I've been thinking a little bit lately about inclusivity, and how our social groups tend to be rather poor at it.
I was reading an article a little while ago on someone's blog about how acronyms are really exclusive and can lead to confusion and just a general lack of communication (one of the examples given was using "TW" instead of "Trigger Warning". I can remember coming across "SI/TW" in a few livejournal communities I used to frequent and it took me a long time to figure out that it mean "Self Injury/Trigger Warning")
I put a show poster up on the bulletin board at work and one of my coworkers read it and asked "What does PWYC mean?" and while it's super obvious to my immediate circle that it means Pay What You Can, I think it's a little short sighted of us to assume that everyone reading the poster is going to get it.
I wonder how many times people have walked by a show poster, say the "$5 or PWYC" and just wrote off the show because they figured they couldn't afford it and didn't realize they could come anyway.
About Me
- Riot
- I'm an anarchist, feminist, artist, musician, friend, lover, human. I'm flawed and fucked up but I have a lot of love and I mean well. I tend to over-criticize the world around me, and I may come off as stuck up or rude, but I can assure you I'm just shy and terrified.
1 comment:
most social groups are incredibly non-inclusive in ways we usually don't even consider. from accessibility to phrases like you've mentioned to the cultural aspect itself. a lot of punk and anarchist communities and their events are white washed, held in non accessible spaces, are incredibly self referential within their subculture, making them essentially pretty hostile to people of colour, people with mobility issues, and people who are new to the subculture. never mind all the problems with bros.
i think it's really great you're trying to recognize the shortcomings of these things, and i certainly don't expect you to go out and fix all the things i mentioned tomorrow, as some of them aren't fixable. (house shows sadly can't always be held in accessible spaces for example.) but we certainly need to recognize the spaces we set up aren't for everyone like we think they are. they are for an everyone like 'us'. it's certainly made me rethink the way i approach events, and for the better.
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