The Slacktiverse

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There will be a redirect placed on this board, its pages, and its RSS feed; in the meantime comments here are closed. Thank you!

There is a poem by Archibald MacLeish called Ars Poetica, usually translated as "The Art of Poetry,"* which ends in the couplet:

A poem should not mean
But be.

Assuming I understand it, I agree with it.  In fact I extend it well beyond poetry.  My primary concern is usually stories, and I would say the same thing, a story should not mean, but be.

This has had a tendency to get push back.  "Haven't you heard about symbolism and allegory?" I have been asked.  Yes, I have.  But here's the thing: those are hard to do well.

Before I expand on that, let me say this: a poem will always mean.  A story will always mean.  People are meaning creating machines.  We couldn't create something meaningless if we tried and even if we did the reader/hearer/viewer/player/experiencer would find their own meaning in it.  But the poem "Ars Poetica" is not about poems but the art of poetry.  It's addressed to the poets, and so I take the statement "A poem should", repeated six times in the full poem as a message to the poet about what their priorities should be.

I would expand that the the creators of all fiction, non-fiction as well but that should be obvious since to even be non-fiction it has to be about what actually happened, otherwise it's just fiction packaged as non-fiction.

So I take it to mean not that the result shouldn't have meaning, but the meaning shouldn't be the top priority, instead the being should be.

Which brings us back to symbolism and allegory.

In both the idea is that something stands in for something else.  The stand-in is what's actually in the poem/work of fiction (and thus the being of the poem), the meaning is what it's standing in for.  In a well crafted work with symbolism or allegory the stand in is chosen so well that, within the work itself, the stand-in and the thing it stands in for never conflict.

That is hard.

It is hard because the stand-in is not the thing it stands in for, that's what makes it symbolism or allegory, and so they will not be the same in all situations.  Sometimes there will be a place where stand-in would do X and thing stood in for would do Y.  They are different things and getting different things to act the same way isn't always easy.

To have well crafted symbolism/allegory you have to choose a stand-in that will act like the thing stood in for in every important situation that comes up in the whole of the work.

The same goes with deeper meaning that doesn't involve symbolism and allegory.  Maybe you have a message you want to send, but to do it well you need to make sure that the stuff actually in the work, the work's being, doesn't conflict with that message.  It can be hard to do.

And since it is hard to make the things line up, the result is that they often don't.  Meaning goes one way, being goes the other.  The creator has some options:
1) Give up in despair
2) Major rewrite so that when it reaches this point the meaning and the being don't conflict.  You've got to change the being somehow, but in doing so you've got to look back at everything that came before to take into account how whatever change you made would have influenced that stuff and rewrite accordingly.
     Say your allegory requires a character to make a certain decision, but what you've written before shows that that character isn't the sort of person who would make that decision.  You'd have to change the character, which means changing how the character was portrayed before, every action, every interaction, has to be reconsidered, every result from either.  The changes potentially cascade outward in ways that potentially change everything.  It might be easier to to restart from scratch.
3) Keep what has come before unchanged, ignore the intended meaning, and follow from the story/poem/show/movie's being.  Go with what's on the page, so to speak, and let it be what it will.  The meaning will take care of itself, even if the result isn't the meaning you intended.
4) Keep what has come before unchanged, ignore what that tells you about where things are going, and tell the story that the meaning requires.

1) Doesn't result in a finished work, and need not be considered.
2) If done right, produces a finished product indistinguishable from something where meaning and being never conflicted in the first place.

Three and four are where I see the meaning being conflict.  Three is what you do if you think things should be rather than mean, if you think what is on the page is more important than the intent behind it.  The intended meaning may be mangled, but the story will be internally consistent.  No one needs to act out of character, nothing needs to come out of left field, no established rules need to be broken, so on, so forth.

Four, in my opinion, does not work.  Because it sacrifices what's already established in favor of what the creator wants to say and that always shows up.  A character suddenly acts out of character, a situation is obviously contrived, a well established rule is broken, things make no sense in context.  The difference between what was supposed to be symbolized and the thing used to symbolize it is such that what was supposed to be an ok relationship becomes an abusive one in the context of the work.  Stuff like that.

But the result is more than just poor art.

The conflict between the meaning "This is just supposed to represent [whatever] so the fact it doesn't actually make sense when taken literally is ok," and the being, "Given the actual situation presented This Does Not Make Sense/Is Downright Evil Though You Call It Good," undermines the meaning. It makes you look at it and think, "Ok, so maybe it meant X, but given that they had to do [atrocious writing] to get there, why in the hell would I accept that their views on X have any value? They had to be dishonest with the reader/viewer to reach that point."

Choosing meaning over being undermines both.  Choosing being over meaning risks producing a meaning never intended, but it produces better art and it means that whatever meaning is produced will be stronger for staying true to what has come before.  A stronger being creates a stronger being.

Art will always mean and be but if forced to choose between the two as an artist, staying true to meaning, or staying true to being, then this is what you should keep in mind, "Art should not mean, but be."

