A (very) brief history of WF

[SkullTraill]

Yeah very reasonable - even if you were 100% on board, it's unhelpful to speak in generalisations rather than specific instances. I'll report things in future. And who knows, it could end up being a reality check for me. It could be there were only a handful of things in a year, but they happened to be right when I started being more active, so I got a disproportionate sense of how common it is.

Alright, great. Also my PMs are always open if you want to bring something directly to my attention, and the suggestion section is also a great place to post if you want to gauge the general sentiment of WF members towards a change you might like.

I think that's the only part I disagree with - like I've made my gender clear, and also at times mentioned having a husband, and I don't think that should open me up to people being misogynistic or anti-straight. I shouldn't have to censor those kinds of basic life details in order to avoid sexist responses. If you look at people's introductions, most people announce their gender, where they live and what language they speak - sex and race. Simple identity labels come up naturally in discussion or when talking about magic in terms of your own life. If started a thread called "women's magic and practising magic as a woman" then yeah people can make a big deal out of my gender in that thread, but not if it's just a basic identifier in a discussion about something else.

I don't have to censor that about myself, to be clear, people haven't been sexist or idk anti-Australian? towards me, and so my expectation would be for that to be universal - simple identity mentions not attacked, only if someone sets out to make it the topic of conversation.

^ which I will bring up in future if there's specific instances of it, in a separate thread

I do understand where you're coming from. I only said it that way because while almost no one will have an issue with you being a woman or australian, there are undoubtedly people who aren't completely accepting of (for example) trans people. And those people, if you choose to bring it up in a introduction or other thread where it isn't essential to the topic of discussion, may want to focus some type of humour or remark about it.

At the end of the day, those parts of your identity are completely irrelevant to 99.99% of discussions on this forum. As the forum grows, it becomes less intimate, more sanitised to focus on the ore topics. Sure, you are absolutely free to share anything you want about yourself, but understand that you then take responsibility for bringing attention to something about yourself that others may not like. Still, no one should be allowed to break the rules over it and attack or harass you, but they may comment about it, and not always in a way that you would feel comfortable with. And for what?

Like I said somewhere else, this isn't social media or a dating app or identity forums or express yourself forums. You can contribute in almost any convo on WF without needing to show your face, real name, age, gender, sexuality, political affiliation. If someone introduced themselves as a 16 year old, they may be viewed dismissively by people who otherwise might have taken them seriously. And yes, that's the loss of the person dismissing them if the 16 year old is actually providing valid and useful contributions, but if the 16 year old complains to me that "people aren't taking them seriously" I'm going to be baffled why they ever chose to bring it up. And I'm not going to go out of my way to make people take them seriously aside from rule violations.

Of course, if they made a thread about "how to practice at home with a small inconspicuous altar" and someone derails the thread with "you're 16 stop doing magick" then that's off topic and would be handled. But if they mentioned it in their introduction post and someone replies with "you're 16, I don't think you should be doing ceremonial magick" then that wouldn't be against the rules. Sure, myself and other people would disagree and say, actually, start young it's fine, but it's still something like a "slight" that wouldn't be against the rules.

All that to say, sure, if you really want to, tell people about yourself. And yes, if people are harassing or violent towards you, they will be warned. If they try to derail a different thread you made where it isn't mentioned, then yes, that's off topic and they will be warned. But in the introduction thread or wherever you mentioned it, it will be seen as you making that part of the topic of discussion unless it's one of those super rare instances where you had to specify that detail to ensure you got meaningful replies. But that's very rare.

Myself and plenty of other people have put in something like aa decade at WF without anyone ever knowing my age, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, ethnicity etc, while still contributing plenty to WF. Yeah, I have trusted people from WF with some of that info in far more intimate settings (PMs, off site comms etc) but since I never want it to be the subject of any public discussion, I refrain from bringing it up publicly.

Of course, I understand not everyone minds/wants to stay that private, hence it not being a rule or anything official. But if you do, expect some labels to be attached to you, potentially unwanted attention, or unsavoury remarks. You won't be protected from that unless they break the rules in some way. And "don't make anyone uncomfortable" will never be a rule here on WF.

Anyway, at this point I think I am contributing to the derailment of my own thread. I wanted to keep parts of this exchange here so that others who come to this thread to get an idea of what WF is about will understand these aspects of WF culture, rules, and moderation. However, since we are close to being on the same page now, and have a good idea of each other's viewpoints, let's move this convo into PMs or a suggestion thread.

Thank you for engaging.

 

[Baal]

great read