(Note: The following contains spoilers for current television shows, including the UK showing of Doctor Who, episode "TDD." Be warned.)

Before we begin, let us back up. Without going into detail, there have been many comments made regarding various rants posted on Dr. Merlin's Soapbox, some good, some bad, some very confused. This column is envisioned to be a guide for n00bs and occasionally serve as a gentle reminder for the rest of us. Sometimes it is easier to learn from the mistakes of others (and Dr. Merlin has made so very many mistakes in her time online that this column will likely never lack for material) so the Soapbox is intended to offer examples in order to make the fandom experience more pleasant for newcomers and old-timers alike. As such, many times Dr. Merlin will provide examples or advice that do not apply to your situation, as you have already crossed (burned?) that particular bridge long ago or else you have decided to traipse back on your own for a visit to the old country. Enjoy. If, however, you're new to fandom, then kindly step inside, take a look around, and see if you find something that suits you. Free advice is worth every penny, as they say, and the worst it can provide you is a starting place on a very interesting journey as you run screaming away somewhere else.

Moving onwards, then.

Dr. Merlin wears many hats in fandom, some intentionally, some because she didn't step backwards quickly enough when volunteers were asked to step forward. One of these hats is as a fanfiction archive moderator. This archive has a few basic rules, one of which is that any files uploaded must be stories or essays related to the specified fandom. Other files are deleted at the moderator's discretion. When a non-story, non-essay file was uploaded recently, it was removed. When the file was uploaded again, the author included a note that removing her story violated her freedom of speech.

Oh, fandom. You're so silly! *pinches cheek*

Let us discuss freedom of speech. To whit, the United States Constitution (Bill of Rights, Amendment One) guarantees that the government will not pass a law restricting free speech. (There is also a guarantee of freedom of the press without government intrusion, a guarantee that the government will not establish an official state religion nor interfere in the practice of religion, a guarantee of the freedom to assemble, and a guarantee of the right to petition the government when people have grievances. The First Amendment is pretty nifty.) This has generally been interpreted to include actions by the government to suppress free speech by force, even without a law. For example, if one wanted to stand in the center of town and proclaim that the original Battlestar Galactica is the greatest television series in the history of time, the President cannot send in the army to tell you to STFU. Probably.

There are limits to freedom of speech. There is the oft-cited example of shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. If you tell someone that killing so-and-so would be really awesome, knowing that person will go out and do what you say, your butt is going to jail too.  And so on.  But either of those cases are not so much limits on free speech as they are examples of the other half of the free speech coin: you are responsible for what you say, and you reap the consequences for good or ill.

This applies to online interactions as well as real-world interactions. You are responsible for what you say and what you write. If that violates the Terms of Service of the webspace you're using, the consequence is losing access to that webspace. In the case of the archive, the webspace was and is being paid for by someone who specifically set it aside for use as an archive for fanfiction, with some allowance being made for discussions of the fandom in essay format. When someone else pays the bills, one does not get to whine about not being allowed to say anything s/he wants. One may purchase a website of one's own, host it on a server of one's own, and post any damned thing one pleases. When you are in someone else's home, you follow their rules, or they will make you leave. That isn't your freedom of speech being violated; you were rude (perhaps unintentionally) and broke the house rules. You have to deal with the consequences. (If it helps, think of someone's blog like their own private newspaper. They get to decide what stories to cover, what editorials to run, and most importantly for you, which Letters to the Editor get printed. Letters which don't meet their guidelines don't get published. That's not limiting freedom of speech, that's choosing not to pay to grind someone else's ax.)

In online discussions, very many times those with minority opinions (frex, "slash is icky" / "Wincest is a blot on the soul of humanity" / "Adric was the best Companion" / choose your own!) will express their trepidation at expressing this opinion. Those who do often find themselves facing a large horde of angry fanthings, some trying to convince them of the errors of their ways, others questioning their intelligence and name-calling. It's fandom. Flamewars only go so many ways. During the Wank That Shall Not Be Named of Two Weeks Ago, there were complaints of "dog-piling" on the latest group who had violated the rules of fannish interaction (and as some of the pilers-on suggested, human decency). This happens a lot. When a fan or group of fans reads something that upsets them (could be because of implied or expressed judgment on the part of the original poster, could be because something was deeply offensive, could be because some fans do not like opposing viewpoints anywhere in their presence -- these are examples, and again I'm sure you have your own) sometimes only one fan will comment in objection, and sometimes her friends will come with. If the post strikes a chord with enough people, many MANY fans will come with. The reasons for this vary from, "I was personally affronted and I felt the need to say something," to "I was tempted not to say anything but do not want my silence assumed to be agreement," to "Let's poke the troll to watch it jump."

