My co-mod has beat me to the punch - but you are absolutely not required to continue discussing something that distresses you! Please feel free to bow out or disappear from the discussion or exchange at any point if you need to.

I think the main issue that needs wider discussion is how other participants interpret a rule like that. If there's a consensus about which characters are canonically genderqueer and how to assess that in new characters/fandoms without mod intervention, then it's easy to add. If discussion finds people would group different characters under that rule, or not group, then it becomes a lot more difficult to implement.

We may also be coming up against a difference in how this exchange is run (the priority is ensuring people get what they want in a gift over in a prompt, rules must apply broadly and easily to all fandoms) versus how you would like it to run.

While we do not screen genderqueer characters for some degree of being female (because they aren't!), the rule originated and persists because of how gender and sexual orientation intersect to create the category of femslash. A real life LGBTQ space doesn't need to consider whether a genderqueer shapeshifter taking female form to date a lesbian is femslash, both because they don't have to deal with shapeshifters and also because femslash is not a perfect analogy for lesbian/bi/pan. They also don't have to consider whether a different shapeshifter with a similar genderqueer identity but no canonic relationship with a lesbian is equally eligible - we don't restrict people who want to write femslash about canonically straight characters, after all. Thus we take a broad definition, and we will back you on getting any gift you want that falls under that definition. But that doesn't mean we're necessarily set up to match for specific different gender interpretations as exactly as you'd like, or that matching that way in the future will suit other participants. If you want to opt-in to participating here, and you're comfortable doing so under the current rules, we will support you and ensure you get the gift you want! If it's distressing to you or doesn't quite work how you'd like, it may not be a good fit.

Your suggestions about defaulting aren't ones we will open to discussion. While we aren't one of the biggest exchanges around, we had 189 participants last year. Hand-matching or re-running matching because a participant is unhappy with their match isn't something we're willing to do. Being multi-fandom makes the likelihood of being able to guarantee a swap to a pinch-hit low. While we may sometimes use discretion around these issues, if someone needs to routinely default multiple years in a row then the exchange may not be a good fit for what they want to offer.

Basically though it comes down to rule change suggestions not really being appropriate for us to decide here, when we don't know how many participants might notice a conversation in the comments of the FAQ and people are distracted by an active round. We have been primarily addressing your concerns based on how/why we interpret the current rules as we do and what that means for sign-ups in the 2018 round, but I think this discussion is now clearly moving beyond that. We invite feedback between rounds, so you have two choices to make: do you want to participate in 2018 with the current rules, and will you feel comfortable discussing these questions with both us and the wider participant group between rounds when we open up discussion.

If you find either distressing or not suitable for you, I completely understand and you should definitely do what makes you feel safest.

hey so, another nonbinary anon popping in (my first time in this thread but i've been following things here for a while)!

i'll try to keep this brief since it looks like the meat of this discussion is going to be put on hold until after the current exchange has closed, but i wanted to hop in real quick to mention that a) i share feralphoenix's and the other anon's reservations wrt how femslash ex is currently set up, and b) the mod responses here have been a mix of understandable (e.g. trying to avoid arbitrating what counts as "female enough" for femslash, wanting to keep the workload on the mod end of things within reasonable limits) and actively not settling well with me (e.g. the way headcanons are brought up and how that brushes uncomfortably against the exchange's "no characters who id as boys in canon regardless of how they're portrayed in the actual fanwork" rule, some nigh-fundamental differences in what we think a mod's responsibility is when it comes to mitigating potential exposure to bigotry a la misgendering).

put another way, i can 100% see where you and the rest of the mod team are coming from wrt taking a more hands-off approach in these respects! what troubles me is the room left open for abuse regardless - as detailed in previous comments, and which imo is at least partially preventable with some structural tweaking - and coupled with certain components of your responses i too no longer feel comfortable with participating in the exchange this year (and i've been a participant before!! it's a major bummer having to bow out of an event i used to cheer on with vigor).

if i can i'll swing by again after this year's round and go into more detail on feedback; some of these issues touch my experiences in pretty personal ways. and i would LOVE to participate again in the future, if at all possible

I'm very sorry to hear that, and we would definitely love to hear from you between rounds! If the current imperfect solution isn't hitting the mark for people, then as we've said we definitely want to know.

In some ways I think the conversation here hasn't necessarily been served well by being in the FAQ post, because our focus is on the current rules (which say definition for genderqueer characters is left up to participants) and what existing tools are or aren't available if people want to be more specific than that. We're also hampered by not knowing the fandoms affected, and relying on the limited discussion had here/what can be quickly googled may often be insufficient. It may be perfectly possible for there to be a rule that is clearly scoped and worded to cover unambiguous canon, while leaving room for fandoms with grounds for good faith disagreement. There may of course also be other solutions we haven't thought of, or other problems with particular changes that we wouldn't anticipate.

Hopefully a between-rounds post will give us a better picture of how many people are/aren't having issues, and also draw in more participants in the same fandoms to discuss specific examples amongst themselves so we can more confidently assess how things could work in practice. And certainly if we've put our foot in it or gotten things wrong in places and that's been hurtful or concerning, then that's on us and our unfamiliarity with certain fandoms and characters and I'm really sorry about that.

I'm just curious if you were ever going to come back and do a between-rounds post. I've been randomly checking in every so often because I was wondering where this would all land.

We intended to but unfortunately our offline commitments post-round were more than we expected to be. Feedback and discussion was invited on our announcement here that the schedule was delayed for 2019, and we'd love to hear from you if you have specific requests or suggestions for changes.