We appreciate your contribution to our site, and respect that your comments are your own written work. To keep discussion constructive, we reserve the right to moderate, refuse to post, delete or edit comments before or after they are published on the site. We also reserve the right to publish your comment as a post with commentary, critical or complimentary. Below are the guidelines your comments must follow. For additional information, see Terms of Use. If you have any questions, always feel free to email us (select “Jennifer Kesler” in the email form).
First and foremost: we must feel your comment adds value to the discussion, or it will not be posted. For years, we labored with a list of “don’ts”, and had to debate whether a comment violated a stated “don’t” or not. Then we realized it was much simpler to say your comment must add value, or else why waste our bandwidth to host it?
That said, here are a few pointers to keep in mind.
- The Hathor Legacy is not a fan site. It’s a site for critical analysis of the portrayal of women in media. Because of this, you might see your favorite movies, books or other creative works being criticized. Before you get defensive, remember: they’re often our favorite works, too. Take a moment to understand exactly what the author is criticizing before rushing to defend the work.
- We’re extremely strict about derailing. Check out Derailing for Dummies for descriptions of many types of derailing you may not recognize as such.
- Criticize the argument, not the person making it. We have zero tolerance for flaming.
- Do not make “But what about the menz?” arguments. Yes, bad things happen to men, too. We know this, we often acknowledge this, and we care. It just isn’t (usually) relevant to a site about bad things that happen to women.
- If someone tells you you’re engaging in privilege, listen. They could be wrong, but they’re most often correct – as we mods have all learned the hard way, too.
- Avoid gendered slurs like “whore”, “bitch” and “bastard.” Also ableist terms like lame, dumb, idiot, moron and retard/ed. This is not an attempt to police your profanity. These terms further concepts that shouldn’t exist – for example, that only women can be “sluts.” Instead, think harder and express what you really mean. Even if your comment otherwise adds value, we won’t post it if you’ve used these words.
- Don’t state your opinions as facts.
- There are more than two sides to an issue, so don’t assume binaries. For example, arguing a defendant didn’t get a fair trial does not equal arguing the defendant is innocent of all charges.
- Criticism of post content is always welcome, but criticism of typos, grammar, punctuation, spelling, word usage, site design and how we operate the site are not relevant to any individual post and tend to derail threads horribly. Please drop us emails (select “Jennifer Kesler” in the form) about these issues, and we will look into them. If you go ahead and submit them as comments anyway, we will delete them. We may pay attention to them anyway (hey, we like constructive criticism!) but we’re more likely to pay attention to emails on these issues.
- No gender essentialist comments. This is the most frequent reason comments don’t make it through moderation. It means you cannot state as fact that “women naturally like ruthless men, it’s a genetic thing” or make any other similar sweeping statements. For more details, read this.
- Don’t attempt to dominate a conversation or demand replies from certain individuals because you think they owe you the discussion of your choice. They don’t.
- Don’t question the entire purpose of the site, or someone’s motive for writing an article or comment.
- Don’t leap to the astonishing conclusion that we’re suggesting censorship when we criticize a work.
- If your comment demonstrates you haven’t read the article and/or you’re creating straw arguments rather than addressing the points actually being made, your comment will not be posted.
- If you think pop culture’s fine as it is, we’re happy for you, but don’t bother commenting to let us know. This is a site for people who think there is a problem. There are eleventy billion other sites for people who love pop culture as is.
Thanks! Enjoy the site.
