropriate round for them to join -- I'd rather everyone feel welcome at once, though I know it may be harder for us. As is hopefully evidenced by having fic and art in one exchange, I prefer a mixing approach to normalizing both ends and welcoming people who fall in the middle or off the scale; I don't like segregating preferences or identities. So if possible, I'd like for us to maintain that approach throughout.
I do like the idea of soliciting input on what people would like to see, as we really need to update/edit our list! We'll still need to interpret that data into something that can reasonably fit on a signup form, but it definitely seems time to update our thinking and reference pool.
I also really like your idea for wording the yes/maybe/no options -- such a three-tiered approach is something we started discussing last night over on the LJ version of this -- gah, I WISH we could interlink comments on LJ in the DW post, the reverse of what's already done with the LJ versions of DW posts! I've been meaning to call attention to the LJ side of the conversation all day and kept forgetting; I'm sorry.
Anyway, I really like your phrasing for the options, which is something I'd been struggling with! With maybe one slight change:
Yes Please | No Preference | No Thank You
Does that seem like a good, inclusive way of presenting the options?
Someone else over on LJ suggested a less granular, more spectrum-oriented approach. I'm also interested in that but have no ideas for how it could be worked into matching. Three options wouldn't be easy, but it's doable; I'm not sure how to work with more than that. If you're willing to put your programmy brains to it, maybe when this round is over we could see if that's a feasible option?
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And yeah, I realize that it's not the best option, but it was the only one I could think of that hadn't been said.
I think that the "Yes, Please || No Preference || No Thank You" is one of the best ways to do a tickybox sort of senario, that way you don't have to muck around with a lot of forms, for one, and everyone could just happily click away.
And polling the community would be the best way to make sure it's properly represented, IMO. Getting everyone's input into what they'd like to see as an option would possibly cut down on the unneeded sections (assuming there are any).
As for the spectrum approach... I think it's doable, but it wouldn't end up getting more data than the three topic check box would. I would have to do something like an averaging program, off the top of my head, mind, and that would just give me like a scale and an average number. To make it actually worth any firm data it would mean separating the choices into categories and I'm a little uncomfortable with that idea because my idea of what fits with X may not be everyone else's.
AND FORGOT
I think that polling the community as a whole would garnish a really good response and idea of what people want as a large/whole group. Maybe even doing a tiered sign up sheet would also be helpful. If you click "Yes" to something it would open up more options for someone to fill out. It'd be less intimidating and more inclusive...
not 100% sure though.
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Maybe the best solution is a tiered sign in? Start at gen and then if you want to move on to something else, click a box and then more choices become available to you? That may not be too difficult to code, I wish I had time to sit through it and see though before I suggest it outright.
I'm very happy that people are talking though, I really do think, as I said below, that the best way to make sure the most people are happy are posts like this one and polling of the community. It says a lot that the mods are willing to do this.
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The more I think about it, the more I like the idea having a scale with more options than "Yes" versus "No" (or "No" versus "No Data"), because it helps capture the fact that some of these things aren't binary, especially when talking about genres. I was really happy, for instance, when the ratings options split into "violence" vs. "sex", because I am perfectly happy to write explicit sex, but explicit violence is not my cup of tea.
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Starting with gen places gen and vanilla as normative, and I really don't like that approach. If gen and kink were co-equal expanding options, I would be interesting in exploring that, but I would rather not pick any one starting point to the exclusion of any others.
We may end up thinking up a couple possible approaches and presenting those to the community, who knows!
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The only problem with too much data is that I would need to find a meaningful way to represent that data so that it can be used for the matching and then for the writer/artist.
It may call for a lot of trial runs and errors, but I think it's doable. I agree, if we can make it work, then it'd be fantastic.
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As we rework the signup form, I also want to make clear that we want to welcome all preferences, including yours. So if you have the time/energy to take a look later (after the end of this round) when we rework the form, we would definitely appreciate having input from people on various points in the spectrum!
I'm really glad you enjoyed your matches! And I'm also really glad our attempts to make the exchange multimedia and multimedia-welcoming are working for you; if you have any suggestions for furthering this we would love to hear them! We are still struggling a little to get more fanartist participation, so if there's anything we can do to be more inclusive on that front, we would love to hear ideas.
Now that the AO3 allows vid embedding, I was actually also hoping to try and draw more vidding interest in, but we decided we weren't ready for any real influx of vidders yet in terms of form/matching. So this too is going on our slate for next round, and I'm pretty excited about it!
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Do you want Kink [box]
Do you want Gen [box]
and then expand from there. It'd require a lot of trial and error though, and I don't want to make anyone upset if it doesn't run as smoothly as hoped.
As I said below the only problem with collecting data is that I have to present it in a way that's meaningful in the end. But I'm sure we can do it.
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