Sarah Dopp is the founder of genderfork.com, a “a supportive community for the expression of identities across the gender spectrum,” and a place where I regularly gawk at photos I think are really cute. Sarah’s behind some other cool projects too. She answered my questions (I’m Dan Copulsky) in July 2010.
How did Genderfork.com get started?
Genderfork started in 2007 as an attempt to explore my own fashion sense. I found that I felt most comfortable when my appearance reflected an equal balance of masculine and feminine elements (whether that meant bright red lipstick and cleavage in a tuxedo, or jeans and a white t-shirt with no jewelry—as long as the gender weights were balanced, it felt right). Fascinated by this, I went digging for pictures of people who were pulling this off themselves on Flickr, and set up a system for blogging a photo a day. For the first year, that’s all the project was. Then, once readers started interacting more, it transitioned into a community-supported multi-media publication about gender variance, identity, and expression.
How does Genderfork balance the desire to post high quality, interesting content with the desire to create an open and inclusive community? Are you selective about what you publish, and is that a problem?
Great observation. We do have high standards for quality, and we do try to represent a broad mix of the content we find and receive. Fortunately for this issue, one of our biggest “problems” is that we get way more submissions than we can publish. This allows us to be selective about what we blog, which makes the “quality, interesting content” goal not hard to reach at all.
The bigger source of tension is our goal of representing balance and diversity. We receive far more submissions from transmasculine people than from transfeminine people. It’s important to us that we aim for an equal balance of “masculinity” and “femininity” (in quotes because most days I’m not even sure what those words mean) in our content stream, even as those traits get mixed up, minimized, or emphasized differently on different people. We have to dig, sift, and reorganize quite a bit in order to piece that balance together. (As we still fall short of it, quite often. It’s a struggle.)
We also struggle to represent diversity in age, race, class, body size, and style of appearance when our submissions piles don’t present the level of variety we’re hoping for. We have a long way to go on these issues, and we appreciate when our readers help us out by recommending content that depicts people with less-commonly represented characteristics.
Has running Genderfork changed your own understanding of issues related to gender or your personal identity?
Yes, greatly. That first year was about me finding my own identity, which I was finally able to put words to: genderqueer, androgynous, genderplayful, and female. Those are all me.
Since then, it’s been about building an understanding of my broader community—how others describe and present themselves, who else is part of our ecosystem, and how radically and utterly NOT alone I am on this path. (What an unexpected and miraculous surprise.)
You work professionally with website development and social media marketing. How much do you think these skills have contributed to Genderfork’s success?
Probably more than I want to admit. The biggest benefit is that I’ve been able to create and maintain the site without hiring technical assistance, and the hosting cost is negligible to me. This means that money can stay out of the picture, and that gives us a lot of creative and organizational freedom.
You’ve run Deviants Online, a social media discussion workshop for queers, sex nerds, artists, and other rebels. How is social media different for those groups, or why does it make sense to have a workshop specifically for them?
Great question. Social media is a set of tools, opportunities, and philosophies that a huge number of people have all of a sudden needed to start grappling with. I’ve noticed that the education/exploration process goes a lot smoother for people when the material is interpreted for their social or professional culture. Deviants Online was just another example of social media being framed for a particular culture.
What’s interesting about this particular culture, though, is that it has to deal a lot with sex. What happens when a professional dominatrix suddenly gets a friend request from her mom on Facebook? What do you do if your educational website about sexual health is being blocked as porn? What does a working model need to consider when he wants to publish his artistic nude portraits online as part of his marketing? While most of the advice for these questions will draw from the same wisdom that’s been circulating in all the other social media discussions, it’s valuable to create a supportive space that encourages people to bring them up and discuss them
You also run a queer open mic. How does that space, particularly in being live, compare to the space you create online for people to express themselves?
There are a lot more hugs involved. Seriously! The internet is MISSING OUT on that incredible aspect of in-person community. Hugs.
Other things… it’s once a month instead of every day, which makes it more of a special occasion, but less of a constant resource. Since it’s offline and usually not recorded, it gives people permission to take a risk that the might not want archived in public memory for all eternity. And we get to go out for beer and hamburgers afterward.
Other than that, it’s pretty similar. My job is to set expectations, shine a spotlight, and make sure people have an opportunity to connect. We always get a mix of new folks and regulars, connections are formed, and the experience isn’t for everyone. But it’s important for us.
Does the future hold any exciting plans for Genderfork or other projects?
The next big thing at Genderfork will probably be the community forums. Right now we’re working with a great group of community members who offered to help us get the scope and guidelines worked out before we open it up to the public. Genderfork receives a lot of submissions from people who are searching for immediate answers and responses, and our publication process doesn’t provide them with that (it can take weeks or months for a submission to get onto our site). I’m excited about the forums because it will let people have full conversations about whatever they want, whenever it’s coming up for them.
The other big project for me is Culture Conductor, which just launched on July 22nd. Like Genderfork, this project is also a community-supporting blog. But unlike Genderfork, this one is about the philosophies and techniques used to create healthy online communities, and it includes much longer articles and interviews. I’m deeply interested in the way communities are created, managed, and expanded, and I want to build a base of information that anyone who’s interested in this kind of work can reference to get started.
Genderfork.com
San Francisco’s Queer Open Mic – queeropenmic.com
Culture Conductor – cultureconductor.com
Sarah’s Professional Website – sarahdopp.com
Sarah’s Blog – sarahdopp.com/blog
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