Genesis

Editors note (2020-02-05): Our ideas for audio versions, regular articles, and a few other things were too ambitious and have not come fully to fruition. — Ellen Dash

An audio version of this article is available on SoundCloud.

Inatri is a publication centered on the problems marginalized groups face when interacting with companies. This is about the technological problems and constraints faced when those who don’t fit society’s definition of “common enough to worry about” try to use websites, interact with customer support representatives, or even get a fucking job.

This is about customer support switching to using “sir” to address me, after they look up my account information.

This is about systems that ask for your gender but really just want to know what pronouns they should use.

This is about the online and paper forms that actually want to ask about your gender, but present “male” and “female” as if they were the only two options.

This is about informing the world about these kinds problems and how we can handle them.

These obstacles often permeate all levels within a company—websites, support-call scripts, customer–employee interactions, and employee–employee interactions.

Sometimes it isn’t just individual interactions that are broken — it’s that your entire governance model is problematic.

Working with Authors, Handling Copyright, and Paying Contributors

A very small group of people are doing a lot of the initial writing and editing without payment. This is very explicitly not going to be the case moving forward, and I will be paying people for writing and editing articles as soon as it’s possible—no exceptions. And when I have the funds to do so, I will retroactively pay those who I couldn’t pay initially. Once I can pay people for their contributions and I’ve sorted out all the legal details, I’ll be looking to bring on more authors and editors.

People will be paid for their work. They’ll retain the copyrights to their work, and they’ll solely be giving us permission to publish it.

Articles will be written by those affected by the subjects at hand. Information on contributing—including any ongoing themes, as well as information on payment rates—will be on the contributing page.

Planning Ahead

Articles will be published every Monday and Friday afternoon (Eastern Time). We currently have articles planned through the end of February. If you would like to write an article once funding is resolved, please visit our page about contributing. Audio versions of each article will be made available alongside their text versions.

Currently planned articles will open with discussing the state of funding platforms, including an update on ATUnit (an open-source funding platform with diversity as its organizing principle) and my thoughts on how I would like to see the project move forward. Posts following that will continue our discussion of how openness and transparency can be thought of as tools rather than end goals (an issue that was first raised on Model View Culture). We’ll also delve into some of the problems that transgender and non-binary people commonly face when they use online services.

You can support Inatri on Patreon.