What falls under Raddle's Content Policy?

The following is intended to give people who may be new or otherwise unfamiliar with these concepts an idea of what we mean with our shorthand in /w/terms_of_service

These are just guidelines to help you engage with your fellow Raddlers with empathy and compassion, this page shouldn't be taken as a code of laws. We trust our moderators to use their best judgement when determining if something is oppressive enough that it ought to be removed from a forum. They don't need to be spoon-fed exact prescriptions for every potentiality.

  1. White supremacy

  2. Queerphobia

  3. Transphobia

  4. Misogyny

  5. Classism

  6. Ableism

  7. Body shaming

  8. Antisemitism

  9. Islamophobia

  10. Colonialism

  11. Age discrimination

  12. Eugenics

  13. Speciesism

White supremacy

White Supremacy is the ideology which defends white privilege. It can be as explicit as language used by Richard Spencer, Viktor Orbán, and neonazi skinheads, or it can be more subtle, such as the common conception presented by Western leftists and liberals of a white-washed "working class" that excludes ethnic and racial minorities. It takes many forms, but is broadly characterized by the defence of whiteness as a construct and the continued dominance of white society.

Whiteness is a form of privilege, frequently experienced as a negative reinforcement: the absence of suffering, when it is otherwise experienced by others. Many forms of privilege operate on this basis; rather than explicitly bestowing rewards to everyone in the privileged group, the suffering of others is hidden from them, such that the privileged person cannot even recognize the fact that they benefit from privilege. In fact, the privileged person often reacts with indignation to any discussion of their privilege, as if the acknowledgement of their privilege would somehow invalidate their own experience or struggles, instead of merely acknowledging the experiences of others. In this way, the privilege may seem unreal to the privileged person, but painfully real to everyone else.

Queerphobia

Similarly, queerphobia is the ideology which defends cisheteropatriarchy. Cisheteropatriarchy is a long word which describes the advantages offered to cisgendered people (those assigned by physicians to a gender they identify with), to men, and to heterosexual people. Queerphobia devalues the experience of all people outside this specific privileged identity, who are quite diverse: this includes gender nonconforming people, transgender people, women, non-binary people, gay and lesbian people, bisexual and pansexual identifying people, asexual people, and many more identities.

When a cisgender, heterosexual, and/or masculine lifestyle is treated as the default, and everything else as abnormal, this builds up anxiety and despair in the groups being othered, damaging their mental health and making them feel excluded socially. This social exclusion has a cumulative effect, pushing people to the margins of society where they have little support or opportunity.

Transphobia

Transphobia is the form of bigotry which specifically targets transgender people. While related to queerphobia, it is a specific subset which has seen a resurgence of popularity and expression in public discourse in many countries recently. Transphobic discourse and action also can impact non-trans people, such as other queer people, or even cis people who do not "express their gender correctly" according to dominant society's expectations. This underlines the necessity for people to organize and combat privilege, even if they do not fall into the most targeted identity category by a particular form of privilege.

A related term is transmisogyny, which is the hatred of and discrimination against transgender women or transfeminine people.

Transphobia includes rejecting a person's gender identity, denying them access to gender-affirming care, and expressing anger, fear or resentment towards people who do not conform to artificial social gender roles.

Misogyny

Misogyny is the belief that women as a group are inferior to men. Often it manifests as either subtle or overt hatred of women as a group. Like the other terms here, a common theme is that this is a generalized hatred of anyone perceived as feminine. Something to note is that there are also women, cis and trans, who hold misogynistic views or engage in misogynistic behaviour. Something that should be noted generally is that marginalized people can internalize a form of bigotry, even if they are in a category of identity which would denote them as marginalized themselves. Social dynamics are complicated and the abused are capable of becoming abusers themselves.

Classism

Classism is the disrespect of people on the basis of their lack of capital / wealth / social standing. It does not refer to the disrespect of people who hold wealth, because people who have wealth are not subject to the deprivation of their dignity and autonomy or the associated victim-blaming that people without capital have.