[This could be considered the almost from scratch reincarnation of a comment at Ana Mardoll's.]

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* Technically if you want to be extremely literal it's closer to "the poetic art" because the way Latin formed the name of a given art form was "ars" plus adjective, where the translation "of poetry" implies a genitive noun which "Poetica," is not.  The important thing is it's about the art form, not the result.  It's about making poems, not poems, not reading poems.

Remember how I said everyone's crunch time hit at the same time?  Remember how I said this would probably end up being a low post week?  Well that applies to the yet to be started deconstruction round up as well.  So instead I give you a hastily produced effort at looking at a traditional fictional convention from a different perspective.

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So you've just been turned into a zombie.  You're slower, your fine motor skills are lacking, you can neither speak nor sign, your walk is a sort of shamble, but that doesn't bother you, does it?  Because suddenly everything is so clear to you, finally, at last, you understand what this was all about all along.

The answers to questions that you never thought to ask when you were one them come so easily to you now.  Before you took the next step in the evolution of the species did you ever ask why there was never any infighting amoung zombies?  Did you ever ask why a lone zombie might be hiding in a darkened room or stay facing away from lower beings so that they couldn't see it's bloodstained mouth and would mistake it for one of them, yet while in a group no effort would me made at self preservation or subterfuge, only at making sure that some part of the swarm broke the line and delivered the "infection", such a small word for so wonderful a thing, to the other side?

You understand now, don't you?  You're part of something larger than yourself.  You have a higher purpose.  In a group you realize that the survival of the group is more important than your own survival, but alone you have to carry the purpose on your own shoulders, and thus must take more precautions.

You understand why we have to stop them.  They're not just a food item, would that it were that simple.  They're a dangerous and unpredictable food item.  In a fair fight they'd lose, so they don't fight fair.  Guns and bombs and technologies thrown against us when we are content with what nature gave us.

Any attempt to uplift them, to give to them the purpose you have been given, is met with violence.

They wish to exterminate us, the genocidal maniacs, and so we must fight back.  Convert them to our side or eat them, but make sure they're no longer a threat.

So wrapped up are they in their petty concerns that they never think of us as anything but something to be destroyed just because we're not like them.  And we're not like them.  We get things done, we work together.  We would never ruin each others lives for bits of paper.  We would never throw others of our kind to the curb to get ahead ourselves.

We are united by common purpose and absolute loyalty.  Think back to before you changed.  Remember the doubt and uncertainty, never being sure if you could trust those around you?  Remember wondering what everyone's agenda was?  Remember how limiting that was?  Never being sure that your allies were really your allies?  Never being sure that you were all on the same side.

Compare it to now.  You know no other zombie will betray you.  You know that we're all in this together.  We are all equal, we are all one.  United by our higher purpose, our next step toward a more perfect species.

For thousands of years humanity was forced to rely on technology to compensate for it's inherent weaknesses, but no longer.  We've crossed a threshold where we no longer need anything but what our bodies provide.  We are the future.

But also remember, also remember the revulsion you felt back when you were one of them.  When your mind had yet to be expanded and you were hampered by a short shortsightedness of metaphorical vision greater than your current shortsightedness of physical vision.  Remember how you saw us as monsters to be wiped out, disgusting and subhuman.  Remember how racist you were then.  How horribly opposed you were to change and how violent your urges against us were.  Remember the unthinking murderous response to us.

Remember these things because they're what makes coexistence impossible.  Some don't remember.  They shamble up to or passed the lower humans and quickly learn that there is no possibility of truce.  Unless the first shot lands in the head, then they don't have time to learn.

It is true that the first response of most zombies is to try to pass on the gift or, in rarer cases, to feed (the transformation tends to leave one feeling hungry) so there are definitely times when our side strikes first, so to speak, and the response to this gift, or attempted gift, is often a bullet to the brainpan, squish.

But more often the first shot is fired by the other side.  Sometimes from such a distance the zombie never saw it coming.  We don't have to threaten them to be attacked by them.  They are threatened by our very existence.  Their objective is to wipe us from the face of the earth.

After which they'll no doubt sink back into their petty infighting, class war, international war, racism, sexism, homophobia, oppressing whoever they can whenever they can.

But we will not go quietly into that night.  We will fight their attempted genocide of us tooth and nail.  And if we succeed then true egalitarian will reign supreme for all time.  For in us there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for we are all equal, we are all one.  Imagine no religion, no country, no possessions, nothing to kill or die for.  You don't have to imagine, it's already here.  But those who pervert nature with their technology are trying to destroy all that.  They're trying to kill us all, and they make no secret of it.

Why?  Because we no longer speak their language?  A small price to pay for the gift.  Because we look different?  You'll never see a zombie judging someone by their looks.  Because we're an acceptable target and they're always ready to lash out at one of those?  Not good enough.

They fight us with a thousand slings and arrows, they fire bullets from far away, they use fire stolen from the gods against us, they stab and they slice, they bomb, perhaps even nuclear.  We meet them with nothing but what nature gave to us.

