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Sterling

3
Posts
A member registered Mar 16, 2019

Recent community posts

Sure safety tools are tools, however the X card in particular is a very bad one for live play.  Your system sounds like the best implication of the X card that i have heard, the verbal form is what I am against.  Where people gotta raise their hand or verbally say no, or there is someway for people to tell it was Gary who played the X card.  As someone who is disabled I hate having to be singled out because I am uncomfortable, there have been cases where speaking out about my uncomfortably has been more uncomfortable, saying that I'm sure the people I was playing with wouldn't have judged me or made shifty eyes at me but the irrational fear that they would kept me from expressing that i wanted what was happening to stop.

The other problem with the X card is that while I imagine you and other will uses this along side other tools and talking to players etc, the wider implementation of the rule is just to slap a band aid over the problem and never address underlining issues or themes with their players.  I feel there are better way we can design these tools, and even better tools out there in the world that already are a thing other than the X card.  Also some tools designed by marginalised people would be excellent.

Long replies are fine! So of course you cant and shouldn't design around assholes abusing something that is a fruitless task and in the end pointless.  In my mind there are 2 types of people who use X card in particular those who are acting in good faith, who are normally more conscious around issues and people, and those who are preformative about the whole idea.  

People who are preformative are the people who would abuse this tool, and in my experience there are a lot of them in the community. Im really happy to hear that you have positive experiences with using X card but the majority of people who I have talked to about this only ever have negative feelings towards the use of the card.  The major problem with the X card is that people use and then go "Right no need to address underling problems or talk in depth with the group I have in front of me I can just tap a sign" and I know people on this forum are in the know on how its important to be communicative with players and the value of trust.  The vast majority of people who use X card don't think past the "rule".  Where I believe  the harmful part, come in is where people will just look at safety tools and go "Yep we are okay now we have this piece of paper".  

I would also like to see more tools created by marginalised people, a lot of what i have across have been written by  Cis white non disabled men and while I'm sure they are trying their very best to be good allies it just shows very clearly to me there are gaps in the knowledge and or experience. 

Im really bad a TLDRS so sorry for the read!

(2 edits)

So I made a twitter thread about why i think most safety tools are bad and in most cases harmful (https://twitter.com/First_Sterling/status/1078117423923056641) I am honestly too lazy to write my thoughts up on it again but I think it would be useful for the conversation.