Jekyll2024-01-20T20:47:24+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/feed.xmlKendra AlbertKendra Albert's personal website.Why Your Meeting Should Have an Agenda2023-11-10T00:00:00+00:002023-11-10T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2023/11/10/agendas<p>If you work with me, you know that I am kind of a stickler about meeting agendas. I’ve gotten so (in)famous for it that one of my colleagues actually purchased me a plaque for my desk that says “no agenda, no meeting.”</p>
<p align="right">
<img src="/uploads/agenda_plaque.jpg" alt="The top of a desk, with a keyboard taking much of the frame. At the back is a plaque that says 'no agenda, no meeting', next to a fidget cube, a cute plastic dumpster fire figurine, and a series of post it notes." />
</p>
<p>If you’re not already a person who uses agendas for meetings, this post is my attempt to convince you of why you should. If you are, you might find the suggested format (at the end) useful or inspiring!</p>
<h3 id="why-meeting-agendas">Why meeting agendas?</h3>
<p>Broadly, I think of the meeting agenda as a tool to make meetings both more productive and leave more space for being human.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></p>
<p>What (good) meeting agendas do:</p>
<ul>
<li>lay out topics for discussion in advance so people can do prep,</li>
<li>ensure that decisions are made and next steps are completed in a timely manner and do not fall through the cracks,</li>
<li>give the attendees shared ownership of meeting success and an understanding of what needs to be accomplished with the time.</li>
</ul>
<p>The more productive part is probably pretty straightforward - going down a list makes it easier to stay on topic! But the more human part can strike people as odd.</p>
<p>In my experience, agendas make meetings more relaxed. If the items that the team needs to discuss are clearly articulated, then it’s clear how much time we have for checking in, or discussing stuff that’s not strictly required - the human element that builds connection and allows for flexibility.</p>
<p>I also find that having a shared agenda creates shared ownership. Rather than one person trying to get through a huge list of things, all attendees can understand the priority items and help figure out how to allocate collective discussion time. It also makes concrete, which allows for explicit allocation, of the labor of who preps for the meeting. A concrete template can function to disrupt unwritten rules and prevent reliance on the hidden curriculum about how meetings function.</p>
<h3 id="agenda-logistics">Agenda Logistics:</h3>
<p>The purpose of the agenda is the thinking and prep, rather than rigid rule following.</p>
<p>I don’t think an agenda requirement should be a commitment to only discussing the items listed. If something more important comes up, it can be useful to pivot and talk about that instead. In some cases, if there’s not enough time for that discussion, I might suggest we come back to it, or schedule another meeting. Again, the purpose of the agenda is to allow for flexibility while making sure the essentials get handled. Agendas can also mean that you can figure out whether to cancel the meeting - if there’s really not anything to talk about, or it could have been an email, prepping in advance can help you figure that out before you get to the meeting.</p>
<p>In my one-on-ones where there is a clear hierarchy, the more junior person usually creates the agenda. (My students create meeting agendas for me, I create meeting agendas for meetings with my boss, etc.) In meetings that are more consensus-based or between peers, there may be one person who is responsible for handling logistics (an admin or owner on a particular project), a person who is more agenda-minded (usually me, let’s be honest), or it might make sense to rotate responsibilities. However, I would strongly suggest figuring out who is going to make the agenda, and if necessary, reminding folks to add things in advance.</p>
<h3 id="agenda-template-users-guide">Agenda Template User’s Guide:</h3>
<p>This meeting agenda template is aimed at one-on-one meetings or small group meetings. I suspect the free-for-all addition of agenda items would not work past a certain size or for groups where what is up for discussion is not consensus-based. I will only add suggested time chunks if I am really concerned that we will not have enough time to discuss everything.</p>
<p>Prior to March 2020, I used individual documents for each meeting agenda. Now, I usually have one shared running document that covers a long period of meetings (a semester, a year, etc). The most recent days are placed at the top (so that they’re easy to find), with the previous agendas lower down in the document. The only thing to note here is that if you have a meeting where some of the contents might be confidential or not appropriate for future attendees, you will need to be careful to switch over to a new running document or redact any previous agenda items. If there is a calendar invite, I ask folks to link the meeting agenda in the description.</p>
<p>Here’s a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v2nQRqM4In2OexNbe98vdtgOUE8opNC-/edit">word version</a> of this template, with some sample items. A big shout-out to my long ago former student (and now practicing attorney) Andrei Gribakov Jaffe, whose agenda template was the one that mine is based on.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>
<h3 id="agenda-template"><strong>Agenda Template:</strong></h3>
<p>[Date]</p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Next Steps from Last Meeting (copied over):</span></p>
<p><em>Before the meeting, whoever makes the agenda copies over the next steps from the previous week into the top of the meeting agenda. As prep, attendees review the agenda and determine if the next steps are done or if they need to still be done, or if there are blockers worth noting. Sometimes it makes sense to remove completed next steps, or strikethrough/annotate them!</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Discussion Items:</span></p>
<p><em>You can have standing discussion items - often this looks like specific projects or repeated topics. Any party to the meeting can also add specific discussion items. I often add items over the week between meetings as I think of them.</em></p>
<p><em>I usually ask people to include enough detail to allow for pre-thinking as necessary. It can be helpful to link out to other documents or materials if they are necessary background.</em></p>
<p><em>If I think an agenda item being on the list will cause stress (“feedback re: job performance”), I try to provide enough context to allow folks to emotionally prepare or otherwise be careful about what I’m writing.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Parking Lot:</span></p>
<p><em>For meetings where there are bigger decisions or things to come back to later, it can be useful to just keep those in a spot for future reference. This could be kept in a separate document, depending.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Upcoming Dates:</span></p>
<p><em>Vacation days, deadlines, holidays, meetings to prep for - those can all go here. For weekly meetings, these dates usually cover things about a month in advance. Having them here means that both parties can skim them in prep for the meeting/during the meeting to make sure there’s not any discussion that needs to take place around them, or to spot potential conflicts.</em></p>
<p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Next Steps:</span></p>
<p><em>Generally filled in during the meeting, although sometimes folks know what their next steps are and put them in advance. Next steps should always have a person or persons assigned to them, and should ideally have a due date, although depending on the context, that part might be flexible.</em></p>
<!-- Footnotes themselves at the bottom. -->
<h2 id="notes">Notes</h2>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>As context, in my current job, I usually have about 3-5 hours of meetings a day. These meetings often require a lot of context switching. I routinely have law students working on 10 different projects for clients at a time, and I definitely can’t keep track of all of them off the top of my head. I especially think meeting agendas are helpful for clinical supervision. One of the consistent pieces of positive feedback that students give me is that they have become meeting agenda converts and have now taken a version of my required meeting agenda practice to other parts of their lives. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>When I say I learn from my students, I definitely mean it. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>If you work with me, you know that I am kind of a stickler about meeting agendas. I’ve gotten so (in)famous for it that one of my colleagues actually purchased me a plaque for my desk that says “no agenda, no meeting.”Comments in Oversight Board Gender Identity and Nudity Case2022-09-12T00:00:00+00:002022-09-12T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2022/09/12/comments-in-oversight-board<p>Back in August, my colleague <a href="https://www.si.umich.edu/people/oliver-haimson">Oliver Haimson</a> and I submitted comments to the “Oversight Board” (an organization that Facebook, now Meta, created to allow users to appeal content moderation decisions). Although I have personally been somewhat skeptical of the Oversight Board, the case before them felt important enough that we had to weigh in.
