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’m fine with not allowing it in the future, but I would appreciate not deleting the ones that already exist.
For archival’s sake. And for so when questions are asked about why, people can see for themselves what happened and decide whether what they see justifies blocking blahaj for them personally or not.
The way Blahaj creates a safe space is a way that ends up creating a very toxic space for others, and I don’t think erasing grievances people have had with them in the past would be good.
The fact that it’s so common means a lot of people are feeling attacked/invalidated/whatnot because of Blahaj, and leaving evidence of what they’ve done to others could help reassure people that it’s not them. Blahaj is just like that.
… If anyone up to the challenge of being a mod of a meanwhileonblahaj, that might be another decent alternative. I saw the idea floating around.
I’d want the old posts kept for historical reference, but otherwise I’m fine with this.
I kinda feel you on this.
I only turned-up in the fediverse because my phone, the Voyager app and Lemmy looks suspiciously like how my phone, the Apollo app and… some other aggregator site I used to visit looked. (Robbit, or something. Can’t remember all the details)
Anyway, having a browse, looking around. Happy happy. Saw /196 and checked it out - I knew the “content” and “the rule” from the other place. Just like old.
Got to understand the difference between community and instance. Had a look around Blahaj… eye-opening. I felt the place out and discovered that it was, in fact, what it appeared to be. Doubly eye-opening.
If Blahaj was a pub, run by Ada, and I was the doorman I wouldn’t even let me in; let alone drink at the bar.
So I wound my neck in.
Plenty of other instances to go bump my gums on - if I’m so inclined.
Just let it slide, folks… their place, their rules.
P.S. The sum of human time wasted on these few words, again and again, reheated and reserved, again and again. I mean, really? We’re at the peak of technological advancement and saturation whilst possibly on the cusp of a dystopian cataclysm and we are all - me included - wasting our time churning over the same old nonsense.
Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born
Come in, she said, I’ll give ya
Shelter from the storm
- Bob Dylan
Doesn’t one of the db0 mod team literally think xenogenders are trolling? He’s probably just going to override you and say those posts are allowed.
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.
In a similar vein: they promote a redefined version of asexuality that can end in more people than ever thinking asexual people are just picky and will be happy to do it for their partner and/or “can be fixed”.
The more the redefinition leaks into the real world, the more people once considered broken who were finally starting to be accepted as normal will end up dealing with forced consent via peer pressure and corrective rape.
No means NO, and that was starting to be understood for what it was. With the redefinition of asexual into “No means I have quirky requirements that The One will have”, it ends in real harm for actual no means NO people.
So yes. Real life harm can be caused by toxic gatecrashing. And people causing it call the ones at risk names for the terrible sin of not wanting to be taken as a joke in reality. Literal insult added to injury.
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!
Let’s set the record straight, queerness and fascist gatekeeping are not mutually exclusive, people can be queer and act in horrible ways, look at transmedicalists, or worse, Blaire White. Being queer doesn’t exclude you from being a fascist if you act like one, and it doesn’t exclude you from being queerphobic either.
I’m OK with that but it has to be a bit more targeted specifically to blahaj’s rule about gatekeeping and neopronouns, and I would add everything drag of course.
I wouldn’t delete old posts, just lock them.
Maybe make it a temporary moratorium?
agree. seeing that the trolls the posters here are crying about have been banneed for weeks to months, a temporary moratorium is probably fine. maybe six months but im pulling that number from nowhere.EDIT: I have changed my mind about this. See https://lemmy.cafe/comment/10132150 and the preceding thread.
- Leave the threads up, probably locked. Don’t erase history.
- I wouldn’t start on wholesale topic bans just yet. This should be an absolute last resort and this will probably do more harm than good.
- Possibly create some extra categories for titles so users can filter it out if they don’t want to hear about it. Instance name of the potential PTB? Not sure.
My suggestion for this topic right now is to get everyone together that needs to and talk/scream/yell about it in private. I think everything has been said publicly at this point and the reading comprehension has gone down the toilet. The amount of misunderstandings, blanket downvotes, pettiness, bad assumptions, baiting and finger pointing is getting ridiculous. Have your damn say and find a conclusion, even if said conclusion is ‘fuck you’ from each person.
For shit like this in the future? If it comes to it, it is far better to lock first, talk to the person, and then unlock it. We can tell each other all day to be an adult, but it isn’t that simple. There will always be some big event that floods the community at some point or another. This community practically begs for it. It will eventually be filed into PTB history.
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.
Yeah db0 has a transphobia problem. I remember seeing an admin say neopronouns are trolling.
at this point it’s all just going in circles
In favor of doing this, but keep the old posts locked without removing them so people know what happened and what led up to this.
Well, I’m for this move. The why is obvious, as you’ve covered it in the post already.
I would also like to voice support for a couple ideas from previous comments
First, that previous posts stay up, and locked, so that people can still see that the issues were.
Second, that y’all consider the possibility of an FPT (frequently power tripped) thread at some frequency where folks can still hash out the common subjects. This and the mod abuse C/ are valuable pressure relief valves. I worry that a total banning of “frequent fliers” (sic) might have effects down the road.
I know that’s extra work for mods, so it’s definitely a big ask, but lemmy does need places where disgruntled users can complain. Having multiple places is better because one community would get swamped if they’re the only place people can go for specific complaints.
Why do you need to delete old posts?
Where can users banned by blahaj admins for lurking in other communities report it? Especially because the lahaj admins ban so many people for gatekeeping despite them not gatekeeping.
There’s a theme here of covering up dissent instead of engaging.
Blahaj admins started this whole ordeal in december for banning dissent and losing dozens of users instead of engaging with their community.
PTB
THANK YOU
three hundredth
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.
I agree in at least a memorandum or a break on this so everyone, myself included, can outside and breathe from air. Play games they enjoy. Read a good book. Listen to music.
Taking a break from the keyboard helps me when I’m upset about online stuff that doesn’t impact the real world.
Mad love for the user name, btw :)
Thank you!
