Blahaj Lemmy state of the shark - Our goals, politics and recent events
Blahaj Lemmy state of the shark - Our goals, politics and recent events
Whilst this is not a local only post/community, it is primarily intended for blahaj lemmy members. Top level replies from non blahaj accounts will be removed.
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I want to take the moment to clarify the Blahaj Lemmy position on things, given recent events and the fallout that has followed. This will give people the chance to decide for themselves if blahaj zone lemmy is the right space for them, or if it doesn't meet their needs.
First and foremost, blahaj zone lemmy exists to give a space for queer folk to exist, with their needs explicitly protected as the highest priority, and with a particular focus on the needs of gender diverse folk. Most lemmy instances are not run by trans folk, and whilst many are still inclusive, they don't always prioritise our needs. Others barely consider trans folk, and react only to the most blatant of bigotry.
We are not a political instance, however political communities have a space here, as does any community that is actively protective of the needs of queer and gender diverse folk. Given the impact of politics on gender diverse folk, that means lots of dialogue and strong opinions exist, and as long as those opinions are honestly held, and not bigoted or exclusive, people are welcome to have and express those opinions here.
For what it's worth, I am a member of the Greens Party in Australia. I have no time for the middle ground politics of the Australian Labor party, let alone the right wing beliefs of the Australian Liberal party. Yet a community of queer Labor Party aligned folk would fit on blahaj lemmy, because the parties ideologies, are not explicitly anti queer. A community aligned with the Australian Liberal party likely would not have a place here, unless the goal of the community was to work at actively challenging the anti queer policies of the party.
That being said, political communities (or any other communities) that exist solely to target and take aim at other queer folk have no place here either. The goal of blahaj lemmy is queer inclusion, and a community whose sole goal is division, will be removed.
The downside to this is that as we assume good faith in members and we don't gatekeep or deny access to people because of their pronouns or gender identity, (even when those identities are challenging to many) it is possible for bad faith actors to take advantage of our inclusive policies. Unfortunately, that's just something we are going to have to navigate as it occurs, because I won't let bad faith folk push this instance to defaulting to exclusion or gatekeeping the validity of someone's identity. I will respect a trolls pronouns even as I ban them, because to not do so, normalises the idea that pronouns are something that are earned by good behaviour, or that other people have a say in the validity of another person's identity and pronouns.
So that's where we stand. Hopefully this will help people decide for themselves whether or not this is the right instance for them.
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i 100% agreed with the respecting a trolls pronouns thing, until i came here. i still do, with the notable exception that i will not respect someone's pronouns when those pronouns make me feel sexually exploited - and when those pronouns have absolutely nothing to do with gender and are more about making a mockery of trans people and playing out a power fantasy over other people.
ban me for this if you want but i haven't spoken directly about this situation on this instance precisely because i expect to be banned for doing so, and it's simply not the same as any other situation with pronouns. the pronouns themselves are the issue. i'm a discord mod and sometimes i have to ban trolls with obviously racist, transphobic, or nazi pronouns - i don't respect those either. i can't see this situation as any different when the pronouns themselves genuinely make some people feel unsafe.
i would also add that you cannot have an instance without politics. trying to do so is making a political decision, and it is one that ultimately invites fascism. i would love it if all trans people had politics that were safe to be around. but they don't.
when those pronouns have absolutely nothing to do with gender and are more about making a mockery of trans people and playing out a power fantasy over other people.
If and when you can demonstrate evidence that that is what was happening, I will act on it, but until then, as I stated, I'm not willing to gatekeep people's identities on my personal assessment of their validity. That's not going to change.
I can and will moderate on behaviour however, but in the case of the person I believe you are referring to, after a moderation chat I've seen no evidence of continuing behaviour at odds with our instance guidelines.
i can't see this situation as any different when the pronouns themselves genuinely make some people feel unsafe.
If someone's pronouns make you feel unsafe, that's more of an issue you need to work on than anything else IMO. I know I've struggled with "it" as a pronoun, because it's historically a slur that has been targeted against our community. Seeing people use it made me deeply uncomfortable, and when I first heard it, I assumed, as you're assuming, that the people using it were doing it in bad faith. I've since come to understand that my assumptions were incorrect, and that my discomfort is my issue to work through, not something I get to force on to others.
And until such time as we find a way of reading people's minds to determine their intentions, all we can do is respect what they tell us about who they are, and respond to their behaviour.
If you disagree with that approach, then you're likely to find your experience here frustrating.
i would also add that you cannot have an instance without politics
Of course not. As I said in the post that you're replying to, political communities are welcome here. This is especially true, because of the impact that politics has on our lives as queer folk.
forcing people to capitalise the pronoun "you" is absolutely nothing to do with gender. there is a huge difference between using a pronoun for someone that you feel could sound dehumanising (and for what it's worth, i use it primarily because it was used as a slur towards me when i was younger) and requiring people to treat another person like a deity or a dom. it's not a me problem, it's abusive behaviour. i have absolutely no problem with neopronouns or xenogenders and have come out to support xenos many times. this is not that.
this is why you need politics in a community. i'm not talking about just political communities, but a political direction to your moderation. you're suffering from a paradox of tolerance. you're tolerating - and enforcing the toleration of - abusive behaviour because you lack the political instinct to see what is wrong with it. that makes this instance unsafe for trans people.
if someone comes on here and insists their pronouns are
spoiler
14/88 or attack/helicopter
are you going to tolerate that? this may be more subtle but it is ultimately no different.
ultimately you're right. i did find my experience here frustrating, and i also found it pretty frustrating watching my partner, who was more active here, suffer through all this bullshit. we've both left, as have a number of others, and i hope you're happy that your decisions have forced out so many trans people from your supposedly safe community. i'm not expecting you to change your ways at this point, but seriously. this is fucked up, and your openness is being exploited. i feel bad for the people here.
