Just a quiet challenge for 2021 that may be broadly applicable:

We should try to be specific in our critiques to the issue we're critiquing, in order to avoid collateral damage.

When we use shorthand like "wow that boob puppet is bad" we run a serious risk of conflating the thing we're actually concerned about with other unrelated issues that actually need protecting.

This is hard because so many of us are traumatized by our engagement with behemoths, sometimes we just need to vent and not spend energy selecting our words carefully in the midst of our fight.

But if our fight shuts out other marginalized people, we need to be more careful.

YOU might know what you're talking about, the people in your immediate circle might know what you're talking about, but anyone not in that circle only see a wide-ranging conversation that targets their bodies, their rights, their safety.

In this week's case, I spent the last 24 hours thinking everybody was talking about Boob Muppet because they didn't want a muppet to have boobs. It seemed like *everyone* was critiquing that, because nobody was actually saying the thing they were upset about.

I'm only saying this now because somebody (thanks Chris) actually articulated what the real issue is, and suddenly I was like "ohhhhh so the space *isn't* just a bunch of prudes this week"

We gotta be more specific, y'all.

That lack of specificity is what leads people to feeling like the space is unsafe for them, because they can't tell what people are upset about, all they know is "oh geez, can't put sex in my game" - "oh no, violence is bad now" - "no more tables I guess"

I know multiple people who don't make or publish or talk about games anymore because the tethers of discourse are so unwieldy that every edge of design feels like an electrified third rail, where if the wrong people see it they'll attach it to discussion of "harmful game design"

Knowing that a thing is harmful is not as important as knowing *why* it's harmful.