We will not be destroyed.  We will not be exterminated.  We are not some pest to be wiped out.

So you've just been turned into a zombie, and now you understand.  We all welcome you as one of us.  We don't judge you, we don't create artificial divisions, we don't carry with us prejudice.  We welcome you as our equal because we are all the same here.  You are our equal, and we are yours, and united by common purpose we will defeat the genocidal maniacs who seek to wipe us out.

Welcome to the community of equals.  Welcome to a place without prejudice.  Welcome to a family that will never cast you out, never betray you, never present one face to you and another behind your back.  Welcome to a place where the answer to, "Can't we all just get along," is a resounding, "Yes!"

Before you were given the gift you probably looked down on us.  You looked at our slow speed, outside of short quick bursts, and found it comical.  You looked at our poor coordination and found it limiting.  You looked at our inability to speak or sign and found it a sign that nothing was going on in our minds.  You probably saw us as subhuman.

But now that you're here, don't those things seem like such small prices to pay?

So you've just been turned into a zombie.  Welcome to the new mother nature.  No more petty bickering.

If I have a plain text introduction will that stop me from messing up the widgets?

Any denizen of the Slacktiverse who has posted an article to their own website since they last submitted to a weekend post is invited, enticed, and cajoled to send a short summary of that article along with its permalink to the group email. That summary and link will be included in the next weekend blogaround. This will help to keep members of our community aware of the many excellent websites hosted by other members.

Readers of The Slacktiverse can send short summaries of, and permalinks to, articles that they feel might be of interest to other readers.  These should be sent, as you might expect, to the group email.

Anyone who knows of a worthy cause or important petition should send a short description of the petition/cause along with its url to the group email.

Feel free to discuss the election as the results come in.

For those in the U.S., did you experience any problems with voting machines or any voter intimidation?  Is your state red, blue, or swing? What candidates do you support? Were you involved in campaigning? How do you feel about voting your conscience vs. strategic voting? Do you have any other thoughts on the election?

For those not in the U.S.: What do the U.S. elections mean to you? How do they compare to elections where you live? What do people in your country think about the U.S. elections?

[Important discussions on the future of the board are taking place here.  If you have any stake in this place, including if you are a lurker, you should go there and make your opinions known.]

So, what is nanowrimo.  Well "nano" tends to be used to denote very small things (nanotechnology used for augmentations for example) and wrimo is clearly a portmanteau of writ and primo, thus meaning the most excellent legal documents issued by a court or other judicial entity.  So a nanowrimo is a very small, but most excellent, legal document issued by a court or other judicial entity.  So simple.

Wait.

That's not it.

Na is for National.  It's an anachronism.  The event is worldwide.

No is for Novel.  The definition of which is loose.  Work of fiction 50,000 words or more.  Their might be some more to it than that, but it is lose, a collection of short stories would count.

Wri is for Writing.  Most people type.

Mo is for Month.  Specifically November.  It's not too late to start, if you start now you probably still have a better chance of winning than me.

The idea of the project is, basically, to use to pressure of a deadline to get words on paper.  By which I, personally, mean "hard drive" it's a first draft, there's no pentalty for writing crap, it's more or less on paper, just get the words out there.  Making them fit for public consumption comes later (also known as editing.)

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So, the prompt here is this: NaNoWriMo.  Say whatever you want about it.

Official website here.

Please click here to go to my "test" board.

Wait 4 seconds.

You should be redirected automatically to here, a potential Wordpress board that has our posts and comments imported thus far. (As of 11/5/2012 4:45pm CST.)

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This is the result of our moderation discussion thus far:

1. We can use the Disqus commenting platform here in order to block trolls, but this solution is highly untenable for a large portion of our community that cannot access Disqus for a number of technical reasons.

2. We can use the Wordpress blogging platform, which provides troll blockage and stronger moderation, but at the cost of some template control. (We have no Wordpress experts on staff currently, so what you see over there is pretty much what we get for the time being -- that template was the closest I could find to our current setup.) We can set this site to automatically redirect there, in order to ensure that the Patheos and Typepad links still steer people to the right site.

3. We can continue here as before, and delete trolls as they pop up.

I think that pretty much covers the range of technical options thus far. My vote, if anyone is counting, is for #2. But we need to make a decision together. Thoughts?

It looks like everyone's crunch time hit at about the same time, so with the exception of a post written a while back tentatively scheduled for Wednesday this could end up being the week of the open threads.  (As a reminder, the moderation discussion is still ongoing.)

If it does I'd kind of like to arrange them around the theme of writing since it is National Novel Writing Month (next open thread will ask you to weigh in on that) but today, being as it is, the fifth of November, it seemed worth remembering.

Guy Fawkes doubtless saw him as a freedom fighter or political/religious reformer, the gunpowder plot failed, he was caught, and thus was a traitor.  Guilty of High Treason he was tortured and executed.  (Strangely he managed to earn the respect of the king he tried to assassinate  though that did not stop the king from ordering him tortured.)

