hi! thank you so much for your comment, and thanks to everyone else who gave input in this subthread.
with the current phrasing of the rules, I was attempting to avoid either grouping all nonbinary characters in with female characters (thus treating them as "women-lite") or fully excluding all nonbinary characters from discussion here. as a nonbinary lesbian myself, I don't want to fully exclude nb characters from discussion here, but I also don't want to brush over nb characters in the rules in a way that implies it's fine to treat all nb characters as women-lite in discussions here.
how would everyone in this subthread feel about phrasing changes to Rule 1 as follows:
1. No boys allowed. Discussion of male characters is banned. 1.1 It doesn't matter whether the discussion is positive or negative in tone. 1.1.1 Yes this includes het. 1.1.2 Yes this means any whining about "yaoi" or "fujoshi" will be eagerly bahleeted by mods. 1.2 Discussion of Rule 63 characters/AUs, including trans woman headcanons for canonically male characters, is permitted at mods' discretion. 1.3 While this community's primary focus is female characters, good-faith discussion of nonbinary, bigender, genderfluid, and genderqueer characters is allowed. 1.4 Characters' gender is determined by the character's own self-identification or word of god when applicable. 1.4.1 Good-faith discussion of characters who don't neatly fit one gender category but could reasonably be interpreted as (cis or trans) women or as nonbinary (ex.: Jess from Stone Butch Blues, various fictional iterations of the Chevalier d'Eon, Jackrum and Mal from Monstrous Regiment) is allowed. 1.4.3 Discussion of female or genderqueer/nonbinary characters who use pronouns other than she/her is allowed. 1.4.4 In the context of this rule, gender-essentialist wank about sexuality/gender presentation/etc. and transphobic wank about genitalia/socialization/etc. are off-limits and extremely banned.
thank you all again for voicing your concerns here; making sure nb characters are handled respectfully by the rules of this comm is really important to me, so input on the gender rule is hugely valuable. in particular thanks to everyone who spoke up about the "aligned" language being wanky - although I'm comfortable with that terminology I see a lot of people aren't, so I will definitely change that.
Re: Meta thread
with the current phrasing of the rules, I was attempting to avoid either grouping all nonbinary characters in with female characters (thus treating them as "women-lite") or fully excluding all nonbinary characters from discussion here. as a nonbinary lesbian myself, I don't want to fully exclude nb characters from discussion here, but I also don't want to brush over nb characters in the rules in a way that implies it's fine to treat all nb characters as women-lite in discussions here.
how would everyone in this subthread feel about phrasing changes to Rule 1 as follows:
1. No boys allowed. Discussion of male characters is banned.
1.1 It doesn't matter whether the discussion is positive or negative in tone.
1.1.1 Yes this includes het.
1.1.2 Yes this means any whining about "yaoi" or "fujoshi" will be eagerly bahleeted by mods.
1.2 Discussion of Rule 63 characters/AUs, including trans woman headcanons for canonically male characters, is permitted at mods' discretion.
1.3 While this community's primary focus is female characters, good-faith discussion of nonbinary, bigender, genderfluid, and genderqueer characters is allowed.
1.4 Characters' gender is determined by the character's own self-identification or word of god when applicable.
1.4.1 Good-faith discussion of characters who don't neatly fit one gender category but could reasonably be interpreted as (cis or trans) women or as nonbinary (ex.: Jess from Stone Butch Blues, various fictional iterations of the Chevalier d'Eon, Jackrum and Mal from Monstrous Regiment) is allowed.
1.4.3 Discussion of female or genderqueer/nonbinary characters who use pronouns other than she/her is allowed.
1.4.4 In the context of this rule, gender-essentialist wank about sexuality/gender presentation/etc. and transphobic wank about genitalia/socialization/etc. are off-limits and extremely banned.
thank you all again for voicing your concerns here; making sure nb characters are handled respectfully by the rules of this comm is really important to me, so input on the gender rule is hugely valuable. in particular thanks to everyone who spoke up about the "aligned" language being wanky - although I'm comfortable with that terminology I see a lot of people aren't, so I will definitely change that.
ETA: this anon essentially voiced what I'm trying to codify in the rules: https://meme-of-bilitis.dreamwidth.org/879.html?thread=66415#cmt66415