I removed your post for gatekeeping, but I did want to address one point...
You asked how I would react to someone coming on here and stating that their pronouns are "attack/helicopter".
I want to point you in the direction of Isabel Fall. Isabel Fall is a transgender woman who wrote a story called "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter". She did it as a middle finger to the slur and as an act of reclamation. In response, she was hounded off of the internet. People accused her of being a nazi.
She was hospitalised, because her own mental health put her at risk of suicide from the strength of the response.
So yes, if Isabel Fall, or someone else, came here trying to reclaim slurs like that, they are explicitly welcome to do so. I also understand that people acting in bad faith can and likely will try and abuse that. But until such a time as I can read their minds to determine their intentions, so I can tell the Isabel Falls apart from the trolls, all I can act on is their behaviour.
I won't act on someone's pronouns alone, and that includes someone using reclaimed slurs (hell, "It" is a reclaimed slur used as a pronoun) or capital letters (we capitalise "I" and don't think anything of what that represents)
The example with Isabel Fall does not fit here, as moderation action against someone like her, or asking/requiring those types of pronouns to be changed/removed is not equivalent to the response she received. This sounds like you're saying that moderation action for offensive pronouns will lead to people getting hurt to the degree she did, but it won't, so this is irrelevant.
You didn't address the other user's example of 14/88 as a pronoun, or ones that have explicitly sexual connotations.
Would you also take no action if someone used the n-word (hard r), the f-slur etc? Or obviously sexual ones like Master or Daddy? Would you require minors to also use these pronouns so they don't misgender that person?
This all is just being tolerant to a fault. I myself am trans, I am supportive of neopronouns and xenogenders, but there's a limit. And that is when other people are getting hurt or made extremely uncomfortable, and when it's just obvious that it's in bad faith.
it's ok, it's only the atheists that get offended..
edit: i mean in this case
Thank you for that story. I'm partway through the Vox article on Isabel's experiences. It's fascinating. I'd really like to be able to read her story. It sounds like good writing.
My partner identifies as an airplane. It was built shortly after WWII as a prototype to experiment with a new swooped wing design in combination with afterburners. It likes to play War Thunder to affirm its gender. If you care to explore the deep reaches of furaffinity and several websites, there's actually a whole fetish subculture about sentient airplanes. I've met a couple people from within the community who also identify as planes. One of them's a Cybertronian (a transformer) who turns into a plane. There are artists who regularly draw this stuff and have communities of fans. I've never met a helicopter, but I'm sure they exist. I bet they hide themselves away extra-good to avoid being attacked by crusaders. You probably have to fill out an extensive verification to be allowed on the helicopter Discord servers. When I first started dating My partner, years ago, it was so shy. I wasn't allowed in its cockpit for months. It's still just as shy, but we've known each other a long time now and it trusts Me to fly it. It recognises that its meatspace body is human, but its inside body on the astral plane isn't. We spend most of our time together on the Astral, where we can be ourselves. The astral plane is used by so many otherkin. I've been in discord servers with hundreds of people who used it to be themselves. Mostly otherkin and plurals. Some trans people too. The otherkin and trans people who don't believe in the Astral and can't use it, their lives are measureably worse. I want to bring magical literacy to everyone so everyone can use the resources that exist for trans and otherkin people. That's kind of the point of soulism. To let people choose their experience of themselves.
When I was a kid I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to meet aliens like in Star Wars. I gave up on that dream when I realised how hard becoming an astronaut is. I wasn't willing to put in the effort. Especially if we're not meeting any aliens until we invent warp drive.
But after I joined some fringe queer spaces and started really looking at the limits of our experiences, I realised you don't need to be an astronaut to experience alien life. You can be an astralnaut instead. People like to say we're all human, we're all the same, we're more similar than we are different. No we aren't! We are so so different, but you have to be open in order to see it. 8 billion lives is enough for a mindblowing amount of diversity. Enough to blow your mind several times over. And the internet means you can meet them. We can connect and form communities for us weirdos. I don't understand anyone who doesn't want to explore the infinite diversity of gender, species, and religion. I just don't get it. People who want to live in a world where everyone is human, and there are 3 genders and 4 sexualities, I don't get it. I understand they're the majority, but why? Why would you want this stuff to be simple when it could be so beautifully wonderful and diverse and complex? "Born too late to explore the earth, born too early to explore the stars"?? I felt that way until I realised I was born just in time to explore queerness. And it's what I always wanted, to explore and to learn and to grow. There aren't enough years in a life to explore all the diversity of queerness. But I'm going to have so much fun trying.
and you will continue to get your members hurt until you learn to take a more principled stance. you didn't respond to the 14/88 pronouns bit, i might add. goodbye. you can find me on hexbear if you ever have a change of heart.