Both of these removals are tacit endorsement of ableism and racism and this mod should be removed.
Also here is the head mod defending a transphobe/chaser https://hexbear.net/comment/3762972
"x-tard" will never be and has never been funny. Disappointed that the mods would take down calling that out. Hexbear has been making some pretty good arguments about the overwhelming white middle class-ness of the instance. The fact that the only Vaush community I've seen is on Blahaj is a great example of it. Even Reddit libertarians aren't cool with using "tard" though. This is literally worse than Reddit libertarian moderation, and that's pathetic coming from a space that's supposed to be inclusive.
Nice post. Once the emoji bug is fixed, you'd be getting the gold star above the spoiler.
It really is odd to defend such a toothless phrase. It just alienates people who are neurodivergent/disabled or know people who are who would get slurred with it. And it's not like the liberals would actually be insulted by it. What's the point of using it, outside of feeling like you're 13 again.
I'll perhaps acknowledge there's an ironic use (i.e. sometimes Hasan will use it when ironically saying what a conservative would), but even that makes me cringe.
The chapo podcast quit using it, so if they work to stop, I don't see why posters can't.
I swear all these fascist reactionary "mundane slurs" are cringe as fuck too
imagine unironically calling yourself a "computertard" or something
yeah this is the type of mod activity that can wreck an instance. report reasons should be tied to the code of conduct. the code of conduct of blahaj disallows ableism, yet this mod uses ableist terms in comments then when you push back, they remove the comment and give a removal reason with more ableism
and then there are the chasers, who have no place in a queer community. not a coincidence that this comes from 196, a largely vowsh watching community
Vaush is so fucking bad. Dude explicitly defends his use of slurs on stream. Why can Vaush call people the n word? Slurs have no place in a leftist space. My child is non-verbal, this mod is using the language people insult my child. The comments left by OP were calm and reasonable. The mod didn't even try to argue it in public because they know there isn't a good response to "don't use slurs".
I tried real hard in those comments to be diplomatic too, and I was called "braindead"
I'm ready to take the gloves off honestly, just hoping Ada sees it and reacts in a positive way.
Rules Based Order ^tm
Disappointing that people use that suffix, or complete word. It is ableism in every way. I'm really not sure why people who consider themselves progressive or left-aligned feel that is still an OK suffix/word to use unless they feel that the people that word abuses are of no worth or worth no consideration.
while I'd like the trans communities to remain linked, I don't want to do so at the cost of exposing trans and disabled comrades to ableism and chaser shit.
Here's a couple sources about it:
Chicago Tribune- Here's an offensive word we should retire right now (2016)
Taking the R-word and adding "lib" to it doesn't make it any less offensive. And what bothers me is that those who combine "liberal" with that word are not insulting their intended targets — they're insulting an entire group of people who have done nothing wrong, all while perpetuating a term that simply needs to go away.
Anchorage Press - Why [word] is Lazy and Offensive (2020)
Combining the R-word with liberal makes it no less offensive.
"An offensive word used by some people on the extreme right of politics to refer to someone who holds left-wing political beliefs"
It's not just us Hexbears who find it offensive. Even if it's used ironically, I think we can all agree that the ironic use of offensive language still has potential to cause harm and should at the very least not be above crticism.
E: I'm pro-federation and I want to soothe things over, and I think the admins of both Blahaj and Hexbear are committed to that, but it seems like this mod is intentionally trying to burn bridges. This all happened underneath a post where they publicly posted a private conversation with one of our mods for the purpose of mockery. I've been trying to get people to tone it down on our side, but none of our people are going to listen to calls for civility in the face of ableism. We support our neurodivergent comrades.
Yeah, saying this right now, 196's main mod consistently posts bait. Ada is a great admin and community runner, I feel bad that I have to consistently see her step in because Moss fucks up so much obvious and easy shit. Moss posting a blurred picture of her conversations with Hexbear admins and blaming the blurring on Ada is shitty, posting ableist slurs and using them in mod messages to people calling you out is shitty.
These are actions that cause a lot of drama within the community, and take less than a few seconds of thought to know they're bad ideas. Moss consistently wants a drama filled community and it sucks. It's like the second one of these ridiculous bait post become old news, OH SHIT HERE'S A NEW ONE FOR EVERYBODY TO SALIVATE OVER!!!!
My impression is that Blahaj accepted the 196 lifeboat without necessarily knowing much about it. Many of us on Hexbear had experiences with it on Reddit because on the surface it seems cool, but it's always had some strong Vaushite tendencies that we really dislike.
:::spoiler tangent
Imo he plays the controversy game of "Say stuff that makes group A mad at me in order to appeal to group B, who hates group A." That leads to saying problematic and harmful stuff but there's always this layer of plausible deniability, and all criticism, legitimate or not, gets dismissed as coming from the bad outgroup ("tankies"). When our site first started we had a ton of posts criticizing him but then we figured out it's better to just ignore his antics.
