We never really managed to figure out when you got banned or why, so let’s just call it a clean slate. You’re unbanned — your comments should turn up immediately from now on (except when the filter gets happy, which happens to me sometimes too). :-D

A moderator is trying to contact you. Perhaps he has the wrong email address.

In a nutshell: At some point in the long distant past, before Myca and I became moderators, you ended up on our banned list. That’s why every comment you make ends up in moderation.

I noticed your name on the banned list and pointed it out. We, the moderators, are trying to determine how that happened and whether you should still be banned. Sometimes the wheels of communication take a bit of time to grind. Picture a conversation in slow motion, and then slow it down about 20x. There’s nothing malicious about leaving you in moderation; it seems to me that it’s been a game of hot-I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-this-right-now potato.

The good thing about this conversation is that if we unban you, then your comments will stop going into moderation automatically, and you will no longer be chained to our schedules, stresses, and whims. The bad thing is that you’ve had like 4 comments in mod for an annoyingly long period of time.

Also, this isn’t what’s happening to you, but in case it’s useful for anyone to know:

I don’t know the figures, but it seems to me that I end up doing a lot of the dealing with the moderation queue. That’s fine, as I’m at my computer enough to usually be able to keep it pretty clear. Unfortunately, it means that when I encounter a comment that I find problematic, but I don’t want to make the call as to whether or not it should go through, I’ll often defer it — and sometimes it seems to take a few days before one of the other moderators has a chance to cast their wiser gaze upon it.

Anyhow, once a comment is in moderation, it stays there until I approve it. And if I happen to be busy or asleep, that can unfortunately take a while . Sorry about that - but it really IS necessary. Blame the free market for creating spam.

And do you or other mods single certain people out and let their posts languish in moderation for many hours (or days) while letting others through in a timely manner? Would you describe such a stealth mod policy as honest and fair?

I’m new to the discussion at hand and, despite my obvious ignorance, would like to join all of you.

I am an ardent, but not strident, feminist with certain convictions concerning sex, gender, power systems, and semantic networks–the rules by which society maintains itself on a daily basis.

I am also here to learn through the dialectical process you have established for this blog site.

I’d appreciate it if people could start moving the discussion over to that other thread. Thanks.

Re: Q Grrl in 351: Agreed. “Safe space” not only doesn’t exist, but attempts to create it, in my experience, effect only silence or couched communication so mealy-mouthed and jargon-laden that silence is preferable.

That said, as one of the women who posted this weekend about feeling uncomfortable commenting at Alas, what is far more alienating to me than predictable trolls saying vicious things is theoretical allies attacking each other in highly personalized, vicious ways.

And that’s harder to address, because it’s not just about saying ‘eeevile bigot, go away’ - it’s about creating civil discourse and holding everyone accountable to it. Civilly.

I’m not sure how I feel about flags and community moderated comments - as others have said, I’ve seen this fail more than succeed in the hands of mobs. And given that some of the worst attacks I’ve seen here come from aforementioned theoretical allies, I have my doubts about it being effective.

My .02.

By the way, re: feminist exodus - I’m one, and I read and appreciate Alas primarily because I’m interested in seeing what’s going on in ally discourse.

Being a believer that women changing their behavior is irrelevant to ending sexism, violence against women by men, etc., I’m damned invested in what men have to say about misogyny.

This blog has only been in existence for about (just over) 4 1/2 years. I remember when Amp started it, because it was just around the time I moved in with him

That’s odd, because the archives go back five years at least. Are they a carry-over from another blog?

It has certainly educated me. I don’t know if the rest of you find value in that, but I certainly do.

I never intended to imply that this blog had functioned to convert the regressives that we see comment here. Perhaps it has tipped folks who never comment - we don’t know. More importantly, it has educated folks, like me, who were feminist or pro-feminist or feminist leaning, but much less knowledgeable than the crowd that commented here.

For example, my position on pron has evolved remarkably due, primarily, to comment threads at Alas. There is no doubt that I changed my position with respect to prostitution (legalize or something else?) because of several comment threads here.

If you find value in educating allies and potential allies, if you find value in changing the opinions and views of the aforementioned comparatively ignorant feminists & feminist allies, then I think that Alas has been a valuable resource.

This blog has only been in existence for about (just over) 4 1/2 years. I remember when Amp started it, because it was just around the time I moved in with him.

Yeah, I was just estimating (and misremembering), but doing a search on my old username, I’m not finding any posts from pre-2003

I don’t know why Daran, BrandonBerg, et. al are here. Robert’s a childhood friend of Amp’s, right? So that makes sense. But Daran and BB? I don’t know if I’d characterize their motives as strongly as chryst did, but it sure doesn’t seem like they’re here to be persuaded by us anymore than we’re here to be persuaded by them.

I might well be wrong in my perception, but I’ve been posting here for about 5 years (originally under the name JRC), and it seem to me that we’ve seen some shift in Robert’s positions over the years. He’s still to the right of just about everyone here on just about every issue, but (and like I said, my perception might be off) but it seems he’s not as far to the right, and that he’s embraced fairly feminist positions on a few issues.

—Myca

The new-ish site Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog is an ever-increasing compendium of FAQs and 101-level discussion, including I asked some feminists a question and instead of answering, they sent me here - why?

It’s a great resource, and could serve the same purpose as archived discussions (or support them), particularly if it became a habit of regular Alas posters, moderators, and commenters to refer people to it rather than engaging in off-thread argument or education.

I came here for the same reasons, I stay for the same reasons, and I also disagree with just about everyone here about something. (And who can say that they agree with anyone about everything?)

And I regret the exodus of feminists.

I find it useful to engage with… smart people who hold very different ideas than I do.

I don’t honestly know how feminist I am, or how feminist I look to the feminists here, so I don’t know if I’m a good example or not. (I’ve been told off at least once for being too concerned with ensoulment issues.) But I came here because I was looking for info on the then-current Terri Schiavo case, and Amp had a very smart and articulate post about her absence of functional cerebral cortex.

I stayed partly for the reason Robert gave above, but more for my original reason: to learn something from people better informed than I on a given subject. Like everyone else, my knowledge varies all over the place: on some subjects you’d have to be much better informed, on others you’d just have to know the terms, to teach me.

Likewise, I disagree with just about everyone here about something, but that just makes life more interesting — except, as I said before, I do regret the departure of so many feminists.

Tongue-in-cheek, I assume?

ChildISH friend. Actually Amp and I were friends in college and that general timeframe.

Although I don’t hang around here because Amp is my buddy. I hang around here because I find it useful to engage with relatively smart people who hold very different ideas than I do.

But there’s a difference between educating people who might actually budge, and educating people who …

well, frankly, I don’t know why Daran, BrandonBerg, et. al are here. Robert’s a childhood friend of Amp’s, right? So that makes sense. But Daran and BB? I don’t know if I’d characterize their motives as strongly as chryst did, but it sure doesn’t seem like they’re here to be persuaded by us anymore than we’re here to be persuaded by them.

What bean says is only part of why that won’t happen here. The fact is, Amp likes debates about where life/personhood/ensoulment begins. This is also one of the few places where explaining that there is more to racism than individual actions actually happens. In short, Alas is sort of a remedial education site for progressive issues. I think that it always has been, even if it wasn’t originally intended that way.

This isn’t a new complaint, I’ve seen this brought up a number of times over the years. Yes, it is tedious to go over that basic info repeatedly, but I honestly think that it serves a useful purpose.