I was hoping you'd have thoughts on this, as your thoughts are always valuable to me. :)
Or they mean they're speaking to a specific group, and don't care about the opinions of people outside that group.
I guess part of what is bothering me is when people assume that the group they're addressing doesn't include certain people, or explicitly say that it shouldn't. Such as the filkers in that discussion assuming that they wouldn't be singing in front of sexual assault survivors (or comparing objecting to songs that excuse rape to songs about talking vegetables), or those who have said that the problem around harassment is that women need to get used to what SF cons are like or stop attending, as if women haven't always been congoers and con-organizers.
The "how dare you censor me, freedom of speech is too important for me to care about the effects of what I say" position is absolutely not unique to fandom, but that doesn't mean fandom should maintain it as a philosophy, I think. And it seems that if fandom is maintaining that particular philosophy I need to consider if I'm supporting it by participating publicly in fandom.
Re: this got long
Or they mean they're speaking to a specific group, and don't care about the opinions of people outside that group.
I guess part of what is bothering me is when people assume that the group they're addressing doesn't include certain people, or explicitly say that it shouldn't. Such as the filkers in that discussion assuming that they wouldn't be singing in front of sexual assault survivors (or comparing objecting to songs that excuse rape to songs about talking vegetables), or those who have said that the problem around harassment is that women need to get used to what SF cons are like or stop attending, as if women haven't always been congoers and con-organizers.
The "how dare you censor me, freedom of speech is too important for me to care about the effects of what I say" position is absolutely not unique to fandom, but that doesn't mean fandom should maintain it as a philosophy, I think. And it seems that if fandom is maintaining that particular philosophy I need to consider if I'm supporting it by participating publicly in fandom.