Commenting to Create Community

Margaret grew up in Atlanta, and now hails from the wilderness of the Virginia suburbs. She is an editorial assistant for TNG.

I was saddened by the conversation that followed Ms. Cavanaugh's post last week. A conversation that started with great ideas for alternate ideas and exploration of why some people don’t love the bar scene quickly turned into a blame session, boys versus girls. It was incompatible with the way that I view TNG. I've always thought of TNG as a small, community-based blog where the bloggers are able to share their lives as queers in DC, and the rest of us get to observe, occasionally for pure amusement, and have a conversation about it through the comments section. In doing so, we are creating a community of DC-area queer (or, if you prefer, LGBTQII) folk -- it's not just about the blog.

The commenting has, by and large, been great. I love it when we get smart, interested people to discuss something like the names we call ourselves. Everyone has a different take, and we get to explore questions that matter to many of us. The conversations about BeBar and Katy Perry were involved, multi-faceted discussions about what our community looks like and how it relates to the greater community. And through such conversations our online community has been developing, growing, stretching.

Slowly, we recognize the names of people we've met as they comment on the blog, and slowly we see comments from our off-blog friends. As a frequent reader, I have gotten to know the voices of the commenters as well as I know those of the bloggers. I'm always delighted to make those connections -- it's what makes me feel like we have the beginnings of a community here.

However, the tenor of the comments in this most recent discussion about our community is concerning. It is great that we are asking questions like how several different identity groups become a community when they are skittish around each other, which are ones that queer communities have to answer. But rather than a productive conversation, the discussion that Amy's post started turned into a storm of insensitivity and blame. Instead of casting further blame, I want to find ways that we can continue to have an online community that fosters offline community.

I discussed this issue with a friend who is far better-versed in internet policy than I am. She assured me that the hateful speech always happens on blogs, that it is a normal (if unwelcome) part of the blogosphere that comes about from the lax attitude towards respect that the anonymous spirit of the internet provides, not to mention a sign that we are growing(!). The only thing, she tells me, that TNG can do is to block particular the IP addresses of particular users or to disable anonymous commenting (which I didn't know you could do).

I am ambivalent on the topic of anonymous commenting. On the one hand, I like the idea of anonymous commenting, particularly in a blog like ours where, offline, everyone is within two degrees of separation from everyone else. What if a sensitive story is pertinent to the conversation? I thought the ability to provide anonymity to commenters was particularly effective in the comments following yesterday's post about trans folk. I would much prefer to hear from voices who would normally stay silent rather than to require them to identify by a name or a handle and, in doing so, silence them. On the other hand, you can't hide behind a bush if we are all sitting around having a conversation, and some of Anonymous commenters use that function in this way.

Laura Nathan, writing in Bitch Magazine, (this article is not online, but find out more about this issue of Bitch) in fact proposes that blogs stop allowing their audience to comment. Some of the reasons she gives for not commenting on blogs include: "fellow commenter want to provoke you, commenting gives hate speech free rein, [... and] the comments format often keeps truly interested parties from participating."

While not all of Nathan's reasons to move away from commenting apply to TNG (the provocation of comments to generate ad money, for instance), I must acknowledge that in this, of all places, hate speech did have free rein. I was particularly disturbed by the show of misogyny displayed when an Anonymous called another commenter a "vile bitch." It's a very violent term, the catch-all word for identifying assertive females as bad -- you want to overturn the gender norms, you bitch. This is why the word is being reclaimed. But that use of it was hateful.

To go beyond this single exchange, how many of these comments were provoking? How many were in direct reaction, rather than thoughtful response, to provocative comments? We'll never know how many people didn't participate in what could have been a productive conversation due to the mean-spirited-ness of the comments. And how many potential bloggers are driven away because they don't want their post to cause such a negative shitstorm rather than a productive conversation?

In contrast to TNG, there are successful instances of having a comment-free blogs, like Slate.com's XX Factor. A group of experts discussion their specialty, and their audience simply observes. Frankly, with the XX Factor, I don't care what the audience has to say, anymore than I imagine they want to hear from me. I want to hear from the eight or so journalists who often have witty, insightful things to say about women in the media.

However, it would be a travesty to stop the commenting on TNG. First of all, we don't have a panel of experts speaking to the masses about gay life in DC. We are all the experts. In addition, disabling the comments would greatly diminish the community-building potential of the blog. Instead of hearing hundreds of voices, including your own, we would hear from 15 people, tops.

Whether a person is posting anonymously or not, I have come up with things that I wish the people who make the comments that I read and would even comment on myself would think about before they send their comments in:

• Respond to posts and comments with things that you would say to someone's face--you'll probably see them at Solly's in a few weeks.


• Criticize ideas, not people. They have the best of intentions--and so do you.


• Respect the Anonymous poster function--don't use it to be snarky or worse.


• Speak from your own experience. Don't comment using naked reference--if you are going to refer to cultural references, to what always happens, or to queer/feminist theory, relate it to the topic at hand and to the DC community. Spell the connections out for your audience, who are not in your head.


• Don't go off-topic. If you have thoughts about something tangentially related to a post, write another post about it.

Honestly, I would have thought that the message "be nice" would go without saying. But as that previous discussion shows, it doesn't.

I volunteer for and read TNG because I think it's important to foster community among queer folk. Historically, I think, community was easier to assume (where it existed) because of the underground nature of gays gathering together. Now there are fewer pressures that bind us, and it is hard to create a coherent whole. The rise in violent attacks on men, the systematic discrimination against transfolk, the automatic dismissal of the experience of bisexuals, the double bind of lesbians who confront both homophobia and misogyny; these things affect us all because they are all symptoms of the same problem: a deeply-rooted cultural bias against those whose very existence seems to threaten the house of cards built by the patriarchy (yeah, I said it!). If we don't come together to protect each other, we will be cast adrift, alone.

So, what do y'all think: what can TNG do to be a better community-builder? And are we going to try to continue an impossible paradox, snarking at each other online and then trying to make out at the Black Cat?