I’m gonna get real with you folks, we’ve had way too many of these posts recently. I’ve been reflecting on this topic a lot the past few days. For me personally, I couldn’t care less about my gender identity. But just because that’s true for me, doesn’t make that true for everyone.
The beauty of the fediverse is that if you don’t like the way a particular instance or community is moderated you can simply choose another to hang out on, or create your own.
Blajah has made it pretty clear by now they will ban anyone who argues against the validity of xenogenders, in order to create a safe space for those folks. That’s fair enough imo.
Safe spaces should be respected, and Blajah’s admins/mods do not deserve abuse for creating and maintaining those spaces.
I can completely understand why Blajah users don’t want to have to constantly argue with external users about the validity of their chosen identities. Bans are one way Blajah has decided to manage that problem so that their users can experience lemmy in relative peace and safety. While it is a blunt tool and I have my reservations about preemptive bans, there are not many other options for @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone, other than defederation from most instances. That would be a terrible outcome for the fediverse as a whole.
In order to help Blajah to maintain their safe space, I would like to propose, if @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com agrees and community sentiment is positive:
- that we no longer accept posts about this topic in this community; and
- we also remove previous posts on this topic from the community.
That’s all folks, have at 'er.
Edit: thanks for all your feedback and comments. I think it’s clear that the vast majority of people are fed up with this topic coming up repeatedly.
Summarizing the feedback, I’d say most folks would prefer to retain previous posts for the sake of posterity, and to serve as an example of why we don’t want anymore of these posts. I’m happy to take that on board. For those folks saying I’m a PTB for intervening in this way, I’ll just remind you that I haven’t made any arbitrary mod decisions, and I’ve consulted with db0 and the community as a whole before taking any mod actions.
I think the way to move forward with this is to acknowledge that there’s a bunch of queer and straight people who have a problem with xenogenders. Personally, I think that’s a valid perspective and shouldn’t sanctioned on our instance. But for Blajah, they’ve drawn a line in the sand over this and that’s ok too. Our instance won’t be blocking anyone over their opinions on the topic, especially in this community where free discussion is necessary and encouraged. But safe spaces should be respected.
A lot of folks mentioned I should more more specific about the “no more posts about Blajah’s mod policies” rather than making it a sweeping and overly broad statement. I think that’s good feedback. I will amend this to "No more posts in this community about the validity or otherwise of neopronouns, xenogenders, and bans originating from Blajah about gatekeeping or transphobia. This is in recognition of Blajah’s safe space policy. You are of course free to discuss those topics outside of this community.
Note that this decision isn’t about ideological gatekeeping, its about reducing the workload for our own mods and admins in trying to moderate this community, and to avoid iterating over the same old topics again and again.
Blajah isn’t getting a “free pass” over YPTB posts - if you feel they are power tripping over other issues then feel free to make a post here. But if it’s a post questioning the validity of xenogenders or about Blajah bans for gatekeeping then that will no longer be allowed here. Those folks deserve a safe space on Lemmy, even if it’s not a mainstream opinion.
For those folks who feel aggrieved about being accused of “transphobia” or “gatekeeping” over their views on this topic, I completely understand just how hurtful it can be to be unfairly (imo) accused in this way. I’ve been in the same position, and I also found it difficult to deal with. I want those folks to know that our instance does not require you to support xenogenders in order to participate in our instance. However we do require that you use preferred pronouns whenever they are specified. That’s been a longstanding instance policy on dbzer0.
Thank everyone for your feedback.
I wouldn’t be against a temporary ban on posts about getting banned from LBZ over neopronouns, but my general inclination is to keep the previous posts up but locked as a wall of shame. I also understand wanting to take them down altogether and I wouldn’t be that fussed about it if they were.
This shouldn’t even be a debate or question. This hateful bullshit against Blahaj just needs to stop and mods need to put their foot down and say enough is enough. Like if this kind of shit arguing against a queer friendly instance for being queer friendly is okay or permitted I don’t think that !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com should even be on our instance anymore, and our admins should just remove it.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope this community can put an end to this bullshit and stop endorsing queerphobic users’ complaints.
Being queer-friendly doesn’t mean they’re immune to criticism. The issues people have with that instance have little to do with it being queer-friendly, and more to do with heavy-handed mod practices, and I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that that’s the reason why people are upset.
Nah the core of most of these posts is whether or not it’s ok to disrespect someone for their xenogender or using neopronouns. People will come in here to say they have been banned for accidentally misgendering or just ‘sharing their opinion’ but every case I’ve seen so far, if you look into their modlog you see that they were actually being really disrespectful about it, making other people with xenogender and/or neopronouns feel unsafe. Blahaj admin has made it clear that disrespecting someones pronouns or identity is not allowed on the instance, which most blahaj users agree with. Anyone who would still like to argue about this rule is just better off on another instance.
