I’ll put in my final thoughts since Salamander here so blatantly called me out on my tact and “self-righteousness”, and then I’ll leave it alone since I had a very educational voice call with a handful of roleplayers in the Dark Empire discord. Honestly Salamander kinda has my number on how I’m responding so I guess the jig is up, so based ig.
I view a lot of the discourse, the rebuttals in this thread, as ridiculous. I’m far from a white knight or “self-righteous”, in my own personal opinion, but they are. In their basest form, the rebuttals all have a common denominator- they are far reaching and ridiculous and have little to no evidence backing any of them up. The writers know that, there’s no changing minds or meeting in the middle, so I respond with ridiculousness.
I don’t think it’s malicious intent, though. I think they’re just uneducated on the culture and meaning of some of these labels we’re throwing around, like misogyny. And when cornered in a room of their peers, none of these writers would say “I support misogyny, racism, etc.” For example, you have one rebuttal in this thread conflating racism with xenophobia. How am I to discuss these subjects with a person that has a completely incorrect understanding? How do I correct their education without sounding patronizing, as an Admin of the forum?
And then there is the argument that one guy got banned for this, so now this is a reactionary ban. So… does it not count now?
…and to expand on that, what bans aren’t reactionary?
I would agree there can be a separation of proactive rulings and reactive, but its all reactive, and to make the argument is reductive. I thought it was a conversation worth having. I succeeded in stimulating it. If anything, my righteousness stems from doing my job. Sometimes communities gotta address these issues, and the timing nor reason doesn’t always have to be to your liking. It just matters that it happens.
Staff has the ball now, I’ll see where they wanna go with it and mediate the result.