Novemeber the 5th had been transformed from the day a group of Catholics hoped to overthrow Protestant rule, to a day that Protestants celebrated those Catholics failure and burned the Pope in effigy   With the passage of time that too would (largely) pass and, instead of the Pope, Guy Fawkes was burned in effigy.  The word "guy" entered the English language via these effigies.

From 1982 to 1989 Allen Moore published V for Vendetta, in which the ambiguous title character and, after his death, sympathetic second lead, don Guy Fawkes masks, completely altering the perception of a Guy Fawkes mask.

In 2006 a film was released.  Allen Moore charged that it transformed his British story into an American one.  It seemed to present Fawkes, the attempted mass murderer, in a positive light and definitely presented the characters who put on Fawkes masks (with one exception) in positive lights.

I've just listed a lot of transformations, some through circumstance, some through time, and the last two through works of fiction.

I've previously mentioned that I think part of what makes deonconstructions so appealing is that they're transformative.  Start with the World's Worst Books, end up with Fred Clark's brilliant commentary.

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This was supposed to be a lot shorter, the open thread prompt is:
What do you think of transformative work?  What are some transformative things that interest you?  Stuff?

Open thread, run wild.  But within reason.

The Blogaround 

It is possible that it has not escaped your notice that the first deconstruction roundup has yet to appear.  It won't be showing up this Friday, hopefully next week.  I dropped the ball on that, I drop the ball on a lot of things.  I am a chronic ball dropper

Anyway, in it's place I give you this open thread.  Not that I want to take away from the moderation discussion, working that out is vital to the future of the Slacktiverse, but I figured we should have something today and in place of the deconstruction roundup I was supposed to provide an open thread with a prompt about deconstructions made a certain amount of sense.

So here's the prompt: Deconstructions, some of us make them, a lot of us follow them, why?  What makes them so compelling.  Alternatively, if you don't find them interesting, this is a perfect opportunity to say why not (if it's the sort of thing that can be put into words.)

Ana Mardoll speaking: 

The question has and will continue to come up: How shall we moderate this space?

Currently, we're using the native Blogger commenting engine and allowing moderators to determine their own rules in their posts. This has drawbacks and limitations, both from a technical standpoint as well as a authorial standpoint.

For authors, the unique-comment-policy-per-thread rule is a burden and essentially means that they have to police their own threads vigilantly or ask other moderators to do so if they step away from the computer. Authors have to consider when writing and submitting new posts whether they will have all the resources they need to deal with any trolls and/or spam, as well as whether they will have resources on that given posting day. ("Do I have the time and the spoons to moderate my thread if it goes up on Wednesday? Or should I wait until Friday?") And since the only options provided to authors are to (a) tell offenders to leave the thread, and (b) play delete-the-posts over and over again until the offenders tire and go away, we are looking at a high overhead of work for each thread -- or, alternately, the thread gets shut down and closed to comments as soon as the trolls appear. Neither of these options are terribly attractive to prospective authors.

From a technical standpoint, the native Blogger commenting engine has a number of drawbacks. We cannot view nor block IP addresses without third-party plug-in tools, the efficacy of which may fluctuate as Google continues to tweak their "new Blogger" interface. This limitation affects perma-banning, since IP bans are the only way to stop trolls from posting indefinitely as "Anonymous". Comments cannot be edited by anyone -- not by commenters, not by moderators -- so if a trigger warning needs to be added, it can't be done; and if a perfectly good comment goes up but which uses "crazy" instead of "unreasonable", the only options are to delete entirely or leave up as is. This limitation affects the safety of this space. Additionally, there is no "mobile Blogger" application that allows for spam-trapping and/or deleting highly triggering comments while away from the computer, and this limitation means that moderation will require someone to be at a physical terminal at all times.

My suggestion -- me, Ana, not any other Slacktiverse author -- is thus:

1. Implement a strong Safe Space policy, a la Shakesville, for the entire site where commenting privileges are revoked from trolls without further discussion and upsetting posts are deleted without comment. This means that conversations stay on-topic and trolls don't get that "stir up the wasp nest" happy feeling of accomplishing trouble. This also means a uniformity of comment policy, which means that any moderator can easily mod any thread since there are no "custom rules" to remember. 
2. Implement the necessary third-party tools to allow IP banning in support of #1. For this purpose, I do recommend Disqus. It's used by Shakesville as the best moderating commenting platform available, and it's large enough of a company to keep up with the constant Google API changes. It fixes all the technical limitations we are running up against: it supports IP banning while still allowing anonymous posting, it grants comment editing powers to both commenters and moderators, and it has a mobile application.

I make this suggestion for three reasons.

One, there are very few full-throttle safe spaces on the web for pluralistic communities. If you just want the pluralism, it's out there -- I hear patheos is lovely -- but if you need a truly safe space where comments that, say, mock infertility as something to be gotten over, are immediately deleted as Not Appropriate, then you have fewer choices.

