Spirit of the Wind

Content note: This week, the notorious sexist, transphobic harassment machine Zak Sabbath got another transgender games writer to drop off the face of the internet and/or social media. This is the third transgender (or otherwise non-cis) victim of his that I know of, who has committed infosuicide or otherwise severely curtailed their online activity because of him.

Frustrated with the tabletop games industry -- especially the regressive, authoritarian part of it called the OSR, or "Old School Renaissance / Revolution," but also people like Mark Diaz Truman who have helped to create a false equivalence in people's minds between abusers and their victims -- I had a public meltdown about it on Google+. This post reproduces that meltdown in its entirety.

For more information on the GamerGate of the tabletop games scene, Zak S, see Ettin's compilation thread and this compilation thread on Google+. Keep in mind that most of the TG scene is okay with this, or is cheering him on, and that Zak S was credited in the latest edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Player's Handbook.

( Vent posting follows )

Content note: Tense family stuff and inequality / sexism / racism.

( Read more... )

Carl Jung once said something about how loneliness has less to do with how many people there are around you, and more to do with whether or not you feel you can say what's important to you.

That's why I complain so much about inequality, sexism, racism, and so on. Every day I'm reminded that I live in a society founded on all of these things, even if it's slightly better (or at least more polite) here than in the States. I can't ignore it, the way the white people I talk to here can. And when they lapse into awkward silences, like when I made the comment about rich people paying for transit or another comment about Canada's treatment of indigenous people, it shows me what parts of their psyches and societies they are not willing to confront.

Conversely, when I meet someone I can talk about these things with I feel so much better about myself. It's like a weight's taken off of my shoulders, and I can approach the work of surviving within this society with a sense of humour rather than fatalism. It's not about nursing a grudge; it's about finding the strength to go on.

So thank you all for reading, listening, and commenting here. It means a lot to me.

Partly because pretty much all of the people I've been close to lately have been one or more of the above, including the Q, the I, and the A.

And partly because the kind of people who are pissed off about adding letters to the acronym deserve to be pissed.

The people I care and have cared about are here, and deserve to be recognized. Anything that makes them feel included is good.

Let's talk about Linux and open-source stuff for a minute.

Free Software is NOT about Accessibility or equality. I see evidence for that claim since more then 15 years now. It is about coolness, self-staging, scratch-your-own-itchness and things like that. When Debian released Jessie [a version of the Debian OS], I was told that something like Accessibility is not important enough to delay the release. If GNOME just broke all the help system by switching to not-yet-accessible webkit, that is just bad luck, I was told. But it is outside of the abilities of package maintainers to ensure that what we ship is accessible.

I hereby officially give up. And I admit my own stupidity. Sorry for claiming Free Software would be a good thing for the world. It is definitely not for my kin. If Free Software ever takes over, the blind will be unable to use their computers.

-- Mario Lang, If your software should be cross platform and accessible, forget about Qt

This mirrors my experience with the Free Software / open-source world. If it's not something an abled cismale hacker cares about, it usually doesn't get done.

Accessibility isn't just about blind or deaf people. It also means people with learning disabilities trying to understand what's going on, mentally ill people trying to accomplish a task while stressed to the breaking point, or arthritic people trying to click a small target. It means minorities being able to participate without being subject to harassment or insulting stereotypes. It means having a culture that encourages patience and empathy, instead of attacking people who display those traits.

I participated in GNOME's outreach efforts as a paid intern, in 2012, because I thought they were a group that cared about these things too. Some of them, I think, still do, and maybe it's even improving. But mostly the experience taught me how little women, and "women's work" (anything that isn't coding), are valued in this subculture. A subculture which has disproportionate power, over the lives and livelihoods of a lot of people very different from them.

I'm sorry for evangelizing it. I honestly thought it was for the best.

PS. Dreamwidth is actually pretty great about this stuff. It's also one of the very few Free Software projects where women are a majority.