A few days ago, I decided to disable the forum I started last year (actually exactly one year ago this weekend — interesting timing) when the I Blame the Patriarchy forum disintegrated. It will be gone by the beginning of August.
Something Radfem Here was full of great stuff — incisive commentary, useful links, strong community. But it also often allowed some members the opportunity to indulge in, as Linda Radfem states, “letting off steam with a spot of online assholery directed at an easy target.” That is primarily why I shut SRH down — I decided it was no longer worth it to keep a place running so that some folks could continue to be assholes to each other. What was going on in some situations was not in the spirit of feminist consciousness-raising, so I threw in the towel.
My purpose here is not to lambaste anyone or even really to talk about SRH in particular. I’ve looked around the web a little for information about building online feminist communities — how-tos, strategies, tips, tricks, things to keep in mind — and I’ve found relatively little. So I’d like to use this opportunity to share what I have learned in the last year about building online feminist communities. I hope that someone will be able to use this knowledge to build upon the work I’ve done (and the work of folks like Twisty and Megann and the folks at Uppity Women, and countless other feminist forum administrators/creators I don’t know) and create even stronger online feminist communities.
If I Knew Then What I Know Now: Advice from a Feminist Forum Administrator
When I started the forum, these were the ideals I had to guide me in the creation and administration of the site:
* decentralized, shared responsibility for leadership and direction
* as little hierarchy as possible, leading to flexibility, diversity, multiplicity, and compassion, not just tolerance or acceptance
* hands-off moderation on boards hand-in-hand with strong defense of boards against users with ill intent
* respect for the independence and intelligence of women
* belief in women’s good faith and ability to choose for themselves
* respect and compassion for the anger, rage, and passion a lifetime in the patriarchy instills in women, feminist or not
* radical listening and deep empathy for others, especially women and others oppressed by the patriarchy
* a space in which women and radical feminists feel invested, empowered, safe, and free to examine their lives through the lens of feminism without insult
I still think it’s possible to create a community that lives up to most of these ideals most of the time — but I’m learning that it’s somewhat unlikely, and that the realization of such a forum relies greatly on the investment, intent, and energy level of the people involved. Here are some things I wish I had known before starting the forum.
1) Communal forum administration doesn’t work.
There is always going to be one person who has more tangible internet power and therefore social power than the rest with an online forum. Not all users can have moderator powers or have access to the administrative side of the site — nor should they. There will invariably be someone who will fuck something up, either intentionally or accidentally, with this level of power. Hell, I fucked up more than a few things myself having access to administrative tools I’d never worked with before. I can’t imagine how screwy the board would look with 100+ cooks in the kitchen. (And this doesn’t even get at the privacy issues this would cause: administrators have access to all members’ email addresses and the capacity to change passwords. Potentially dangerous territory.)
SRH had its fair share of problems with moderation, as well, because it’s extremely difficult to implement fairly and appropriately in a feminist space (more on moderation in #2). But even if moderation had gone perfectly, there would still have been a hierarchical power dynamic in place: administrator, then moderator, then users. This is simply the way online forums are set up, for the most part. You see this structure in Livejournal communities, blog-centered communities like Shakesville and Feministing, even wikis to some extent. Even when you don’t have moderators, which is the strategy I suggest taking with feminist forums in particular, the administrator can still wield unfair power over users. I’ll talk more about what this means for the administrator’s role on the forum in #4, but for feminist women users on these forums, navigating the power dynamics inherent to the site can be irritating if not outright scary and triggering.
I believe that Megann’s board, Feminist Lens, had planned on passing administration through different hands if other folks wanted it, which may be one way to counteract the problems of feminist forum administration. One potential issue, though, is that many forum users don’t want to be burdened with the responsibility of administrating a forum — which is fair, because it is a lot of responsibility and a lot of work for free. So even if you plan to have rotating administration, you may not wind up with this because no one will step up to help out.
I don’t think that this means that feminist forums can’t or shouldn’t exist — I think it simply means that new feminist forum creators/admins should keep in mind that there will always be some mistrust and misunderstanding between admin and users, because of this bewildering power dynamic. Part of the challenge of developing feminist communities online is figuring out how to mitigate this mistrust and misunderstanding.
(I’d like to note that these same dynamics would appear with even a small-group administration of two or three folks running the forum — and they may even be worse with the possibility of cliqueishness.)
1a) Fostering shared leadership through a democratic ethos
One way of calling the power relationship into question in feminist communities is by maintaining a democratic ethos: voting on changes, having a transparent administration policy, generally allowing the group to determine the shape of the community. There are many ways to maintain this ethos on forums: polls, discussion threads, private messages, etc.
