About The Rachel's Haven Conflict

Dear Readers,

This is my LAST post about this, ok? I will still respond to comments about this because I do my best to respond to all comments, but this is the last blog post I'm going to devote to this. Because it would be nice to get back to making more new capped pics again, right?

I do have to take back one thing I said, and that's the no regrets.

I have one huge regret about what happened years ago, and that's that I think Rachel took it personally, or that anybody took it personally.

I had a lot of direct discussions with Rachel about it. We debated it. I was passionate about not excluding people. She was passionate about getting more participation from readers. She was adamant that her system did more good than harm.

It was not personal.

Back then a lot of TG Fiction writers struggled with not getting feedback about their works from readers. This was before blog analytics and all these new ways to have anonymous posting and such.

You see, I used to even talk to readers on Yahoo Messenger. I had this one reader that was so paranoid about his family finding out he reads this stuff. He never saved any to his computer. If he felt like his identity was too traceable he'd change it. I talked with him as he changed his email at least four times in the course of a couple months. TG wasn't socially acceptable. It still isn't to a huge degree.

I had messages on my groups by people who said English isn't their first language. The sentences were broken in the messages but they wrote that it's hard for them to communicate in English and that's why they don't comment or comment often.

These people were part of my audience. They were ones that kept coming back even if I didn't know they existed prior to a chance comment.

These are people that would be denied access to my works under the Haven's system of governance.

They're the ones that get excluded by that system now. All that TG Fiction history, history I was lucky enough to live through and be a part of they are denied access to while I get a free pass for being a captioner. 

Is that fair? No. It's not.

And yes, the Haven has its good qualities. The intent was good. 

I was voicing out against a regime of oppression. Basic concepts, that's what it amounts to. 

I wasn't personally going after anybody. My goal was equality and equal access for all, and I turned out to be the bad guy?

Like I said, Rachel and I debated a lot of this in private. I did try to work with her, I tried asking if there's a way to compromise.

At the time I had over 5,000 group members and I told you stories about a couple above. I wanted to make sure if my capped pics were archived somewhere that each and every one of my members and others could access them freely without obstacles.

She wouldn't budge on that. No exceptions. Nowhere else other than the Gallery for me to put them. Not in any free access places on there.

Before the Haven things were unstable for TG Fiction online. Websites were purged regularly. We all went to Lycos Groups then that closed down. I went with some to Yahoo Groups, and others went elsewhere.

The Haven was needed. It has a good purpose. It has a good cause in preservation, but it's not a Haven for everyone. 

That's what I was trying to change. 

Yes, I was upset that nobody else that was on there from the old days, names I knew and recognized, that they didn't stand up for what was right from the start. 

You see, they didn't have to go through the participation process because of notoriety. 

And at that time the participation process wasn't a set number of posts, it was something organic. They charted your level of participation and certain levels got certain access, and if you started to slack off you could go back down in level of access.

That's how it was when I tried fighting it. Tried changing it.

I understood why they did it. I could even sympathize with it. But I could not agree with it, and I could not sit idly by and not do something.

I never meant to hurt Rachel if I did, or anybody else. I followed my morals, values, and principles and tried to do what's right over what's easy or gratifying.

Why anybody even brought this back up is beyond me. Why did it become a big deal for me?

On my "Legacy?" post someone commented that the reason I don't have a legacy, why nobody else makes captions using stuff I've created, is because this went down several years ago.

That's where the thought about being blacklisted came from. That's where those last two posts came from.

My fingers are getting tired from typing all this tonight.

Honestly, I never thought this stuff would come up ever again. Bygones were bygones.

I do my thing and they do theirs.

Some of you that commented were like "Who? What? Why?" and then others knew exactly what it was and brought out the old arguments.

So the lesson here is that the TG community at large can really hold a grudge I guess, well, at least the oldest part of the community now.

If Lycos Groups hadn't ended it'd have been different. It was better than Yahoo and everybody knew everybody and got along great. Lurkers, commenters, cappers, and readers it didn't matter. That was back in 2003 folks. 

Like I said, before the Haven the old TG Fiction Community was more inclusive of everyone no matter what. I tried to keep it that way.

Oh! And a tidbit! 

I had a girlfriend way back before this Haven thing went down. Fiancee even so I disclosed the whole Gensabi thing to her.

She saw how many group members I had, that people liked what I did, and tried to get me to write TG Fiction for money.

You know what I told her?

I told her it's not about money. It's about the art and the community. It's about being available to everyone. That way there's nothing to stop transgender people from accessing this type of fiction. 

Of course, we didn't work out. But to me what I told her was the truth. That's what the TG scene was. Then came the Haven.

Look, if I didn't believe the way I do then this blog wouldn't exist.

It wouldn't be about the art of captioning. It would all just be on the Haven and you'd have to jump through hurdles to see it and I wouldn't be able to write half the stuff I do based on their guidelines.

This was over several years ago. 

Can we please put this zombie down? Give it mercy? Head = dead? Can I move onto other things...stuff...things? 

Sincerely,
Gensabi