Feminists

I can't imagine that I would *ever* block anyone. I can't imagine an emergency arising that would call for unilateral action -- but if something dreadful did happen, and hopefully there were at least other members around, I'd do it if it seemed to be the host's duty to do it. Otherwise, I might think someone needed blocking and put it to other hosts, or pass on requests for blocking to the rest.

There would also have to be some concrete event, substantiation of a complaint, demonstration of something characterized as "dismissive or abusive behaviour toward feminists" that really amounted to a pattern, and not just a bad hair day. I'm pretty tolerant of rough and tumble; my posts should always be read that way (apart from the invisible tongue-in-cheek idiotfaces).

I'm not tolerant of other people being lied about, their words twisted, ideas attributed to them that they have not espoused, and the like, in order to portray them as reprehensible.

But again, I can only imagine that banning decisions would be made not in haste, and not unilaterally, and not without at least an opportunity for hopefully all hosts to weigh in, and I would never expect that to happen in the space of less than a day. I'm not on a banning campaign, honestly. And I'd always prefer to ask that someone agree to lurk and come back next week rather than ban them.

I'm not big on shutting off avenues and sources of ideas and discussion, truly. I'm big on civil discourse -- which doesn't mean making nice, it means addressing what is said, not dismissing it, not misrepresenting it, not addressing something that was not said, not pretending something was said that wasn't, not pretending to know what someone thinks, not claiming to hold some trump card, and not going after the speaker rather than the words.

As an ordinary poster, I'm just looking for genuine engagement, and I'm almost always willing to say the well is never too poisoned to start that process. I want to see it start, though. Some straightforward talk.