I recently made a new account on lemmy.blahaj.zone, because I’ve been harassed and doxxed on my old account and I wanted a fresh start with a more lighthearted online identity that I could be more open about my gender identity on. I’d heard blahaj zone was good for trans people, so I made my account there. And yeah, [email protected] removed my post discussing neuronormativism from a queer perspective, but I hoped maybe “the trans instance” would be friendlier to trans people.
A couple days after making my account, I saw someone on Blahaj engaging in the tired old cliche of “I hate politics, there’s no politics on my social media and I want to keep it that way!” Well we’ve all heard the joke that the two races are white and political, the two genders are male and political, and the two sexualities are straight and political. Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope. And having sufferred harassment and abuse from people inside the queer community who “hated politics” and saw trans or nonbinary or xenogender identities as political, I knew this kind of speech was going to make bigots feel comfortable saying they also hate politics, and they think us trans people are it.
So, I responded to the transphobia. I started out by attempting to educate them on what politics actually means. But I was interrupted by the Blahaj admin Ada, who told me that politics is “anything I disagree with”, and that indeed politics isn’t welcome on Blahaj. This language was deeply triggering of my past issues dealing with abuse, and I knew from past experience this sort of thing is said by people who are getting ready to say some enbyphobic or racist hate speech. It is especially common for white queer people to talk this way to BIPOC queer people. I tried to reason with Ada, explained the history of the cliche, the trauma it’s caused many trans people, and the consequences this kind of speech will have on the community here, making us all less safe.
Ada wasn’t having it. She minimised my concerns by reducing them to my personal trauma while ignoring my wider concerns for others’ safety, and weaponised my PTSD to paint my opinions as invalid because I am mentally ill. She said she owns Blahaj, and she gets to do whatever she wants with it, and nobody is allowed to express a differing opinion, even one that protects trans people, because that’s politics. At the time I thought her concern was me speaking directly to transphobes and making them feel uncomfortable by calling out their actions, so I said I’d just report it instead, and she banned my account.
This behaviour protects transphobes, WILL lead to trans and BIPOC people being harassed on this instance, attacks and gaslights victims of trauma (my concerns can’t be valid because I have a mental illness), and forces out any trans person with a commitment to safety for the community.
The thread where all this happened: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2143969
I’m locking this thread, as I can envision this going south very quickly. Remember to be(e) nice.
I want to keep this space as one where people can be free to vent. That being said, I’m honestly kind of loath to encourage fedi drama from other instances leaking over here. I’m not saying you can’t vent about other instances, but I don’t intend for this to become Subreddit Drama.
Anyway, OP, after reading through everything, you’re coming off as needlessly hostile. I don’t think that’s how you meant to be, but that’s what you appear to be. If you see someone who mentions that they don’t have it in them to follow politics, you shouldn’t be pushing back on that unless it’s clear they’re doing so in bad faith. As someone who does follow politics, it can get depressing. It can be bleak. And it can get overwhelming. If you are able to power through that, great! It helps. But not everybody can read about how the right is planning to genocide us. I guarantee that there are trans people who have taken their own lives over this. I guarantee it. Your demand that people refrain from saying they don’t follow politics is deeply, deeply misguiding. It isn’t your place to determine what people can and can’t do. And that’s exactly what you sound like. Also, it looks like you got banned for a flippant, ableist comment. Suffice it to say that I won’t tolerate that here. Be(e) nice.
Potentially relevant information from the other individual this person was arguing with:
Hey, Abigail here. I just want people to know the reason this guy got banned is likely because of a deleted comment not included in that thread. OP called me autistic for not liking politics. THAT kind of behavior is not acceptable on lemmy.blahaj.zone, so I reported the comment and let Ada handle it. Ada tried in good faith to reason with OP but it was clear they just wanted to fight. So yeah, they got banned. Ada’s a fantastic lady who’s been great at keeping the trolls at bay.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669
Tough to confirm from the modlogs as blahaj.zone appears to be having some intermittent outages.
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I’m not OP, I’m not a guy, and I didn’t call anyone autistic.
Maybe Abigail thinks I’m a guy ,but why would they? I’m very openly nonbinary. This feels like transphobia and it’s not true
If Abigail is calling me a guy and OP for some reason, then I think I know what happened. I said that politics is participation in groups, and if Abigail really doesn’t like politics, then Abigail doesn’t like being in a group. I said that not wanting to participate in any group ever would be pretty strange, but I would understand it better if Abigail had ASPD.
If Abigail is actually misgendering me here, then the issue is simply that Abigail doesn’t know the difference between antisocial personality disorder and autism.
Sorry but at first I agree with the point you were trying to make, at the same time you need to be careful when having discussions as this because it might seem you’re just straight up attacking people.
Yeah, I never figured out how to turn that off. I guess the patriarchy conditions people to think that a nonbinary person having opinions and emotions is a form of aggression. It does the same thing to women. But nonbinary rights are still 50 years behind women’s rights so people aren’t aware of the bias
yeah having read the thread, i’m inclined to agree you come across as someone trying to pick a fight, when you have a semantic disagreement with them at most
i understand that you found what they wrote triggering and harmful, but i don’t think you were very kind with your posts. i feel like, in your haste to protect trans people, you were not considerate of the human being you were actually speaking to
i know you’re not a member of beehaw, but you’re posting it to our instance, so that’s the standard i’m applying
if you had empathized with them (her?) that they sometimes need a space where they can just be a person, instead of being trans (or a woman or however abigail identifies), they (she?) might have been more receptive to your point
it also would have helped if you had been direct to the point - for example: “hey, would you mind saying “i don’t like debates around my fundamental rights to exist” (or whatever alternative) as opposed to saying “i don’t like politics”? this way you still allow space for discussion of important matters related to human rights, while clearly communicating what it is you dislike” (this is my best understanding of your point, but hopefully you can see how to tailor it to better represent what you truly want to express)
as it is, you spent like five posts nitpicking semantics when you knew what was intended and could have just directly stated what you disagreed with
and if you didn’t know, well… i guess this is a reminder that words don’t mean the same thing to everyone, and your definitions aren’t necessarily more valid than someone else’s
ultimately, you were argumentative with someone who was absolutely not advocating for transphobia, and policing someone’s language without even making the barest effort to engage with what they were actually saying. in both the original poster’s position, and in the admin’s position, i completely get why they reacted how they did
i don’t personally agree with your point, but i hope these recommendations help you more clearly communicate it, and foster healthier interactions about it, in the future
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Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope
No it isn’t. You’re just a butthole that tries to use the Transphobia label as a weapon against anyone you disagree with. Ada was right to ban you.
