I need to write something and I can't come up with a damn thing. I keep deleting every line I come up with, because something is closing in around me that I have fought all my life. I finally walked away from something that bothered me for a long time.

I had disagreements of principle and was expected to uphold ideas that I don't in any way agree with, while acting as a club officer in something that, while online, ultimately must be described as a social club. The principle on which the founder justified that is one that I did eventually agree with: one's own site could be considered an extension of one's own living room and no, a private person doesn't need to hold up some godawful standard of fairness or equality or free speech or anything. At home they can kick off their shoes and use unacceptable words and hold unpopular opinions and just be who they are.

You be you and I'll be me.

That is a statement of principle. That, here in my own LJ, is how I view life. It is the *only* way that I can have friendships as diverse as I do. It is one reason why I am not going to name any names and this is not about the latest site scandal or any individual's behavior in it -- this is about some of my personal ideas and this is my LJ. Here is the place where I might stop being silent, stop being diplomatic and start looking at issues for what they are.

I stood up for some weird principles. Some people make fun of the idea of always looking for "win-win solutions" when facing conflicts in life. It's inconceivable that might be better than the win-lose. I've been in other situations that had nothing to do with what prompted this and I've seen the same things happen time and again. Sometimes I get laughed at for that "win-win" type of thing.

I've also been, all of my life, a passionate defender of free speech -- but step by small step, I wound up in a public position where I could not speak out on that topic because that topic itself inflames some people. I'm against censorship. Flat out against censorship. There is something I should have posted here in my living room for a hell of a long time.

I ask myself tonight, when I have been chat-banned by association because that's the IP address my Internet comes in on, why I didn't jump in on some flamewars and post the kinds of things I used to -- that weren't flames, that rested more on the idea that if I'm in a debate and my opponent starts namecalling and I don't, my position will look a lot stronger than if I did that too.

I used to enjoy debate threads.

I had that strategy in them of making my point and letting anyone who disagreed with it just handle it the way they do -- sometimes replying as impassioned and not-personal as I did, sometimes blowing up in flames, occasionally making a point I hadn't thought of that convinced me of that point on its own.

But I haven't done that for a long time now. Somewhere back at the shelter when I wound up against unreasoning opposition that had literal blackmail on me, where that kind of irrational reaction wasn't just words but could threaten things like my housing, and people that I might have just dropped the issue with after it became circular had real power to affect my life, I started turning inward. I faced flames a lot worse than any debate thread on an electronic forum. I had physical threats and most of all, the sight of some faces that are only there in my memory now. The look in some eyes that meant that while I was open to considering the other point of view, they never saw anything but their own.

Many of those people were so fried out on their own troubles that if I started focusing on my own issues, I was tearing up their lives and adding trouble to what was already unendurable trouble in theirs. I could hurt them, but I wouldn't get anything out of hurting them except the dubious satisfaction of getting back at them.

That was then. It changed me. It meant that while I was there, I started learning to mind my own business instead of preaching and trying to control people -- that like my old debate style, I'd gone to the point of realizing that for some people that was not the time or place. I went very quiet. I started pouring out a lot of it in fiction, recognizing that what was MY business was to do the thing I set out to do in the first place. Write fat fantasy novels.

And not give a damn that, for example, there were a whole lot of people around who didn't read for pleasure and would not respect that occupation. Or did read and would rather read something else.

I am trying to break my own silence, because this is not about anyone's behavior but mine.

The only thing I am responsible for is what I do. When I started as a chat moderator, my main thing was that after the shelter thing, when the only friends I had at any time were transient and there were inevitably issues that I'd have flamed to the skies back when I wasn't locked in with the broken people in the worst of their crises that I set aside for some *other* reason. Like that there was even one thing we had in common. I learned tact. I became damn diplomatic and I don't know that I should be ashamed of that.

Because if a chat got a little too fiery and a circular argument got going, I got damn good at just changing the topic to something a lot more positive. Usually while bouncing off the topic that had gotten borderline flamelike. When I was in chat, things went smoother and most of the time what I did was invisible. No-sword fighting. Lightening things up. Focusing on something that I knew would be less strained.

In all the time I was a chat moderator, I never booted anyone.

I think I can be proud of that. I didn't *need* to boot people. I hate being threatened. I don't come down all parental on people I disagree with -- that isn't something I think is right. I'm here in my own damn living room right now and what scares me is the way so many things that I don't do or believe in are so socially acceptable.

And the only honest decent thing I can do about that is to not do it myself. But I got IP-banned and I'm not in that chat room -- and while I posted leaves of absence and made sure everyone knew why I was offline when offlined, that just made what I do as moderator literally impossible. I am mostly housebound. I don't have health or transportation to get out to a library and use their computer to access chat. If I did, the librarian would boot me after fifteen or twenty or thirty minutes for hogging the public computers.

The last time I tried using a library computer for accessing the Internet, I got into conflicts with the librarian over the fact that I couldn't even shovel my mailbox in the time alloted.

