Twisted Tourniquette

I was going to comment on my thoughts about CupidsBow’s interesting opinion piece “Why ‘No’ Still Means Yes: a Rant About Suffering and Sex” , but a condescending reply to her blog has overshadowed the conversation, enough so that CB clarified (in another MetaFandom post – God, I love MetaFandom) what her different kinds of posts are and what kind of response is appropriate to each one. In “A Personal Schema for Meta, by CupidsBow,” she talks about three general formats of public posts:

The Formal Essay
The Squee
The Personal Rant

It’s rare to have a MetaFandom author say “I overreacted” publicly and even more rare to hear why, and I’d recommend checking out both posts.

You knew there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you? Sneaky readers. You people are too smart for your own good.

My immediate thoughts were a mixture of “I agree!” and “But…one small addendum?” Maybe I should bullet-point them. This post, btw, is in no way, shape, or form a rebuttal, a rant, or a snark against CB. I just like commenting and critiquing posts, and there hasn’t been much on MetaFandom lately. I’m way too focused on the U.S. Elections to concentrate my wrath or joy at anything else. So, some conclusions:

• I do think CB means to define ‘modes of discourse’ on her own personal blog and not tone.
• I don’t think words like ‘tone,’ ‘politeness,’ and ‘civility’ have any place in meaningful discussions.
• CB made an edit to prominently note that she’s aware of how the word ‘tone’ is inflammatory and did not mean it in the usual way people use it, where one person wants to silence another person. I, for one, appreciate that, and it is clear *in context* what she is trying to say. She probably didn’t want to change the appearance of tone, because someone was bound to come in and say she was trying to hide what she said. Therefore, I will not go into a lengthy(ier) post about ‘tone’ and its detrimental effects in silencing people and their opinions.
• However, I would humbly suggest that anyone – ANYONE – blogging about means of discourse and appropriate responses to one’s posts on private journals or groups, regardless of how well one thinks one can explain one’s self, attempt to talk about appropriate responses to conclusions on one’s emotions without using ‘tone’ or either of the other two words above.
• I support CB in her right and the right of all bloggers and journal writers to police their own cyber-grounds and personal safe spaces.
• If someone has submitted one of your posts to a major discussion community and you don’t want people to disagree with you (because that does happen), contact the moderator of that community and ask for the link to your work to be removed.
• This is just an anecdotal observation, but when I see a link on MetaFandom, I assume the rules of MetaFandom are in place. I do not know every individual set of rules and nuances that governs every LiveJournal user’s journal. I am not psychic. I expect that there are a lot of MetaFandom readers out there who are not psychic, either.
• If you are expressing an emotional reaction to a trend and are voicing that opinion as a public essay or a rant that you submit to MetaFandom, you should expect that not everyone will agree with you. If any disagreement, well- or ill-conceived, is going to seem like a personal attack or an invalidation of your emotions, do not submit the post to MetaFandom or other public discussion groups and open it up for responses. Period.
• Outside of your own personal spaces, you really can’t dictate anything.

It would be a boring world if we all agreed on everything. It would be great if readers were more circumspect of their virtual environments and writers were more upfront about discussion expectations for their expository posts.

Tweet This Post