And apparently, also when you think that ‘They’ is a perfectly serviceable gender-neutral singular pronoun, but are willing to use other pronouns if asked to.
EDIT: Other removable offenses on Blahaj now include questioning mod/admin decisions and quoting the modlog as a reason why you’re leaving.
I kinda get it, though. It’s not easy to draw a line and say this is valid and that is not because you dislike the person or the person is a troll or whatnot, and I’m not specifically talking about drag. Like it doesn’t make it ok to call people racial epithets if they’re a criminal. So how do you tell which pronouns are valid and which aren’t? The conclusion over there is you don’t. And I would be really uncomfortable going into a minority space and telling people they’re being gay in the wrong way or telling somebody they’re reacting to racism in the wrong way or they’re not passing or bisexuals aren’t valid or whatever else. I get that it may feel heavy handed, but this is the kind of discussion that happens over and over in bad faith. So how do you tell who’s having a conversation in good faith or bad faith? Once again, the conclusion seems to be one doesn’t and to err on the side of safety for the users of that instance. Bad money drives out good and that’s not necessarily your fault, but the coin is worth less regardless of if it’s shaved or not.
There is such a thing as toxic positivity - when being permissible itself creates an environment for bad faith actors to dominate discussion. I am generally more hesitant to tell someone their experience of racism is wrong, but at the same time, that doesn’t mean that getting a sunburn because they have pale skin is racism. All discussions require boundaries, even if just implicit ones; discussions without boundaries descend into incoherence. It’s been declared here that questioning the boundaries of this discussion at all is no longer welcome in Blahaj. And that’s… very unfortunate.
When it was just “We’re going to be enforcing the standard rules on pronouns and gender on dragonfucker as a gender”, it was like “Okay, fine, I’m sad, I’m going to sadpost and leave, but this is well within their rights and I understand what they’re trying to do.” Removing comments for any questioning of the decision? Bit more irritating.
It’s impossible. That’s part of the issue. Whatever boundary you want to draw, there are going to be difficult areas at the borderline or in the extreme cases.
For me, it’s transparently obvious that the dragon person is either taking the piss or suffering from mental illness. Someone else might look at the same situation and say that I’m being ignorant and hateful if I think that. Sure, they can think that.
The thing that makes it hard is that we have to be able to talk about it. Both of those opinions. If I ban the person who thinks I am wrong, they can’t stick up for drag. Bad stuff. If they ban me for saying my feelings on it, saying that they have a right to determine that those feelings are not acceptable to be spoken, then to me, that makes the whole operation and network into a stupid and pointless endeavor.
Part of the whole point of tolerance and open society is that you learn to rock and roll with the people you don’t agree with. I don’t think there’s anybody who will survive for long on the main instances who will be openly racist, transphobic, or anything like that. If you start looking for the most minor of transgressions or differences of opinion, and then shutting out that person because now they’re “bad” and can’t even be spoken to, I think you’re actually interfering quite a lot with your own acceptance in the wider society.
Not everyone is going to think like you. It’s okay. Back in college, I knew some communists who were widely accepted, even by conservatives and “normie” society, because they were firmly in the mode of “this is my stuff, and I’ll tell you about it, but I have 0 expectation that it needs to be your stuff, too.” The ones who had major issues were the ones who had elaborate restrictions on how people needed to see things, how they were allowed to be spoken to, things like that. They wound up isolated into their own pretty small social circle. They didn’t wind up building the wider enlightenment in society that I am guessing they were wanting to do by making the restrictions.
I can see special situations where you really just want your own space safe from people coming in and laughing at you or whatever. I get that. But most of the time, I think setting this super-restrictive model of how everyone needs to talk to you and how they need to look at things in order not to be “bad,” does more harm than good and builds a lot more insincere “acceptance,” than it does genuine understanding about what’s going on with you and your people.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I get what you’re saying. I just lean more towards that the space doesn’t have to be for fostering acceptance or understanding by outsiders, regardless of outcome. The best example my morning brain can come up with is: swingers generally don’t get together with the purpose of interacting with the non-swinger public (unless they’re exhibitionists with a poor grasp of consent) or improving their image; they get together to fuck. The metaphor breaks down in that lemmy is a bit more public, but one can still get kicked out of Hedo for not following the rules even if it’s upsetting or gives you a bad experience with the scene. It would be a pretty awful place for swingers if nobody enforced rules that made it a safe place to be naked etc. even for “ugly” people, even if that becomes the image generally. Ok, this metaphor is getting worse and worse, but hopefully it’s good enough to get us to shore.
btw, meant to mention this originally, but I adore your use of economic metaphor