So I resigned for personal and health reasons. I didn't jump in on the flames criticizing anyone's behavior in it, because I have held my tongue a thousand times while I was moderating and I have a lot invested in a community that's a whole lot of people -- many of them just onlookers.

I took a look at what I'd been doing for a long time and wondered why I hadn't let go sooner -- because what was expected of a chat mod changed and chat mods were supposed to take a much more active enforcement role than just changing topics. On principle I care a lot about free speech. On principle, I also hold a view unpopular with some parents and passionately important to others -- ignorance is not protection.

I didn't speak up on that one after a while.

I hate censorship. I hate it that people regardless of who they are or what their situation is are at the mercy of some damn subtle forms of abuse as well as the obvious bonebreaking life threatening or sexual variety. I am not in the camp of "children should never be spanked." A real spanking can be held up as what it is -- the message "You have hit a hard boundary and this is the 'felony' level that you will face no matter why you did this."

Well, that's another thing.

So I became that quiet and diplomatic in about the same way that I hung around with someone who was a selfdescribed Bigot, because the Bigot was also a keen debater and we had a lot of fun sometimes going round and round on various topics and pouncing again when either of us came up with something new on the subject. I can say that vaguely too because the latest self admitted Bigot that I hung out with was only one of many. Some people with strong conservative views will also respect "agree to disagree" if an argument turns circular after everything's been said.

Now maybe I would have stepped down sometime anyway due to other commitments. I have quite a few. When my health goes belly up, different things drop away one at a time and one of the things that has eroded for oh, about a year or more, is my time and energy to write. The thing that was the reason I joined a writing community. Days at a time got sucked out of what I was doing by duties that weren't there in the original description of the post "just do what you've been doing all along."

There are slanted posts flying all over the place, again. This time I didn't step up to stop it and run around the way I usually do being diplomatic. The time before this, I wound up *not* defending someone I love, because the community was more important and the peace was more important and the people who were angry wouldn't listen anyway. That's true of a lot of angry people.

But I have laid it down now, because that issue came up again and it's carrying on in her blog and around and the latest Site Scandal is yet another soap opera event. Accusations are flying all over the place. Most are in a category that I would always have considered unanswerable. Some people were very shocked that I didn't just jump in and flame, especially when it got *that* personal.

I didn't get offended by the age issues with my lady, because I still don't believe in the calendar and I take people for who they are. I still think that there need to be some serious amendments to the age-based laws in this country that take into account the fact that human beings are not going to mature at the same rate and that some of them for one reason or another are not children when the calendar cutoff says they are.

Like anyone who goes through all the baffles to get legal emancipation before 18. To do that in most states you have to show the judge that you're capable of living on your own and taking care of yourself, often with a probationary period of living alone and law abiding and self supporting. Or the way that there are people who are age of consent for sex itself or even marriage -- but they can't read about it or write about it. The age laws are weird and they impose on a whole category of parents -- like the ones I had -- who would rather see their kids educated early as the only real protection against abuse or fraud or trickery.

Because I took a quiet stand for keeping the focus on community and not flaming, I wound up in a position where I could not speak out on that issue -- one that I am passionate about. And a few others. And slowly a lot of my themes eroded because I was focused on keeping the peace -- so I wound up sometimes not writing what I meant to write and narrowing my own scope to things that were common ground with people I disagreed with. I think I spent way too much time focused on just one site.

And now I can post on the boards, which I still might do, often, on all the topics that are relevant to me. I like the writing exercises and the workshops -- but I will be attending workshops by transcript instead of actively participating in the brainstorm. There's good information on the site. There's still a lot of support and well, most of the friends I know online are there.

I ask myself now why, when I met folks coming in from Baen's Bar that I hung around with and liked, I didn't spend some of my time on Baen's Bar and follow them back where they came from.

Hello BarGnat. I missed you. I hope you're doing okay. Please come try out http://www.pele.cx/~nonny/evolution/evolution.html -- we are putting up another writing site and it's got a different slant, but it will have plenty of humor and I remember how you cracked me up all the time. Beard told me you were doing well. But I miss you a lot.

The same goes for anyone I can't get in touch with at the moment in chat. We've got an AIM chat going that is the chat for the new site, mostly for a few days that's been devoted to rules discussion for the new site and other things like that, but also to writing and current projects and the usual silly streak. We're working on getting a more permanent chat set up that will be there whether anyone's in it to pull people in or not -- the logistic flaw of using AIM for a chat room is that to keep it going round the clock you need a contact person to pull in new chatters, on watch. Well, I used to live in chat and I've been doing my share of pulling people in.

It'll grow. Sites do. If you like it, tell people and post the URL here and there. The extension of that "living room" principle is just that if you don't like the editorial, do your own zine. Funny how having an Internet makes that *easy* -- and free speech is all of them coexisting and not giving a damn that some people will actually get into more than one. We've had to build in a hurry. It was going to open up after we'd jelled a core set of forum topics and put up some articles and essays and gotten all the design features -- like a chat that doesn't need a door-holder -- worked out. To make it easy for new members.

But it's in rough shape and we got a prototype up, so that's going to take a few weeks to evolve toward its own style. Hope to see you there.