Published on 12, July, 2020
I don't know about others, but I'm getting a little concerned that the arguments will put off new members.
Quite often people join and then disappear quite quickly.
I've been involved in these myself on occasion, so I'm not innocent.
However, maybe the mods could create a section where these potentially contentious threads could be placed that had a heading like NSFW (a new one on me but it seems to be well known).
If a seemingly innocuous thread then turns into a constant argument, perhaps it could be moved to there.
It's sometimes interraction between older males and older females (or non binary etc) and comes down to very different relationship/*ex points of view but can of course stem from any subject and any set of contributors.
I think it happens more often than it once did, and I've not been here a year yet.
You know I have a vision for this forum as an autistic safe space. What is an autistic safe space? It's a place where its safe to be your self and honest about your self and your issues with out having the outside world accuse you of being a weirdo and a creep. It's a place where we can be honest about our special interests with out apologising for the fact that they make other people uncomfortable. It's a place where people can honestly relate to each other with out having to do a stressful mental risk assessment on every word and joke. It's a place of tolerance where when people express views or tell jokes that upset each other they can work it out in a civil manner with out hurling accusations or villainizing each other.
It's a place where autistic people can come to discuss the difficulties they have interacting with the neurotypical world, whether that be in work, or relationships, or sexuality or anything else, without being made to feel bad because they don't conform to societies expectations and norms. Because they struggle to traverse a social landscape not made with them in mind.
What a safe space is not is a place where young autistic men new to the forum open up about the difficulties in their relationships / sex lives only to be dog piled by people vilifying them, even accusing them of being criminal.
People have been leaving this forum because of this. Lots of people have been put off when their 1st or second thread is filled with hateful comments against them only to be locked by a mod without any reassurance that they have done nothing wrong.
The last thing I want to do is create an echo chamber. This forum is better if its full of a diverse set of views and robust debate. However as they are subject to repeated abuse by a small subsection of this forum people are already starting to vote with their feet. If this continues, if this tirade of abuse is allowed to continue, this forum will become an echo chamber anyway.
If this happens I will have to seriously consider setting up my own forum for autistic people for those leaving this forum. I already run my own autistic rights advocacy type website and I'm more than capable of doing this. I don't want to do it. But I'll have to consider it if things don't improve going forward.
An autistic safe space must be a queer safe space, an ace safe space, and a trans safe space, given the enormous overlap in these already marginalized identities. The current rules would ensure this if they were enforced, but they are not, which has turned this place into an echo chamber where the existence of trans people is up for debate and men proclaim their right to sexually harass / coerce others and encourage new posters to do the same.
Peter said:If this happens I will have to seriously consider setting up my own forum for autistic people for those leaving this forum.
Go for it! That would be fantastic. I'm not saying that there can't be an autistic space run primarily for the benefit of and dominated by straight men, but it's shameful that the National Autistic Society is hosting it.
I assure you if I set up such a forum it will be for everyone. EVERYONE. And a place of tolerance, including tolerance of views people don't like so long as they are made in a civil way.
No. The education is free and there if you can be bothered to look for it. Now let this thread end for everyone's sakes.
I have to say that forbes article is really bad. A hand full of cherry picked anecdotes about accounts that were banned with no real response from the social media sites that did the banning as to why they were banned. They could have at least looked at the banned content critically to see if it violated TOS but it seems they are willing to take the word of the users. That's very unbalanced journalism.
That social media advertising can be abused by companies to get around equality rules is no surprise. But it's also unrelated to censorship because it's not about limited what people can say but rather targeting who sees it.
As for government use o social media so far the governments message doesn't really seem boosted about the myriad of different opinions out there. Again a cacophony of divergent voices both extreme and not is helping to ensure people don't just swallow everything there read online. Including what the government posts.