<!--more--></p>
<p>I’ve pulled out the introduction to our remarks, and the full text is linked at the bottom. Thank you so much to Oliver for being such a thoughtful and flexible collaborator on this project.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“We are writing this comment as two experts in technology policy, content moderation, social media, and gender…In addition to our professional expertise, we are also trans people ourselves, which makes us intimately familiar with the type of marginalization Meta imposes on transgender people.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The case before the Oversight Board is an archetypal example of the harm that transgender people attempting to use social media face. In it, two trans people did not violate site policies yet were harmed not only by their images and speech being silenced, but also by the site limiting their ability to crowdfund money for surgery. It is not an isolated incident. In aggregate, both “neutral” policies that are disproportionately enforced against trans users and policies that target trans users have the effect of limiting trans people’s abilities to post content related to their marginalized identity, thus silencing their participation in the public sphere. Issues for transgender users on online platforms cannot be solved by magical thinking around equitable enforcement; they require a deeper reimagination of how bodies are understood and regulated.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>Below, we discuss examples and evidence of how these processes play out in practice, and what the Oversight Board can learn from the examples in crafting a decision on the case before it. In doing so, it may be impossible for an organization like Meta to sufficiently limit the cisgender gaze in its own content moderation policies and enforcement to equitably treat transgender users. Fully addressing trans marginalization on Meta may necessitate changes to underlying nudity, sexual solicitation, and other policies to eliminate the engines of disproportionate harm, rather than attempting to create exceptions for transgender users and their content. But it is not just the policies that are problematic here—the enforcement of these policies must be carried out in a way that does not further marginalize trans people on the platform.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://github.com/KSerra/Kserra.github.io/blob/3e6c139117dd45f2a8e7d9495376c0f368b51701/Trans%20Content%20Moderation%20Oversight%20Board%20Comment%20Draft%20-%20Google%20Docs.pdf">Full Comments</a></p>Back in August, my colleague Oliver Haimson and I submitted comments to the “Oversight Board” (an organization that Facebook, now Meta, created to allow users to appeal content moderation decisions). Although I have personally been somewhat skeptical of the Oversight Board, the case before them felt important enough that we had to weigh in.Enough About FOSTA’s “Unintended Consequences”2021-07-28T00:00:00+00:002021-07-28T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2021/07/28/enough-about-fostas-unintended-consequences<p>It feels inevitable that if you’re talking about FOSTA/SESTA (the federal law passed in 2018 that amended section 230), someone, at some point, will mention that it was aimed at combatting sex trafficking that had unintended impacts on folks doing consensual sex work.</p>
<p>Just to provide a few examples, there’s a law review article about FOSTA called “<a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/temple93&div=9&id=&page=">good intentions and unintended consequences</a>.” Or you could look at the 2018 OC Register article called “<a href="https://www.ocregister.com/2018/04/04/the-unintended-consequences-of-a-well-meaning-sex-trafficking-law/">The Unintended Consequences of a Well Meaning Anti-Sex-Trafficking Law</a>” (complete with <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/guide-to-respectful-repo/">cliche sexy legs</a> 🙄). Even Elizabeth Warren, in the <a href="https://khanna.house.gov/media/press-releases/release-reps-ro-khanna-barbara-lee-senators-elizabeth-warren-ron-wyden">announcement </a>for the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act, said “As lawmakers, we are responsible for examining unintended consequences of all legislation, and that includes any impact SESTA-FOSTA may have had on the ability of sex workers to protect themselves from physical or financial abuse.”</p>
<p>But as <a href="https://twitter.com/cybwhoregology">@cybwhoregology</a> has been pointing out, the narrative of “unintended consequences” is utter nonsense. Negative effects on sex workers (and there were <a href="https://hackinghustling.org/erased-the-impact-of-fosta-sesta-2020/">many</a>) were not “unintended.” The text of the law explicitly criminalizes the promotion of prostitution and it’s hard to argue that an interpretation of the law that was clear from its text is unintended. Sex workers and trafficking survivors were very clear about the likely outcome of FOSTA/SESTA prior to its passage. Finally, this narrative is contradicted by what the organizations that supported FOSTA say about their own goals.</p>
<p><strong>1. FOSTA explicitly criminalizes the promotion/facilitation of prostitution that does not involve trafficking.</strong></p>
<p>So the first conclusion I reach when I read these takes is that people have not even skimmed the text of the bill. I don’t really blame them - it’s pretty incomprehensible. But go take a look - the final text is <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-115publ164/pdf/PLAW-115publ164.pdf">here</a>. I’ll wait.</p>
<p>Okay, do you see why it’s ahistorical to claim that negative effects on sex work were unexpected? Just in case not, I’ll break it down for you.</p>
<p>Look at 18 U.S.C. §2421A - the bottom of the first page. This is a federal criminal provision, created by FOSTA, prohibiting promotion or facilitation of prostitution. Note that this does not require that any sex trafficking took place. The text clearly says that it is a federal crime to run a computer service with the intent to promote or facilitate prostitution of another person.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> You can have an aggravated violation under 2421A(b) if the website promotes or facilities the prostitution of 5 or more persons, OR acts in reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contributed to sex trafficking.</p>
<p>I am going to repeat that point again. <strong>You can have a criminal charge under FOSTA, including an aggravated criminal charge, without any trafficking taking place at all. Just promotion or facilitation of prostitution (aka consensual sex work).</strong></p>
<p>This concern is not merely hypothetical. The one criminal prosecution that has happened (US v. Martono, about CityXGuide) under 2421A just resulted in a plea deal where the defendant pled guilty to promotion of prostitution and conspiracy to facilitate prostitution. Although the Department of Justice talked about trafficking in their <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/us-attorney-s-office-shuts-down-website-promoting-prostitution-and-sex-trafficking">press release</a>, they never ultimately charged Martono with trafficking, likely because they could not prove that he had the level of knowledge required.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>
