The silence
Content warning: Whenever there's fall out in a community or a community space is less diverse, we end up with a postmortem on our community areas. Sometimes we have a discussion on what the community is like overall. Then nothing is done, because no one comes forward. No
Whenever there's fall out in a community or a community space is less diverse, we end up with a postmortem on our community areas. Sometimes we have a discussion on what the community is like overall. Then nothing is done, because no one comes forward. No one really wants to change things. The folks you designated as troublemakers just don't want to help. They engaged and your community utterly failed to welcome them. Instead those folks were ignored, or worse attacked.
Sometimes someone vital to the project quits. People step up, but some of the original folks who added so much to your community are gone. They aren't coming back.
It's very rare for anyone to let the public part of the community know why.
There's a reason for that. The repercussions for whistle blowers can be life threatening or merely career ending, particularly if they are from a diverse background. Although in our capitalist world, career ending can affect quality of life. So still life threatening.
Being a public facing woman in tech is like walking over a tightrope while someone starts thrumming the rope. Plus the tightrope is strung over over lava. You get to hear the fading sounds of folks who fell off ahead and behind you. You wonder what will knock you off.
So when you're in an abusive space, who do you trust?
How do you work out who to trust? To tell you if this is normal or not? How can you know if you're in a safe space?
For many of us, there is no such thing as a safe space. Especially in FOSS.
So women tend to do what we've always done. We talk, and it's not gossip about drama.
Men often want to reduce our whispers to mere gossip. The image of the gossiping old biddy to be feared and yet mocked. We grow up with internalised misogyny beaten into us by society. We're called scolds.
[1]Don't be like those mean old ladies. Be a cool girl.
We gather intelligence and share stories about our experience. We share carefully coded messages about who to be careful about.
It's so much more than just gossip.
The Whisper Network
We have some very public examples in our community when toxic community leaders are called out with receipts. Harassment happens. Our sanity is questioned, our career options are limited as we get to be labelled troublemakers.
So we hunker down until we are in a smaller quieter space. We're careful about what we say. In the silence between those words we detect what isn't said. We respond and the folks in our smaller spaces realise what we haven't said in turn.
Our whispers become stories and those stories become passwords.
About a week in, I showed a few of my new friends some emails I’d been getting from an older male writer many of us knew. The messages weren’t explicit or threatening, but something about their tone had made me distinctly uncomfortable. It was hard to put my finger on. I passed my phone around, trying to explain why I’d felt so creeped out, repeating every few minutes that I knew there was nothing tangible, that I was probably just making it up. “Am I crazy?” I asked, over and over again. Everyone kept shaking their heads.A story like this is a password. Once you say it out loud, doors start to open.
Stories Like Passwords – Emma Healey [2]
Misogyny
As a white woman, I can't really comment on the undercurrent for other folks and their experiences. But scratch a racist that pushes against any consideration for black folks and you'll find all the other things they are against as well. The same for a Fascist. The same for a TERF.
While we are all human, people who actively deny the human rights for other people harm others. Ultimately they will harm your human rights to be on top. So pushing for safe spaces for Trans folks, for disabled folks, for black and brown folks is important.
But it takes more than empty words of policy to enable me to trust you. Which is the same for everyone. If you are prepared to engage with TERFS and racists “because they do good work”, I know that ultimately you aren't safe to engage with. [3],
[4]But this has always been the culture within FOSS. The women are missing, but that's also across Tech. We have systematic issues within our Tech communities and society at large. Powerful influential men who through the tech they build, the communities they create can ruin Women's careers. Their networks of influence reinforce their power.
The men in stories like this always have just enough power, in their little worlds and in ours, that to confront them would be to court an ordeal, to invite others to question our own memories and motives. It’s always more trouble than it’s worth. If you don’t have hard proof, if you don’t have a police report, then what do you have? Only what you remember. Only what you felt.Stories Like Passwords – Emma Healey [2]
Our disquiet with a situation, with our interactions are dismissed as drama. Our lack of safety is ignored. So of course it isn't worth it.
So we carefully work in the shadows. Giving support to each other and counteract the gas lighting in our communities.
It's not drama. No you aren't imagining this.
Are you safe?
[1] https://dotart.blog/cobbles/the-scolds-bridle[2] https://medium.com/the-hairpin/stories-like-passwords-bf04e46c3fb6[3] https://dotart.blog/cobbles/on-bears[4] https://medium.com/@violetblue/but-he-does-good-work-6710df9d9029
The Scold's Bridle
When I see the vitriol directed at women and other marginalised folks online I'm often reminded of the scold's bridle. This particular reminder was WeDistribute's article on Fedionfire and how the Fediverse backlash caused it to shutter.[2]It was an article that was particularly disappointing from WeDistribute after they published the Nexus of Privacy's 8 Tips for Developers article. I felt WeDistribute was rather punching down on the community there.
