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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards @lemmy.dbzer0.com
PugJesus @lemmy.world

"Gatekeeping" is when you don't think "Dragonfucker" is a gender

And apparently, also when you think that 'They' is a perfectly serviceable gender-neutral singular pronoun, but are willing to use other pronouns if asked to.

EDIT: Other removable offenses on Blahaj now include questioning mod/admin decisions and quoting the modlog as a reason why you're leaving.

217 comments

  • Yeah, they've kinda lost the point.

    Don't know that it's power tripping because it's a matter of whether or not you believe that neopronouns are or are not part of trans rights and trans issues. If you do, then they're maintaining their space as a place for trans and trans adjacent folks to not have to deal with the bullshit of constantly defending and fighting for every single thing.

    So I get it. Once you believe that, and you're maintaining a space for trans people, you absolutely have to draw that line.

    I don't agree with it, but that's not the point. It doesn't matter if I agree or not. It only matters that blahaj is a trans space first and above anything else, and they do buy into neopronouns.

    They've also bought into protecting a couple of trolls because of that, but that's the down side.

    But, yeah, it's a fucking mess when you can't even use a broadly accepted neutral term as the default until you have a specific one. Which, being real, keeping track of random online user names and their choice of pronouns just isn't worth it. Why the fuck should anyone bother?

    Irl? Absolutely. You've got faces to connect things to. But online, with people that are essentially acquaintances at best, how the fuck are you going to remember that doggyboy19 is the one that uses xexu, but puppyboy18 uses xenu? My dyslexic ass already has enough trouble keeping track of the user names that don't have partterns that match established words. Neopronouns amount to a random string of lines and circles to me, there's no fucking pattern to memorize at all, there's nothing I can use to keep track of them.

    Which is going off the topic of your post here, but it's one of the reasons "they" is a shit ton better. You don't have dyslexics, people with English as a second or third language trying to have a nice conversation and being treated like an asshole because they can't follow the randomly chosen garbles used by some of the more absurd neopronoun folks.

  • Yeah, I got, I'm guessing perma banned by Ada(?), from there, because I asked to many questions (just one post) about a statement that made no fucking sense to me, on someones post.

    Oh! And aggressive disgusting responses back to my questions were way more hateful and vile than anything I've ever posted anywhere, especially directly to another person. Misgendered me, verbal attacks, etc. Went to report that shit, couldn't because of ban. Didn't see those folks banned or their comments removed though. Guess hate speech and violence is ok to them, if your not trans enough for their elite dragon-fucking club.

    I'm on the spectrum. I get upset when I can't make sense of shit and DO indeed ask a lot of questions that seem dumb or rude to others. My brain is trying to figure out the rules and meanings of this new idea.... get a grasp of the boundaries.

    Thought Blahaj would be a safe place to hang around for an oddball like me, all the inclusitivity talk n shit. Big mistake! Honestly thought about leaving lemmy, think I had more response to that than anything else I've said on here, and it was truly awful to read. Made me question myself and feel really really shitty for not understanding then getting attacked because my questions are to snarky(?), the reason I usually escape TOO here, and rarely respond or post even then. Then my adult brain kicked in and I realize they are a bunch of idiots who think a dragon is real and providing sage advice, and I'll just block that shit. Miss some of those memes though.

  • We really need to stop complaining about the pronouns shit, the real problem with dragonfucker isn't with the preferred pronouns, it's the fact that dragonfucker is known to harass individuals who call them out on their trolling or sealioning or disagree with them in any way they can't spin as aggressive or hateful.

    I was harassed by an alt of this person because I called them out for their behavior when they decided to make a public attack post on me (now deleted) because I preemptively banned their user account and "spouse" account from communities I moderated for trolling, sealioning, and bad faith arguments.

    I clarified that politely and reasonably and also properly contacted pawb.social's admins (since the mentions in their comment weren't done properly) and the following response was to create @draconicistransphobc@discuss.online and create !fuckdraconicneo@discuss.online and start spamming it with abusive content attempting to defame, humiliate, intimidate, or even just scare me. That account also sent me porn in my DMs and made rude insults towards me. I was also told to kill myself and also sent death threats, including an invitation for admins to give out my IP address so I could be hunted down and tortured.

    I'm almost certain that dragonfucker is the one who did this since it happened immediately after the post which was made on !meta@pawb.social complaining about the bans, and also there were many slip-ups by that account which indicated it was an alt belonging to dragonfucker. Unfortunately beyond that dragonfucker likely did a good job at covering their tracks, or Lemmy just sucks at identifying people, probably both, but I'm confident enough that I'd be willing to bet real money it was dragonfucker, the circumstances are way too suspicious.

    Edit:

    Here are some of the messages and comment mentions from the alt account mentioned in the post, fair warning, they're not pleasant. Pornographic imagery has been censored.

