Iā€™m gonna get real with you folks, weā€™ve had way too many of these posts recently. Iā€™ve been reflecting on this topic a lot the past few days. For me personally, I couldnā€™t care less about my gender identity. But just because thatā€™s true for me, doesnā€™t make that true for everyone.

The beauty of the fediverse is that if you donā€™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. Thatā€™s fair enough imo.

Safe spaces should be respected, and Blajahā€™s admins/mods do not deserve abuse for creating and maintaining those spaces.

I can completely understand why Blajah users donā€™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 @[email protected], 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 @[email protected] 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.

Thatā€™s all folks, have at 'er.

Edit: thanks for all your feedback and comments. I think itā€™s clear that the vast majority of people are fed up with this topic coming up repeatedly.

Summarizing the feedback, Iā€™d say most folks would prefer to retain previous posts for the sake of posterity, and to serve as an example of why we donā€™t want anymore of these posts. Iā€™m happy to take that on board. For those folks saying Iā€™m a PTB for intervening in this way, Iā€™ll just remind you that I havenā€™t made any arbitrary mod decisions, and Iā€™ve consulted with db0 and the community as a whole before taking any mod actions.

I think the way to move forward with this is to acknowledge that thereā€™s a bunch of queer and straight people who have a problem with xenogenders. Personally, I think thatā€™s a valid perspective and shouldnā€™t sanctioned on our instance. But for Blajah, theyā€™ve drawn a line in the sand over this and thatā€™s ok too. Our instance wonā€™t be blocking anyone over their opinions on the topic, especially in this community where free discussion is necessary and encouraged. But safe spaces should be respected.

A lot of folks mentioned I should more more specific about the ā€œno more posts about Blajahā€™s mod policiesā€ rather than making it a sweeping and overly broad statement. I think thatā€™s good feedback. I will amend this to "No more posts in this community about the validity or otherwise of neopronouns, xenogenders, and bans originating from Blajah about gatekeeping or transphobia. This is in recognition of Blajahā€™s safe space policy. You are of course free to discuss those topics outside of this community.

Note that this decision isnā€™t about ideological gatekeeping, its about reducing the workload for our own mods and admins in trying to moderate this community, and to avoid iterating over the same old topics again and again.

Blajah isnā€™t getting a ā€œfree passā€ over YPTB posts - if you feel they are power tripping over other issues then feel free to make a post here. But if itā€™s a post questioning the validity of xenogenders or about Blajah bans for gatekeeping then that will no longer be allowed here. Those folks deserve a safe space on Lemmy, even if itā€™s not a mainstream opinion.

For those folks who feel aggrieved about being accused of ā€œtransphobiaā€ or ā€œgatekeepingā€ over their views on this topic, I completely understand just how hurtful it can be to be unfairly (imo) accused in this way. Iā€™ve been in the same position, and I also found it difficult to deal with. I want those folks to know that our instance does not require you to support xenogenders in order to participate in our instance. However we do require that you use preferred pronouns whenever they are specified. Thatā€™s been a longstanding instance policy on dbzer0.

Thank everyone for your feedback.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    13 hours ago

    I think where the disconnect is, is that youā€™re continuously, in those quotes, making declarations about what it and isnā€™t gender, what is and isnā€™t trans.

    Thatā€™s what the comments were removed for.

    In those quotes, you arenā€™t seeking understanding, you arenā€™t discussing the subject, you arenā€™t expressing an interest, youā€™re saying, directly ā€œthis is my opinion on the matter, and I refuse to consider any alternativesā€

    You literally say youā€™re drawing a line in the sand.

    Thatā€™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 thatā€™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, itā€™s you declaring other peopleā€™s genders and pronouns invalid. It doesnā€™t matter whether or not it was drag. It doesnā€™t matter who you were talking about, you donā€™t very to make that decision for others

    You donā€™t, I donā€™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 doesnā€™t change that if we expect our opinions on the matter to hold sway, weā€™d be assholes.

    I mean, cā€™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 thatā€™s the exact bullshit being weaponized against trans people. Even if you didnā€™t mean it the same way (and I know you didnā€™t, I know youā€™re not a bigot), itā€™s the exact worst possible argument to use.

    Itā€™s so arrogant, claiming to have not only the ability to know what is and isnā€™t biological, but whether or not it has validity. You directly say that youā€™re deciding what is and isnā€™t valid, for other people. I mean, are you even a doctor? Of any stripe at all. Can you back up the claim that thereā€™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 thereā€™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 canā€™t have a brain that operates independently of its underlying biological imperatives. Itā€™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.

    Thatā€™s biology. Now, Iā€™m with you, thereā€™s no actual dragons that arenā€™t komodo. And a cat isnā€™t a human, nor is a human a cat. But I am not confident in saying that someoneā€™s inner self finding expression by identifying with or as a cat isnā€™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.

    Iā€™m kinda beating a dead horse here because Iā€™m a little flummoxed that you canā€™t see all those comments and notice that youā€™re doing exactly what they were removed for.

    After all that, it really doesnā€™t matter what the specific target was, it doesnā€™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. Iā€™d have banned you too, even preemptively because it looks like youā€™re making it a fight.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      10 hours ago

      youā€™re saying, directly ā€œthis is my opinion on the matter, and I refuse to consider any alternativesā€

      You literally say youā€™re drawing a line in the sand.

      When did he say the second part?

      It sounds like he said the first part only. That, to me, is okay. It sounds like the other people in the conversation are going beyond just stating their opinion to drawing a line in the sand, that there are absolutely no alternatives to their chosen point of view, and in fact any attempted alternatives are specifically forbidden.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      I think where the disconnect is, is that youā€™re continuously, in those quotes, making declarations about what it and isnā€™t gender, what is and isnā€™t trans.

      Only one of them is me, the one tagged with ā€˜literally meā€™.

      In those quotes, you arenā€™t seeking understanding, you arenā€™t discussing the subject, you arenā€™t expressing an interest, youā€™re saying, directly ā€œthis is my opinion on the matter, and I refuse to consider any alternativesā€

      In which case my original point is correct - that dragon being a gender is mandated by Blahaj policy or actions. Stating an opinion to the contrary is ā€˜gatekeepingā€™.

      And thatā€™s okay, you have a right to have that opinion and draw that line. We all do.

      Apparently not, considering the removals.

      You do see that though, right? That every quote you chose, itā€™s you declaring other peopleā€™s genders and pronouns invalid. It doesnā€™t matter whether or not it was drag. It doesnā€™t matter who you were talking about, you donā€™t very to make that decision for others

      Then you do agree that Blahaj policy is that dragon must be treated as a gender.

      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.

      Again, most of them are not me, I picked them not as examples of what I believe, but as examples of objections that were fundamentally or exclusively to ā€˜dragonā€™ as a gender, without significant hostility which were removed as gatekeeping - ie me attempting to prove my point that dragon as a gender is absolutely core to this whole debacle.

      • OccultIconoclast@reddthat.com
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        9 hours ago

        Southsamurai is right, you do seem to just be starting fights for no reason. How is someone being a dragon or anything else supposed to hurt you? Whatā€™s your motivation? Whatā€™s your goal? Why?