I've been a member of this community for about 3 years. in that time, I've gone from lib, through DSA, to something I'm comfortable calling a communist organizer. I discovered I was trans in this space and I have transitioned while posting and, in truth, I will always be fond of it for that reason. in my time here, I've made it a point to be open and share of myself as much as I can, partially because an open posture and profile helps my organizing, partially because I hate alienation, and partially in an effort to try and change this space into something welcoming for people of all genders, sexualities, races, and of differing ability. my hope has always been that by sharing freely of myself, I'd encourage others to do the same. it's in that spirit of openness that I offer this criticism of the userbase - as a whole and without reference to any particular individuals - and an explanation of why I will not be returning to this space. I encourage you all to look through my post history and attempt to understand who I am before you respond with vitriol - I have in fact done my best to make it as easy as possible.

it's ironic, I think, that what finally broke me wasn't the waves of transphobia - the truly nasty, or the insidious and subtle - that have, in the months since our pronouns struggle sessions, found their way into my inbox, the gaslighting over whether it was happening, or even the weird, harassing messages from chuds who decided I was to blame for their bans. it wasn't even the omnipresent misogyny and racism that makes this space so toxic for non-male and non-white users. nope, what broke me was two-fold.

first, the especially cishet white male audience here struggles with criticism. we laugh easily at reddit libs being blatantly racist or sexist but the community as a whole bristles at the notion that they might have work to do.

PSA: we have not won liberation. the hegemonic culture is extremely bigoted on so many axes. even if you spend a lifetime doing hard, careful introspection to root bigotry out of your hearts and minds, the very air you breathe instills it back within you. it's not a personal slight to be told you've fucked up.

in organizing spaces, we hold to a notion of accountability that attempts to raise up the voices of those harmed, especially marginalized people, in order to ensure that hegemonic cultural influences do not infiltrate our spaces and drive away the very people whose liberation we fight for - the American working class is far browner and queerer than the class reductionists pretend and to ignore those issues as predominantly cishet white male organizers, stepping into their spaces is to alienate them from the word go. this notion is utterly foreign to most of the userbase here and it leads to astonishing and bewildering defensiveness.

it is not the job of marginalized people to do emotional labor to make you okay with the fact that you've hurt them. the assumption that you are owed that labor is part of the system of oppression that makes life miserable for people you call comrade. it's the same notion as when a loved one informs you that you've hurt them - if you make it their problem to make you feel better about the fact, you're being an asshole. deal with the hurt you've caused, then deal with the feelings about yourself that having hurt someone causes within you.

this is such a core issue on this site and I've watched it drive away so many good comrades - especially, I've personally noticed, queer people, women, and people of color. I am certain that other marginalized identities are similarly driven away from this place.

please, stop defending this behavior.

please, stop engaging in it.

choose reflection, not defensiveness. you will not be made less. you will, in fact, become so much richer for the experiences and relationships that this space has the potential to foster, but that it cannot for the omnipresent toxicity.

on a more personal note, I'm also deeply frustrated with a space filled with apparent leftists that does so little organizing or any actual praxis. what does it mean to profess left politics and to engage in purely symbolic action. there is so much good and important work to be done. not all of it requires you to know and talk to people. it merely asks that you attempt to solve the problems that you yourself encounter and to share that work with as many others.

we talk endlessly about theory and which tendency is right - but just two days ago I posted a thread to collect the most useful works and so few found themselves able to contribute. someone commented to me that they thought it was the best thread they'd seen here but I was honestly disappointed. over more than a day, less than 10 users managed to even look through this site for resources to post. when I think what might have been... but we each expect someone else to do the work.

that alone would merely be irritating. but to follow that with incessant armchair speculation about the work others should do... I could never convince actual organizers to spend any time here. we joke about every one here being libs but what's the difference? what use our radicalization if all we can do is post about what other people do?

no one is coming to liberate you. we have to build the better world we claim to want. we are the only ones who can do it. it only gets done one brick at a time.

if this post offends you, whatever. I'm not reading the replies so vent all your rage.

if, on the other hand, this speaks to you, if you'd like ideas for necessary work that needs to get done, that would help real people, reach out to me on matrix. you can find me at @therivercass:chapo.chat. I am never without a list of a million different things that would make actual people's lives a little easier but that I will never have the time to get to. I promise, I only bite jackasses.

(apologies in advance to anyone that reaches out - my responses this week will be slow.)

