(this started out as a reply to this tumblr post)

When I first started posting about social justice online, on my fannish livejournal, I posted about racism a LOT, with lots of self righteous LET ME EXPLAIN A THING. And then two of my non-white(*) friends said it was ruining my blog for them: one because she felt like I was speaking over her experiences, which didn’t match the monolithic How POC Feel Narrative I was ‘explaining’, the other because it was causing my clueless white friends to say racist crap in the comments. I had to fight back a defensive “But DON’T YOU WANT ME TO FIGHT RACISM??” reaction.

Ten years later and I’m still trying to figure out how to discuss racism in ways that actually help fight racism, and make the spaces I control supportive of POC/non-white people, rather than simply making the loudest possible noise about how it’s REALLY BAD YOU GUYS.
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Thank you! I really appreciate it!

I always feel really grateful and surprised when this sort of thing happens, and then am like "Does this mean I have minions I can get to buy me stuff? Am I somehow pressuring people to buy me stuff? AM I THE NEXT CASSANDRA CLAIRE??" But mostly I'm just happy :)

Yvi is asking for suggestions about a non-English language fest on Dreamwidth for people who don't speak English as a native language (including people who learn their culture's language later in life, but not someone like me who learnt a second language at school because it sounded like fun)

I think it sounds like a cool idea, and would be happy enough not posting for a day if that would help. I am wondering if people would prefer comments in English, my dodgy German (as appropriate), or machine translated, or if it would be better for me not to comment at all.

Es ist vielleicht besser fuer alles dass ich werde nicht eine ganz Post auf Deutsch zu schrieben :)

I'm going to mess about with my access filters a bit, is there an easy way to see all my locked posts at once? I'm SURE I remember one but I can't find it.

Also: am going to be messing about with my access filters a bit :)

So LJ has finally crossed the line for me by not only having pop up ads which infect people's computers with a virus but infecting one of my friends in particular.

I have thus decided I will at some point swap over to cross-posting the stuff that currently goes in alias_sqbr from alias_sqbr (yes, keeping lj comments enabled).

But before I can do that I need to know: is there any easy to switch between two dreamwidth accounts? Preferably one that works in Safari.

*Tests out the crossposting footnote thing, which I only just figured out*

So I don't know when it happened but reading filters seem to be working from the dropdown menu in my dw reading page, huzzah! I just went on a big reading filter reorganisation and added a few people.

Thus it seems like a good time to remind people to ask to be on my subscription filter if they're interested. It's mainly me ranting when I have too much of a headache to write a proper post, you're not missing much :) Anyone who reads this journal is welcome to be on the filter if they're willing to play by my rules, I don't have to be subscribed to you.

I don't actually have any new locked posts worth reading, but comments from people not on my access list get screened and given all the new people since I last asked it's a pain to unscreen them all :)

So: if you're willing to abide by the comment policy and want to be on my access list let me know and I'll add you. Yes, even if I don't know you, am not subscribed to you, you don't give me access, etc, if it's super personal ertc I'll put it under a more specific filter.

Here's all my locked posts to test your access on. No, there isn't very many :)

This is the basic stuff I assume as context when I post. The links are to extra info for the curious, I'm not going to assume people have read them!

I have a lot of social media accounts, almost always under the name sqbr.

Misc
My name is Sean, which isn't my birth name.
I was born near the end of 1979.
I was born and live in Perth, Western Australia.
I'm an atheist, shading into agnostic around the edges.

Social context
I'm afab and genderfluid.
I'm white, a mix of Anglo, Eastern European and Jewish.
I have anxiety and depression.
I have chronic fatigue syndrome to the extent that I can't work, and identify as disabled. (A rundown of my health issues) I also have a lot of food intolerances, use a power wheelchair, and can't walk up stairs without a lot of pain(*).
I'm married to distantcam and biromantic grey asexual.
My parents are well educated lefty artist types working unskilled low-paid jobs, which makes me ambivalent about my class status.

Interests
I'm a science fiction fan, and am involved in local con-going fandom.

I draw a lot, including comics. I also make visual novels (art, writing, and coding). My fanish creative stuff can be seen at my alias_sqbr tumblr and the AO3. I also have Professional Artist And Game Developer stuff that avoid linking to my fannish persona publically but can be seen here if you're on the access list for sqbr or here for alias_sqbr.
I have a Phd in computational mathematics and love science, though I kind of burnt myself out talking about it after working in Science Communication for many years. (My maths page)

Communication

I am sometimes very bad at judging social cues or figuring out what other people are thinking.
I sometimes have difficulty replying to messages.
I have conflict anxiety, but am pretty good with calmly expressed criticism.
I like discussion and expressing my opinions which can sometimes come across as a bit combatitive.
I like most people, and am very happy for random people to join in the conversations on my blog.

I'm very absent minded, so have probably forgotten some stuff :)

(*)These last two are less relevant to my blog and more things I like to mention as often as possible so that people don't invite me for wine and cheese at the top of a flight of stairs.

I've had a bunch of comments recently which have been sincere and thought out and not entirely without merit, but I was really ambivalent about unscreening them since I felt they might be hurtful to some of my readers.

Thinking about it helped crystalize what I was going for from the beginning with this journal: I am not the thought police deciding what is and is not a Valid Statement. I'm just trying to make sure the content here doesn't have a hurtful effect. If a conversation will be hurtful held publically, then I shouldn't make it public, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a Bad Conversation.

So: If you have something to say to me which is a sincere and thoughtful response to what I've said but you're worried it might go against the word or spirit of my comments policy, send it as a private message or email. If you want to discuss it with lots of people, make a post on your own journal and leave a comment with an explanation and link.

If you make a comment which I think deserves a reply but I'm not comfortable making public, I'll leave/make it screened and send you a private message.

Note that I may decide that I don't want to continue a conversation privately either: my spoons are very limited, and if it's hurtful to other people it may also be hurtful to me.

I've decided to try and approach being stuck at home as I might a holiday (of indefinite duration and limited resources :/) and so am slowly going through all the things I've been putting off for ages. It gives me a nice sense of accomplishment.

Anyway, I just went through my draft posts folder. To begin with I had 84 drafts going back to 2007, now sorted into:

• 34 I had already posted (including a few drafts of comments)
  
• One I posted right away (since it was a teeny post that probably won't get much of a reply)
  
• Two I will post in a little bit when I'm sure none of my posts from the last few days are going to explode in a hurry
  
• 2 about ethics
  
• 3 about gender
  
• 2 long rambles about my personal history that grew out of other ideas (probably won't post these :))
  
• 15 about race
  
• 4 about religion
  
• 9 misc (polls, a discussion of allergies, other random stuff)
  
• 8 I decided were crap
  

Next up: going through each subfolder and seeing if I can combine the various drafts into one or more posts (or additions to the "just crap" folder). Many of these are just variations on the same ideas, there were a HEAP about artistic responsibility going back to some of my earliest drafts but I think I've finally articulated my position on that so they all went into "posted".

Does anyone else do this? And yes, it is scary to think that the huge barrage of rambly crap that makes it onto my journals has already passed through a winnowing and editing process :D (Though most of my posts are written off the cuff. Like this one!)