Questions and Nidoranswers
It's been five days since I published my essay on diversity in PSR, and in that time a lot has happened. Overnight, the PSR Discord was broken up into smaller Discords by console with the explicit goal of restoring power authority to those invested in that community. I want to commend the PSR admins for their quick and decisive response; I originally wrote that I didn't think the admins created an exclusionary space on purpose, and I'm happy I can continue to believe that.
The last half week has been exhausting for myself and so many others as we all try to build new communities that both honor the best parts of PSR and acknowledge the need for new systems of organization. I've seen more female and non-binary voices speak up since the server split than ever before, and am so excited to see so much minority interest in this hobby – both from entirely new faces, and those who are taking the chance to come back.
With all that said, I'd like to address some questions I've received. This won't be comprehensive, but hopefully it adds some context to my original writings and helps contextualize some of my feelings.
Before I start, I'd like to thank Etchy, The4thGenGamer, Swiftalu, Emray, jyash4, GretaIceVixen, and everyone else who spoke up either in solidarity or to share their experiences. None of this would have been possible without all of your support.
Why didn't you name any specific examples of discrimination?
My original essay examined PSR by way of critical theory, which argues that institutional are more responsible for societal issues than individuals. There are individuals in the community that I think are actively harmful, don't get me wrong, but I think their presence is a symptom, rather than a cause. An inclusive community protects themselves from such individuals by calling out their bigotry (once again, see the paradox of tolerance), thus ensuring that they do feel empowered to harass and intimidate others.
In my experience, PSR was not exclusionary on the surface; I wasn't getting slurs yelled at me, for example. Instead, PSR failed to be actively inclusionary, resulting in a community where minority voices were diminished through internalized biases. If you want a first hand account of this, read this thread by Emray or this post by Swiftalu.
So, everyone in PSR was bad then?
I don't think most people were aware of these issues, and this is pretty apparent given the amount of support I received for calling them out. It's easy to think things are perfectly fine when nobody argues to the contrary, and it'd be ridiculous for me to blame anyone for that.
Everything's good now, then?
Nope. I'm optimistic right now, but old habits die hard. It's going to take an active effort from everyone to remain aware of how their actions might affect others in subtle ways, but fortunately I've seen a lot of care thus far!
You just want to be a moderator!
I did volunteer to moderate the Switch Discord, but I only want to do it if community trusts me in that role. I also volunteered to moderate the 3DS Discord with the condition that if there are any more qualified minority candidates, they should be chosen over me, as I don't want to accumulate power over multiple communities. Plus, moderation is a ton of work and is relatively thankless. I want to be in a position where I can influence positive social change, but I'm also only one woman, and I feel that contributing to the Switch community is the most obvious allocation of my energy given my experience with LGPE.
You're just trying to force your ideology!
Are we still boycotting SRC?
I plan to resubmit my deleted times and return to submitting new times once the SRC moderators have changed to represent the new communities.
If you have other questions, don't hesitate to DM me on Discord (Corvimae#8392) or Twitter (@Corvimae). Please don't just mention me, as I prefer one-on-one conversations over the nonsense that is Twitter-at-large!