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 post is about a different user, a trans user, who was banned for comments they made on my post, which is not linked to directly.
… for the same sentiment that got you banned
You’re not upset that a trans user got banned, you’re upset you got yourself banned and are pointing to a trans user as a shield against anti-trans accusations
You’re digging the hole deeper. Just let it go.
I’m glad others can see PJ for who he is, makes me think I’m taking crazy pills with how PJ gaslights and uses DARVO.
Your abuse of terminology without regard for meaning continues, I see.
I said that dragonfucker wasn’t a gender, because dragons don’t exist.
The other user was first banned for asking a question about neopronouns, and then, subsequently, opining that people could not be possums.
No, I’m upset that a trans user was harassed to the point of leaving the Fediverse.
What.
OK but you can see how this statement breaks their rules on gatekeeping the use of pronouns, right?
At no point did I make a statement that I wasn’t willing to respect a user’s pronouns. In fact, I explicitly stated that, despite my disagreement, I always made an effort to respect Drag’s pronouns.
In any case, as I said, my ban is secondary. I was willing to let it lie with the lock. It was irritating, I bitched about it, it was over. Coming back today to find a trans user harassed off the fucking Fediverse by Blahaj? Bit more upsetting.
You respect it but you don’t think it’s real?
You’re splitting hairs man. At the very least it should not make you this upset.
A pronoun is not a gender, and, furthermore, even if I didn’t think Drag’s pronouns were real, I respect things that aren’t real all the time. I respect the beliefs of the religious, generally, because I expect the same respect to be afforded to me in ordinary social contexts.
Dragons aren’t real. Do you think dragons are real? Because if so, there is a very serious disconnect from reality here.
I consistently used Drag’s pronouns. I did not attack Drag. Drag and me have had very few interactions period, though I vaguely remember a scrap a month or two ago.
I was not telling Drag that his identity was false; if the rule is ‘do not engage if you disagree with someone’s gender’, I wasn’t breaking that rule. Drag was not there at all. What I was doing was saying that the reason I, and many others, left Blahaj was not out of transphobia, despite the accusations leveled towards everyone who left Blahaj in that thread. And I said it outside of Blahaj.
… a trans user being called transphobic and a fascist by a community with a history of that attack-dog mentality, until they swore off the Fediverse entirely, shouldn’t make me upset?