[13]We saw similar opinion pieces around the Fediverse on BridgyFed and on Threads when folks decided to band together for the Fedipact.
There's a push and pull between those who want smaller communities and those who want to “Facilitate Network Discovery”. You've a lot of marginalised folks on the Fediverse, LGBTQ+ folks, Women, BIPOC, disabled folks. There's complexity in our communities and reasons why some folks want to organise in the open, but don't necessarily want to be searched for.
But as usual, backlash happens, and hurt white feelings abound. Somehow the community who never asked to be collated get called out as the hysterical folks who just need to shut up.
It's the need to shame the shamers because you felt scolded. We harshed your buzz and goodness, don't you just want to make us pay for it so we never do it again.
What is the Scolds Bridle?
It was a form of punishment mainly of outspoken women or gossips or Scolds. It was an iron cage with a spiked bit that would pierce your tongue if you tried to speak. The scold would wear the bridle for an amount of time, often being led around the area. It was a painful, humiliating punishment.[3]Scolds weren't the only folks punished, it was used against Quakers preaching as well. So let's be clear on this. The Branks as they were also known were used to subjugate women. To shame them and be an example to others to not speak up. A violent state punishment to protect the status quo.
We never asked for you to collate our posts
Some of us found out that Fedionfire took posts from the public firehose. [1] We weren't very happy about it, some folk snarked. There were threats as well.Folks don't send threats to the developer. Pointing and laughing are fine though. For one thing, I've found some devs tend to have very thin skins when it comes to mockery.
In all seriousness though, We shouldn't have to keep pushing back. I've literally written a couple of essays about Consent and the Fediverse. [5],
[6]We care about consent on here. It is possible to ask folks if the thing you are doing might upset people because you are collating their posts without their permission. Heck, there's a list of previous developers who haven't cared and had serious pushback on it. Don't just listen to other CIS white developers who don't see anything wrong with it. Especially if they feel Facebook being in our space is so cool. As I wrote in Consent and the Fediverse, there's a reason some of us left.
But let's address just why there's a backlash against the backlash. White Supremacy is fearful of rage when it doesn't come from a cis white man.
Feminine Rage
Why did such a thing as the branks exist? Why do men feel the need to reply guy back to women explaining the world and the experience they live in? Why do we have Christofacism hand in hand with Trump in the Whitehouse? Why is there such a need to undo progress?Why do some folks in the Fediverse feel this need to punch down on Folks like WelshPixie and the admins on the Fedipact?
The thing that I note is that it is very often white cis male developers who do these things. When people push back, there are a lot of hurt feelings. There are accusations of harassment.
Men are scared of feminine rage. They fear the scolding. Not just because their feelings of doing something bad may make them feel bad. There's some misogyny to work on there. There's some racism to work on. There's homophobia to work on. This is our socialisation to uphold White Supremacy.
As a cis woman, I've been socialised to keep my rage in. To be nice. To provide feedback nicely. To ask nicely and to advise nicely. I hold in my rage. It's a rather tenuous thread at this point. I'm not sure what would happen if it snapped.
I find it very hard nowadays to keep that rage in, every time I see another scraper, or pulling from the firehose tool. Sometimes it's physically painful to keep the scream of anger and tears in. But I do. My iron branks are mental, my socialisation. I know to scream out will hurt my career. There's the spike in my tongue and the spike pierces in so much further for others. The consequences for speaking out would be so much worse for some folks in our spaces.
I find it hard to keep my rage in every time we point out that we'd like to opt in for people reusing our posts. Or to have my phone not try to send back my metadata to a centralised point.
When I express mild annoyance, I get the odd patronising reply guy message. “Well that's the way the world works, Honey, Don't you worry your purty little head about it. Now just shut up and take it.”
I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. We aren't Maenads who don't understand how the Fediverse works. Nor are you developers Orpheus.
I find your song of code lacking, out of tune because of your privilege.
As you ask for us to be forgiving like Mummy and your friends pat you on the back because we were so mean. As your fellow developers and fanboys talk as if we had torn you apart.
Dude. There's a reason lots of us push back.
We claw our way out of the pit of our backgrounds, into the light to live, to exist, to organise. Then you lot decide to take a bunch of our public posts without our permission, you don't seem to understand we'd like some control over where our public posts go. Who we want to work with.
[1]The flippant answer of “duh just don't post,” is shallow. It's exclusionary. It shows how little danger you've had to face. How little abuse. How much you've bought into rape culture rather than consent culture. Silicon Valley is very much the result of White supremacy. The meritocracy is a myth. We're reaping the political consequences of believing that lie right now. Meanwhile, you witter on about your hurt feelings and how harsh that criticism was.