<p>As if that wasn’t enough, FOSTA also changed Section 230 (the federal law that previously had limited internet platform’s liability) to also allow for state criminal charges against platforms based solely on conduct related to sex work, so long as the conduct underlying the charge is based on 2421A.<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<p>You cannot pass a bill that creates additional federal criminal charges and removes immunity from state criminal charges for the promotion/facilitation of prostitution and then claim that negative effects on sex work were an accident! If the people who passed this bill, and those that advocated for it, didn’t want to harm sex workers, they shouldn’t have passed a bill that created additional crimes for the promotion of prosititution.<sup id="fnref:4" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:4" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup></p>
<p><strong>2. Sex workers were incredibly clear about the likely impact of SESTA/FOSTA before and at the time of its passage.</strong></p>
<p>The second reason that the narrative that the negative outcomes of FOSTA on sex workers was an unintended consequence is nonsense is because it requires erasing (or ignoring) the people who pointed out contemporaneously that the bills were going to harm sex workers.</p>
<p>If you want receipts, there is the Survivors Against SESTA <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180329075557if_/https://survivorsagainstsesta.org/page/3/">page </a>from 2018 that encouraged folks to call their Senators to explain how FOSTA/SESTA would harm sex workers. Survivors Against SESTA also produced a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180324175712/https://survivorsagainstsesta.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/onlinespaces_impact-003.pdf">one-pager </a>on why sex workers need online spaces. Oh, and here’s their <a href="https://survivorsagainstsesta.files.wordpress.com/2018/03/sestafosta_1p_senate.pdf">one-pager </a>on how FOSTA and SESTA would harm workers. New Orleans Harm Reduction has <a href="https://nolaharmreduction.tumblr.com/post/171627547809/all-the-info-you-need-to-fight-back-against">a page from 2018</a> where sex workers outlined materials as part of the social media campaign against FOSTA.</p>
<p>Media even covered these concerns! Here’s a contemporaneous <a href="https://theappeal.org/proposed-federal-trafficking-legislation-has-surprising-opponents-advocates-who-work-with-bf418c73d5b4/">article from Melissa Gira Grant</a> quoting sex workers’ rights experts about the negative impact of either FOSTA or SESTA on sex workers. And there’s a <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40537286/fosta-backlash-how-the-anti-sex-trafficking-bill-could-harm-sex-workers">FastCompany article</a> with a <a href="https://twitter.com/KateDAdamo/status/968216597570752512">tweet from Kate D’Adamo</a>, who said “I was a #sexworker organizer for years in NYC. #FOSTA would undermine almost every single thing I would tell people for how to stay alive. ALL screening, ALL peer references, ALL bad date lists I could send. #SurvivorsAgainstFOSTA.”</p>
<p>It’s also worth checking out the #LetUsSurvive or #SurvivorsAgainstSESTA hashtag, where you can still find many of the posts that people made prior to FOSTA’s passage. (Although the historical record is obviously incomplete because of account deletions, caused in part by platforms’ fear of liability under FOSTA. I believe Alanis Morissette would call that ironic.)</p>
<p>FOSTA and SESTA were two bills that were advocated for by different organizations that were combined into one, giant, bad, law. If SESTA alone was passed, it would have been plausible to argue that anti-sex work effects were collateral damage to efforts to prevent sex trafficking, if not for the accurate predictions about consequences of the bill. In short, sex workers expected these consequences, and said quite clearly that these were the likely outcomes. To quote Bardot Smith, “<a href="https://hackinghustling.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ALGORITHMIC-WARFARE-hh-feb2020.pdf">WHORES TOLD YOU</a>.”</p>
<p><strong>3. Many of the people who advocated for the bill saw increasing the difficulty of engaging in consensual sex work as a feature of the bill, not a bug.</strong></p>
<p><strong>Content warning for language that ignores sex worker agency - skip the next paragraph if that’s harmful to you.</strong></p>
<p>It’s not just that calling the effects unintended erases sex workers’ advocacy and labor. It also ignores the fact that some people who oppose “sex trafficking” often do want to eliminate all sex work. For example, one supporter of the bills was CATW (the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women). CATW explicitly seeks to end what they call “sexual exploitation,” which it defines as possible “only if no woman or girl is trafficked, exploited or prostituted in the sex trade.”<sup id="fnref:5" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:5" class="footnote" rel="footnote">5</a></sup> So from the angle of organizations like CATW, as well as the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly known as Morality in Media), and others, the harm to sex workers (who they often do not believe are legitimate stakeholders) is, in fact, a feature, not a bug. If you’re looking for a useful summary of how this dynamic plays out in reporting, I suggest this piece from <a href="https://whyy.org/segments/fosta-sesta-was-supposed-to-thwart-sex-trafficking-instead-its-sparked-a-movement/">WHYY Philadelphia</a>. In it, someone who works for CATW and who is speaking from their experience being trafficked makes the claim that “Sex is not work, and work is not sex. And although I recognize that there is a population of people who self-identify as sex workers, it’s really a term that’s used to mask the inherent harms that come with prostitution.” That’s not a statement that is consistent with the idea that harm to sex workers is an unintended result of anti-trafficking efforts.</p>
<p>Of course, this debate goes back far further than section 230 - it’s a rehashing of a set of conversations that took place during the white feminist sex wars of the 1970s. Far more eloquent people than I have written about how it is true that the <a href="https://nplusonemag.com/issue-35/essays/cashconsent/">binary between sex trafficking and sex work does not do a good job of capturing folks’ experiences, but that’s because it is a product of whorephobia</a>. Whorephobia comes down to the idea that there is something uniquely damaging about work that involves sex, rather than the damage coming from society’s distaste for sex work and the stigma that comes along with that and criminalization.<sup id="fnref:6" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:6" class="footnote" rel="footnote">6</a></sup> (Just to be clear - there is not. Many of the harms that people articulate as coming from this kind of work come from criminalization itself, as well as <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424363/">the lack of affirming health and social services</a>.) Fundamentally, it is impossible to truly respect and listen to sex workers and believe that the goal should be the elimination of sex work, unless you also believe that all work should be eliminated.<sup id="fnref:7" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:7" class="footnote" rel="footnote">7</a></sup></p>