Two, I do not think this community will continue long without fresh new material to discuss. We have an open forum, but I do not see many people using it. It would appear that people here prefer to discuss guided content that has been provided by authors. The harder we make things for authors -- the more they have to come up with their own commenting rules, moderate their own threads, deal with anonymous trolls that can't be perma-banned, etc. -- the fewer authors I believe we will have. No authors, no content, no community: that is my greatest concern right now.

Three, and I'm going to mimic Nicolae Carpathia to discuss the "elephant in the room": we've done community moderation and "soft" safe space moderation before, and by my personal metrics it didn't work. Everyone is going to have their own opinion about that -- so much so that we've included a bit in the comment policy for this thread about it -- but the bottom line is that there are pages and pages in the Slacktivist archive of trolls coming for months on end with no loss of enthusiasm for their task. Ignoring the bullies doesn't make them go away. Engaging them doesn't make them go away. Deleting them and banning them does.

And while I know it's fun, out in the trenches, to play with the trolls, I'm going to tell you as an Author and a Moderator: it's tiring for many of us. It hurts to pour your heart and soul into a post only to have it immediately devolve into a flame-war about whether or not you're a big drama queen whiny bitch for being triggered by a disability. No matter how many people jump in to defend you, it still means that the meaningful discussion you hoped to foster has turned into slinging mud and names on a particularly smelly playground. So there's that.

Final thoughts before I turn this over to Chris: I don't know how we resolve this, maybe we put it up to a vote. Nothing we choose is going to work for everyone, and I recognize that: Many of you work at places where Disqus isn't available because of old browsers or comment-blocking. But I will say this, and again this is my opinion: the more stressful it is to author in this place, the fewer authors will step up to the plate to provide original content. I consider that to be a major consideration, and even if we don't go with Disqus, I do think we need a workable solution.

chris the cynic speaking:

Thursday is Board Business day and the question of moderation is definitely Board Business, so I very much approve of, and indeed suggested, that it be discussed today.  But it's also remind everyone about the weekend post day since that's usually the only board business we have.  Full descriptions can be found in any of the three previous Board Business threads (One, Two, Three).  Quick and dirty:

If you wrote anything since the last time you submitted to a weekend post, send us an email with link(s) and description(s).  It will appear in The Blogaround.

If you read anything you think might be of interest to the rest of the community, send us an email with link(s) and description(s).  It will appear in In Case You Missed This.

If you know of any worthy causes that members of the community can help with, send us an email with link(s) and description(s).  It will appear in Things You Can do.  Unless it's too time sensitive to wait in which case say so and it'll be posted before the weekend.

Standard deadline 2000 GMT on Saturday.  If you miss it try anyway and we'll see what we can do, but try to make it.  Email Address is: SlacktiverseAuthors at gmail dot com

Ana Mardoll speaking again:

The moderation team has agreed on the following rules for this thread:

1) All anonymous comments must have some type of signature. (like "~ Ana from her work desk" or "Anon329")

1a) All comments from the same user must have the same signature. (This is so we can carry on a coherent conversation without having to say "Anon third from the bottom here, I think..." each time.)

1b) No using someone else's signature.

2) Stay on topic for how to move forward. This is not a referendum on how things were run at Typepad or under Fred or to air personal grievances from those eras. If it is necessary to reference those eras to make a point about how to run things here (for example, "Fred did X with consequence Y, so we should/should not consider doing X") that's fine, but keep it on the topic of how we're going to run things here.

3) Be civil. That means in both content and tone. If in doubt, err on the side of caution.

4) No arguing with comment deletions.

5) Offending comments will be deleted without notice.

6) Not a rule, but a point to consider: The members of this community have diverse constraints, needs, and wants. Saying "If X occurs, I will not be able to use the site because Y" is different from saying "Do not-X or I'm taking my ball and going home!" It's different even if Y is "reasons I can't/am not at liberty to explain." Please respect the former statement and refrain from making the latter statement.

7) Mods reserve the right to, at their discretion, delete any comment which detracts from the discussion, even if it does not break any of the above rules.

So, it's Wednesday here.  Because this is being posted later in the day it might not be Wednesday where you are, but the point here is: Wednesday.

Stop reading and get up from the computer.

Okay, fine, read a little bit further, but I'm not joking. Up. Metaphorically, if you use a wheelchair or cane, but how you move doesn't matter as much as how fast. Find or make an empty space at least ten feet by ten feet, and put on some music. It doesn't much matter what music—this activity is traditionally associated with both kinds, country and western, but then there's "Build Me Up Buttercup" (1960s soul), "Moves Like Jagger" (2010s pop), "Mickey Mouse Club March" (1950s Disney), "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas"... (Okay, yes, and "Red Solo Cup"; nothing's perfect.) The only requirement is that there be a good beat to the music, a good danceable beat.

