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Ghazi
A community for progressive issues, social justice and LGBT+ causes in media, gaming, entertainment and tech.
Official replacement for Reddit's r/GamerGhazi
Content should be articles, video essays, podcasts about topics relevant to the forum. No memes, single images or tweets/toots/... please!
Community rules:
Be respectful and civil with each other. Don't be a jerk. There is a real human being on the other side of your screen. See also the Blahaj.Zone Community Rules
No bigotry of any kind allowed. Making racist, sexist, trans-/homo-/queerphobic, otherwise demeaning and hateful comments is not ok. Disabilities and mental illnesses are not to be used as insults and should not be part of your comment unless speaking of your own or absolutely relevant.
No gatekeeping and being rude to people who don't agree with you. Leave “gamer” stereotypes out of your comment (e.g. sexless, neck bearded, teenaged, basement-dwelling, etc). Don't compare people to animals, or otherwise deny their humanity. Even if you think someone is the worst human on the planet, do not wish death or harm upon them.
No "justice porn". Posts regarding legal action and similar is allowed, but celebrating someone being harmed is not.
Contrarianism for its own sake is unnecessary and not welcome.
No planning operations, no brigading, no doxxing or similar activities allowed.
Absolutely no defense of GamerGate and other right-wing harassment campaigns, no TERFs and transphobia, racism, dismissing of war crimes and praise of fascists. This includes “JAQing off”, intentionally asking leading questions while pretending to be a neutral party. This also applies to other forms of authoritarianism and authoritarian or criminal actions by liberal or leftist governments.
NSFW threads, such as ones discussing erotic art, pornography and sex work, must be tagged as such.
Moderators can take action even if none of the rules above are broken.
I've always been able to separate the artist from the work of art. I had to be able to if I was going to be a successful student. Now that I am middle aged I think my tendency is to read and watch things with complete ignorance about the creators' biographical details. I don't use Twitter or Mastodon. I don't follow creators on any social media platform. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I did consume more media and payed attention to what creators say and do online. Maybe I would change my attitude. I don't know. What I do know is that a work of art can convey a message that has absolutely nothing to do with the artist's beliefs or political leanings. But then I remember attending a lecture that Gayatri Spivak gave at Cornell's School of Criticism and Theory. She talked about how sometimes the politics of something, its "political value" if you will, can be much more important than what it is worth intellectually and people should go with that perception if that is what they ponder when contemplating a work of art (or literature, or any product of creativity). So, this is where subjectivity becomes important. Our subjectivity as we contemplate a work of art is important and if we feel we should disregard it because the artist is not to our liking, we might be better off rejecting it and doing something positive for the world and society. So, I guess my take is that I won't mess with other people's subjectivity and I hope they don't mess with mine. On the contrary, we might be better off if we encourage each other to express our subjectivity and appreciate it for what it might mean in a social context.