<p>To pull us back to FOSTA, I suspect most mainstream technology policy organizations (and reporters, and pundits/scholars) do not want to comment on or engage with the fact that some (but not, by any means, all) anti-sex trafficking organizations believe that all sex work is inherently exploitive or leads to sex trafficking. Thus, the argumentative move seems to be to suggest that the intentions of the people who promoted FOSTA/SESTA were good and the harm to sex workers was unexpected. I understand this from a realpolitik perspective - the politics of the anti-trafficking space can seem complicated, and no one wants to appear to be pro-trafficking. And admitting you’ve caused harm is hard! However, again, pretending that prostitution was “accidentally included” or that FOSTA was a bill that was only aimed at ending what the law defines as sex trafficking is at best, revisionism.</p>
<p><strong>Conclusion:</strong></p>
<p>Most people who talk about FOSTA’s unintended consequences are not bad people, nor are they trying to erase or ignore sex workers. But the narrative that sex workers were “collateral damage” of an anti-trafficking bill is ahistorical and compounds the harm. Please, please, stop saying that the effects were unintended.</p>
<p>Did you find this post useful? Please throw some money at Hacking//Hustling, who has been working to cultivate a better understanding of the impacts of FOSTA. You can donate <a href="https://hackinghustling.org/donate/">here</a>.</p>
<p>Thank you to Danielle Blunt and Riana Pfefferkorn, who provided very helpful feedback on this post! All mistakes are my own.</p>
<!-- Footnotes themselves at the bottom. -->
<h2 id="notes">Notes</h2>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>18 U.S.C. §2421A(a). <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Thank you to Kate D’Adamo, who pointed this out. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>18 U.S.C. §2421(a)(5)(C). <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4" role="doc-endnote">
<p>The empirical evidence is clear that criminalization harms sex workers. See, e.g., Platt, Lucy, Pippa Grenfell, Rebecca Meiksin, Jocelyn Elmes, Susan G. Sherman, Teela Sanders, Peninah Mwangi, and Anna-Louise Crago. 2018. “Associations between Sex Work Laws and Sex Workers’ Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Studies.” PLoS Medicine 15 (12): e1002680. <a href="#fnref:4" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This is from CATW’s <a href="https://catwinternational.org/our-work/advocating-for-strong-laws/">description of their work</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Melissa Gira Grant’s Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work is an excellent resource that more fully explores this idea. <a href="#fnref:6" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This is an argument from Moses Moon (fka @thotscholar) Sex Work as Anti-Work body of thinking. You can read them more fully exploring it, in conversation with Lorelei Lee and Kitty Milford, <a href="https://hackinghustling.org/event-work-and-anti-work-what-are-people-in-the-sex-trades-fighting-for/">here</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>It feels inevitable that if you’re talking about FOSTA/SESTA (the federal law passed in 2018 that amended section 230), someone, at some point, will mention that it was aimed at combatting sex trafficking that had unintended impacts on folks doing consensual sex work.Care, Not Respect: Teaching Professionalism2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:002021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2021/07/15/care-not-respect-teaching-professionalism<p><em>This was inspired by a conversation with my 2020-2021 student, Kose, as well as conversations with this year’s IfRFA fellows. Thank you Kose, Elias, Iltaff, Nirali, and Makela! </em></p>
<p>As someone who has to articulate to students what clear standards look like in a profession that lacks them, I always worry about using the word “professionalism.” What is professionalism, and how does one teach it?</p>
<p>At its best, professionalism encompasses a number of small, everyday tasks that I associate with high quality work products or making life easier for those around us. Common tasks that fall under the professionalism umbrella include wearing the correct clothes to court, reviewing final work product to make sure the formatting is perfect, or showing up on time and with an agenda to meetings.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with that? In so many legal spaces, professionalism comes to stand in for the unnamable, the je ne sais quoi.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> It means “looks like us” or “acts like us.” Professionalism implicitly relies on the stereotypes about who belongs in law and who does not. Every time I facilitate discussions about this, I learn about new things piss me off. Some examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>First generation students are told that during oral argument, you shouldn’t use hand gestures because it’s unprofessional.</li>
<li>Female students are held to dress code requirements that only work for some bodies, not to mention some budgets.</li>
<li>Students of color are expected to constantly code switch to fit the idea of what a legal practitioner looks like.</li>
<li>Neurodivergent students get told to make eye-contact in meetings where it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference other than making a supervisor feel more powerful.</li>
</ul>
<p>The list goes on and on and on. Unprofessional becomes the catch all for “not acting like me,” when deployed by white, straight, often male, supervisors. Professionalism is so racist, ableist, classist, and sexist that it feels like it can’t be rescued from itself.</p>
<p>If a student dares to ask why these things matter, professionalism is usually framed in terms of respect for legal institutions. We stand when the judge enters because it is respectful. We wear a suit to court because we respect the institution. But as someone who is often disrespected or harmed by legal institutions, I find it hard to act from this frame. Call me petty, but legal institutions so rarely go out of their way to respect me or the people I care about. Performing respect for them doesn’t get me out of bed in the morning.</p>
<p>But over time, I’ve come to believe there are some skills at the heart of professionalism that might be worth saving, and as a teacher, I am always trying to balance teaching the way things should be with the way things are. So when I have to teach it, I try to talk about professionalism as a way of caring about others around us. Professionalism, at its best, is as an act of love and belief towards those we work with, rather than a set of behavioral standards that we have to live up to. We review final documents for typos because taking the time to produce high quality, clean, work product shows our clients that they matter to us. We send agendas, and show up on time because we care about those we’re meeting with, and not wasting their time is a way to express that care. And when these norms do not communicate care - when they will not succeed in making our people feel cared for, we can let them go.</p>