  • I kinda get it, though. It's not easy to draw a line and say this is valid and that is not because you dislike the person or the person is a troll or whatnot, and I'm not specifically talking about drag. Like it doesn't make it ok to call people racial epithets if they're a criminal. So how do you tell which pronouns are valid and which aren't? The conclusion over there is you don't. And I would be really uncomfortable going into a minority space and telling people they're being gay in the wrong way or telling somebody they're reacting to racism in the wrong way or they're not passing or bisexuals aren't valid or whatever else. I get that it may feel heavy handed, but this is the kind of discussion that happens over and over in bad faith. So how do you tell who's having a conversation in good faith or bad faith? Once again, the conclusion seems to be one doesn't and to err on the side of safety for the users of that instance. Bad money drives out good and that's not necessarily your fault, but the coin is worth less regardless of if it's shaved or not.

    • It’s not easy to draw a line and say this is valid and that is not because you dislike the person or the person is a troll or whatnot, and I’m not specifically talking about drag.

      It’s impossible. That’s part of the issue. Whatever boundary you want to draw, there are going to be difficult areas at the borderline or in the extreme cases.

      For me, it’s transparently obvious that the dragon person is either taking the piss or suffering from mental illness. Someone else might look at the same situation and say that I’m being ignorant and hateful if I think that. Sure, they can think that.

      The thing that makes it hard is that we have to be able to talk about it. Both of those opinions. If I ban the person who thinks I am wrong, they can’t stick up for drag. Bad stuff. If they ban me for saying my feelings on it, saying that they have a right to determine that those feelings are not acceptable to be spoken, then to me, that makes the whole operation and network into a stupid and pointless endeavor.

      Part of the whole point of tolerance and open society is that you learn to rock and roll with the people you don’t agree with. I don’t think there’s anybody who will survive for long on the main instances who will be openly racist, transphobic, or anything like that. If you start looking for the most minor of transgressions or differences of opinion, and then shutting out that person because now they’re “bad” and can’t even be spoken to, I think you’re actually interfering quite a lot with your own acceptance in the wider society.

      Not everyone is going to think like you. It’s okay. Back in college, I knew some communists who were widely accepted, even by conservatives and “normie” society, because they were firmly in the mode of “this is my stuff, and I’ll tell you about it, but I have 0 expectation that it needs to be your stuff, too.” The ones who had major issues were the ones who had elaborate restrictions on how people needed to see things, how they were allowed to be spoken to, things like that. They wound up isolated into their own pretty small social circle. They didn’t wind up building the wider enlightenment in society that I am guessing they were wanting to do by making the restrictions.

      I can see special situations where you really just want your own space safe from people coming in and laughing at you or whatever. I get that. But most of the time, I think setting this super-restrictive model of how everyone needs to talk to you and how they need to look at things in order not to be “bad,” does more harm than good and builds a lot more insincere “acceptance,” than it does genuine understanding about what’s going on with you and your people.

    • So how do you tell who’s having a conversation in good faith or bad faith? Once again, the conclusion seems to be one doesn’t and to err on the side of safety for the users of that instance.

      There is such a thing as toxic positivity - when being permissible itself creates an environment for bad faith actors to dominate discussion. I am generally more hesitant to tell someone their experience of racism is wrong, but at the same time, that doesn't mean that getting a sunburn because they have pale skin is racism. All discussions require boundaries, even if just implicit ones; discussions without boundaries descend into incoherence. It's been declared here that questioning the boundaries of this discussion at all is no longer welcome in Blahaj. And that's... very unfortunate.

      When it was just "We're going to be enforcing the standard rules on pronouns and gender on dragonfucker as a gender", it was like "Okay, fine, I'm sad, I'm going to sadpost and leave, but this is well within their rights and I understand what they're trying to do." Removing comments for any questioning of the decision? Bit more irritating.

    • Bad money drives out good and that’s not necessarily your fault, but the coin is worth less regardless of if it’s shaved or not.

      btw, meant to mention this originally, but I adore your use of economic metaphor

  • Sorry, Hate me but if peoples are having and not hurting anyone. I wouldn't care. Yeah, Dragonfucker have confusing pronoun and I am not even native english speaker. That's why I avoid talking to Dragonfucker if I accidentally mispronounced then everyone will think I am homophobe?

    But "They" is gender nuetral term.

  • @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com why is this post still open when you locked the other one? Seems strange to me, both are equally contentious and have devolved into mostly a slap-fight. PugJesus has stated he wants to leave Blahaj but is still causing drama here over this whole affair, instead of moving on with his life.

