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.
Once again, if you think thatās a bad thing: touch fucking grass dude.
Iām going to give you the benefit of a doubt and consider this last reply as not intentionally endorsing doing slightly bad things to people, because that would be bullying and weāre not here to bully people, far as I know.
If you think an instance with barely 9000 users has some control over the world that a handful of them being shitty online (in your opinion) means that you āmust confront the bad thingā youāre off your rocker. Trans people are a sliver of the human community and theyāre a sliver of the Lemmy community. They have no real power except that of their own instance. Why is that a bad thing? Explain it to me, please. Thatās what I mean by ātouch grass.ā You are ascribing ill intent to people who traditionally have no power in society simply because they finally have a place where they have instituted their own rules.
Do you confront cops for doing bad things? Because I think they actually have power in society maybe you should focus on groups like that instead of pissing away your time on tiny communities who mostly keep to themselves to begin with. Or do you only confront groups you know donāt have power over you, like the trans community? Because youāre too much of a pussy to confront a cop for doing bad things? Easier to pick a fight with someone small?
I didnāt pick a fight with them, i sort of picked a fight with your comments. Because I consider them to be wrong, or otherwise not good. No need to drag everyone else around that.
This whole thing seems to me an inner conflict within the group that spilled out. It reached this place, which is a community where users decide whether they consider a modās action as abuse.
And this post is a Meta asking users whether to ignore, lockdown or erase such topics coming from that specific group.
For all intents and purposes, I am posting as a user of this community in regards to whether we should ignore potential mod abuse selectively.
Which group this is about doesnāt matter to me, whether bigger evils or lesser evils, they should not be ignored.
This communityās objective is understanding and maintaining awareness of what is and what isnāt mod abuse at its core. At least thatās my opinion.
Whatever is decided is up to those who run this place. As is in every other instance. Until then however, your anger is quite misguided.
And we obviously have wildly differing ideas of what āmod abuseā is because one of us doesnāt care about things like power disparities or whether or not a certain community has traditionally been marginalized. Power disparities matter when it comes to āabuse.ā This sounds like youāre basically DARVOing me and Blahaj in general.
āAh, but I am the calm rational realist, so it does not matter that we have dismissed the abuse of your community, your admin has committed the Cardinal Sin of Mod Abuse because they were trying to protect their marginalized community from abuse and taking a proactive approach to do so, thus they are the real abuser here. Let the Inquisition take its pound of flesh.ā
Itās absurd.
āIf a community has been traditionally marginalized, the community can do no wrongā
y i k e s
It certainly doesnāt stop you from trying.