I’ve been waiting until after Christmas day to make this post, but some of our communities recently have had a lot of noise and upset over someone that uses neopronouns that most people are unfamiliar with.
So I want to make this clear. A persons pronouns are to be respected. This is true when the user is using neopronouns that you’re unfamiliar with. It’s true even if you think someone is trolling. Pronouns are not rewards for good behaviour. They aren’t only to be respected when you like the person you’re interacting with, or if their pronouns “make sense” to you. Trolls, spammers, twitter users, it doesn’t matter who they are, your options are to respect their pronouns, or to not engage with them.
I really want to re-iterate the importance of this. Gender diverse folk are undermined, invalidated and questioned at every step of our lives. As a community, we need to be working to undo that, not creating more of it, and that means there is no space for treating pronouns (including neopronouns) as a reward for good behaviour.
This isn’t a free reign for trolls and spammers. The rules still apply. Trolling, spamming, etc will continue to be dealt with, but it’s not an excuse to act as if respecting someones pronouns is optional.
None of that is “contextual behaviour”. It’s literally just people upset by pronouns they find discomforting. Once you remove “Using pronouns I don’t like” as a reason, there is nothing else to those posts.
Drag was banned from 196 by community mods
We have reports, a matrix channel and DMs.
I haven’t seen evidence of other bad behaviour that warrants an instance ban. Drag has stirred up drama, deliberately so, and has received community bans as a result, and I support the rights of the community mods to make that choice. But I’ve seen no evidence of genuine attempts to encourage others to suicide, or ongoing deliberate misgendering, or anything else that warrants an instance ban. I’ve seen many accusations of such, but I’ve not seen any evidence behind the accusations.
If I’m missing some, please drop me a DM or the like.
A queer instance that gatekeeps queer folk isn’t hospitable, protective or empathic.
I am well aware that trolls can slip through and try and stir up drama. I believe that it’s worth the risk, because the cost of gatekeeping gender diverse folks self expression isn’t a price I’m willing to pay to be troll free. I’d rather the odd troll slip through the cracks and get dealt with than default to gatekeeping.
No. Your paragraph is wholly false and you are making these claims in bad faith. I cannot read you the user comments and spell out their meanings. You act with a prejudice that people can only take umbrage with this user because they use neopronouns and you willfully and selectively reject any claims of impropriety that the user may have committed elsewhere.
I meant from unbanned from the instance. I’ve edited my comment for clarity.
So those are instance bannable offenses? Is there a full list beyond just in the instance sidebar? Here are some removed comments from the modlog by the user:
Advocating for suicide/murder: “If you’re planning on killing yourself, go buy a gun and take a red hat with you. Drag is serious.”
Explicitly advocating for murder/violence: “Buy a gun. Shoot a red hat. Violence is the answer.”
After cyberstalking and harassing a lemmy.world mod to disrespect the mod’s daughter’s pronouns: “You previously said that you always use gender neutral pronouns to refer to other people. In order to help you with that goal, drag would like to point out that you just used a “she” pronoun, so that you can edit it to a “they” and maintain the standard you set for yourself.“
Racism: “Drag thinks Germans just like genocide in general.”
Advocating for bestiality: “Drag likes dragon dick and doesn’t have a problem with anybody who does. That’s clearly some kind of non-dragon-fucking person. Whoever they are, they suck. Love is love and loving dragons is okay. Drag doesn’t have a problem with sucking any kind of cock, as long as it’s consensual.”
Some mods also believe this user to be a new account by a troll named droneright. I’m not going to link to every comment and post that still stands that points to the gestalt of the troll’s deception. It’s not gatekeeping to scrutinize somebody’s actions and determine that they are spitting in your face and telling you that it’s raining.
You are being trolled. The user has carefully curated elements of absurdity and inanity separate from a gender identity/expression with the intent to form a mocking caricature of queer and queer-inclusive people and to ruin their safe spaces. Read the comments and read between the lines elsewhere. A server admin needs to have the reading literacy and internet literacy to see this miles before it has gotten to this point.
You will find your instance overrun with trolls that make the experience intolerable. Other instances will defederate from your instance to avoid the abundance of trolls that you will host. The people who need an inclusive community will lose it.
I will share that dragonfucker has significantly harassed me and sent death threats toward my way, it was through an alt account so I guess one could say that it could’ve not been drag, but the circumstances surrounding it were suspicious enough that I’m almost certain that this alt was the same person/dragon as dragonfucker. The community that was created to harass and target me [email protected] along with the alt is gone but since I was pinged on every account and I have email notifications enabled I still do have all the messages I received, as well as screenshots of DMs from the user account, none of them are pretty.
I’m not a fan of gatekeeping people’s identities and I REALLY don’t think we should do that. I do think we should understand the kind of person drag is though, and acknowledge that these types of things like the death threats, the harassment, and encouragement of suicide have no place here, in a safe space no less.
I have explicitly acknowledged drag deliberately created drama in 196, was banned by the 196 mods, and I support the mods right to make such bans.
What I’ve said is that I haven’t seen evidence of anything warranting an entire instance ban. I’ve seen people talk about it a lot, but I’ve not actually seen the evidence myself, and given the ire that drag has stirred up in people, I’m going to need to see it before I act on it.
drag is not based on blahaj zone…
You have the patience of a saint.
That’s why I said to read through the user’s history and critically consider why the profile expresses the particular things it expresses. Look at the gestalt, not just individual incidences.
I know. But other trolls can copy this behavior and infiltrate safe spaces by being hosted on your instance.