Crinklewott 💕 @thingywott@awoo.space

even though the main reasons for pulling it out often involve scary circumstances, every time i get to use clojure for my actual work work, it's just such a breath of fresh air to use that it doesn't really matter

hee, words really can't put how grateful i am that it's a thing we can use

rude of my brain to want to deep dive into all of them simultaneously

gosssh, there are just so many things i wanna learn

anyway, i guess the tl;dr is that inclusivity is extraordinarily delicate, and if you want to be a good steward of an inclusive space, you need to be extremely purposeful and explicit about what you mean by "inclusive", and how you manage it

otherwise you will accidentally exclude people, and you won't have an easy way to change that after people start using your space

sometimes small musings about a certain group's inclusion can seem not egregious enough to act on

but even this kind of thing effectively excludes anyone from that group who sees it

after all, they can now see there are people who aren't sure they belong--and that idea was permitted, so who's to say how many people like that will be there?

it's no longer a welcome space

i feel like most people here recognize this part--the paradox of tolerance is not new information to most people who can even read this post

but the part that's easy to miss is just how extraordinarily delicate inclusivity can be

for example, not explicitly naming everyone you include can leave enough room for huge swaths of people to doubt they belong and leave enough room for people to debate if they are implicitly supposed to be there, thus effectively excluding the target of their opinions

that means inclusivity is actually Extremely Difficult, because you aren't just dealing with policy anymore; you're now dealing with the opinions of this policy by all of your attendees, and their willingness to exclude people who disagree with any part

like, spaces that allow people who want to remove the T from LGBT are no longer inclusive of trans people regardless of any official stances about their inclusion, but spaces who are collectively okay ousting the people with those opinions are

for example, there are kinksters who participate in pride, but because of how heavily it gets contested, the only ones there are people already confident they should be

most people who are encouraged to go, but don't already have this confidence to, won't

this means that the same shrinking pool of boisterous kinksters and the people who already would have enough confidence to do this kind of thing outside of pride are the only people who will attend

that group is effectively excluded

thinking about how inclusivity only works if the people you want to include feel like they should be included

that means if even a single person feels that anyone who is normally welcome shouldn't be included, that group is effectively no longer included

because if any group's inclusion is contested, the only people who will feel like they should be there are the same people who would already think that about other spaces; non-inclusive ones

the two now mean the same thing to that group

i know the source of the concerns isn't real

but when cool people who show solidarity with anyone who isn't hateful or harmful parrots it, it can really sow seeds of doubt

it can really make it feel like they have a point, and that it's okay if inclusivity doesn't extend to people like me

because my existence must be harmful, and exclusion is then a justified penance

it really hurts

but also, gosh, i really do wish more spaces where i am allowed existed

or that there was a way to normalize just being Around in more places without everyone needing to have Opinions about if that should be allowed because of the misinformation spread by people who have louder voices than we do

misinformation started by people who don't want us to exist for hateful reasons who are good at introducing us as a Concept Of Contempt to people who have never heard of us by reframing their hatred as A Concern they don't actually subscribe to

it really feels like just being allowed to exist is a lot to ask some days

and when agreed on "inclusive spaces for marginalized people" are filled with people who have problems with my inclusion, i don't really want to argue

if someone who is marginalized tells me i don't belong, i listen to them. it's not the same as when a hateful bigot does it

most of these people are lefty, and want inclusive spaces for everyone--just, we don't qualify

i have pretty fun anxiety, so it's Actually Quite Hard being my own advocate in what seems like a vacuum for support otherwise

what's worse is that i believe them sometimes

it's really hard to always have to justify my existence to people who are pushing to not have to justify their existence to others as well

nothing says "your acceptance is a different problem than ours" quite like that does

this sure has been an mh week

but that means chances of things improving are basically 100%, and i can get down with those odds~

this is the reason so many of us are hidden, and the reason that i feel like i'll never truly be welcome in spaces other kink is accepted

even in highly inclusive spaces, this just keeps happening

sometimes i feel like we're collectively the canary in the coal mine for kink positivity, but things like this just make me feel like we're just a part of a different domain entirely--where the inclusive spaces around us are safe places to theorycraft justifications for excluding us based on continuously-unchallenged misconceptions about why wearing diapers, or why wanting to feel little makes you the scum of the earth