Girls. It's utterly feminine to feel that rage, that incandescence. It's feminine to want to lift that baseball bat and smash. It's also feminine to find the words to tell those developers, why it's wrong. Or like, just link to the Nexus Of Privacy's 8 tips for Fediverse Developers. Because I can guarantee most of them won't have read it. If they had, they would ask before launch if their project should be opt-in.
[12]And so we continue ad-nauseum.
The pushback against the opt-in, that need to reply-guy back comes from the same desire that the branks came from.
To shut up the marginalised. To humiliate them, to scold them back into compliance.
It's why I think WeDistribute punched down. That article was written from the desire to support the developer and push back against folks.
It's why they may not see it as punching down. They will probably see this as me punching down.It's the desire by others to perpetuate the harassment that Folks face on the Fediverse for stating their boundaries loudly and clearly. To hide and re-frame the issues of harassment marginalised folks face. We're interfering with the Fediverse Utopia by stating our boundaries.
But I should be fair because the Devs aren't the only tech folks scolding the marginalised for requesting that their human rights be respected. You only have to look at the debate around alt text and see some high-profile accounts call folks “Scolds” when all they asked for was some alt text for a screenshot.
We all have work to do on this, on our biases to learn to listen and not react. I've spent a month not reacting. I'm still incredibly disappointed and angry.
I honestly expected better of my community. It was disappointing to read that article. It was disappointing to see someone I respected in tech go on about Scolds. Well done on dropping your mask on the ableism there. If you really can't be arsed doing the alt text for a screenshot or even asking for someone else to do the alt text for you, why bother with the picture? Well done on the punch down.
Sometimes I suspect that if the branks were around today, some of you would be the first folks to put it over my head. To slide the bit in, to tug on the bridle and break teeth. You'd take pleasure from me not being able to speak. To express my rage.
So yes, this is a scold.
The Internet form of the Scolds Bridle is politeness, it is tone policing. It is the threat of doxing and violence. For the same reasons, we disrupt the idea of the status quo. No one likes to be told they are harming others.
[11]We don't like the idea that we perpetuate harm, particularly in FOSS.
I'm tired that we have to protect our safety and justify our existence in public. I'm so tired of the fact that LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folk have to hold in that rage. Even if on occasion we do feel so angry there's almost a visceral need to tear “something apart” to burn it all down.
Oh hey, looks like the tech bros are doing it for us. What do you mean? Not that way?
I'm so tired and angry that our human rights are fucked and the SWF is happy to let Facebook into our spaces to determine how Activity Pub 2.0 should benefit Zuckerberg's creepy surveillance data hoarding to feed LLama.
I'm so tired of the rapey vibes I get from developers who would prefer us to opt out rather than consider building the opt-in. It's not that hard. It's what just my toots do. You look at my mastodon profile you see a link to just my toots. Which I opted into.
Why is it so hard for the Fedibros to get consent? Why do we keep having to do this? Holding in my rage is tiring. So I try to direct it, to use my rage at the world and to speak up for others if they haven't the energy at the moment to do so themselves. This post isn't my first scolding and nor will it be my last. [5 to 8]
If you're a guy and you're wondering what to do? Take a look at the culture around us. When you see your friends doing the reply guy thing? Call it out.
Is your friend doing some kind of Fediverse project that's a bridge? Ask questions, and ask them if they are going to make the service opt-in.
Keep calling out predatory behaviour, whether it's apps or real life. I know they are your friends, but if you're scared of losing their regard. They aren't your friends. You're their fanboy.
If you don't see what's wrong with their behaviour but you're feeling a bit attacked right now? Be brave, step back. Take a breath and listen to what folks are saying rather than reacting.
We are at a stage in history where we need to band together and I want to work with people who don't want to bridle me but to work with me.
Be braver. It's braver to take the hit to your idea of yourself, rather than punching down on the vulnerable.
Further reading
[1] https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html[2] https://wedistribute.org/2025/02/fedionfire-shutdown/
[3] https://allthatsinteresting.com/scolds-bridle
[4] https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women
[5] Ignoring Boundaries https://www.onepict.com/20230906-boundaries.html
[6] Consent and the Fediverse https://www.onepict.com/consent-fediverse20230627.html
[7] Consent and the Fediverse part 2 https://www.onepict.com/consentpartdeux20240215.html
[8] On Bears https://www.onepict.com/20240506-bear.html
[9] UN report on STEM. https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/02/1160041
[10] https://www.tastesofhistory.co.uk/post/about-history-the-scold-s-bridle
[11] https://youtu.be/BxQ15OEEuLM?si=30KIw8qWQpp5d797
Polite Women Are Not Safe – Parkrose Permaculture[12] https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/
[13] https://wedistribute.org/2024/07/fediverse-privacy-and-consent/
Privacy and Consent for Fediverse Developers: A Guide
In light of the recent controversy concerning Maven's ingestion of over a million posts and thousands of profiles, the conversation has shifted towards the nature of open networks, and whether that miSean Tilley (We Distribute)
