Iām gonna get real with you folks, weāve had way too many of these posts recently. Iāve been reflecting on this topic a lot the past few days. For me personally, I couldnāt care less about my gender identity. But just because thatās true for me, doesnāt make that true for everyone.
The beauty of the fediverse is that if you donāt 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. Thatās fair enough imo.
Safe spaces should be respected, and Blajahās admins/mods do not deserve abuse for creating and maintaining those spaces.
I can completely understand why Blajah users donāt 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.
Thatās all folks, have at 'er.
Edit: thanks for all your feedback and comments. I think itās clear that the vast majority of people are fed up with this topic coming up repeatedly.
Summarizing the feedback, Iād say most folks would prefer to retain previous posts for the sake of posterity, and to serve as an example of why we donāt want anymore of these posts. Iām happy to take that on board. For those folks saying Iām a PTB for intervening in this way, Iāll just remind you that I havenāt made any arbitrary mod decisions, and Iāve 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 thereās a bunch of queer and straight people who have a problem with xenogenders. Personally, I think thatās a valid perspective and shouldnāt sanctioned on our instance. But for Blajah, theyāve drawn a line in the sand over this and thatās ok too. Our instance wonāt 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 āno more posts about Blajahās mod policiesā rather than making it a sweeping and overly broad statement. I think thatās 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 Blajahās safe space policy. You are of course free to discuss those topics outside of this community.
Note that this decision isnāt 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 isnāt getting a āfree passā over YPTB posts - if you feel they are power tripping over other issues then feel free to make a post here. But if itās 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 itās not a mainstream opinion.
For those folks who feel aggrieved about being accused of ātransphobiaā or āgatekeepingā over their views on this topic, I completely understand just how hurtful it can be to be unfairly (imo) accused in this way. Iāve 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. Thatās been a longstanding instance policy on dbzer0.
Thank everyone for your feedback.
I was accused of being a transphobe on a comm that wasnāt even in Blahaj. I defended myself. For that, I was banned. Another poster, a trans user, made a comment. For that, they were dogpiled by Blahaj defenders, called a fascist and a transphobe, and then banned. Now Blahaj defenders want this to not be discussed under any circumstances.
Who here wants the right to go around insulting everyone without consequences?
Havenāt you figured out by now thatās the strawman argument of any queer person who wants to feel oppression and be offended?
I donāt think theyāre saying you canāt discuss it, or theyāre going to ban or defederate you for trying to talk about it, or anything like that. Theyāre just saying that, now that the issue has been discussed a bunch of times in this community with nothing getting accomplished other than a big productive-conclusion-free food fight, theyād like to (or they are proposing to) prohibit future repetitions of the exact same food fight. I think this is one of the rare times when āyou can still talk about it, you just canāt do it here anymoreā has a good amount of validity.
And like I say, I think the users are much more the issue here than the moderation. I think āhow do we manage to get along on the fediverseā may be a better way to approach it than ādonāt you agree that the mods of blahaj are terrible.ā
Thatās sort of what Iām saying. A lot of people on lemmy do want to have that right, and itās not super-important (apparently) within the consensus culture to say theyāre not allowed to. The boundaries of whatās acceptable behavior are often in very weird places, to me.
Proposal from OP, one of the mods (who, in fairness to them, is very hard put on by all this pointless fucking drama that they get to get hit with without even being involved)
One of the most upvoted replies:
The reason why it is production-free is because Blahaj defenders swarm the comm every time it happens. If the position is āUsers are sabotaging discussions they donāt want to happen, so we should just not have those discussionsā, then all youāve done is reward toxic behavior.
Yeah thatās part of my POV lol.
Yeah, deleting past posts is silly I think. I donāt agree with that part.
Yeah, thatās a bunch of bullshit. The only reason I didnāt get in an argument with that person is (1) life is short (2) like I was saying, there are clearly a bunch of good-faith people who are sort of twisted up with certain words and definitions, such that theyāll interpret anyone trying to disagree with that person as transphobia. Thatās the whole point of them being so forceful about defining anyone disagreeing with them in a very particular way. It lays the groundwork for anyone whoās an āallyā to misinterpret any disagreement.
I think the solution to that has to come in some other form than just having a big sprawling slapfight with them. The chance of them seeing reason about it seems near 0, and I think the sum total impact of the slapfight on other people who are observing it will just be to drive them a little further into their echo-chamber.
Correct. Iām not saying itās not a problem. Iām saying that having big frequent slapfights about it will not solve the problem (and yes, partly specifically because at this point thereās a whole crew of users whoāve I guess been amped-up and trained to come in and vigorously inflame the slapfight any time one happens.) The best I can come up with is:
Neither of those are simple things to do. Iām just saying that that type of conversation seems more likely to lead to a good solution to the badness that youāre seeing, than is just vocally hassling the blahaj admins and users every time this same issue comes up.
Banned users like yourself also flood the thread every time. I donāt see how thatās any different.
What, all three of us? Clearly weāre mass downvoting Blahaj defenders and mass-upvoting our Banned Comradesā¢. Hell, I was only added to that banned list the other day.