I’ve seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone’s pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they’re wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they’re transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.
It’s because Blahaj doesn’t have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada’s psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada’s interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.
And Ada didn’t write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.
I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.
If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn’t be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn’t understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn’t misunderstand it so often.
I think the current system is creating pointless drama.
Transphobes getting mad and sealioning about “rules” is not pointless drama because it accomplishes the goal of keeping those people out.
Literal rules can be designed or twisted to undermine the fundamental goals of those rules. It creates lawyers focused on rhetoric over morals; lawyers trying to find a way to get away with the very things the rules were supposed to prevent. Words have no meaning so long as they can be abused to accomplish what they want. This is how fascism is so easily able to overtake liberal democratic systems and how powerful interests rig the state in their favor.
Anyhow, most of the drama comes from people like you who care more about semantics than having queer people feel safe and secure. If you want to help banned transphobes overcome their bigotry, find a way where you can do that off blahaj. That’s how you can actually achieve your goals without relying on Ada to do it. When many of them inevitably refuse to change, then you can feel secure in knowing that most of this “drama” is bad faith bigotry. Complaining here is a waste of effort for accomplishing what you supposedly want.
Making Blahaj a safer place for trans people with less drama? I can’t do that on Blahaj?
I read most of the other comments and didn’t reply because I don’t want to start a ton of arguments, but your comment stood out to me as making a lot of assumptions about what I want that I don’t understand.
This is actually a great example of why I’m not a huge fan of Blahaj’s guidelines. You’re trying to use your sense of cognitive empathy to figure out how I think. And the guidelines say empathy is good. But I don’t like it. You’re making mistakes, and I’d rather you didn’t try to psychoanalyse me. I want you to empathize with me less, please. You haven’t read enough of what I have to say to make accurate guesses at the level you’re trying to. It’s too early for the amount of empathy you’re pointing at me.
One of the reasons I created this post is because I assume Ada doesn’t like being psychoanalysed by internet people either. This post is a warning that the current system leads to lots of amateur psychoanalysis. It’s unpleasant for me, I’d assume it would be unpleasant for her too.
“Psychoanalyze” you with “cognitive empathy”? Those mighty fancy words make me suspect that you’re either grasping for straws, or just trying to waste my time.
Other people having a special interest in science doesn’t make you dumb. Science is actually very cool, fun to learn about, and important for understanding the world and other people. You don’t have to treat it like a scary thing.
Your psychology “education” clearly comes from someone like Jordan Peterson or Sam Harris, so I’m not too worried