I honestly cannot tell if I have yet reformed this place enough to show anyone but I didn't feel any shame when I was caught at this site by a family member at Thanksgiving, which means... Do I think this place is cool?

The goal all along has been to make this site exactly mainstream enough to be good.

I wrote most of this yesterday.

What's good about the s*x badge?

1. This place has always been an exploration of the taboo. I don't know if people who speak through taboo always understand that being willing to speak through the taboo is rare. It's just that choosing the time and place to speak through the taboo is very difficult. Thus: keeping the spirit of transgression against the taboo was very important so I couldn't, and can't, quite censor anything. Novices are quick to censor. Moderates are slow to censor. And I am, after all, modrat librul. Thus: Impassionata Congress will be discussing a subtle form of topic ban that is encouraged. (All LARPs are actually ARGs.)

So the s*x badge is good because it is a transgression against a taboo.

2. The misogyny is too hateful. There are good kinds of misogyny and it takes experience and practice to know the difference. I would never ask anyone to hew to that which some feminists rule as to what constitutes misogyny, and misos is a raging against the divine feminine in a way that you can't let get permanent you know? There's venting (It seems like women know what they're doing but refuse to admit it even to themselves often for years) (and years) and then there's celebrating that women are occasionally

confusing

for that's what makes them so appealing. See that? I approach my miso-gyny, the deep being miserable of those who love, my annoyance with this aspect of the divine feminine, by celebrating it.

(But it is a true real thing that men experience, the confusion of women!)

Other than that this place is about freedom to squash dissent by bullying people out of it until they realize it's because the ideas they're saying are wrong or misinformed or downright stupid, escalating to bans. (Unfortunately bans are used ironically here, to denote good content.) (This should not change.)

This place has slowly shifted because the misogyny goes in waves. I would say we're about due for one so I'm just going to try and head it off at the pass, so to speak.

3. @JollyMoon created the s*x badge and it was a very odd play. It took a lot of bravery to try and shove that award into the shop. A culture that is s*x-positive has more s*x.

What's bad about the s*x badge?

• Bragging about s*x on the Internet isn't cool. It will never be cool. Time spent in such an exercise would be better off spent at other things, a few come to mind.

• The bigger problem is that it makes a commodity of a human experience in a world which already makes commodities of everything. "Doesn't matter, had s*x" is a radical retort, but I am still uneasy.

The more people treat s*x as an empty badge, the less dramatic s*x will be.

So I think "Has the s*x badge run its course?" is a valid question at this stage.

I know there were jokes about this being a Gay Dating Site. A Site for Queer People to Date. I hope it doesn't lose the queer energy here.

I just feel like if I were single and younger I would clean up here. The s*x badge is unnecessary, as nothing was ever stopping anyone from putting up a fun profile and cruising.

I don't understand you! Just DM each other?? I understand. I'm sorry.

But the s*x badge gave people permission so a bunch of people got laid. We should celebrate that!

This place felt really really really really really gross at first. I went into it on consultation with St. Francis as I understood him to be (SUPER REAL?!?), and I have been afraid of losing my virtue to the presence of hatred and contempt for other people. I literally trusted that I was on a holy mission and that this might protect me. I have no real way of knowing if it did...

But now it's a cool (?) place to be, with some really gross elements that I believe we can fix. And some residual grossness that should never go away, because to scrub it away would be to make a lie of the humans that direct their gaze here. (And this is the lie that lives everywhere else on the corporatized Internet.)

"Don't be boring" ends up being very fascinatingly perfect moderation advice. Marsey, Spirit of the Cat: Power comes from Drama.

The culture here is vibrant, and it is ugly, and it's truly countercultural. Is it perfect? No. But if we're struggling in a world where the censors necessarily go too far, you can't start from a position of perfect censorship. Arbitrarily free speech is impossible.

And hatred and contempt are empty. There isn't really anything dramatic about them.

So:

the house cleans itself.

So goes the theory, at least.