Envision^[1] yourself positioned (or, better, actually position yourself) in a square, two people per side. The person beside you is your partner, the person catty-corner to you is your corner. The person outside the square with the microphone is the caller, and if something goes wrong it is zir fault. The couple facing the caller and the couple facing that couple are the Heads, the other couples the Sides. Back to the caller? You're couple number 1. Caller to your left? Couple number 2. Continue counterclockwise to couples 3 and 4. The place you're standing now is Home. Oriented? Good.

Join hands and Circle Left. Now Circle Right. Now Up to the Middle and Back.

Welcome to square dancing.

To successfully navigate a square dance tip, you need to remember a few things. Which hand is your left, and which your right? (My father has badges that say "Left" and "Other Left". Just to help people remember. He switches which side he wears them on.) To which number couple do you belong, and does that make you a Head or a Side? Did you start out on the left side of the couple, or the right?

That last is very important to remember; most calls are directed at half the square, though many of them have instructions for both halves, and which half gets the directions varies: Heads or Sides, Centers or Ends, Leaders or Trailers, Left or Right of the couples of the moment, on the left or the right side of Home.

It is typically easier to remember that, when everybody is Home or in normal couples, Boys are on the left and Girls are on the right.

The gender binary pervades square dancing. Genderqueer? Tough; pick one. You can change at the end of the tip, or in the middle if you're dancing with people who don't mind doing two Trades where one was called and possibly confusing the caller and the rest of the square. But there's no 'bigender' or 'agender' or 'third gender' in square dancing. There's boys and there's girls, and every dancer is one or the other.

Note the couple in teal in the foreground. The man is wearing slacks and a Western-cut shirt; the woman, a dress with a circular skirt and a crinoline underneath, and you know they're dancing together because they're wearing the exact same shade of teal. This is traditional square dance attire. A blouse and circle skirt is acceptable in place of a circle-skirted dress, as is a blouse and a prairie skirt. If the dance hasn't been specified to be traditional attire only, no one will bat an eye at a girl showing up in jeans as the redhead on the left did, but if the dance has been so specified, a girl not in a skirt is Frowned Upon. A boy in a skirt is Frowned Upon regardless, but that's not a square-dancing-specific issue.

There's also singing calls. In contrast to patter, where the music is instrumental and the calls are spoken, the calls are sung and so are select lines from the original songs. For instance, in Charlie Daniels's "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", the line "Johnny rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard" is followed by the line "'Cause hell's broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards". In this singing call version of "The Devil Went Down to Georgia", "play your fiddle hard' is followed by 'Dosado^[2], go once around, now Promenade your pard'" (square dancers like rhyme), and then while the dancers are Promenading, the caller sings "If you win you get this shiny fiddle made of gold", which follows "devil deals the cards" in the original. The other relevant point distinguishing singing calls from patter is that in every patter figure, everyone ends up Home. In every singing call figure, the boys go Home while the girls rotate. Because reasons.

Then there's the calls that simply cannot be done in same-sex couples. Swing: like in ballroom dancing, girl's left hand in boy's right, girl's right hand on boy's shoulder, boy's right hand on girl's waist, and rotate clockwise. Star Thru: girl's left hand palm to palm with boy's right, girl steps forward and turns a quarter left to the inside as boy steps forward and turns a quarter right to the outside. Even the calls that don't have gender in the definition are often gendered: to Courtesy Turn, the right-hand side of the couple walks forward and the left-hand side backward in a semicircle so that they end up in each other's footsteps facing the opposite direction. Well, that and some work with the hands. There's no mention in the definition of gender at all. But it is rarely called from same-sex or arky (girl on the left, boy on the right) couples. This is probably because of the hands part of the call: right-hand dancer's left hand in left-hand dancer's left hand, right-hand dancer's right hand on the small of zir back or working her skirt, left-hand dancer's right hand on right-hand dancer's right hand or the small of her back to guide her through her forward motion. For some reason, if it's a girl on the left and/or a boy on the right, people find this awkward.

Courtesy Turn is also an example of one of those things CALLERLAB, the organization that maintains the definitions of all square dance calls, prefers to pretend doesn't happen. In Courtesy Turn from normal couples, he's courtesy-turning her, not the other way around. In California Twirl, he's twirling her. Swing Your Lady is called more often than Swing Your Partner, even though they're the same damn thing. Walk Around Your Corner is exactly what it sounds like: you face your corner and walk around same (distinct from a Dosado Your Corner in that you stay right shoulder to right shoulder the whole move, rather than staying facing a particular wall the whole move), but it's often called as Walk Around the Left-Hand Lady. See Saw, Walk Around Your Corner's counterpart move, is often called as See Saw Your Taw, because square dancers really like rhyme; 'taw' is a word I have never seen outside a square dance context, and it's supposed to mean 'wife'. (Wiktionary says 'spouse' or 'dance partner'; good for Wiktionary. Every time I've been to square dance lessons when See Saw is being taught, I've heard that 'taw' means 'wife', and calling 'See Saw Your Pretty Little Taw' emphasizes that reading. In gender essentialism, men are neither pretty nor little.) In Run, the directed dancers do a half circle into the adjacent inactive dancer's starting position while the inactive dancer steps sideways into the active dancer's starting position, and it can be called as Boys Run, Girls Run, Ends Run, or Centers Run. Of Ends Run and Centers Run, I've noticed that callers don't tend to prefer one over the other, but of Boys Run and Girls Run, guess which one gets called more often?