  • This is twords everyone, not specifically pug,
    I really don't understand how this is so hard for people. If calling someone a hippopotamus makes them happy and doesn't inconvenience me then you bet your ass I'll be saying hippopotamus. Seems insane to all get so worked up over something that has no negative impact other than making you not mindlessly say 'they'. Literally just accept it, or block. Downvoting about it every time you see drag isnt gonna fix anything. That's harassment, and harassment ain't cool.
    Never thought that would be controversial on Lemmy.

    I just really think people have lost their ability to see that someone else is on the other side of the computer screen. As the bumper sticker that got mega upvoted goes, "trans people existing does literally nothing negative to your life"

    You don't even have to respect drags opinions either! You can just treat drag like any other person who has a lot of bad takes (excluding gender). My upvote ratio is literally 36 up 32 down, but I'll still do something as simple as writing 'drag' instead of 'they' to make the person on the other side of my computer screen just a little bit happier.

    Happy new years, btw.

    • Drag is not a pronoun, and it's not going to catch on, no matter how hard you try.

      Also, every interaction I've ever seen with Dragon gives me the impression they're deliberately being annoying.

    • I really don’t understand how this is so hard for people. If calling someone a hippopotamus makes them happy and doesn’t inconvenience me then you bet your ass I’ll be saying hippopotamus.

      And if the admins begin removing people who say human beings can't be hippopotami?

      That, for me, was the reason I left/announced leaving. I don't give a shit about drag, specifically. Drag could be deleted tomorrow and it wouldn't make a difference. Drag could have been IP banned immediately after Ada started removing comments and it wouldn't have made a difference to me.

      Once "You can't be a dragon" is considered a sin on par with transphobia, or, by the arguments of some of the Blahaj commenters here, literally the same thing, I'm fucking out. I'll generally humor people with inoffensive oddities, but when it comes down to "Agree or shut up" about it, I'm not eager to stick around.

    • I really don't understand how this is so hard for people. If calling someone a hippopotamus makes them happy

      I can't speak for everyone about this, but referring to someone as (like in the example that you use) a "hippopotamus" is fine. I personally think of myself as a cat, and though I don't personally enjoy actually being referred to as such I can understand other people who would and I can accommodate them. My personal wrinkle with this is far more nuanced.

      I'm a gender abolitionist. I regard "gender" as a particular aspect of identity that holds cultural significance. I don't think aspects of identity should be given so much consideration and weight, and I don't think it's useful to refer to something as "gender" when it previously hasn't been, because that makes my goals less achievable. I also don't think there should be gendered or personalized pronouns, period. I use gendered pronouns because that's what society expects of me, but these new ones are not only unnecessary the same way gendered pronouns are but also often aestheticly displeasing. For these reasons and others, I get annoyed by neopronouns, especially bespoke ones. Furthermore, I find the idea of pulling more aspects of identity under the nebulous umbrella of "gender" to be regressive.

      Hope that helps you understand.

  • YDI

    And apparently, also when you think that 'They' is a perfectly serviceable gender-neutral singular pronoun, but are willing to use other pronouns if asked to.

    The first image in the post body, your comment that got removed, says the complete opposite.

    It's not up to you, or anyone else, to label someone's use of pronouns as trolling. If you think they are, block them, and move on. If you have solid proof that they have I'll intent, report them, block them, and move on. I don't know why you're surprised that a trans safe space is removing comments and banning people for vigilante misgendering.

    • The first image in the post body, your comment that got removed, says the complete opposite.

      "I'm going to leave Blahaj because I don't acknowledge dragonfucker is a gender" says literally nothing about whether I'd use pronouns, including drag's.

      EDIT: Oh, sorry, the post body? That one I'm quoting up to "as gatekeeping", I understand that might not be entirely clear at a glance due to modlogs not preserving formatting.

      • Yeah you caught it, I meant the one in the post body. I've read your comment before it was removed (and actually upvoted some others in the thread), so I'm aware of the formatting. But the comment you're quoting says very explicitly that they will never use neopronouns and will respect gender identities only if they limit themselves to he/she/they. That's the reason it got removed for gatekeeping, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

        No one is forcing anyone to use specific pronouns. If you don't like how someone wants to be referred to, either refer to them by name, or block them and move on. blahaj.zone is an explicitly queer instance where a sizable percentage of users are trans, and neopronouns are accepted. It's unfortunate if trolls abuse that trust, but imo it's way more harmful if someone started policing acceptable gender identities in a nominal safe space, than if a few trolls slip through. This only got to be such a big drama because some people got very defensive (and rude) about it.

        I'll be sad to see you leave blahaj, I really appreciate all the activity and posts you're bringing to lemmy as a whole. But if this is the hill you're willing to die on, I guess blajhai is not for you. I'll see you on !roughromanmemes@lemmy.world c:

    • It's not up to you, or anyone else, to label someone's use of pronouns as trolling.

      Is there some special rule in play here? People get accused of "trolling" and banned when there is no trolling a lot. Check modlogs.

217 comments