You don’t get to define what people do or do not like. If someone says they hate politics, your only choice is to believe them until they give you reason to believe that they are lying, that or be a butthole. It appears that you chose to be a butthole.
Remember to be(e) nice. You can get your point across without name-calling.
Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope.
This is the dumbest take I’ve ever seen. I’ve also seen comments from your previous account and understand why you were banned. It was well deserved, yet here you are doubling down having learned absolutely nothing.
I don’t think it is a dumb take. People that affirms they hate politics are either uninformed or straight up conservatives without knowing, at least the ones I’ve met.
Generally when I’ve heard people say they hate politics, they mean discussing elections and political leaders or political issues isn’t fun. It’s not what they’re looking for, and they don’t like it popping up outside of places meant for it.
If I went into a politically focused community and started posting random furry meme pics, I shouldn’t be surprised when people say they hate furry memes. Now, apply that to people who hate politics when they’re in non-politically focused communities when some politically charged idealist of any spectrum starts trying to relate this totally unrelated thing to some political issue.
If they’re saying they hate politics while in the middle of a political discussion, sure. But I don’t see that as often as the other context.
Honestly, I wouldn’t even say the second part about conservatives. In my experience, most centrists agree with Democrats on most issues. But Republicans try their hardest to make politics a mudslinging contest so centrists become disinterested. That evens the playing field.
All that to say yes, I agree with you that they are uninformed. And it’s caused by the most vile of the Republicans because they can’t compete if centrists stayed engaged.
I mean I get it; being queer is exhausting, and sometimes you just want to take a break from … all of that … and look at cat pics.
That said queer identities are indeed inherently political, and I don’t think you can reasonably achieve a goal of “no politics,” especially in queer spaces. I agree that saying “no politics” is basically the same as saying “no politics I disagree with,” and at least she was honest about that. But I don’t think it’s generally a very achievable goal. Like, as long as identity is political, there will be politics in every space. You can intentionally ignore it to have a good time or do other things, but it’s not like it isn’t there.
Sorry this all happened to you. If you want another queer-aligned instance that’s much smaller, I host https://lib.lgbt, feel free to check us out!
The thing is I’d be fine with an instance that had the rule of “no politics I disagree with”, as long as that instance disagreed with transphobia. But Blahaj appears to agree with transphobia and disagree with trans rights, and that’s really the issue. And the reason you are able to have “the trans instance” be a place hostile to trans rights is that they use poorly defined words like “political”. Everything is political and everything can be defined as political, so when someone says they hate politics they’re just obfuscating their views and that’s how you end up with a transphobic instance full of trans people who think it’s a safe space
Yeah totally agreed. I think they mishandled the Hexbear situation as well; it was obvious from the outset that regardless of their queerness, they were operating in bad faith. Unfortunately time proved that right.
Oh BTW I am very queer and queer in ways that most queer people are totally unfamiliar with as a coherent concept. My queerness is as hard for binary people to make sense of as romance is to aromantic people. I was told two days ago by an autistic person that empathising with me gave them a headache. Are you gonna be able to be cool with that? Nothing I say will be offensive, but it might be deeply confusing and a lot of people respond to confusion by assuming hostility
I love any, all, and no genders! Bring it on!
That said we are very very small and inactive, so you’re probably just gonna be interacting with peeps over at blahaj.zone anyway. But we are very welcoming in any event.
Cool, awesome. I will post my schizotypal gender rants when I come up with one
What was your old username? Would be helpful to look you up in the modlogs
What community do you moderate? Your page isn’t showing anything
Anyone can look in the modlogs.
I was @PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES in the linked thread. Sorry, I thought the person above was asking my old username from back when I was being harassed and doxxed. As I said above, I wanted a more lighthearted username. The username actually did defuse a tense situation during the time I had it. Someone was going to argue with me but couldn’t take me seriously. I was just glad to avoid the controversy.
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Tbh blahaj seems to be getting more and more toxic over time. I wouldn’t be surprised if this due to other users.
I obviously don’t expect every instance to have the same rules as heehaw but it’s odd to see people engaging in bad behavior on the trans instance of all things
This noise is from a two day old account with a questionable history. I don’t think it’s a co-incidence that the account was created right after the hexbear fracas, and seems to be going out of its way to stir up controversy.
It really does feel like OP is trying to cause drama. The amount they’ve reposted this in the last two hours is a lot for someone who just made an account on a instance.
I remember reading that original thread yesterday and how weirdly the discussion was going. Didn’t expect it to lead to all this.
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Actually I find discussing this issue intensely stressful. It might be because people make fun of me when I talk about non-mainstream queer issues. The reason I do it anyway is that I dislike the idea of bigotry being allowed to spread. Transparency and swift action protect trans people from abuse.
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