Ableism

Ableism is discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities or who are perceived to have disabilities. Ableism characterizes persons as defined by their disabilities and as inferior to the non-disabled. On this basis, people are assigned or denied certain perceived abilities, skills, or character orientations.

In the context of a discussion forum, denigrating people based on their intelligence or ability is a common example of ableism. A lot of this discriminatory language and rhetoric has been normalized by society to the point where few people even realize they're discriminating against marginalized groups of people when using words like "stupid" and "crippled".

It's a good idea to deconstruct the everyday language we use and analyse how it can be harmful to others (and ourselves), and how language can instead be used to empower others and make everyone feel included and valued.

That being said, no one is going to be excluded from the site for innocently using common words and terms, but you can expect to be engaged in dialogue by other users if your language has bigoted connotations, and mods will take action if you persist in wilfully denigrating others based on ability.

Body shaming

Body shaming is negative statements and attitudes shown toward a person's weight, height, shape or size. There is a lot of shame and discrimination against differently-shaped people in society which can lead to serious eating disorders, destructive behaviors and suicide. We want to encourage a more positive attitude toward diverse body sizes and styles.

Antisemitism

Bigotry against the Jewish people and historically other Semitic races. Often manifests as conspiracy theories such as Holocaust denial, and the idea that a small group of Jewish people have some sort of secret control over the world (Rothschilds, George Soros, etc.)

It should go without saying that critiquing the colonialist settler-state of Israel and its continuing atrocities against the Palestinian people does not qualify as antisemitism.

Islamophobia

Islamophobia is a form of bigotry which regards muslims, followers of the Islamic religion, as inferior, uncivilized or dangerous. This is usually based on an underlying racism, and is used as a way to enforce that racism on an ideological level.

Colonialism

Colonialism is the violent conquest, erasure and assimilation of one culture by another. Often related to ideas about the supremacy of Western or white culture/knowledge.

Age discrimination

Age discrimination is the disrespect, disempowerment and devaluation of people on the basis of their age. This can look like elderly people being removed from their communities to be confined to nursing homes, or minors being harassed and arrested for breaking a state's curfew laws.

Eugenics

Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices with the stated aim of improving the "genetic quality" of a human population. Historically this has been attempted by discriminating against and excluding people and groups judged by those in political power to be genetically inferior, and elevating those judged to be genetically superior. Eugenics programs have created violent authority throughout history, leading to racial discrimination, ableism, forced sterilization and forced euthanasia.

The science behind eugenics is notoriously shoddy, as eugenics policies eventually lead to a loss of genetic diversity, thereby resulting in inbreeding depression due to a loss of genetic variation. Attempting to create genetic lines "clean" of "disorders" can have far-reaching ancillary downstream effects in the genetic ecology, including negative effects on immunity and on species resilience.

Eugenics has been utilized in various ways by various groups, but the thing all eugenics policies have in common is the insinuation that a group of people have the right to decide for all of society what is genetically desirable and what is genetically undesirable. This inevitably leads to structural discrimination and is a fundamentally ableist viewpoint.

Speciesism

Speciesism is intolerance or discrimination on the basis of species, typically enacted in the form of cruelty towards other animals by humans, and the exploitation of those animals to benefit humans. Piers Beirne considers speciesism as the ideological anchor of the intersecting networks of the animal–industrial complex, such as factory meat, dairy, egg and fur farms, vivisection, hunting and fishing, zoos and aquaria, the wildlife trade, and so on.

Amy Fitzgerald and Nik Taylor argue that the animal-industrial complex is both a consequence and cause of speciesism, which they believe is a form of discrimination similar to racism or sexism. They also argue that the obfuscation of meat's animal origins and its presentation as a sterile, faceless, plastic-wrapped consumer product is a critical part of the animal–industrial complex under global capitalism.

Speciesism results in the deep-seeded belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals for their own pleasure, a belief which is pervasive in modern society but nonetheless is oppressive and domineering and has long been countered by people who practice a vegan lifestyle.