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.
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.
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.
Sounds like a Truman Show glass house, considering the federation.
Well, whatever, it’s your playground.
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.
“Do not confront the people doing minor bad things, we should let those slide because there are worse things out there” is a slightly shitty advice too though.
Once again, if you think that’s a bad thing: touch fucking grass dude.
I’m 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 we’re 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 “must confront the bad thing” you’re off your rocker. Trans people are a sliver of the human community and they’re 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. That’s what I mean by “touch grass.” 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 don’t have power over you, like the trans community? Because you’re too much of a pussy to confront a cop for doing bad things? Easier to pick a fight with someone small?
I didn’t 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 mod’s 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 doesn’t matter to me, whether bigger evils or lesser evils, they should not be ignored.
This community’s objective is understanding and maintaining awareness of what is and what isn’t mod abuse at its core. At least that’s 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 “mod abuse” is because one of us doesn’t care about things like power disparities or whether or not a certain community has traditionally been marginalized. Power disparities matter when it comes to “abuse.” This sounds like you’re basically DARVOing me and Blahaj in general.
“Ah, 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.”
It’s absurd.
This community is on lemmy.dbzer0.com
I’m talking about people containing their fights over moderation topics to this community, not going into another community and trying to start fights there.
They should be able to complain about any mod, any community, or any instance here