Still, even with a democratic system in place for making policy decisions, choosing mods (and whether to have mods), adding new members to the community, the administrative role reared its powerful head when it came to implementing changes practically. For example, on SRH, meta-discussions of the board’s running would often go like this: one person suggested a change, there would be some discussion, and then the matter was, for all intents and purposes, dropped. As admin, I usually tried to revive these conversations and see if they would come to a more conclusive end so that I could figure out what I needed to do on my end. In other cases, I would put up a poll to determine what the membership required. By the time we got around to implementing changes democratically, the kairotic moment for such changes had passed, rendering such votes and conversations irrelevant. The most frustrating aspect of this for me was when I sought feedback on the policies I had drawn up at the beginning of the forum. Few people responded, and it seems to me (with no formal investigation) that few people even read these policies.
I think the problem was that people just wanted to talk. I just wanted to talk. But I felt compelled to formalize processes and policies and rules. I suppose that could be the teacher in me, or maybe I was just trying to show my respect for the community by trying to make it a safe place through more rules and guidelines.
My suggestion to the new feminist forum administrator is to think about the extent to which you will go to ensure democratic processes. Making everything democratic wasn’t feasible for SRH in my experience, because I was the only one implementing changes and putting up polls for voting. Everyone could start threads and discuss these possible changes, but it was up to me to keep up with these conversations and work to understand exactly what folks were saying they wanted. It was really rather painstaking, though it was often enjoyable and educational to learn why people were suggesting the changes they were. If I didn’t have to work, maintaining a real, true democratic forum would perhaps be possible; but I found that I just didn’t have the time to make it completely democratic.
One way of dealing with this that I considered at one time was to give everyone poll-creating powers (I can’t remember why I didn’t do this in the first place, actually). This way, I wouldn’t be the only one responsible for determining what the needs of the community were. But the problem that prevented me from doing this was trying to figure out what polls would be considered binding in terms of whole-forum policy. I was thinking of what would happen when one person polled the community to have one change done and another polled to have another, opposite change done — what would I have to do with two opposing outcomes? It just didn’t seem workable, and it didn’t seem necessary for the size of the group at SRH, either.
The morals of the story: having more rules/policies doesn’t lead to a safe space, and democracy is fucking hard work.
2) Don’t start off with moderation.
I should have known this, especially after the IBTP Meltdown of 2008, but I thought “hands-off moderation” made sense, for one thing, and that it could work in a feminist space. I was wrong on both counts. I learned this last year that you cannot have hands-off moderation. It is a contradiction in terms. You either have moderation, or you don’t. The end.
We voted in mods at SRH about a month after the forum started, and I pulled them about three or four months later because of all the problems having moderation caused. SRH didn’t need moderation — folks were getting along fine and learning from any conflicts that arose. What I meant by hands-off moderation wasn’t being enacted: I envisioned a more passive, come-to-us-when-you-need-it, mediation-style moderation, but this is completely unlike typical/traditional moderation on most other forums, so no one knew what this looked like. And I think the term “moderator” invited the newly elected mods to be on the look-out for possible problems — which some users took as creating problems rather than being proactive about preventing them.
When I pulled mods, I caused a lot of problems, as well. Many users saw this as heavy-handed, even as fascist and anti-feminist, if I recall correctly. Perhaps it was, but I was also not pleased with how moderation and the forum were shaping up (see #1 and #4). I think that, ultimately, removing moderators (and stopping moderation altogether, once I finally figured out that I was guilty of moderating, too, even while saying I wasn’t and didn’t want moderation) was the best decision for the forum and the community. But I wish that I had never begun the whole moderation thing, period.
My point here is that new feminist forums will organically figure out what works for them. Members may suggest moderation a few months in, and administrators and members should work together how best to realize that wish. But I’ll bet that most feminist forums will not want, need, or benefit from any sort of invasive, intrusive moderation where outsiders enter discussions to determine who is Right and who is Wrong and who should be Punished. This kind of moderation — which is really the only kind of moderation that ready-made online forums allow for — is completely contrary to the goal of feminist spaces. Feminists are able and should be allowed to work out their disagreements without the “authorities” stepping in to arbitrate. Assuming otherwise is promoting the infantilization of women.
3) Consider the effects of a stringent registration policy/process.
In order to keep the amount of trolling and spam low, SRH had a sort of intricate process for involving new members in the community. New members would register, and I would have to activate their memberships (oh, administrative tasks). Usernames I recognized from IBTP would be moved straight to the regular members group; new people who I didn’t recognize would go to the “New Members” group. (This was an admittedly subjective process, and a couple people from IBTP who didn’t post much got stuck in the New Members group — but that was almost always taken care of as soon as I found out who they were.) Individuals in the latter group would be able to post with approval to the New Members board, where they would introduce themselves. After a few days of discussion and welcoming, the regular membership would vote on whether the new member should be made a regular member, having regular permissions and access to the board. Voters who voted “no” were asked to explain why, so that the rest of the membership could be made aware of any potential problems or drawbacks of allowing this person into the community.
