offline, working with anarchists, I've never met one that would be opposed to this purge. the online, free speech defending types are a purely online phenomenon.
Liberal free speech is a weird bastardization of "freedom" in the minds of many Americans.
yeah, i think it becomes dangerous when the mods/admins are too divorced from the actual community. as the site grows, it'll become more of a problem, but so far y'all have been great.
that's not dissimilar to the Taoist notion of mindful inaction in rulership. Action through inaction, "wu wei". The Le Guin translation of the Tao te Ching is on libgen and is a fun read if you're interested.
i think you can't only act through inaction though... like Mao said, that can just be a metaphysical shield for the bourgeoisie. You do need to exercise authority sometimes. See, for example, this thread.
There's a man in Hitchhiker's Guide who lives in a remote and rainy cabin, where he spends his time playing with his cat. Occasionally, some people land on the planet and come inside to ask him questions about how he thinks things ought to be. Then they leave for another year or so. They don't tell him that he's secretly the ruler of the galaxy, and they chose him specifically because he had no interest in doing it.
that's the dream - remote, rainy cabin, fireplace, cat, books. occasional human contact.
king shit 👑
for real though i'm happy to see a strong stance taken. i'm sick as fuck of seeing people constantly downvoting trans positive content with no explanation or backbone to stand behind their shit opinions
cissexism, the belief that cis people represent a kind of default position, and that trans people constitute an other, is a kind of transphobia. if trans people talking about their issues in society or media bothers you, examine why - you've internalized cissexism. that's the main kind of transphobia that keeps popping up on this site. transphobia goes much deeper than "kill all trans people" and cissexism enables all kinds of societal abuse.
take a step back each time you notice this. learning to notice this is always the first step. then you can start intentionally correcting yourself by working out what this looks like if you set that feeling aside.
it's the same process you use to correct any belief and the same process that you use to change someone's pronouns or name.
it really does work too. You don't need to be mad at yourself, just gently correct yourself when you catch it.
once i started being gentle/mindful about correcting mistakes like that, i found it got a lot easier.
yea being mad or blaming yourself will make other shit worse. this isn't about your worth as a human being, just making the world kinder for a bunch of people who really need it.
Correct yourself every time it happens and if you need to, ask questions or respectfully engage in a discussion to help sort out what you're thinking and feeling. It's an iterative process and you're basically aiming to rewire your brain to no longer knee jerk or consider trans people to be an "other"
if you ask questions, please try to direct your questions to cis allies. it's exhausting to the trans people who have to deal with this regularly.
To kind of piggy back off of this, I've had to deal with my own internal CIS male biases and I have found a secret over the last half decade or so: it's ok to not engage. Read what other people are saying, try to understand, and just sit on it and relax. Process at your own pace.
My parents or lack thereof did a number on me, as did my history of being sexually abused at a very young age. I built lots of walls. I knew logically I was wrong as I aged but feelings and thoughts don't always line up. When I was younger I thought I had to comment on everything and naturally be right about everything. Then as I got older I became annoyingly inquisitive because I wanted to right my personal wrongs and have all the right hottakes. The result is I was a bad intentioned asshole who turned into a good intentioned asshole.
Still an asshole.
For me the truth is, I don't have to engage. I don't have to understand everything. I try to internalize my empathy and focus on why things are feeling uncomfortable. Ask questions when and where necessary, I suppose. But shit - even just reading the threads on the non-binary topics here, all passively - never reacting or posting, has taught me a ton.
I don't expect the train to stop because I need training wheels. I don't have to know everything right then and there.
this is extremely true and a very good take. thank you for saying this.
No problem. Once in a great while I have some decent insight. It's part of the joys of getting older.
This was really helpful to read. I need to think on this more as well.
I can't tell whether you're kidding or not, but I really hope we don't start banning people for downbearing. it's way too easily to accidentally do on mobile, and it's also easy to simply misread something as you're scrolling past.
people can also have random reasons for downbearing stuff. like maybe someone deeply hates Elmo and always downbears any meme they see with Elmo in it, idk.
pretty different imo from typing out some transphobic shit and pressing "post".
AND OBVIOUSLY NOT TRYING TO DEFEND TRANSPHOBIA.
I've just literally downvoted stuff before by accident and I would definitely be worried about getting banned for that.
ok, thanks. I def respect the effort to defend trans comrades and it's great that you're being receptive to the concerns. I just got scared since I'm constantly up voting stuff by accident, and occasionally downvoting by accident. I appreciate the clarification.
Thanks for understanding. I was really worried it would come off as concern trolling since tone is so hard online. ❤️
Yeah strikes to see what is and isn't acceptable would be really nice.
Yeah my phone gets really slow when the battery drops below 15% and I accidentally up and downvote a ton of stuff when this happens. Oviously not defending any transphobia though
LMAO now this is the kind of authoritarianism I can get behind.
Assad has to go
Well shit. Why not just come right out and say "what's the worst that can happen?" and then go stand outside waiting to get struck by lightning?
was really surprised to see you included, I hope you are able to stick around
Yeah thats wierd , tbf i do be shitty dramma bitch some times and downvote posts that already have some of downvotes without even reading them while scrolling down but thats just a dumb ass reactionary habit and i gotta do better
tbf i do be shitty dramma bitch some times
I relate to this on a spiritual level
Because the criteria being used is bunk, there are going to be a ton of unnecessary bans. Don’t like that people are getting smeared as transphobes with no evidence by a mysterious team of “auditors”.
Yeah it's not the best, but Beatnik has said before that his and the mods' judgement leans toward banning "accounts" rather than people anyway. It's not "good", but it's arguable necessary, and if these users come back at some point and don't show any transphobic behavior, then they can pretty much get back to posting as usual. To me it feels like a minor punishment all in all.
Me normally: :anarchy:
Me when seeing some transphobic shit: :stalin-shining: :stalin-shining: :stalin-shining:
the left is coming for your dick, surrender your dick at your nearest dick surrender station
the dick drive is now in operation. please report to your nearest dick station for processing.
Who the fuck thought it was ok to be transphobic? Fuck you, we love our trans comrades.