I stopped visiting this instance because the transphobic screeds became too much for me. Someone who doesn’t ‘get’ half of young trans people but just feels being nice to people exploring themselves or ignoring them if they’re too much is easier.
I’ll die on the hill that their bullshit about pronouns and respecting nonsense and made up troll identities that make a mockery of us makes the world LESS SAFE for queer people. As a queer person who is visibly gender nonconforming and at physical risk in our current political environment. Im willing to be banned from all of lemmy over this idgaf.
Millennial queers and our elders fought like hell for acceptance so children could get their panties in a twist over being “misgendered” by strangers on the internet who don’t know them nor give a fuck what their gender is. Do these kids even touch grass? Chronically online children putting us all at risk.
Meanwhile we have real serious threats to our physical safety in America but yeah. Let’s whine and cry about being misgendered! it’s oppression!
Edit - IRL I call people what they want to be called. Online I have no idea who the fuck you are or what your gender is nor am I going to remember. And the genderless “they” is not undermining your gender you don’t get to police the English language. And that’s really what this is about. People who feel powerless grabbing on to what little power they have to police others behavior under the ironic concept of “gatekeeping.” That’s the pronoun whining in a nutshell.
As for the question at hand, lock old posts, let new ones through. Their moderation is heavy handed and not queer friendly and they deserve criticism for it. Only their kind of queer is accepted. Not people like me living in reality, staring down the beginning of a genocide and telling them to grow the fuck up.
edit: oops i posted this in the wrong thread apologize
They’re a bunch of petulant children who care more about pronoun policing and power tripping and ironically gatekeeping than preparing for the incoming fucking genocide.
They provide a safe space for made up identities and actively harm actual queer people.
here’s a tldr of your spectacular crashout
them: “i acknowledge that memory is fallible but if you know someone and have been introduced to your pronouns you should at least do your best and it’s not very loving to default to they/them you should at least try :)
you: “you are a piss baby and are responsible for your oppression”
you: gets banned
you: “piss baby im being so oppressed also you don’t care about genocide”
Yeah. That’s language policing of they/them just to get butthurt and feel oppressed. I’m not playing this game. We’re dealing with the start of a genocide in America nobody has time for this childish bullshit.
I’m dying on this hill. Fuck their feelings.
Why do you care so deeply about a physical genocide of these people while simultaneously refusing to even respect their given culture and self-governing practices?
Perhaps it could be because you don’t actually care about queer/LGBT genocide and are implicitly okay with it so long as it doesn’t spill over onto you? Allyship ain’t a one way street, and it sounds like you’re not even an ally. Sounds like you just wanna coopt their existence as labor to protect you while simultaneously plotting against them and their culture after the threat has passed. You’re no comrade; the only reason you’re not a bigoted fascist is because you’re not übermensch. Unfuck yourself.
I’m queer, fuck you. Fuck your feelings and fuck your pronouns too. Fuck everything about you. Call me a fascist? For holding queer people accountable for their bullshit while we have a genocide approaching us? Fuck alllllll the way off. Fucking child. Waaaah my pronounssssss go complain to the fucking concentration camp guard about being misgendered in a few years!
I think you’re doing the right thing. The trolls are really stepping up, which is obvious in this thread. I’m trying to share it a lot because if you really read it and understand the process of what they’re doing, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy.
“Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”
Edit: I forgot to add this part of the thread:
The goal is to keep opinions we don’t want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can,…
The trolls are really stepping up, which is obvious in this thread.
That stood out to me too. A ton of people jumped in with instantly inflammatory takes which seem almost tailor-made to continue this ridiculous dispute.
I actually have a pretty high opinion of PugJesus otherwise…
My opinions on xenogender aside, the fact that Blahaj defenders, in this very comm, harassed a trans user into leaving the Fediverse has me fuming, and rightfully so in my opinion. And they play it off as “[The harassed user] deserved it.” even now. That is pretty core to the anger I feel right now.
Yeah, you’re not wrong. I read back on it a little bit, and it’s some grade-A bullshit. I’m just not sure if it’s the type of thing that can get solved with griping about the moderation. I think in my mind, the users who were egging on the harassment of that person are different from the moderators who were applying the policy.
I think a lot of the root source of it has to do with the power of words and mental structures. Once any type of disagreement with the official stance is “transphobia,” you’ll get genuinely good people who are for-real convinced that anyone who’s trying to talk sense into them is being transphobic and denying their right to exist, and they’ll get all amped up to fight against that person. If they don’t do that, they’re being a bad member of the community. It’ll tear a big rift in the communication between people. I have some experience with having that kind of structure in your brain and having it distort how you look at things and how you react to things, and it makes it really hard for people to make sense of each other.
