Hey, Here Is Our Commenting Policy! You Should Read It! Whooooops Some People Haven't Read It!

Required Reading Before Commenting: Everything in the Feminism 101 section, all links below, and "My Vote. Mine." Please also familiarize yourself with Shakesville's Email Policy.

Culture: This is an advanced feminist space. We don't do newbie education on demand here, and we don't do flamewars with people who treat discussion of progressive feminist ideals as an abstract academic exercise or want to play "devil's advocate." If you have a question, ask it in the daily Open Thread, with the hope but not expectation that someone will be around who has the time and inclination to answer it and engage in discussion with you.

Short Rules: Be nice. Be thoughtful. Be open to correction in response to unintentional expressions of privilege. Respect the mods. Hold yourself to the same standards you hold the contributors and other commenters. Have fun. And expect to get whatever you give: If you respect the guidelines and the community culture, you'll get the same in return.

Long Rules: Comments are open to anyone as long as they don't troll and/or traffic in racist, sexist, homophobic, trans*phobic, ableist, ageist, sizeist, or otherwise overtly objectionable commentary based on people's intrinsic characteristics. Differences of opinion are welcome; no one has ever been nor will ever be banned on a difference of opinion alone. Hate speech, slurs, rape apologia, rape jokes and metaphors, violent imagery and rhetoric, threats, trolling, concern trolling, derailing, playing the Oppression Olympics, pointless belligerence, sockpuppeting, silencing tactics, accusations of bad faith, disrespecting the mods, including ignoring them, telling contributors what they should be writing about or how they should be writing about it, and/or invoking the [TW] blogmistress' personal experience to use against her, or doing the same to any of the contributors, mods, or other commenters, could result in any of the following: Your comment edited to remove offending material, your comment replaced with an incredibly sophomoric paraphrase, your comment deleted, and/or your commenting privileges revoked.

Being banned from Shakesville is not an invitation to take your issues to the email inbox of Liss and/or any of the other contributors or mods.

Whether you can comment at Shakesville is ultimately at our discretion—and plaintive, angry, or accusatory wailing about free speech will be met with yawning indifference. This isn't a public square. This is a safe space.

This blog is meant to be a refuge from the entire rest of the world where people who deviate in some way from arbitrary norms are ridiculed, marginalized, turned into punchlines, silenced, targeted, treated as less than, made to feel not good enough, put at real risk of physical harm, and denied rights, opportunities, access, equal pay, friendships, votes, equality.

We're all going to make mistakes occasionally—and for that, we need to make allowances. Everyone trips up now and then, even with the best of intentions, which is why we are resolved to endeavor always to be aware of our privilege, and, in moments of failure, remain open to criticisms and suggestions, think twice before responding defensively, and apologize when we fuck up.

We also expect the same of those who want membership in the community—which includes calling out others' mistakes in a productive and considered way, because no one is expected to be perfect. Everyone is expected to be willing to self-examine and learn, and therefore everyone must be willing to provide the space, the room to breathe, in which that reflection and growth can happen. A failure to support the provision of room to fail is a failure to respect the rules of the safe space.

And everyone is expected to respect the rules.

If you take issue with a blogmistress who wants her teensy weensy part of the world to be a sanctuary from the oppressions of the kyriarchy, if you feel that impinges on your freedoms, then off you go. You've got an entire world waiting who won't hold you to the same standard.

We expect more.