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.
I think looking at a more concrete hypothetical would be more clarifying for people.
Let’s say that User A has their pronouns listed as “daddy” and User B has their pronouns listed as the t-slur. User C finds both of these uncomfortable to use, A because it feels like they’re being coerced into a sexual interaction with another user, and B because they’ve been personally victimized by that slur before and being around those that use it (even in a reclaimed sense) hurts them (and I am confident this is a thing people are sensitive to on this instance because I’ve seen people put trigger warnings for its usage before). User C wants to continue to interact with their community, so they use “they/them” for A and B instead. What happens next, from a moderation standpoint? What if they had conspicuously avoided pronouns by using “User A” and “User B” exclusively?
I think there have been cases that go up to or put a toe over the line of acceptability for some people, and some of us are confused/concerned about how far things go. It seems like you have a clear idea of what is and isn’t acceptable, but your hard line hasn’t translated well into the heads of other people, and it creates an ambiguity for the rest of us who see a very blurry spectrum. I know you have a very hard (and usually thankless job) and from both seeing your work and from benefit of the doubt, I’m sure you want to do right by the people here, but I think some clarity would be good for people. In the above example, if User C doesn’t know what will or won’t get them kicked out of their communities or even the instance, they may engage less and ultimately feel pushed out of their space, and so moderation really needs to be a balance of the needs of Users A & B and User C.
And to be clear, I don’t think anyone is asking for permission to bully someone with unconventional pronouns, nor permission to tell them their gender identity is wrong or invalid (If there are, those people do not belong here in any capacity). I think the question is mostly, which neopronouns requests are unreasonable enough for people to be allowed to use backup pronouns or just the user’s name instead.
Has User A created a situation in which the only way for people to interact with them involves minors using sexualised terms to refer to them? I’m hard pressed to think of a more clear cut example of unacceptable behaviour… It would see them gone in an instant. Yet if that same person, using those same pronouns allowed space for non sexualised pronouns as well, they’d be quite welcome. The pronouns aren’t the issue, the behaviour is.
With user B who is using reclaimed slurs for pronouns, they’re welcome to do so. Lets look at “It” is an example. I personally, am uncomfortable with this pronoun, because the term was used to dehumanise folk like me when I was younger. But that’s a “me” problem, because that same term was used to dehumanise the person using “It” as a pronoun, and they are finding power in reclaiming it If someone can turn around a weapon used against us to find power, then that’s something I’m going to encourage, not discourage, my own discomfort be damned. What you’ll also find is people that use neopronouns and reclaimed slurs rarely use only those pronouns, because they exist in a world in which it’s simply not possible for most people to do so. So they typically have multiple options for pronouns, with a preference that more accepting folk use the more challenging pronouns, but an understanding that not everyone will. It only becomes an issue if the pronouns are used as a bludgeon to create division, and even then, it’s the act of trying to create division, not the pronouns themselves that require action.
The challenging part is that there is no clear cut, black and white way to determine whether someone is using challenging pronouns in good faith, or to create division. The only way to tell, is to look at how that person behaves, and see whether they’re trying to encourage division. And that’s something that takes time to tell. What I’m not going to do is get to a point where I assume unusual pronouns exist only to cteate division.
I have nothing to do with the day to day running of the vast majority of communities on the instance, and their rules likely differ to the instance rules, so I can’t speak to what will get you banned from them
But to get yourself banned from the instance, you would need to show exactly what I’ve just been talking about. A repeated pattern of behaviour. You’re not going to get banned for accidentally misgendering someone. You’re not going to get banned for finding someones pronouns confronting. You’re not even going to get banned for avoiding their pronouns. You are going to get banned for repeatedly, deliberately misgendering someone, and you are going to get tapped on the shoulder and asked to disengage if you keep engaging with someone whose pronouns you refuse to use.
I appreciate the clarity on what exactly does and doesn’t get someone banned. That all seems very reasonable to me, and largely answered my main question. Feel free to disengage with this conversation guilt-free if you think my followup here isn’t worth your time. Unfortunately I have reddit-brain and feel like I need to re-explain myself when I feel like i’m not being understood.
With that out of the way: I think you’re missing the point about the examples.
On the User A side, I’m not talking about directly interacting with minors. I’m talking about indirectly interacting with everyone, including minors, but also including adults who don’t want to interact in a sexual manner with randos. There’s definitely a difference, but I think it’s the same sort of effect if User A asks a minor to use their sexualized pronouns vs if they label themselves with sexualized pronouns and then go into spaces where minors may interact with them.
On the User B side, I feel like while “it” is similar in some ways to slur pronouns, it also has some fundamental differences. For one, “it” is already a word we use in other contexts and is not one people can really avoid even if they try, and for another, most “it” pronoun people I’ve encountered intend it to be uses in the object sense, not the reclaimed slur sense. Would User B be treated differently moderation-wise if their pronouns were different reclaimed slurs, like the n-word? I know that there’s no amount of complaining about misgendering that could convince me to use certain slur pronouns.
I do agree that most people are going to be reasonable and those with more controversial pronouns will likely give those who are uncomfortable an out (in the form of alternate pronouns), but I don’t think those people are who anyone is really worried about here, because they seem chill as hell, lol. I get that we’re talking about edge cases of edge cases here, so maybe the whole thing is purposeless anyway.
If we were only talking about adults, user A would be the same as user B. It would be “wait and see” rather than assuming bad intentions on pronouns alone. But we aren’t only talking about adults. There are minors on the fediverse. So if there is no way for a minor to interact with them in a non sexualised way, they’re not going to be allowed here, whether or not any minors actually do interact with them.
But if that same user was fine with he/him as well, there would be no problem
Is the target of a slur using that same slur to try and reclaim power? Great. Is a troll pretending to be a user trying to reclaim power? That’s hard to tell, but once it becomes clear, they’ll be gone.
And that’s fine. It only becomes an issue if you insist on interacting with a person who you refuse to gender, or if you deliberately misgender them.
The trolls hiding as edge cases get revealed by their behaviour. There are no rules that can be made ahead of time that catch all the trolls, whilst not gatekeeping innocent folk. Allowing space for people to exist on their own terms means acting reactively, and means that trolls will slip through the cracks sometimes. That is by design, because the alternative is gatekeeping.
I absolutely agree. I think people (myself included) were concerned because the (necessary) ambiguity of rules seemed to be opening the door to times when a user would feel pushed out of spaces by having to tiptoe around other users that they think might just be trolls. It seems to me from talking to you about it that there is generally good faith assumed on all sides, which definitely sets my mind at ease.