I absolutely agree that DraconicNEO harassed the shit out of an actual trans person with some perfectly valid things to say, and is consistently saying “transphobia” is anything they don’t agree with and attacking it using some carefully chosen trigger-words. They’re also coming into these comments to try their absolute best to restart the argument. None of that is a very LGBTQ-friendly thing to do or a good thing for cooperation between instances. I’m just saying I’m not sure the anger needs to be directed at the moderators here. I think trying to strive for an actually inclusive social contract, where people can be okay with each other, is the goal, and that has to start with the ways people interact with each other separate from when banhammers come into the picture. In this case. Does that make sense? Have I missed some case of the blahaj admins doing that type of harassment or anything? I get that the policy seems over-the-top but I’m not aware of them actually being obnoxious about it, they’re just very consistent about applying it. I sort of get why it’s that way, even though I disagree with the decision. I just don’t think they are where the toxicity is coming from, here.
I suppose since the bans started with Draconic Neo calling down Ada, and then Ada finding that a valid reason for a ban, not just for me, but later, separately, without being called in, also for the trans user in question, that I see it in a very “unstated approval” light. I am also very pissed about the harassment situation, though, so I may be making connections with tunnel vision.
Yeah, I think Ada’s just applying the rules. That’s fair (or… well, it makes sense why she’s doing it I mean.) Like I say, I think the goal should be building a social contract where harassing a user in that fashion is going to be seen as “holy shit what’s wrong with that person” as opposed to something normal. Right now, it’s normal for some weird reason. But I think that’s a separate thing, only tangentially related to the moderation. It just happens that that person is also able to abuse the rules to involve moderators against people who they’re having that type of disagreement with.
Would the harassment-victim have stuck around, if not for the moderation? I don’t know. Maybe so. But I don’t think the moderation is the issue.
Like I said, I see a very “Wink wink” attitude of permissiveness in this, especially considering the second ban was not from Ada being tagged.
Going back to the old forum days comparison, upsetting one of the big users would always get you swarmed, even if the big user didn’t deign to publicly involve themselves.
That kind of community culture is cultivated.
I think people should be allowed to complain about any mod, on any community, on any instance.
Otherwise, it shows a pretty clear favoritism.
I don’t come here for fruitless arguments regarding lemmy.ml or blahaj.zone moderation, but that is the cost of open discussion. If people want to fight each other, who are we to prevent them?
That’s just it, though. The blahaj people don’t want to fight about this, that’s literally the entire point of the rule. This is about other people coming into their spaces, starting fights, getting banned for rules that are very clear and then pitching a shit fit about it.
I don’t complain when I get booted from lemmy.ml communities for breaking a clear rule because I went to their place and fucked around. It would literally be a waste of everyone’s time for me to complain about.
The rule about pronouns is pretty cut and dried. You can either respect them, or you can not engage with the people who you think are trolling at all, which to be clear, is incredibly fucking easy to do. No one is forcing these people to make comments like that in those communities. That’s a personal choice.
Once again, if you show up on blahaj and start fucking around with pretty clearly defined rules, only one side is fighting, the other side is just banning them for breaking clear rules. That’s not a fight, that’s enforcing the rules they’ve laid out.
“Do not confront the people doing bad things” is a very shitty advice.
I think there are far worse and far bigger things for folks to be worried about in real life than getting their fucking panties in a twist because trans people want to be left alone.
If you really think banning people for not being able to respect pronouns is a “bad thing” my dude you gotta get a fuckin grip on reality. Seriously touch some fucking grass and realize there’s actual real life shit that’s actually bad.
It’s not about pronouns. It’s that they lose their fucking minds over any kind of pushback at all. They/them/their is gender neutral and does not negate someone’s gender. Neopronouns are a joke in the real world. Species dysphoria? Get fucking mental health help. You’re a human not a cat.
In the real world this kind of fantasy bullshit that blahaj promotes actively harms queer people.
And then in the context of current events - America is right now starting a genocide against us and this is what the community thinks is important? Fucking pronouns?!
Do not confront the people doing bad things
That’s not the rule. The rule is don’t misgender them.
If you can’t use their pronouns or otherwise interact with them without invalidating their identity, then, you aren’t to interact with them.
If you can’t use their pronouns or otherwise interact with them without invalidating their identity, then, you aren’t to interact with them.
Who was I interacting with, Ada? :)
happy to chip in. it was right here that you verbally invalidated someone’s identity and expressed clear intent to invalidate other identities in the future. edit i misunderstood and Pug wanted the most recent occurrence. see below for details and that occurence.
content warning
Was that what I was banned for? Because it seems to me that I was banned just the other day, not 2 months ago.
Thank you for also confirming that acknowledging reality is against your moral code.
ah! it was not clear you meant the most recent instance. still happy to chip in! i t was right here that you verbally invalidated someone’s identity and expressed clear intent to invalidate other identities in the future.
As a blahaj’r, I would deeply appreciate this.
i started banned by blahaj to resolve this issue i hope you appreciate it
Hey dick why did you remove my post?
you broke rule 1 and failed to resolve it i will restore your post if you resolve the transgression
edit for context this exchange is in reference to a post on !chadmctruthstruth@lemmy.world not banned by blahaj
three hundredth