That's right, it's Boys Run. Little as CALLERLAB likes it, square dancing tends to give the direction to the boys and expect the girls to puzzle out their steps. That's not true of the Ladies Chain family of calls, or of Teacup Chain, but I have never heard Men Chain and rarely Men Teacup Chain, and if the girls are active on those calls then the boys get the easy part. Also rare is Beer Mug Chain, but that is not an official call (not up to Plus level, anyway; I know nothing of Advanced or Challenge) and invariably breaks all the squares. Also notice how, apparently, only girls drink tea and only boys beer.

Boys typically get the easy part with choreography, too. Calls are meant to flow one into another. The call Roll, for example, is meaningless when starting from a static position instead of partway through another call; whichever direction you're turning at the end of the call before Roll, you keep turning that direction another quarter turn. Or Wheel and Deal, then Zoom; in Wheel and Deal, both members of a couple are moving the same direction at the end of the call, and in Zoom, the first part of the call for the leading couple is turn your back on your partner. The boy keeps going in the same direction he was going, while the girl has to halt and reverse direction. This combination is called fairly frequently, generally but not always by male callers who are unfamiliar with dancing the girl's part.

There's also setting up and breaking down the dance hall (moving tables and chairs, etc) and providing the food. Guess which gender, in my experience, typically does which task?

Square dancing isn't all rigid-gender-role doom and gloom. Girls do wear jeans to casual dances, after all.

Square dancers skew female, so to maximize the number of squares on the floor in any given tip, many female dancers dance the male part. And of course dancers who know both parts can switch genders as many times during the night as they like. Not I, if I can avoid it—I find it breaks my brain too badly to be raising the left hand to Star Thru in one tip and the right hand to Star Thru in the next—but my mother and my sisters can dance boy with ease, as can quite a few of the female dancers I know. (My mother, in fact, has made sashes in magenta fleece and sky blue in order to faciliate people changing gender between tips, because she's sick of a tip pausing for the caller to point at one of the seven female-presenting people in the square and ask whether that person's a girl or a boy.) Girls consequently usually win Battle of the Sexes tips, wherein half the squares are all women and the other half all men and the goal is to be in a square that doesn't break down due to somebody doing the wrong half of Star Thru or whatever. On the other hand, when you get the caller interrupting the steady flow of patter to say "[Mama Murasaki], you're a man", you know something's gone wrong.

Then there are LGBT clubs such as Philadelphia's Independence Squares and Washington DC's Lambda Squares. When the expectation that couples in the Home position will be boy to the left girl to the right collides with the expectation that couples in the Home position will be people who arrived together, the latter usually wins.

Dance-By-Definition clubs also exist. CALLERLAB wishes to emphasize (in the introduction to the Basic/Mainstream Definitions file) that "most of the calls are defined without reference to gender", and DBD clubs cheerfully upend the gendered expectations about how these nongendered calls are done. It's in these clubs that you'll hear Courtesy Turn called from same-sex or arky couples, or Teacup Chain called immediately after Half Sashay (which moves couples from normal to arky). It's also members of these clubs who have the least trouble dancing the opposite of their assigned gender.

I love square dancing. I do. One of my local clubs is closing, and I think that's a tragedy. But as I understand it, this was one of the clubs that insisted on traditional attire and mixed-sex couples. Square dancing is changing to match a changing world: casual-dress clubs, LGBT clubs, DBD clubs, and clubs that skew young instead of middle-aged and elderly are proof of that. But I worry that square dancing isn't adapting fast enough, that it can't fully adapt to a world without the gender binary at all, and if square dancing can't fit into a world with no gender binary, then this thing I love deserves to die.

Board Notice: There are trolls in the Remembrance thread. We are letting this continue for the moment and not shutting down the thread because we want to have a planned discussion about how to moderate the board and we feel that the thread as it currently stands represents some of the problems the moderation team is facing. If you personally want to engage the trolls for the moment for lulz, feel free, but if you have trigger-issues I recommend staying out of that thread for the moment. Thank you.

Content Note: Disability, Infertility

Possibly my favorite two posts at Shakesville is Liss' two-part series on disability and remembering. (Here and here.) Liss discusses something that I'm not sure I've ever seen discussed elsewhere: that part of being an ally to the disabled means remembering that they are disabled. That part of loving a disabled friend or family member means not forcing them to repeat, over and over, that they are disabled.

Failing to remember, thus obliging someone to repeatedly disclose a disability, also risks making that person feel like they're "talking too much" about hir disability, or "complaining." Many people with disabilities have experienced criticism for talking about their disabilities, or have been on the receiving end of exasperation expressed by someone who doesn't want to hear about it, [...] We often struggle to strike a balance between making sure people around us are aware of our disabilities and not playing into perceptions of attention-seeking, and "forgetting" makes finding that balance all the more difficult.