I've been worried since the start that federation with 196 was a ticking time bomb, but I've been pleasantly surprised that the users haven't really been posting bait or trying to antagonize us, but unfortunately I can't say the same for this mod. From what you said it sounds like they do similar controversy bait tactics.
From the chicago tribune post
which I'll refer to from here on as the R-word
they then do NOT just refer to it as the R-word, they have it like a dozen more times in the article
:::spoiler emoji
Some more juicy deletions
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6ac3d354-0791-49ed-9c1d-a657d6fdcd78.png
hexbear is defederating over these and other issues. you can read about the reasoning from our admin team here. please consider making an account on hexbear! we're very strict about transphobia and have a thriving queer community, built up over 3 years.
Thank God.
Damn that's disappointing you are so invested in having some transphobic racist chaser mods over some nebulous threat of "tankies"
The first one, no question. That word has no usefulness.
The second I’m on the fence about. Lately there have been a A LOT of attempts to derail discussion about pretty much anything using exactly that argument. I can’t fault a mod for putting a lid on it.
making an argument with verifiable facts isn't an attempt to derail a discussion -- it's an attempt to further the discussion. the OP is an anarchist, not some tankie.
Eh, you can definitely use verifiable facts to derail a discussion.* It all depends on context and whether those facts are being framed truthfully and with good faith. There just isn't enough context to go off of here. I don't really care about OP's politics because the point stands whether I agree with his politics or not
*Edit: See the book Merchants of Doubt about how cigarette companies in the 70s misused scientific findings to cast doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. Stuff like pointing out how women and men had similar smoking rates, but not cancer rates. They left out the part that women smokers tended to be much younger. Thus, in a couple decades their cancer rates matched men's, but by then the damage was done. Bam - use of verifiable facts to lie and derail
I don’t know op or his politics, but the comment is clearly baiting and escalating. Unless the comment goes to the heart of the discussion at hand (which it might, but I don’t know), I think the decision to remove is defensible.
Note that I’m saying defensible, not correct, or great, or just. I’m not a big fan of just nuking comments in general, but moderation is hard work and as far as I’m concerned, this falls squarely within a mod team’s authority.
The context was about tankie-bashing.
What I was thinking too. X-tard is ableist and plain dumb. I wish we could actually read the post and comments, though, because it's hard to tell what OP was really saying. Is he claiming that dissing on MLs is racist? Hard to say, but if he is that's ridiculous
Is he claiming that dissing on MLs is racist? Hard to say, but if he is that's ridiculous
That’s how I read it anyway. And while it’s not completely out there, I’ve seen these arguments show up a lot lately and definitely not always when it would have been a natural course for the conversation to take.
Apparently some people really like this particular talking point, and interaction be damned.
Isn't the significant presence of hexbear folks here pretty solid evidence that their admins don't have good control over their users (or rather that they have no interest in following their own rules)? They were specifically told to stay out of metas for other instances.
I was under the impression that we were only supposed to stay out of threads that had a disclaimer like this:
This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
I'm not aware of any request not to make or comment on a post like this.
Anyways, what is your opinion on this mod ableism and the racism against the third world emancipation movements?
Admins have very little visibility into what their users are up to in other instances and no control aside from easily dodged instance bans.
A Hexbear user literally made this post, I think they're allowed to talk in it.
Hey, serious question, why is "-tard" still considered to be a slur? It's no longer used in any professional capacity (at least in the US), so it seems like it'd be more offensive to insist that it still applies to people who are intellectually disabled than to let it become another synonym for stupid, dumb, idiot, etc (which were all professional diagnosis as well btw). I can understand wanting to discourage its use as an insult if it's a professional diagnosis, but it's not considered one anymore.
it gets applied broadly to a variety of neurodivergent and developmentally disabled people and its use against those people has left many with trauma
Huh, I'm gonna have to think about this one. My experience growing up was that, despite being neurodivergent, I never felt like I was being called it anymore than anyone else, and that was probably at the height of its informal use (when it was considered just another way of calling someone stupid).
However, it does make me wonder if the declaration of it being a slur backfired. Is it used as a slur against neurodivergent people more often now than it used to be? I'm wondering if the people who were using it as a generic insult stopped using it, which meant the people using it as a slur became the only users, which solidified its status as a slur.
Its no longer used in a proffesional capacity partly because its a slur (its also meaninglessly broad as a diagnosis).
Its considered a slur because the only current use of it is as a slur
AKTHUALLY there are non-insulting uses, e.g. to "removed" something or saying something is a "removedant" (like a fire removedant). Yes, those are the same "removed" because if I understand correctly, that's where the word originated from.
I also want to point out the circular logic you have going on. It's a slur because it's considered one, so it's only use is as a slur, as a result, it only gets used as a slur, so it's considered a slur, so it only ever gets used as one.
To be clear, that's not disregarding what you said, but I wanted to point out a flaw in that logic.
Well this has certainly turned into a shitshow....
With out context, in the first comment everything after he first 2 sentences was just shit string and didn't add anything except vitriol, probably it and whatever it was replying to should be removed. I have no idea what your talking about in the second comment.