<p>Framing professionalism as an act of care for others also helps us build skills in setting boundaries. There are some things I won’t do, no matter how much I care about my client or my students. Each person may decide for themselves what steps they may take to care for others, and what steps they cannot take out of care for themselves. I am not going to accept being misgendered, even if it would be “disrespectful” to interrupt someone.</p>
<p>This reframing, of course, does not solve all professionalism’s problems. As Kose pointed out to me, care can be weaponized in toxic ways - see the discourse around viewing a workplace as a family, which often makes it harder to assert reasonable boundaries. And care work requirements still disproportionately fall on minoritized people, and that means we must be vigilant in our views about who needs to be professional. But if professionalism is about care, we can use this frame to ask for more from the students (and lawyers) who traditionally perform less care work. Taking notes, doing ministerial tasks, prepping for meetings, “acting professional” - these are things we can redistribute among team members, when we acknowledge them as grounded in care, not respect. We can accept dress codes for the utter horseshit that they are and still follow them, because we care about our clients. For me, this reframe helps solve a fundamental problem - how to both understand professionalism’s role in gatekeeping the profession, but still teach it in ways that allow students to see how it might matter.</p>
<!-- Footnotes themselves at the bottom. -->
<h2 id="notes">Notes</h2>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>When I went to look up how to spell “je ne sais quoi”, the sample sentence that shows up from Oxford dictionaries is literally “that je ne sais quoi that makes a professional.” (!) <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>This was inspired by a conversation with my 2020-2021 student, Kose, as well as conversations with this year’s IfRFA fellows. Thank you Kose, Elias, Iltaff, Nirali, and Makela!June 2021 Decrim MA Testimony2021-06-16T00:00:00+00:002021-06-16T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/decrim-ma-testimony<p>On June 15, 2021, in solidarity with a number of my sex working comrades, I offered oral testimony to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary in favor of decriminalizing common nightwalking and against the Nordic model (also known as End Demand, or rather ironically, “the Equality Model”). I’m reposting it here.</p>
<hr />
<p>Chair Eldridge, Chair Day, and the Members of the Committee on the Judiciary,</p>
<p>Thank you for having me today. My name is Kendra Albert, and I am an attorney at Harvard Law School, where I teach in the Cyberlaw Clinic. I am also an out transgender person, and I serve as the Director of the Initiative for a Representative First Amendment. My practice at the Cyberlaw Clinic focuses on the free speech impacts of regulation of sex work. I am here today to oppose bill <a href="https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/HD3437">H.1761/S.940</a> and to support bill <a href="https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/H1800">H.1800/S.992</a>.</p>
<p>Massachusetts has long been a national leader in evidence-based policy. What we know about sex work, both from what sex workers tell us and from research, is that harm to sex workers comes primarily from stigma and criminalization, not from the work itself. Because of that, repealing common nightwalking is vital - it removes one avenue that police use to profile sex workers and people who police believe look like sex workers. But merely erasing the most antiquated language while continuing to incentivize police targeting clients, as H.1761 does, just moves the problem around.</p>
<p>Making Massachusetts follow the evidence leads to supporting full decriminalization, not asymmetric criminalization under the guise of helping sex workers access exit services. Studies show that the model suggested by the advocates of H.1761/S.940 (generally called the “Nordic Model”) leads to reluctance to call police for help and may exacerbate violence. A peer-reviewed study released in Social Science of five “nordic” jurisdictions in Canada found that almost one third of sex workers surveyed would be unable to call 911 if there was an emergency.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> In another study from Montreal, sex workers reported dramatic increases in violence after Nordic-style policing was implemented.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> In fact, sex workers in Canada have had to file lawsuits to try to end human rights harms that comes from these failed policies. There is no evidence that the Nordic model reduces demand for sex work, nor that it reduces human trafficking.</p>
<p>Sex workers in Massachusetts deserve better than a policy intervention that has already failed elsewhere. For those reasons, I encourage you to support full decriminalization, H.1867, or as an interim step, the full repeal of the common nightwalking crime, H.1800/S.992, rather than providing favorable reviews on H.1761/S.940.</p>
<p>Thank you for your time and the opportunity to testify.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Crago A-L, Bruckert C, Braschel M, Shannon K. Sex Workers’ Access to Police Assistance in Safety Emergencies and Means of Escape from Situations of Violence and Confinement under an “End Demand” Criminalization Model: A Five City Study in Canada. Social Sciences. 2021; 10(1):13. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci10010013. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Chu, S. K. (2013). Sex Work Law Reform in Canada: Considering Problems with the Nordic Model. Alberta Law Review, 51(1). Retrieved from http://www.aidslaw.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Nordic_model-ALR-Oct2013.pdf <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>On June 15, 2021, in solidarity with a number of my sex working comrades, I offered oral testimony to the Massachusetts Joint Committee on the Judiciary in favor of decriminalizing common nightwalking and against the Nordic model (also known as End Demand, or rather ironically, “the Equality Model”). I’m reposting it here.Evaluating Apologies2021-04-12T00:00:00+00:002021-04-12T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/evaluating-apologies<p>I wrote this a while ago, but it seems relevant today - these are my own personal criteria for evaluating apologies.</p>
<p>Apologies from a person who did or was complicit in a harmful act must be meaningful and consonant with the magnitude of the harm.</p>
<p>Specifically, in order for me personally to find it meaningful, the apology must include:</p>
<ul>
<li>naming the harm that they did, specifically
<ul>
<li>Leaving others to explain or contextualize the shitty thing is not acceptable.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>explaining how they became aware that harm was done
<ul>
<li>If appropriate, crediting people who attempted to intervene or report.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>stating very clearly what exact steps they are taking to make it right, including a description of how those steps address problems they caused
<ul>
<li>Giving money to a cause is insufficient if giving money to a cause would not ensure that the harmful thing would not happen again.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>stating who will hold them accountable for those steps.
