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.
Iāll 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 āmisgenderedā by strangers on the internet who donāt 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. Letās whine and cry about being misgendered! itās 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 ātheyā is not undermining your gender you donāt get to police the English language. And thatās 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 āgatekeeping.ā Thatās 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 ācan be fixedā.
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 āNo means I have quirky requirements that The One will haveā, 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
Theyāre 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.
hereās a tldr of your spectacular crashout
them: āi 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 itās not very loving to default to they/them you should at least try :)
you: āyou are a piss baby and are responsible for your oppressionā
you: gets banned
you: āpiss baby im being so oppressed also you donāt care about genocideā
Yeah. Thatās language policing of they/them just to get butthurt and feel oppressed. Iām not playing this game. Weāre dealing with the start of a genocide in America nobody has time for this childish bullshit.
Iām 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 donāt actually care about queer/LGBT genocide and are implicitly okay with it so long as it doesnāt spill over onto you? Allyship aināt a one way street, and it sounds like youāre 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. Youāre no comrade; the only reason youāre not a bigoted fascist is because youāre not Ć¼bermensch. Unfuck yourself.
Iām 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!
Letās 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 doesnāt exclude you from being a fascist if you act like one, and it doesnāt exclude you from being queerphobic either.