Scans_Daily

I used to post at the old s_d. I don't post here (until now) because I wasn't willing to pay for an account I won't really use, and it took me forever to find a shared code to sign up. Which I have now done because I've lurked here since the new s_d's inception and I find a lot of what has gone on to be absolutely ridiculous. I simply can't hold it in anymore, and I have decided to live the ultimate cliche and do this 1st-post rant. Join me, won't you?

I am gay, Jewish and I grew up disabled. I got bullshit from kids based on my minor disability, all manner of retard jokes. I have faced my share of bullshit in everyday adult life over it. But I have never been offended by any of the so-called "ableist" posts one occasionally encounters on this community. I never felt oppressed as a homosexual, or as a Jew, or anything else while at the old scans_daily. It just never occurred to me to bring my whole life into the equation; the comm was about crack-y comics and it was a GLBT-friendly space, we had an easy sense of humor about it all, and that was where we all seemed to leave it. Maybe my experience is different from others; maybe I am also deeply privileged. But I never felt oppressed at scans_daily, until scans_daily moved and took on those heady delusions of grandeur about being The Ultimate Safe Space against all forms of oppression.

The simple fact is that scans_daily's stated new ethos failed before it began. As they say above, people of all stripe are fucking terrified. There is no way to be a safe space for everyone, because in the attempting of that, you end up being a safe space for no one. Nothing is permitted, because everything is subjective, and thus everything is potentially a hot button or a trigger for someone because of personal experience and/or hardship that only they are privvy to. For the moderators to pretend that this personal subjectivity trumps everything, and negates all manner of uniform rules of shared civility and conduct, is the height of naivete and failed utopian thinking, and it leaves the entire community divided and resentful, as we see yet again in this post.

The ugly and unpalatable fact that the mods are strenuously avoiding by politely insinuating that everyone else is intolerant for not getting it, is that there has to be a line. There have to be rules, solid and concrete ones, even if sometimes a mod has to be a dick to someone whose legitimate pain or issue they sympathize with. You can't just make the rules up everyday and shuffle 'em around a little like Three Card Monte based on somebody's RL personal issue which may have little to no bearing on the latest discussion of why someone doesn't like Wonder Woman's new jacket, or why someone else thinks this character or that one is an antiquated queer stereotype.

The bottom line is that it's just the fucking Internet, people. People, be they gay, str8, trans, whatever, ALL have personal points of view, they ALL have bias, they ALL have trauma, they have pet peeves, they even occasionally have the dreaded "Privilege," a term almost as overused around here as "anti-oppression," which from what I have gathered lately has recently come to mean, "any poster who has a problem with being relentlessly bullied in a place that is afraid to deal with a firm moderation policy." Like it or not, this is first and foremost a GLBT-friendly place for people to see scans of COMIC BOOKS. That means nerds. Lots of fucking nerds, ourselves included, you and me. You're going to get nerds of all race, creed, size, shape, nationality, orientation, self-actualization, and then some. And some of those nerds are going to be a little sheltered. They're not all going to be gay, or lesbian, or bi, or transgendered, or Jewish, or differently abled, or black, or Asian, or Latino, or Native American, or whatever else. People come to scans_daily to just be people together, enjoying comic books in a liberal-minded space. THAT's how you educate, through a shared community interacting on the basis of what they have in common. Stumbling sometimes, yes, but learning from there. Not through allowing shit to devolve into a series of bullying free-for-alls under the guise of "that's how they learn, and if we don't let X tear Y a new asshole, then we're not being a safe space."

Think about it: What will the offenders who were actually insensitive and sheltered in some of the more mild cases actually learn from these recent flare-ups? Never to fucking come here again, that's what. They won't learn. They won't stick around. They'll just retreat further into generic str8 comic comms and become more ignorant. And what about the kids who lurk who are still coming to terms with themselves, whether they're gay, lesbian, bi, trans, whatever? What do any of the screaming fits and amateur lecture tours do for the closeted kid in a rural area who doesn't know how to handle or view him or herself, or others like them who are out in the world? Do you really think this shit is setting them at ease?

"Until the (personally justified) rage passes" is not a moderation policy. I feel as though s_d has begun to promote a victim mentality. The way I see it the mods have to make harsh choices about what they value more - talking about comics in a liberal environment, or creating a safe space. You can have both in fair measure, but you're going to have to make sacrifices to your vision, and most of all, you're going to have to make real rules and stick to them. Because this endless shaping and re-shaping of the rules while refusing to acknowledge the larger problems of what your flawed "ethos" is allowing in terms of poster conduct is getting really pathetic.

That's all I had to say. Fire away.