Community Profile

The community is presently under moderated membership. Prospective members need to email the mod team with answers to the below questions so that we can gauge your fit for the community. DO NOT message or email individual mods with your answers. Please be succinct and informative. The mod email address is ljfeminist.mods@gmail.com.

APPLICATION QUESTIONS

1) What does feminism mean to you? If you consider yourself a feminist, why do you? If not, why not?

2) Most of us experience some form of oppression. Many of us also hold privilege, whether due to class, race, religion, language, ability, age, gender identity/expression, or sexual orientation. Have you dealt with situations where someone has confronted you about privilege you hold or oppressive comments/actions you have made? Please describe how you have dealt with one or more of these situations.

3) How have you currently or in the past viewed intersectionality, and how do you view the ongoing work of 'unpacking' your privilege?

Requests for membership made before a prospective member emails the team will be rejected. Your email MUST contain your livejournal username.

CODE OF CONDUCT FOR THE COMMUNITY

Members are encouraged to develop an awareness of the privileges they possess and to unlearn prejudiced beliefs. This means that the community does not qualify as “safe space” for marginalized people. Posters will inevitably say bigoted things during their learning process. In such cases, critique from other members is not a personal attack, but a vehicle for education. Repeated offenses and deliberate refusal to learn and to own mistakes will result in banning.

Most of us are both oppressed and privileged in a myriad of ways. Because this is a feminist community, we do not have leave to ignore other factors besides sexism that intersect to affect women's lives.

Participation in feminist means that you have read and understood the below rules. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse. If you have a question, please email the moderators.

1) This community has been established in order to discuss and debate feminist issues from an anti-oppression standpoint. A post with minimal text, requests for homework help, a repetitive post, or a post of the “look, isn’t this cool?” genre will be warned by the moderators. We also disallow memes and posts advertising local activism or charity events. None of these types of posts foster constructive discussion. If it is not amended after a warning, the post will be deleted.

2) NO TONE POLICING. As a participant in this community, you should expect to be called on your privilege. Responding to someone who is questioning an assertion from an anti-oppression standpoint with some version of “That was really mean” will earn you a warning. As noted above, however, the moderators cannot guarantee that feminist will be a safe space for marginalized individuals. Instead, we strive to be an accountable space--to hold each other accountable for oppressive behavior.

3) Do not bait other participants with inflammatory statements.

4) Do not derail posts.

5) Do not delete posts, or comments, or share content from friends-only feminist posts.
a. If the mods ask you to make an edit, or to delete to comply with the rules, you may then consider deleting your post. But deleting a post because you do not like the way comments are going is not allowed and will result in a ban.
b. Do not delete comments except in order to fix html, grammar, spelling, or post location. We are all accountable for our words, even if we regret them later. In a similar vein, do not freeze threads or screen comments, as those actions are reserved for moderators.
c. Do not share posts that are locked as 'friends-only' - by cut and paste or by screencap. Doing so will result in your being banned.

6) Place all long, image- or video-containing, or potentially-triggering posts behind a cut. Do not link to other livejournal communities without permission from the original poster as well as from one of this community's mods. Likewise, obtain permission from the original poster before linking to personal livejournals.

7) Do not post on behalf of non-members, as this allows them to circumvent our membership rules.

8) Moderators will use mod notes, warnings, or bans based on the seriousness of a member’s offense. A mod note may be the precursor to a warning, or just a note to a member or the community in an official capacity. A mod warning is the notice of a rule violation; three warnings will generally earn a banning, but banning can occur before three warnings have been incurred, if the mod team feels it is warranted. Banning is permanent removal from the community due to continued rule violation. The mod team reserves the right to ban, or to review a ban, at their discretion.

9) Do not try to reply to mod notes/warnings through comments or posts if you have questions about them. All notes, warnings and notices of bans are frozen to prevent commentary on mod action so that discussion can remain on point. If you have questions, please email the mod team at ljfeminist.mods@gmail.com instead.

10) Do not use icons that contain oppressive language and/or imagery. Be mindful of an icon's appropriateness when responding to an entry.

11) Even though feminist is not, as noted earlier, a safe space in the strict sense, reproducing friends-only entries or comments to friends-only entries elsewhere is grounds for an immediate ban, as is trolling member journals.

COMMITMENT TO ANTI-OPPRESSION

Below is a list of oppressive behavior to avoid in this community. This list is not comprehensive. If you have suggestions for its improvement, or questions about its content, please email the mods at ljfeminist.mods@gmail.com. This community adheres to the power+privilege definition for oppression—you oppress others over whom you have both individual and institutional power and privilege. We do NOT believe in reverse “-isms." Reclamatory usages by members of oppressed groups are welcome in this community.

Ableism
Classism
Ethnocentrism/US-centrism
Homo-/bi-/queerphobia/heterosexism
Racism
Sexism/misogyny
Transphobia/cissexism

Religion is to be respected in this forum. So is bodily autonomy, and we honor individual choices about medical treatments and sex work. Victim/survivor-blaming is never appropriate. Biological essentialism is often a precursor to transphobia/cissexism & queerphobia and is not acceptable in this community.

AFFILIATES

• feminist_101: For the basic questions and for HOMEWORK HELP.
• fem_activism: For local activism posts. Unless the post is directed to an entire country or is an internet based project, we ask that you do not post it here.
• 16steps: A community focused on feminist sobriety support. Many women facing a drug or alcohol problem find that AA is not the place for them and aren't aware that there are other alternatives.

Contact Information
The Moderators can be reached at ljfeminist.mods@gmail.com.

If the above address bounces mail back, please click the below link to send mail to each of our individual email addresses:

LJ Feminist Mod Team