I hope that discussion about the word flounce was some ultra-meta comment about the state of feminist discussion on T’internets too, because otherwise I will cry into my pillow tonight.

I’ve never got the impression that they might have sympathy, indeed until a few months ago they tended to publish more on trans issues. Now I think about it, they also tended to comment more themselves, which often acted as a balance on the more bitterly contested comment threads. I’d be very dissapointed in them if it was indeed fence sitting.

I think personally I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt for a little while longer, at least give them the chance to get to grips with what is clearly an ongoing and widespread problem for them.

Definitely a big issue is (and I say this as someone who has moderated online commmunities in the past) that if you do not moderate proactively then people will take that as permission, regardless of stated policy and regardless of what you say. You need to be seen to be enforcing moderation. Ironically the more you are, then the less you need to, but it does take an investment of time and effort. Time they don’t appear to have. I think they have a real problem on their hands and no easy solution in that respect.

However, this does not excuse them. These issues have been rolling on and on, and not just with trans issues of course. It is this that makes me feel it is more a problem of policy than intent. It makes no sense to me to state they wish an inclusive community if they really do not care about intersectionality, that would just set them up to fail.

All that said though, I feel they need to take action and they need to do it soon if it they wish to avoid the perception of actually having prejudice and issues of privilege themselves as a group, no matter how inclusive that group of editors themselves are.

It seems as though the comment threads have been placed under moderation for the most recent two Feministing articles dealing with trans issues (These two threads.) The comments have died to less than a trickle and none of my new comments are posting… Either that, or I have been banned from those threads.