Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-

Ready to ditch FetLife? Tools to make the transition easier.

maymay:

All right folks. FetLife’s founder, John Baku, unleashed a wave of pedophilic comments on an unsuspecting 9 year old boy. (Disgusting.) FetLife’s new community manager, Susan Wright, is telling a woman targeted by a convicted murderer that the other FetLife users who are sending her personally identifiable details to this felon are not in violation of the site’s Terms of Use. (Bizarre.) And the people who are continuing to post my full legal name and other information, despite many of my friends having sent me screenshots showing that they’ve repeatedly reported these violations, are continuing to do so.

And you’re on FetLife…why?

Because it’s the place where you find out about events? Check out FetLife iCalendar, an easy way to sync your Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, or any other calendaring application with FetLife events. (Yup, I said “sync.”)

Because you don’t want to lose all your account history and FetLife offers no way for you to get it? Check out this free FetLife Export tool, which comes complete with a video walkthrough for making a full backup of your FetLife account.

Because your writings are on FetLife and it’d be a pain to move them to another blogging platform? Last night, I wrote a WordPress plugin that automagically imports your FetLife Writings from FetLife.com into your WordPres blog. It’s called the WP FetLife Importer and as soon as it gets approved, you can download and install WP FetLife Importer directly from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Until then, you can download a copy from my staging server.

If your blog is on WordPress.com rather than your own server where you can install plugins, try the FetLife to WordPress eXtended RSS (WXR) Generator instead.

Recently, I got some email from folks who run a BDSM/fetish group concerned that FetLife isn’t the best place for them to be. (Y’think?) Moreover, although they had come to rely on the site for just about everything, they had no way to contact the over 2,000 members in their FetLife group informing them that they’d like to transition away from FetLife.

Turns out, I’m getting more and more requests from folks who are beginning to realize that FetLife is exploiting them and not letting them leave easily. When a company, or a service, or a person, tells you that you need them to survive, and at the same time they hinder your attempts to leave, what you’ve got is an abusive relationship.

And while I can continue to say “I told you so” until the cows come home, I’m taking a different approach this time.

• If you’re an individual person and you want some help escaping FetLife, leave a comment or make a request for some code and I might be able to make an exporter/importer/content migration tool for you.
• If you’re an organization or a group, check out my (still very new) Escape from FetLife page and ask me for a quote. I can make hours upon hours of labor-intensive work moving content out of FetLife as easy as…well, as easy as clicking a button. (Don’t believe me? Try any of the tools, above.)

I was a professional Web developer and free software programmer for almost a decade. If you (or anyone you know) wants help getting off of FetLife, let’s make it happen. (Because I can.)

Actually, I think more people should have this resource post.

For clarity

carol-fucking-danvers:

If you say the “A” in LGBTQIA+ is for “Ally” I will personally paint the word “Asexual” on a baseball bat and beat you with it. 

suaine:

Why am I so angry with this MTV article about Sterek’s win in the E!online poll?

Because major entertainment sites keep telling me how ridiculous I am for expecting queer people to have the same kind of stories and potential that straight people do (including but not limited to: straight is not default and everyone may as well be queer until proven straight, it worked well enough the other way around). There was Entertainment Weekly, of course, but zap2it is hardly better, and the continued digs from the Remote Control blog at MTV itself.

“It’s not going to happen,” they say, armed not with insider info from the show, but only the knowledge that so far the media has sucked pretty badly for queer representation, implying not sympathy but a kind of glee at our “obvious” delusions. “They’re straight,” they say, even though there is word of fucking god that at least one of the characters really isn’t. “Female love interest!” they crow, throwing us a little “sorry, shippers” as if it’s a given that one means the other can’t happen.

And I’m done. If all those people know more than we do, if Jeff Davis himself has whispered into their ears, then we have a right to know without all this hedging and cutesy obfuscating. If the chance has gone down from 50/50 to nearly nothing, we have a right to know. If the decision has been made for real and forever, we have a right to know. Until then, though, let’s stop with the patronizing language. Until then, your guess, dear entertainment outlets, is as good as ours.
 Stop being dicks about it. You want to write about Sterek, for god’s sake drop the fucking qualifiers.

Sterek is not about porn - no more than Kurt/Blaine or Agron/Nasir are (to pick two opposite ends of the queer PDA spectrum on current TV). Sure it’s nice to know your pairing is being physical, just as it is nice to know that for Barney/Robin or Delena, I guess. But that’s not the core of it, not by a long shot.

And fandom, fuck, it’s so much bigger, scarier and more diverse than you can imagine. The vast, dark, seething mass of it is both the best and the worst and everything in between. Young women, teeny fangirls, are a part of it, but they are not the whole entity and frankly I feel like that box is meant to denigrate double for half the trouble - don’t we all know how silly those girls are, for liking things? Those emotional messes who scream and cry and obsess? IS THAT HOW YOU SEE US? Because we can do that, no matter what age or gender or heritage or sexual orientation, but we are more. We are vicious beasts and resourceful artists and we love deeply and our anger and frustration runs nearly as deep.

Treat us like adults and we will return the favor. Alternatively, if that’s too damn hard, how about you at least treat us (and Sterek) the same as shippers for het couples who aren’t officially together, yeah? Would you ever say “even though the chances are pretty slim”/”even though they are not/can’t be attracted to each other” for Joan/Sherlock, for example? Despite word of god that denied the possibility vehemently, I’ve seen more than one media site fall head over heels for potential Joanlock kisses without feeling the need to qualify.

I am not generally a vindictive person, but I’m getting to a point where a small, nasty part of me wants Jeff Davis to go all out on the Sterek PDA, including undeniable, slightly filthy sex up against a wall, just to flip everyone off who ever felt the need to delegitimize the thing we like *without any need or proof*. It would be different if Jeff had come out and said it isn’t ever happening, like that Community writer did on twitter, but he hasn’t.

Once again Suaine wins an internet.

I am so tired of outsiders assuming that everyone in fandom are cis straight girls. 

Here’s a tip: We are not.