Skip Reading This Sticky At Your Own Peril

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MacAllister

'Twas but a dream of thee
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Everyone is welcome in this room. Even if you're straight as can be, you're welcome in this room

Everyone is welcome to post, discuss, question, and even debate, in this room.

At least initially.

However, you need to know right up front: This is not simply a general, sex-positive, anything goes, we're-all-a-little-queer-together room -- although sometimes threads will vibe that way, and that's cool too. If that's the environment you're looking for, please allow me to recommend the erotica forum and the Blue Bordello.

This is a QUILTBAG community. If you don't know what that means, you'll want to tread rather carefully. No one here cares about making you feel better about not being gay/lesbian/trans/bisexual. It's not about you, at all, in fact. I'm sorry if that seems hard to understand and perhaps even makes you feel somewhat excluded. That's not going to be easy for some perfectly wonderful people to deal with, because it's difficult and painful to examine our own previously unexamined cultural privilege. Sometimes when people don't get the preferential treatment they've learned to expect, they read that as hostility. It's not.

That said, onward!

If you find yourself tempted to troll in here, just don't.

If you find yourself tempted to derail conversations by posting things like:

"Well, I just don't understand why you have to label yourselves"
or
"I just don't think readers need to know that a character is gay"
or
"Where's the room for straight people, then? Isn't it just as much discrimination to give teh gays a room and not build one just for straights?"
or
"Why must you gay people be so in-your-face about it, it's just TMI"
or
"Bisexual people are just horndogs. They really need to just pick a team, for heaven's sake"
or
"How do I find a hot babe 4 a 3sum w/ my man?"
or
"I'm [straight/married/NOT qltbag], but I've always been curious! I just don't get why you people are so hostile to me!"

(And these are just a bare handful of the old standards) -- DON'T.

Why is this so obnoxious, and why should you expect to be met with resistance?
- We are sick of you coming in to our bars, clubs and spaces when we aren’t allowed as equal citizens in your spaces … like, say, oh, the institution of legal marriage.

- We are out with our family and friends. Most of you are closeted.

If you find yourself posting those statements, or variations of those statements here -- you're trolling. If you're in here looking for validation/education/affirmation that it's cool to be straight, you're not really in the right place. There's a whole world out there that's happy to affirm your heterosexuality. This room isn't about you.

Those sorts of statements aren't actually about discussing, they're classic derailing and silencing tactics--even if you mean well.

Here's the tricky part. If you honestly mean well, but you're making statements like those above? You're behaving like a clueless jerk with a sense of entitlement that just won't stop. Keep your mouth shut, read a lot, and you might actually learn something real, okay?

If you just can't control yourself, and you troll in this room, I will block your access immediately. If your offense is egregious enough that you really, really piss me off, I'm very likely to ban you from the entire AW community, not just block your access to this room.

You will not receive any warnings about how very offensive and unacceptable your behavior is, beyond this post. If I get so much as a whiff of troll, you'll be blocked immediately and permanently from this room. No one owes you an explanation, no one is going to wheedle you into better behavior, and no one here actually cares what you think about teh gays.

Because mostly, I just don't buy any of those ridiculously thin and patently offensive "gosh, how was I supposed to know people would take offense" or "You're just being too thin-skinned" or "I just don't believe in being all PC, I'm gonna call 'em like I see 'em" or "geez, lighten up! It was a joke!" defenses. I think they're bullshit, and I think the people who defend themselves that way know perfectly well that it's bullshit.



Don't do it here. Just don't.
 
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