Fediverse

I’d be interested on peoples views on a concern that I’ve had growing for a while; maybe the concern is genuine, or maybe I’m being paranoid. But I feel that some of the more extreme ‘pro-trans’ conversation online feels less ‘pro-trans’ and more ‘anti-terf’ or even ‘anti-everything’ to the extent that it has become impossible to have a discussion about concerns, confusions, genuine ignorance etc, in other words impossible to educate or come up with solutions to genuine problems.

A lot of these extreme trans, conversation destroying comments are so full of hate, so often, that I admit I have become suspicious. If you were deliberately trying to divide a community from potential allies you couldn’t do it better, and I’ve seen one too many ‘as a black woman’ comments accidentally posted from the wrong account by some white as a lily racist extremist man to trust everyone who says ‘as a trans person’ online.

I would like a space where people with genuine curiosity but also genuine concerns (as in, that they have the concern is genuine, it doesn’t mean necessarily that there is a genuine problem that needs resolving) could have an adult discussion to educate and understand each other, in order to find solutions, without having to worry about being cancelled and shut down.

If you’re on the fence and it feels like the only people who listen to you with respect and sympathy are the anti-trans people, well, you’re going to end up hearing a lot more of what they have to say than learning something actually useful.

I understand that the trans community must get frustrated with having to explain themselves all the time, and impatient for the day they don’t, and it sucks that that’s the world we live in right now. But I’m also very concerned that we should be cautious about accepting every hateful or insane sounding ‘as a trans person’ comment we read at face value. Hatred leads to the dark side after all, and that’s where some people want you to be.

That said I’m not trans, or even pretending to be trans, so I can’t speak for the community. I just believe strongly in the adage that the most effective way to win support is to meet hate with love, and I know a growing number of people who should have been trans allies being turned away by the feeling that they are not being listened to or taken seriously. Even if their concerns feel stupid to be people in the community.

Oh also, whilst I think people should be taking genuine concerns seriously, be careful of ‘whataboutism’ so hey, fun tight rope.

That’s my paranoid ramblings for anyone who cares from someone who wants to see tolerance and understanding but is scared we’re going the wrong way.

No one knows who you are on the internet, and in case you’ve been living under a rock, the bigots are out in force to troll, to belittle, and to shame anyone who is different.

I think the moderation in this case was a bit to heavy handed, yeah. But, I also don’t blame them for being on a hair-trigger. Read a mod log sometime, you might jump at shadows too if you saw what the actual assholes have been up to.

Agree that it’s not much of a reason to avoid a piece of software. If anything an instance.

This is a tale as old as time. Oppressed groups are naturally conditioned to be hyper-defensive per the oppression they face, which results in lashing out against neutral parties, which comes back to haunt the oppressed group as oppressors can now point as their "inherent evil" and sometimes even the neutral parties will say "hmm maybe they ARE all crazy" and become oppressors themselves. In this case it's not even a neutral party, but someone who is part of the oppressed group theirself, being ostracized by their own community.

I'm reminded of the time that Contrapoints (Natalie Wynn, a veritable transgender icon) got cannibalized by the very community she seeks to advocate for because she confessed that the pronoun dance that happens in inclusive spaces can feel like a step backward for a newly passing trans person who wants nothing more than to be supportive of others, but simultaneously wants nothing more than to naturally and intuitively be referred to by their preferred pronoun without needing the dance. If even the champions of the community are going to be eviscerated for not treading lightly enough, what hope is there of recruiting allies from normie-space?

It's like with most people really. The majority just wants to live their lives in peace, but there's that small group of militant assholes that make life difficult for everybody.

In this case, they also happen to belong to a disadvantaged group, so in addition to being assholes, they can also accuse other random people of just about anything, and you can't really say anything against them.

The only possible end result of this is that it will blow up, nobody will be happy and the wave of sympathy can even turn around. Like Amber Heard killed the whole MeToo movement, but it was on its last legs already due to similar shitty people.

imo, I can totally understand parts of the trans community not wanting to have to teach people to respect them (people not respecting you as a person by default fucking sucks, and it's understandable that you'd find it not worth your energy and fucking ridiculous that you have to teach people that you're a person)

so, I can see why OP got immediately banned, especially since they legit said a slur in a shit joke that, with said slur, could have come off as weirdly fetishizing; many people in marginalized communities don't really like having to go through someone's post that comes off bigoted to "figure out if they meant to say something bigoted on purpose or in a bad way" for obvious reasons

hopefully OP realized why they blacklisted them so quickly

Wait what? Tranny is offensive? But Kim Petras tweeted about being a tranny with a Grammy. This non binary person is confused.

Back in my Reddit days I got banned twice - once from a subreddit and once a site-wide shadowban (which got rescinded when I appealed, amazingly) and both were random bolts from the blue where I didn't actually break the rule I was banned for. In the shadowban case I happened to belong to a subreddit that was apparently in the midst of brigading another subreddit I was reading, and when I upvoted a few comments I guess I triggered some kind of anti-brigade filter. In the case of the subreddit ban, there was a guy being downvoted who was complaining about it and I explained to him why I thought it was likely that he was getting downvotes. That subreddit had a "no downvotes allowed" rule and the mods must have figured that since I was explaining why the guy was getting downvotes I must also be downvoting him. On Reddit there's no way to actually tell who's downvoting who.

Here on the Fediverse it's both a bit more scary since every instance can have whatever standards of care it wants, but it's also less scary because every instance can have whatever standards of care it wants. I can just create a new account at a different instance if the one I'm on turns out to be run by yo-yos. Hopefully the account migration features get implemented soon to make that even easier.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." --Cardinal Richelieu