Make our forum a safe and welcoming place to and for women

As I was scrolling through the membership roster of this forum, I noticed a preponderance of men…Does that concern any of you? I know MANY MANY MANY 100’s of women, just in my own city, who are exceptional musicians. Why are our ranks not swelling with women, as well as men?
Over the couple of years I’ve been involved with vcvrack, and especially the facebook page, I have on a couple of occasions read some comments, or even seen posts that are demeaning to women.
To many guys out there, they’re, I suppose, “just Bro-ing it up”… let’s consider leaving that to a different scene and walk the high road.
It’s our responsibility to police ourselves, to grow up, not “bro-up”…
Happy New Year! Brad Smith- SF,CA

2019-01-01T08:00:00Z

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Indeed agree with your post, good on you. Its early days yet, i think this a beta forum??. The open source nature of vcv rack i ‘assume’ brings with it alternative types who are generally open and exclusive and non-hierarchical. It will be interesting to see where the forum goes and who comes in and who goes out.

What i would like to discuss are general ideas of guidelines for exclusivity. For example: a do not do page could work. ie: do not post cliched synth pictures with semi-naked people and so on and so forth.

Cheers

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I think that the basic questions we’re asked to consider before posting cover everything. I wouldn’t want the guidelines to be proscriptive. I just thought a gentle encouragement might be useful. You’re right Orwell, it’s early, we’ll see. I really would hate knowing that there are women out there who eschew the community here because it’s still the old boys’ club…
Happy New Year!

We’ve talked about this topic quite a bit over on the lines forum.

https://llllllll.co/t/where-are-the-women-and-non-cis-males/7264?u=jasonw22

Eventually we decided it would be helpful to have a code of conduct, which we discussed here

You’ll see that a code of conduct was proposed, but it was never actually made a permanent part of the site as far as I can tell.

It seems there’s always room for improvement.

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Thank you so, so much for this post!

I’ve spent more time than I care to think about trying to bring these issues up in a lot of hardware synth FB groups, mostly with predictable bro-y + alienating responses.

I don’t know if it’s a software/hardware machismo thing or what, but the VCV + Lines community has always felt a bit more welcoming/less overtly misogynist than say, Muff Wigglers(!!)

Much < 3 VCV community,
mg

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Given the name (MW), I’m totally unsurprised…

As one of the Queer kids, I’m totally behind the idea of ethics and respect informing how we act on here. Thinking about how what one says could impact someone negatively, before it gets said, is a huge thing in life, as is accepting that one has fucked up when the latter undoubtedly happens.

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No insight or words of wisdom here, just 1000% co-signing making this an inclusive and welcoming community for everyone.

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I see and agree with your point. From my own personal experience in web derping and synth meme surfing I can honestly say that I’ve yet to even come across a synth pic with anything other than cats and the occasional pupper dog. But point being it is critical to everyone to understand and respect the importance of acceptance and tolerance for ALL men, women, and furbeasts with no bias toward orientation or race. Everyone one here seems really cool and here for the same reason as everyone else (discussion of Rack and synthesis in general) And because its a new forum it does seem advantageous to the admins to be able to spot and deal with anyone being a jerkov for the sake of being a jerkov.

i think we are a very welcoming community. i haven’t seen any big problems, and a few minor ones were quickly dealt with. i don’t think there is much more we can do to make this a safe and welcoming place to everyone.

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Agree Ablaut! Both the FB group and this forum as well are almost shockingly clean and welcoming. It’s very heartwarming so let’s not invent problems before they actually appear. Everything has been going really well so far, and I see no reason for that not to continue, because it’s full of interesting, supportive, encouraging, fun and engaging people.

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If this feeling ever changes (and I do hope that it doesn’t) I can heartily recommend to admins/mods that they find a way to write and enforce a code of conduct. It’s really not that difficult to do, and it can be the difference between a mostly safe space where some people are inevitably hurt without recourse and are driven away, and a truly safe space where grievances are addressed.

It might sound like a small difference, but those people who have been driven away may have been some of your most sensitive and creative members of the community. Over time, this way of sorting some people in and others out, will dramatically change the tone of a place. At that point people will be turning themselves away because they just don’t like the smell of the place.

A much briefer way of saying what I am trying to say is this: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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It’s so unfortunate that online behavior is such that a written “code of conduct” is even necessary.

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No, not at all. Things like modular and music software are often considered as “toys” by many, many women.

And I don’t see a point in any special treatment for anyone - as long as we all are respectful of each other - we’ll do fine)

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Already seeing some sexism right here in this thread.

Unfortunate.

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I’ll see myself out. Disappointing.

@peterstjnh

woah now - Music is music, but it’s made by PEOPLE. Calling for a welcome community for all is certainly not ‘shit’

This is exactly the type of attitude we need to be wary of!

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Have you ever heard the terms ‘punching up’ or ‘punching down’?

I don’t think anyone is calling for special treatment, more noticing that often times there’s an unfortunate ‘bro-y’ atmosphere that tends to exacerbate alienating gender dynamics.

Us saying “well, woman don’t really get synths/think they’re toys” could be an example of that.

Some of the best synth players + composers I know are female-identified, but tend to steer clear of synth forums for exactly this reason. If we all step up together, we can make the VCV community a better place though! < 3

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Due to the large number of flags/reports in this thread, I’m going to lock it until I get a chance to read it.

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The preponderance of men in the vcvrack forum is not a bad thing… but a BALANCE of men and women would be an IDEAL thing…

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I’ve been on the internet since well before the web existed and I can honestly say that this is the best, most respectful and most well behaved community I have ever belonged to. There is absolutely no necessity to add new rules, codes of conduct etc whatsoever.

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