<ul>
<li>It is not appropriate to expect those harmed to hold them accountable.</li>
<li>Everyone often in practice means no one - it is better to be specific.</li>
<li>In some circumstances it may be appropriate to pay someone (up front) to help the person with their accountability.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The apology must not:</p>
<ul>
<li>trivializing the harm caused (no “I’m sorry if you were offended.”)</li>
<li>prioritize excuses, explaining their thought process, or centering themselves over the harm caused</li>
</ul>
<p>The person apologizing must also have mitigated or attempted to mitigate harm caused by any protective steps they took or an institution took on their behalf. Even the most heartfelt apology is hard to take seriously if someone is still threatening legal action against whistleblowers or stonewalling further investigation.</p>
<p>If there is a specific person who has been most significantly harmed by the bad action, their views on the acceptability of a public response are important to me but not controlling of whether I think an apology is meaningful.</p>
<p><strong>Clarifying Questions:</strong></p>
<p><em>But what about some specific circumstance where these rules don’t make sense?</em></p>
<p>That’s a good question! Obviously, each situation is unique, and there may be instances where some of the items here are not going to be applicable. But if I find myself trying to rules lawyer myself into thinking that an apology merits forgiveness or public support, that’s a good opportunity to check myself.</p>
<p><em>But an apology like the one you suggest would expose someone to liability!</em></p>
<p>Good! Or shall I say - that is part of being held accountable, because it represents a person accepting at least some of consequences of their actions, to the extent that the legal system dispenses those. It also means that the apologizer is willing to give up something of value to deal with the harm they have caused, which can be an important test of their seriousness.</p>I wrote this a while ago, but it seems relevant today - these are my own personal criteria for evaluating apologies.The Chatham House Should Not Rule2021-04-09T00:00:00+00:002021-04-09T00:00:00+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/chathamhouse<p>I often attend events that use the Chatham House Rule.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chatham House-by-default seems to have become a norm in certain parts of academia and civil society. Academic institutions often use it because not attributing allows for participation/insights from people who may have institutional constraints on sharing their experiences/opinions. For example, folks who work for a government entity or a corporation are often constrained in what they are able to say. Using the Chatham House Rule allows them to speak/participate.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></p>
<p>But for those of us who are not subject to those institutional strictures and who have often given up opportunities to remain so, Chatham-by-default can mean that our participation in these conversations is just unacknowledged (and usually unpaid) labor. If I say something useful or valuable during a conversation, and it makes it into a concrete output (like a report), the Chatham House Rule ensures that I don’t receive any credit for that outside the context of the people who were potentially in the room in the first place. If others find the idea compelling and end up repeating it, I may never get credit, making it harder to build credibility as an expert.</p>
<p>Relying on memory rather than formal credit also has distributional consequences because of sexism and racism. Not recording attribution is likely to have disproportionately negative effects on those who are already less likely to be recognized as having important contributions. (This phenomenon is sometimes called <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-hepeating-2017-9">“he-peating” or “rewhiting.”</a>)</p>
<p>Many interpretations of the Chatham House Rule produce summary documents that don’t allow for an understanding of power dynamics or the incentives of speakers. It matters who said what! If the [Big Company] lobbyist says that the problem is that not enough people trust corporations to do the right thing, a reader should weigh that comment differently than if someone who works for [Consumer Rights Group] says that. Positionality beyond affiliations is also relevant - especially as we think about underrepresentation of Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people in spaces like technology policy. (We could also imagine a version of the rule that allows for some sharing of information about the background of a speaker. One difficulty could be that such information requires a sufficient number of speakers of a particular background in the room so that an identification is not immediately revealing.)</p>
<p>Finally, the Chatham House rule seems to operate on an implicit assumption that additional information is sufficient reward for participation in conversations, as opposed to credit for insights/perspectives. As someone who believes incredibly strongly in paying participants for their time and efforts, I’m increasingly uncomfortable with academic norms that lead to extractive knowledge creation.</p>
<p><strong>The Chatham House Rule, as a default practice with no option of attribution, privileges the needs of those who are not willing to have their views be attributed over people who benefit from attribution and credit.</strong> I wish more organizers would think critically about whose participation is rewarded and encouraged by Chatham House, rather than assuming that it is good for everyone. As part of this process, organizers could directly consult participants in knowledge creation about what is useful to them - whether that’s payment, anonymity, or credit, and then endeavor to provide that.</p>
<p>Thank you to Jonathan Zittrain, Afsaneh Rigot, Wendy Seltzer, and some anonymous reviewers who read and provided feedback on a draft. Very meta.</p>
<!-- Footnotes themselves at the bottom. -->
<h2 id="notes">Notes</h2>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This is fundamentally different from safety rules that are used to protect at risk people. Across many spaces, I have never heard the Chatham House Rule used in that context. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>I often attend events that use the Chatham House Rule.Their Law: New Essay on Harvard Law Review Blog2019-07-11T15:20:07+00:002019-07-11T15:20:07+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2019/07/11/their-law-new-essay-on-harvard-law-review-blog<p>I recently published <a href="https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/their-law/">an essay</a> responding to <em>They, Them, and __Theirs</em>, an article on non-binary inclusion. (Yes, the title is a reference to a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz9I0WJxF84">The Prodigy song</a>.) </p>
<figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="3840" data-orig-width="5760"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/74849cc16b1336081552f432355db075/1207ac2d689146ca-c6/s540x810/68ff3d8e86319c431ab40116c2257f8f4ca65472.jpg" data-orig-height="3840" data-orig-width="5760" /></figure>
<!-- more -->