Usually, the votes were unanimously “yes” for new members; voting in male members was where it got sticky. There were lots of disagreements about allowing men onto SRH, what level of access they should have, etc. One of the few unbending rules I kept from the start was that men were welcome on SRH, or, in other words, SRH was not women-only and would not turn men away simply because they were men — it was always up for a vote whether particular men would be welcome, however. Obviously, this sort of approach made it more difficult for men to join the forum, which has many advantages as well as drawbacks for both sides.
The voting process alienated a few women, as well, and led to some new members leaving as soon as they became regular members.
Basically, SRH was an exclusive club. It worked for the members because it allowed many of them to work toward a safe-space feel with people they knew relatively well, and this safe-space feel allowed for discussions that we may not have been able to have had the forum been a free-for-all. On the other hand, alienating women isn’t really useful in a feminist space, and some (including myself on some days, depending on how I’m feeling that day) would argue that alienating men from wanting to participate in a feminist space isn’t useful for feminist activism either.
The bottom line: how and whether you accept new members into a forum community tells current and potential members something important about how the community works. Obviously, you’re never going to be able to please everybody, so no matter what you decide to do with registration, someone will be unhappy. So you have to abide by your priorities. The priorities of SRH were primarily to support and protect the current members, who were almost all adversely affected by the fallout of IBTP. We needed a place to go and talk and be with each other, and we didn’t need or necessarily want people we didn’t know intruding upon that space. I think that feeling changed after a while and we might have considered reworking the new member process — but it was also never suggested, so it probably was okay with most of the people who were members there. Still, I can’t help but wonder what the forum might be like now if it were easier and less time-consuming for new members to join — would SRH be more active? Would our conversations be more lively and diverse? Would some dudes be able to read and learn something that they wouldn’t be able to learn elsewhere?
4) Most importantly: What should the role of the board administrator be?
Can the administrator be a lively, opinionated participant on the boards, or will she be relegated to the role of a silent, behind-the-curtain housekeeper?
My experience tells me that the housekeeper role is more likely. As I noted in #1, there will always be mistrust between admin and the membership, simply because there is a power dynamic inherent to the relationship that is contrary to a trusting, mutually beneficial relationship. I found myself participating less and less in discussions on the forum because I didn’t want to inadvertently stir up any shit, and that meant that I was just doing behind-the-scenes stuff like approving new registrations, locking/combining threads people wanted locked/combined, etc.
Honestly, I think some folks on the forum saw me primarily as a housekeeper, as well. When things went wrong and people were getting frustrated with how the forum was going, some people saw fit to call me names, question my commitment to feminism, and, essentially, demand better service. My first thought was to point out that 1) the forum is free for them to use, and I have done much of the shit work for free, and 2) no one is forcing anyone to remain on SRH, and creating your own board is free. The problem, though, is that I have a relatively privileged voice because I’m the forum administrator, so people are more likely to listen to and empathize with me than with the people calling me out. Which isn’t really fair, to anyone. So my method of coping was mostly to shut up and do even more easily-ignored, behind-the-scenes shit work — to become the housekeeper even more completely than before.
It’d be easy (and pathetically self-pitying) to say that I got treated as a wife on SRH. But I had lots of agency and leeway and freedom. In a lot of ways, I avoided conflict by taking on the housekeeper role when I could just as easily have continued participating normally even while confronting disagreements with other members head-on. I was too busy and stressed out with grad school to do this, but I could have, and it may have led to greater learning and a stronger community.
So my advice to new feminist forum administrators is to decide how you’ll participate on the forum and don’t let anyone or anything prevent you from being a full member of the forum you’re running. If you want to engage with members on contentious topics, do it. (Of course, don’t wield your privilege to stifle conflict.) Talking about the hard stuff while acknowledging your various privileges is what feminist forums are all about, and these discussions could lead you all to a better understanding how to do feminist leadership and how to develop strong feminist communities.
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If any of you are thinking of starting a forum and would like my input, please let me know — I’m more than happy to consult. :) I’m not looking to join any new forums, though, as I think I’m tiring of the whole online feminism thing altogether. Probably because of the backlash.
Thank you to everyone who joined SRH. Thank you to everyone who taught me something about feminism, feminist communities, and feminist leadership. I’m sorry it couldn’t go on, but it was a fun and interesting ride while it lasted.