  • sebastian [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    go into the trans comm, and read the modlog of removed comments. scroll through our posts and look at the wave of downvotes going anywhere from 15-30 or more (aside from the newest, those appear untouched for the moment).

    look at all the trans related struggle sessions this site feels it apparently must have that just incites more trolls coming in to harass trans users. i'm not a frequent poster aside from the trans comm, and i've seen no less than 4 trans struggle sessions in 5 months where cis people won't listen to us and insist their opinions are correct.

    we're all tired here. if i wasn't actively trying to mod the trans comm into a place safe for us, i'd have left this place behind, performative trans rights and all.

    • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]M
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      4 years ago

      How much of this harassment is the community eating itself, and how much is it 4chan, stupidpol, and other assholes happily creating countless accounts to harass people in a well-known place with out and proud trans users. It's like being mad the gay club has anti-gay people posted up outside during its opening day.

      I am not trying to concern troll, I'm just curious to whether this is a community issue, or being besieged issue by assholes at every opportunity?

      • sebastian [he/him]
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        4 years ago

        let me once again say: look at the trans struggle sessions. look at cis people talking over trans people and getting highly upvoted while we get a mixed response, or even downvoted. hell, look at cass's comment history, she gets it the worst since she didn't put up with any shit.

        and it's probably foolish to discount all downvote and transphobic spam as originating from stupidpol. yeah i won't argue that the bulk is them, but let's not forget it was one of our regular users who went to stupidpol in the first place.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
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          4 years ago

          Yeah I remember being in one of those threads a few months ago with the user that's leaving now (cass) and it got pretty bad. And it definitely wasn't just stupididpol people doing it.

        • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]M
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          4 years ago

          I’m not trans but I use the word latinx all the time and even here, I get people telling me that word sucks or whatever, when I feel like it conveys the general sentiment better than latine. So I wanna say I stand with ya’lls in the struggle to tell opinionated and annoying cis people to fuck off (that includes me).

          • lilpissbaby [any]
            ·
            4 years ago

            when I feel like it conveys the general sentiment better than latine.

            why? just curious as i also use X rather than E (when writing) but I guess it's not that popular anymore

            • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]M
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              4 years ago

              The wonder of grad school and working from home and being a dad is that I don’t have time to give a fuck. I just roll my eyes at people making mountains out of molehills.

      • pubic_library [any]
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        4 years ago

        I used to downbear a lot of dumb trans stuff in the past and I'm trans, and its also pretty shitty to claim there's only one way trans people can view the world or respond to things. You could say its the community eating itself I guess, but I'm trans and just find some stuff spam or super low quality.

        I since stopped downbearing the majority of stuff and left trans spaces once we all got yelled at to not use a button thats there for a reason, and I also didn't know I was hurting people by doing so so I stopped that too.

        I frankly don't see a shred of hate here, but again I left the trans communities so I guess im just unaware. I'm guessing there are also mixed reddit ex-chapo participants here which were crossposting among multiple subs including things like stupidpol, but could hold their dislike for idpol in to not offend ditectly, but still silently participate via up/downvotes. Reddit chapo seemed more tolerant.

      • QuillQuote [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        It's both.

        When the vast majority of the site is cis/het white american males, expecting anything other than reactionary brainworms being common to the point of invisibility (to said majority) is silly

        No one knows anything until they learn it, and that goes double when it comes to unlearning propaganda ingrained in us from birth, which is why we have to face that reality clearheadedly and annihilate our liberalism through criticism, reflection, and giving more of a damn about each other than we do about 'being right' (aka not even considering you could be wrong)

      • Sen_Jen [they/them]
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        4 years ago

        How much of this harassment is the community eating itself, and how much is it 4chan, stupidpol, and other assholes

        We aren't reddit, we aren't a facebook or instagram page, we're a very small community of leftists with a very specific niche. I seriously doubt we are being attacked by outside users on a regular basis.

        • disco [any]
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          4 years ago

          We absolutely are, and you can see it in the mod log. It seems to happen most visibly when we have a trans issues struggle session which then gets cross posted to online drama watching / chud communities.

          I spend a lot of time observing those communities, and I have seen the raids being planned in real time. The mods seem to do a good job of combatting that stuff though.

            • disco [any]
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              4 years ago

              Cumtown.org is one, Reddit.com/r/drama is another

        • pubic_library [any]
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          4 years ago

          Agreed, I think this is just a left community with diverse ideas who maybe don't all see things in the exact same ways, but share set of underlying principals. I definitely don't take a downvote or challenge to myself as transphobia. This site was also hard to find for me, a long time reddit cth poster.

          Also, I think constant pinned petty drama like this is super off-putting to a lot of leftists.