<p>I’ll quote the beginning here: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Many gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms are behind locked doors. Not in the same sense that all bathroom doors are locked; rather, these spaces can be accessed only by either being lucky enough to slip in behind someone with authorization, or by pleading one’s case before some sort of decision maker—a literal gatekeeper. In the most immediate sense, it’s the gym manager (“Can I use the temporary gender neutral facility?”), the information desk person (“Can you let me into the family restroom?”), or the key card provisioner (“I need access to the other floor because that’s where the bathroom I can use is. Please.”).</p>
<p>Other aspects of gender-neutral life can require a different, but intimately related, set of recitations to a more metaphorical set of gatekeepers. Sometimes these pleas are heard by a therapist (“Can you give me a diagnosis so I can get this covered by my insurance?”), a doctor (“Please just let me have the anti-depressants so I don’t become another suicide statistic.”), or a judge (“Your honor, don’t make me publish my old name and new name in the newspaper in order to effectuate my name change.”). Other times they are addressed to an HR manager (“My colleague called me by the wrong pronouns for the entire meeting and my boss didn’t correct him.”), a lawyer (“The new shift manager kept snickering about my pronoun pin and marked me as late even when I wasn’t…do you think I have a case?”), or an athletics organizing body (“Look, I just want to lift weights, okay? I don’t care which category I’m in.”).</p>
<p>It is the law that underlies these requests that Professor Jessica Clarke takes up in <a href="https://harvardlawreview.org/2019/01/they-them-and-theirs/">They, Them, and Theirs</a>, her law review article on nonbinary people. Rather than focusing on the moral claim that nonbinary people should have their genders taken seriously, Clarke takes up the logistical arguments that critics have mounted against nonbinary gender claims. Most simply, she argues that including nonbinary people in existing social institutions would not require radical changes to the law.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Clarke’s thesis is not wrong. She ably points out many ways in which nonbinary people can fit easily into existing systems and pushes back against common arguments, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/01/13/462906419/everyone-uses-singular-they-whether-they-realize-it-or-not">from the tyranny of grammar</a> to the <a href="http://time.com/4702962/gender-neutral-bathrooms/">imagined threat of sexual predators in restrooms</a>. There is certainly a strategic argument to support the integration of nonbinary people into existing systems of state-sponsored gender. But advocates for nonbinary people should not start with a goal of assimilation, even if that is where they end. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can read the rest at: <a href="https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/their-law/">https://blog.harvardlawreview.org/their-law/</a></p>
<p>Image from Vice’s <a href="https://broadlygenderphotos.vice.com/">Gender Spectrum Collection.</a></p>I recently published an essay responding to They, Them, and __Theirs, an article on non-binary inclusion. (Yes, the title is a reference to a The Prodigy song.) Baking as Carework2019-03-24T17:33:19+00:002019-03-24T17:33:19+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2019/03/24/baking-as-carework<figure class="tmblr-full" data-orig-height="2053" data-orig-width="4017"><img src="https://66.media.tumblr.com/58e78c10651fe4ced33826c478c0f221/tumblr_inline_povshy2Y641rrgb56_540.jpg" data-orig-height="2053" data-orig-width="4017" /></figure>
<p>I changed my mind about bringing baked goods into the office. Twice.</p>
<!-- more -->
<p>I haven’t always had strong opinions on this complex and important topic. But in 2012, I brought in cookies for a meeting. I was nominally in charge of a large group of folks, and I figured as a courtesy, I would bake some cookies to make everyone feel better about having to attend on less than 24-hours’ notice. They were complicated cookies - Christina Tosi’s chocolate chip marshmallow cornflake cookies. I overanalyzed how many people had eaten. Who went back for seconds. If they liked them. And as the cookies disappeared, I felt as if my authority to actually lead the meeting was disintegrating - crumbling into the carpet along with the stray crumbs. They were delicious. I swore “never again.” No more baked goods in the office.</p>
<p>It wasn’t a totally unreasonable position. I haven’t been able to track down a citation, but I’ve heard that Sheryl Sandberg once said that you should never bring baked goods into the office. The unspoken end of that sentence is “if you’re a woman.” You should never bring baked goods into the office if you’re a woman (or read as one). Because then you’ll be a mom, rather than a leader, a nurturer rather than a respected colleague. And if you had to choose (and it certainly seems like you did have to choose), wouldn’t you pick “respected” over “comforting”? I would. I did. Besides, opting-out of feminine labor as a feminine presenting-person felt radical. It felt transgressive.</p>
<p>It wasn’t just that I had brought cookies into that meeting. I cared about what people thought about them. And that was the second problem - just baking cookies shows that you spent time and energy on taking care of others, a no-no - but desperately wanting people to like your baked goods is even worse. Caring about what other people think gives them power over you, and giving people who have to respect you power over you was scary.</p>
<p>Changing my mind about my no baked goods policy wasn’t a bolt from the blue. I didn’t wake up one morning, shout “the patriarchy is full of lies! good leaders can be vulnerable and show that they care!” and bake a whole pan of brownies for my colleagues. It was a slow process, like sugar caramelizing on the Great British Baking Show, where nothing appears to be changing until the entire pan is almost burnt. </p>
<p>When I took a class from an amazing biological anthropologist who baked for us, her students, every week, I didn’t respect her less. When I read Teaching to Transgress and bell hooks talked about the importance of being vulnerable and present in order to create a learning environment, I found myself nodding along. I thought about how many more risks I was willing to take with colleagues who were open about their struggles and uncertainty. I followed a long conversation around emotional labor online and reflected upon how I loved the feminist spaces, where people put time, energy and attention into creating dialogue. </p>
<p>Over time, I watched who was able to not focus on the feelings of those around them. I could, as a “scholar”, but my friend, the administrative assistant, she didn’t have that option. The black women I chatted with at conferences couldn’t – they’d be perceived as angry. My younger colleagues, who worked for male bosses who weren’t quite as secure as mine – they couldn’t get away with not performing emotional labor and femininity in the workplace. I grew more uncomfortable opting out of care work just because I could.</p>
<p>In short, I found a thousand counter-examples to my initial thesis that there was a transgressive power to just opting out. In a society where vulnerability and care are devalued and seen as a sign of weakness, care-work, like baking, is radical. Sometimes it is more transgressive to opt-in. To choose to do the work, even though you know you don’t (or shouldn’t) have to.</p>
<p>I now believe that vulnerability and visible care are not at odds with leadership and respect. They are inseparable. Admitting that you care, that you are willing to put in the time and energy, is fundamental to showing those around you that you respect them. And giving respect is a good way to earn it.</p>
