Discussion for the New Policies-post

[Kellis Amberlee]

This is a discussion thread for our new policy post.

We'd love to get your feedback, even when it's in the form of disagreement. Feel free to discuss and come up with suggestions to further FOCA.

[rageasaurus]

Hello mods and fellow Awkwardeer commenters. As a person who is guilty of botching an effort to call out language that I found hurtful, I wanted to offer my thoughts.

I wholeheartedly agree with and welcome the new policies that have been outlined. I accept full accountability for my botched call-out - and for what it's worth, I realized I'd messed up and wrote a follow-up apology to the OP back then - and looking back, I recognize that having these guidelines at the time would have helped me to get this right. Also, I somehow hadn't noticed the derailing aspect of call-outs, so I appreciate having that pointed out, as well as the suggestions for how to better handle the situation.

On a related note, I also saw the thread about abbreviations/acronyms being confusing. I hereby raise my embarrassed hand as an offender, and I won't be making that mistake again. I was short on space in my post header, and I resorted to my Twitter habit of shortening words, erroneously taking for granted that people would understand my abbreviations. That said, would it be possible to add characters to the maximum length of post headers? I understand if not. I can certainly work on being more succinct. :)

I really appreciate this community, and I hope I don't goof up again, but it's also good to know that there's room for goofing up, apologizing, learning, and growing. I tend to be pretty hard on myself when I mess up, and I had to fight a jerkbrain flareup to avoid running away and staying away both after I initially messed up, and when I saw this new policy. Thank you all for being awesome, and I will continue learning and doing my best along the way.

[Hattrick]

Thanks for all you do and your thoughtful approach, mods.

[Kaz]

That policy is looking really good!

In fact, I'm going to get all meta and test the policy in the thread discussing the policy, because there's a bit that makes me feel a little uncomfortable:

if you can't, because you're too upset/don't have the spoons/have lost the ability to articulate, either say so ("I have no spoons to explain, but ouch. That hurt a lot." - for example)

I'm pretty frustrated by the development in which "spoons" is being used more and more by nondisabled people for their experience of low energy, thereby changing the meaning in a way that makes it useless for what it was originally intended for. And I feel as though stuff like the quote contributes (especially the fact that the example sentence contains it), because people run across the term, work out the meaning from context and pick it up as a cute metaphor without realising it's disability-specific? I'm not 100% sure on this, though, so I'd be happy to dicuss it in a different thread.

...was that too long?

[CodaSammy]

This is a discussion thread so I think a brief sidetrack onto "spoons" is fine without being a derail :)

You're right, Kaz, and I have heard this criticism of the phrase before, so I try not to use it for myself. I wrote that particular paragraph, and I was thinking of someone who was disabled and unable to explain why something bothered them - but I can see how that doesn't come off, especially since it's used in the example. I'll think more carefully on my usage of the phrase in the future.

I'd actually be really interested in a thread discussing the problems surrounding it; I'm getting ready for work and shouldn't be posting at all (oops) so can't start it right now, but I'd love it if you did!

[Kaz]

This is a discussion thread so I think a brief sidetrack onto "spoons" is fine without being a derail :)

You're right, Kaz, and I have heard this criticism of the phrase before, so I try not to use it for myself. I wrote that particular paragraph, and I was thinking of someone who was disabled and unable to explain why something bothered them - but I can see how that doesn't come off, especially since it's used in the example. I'll think more carefully on my usage of the phrase in the future.

Honestly, if the surrounding context were different - if "spoons" were commonly understood to refer to disability issues only - I'd be right behind you and be happy that the post was explicitly inclusive of disabled people. Which is one of the reasons I said I wasn't 100% sure about this. But fact is that context is one where "spoons" gets used a lot by nondisabled people, I suspect in part because they pick up the metaphor through osmosis without ever really learning where it came from. And in that context, I think the quote as it is would contribute to that.

And looks like R.J. beat me to thread creation!