BAD THINGS
Dec. 15th, 2009 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentric1. Stephen Conroy has announced that the internet filter will go ahead. According to the SMH:
Now, in theory, government censors should be apolitical etc etc blah blah blah public service code of conduct. We all know that could go any which way in practice. BUT AT WHAT POINT IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO RELY ON PUBLIC COMPLAINTS AND 'INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES'?
You know where that leads us? LJ STRIKEOUT. #AMAZONFAIL. YEAH.
Not happy. Plan on writing to Minister Conroy. Can I encourage you to do the same? Sounds boring, but apparently when the original policy was announced, the flood of letters forced his Department to take on a whole slew of temps. Write. Write now. Write over Christmas, when half the public service are away AND YET THEY STILL HAVE TO ANSWER LETTERS WITHIN THE SPECIFIED RESPONSE TIME. Write big letters and small letters, send goddamn Christmas cards, they still have to answer. And answering costs time and money, which are things the government does not have much of.
2. SPEAKING OF LJ. This morning, they announced that in the next code push, they would add a "gender" field to the sign-up page, and make it mandatory to display it on your profile. Said field included no "unspecified" or "other" option. Check out Synecdochic's post on the matter for details. She has since heard from the manager of US operations, and the code was a beta test and will not be pushed live. The gender field will be added to the sigunup page but it doesn't look like they're going to make it mandatory after all.
If they're not going to make it mandatory, this is... good. However, what's also come out of it is something I hadn't realised: all those ugly diet ads on my LJ page, the ones that made me decide to lock it down and migrate to DW? They're targeted at me BECAUSE I HAVE SELECTED FEMALE AS MY GENDER. I have now unspecified my gender and encourage you to do the same.
I quotethingswithwings:
I don't trust LJ any more than a snake in a box.synecdochic has (repeatedly) stated that DW is a queer-friendly, trans-friendly, just-plain-don't-want-to-be-limited-by-my-gender friendly space, and is offering DW codes to anyone negatively affected by LJ's policies. I still have a few codes myself: if you want 'em, let me know.
For now - since LJ have declared that they will not be pushing this code - I will not be making any further changes to my blogging habits. I will think about disabling comments on my fandom journal, and see how that goes over. Sooner or later, I will be disabling comments on this one. I hope later rather than sooner.
The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on crime, would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.
Now, in theory, government censors should be apolitical etc etc blah blah blah public service code of conduct. We all know that could go any which way in practice. BUT AT WHAT POINT IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO RELY ON PUBLIC COMPLAINTS AND 'INTERNATIONAL AGENCIES'?
You know where that leads us? LJ STRIKEOUT. #AMAZONFAIL. YEAH.
Not happy. Plan on writing to Minister Conroy. Can I encourage you to do the same? Sounds boring, but apparently when the original policy was announced, the flood of letters forced his Department to take on a whole slew of temps. Write. Write now. Write over Christmas, when half the public service are away AND YET THEY STILL HAVE TO ANSWER LETTERS WITHIN THE SPECIFIED RESPONSE TIME. Write big letters and small letters, send goddamn Christmas cards, they still have to answer. And answering costs time and money, which are things the government does not have much of.
2. SPEAKING OF LJ. This morning, they announced that in the next code push, they would add a "gender" field to the sign-up page, and make it mandatory to display it on your profile. Said field included no "unspecified" or "other" option. Check out Synecdochic's post on the matter for details. She has since heard from the manager of US operations, and the code was a beta test and will not be pushed live. The gender field will be added to the sigunup page but it doesn't look like they're going to make it mandatory after all.
If they're not going to make it mandatory, this is... good. However, what's also come out of it is something I hadn't realised: all those ugly diet ads on my LJ page, the ones that made me decide to lock it down and migrate to DW? They're targeted at me BECAUSE I HAVE SELECTED FEMALE AS MY GENDER. I have now unspecified my gender and encourage you to do the same.
I quote
thingswithwings:This is pretty much horrifying. I mean, some companies and governments have that kind of policy in place from the getgo, which is one kind of ignorant bullshit, but to have a more open policy and then reduce it to the oppressive binary system later in order to better target ads for weight loss and viagra? I mean, it's a perfect demonstration of how institutions force people into these gendered roles/scripts, then calls them into being as such - "great, you're a woman: now let us tell you how your body isn't attractive enough." This is, right here, how women and men are produced, and in the countries I live in at least, it's part of why women and men are produced (there's money to be made in the manufacturing of gender, in addition to the other paradigms of power that are created/reinforced by that process).
I don't trust LJ any more than a snake in a box.
synecdochic has (repeatedly) stated that DW is a queer-friendly, trans-friendly, just-plain-don't-want-to-be-limited-by-my-gender friendly space, and is offering DW codes to anyone negatively affected by LJ's policies. I still have a few codes myself: if you want 'em, let me know.For now - since LJ have declared that they will not be pushing this code - I will not be making any further changes to my blogging habits. I will think about disabling comments on my fandom journal, and see how that goes over. Sooner or later, I will be disabling comments on this one. I hope later rather than sooner.