<p>I’ll never quite know if I was right, in 2012, that I was respected less because I baked for people. It’s not clear if my confidence in embracing carework now come from the sense that I am more confident I am better at my job, more sure that I am worthy of respect (not to mention a better baker). But one way out of the trap of patriarchy, where you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, is to do what you would have wanted to do anyway.</p>
<p>So now I bake.</p>
<p><em>This essay is a slightly modified version of the talk I gave as part of the Harvard Law School Library’s Why I Changed My Mind event. You can watch the talk <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3111&v=R7DY7DgOsdU">here</a>. </em></p>Difficult Speech in Feminist Communities2019-03-05T12:57:55+00:002019-03-05T12:57:55+00:00https://kendraalbert.com/2019/03/05/difficult-speech-in-feminist-communities<p>(This essay was originally published in 2017, as part of the Berkman Klein Center’s <em><a href="https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/33746096">Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online</a></em> collection. In the interest of making it more broadly sharable, I’m now posting it here.)</p>
<p>Many feminist communities online have developed sets of practices to accommodate, moderate and regulate speech. As we consider the implications of hateful speech on our online communities, it is vital that we also reflect upon how communities deliberatively deal with wanted yet complicated topics, and whether these practices can provide models for dealing with formulating and regulating speech according to community-developed norms. This essay discusses one such set of models – a set of interventions against what I call “difficult speech.”</p>
<!-- more -->
<p>Difficult speech is speech that is wanted yet may also cause discomfort or harm in a community with a shared set of norms. For example, a trans person in a community aimed at trans folks might want to discuss their body as part of seeking advice on dysphoria (a psychological condition of distress stemming from one’s body not matching one’s gender). However, for other trans folks, a person’s recounting of their feelings about their body may not be something that they cannot read without having suicidal thoughts. The issue is further complicated by the fact that what may cause difficulty for a person on their bad day might be perfectly fine a few days later. This variability, both across people and time, creates unique moderation needs. In writing this piece, I reviewed a small number (~5) of feminist sites, including both blogs with moderated comments sections and forums/private community spaces, to see how they deal with difficult speech. Content warnings and multiple channels with redirection are two options for handling this moderation that were common to multiple surveyed spaces.</p>
<p><strong>Using Content Warnings to Offset the Impact of Difficult Speech</strong></p>
<p>Perhaps the most obvious method of dealing with difficult speech is “content warnings” or “trigger warnings.” Content warnings are literal statements of the content of following text or images – for example, if a text contained the first-person narrative of sexual assault, a content warning might say “sexual assault.” (Generally, the term “content warning” is considered broader than “trigger warning” and thus I will use it.)</p>
<p>Content warnings are not unique to feminist communities, but are often more common in feminist spaces than elsewhere. Warnings can be used in a variety of circumstances, for content containing anything from depictions of rape to manifestations of white supremacy. In some communities, warnings are deployed along with tags that make the difficult material not readable unless moused over (“spoiler tags”). If material is not obscured, a content warning can be paired with a note about how long the warning will be in effect for (“CN: police violence, next 4 paragraphs”).</p>
<p>Communities often engage in discursive practices around what kinds of content requires a warning – allowing autonomy and discussion over shared values. Commonly chosen content warnings among some feminist communities surveyed include “sexual assault”, “transphobia”, “racism”, “war on agency” (reproductive rights), and “Nazis.” As demonstrated by this list, the potential options are broad, and often depend on the needs and characteristics of the members of the community.</p>
<p><strong>Using Multiple Channels to Respond to Difficult Speech</strong></p>
<p>Some communities use a combination between multiple channels and conversation redirection to handle difficult speech. For example, there might be two channels for a particular issue: #bodyissues and #bodyissues-unfiltered. When someone wants to talk about something that others might find difficult, either as explicitly mentioned in guidelines or just understood as a sensitive topic, they might post in #bodyissues with a content warning and a pointer – “I want to talk about a dysmorphia thing in unfiltered, if you’re up for listening meet me there.” Users who are able to support can view #bodyissues-unfiltered to read and comment. Other users who might not be worried about potential triggers can view the unfiltered channel as part of their daily community interactions.</p>
<p>Finally, a user who is finding a conversation taking place in the #bodyissues tag difficult can ask other users to move to #bodyissues-unfiltered. This allows for more situational reactivity than a more traditional content warning system.</p>
<p><strong>Platforms, Affordances and Regulation</strong></p>
<p>One notable characteristic of the aforementioned interventions that deal with difficult speech is that they rely on platforms having particular affordances, and making these affordances accessible to moderators – the power to ban members, to create multiple channels, and to block out speech (for example, with spoiler tags). Thus, difficult speech interventions may not be possible in communities that work on platforms without these. For example, a community on Facebook, couldn’t use spoiler tags, as they are unsupported by the platform.</p>
<p>Additionally, difficult speech interventions can be undermined by more traditional moderation actions by platforms. For example, imagine a racial slur is used in the context of explaining a recent experience and asking for reassurance. If an appropriate content warning is used, the harmful effects on members of the targeted community may be mitigated. Nevertheless, the post containing the slur might trigger a “shadowban” or “time out” from the platform due to the language – resulting in fewer people seeing the post at all, the exact opposite of what the user may need.</p>
<p>As I write this essay, Mastodon, an alternative social network, has been rapidly gaining popularity. Mastodon supports content warnings, and users from different Mastodon servers have been engaged in robust debate over what content deserves warnings, from politics to porn. Whether Mastodon ends up going the way of forgotten social networks like Diaspora or Ello or becomes widely adopted, it is notable that content warnings are now more integrated directly into platforms.</p>
<p>Since much regulation of speech is bound up in legal frameworks and debates over banned terms, community adaptations to difficult speech, like those taking place on feminist platforms or on Mastodon, suggest a new way forward for dealing with harmful speech online.</p>(This essay was originally published in 2017, as part of the Berkman Klein Center’s Perspectives on Harmful Speech Online collection. In the interest of making it more broadly sharable, I’m now posting it here.)