Your freedom of speech is not being violated by the people who show up in your Livejournal or blog to tell you that you've been an idiot. The U.S. government did not try to stop you, and the other fans also have not stopped you. If you have expressed an Unpopular Fannish Opinion [TM] you are now enjoying the consequence: becoming unpopular. No violations needed. If your unpopular opinion violates the Terms of Service for the website you’re on, you may also be looking for new webspace. Again, all about the consequences.

The opposite is also true. If you have a popular and agreeable fannish opinion, your freedom of speech is not violated when someone posts something critical about that opinion, on your journal or elsewhere. When someone disagrees with you, even when many people disagree with you, the Internet is not oppressing you. The Internet is opt-in. Fandom is opt-in. Unless you are a very rare and unfortunate case, no one has chained you to your chair and forced you to read post after post of House/Wilson slash and click on every single discussion out there about the show. Your eyeballs are not being propped open with toothpicks as you are exposed to in-depth House/Cuddy essays and House/Cameron fanart.

Little fanthing, you signed up for that yourself.

The items you click on during your day, the websites you choose to visit, even the people and communities you've chosen to be on your Friends list so that they show up in front of you on demand, these are all choices you've made. This is content you've sought out. When you Friended that SPN newsletter, you knew (or found out within a day) that gen and het were featured there, as broad as daylight where you'd see them every day, alongside the slash. That comics fanfiction community has Xavier/Magneto blatantly beside your beloved Superman/Batman. Perhaps you joined a particular comm back when it was still primarily Harry/Snape and it has since been overrun with Harry/Ginny. Maybe your friends are now all talking incessantly about Bones while you're bored silly and want to go back to chatting about the Sarah Connor Chronicles because that show RAWKED. *ahem*

The point is that you opted in for this. You might be saddened by the changes. You might be horrified by the focus. But no one is forcing you to visit those websites or read those journals. Not your mom, not your chemistry teacher, not Eric Kripke, not even Barney the frelling dinosaur is forcing your eyes to pass over the material that offends you for simply existing. That's all you. Really.

"Well, Doc Merlin," you say, "that's all well and good to tell me it's my own damn fault for saying something. Thanks, really. But it doesn't stop the fact that people are coming to my journal and calling me anatomically impossible things simply because I happened to compare supporting their favorite 'ship to performing oral actions on Osama Bin Laden while shooting heroin and eating baby seals. What's a young fan to do, short of calling everyone bastards, deleting my LJ, committing pseuicide, and coming back five days later as my own long-lost twin sister to try to make everyone feel bad for being mean to me?"

I'm glad you asked, Imaginary Fan! There are a number of things you can do, both to resolve this situation and also to help prevent future like situations from occurring.

First, please go read (or reread) "Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (And That's Okay)." Everyone is coming to the canon with a different set of expectations and a different set of background experiences, and that's going to color their perceptions of what's on the screen. If you come into fandom realizing that every single person in the fandom is going to be watching for different things, finding different details, and reacting in different ways to what they see, then you're going to be much happier than the people who randomly bounce into the first Supernatural discussion link they see, looking for an analysis of Dean's adversarial relationship with Bela and finding instead descriptions of how much he wants to shag his brother. Realize and accept that it's okay to like (and dislike!) different things about the canon. Make your mantra "Your Kink Is Not My Kink" and move on.

Second, use cut-tags and links when appropriate, and post descriptive tags for them. If you're about to put on your rantypants about how Jenny on Doctor Who is the Mariest Sue who ever Sued, cut for spoilers and also for the sake of people who think she's actually the bee's knees. This is not to protect your friends' poor virgin eyes from seeing something critical of their opinions, it is to give them an opportunity to skim by should they believe it will harsh their squee. No one has the inalienable right to go through life without squee-harshing (sorry, that means you, too) but it is far more polite than posting uncut your three-page treatise on why all Doctor/Rose 'shippers are going to hell, especially when you know that many people reading your blog are rather fond of that pairing.

