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.
This shouldn’t even be a debate or question. This hateful bullshit against Blahaj just needs to stop and mods need to put their foot down and say enough is enough. Like if this kind of shit arguing against a queer friendly instance for being queer friendly is okay or permitted I don’t think that !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com should even be on our instance anymore, and our admins should just remove it.
I hope it doesn’t come to that. I hope this community can put an end to this bullshit and stop endorsing queerphobic users’ complaints.
Being queer-friendly doesn’t mean they’re immune to criticism. The issues people have with that instance have little to do with it being queer-friendly, and more to do with heavy-handed mod practices, and I think it’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that that’s the reason why people are upset.
Nobody is arguing against blahaj for being queer friendly. People are arguing against some of their members for being unfriendly to people, including queer people, among them LittleRatInALittleHat. That’s the only reason people are caring about this.
The type of mentality “you’re not allowed to criticize me, because I am X, and so unless you agree with me you’re being anti-X” is tempting but it is wrong. You might think dragon is a gender, or you might not, it is fine, but refusing to agree that dragon is a gender is not and has never been “transphobia” or in any way anti-queer.
Well, I’m gonna chime in again, because it’s a nice jumping off point.
That argument, that anyone is actually saying dragon is a gender, is simply misrepresenting all of the subject.
Regardless of one’s view on xenopronouns in specific, or neopronouns one general, the claim hasn’t been that dragon is a gender.
The rule, and the argument behind it, is about pronouns. And it isn’t really about the pronouns themselves, as much as it is about who gets to decide when someone is deserving of being respected as an individual.
We’re not biking being asked to share a belief that a person is a dragon, or fucks dragons, or that humans can be part dragon.
What we’re being asked to do is to respect pronouns or just not talk to someone. That’s it. That’s what it’s about.
The rule simply lays out what will happen if people don’t do one of those two things.
You don’t have to agree with the word being used as a pronoun meaning anything other than that it replaces traditional pronouns and makes them happy. Does it matter if they think they’re a dragon, or a tiger? No. It doesn’t matter. If the cognitive dissonance of using a word in an unconventional way is so high that you simply can’t do it, that’s okay. You have multiple options at that point.
One, you can ignore the request, and accept the consequences as they come. Fair or not, those consequences are known.
Two, you can use them anyway, and roll your eyes while you do it. Nobody will know you’re rolling your eyes.
Three, you can use them anyway, and complain about it, which may also have consequences, depending on how you complain.
Four, you can block the individual and never interact with them again, thus preventing cognitive dissonance entirely.
Five, you can choose to just not interact with them at all.
Six, you choose to not interact, but complain about it elsewhere, with possible consequences (as these posts have shown).
There’s even other options, but they’re absurdist stuff like juggling oranges while singing “I’m a little teapot”. So, you know, only entertaining to me.
Now, that’s separate from anything else, I’m only talking about the idea that one has to share a belief to be able to use someone’s pronouns. Like, my pronouns are he/him, they/them, and I’ll accept any gender neutral neopronouns as well. But I’ll accept she/her in a pinch, though I may correct those if it’s relevant. It’s why I never list my pronouns, I’m cool with almost anything, up to and including “that asshole”. That’s not even a joke, I’m fine being referred to that way as a replacement for a pronoun, or in general.
You don’t have to agree with my belief that I’m not obligated to behave in the way a pronoun implies to use any of those. You don’t have to agree with my belief that by accepting almost any pronoun that I improve myself by challenging my own concepts of gender in order to use he/him, or any of the rest.
So, why would you have to believe in anything at all to use any pronoun? You aren’t expected to log off and tell your roommate or whatever, “jeez, this cat I was talking to was a real weirdo, he’s just nuts” and you aren’t expected to log off and tell the same person “I was talking to this cat from blahaj and drag sure did annoy me” you can use any pronoun you want when you aren’t in the presence of the person requesting an individual pronoun, or any neopronouns, or a xenopronoun.
You don’t need to believe anything except that the person, the human being with their own life and needs and pains, is made a little happier by the use of it. That’s it. That’s all you have to believe.
[heavy sigh]
I’m speaking in the general, with dragon as the example used because drag is largely the focus of contention.
The next paragraph, “The rule, and the argument behind it, is about pronouns. And it isn’t really about the pronouns themselves, as much as it is about who gets to decide when someone is deserving of being respected as an individual.” covers that. I was addressing the rule, and blahaj, not drag.
It hasn’t been blahaj policy that I’ve seen that dragon is a gender, only that you have to treat people’s pronouns and genders with respect.
It’s one of those where we don’t have to agree, we just have to be nice.
Or have the admins specifically addressed the issue as a declarative, and I missed it? I do miss things ;)
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/8b47330e-fe59-466e-aef5-b529ed0b05a5.jpeg
I could go further back to the whole kerfluffle this stems from, where there are more examples, but honestly, I don’t feel like digging that shit up.
Ehhh, what that screenshot shows is admins deciding that you didn’t treat pronouns with respect.
Obviously, you disagree with their assessment. I do too, really, though I have seen their argument about it somewhere to and down the various threads.
That is a different thing.
I definitely get why you don’t think it’s different, but, looking at it from this side of the screen, that’s not a statement of policy, it’s a reaction to their interpretation of what you said.
Against my better judgement, I went into Blahaj back around the time of The Event.
Removed: Gatekeeping
Removed: Gatekeeping
Removed, no note
Removed: Gatekeeping
Removed: Gatekeeping (that one’s literally me)
Removed: Gatekeeping
Removed: Transmed stuff
All of that points pretty firmly to disagreement with dragon as a gender as gatekeeping, not a matter of respecting pronouns.
