Re: <nettime> apropos "relax dear"

[tbyfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

Julia, your questions — 'so, is that it?' and 'is this normal?'— are 
really important.

A few years ago Felix and I pranked the list on April 1st by announcing 
that we were shutting down nettime:

	https://nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-1504/threads.html

But it wasn't entirely a prank. Our concerns were very real, and they 
still are. This list has some serious problems, the most obvious being 
the all-too-familiar constellation of gender bias: who contributes, what 
they contribute, how they contribute, etc. Gender isn't an 'issue,' it's 
the entire world, but our failure to address it well on this list is a 
*big* issue.

Felix and I can and should do more to try to address that, but in many 
ways that kind of overt effort runs counter to how we see our role *as 
moderators*, which is more as janitors than as leaders. (So, to JO's 
question about who cleans the toilet, the answer is the mods do: Felix, 
Doma, and myself.) Shifting the 'culture' of this list will require 
collective effort on the part of the subscribers — in particular your 
lurkers, because you're the majority.

I switched Bard to moderated status because his contempt finally crossed 
a basic line — accepting an indiscriminate political murder on 
supposedly theoretical grounds. I think that's a good line to draw now 
*as a policy* now, at a time when deliberate political violence consumes 
more and more of the world. But drawing a line there might also tacitly 
suggest that anything short of that is somehow OK. What movements like 
#metoo are showing more clearly, for more people, is how 
'micro-aggressions' are the building blocks of systemic gender violence. 
So, for example, when someone tells someone else to 'relax,' that single 
word carries the freight of entire worlds.

Complaints about 'PC' this and 'PC' that cast that recognition as though 
it were oppressive, and indeed it sometimes is. But it can also be 
liberating to *know* — not a shiny new realization but a conviction 
— that words can change things for the better. This Bard eruption has 
shown that nettime, like any other community, can be seized by 
negativity, even as everyone fully recognizes the dynamic. Flipping him 
to moderated status fixes that, but there's no software setting for 
fixing gender imbalances. The only way to do that on a list — or 
around it — is with words.

You know what would be great? If we — by which I mean all of you, 
acting individually — could take a few concrete steps to nudge this 
list in better directions. Rather than make a few banal suggestions of 
things you can do *right now*, as if this were a political fund-raiser, 
it's better to leave this as a standing invitation.

Cheers,
Ted


On 5 Nov 2018, at 1:57, Julia Röder wrote:

> about that
>
> > dear angela,
> > relax dear.
> > it is ok.
> > noone is recruiting anyone here.
> > chill.
> > best,
> > w
>
> so, is that it? silence about this from the whole list except from 
> angela?
> do you all not say anything because you think this is trolling or this 
> is
> normal??
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