For myself, lolita fashion is safe because I participate purely on my own terms. It's a subculture that I can engage with on my own, online, or in person and I get to set my limitations there. Mostly I'm a lonelita, as they call it, as I'm not a hugely sociable person and I think I've been to...five meetups? Not many, that's for sure. I'm part of my local communities on Facebook, but tend to lurk rather than participate. I go on CGL sometimes but again, mostly a lurker. My most active community platform is this blog, and again this is a space where I am very much in control of what I'm doing and with what frequency and intensity.
So it is a safe space because it's on my terms. I'm not less of a lolita because I don't go to lots of meetups, and I am still engaged with the community in ways that I'm comfortable with on a much more regular basis.
The question of how do I make lolita fashion a safe space for my community is a little less simple to answer. On it's surface the answer is that I haven't really, and by that I mean I have not taken any action to make my community safer, more inclusive, or more welcoming. Luckily the Australian communities in general seem to be that way anyway, but this prompt is really making me think.
My first meetup ^__^
Anyone who knows me IRL knows that I personally do not really care about anyone's anything. If you're in trouble, I will sympathise and help how I can, and I try to be a good ally but on a personal level - you do you as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. I know that as a straight, cis, white woman I'm pretty privileged to be able to be flippant about such things.
This topic has made me realise that I want to make my community a more openly safe space. By my community, I specifically mean the Newcastle Lolitas, since that's the community I moderate. Even though we really only have two active members, there are more in the group on Facebook, and after this pandemic is over I really want to start organise more for the comm. And before I do that I think I want to step up a little, and make it clear that that community is a safe space for all regardless of race, gender, orientation, religion, or anything else. Lolita is a joyful fashion that I think anyone should be able to participate in.
So I think I'm going to go off and edit the description of the comm I manage on Facebook to make these things clear ^__^
Read more from other bloggers:
I think even when you engage with lolita on your own terms, more as a lonelita than anything else, you can still do loads. So much of our community continues to be focused online and sticking to online interactions. We all pick different parts of lolita online sphere to follow, but we can all help maintain them as safe spaces by calling people out on discriminatory words and behaviours. Of course, there is an element of "pick your battles", we all know the reputation of CGL and the anonymity makes people bolder and more likely to gang up, but you just never know when some lost soul will wander to your online spaces and decide that it's ok for them to make horrible comments. And tbh, and this is something I've talked about with people only earlier today, there are so many new lolitas who joined the fashion during quarantine or just before, or who only stuck to online spaces while they were building their first coord, and a lot of them get sucked in to the groups focused on being salty-going-on-bullies, not always realising that this doesn't make them cool and that this isn't what lolita is about. So even saying to them "hey, that's not an alright way to act" can help someone evaluate and change, so that they're not contributing to the toxic parts anymore. Because even in IRL communities you don't always reach everyone actually IRL, every comm has lurkers and people who just somehow don't make it to meetups, but who may also lurk in other online groups.
ReplyDeleteYou make a very good point! That's something to keep in mind for me personally, since I tend to be in the mindset of "ignore it and scroll on" which realistically doesn't help anyone.
Delete