Third, respect the cut-tags that you see. If you know Adama/Roslin pushes all your squick buttons in weird ways, don't go looking for A/R posts just to go argue with the OPs. If you read a blog that continues to bother you because of the focus on Jack Harkness, then stop reading that blog. See if the blog owner has another blog or a feed that only includes the things you wanted to read in the first place when you started following her stuff. (The LJ tagging tool and notify function work well for this sort of thing, and can email you only the posts tagged, say, "Kara Thrace pwns the universe" and "personal".) Filters are also useful (again on LJ and similar platforms) because you can keep someone on your Flist to read your own brilliant yet sadly Friends-locked meta while not having to read their journal at all if that's what it takes.

Your Internet experience is personalized to you, whether or not it feels that way. If it's going to make you crazycakes to be around a particular bulletin board or chatroom, go somewhere else for a while, get some coffee and some perspective. Unlike canon, here you have options on what you see and what passes you blissfully by. Remember that turning off the computer is always a better (and less expensive!) option than putting your fist through the monitor. (Dr. Merlin could share stories. She won't. Note to Mr. Merlin: honey, the game did not cheat.) Afterwards, if you decide to go back to the places and people you don't like, understand that you are choosing to go in, and you are going to be responsible for what you say and do when you get there.

Fourth, don't be a jerk. Agree with things that are going on in your friends' journals, don't agree, but don't fall into the lazy, manipulative conversational habits that try to shut down dissent. If necessary, go back to step one for a while. You may want to try out the "see how the other half of fandom lives" mental exercise, in which you try to see the show from the POV of the person who's driving you up the wall. You might learn something. (Of course, the thing you learn may very well be, "OMG, not just never walking a mile in those shoes again, BURNING THE SHOES RIGHT NOW they smell of DEATH!" That happens too.)

Finally, accept the fact that if you express an unpopular fannish opinion, you will be unpopular. Be okay with that. Heck, be proud of it. (Or, you know, if it's creepy, please don't be proud of it.) Maybe Luna really should have been Harry's true love. Maybe Lana Lang is the best thing ever to happen to Smallville. Maybe your favorite show is better off cancelled. Fandom's not a quiz, and you don't win anything for being right. At best, you win new acquaintances for being persuasive. At worst, you lose them all for violating the rules; that's a risk in any group situation. (Quick tip: when it comes to other fans, it's always better to ask first about the rules if you don't know. Forgiveness comes hard.)

If you do post, be prepared to back your opinions up when people come complaining, be willing to listen to the complaints (they may mention aspects you hadn't considered), or be ready to lock down the comments. Be ready to have your own comments locked down if you're in someone else's space, because again, the person who owns the space sets the rules. Choose your battles and fight the ones you care about most. Some are going to be important. Some are not. Understand that people are going to disagree with you even if you're just posting that puppies and babies are cute. Follow the terms of service on the site you're on (and argue with the webmaster if you must, should you think they're unfair -- sometimes they listen, and sometimes they are beholden to other people too) or find your own site and set your own terms.

You are not being oppressed for holding an unpopular opinion. You may be mocked on Fandom Wank. You may be shunned by people you thought were your friends. Your fanfic may get less feedback. You, yes you, may get ignored by the fandom newsletter. Or you may not. You may find out that posting an unpopular opinion inspires more people to post that same opinion because they thought they were the only ones. Your real friends (assuming you haven't called them drug-addled terrorist-sucking seal-eaters) will still be there for you, even if they start skimming anything you helpfully tag "reasons why I hate Ianto" and "Angus MacGyver/Luke Skywalker fanart." The rest will learn to adjust, or they'll go read someone else's blog. (Coming soon to the Soapbox: friends, fandom friends, and Friend lists --- a spotter's guide)

Go forth.  Be that unique, special snowflake that you always hoped you were, and enjoy yourself before someone drops by with a flamethrower