I know that this isn't always easy. I know that there's a big difference between living with a disability and knowing someone with a disability. I don't expect people who are able-bodied to instinctively grok every facet of disability or to understand instantly and immediately every thing that a person with a specific disability can and cannot do. Disabilities infiltrate our lives in strange and unexpected ways, and I recognize that the ripple-effect is not something that can always be instinctively intuited. This is not a post about "grr, able-bodied people who are not psychic". That is not this post.

But this is a post about life as a disabled person surrounded by people with able-bodies. People who sometimes fail to remember, and who perhaps sometimes don't even try to remember. (If nothing else, consider this fodder for that disabled character you've always thought about including in your NaNoWriMo novel.)

Being disabled means that people who know that walking hurts you will still turn around and opine that you should walk more often because that's what their health magazines recommend.

Being disabled means that people who know you cry at commercials with babies in them will still call to tell you that they bumped into your childhood friend at the mall and she had newborn infant twins.

Being disabled means that people who know that you have a handicap parking permit will still park at the back of the lot because it's "less crowded" back there and everyone "needs the exercise" anyway.

Being disabled means that people who know you are infertile will still rush to tell you that they're pregnant and will expect you to shriek with joy and ask All The Details because of course you must care.

Being disabled means that people who know you can't easily sleep in hotel beds will still apply strong emotional pressure for you to come visit them because they haven't seen you in so long.

Being disabled means that people who know you can't walk long distances will still plan family vacations at enormous national parks with no public transportation options or handicap paths for wheelchairs.

Being disabled means that people who know you can't have children will still expect you to listen to stories about their children and react with enthusiasm and happiness for them.

Being disabled means that people familiar with your lifetime of difficult and painful experiences with dozens of unsympathetic doctors will still insist that you just need to keep looking for the "right" one.

Being disabled means that people who know that an activity hurts you will still forget, and ask for an explanation again each time, for why it hurts you even if you do it just so as they suggest.

Being disabled means that people who know you are disabled will favorably compare you to all the other awful disabled people who aren't really disabled, but just lazy and unhealthy.

Being disabled means that people who know you are disabled will express sympathy that you are disabled while still making it clear that you really need to stop talking about it "so much".

Being disabled means that people who know you are disabled will explain to you why disability accommodations are bad for businesses and reflect inappropriate entitled attitudes.

Being disabled means that people who know you are disabled will tell you that your experiences and opinions are wrong because they know other disabled people who feel differently.

Most of all, being disabled means that usually when any of the above happens, it happens from someone you liked or loved or trusted. It's family members, lovers, and friends who often drop an unthinking, unremembering sentence into the conversation, about how you should like cute babies more, or travel more often, or walk a little more for your "health". It's the people you trust who haul out platitudes about how wonderful the medical establishment is, despite being blissfully free of your own experiences with it. It's the people you care about who get several months into planning that family vacation to hike up Mt. Everest before you have to remind them -- gently, haltingly, tentatively -- that thank you but, ummm, you won't be able to attend. You have that whole disability thing, remember? And, no, you can't just shake it off for the sake of seeing the whole group, even if everyone really was so looking forward to seeing you again. Sorry!

Being disabled doesn't just mean missing out on dozens if not hundreds of fun things in the course of a single month. Being disabled doesn't just mean counting and hoarding spoons, and having to consider things like "if I walk to the cafeteria with the rest of the group, will I have the ability to get back to my desk afterward?" Being disabled also means having to explain that thought process and the need behind it over and over and over again to people who are otherwise remarkably intelligent and possessed of strong memories. Being disabled means apologizing -- profusely and obsessively -- for not just having the disability, but also for having to remind people of it.

Being disabled means, more often than not, feeling terribly alone. Not because the people around you don't care about your disability, but because they're so unaffected by it that they have the ability to repeatedly forget about it.

If you are an able-bodied person, and if you really care about the disabled persons in your life, please try to remember that they are disabled. Create an opening for them to talk about it in ways that makes them feel like they're not ruining your day by bringing it up. "I'd like to plan a group hike, but does that mean you won't be able to come?" reminds them that you know about their disability and that they have a space to safely talk about it. "Would it help if I didn't talk about cute babies for awhile?" gives them the space to say that, yeah, maybe that would help. "I'm sorry to have forgotten, but are you capable of doing this activity?" at least clarifies that you do remember their disability, even if you don't remember every aspect of it. (And then when they tell you yes/no, don't grill them about why or suggest alternative ways that they should try to approach the situation. Try to remember that living with a disability means that they've put hundreds more hours of thought into the problem than you have.)

Being an ally to people with disabilities means remembering that those disabilities don't stop existing whenever you're not looking.

In case anyone is wondering why some things read "Last week" instead of "This week" it's because it's not always possible to get everything in on time and anything added after the post goes live might be missed.

The Blogaround