I think where the disconnect is, is that you’re continuously, in those quotes, making declarations about what it and isn’t gender, what is and isn’t trans.
That’s what the comments were removed for.
In those quotes, you aren’t seeking understanding, you aren’t discussing the subject, you aren’t expressing an interest, you’re saying, directly “this is my opinion on the matter, and I refuse to consider any alternatives”
You literally say you’re drawing a line in the sand.
That’s gatekeeping, 100%
Does it make you a transphobe? Hell no. Does it make you a bad person? Not in any way whatsoever.
But it is you doing exactly what the rule is about: telling other people that they and their gender/pronouns are yours to decide the validity of
And that’s okay, you have a right to have that opinion and draw that line. We all do.
You do see that though, right? That every quote you chose, it’s you declaring other people’s genders and pronouns invalid. It doesn’t matter whether or not it was drag. It doesn’t matter who you were talking about, you don’t very to make that decision for others
You don’t, I don’t, nobody does.
We can all have great discussions about the semantics of gender, of how pronouns function, what their role in language, philosophy, and society are. We can even make declarative statements like that if we want to. But it doesn’t change that if we expect our opinions on the matter to hold sway, we’d be assholes.
I mean, c’mon you directly brought in the whole biological argument. Like, the worst possible way to address the subject matter, the claim to have a inherently superior ownership of transness because it has to be biological, and only biology matters? You have to see that that’s the exact bullshit being weaponized against trans people. Even if you didn’t mean it the same way (and I know you didn’t, I know you’re not a bigot), it’s the exact worst possible argument to use.
It’s so arrogant, claiming to have not only the ability to know what is and isn’t biological, but whether or not it has validity. You directly say that you’re deciding what is and isn’t valid, for other people. I mean, are you even a doctor? Of any stripe at all. Can you back up the claim that there’s no biological mechanism at play that leads a person to have a connection to an animal that can serve the same role as gender identity?
Because there’s a ton of information about neurodivergence out there, and some of it points to there being a high correlation between trans identities and neurological differences from cis brains. The overlap between a huge range of neuroatypicality and not just trans identity, but the very otherkin related identities being objected to is there, and neurology is biology. It just is. You can’t have a brain that operates independently of its underlying biological imperatives. It’s built by DNA, RNA, and epigenetics into this network of complicated nerves that run through a meat suit, interacting with it chemically and electrically.
That’s biology. Now, I’m with you, there’s no actual dragons that aren’t komodo. And a cat isn’t a human, nor is a human a cat. But I am not confident in saying that someone’s inner self finding expression by identifying with or as a cat isn’t biological. To the contrary, unless it only appears after disease or injury, I would say that it has to be biological in origin, even though the specific expression may be a psychological development as opposed to purely anatomical or physiological one.
While you are definitely not an enemy, not a transphobe, not a bigot, you definitely broke the rule, multiple times, and you picked your own quotes about it. If this was still about whether or not a mod action was justified, it would be totally YDI with that list of quotes.
At every step, you laid claim to the authority to decide for others whether their identity is valid.
I’m kinda beating a dead horse here because I’m a little flummoxed that you can’t see all those comments and notice that you’re doing exactly what they were removed for.
After all that, it really doesn’t matter what the specific target was, it doesn’t even matter that they are, defacto, making it clear that they accept xenogenders as valid genders within blahaj and that the rule applies to them. What matters at that point is that you had multiple comment removals and kept doing the same thing. I’d have banned you too, even preemptively because it looks like you’re making it a fight.
Legitimately, I don’t see how that can be reasonably interpreted to be about pronouns at all. My objection was to dragon as a gender. I was banned for ‘gatekeeping’. Redirecting that to a pronoun dispute requires a reading that I literally cannot see, not simply one I disagree with.
Well put
“They can’t be power tripping mods because they are queer!”
No, that is stupid.
Yes, that does seem to be the consistent position in Blahaj.
Brother in Christ, imagine you had a sub where you talk about basketball and people constantly came in, not fans of basketball just saying “man, basketball? I don’t get it” but they are just using that to argue how basketball shouldn’t exist if you dare engage with that.
You’d ban those posts. Because you want your sub to be about basketball for basketball fans. Not because you want to argue with non fans about the validity of the existence of basketball.
Hope that answer was straight and masculine enough for ya.
Cool, now, how about looking around outside of that sub for people who say “Basketball? I don’t get it” to hand out bans and accuse of being Basketball-phobes? Or, in this case, an actual Basketball fan who dared question a referee’s decision? Unfortunately, the holsum basketball community decided that made them a Sports Hater and an opponent of public schooling, and RIGHTEOUSLY drove them out of town!
I don’t like sports and I’m not particularly traditionally masculine, but thanks for the stereotyping.
It’s part of the definition of “teams.” They need to assign attributes of the enemy team to you, just to make sure everyone understands that they’re on the correct team and need to be supported uncritically.
It’s part of the demonstration of the power relationship. They’re allowed to make snide comments about your sexuality and talk down to you. God help you if you try to do it in the other direction (which is of course as it should be - I’m just calling out the toxic behavior for what it is, not saying it should at all be okay in the other direction.) They’re flexing their privilege within this context.
Idk man. Pick one, or both. Like I say, once you’ve engaged yourself as officially “the enemy” according to established battle lines, people are going to feel like they’re being a good ally if they show up to do battle with you accordingly.