that was me speculating, bridging the gap between my main points of information: 1) that I had seen trans hexbear users discussing chaser messages they had gotten, and complaining that there were too many chasers in 196, 2) that I had seen posts from you where it was obvious to me that you care and consider chasers to be a problem, and 3) that 196 was a lifeboat community and is larger than the rest of blahaj.

If you're happy with 196 how it is, then the three interpretations I see are 1) that hexbear users who complained of chasers were misjudging or exaggerating the extent of the problem, 2) that they have a lower tolerance for chaser behavior, or 3) that they have a lower threshold for what they deem to be chaser behavior — or some combination of the three.

either they don't believe what they are saying about safety, or they do believe it but were fine with that state of affairs before the 196 mods denied their request

Or it's not all the same people, or their opinions changed. But I also think emotions were running high. I remember posts where hexbears were pretty upset that users on blahaj had accused them of pretending to be queer. There are also a lot of comments like that here, but I think it hurts a lot more coming from other queer people. Overall, I don't think the situation brought the best out of anyone.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

that hexbear users who complained of chasers were misjudging or exaggerating the extent of the problem

This is exactly what happened.

The two instances that I am aware of.

The first instance was a cis guy responding explicitly to a prompt from a trans person, talking about how their attraction to a non medically transitioned trans man wouldn't work, precisely because he acknowledged that his attraction would be based on elements that would make the hypothetical trans man in question uncomfortable.

This was not a cis person volunteering an opinion to trans folk unasked for. It was a cis guy responding to an explicit question from a trans person, whilst respecting trans identities and acknowledging the reality of dysphoria.

The resulting discussion about that topic lead to a huge outbreak of transphobic commentary from external users. That lead to me making a post calling out the transphobia and aggressively banning anyone that crossed the line.

This all happened months before hexbear joined, and the post from me addressing the issue is still visible in 196.

It's not an accident that this incident only became an issue for hexbear folk after the 196 mods refused to remove anti tankie political commentary at hexbear's request.

The second instance was a hexbear user reporting someone making chasery comments to them. I asked for details so I could ban the person in question. Before telling me who it was, the hexbear user asked me not to ban the account in question, because they looked like they were a newly out trans person that had taken a joke too far (they were calling people m'lady as a joke). In any case, I talked to the poster making the comments, and told them that it's making people uncomfortable and they need to stop. They did (they already had before I messaged them)

And that's the "endemic" of chasers. A trans person making an ill conceived joke, and a single cis person answering a direct question from months ago.

I can absolutely understand why some people would be uncomfortable with both of the events in question. But even allowing for that, what we have is two misrepresented events that were actively addressed at the time they occurred, one of which occurred months before hexbear even appeared on the scene.

Again, it's not an accident that most of the chasers hexbear are concerned about apparently hang out in 196, a community that hexbear users wanted to join until they found out they couldn't. Only then did the chasers and transphobia appear in their narrative.

[–] mycorrhiza@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Here are the instances I'm aware of. There might be more, I just saw these posts ambiently while browsing hexbear. And I also don't know if the ones mentioned on hexbear are the sum of all chaser experiences users have had.

(Scroll down, these are all comment links not post links)

https://hexbear.net/comment/3826339

https://hexbear.net/comment/3772050

https://hexbear.net/comment/3775110 (see screenshot)

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago

The two additional incidents linked in there (in post 1 and 3), were both actioned by a moderator, the user spoken to, and the behaviour hasn't been repeated. The one in your third link was aimed at me directly, not a hexbear user, and occurred before hexbear federated with us.

So, 4 events in total, 2 of which involved hexbear users, and 2 of which occurred before hexbear federated with us. All 4 of which received a moderator response and communication with the user, which stopped the behaviour in question.

Notably, 3 of the users accused of being chasers are trans, gender diverse or gender questioning themselves. And I'm not going to kick a trans person to the kerb for behaviour that can be addressed by talking to them.