I’ll just post my initial comment in the entirety since what happens is entirely predicted by my first comment.
The topic was trans athletes and, like with any hot button political issues, there are rigidly defined ‘sides’ that come with a list of things that you must profess.
These things are simply declared as not being open to discussion and if you challenge that declaration, ye power trippin’ bastards rear their ugly head. This dogma is unhealthy in any community and the people who enforce it through social pressure, cyber bullying and mod powers are actively harmful.
As to demonstrate my point I continued with the conversation, responding in good faith to the people who attempted a conversation, right up until I was mass banned (which only took a few hours).
The first comment is here if you want to see the entire conversation or think I’m hiding some secret transphobic rants in my comment history: https://lemmy.world/comment/15496985
The Initial Comment
This is an issue that exposes some of the more dogmatic people in the movement.
It is as if there is a list of positions that you’re required to believe and if you disagree with any one of them you’re labeled a heretic (transphobic, in this case).
Sports and the fairness of competition is a complex issue even when you’re just talking about cisgender competitors:
Can a person use performance enhancing drugs to train and then get clean enough to test positive for a competition? It seems unfair, to me, for the other competitors if this is the case.
It isn’t an unfair statement to say that the physical performance of cisgender men is higher than that of cisgender women. This is why we have separate competitions for men and women.
The issue isn’t as simple as a choice between “Transgender people should be free, without question, to compete in any competition” or “Transgender people should not be allowed to compete as their gender”
Framing it in such a black and white manner is harmful behavior, no matter which position you take.
We need to understand how people’s bodies are affected and what advantages of disadvantages are obtained and then base the rule changes on objective data and not appeals to emotion or ideological bullying.
Fabricated Pretexts
The last thing I said on the topic (bold added), as there were already commenters insinuating that I’m secretly a transphobe rather than engaging in discussion, was:
Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, I’m not supporting that position. From the point of view of fairness in competition there has to be an objective answer that’s backed by objective tests.
Simply declaring that trans people are beyond reproach and that any attempts to quantify biological advantage are unfairly discriminatory and anyone asking these questions is a bigot isn’t helpful.
I include this because included in the reasons for the bans is: “Transphobia attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.” This is completely misrepresenting what I said and what I believe in order to create a pretext for a ban.
And the power trippin’ bastards come in with the sweeping community bans ([email protected], really?): https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=2&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=12926811
Conclusion
This kind of thinking is harmful to any community.
Labeling disagreement as bigotry is nonsense. Refusing to engage on a topic and using filters and bans to hide from people who don’t perfectly align with your ideas is not how you make allies or educate people.
The people that do this are responsible for creating the impression that your communities are hostile and made up of extremists. Attacking allies because they don’t fall in line without question is a blunder.
People with moderator powers should be held to a higher standard of responsibility and fabricating reasons for bans and mislabeling people as bigots is the ultimate abdication of that responsibility. These people are not interested in helping a community thrive, they simply want to be the ones with the power to strike out at people that they want to hurt regardless of the damage that it causes.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk (except you, [email protected], I pray you never learn how to exit vim)
YDI, you were throwing around talking points that have been debunked so many times that nobody familiar with the subject would believe you’re acting in good faith.
I’m willing to believe you, since you went to the trouble of making this post. But that’s the only reason why.
So, with that in mind, you gotta understand that waiting for people to play catchup with the science gets old for trans people and their allies that have had this debate a hundred times.
At this point, after more than a decade of this same thing being thrown at trans people again and again and again and again and again, it is not realistic for anyone to spend time dealing with you, or anyone else, that is going to pound the same incorrect pulpit once more.
Now, there’s only so far I’ll go on this community regarding the debate because this isn’t the place. This community can’t function as a dumping ground for every debate that gets stopped somewhere else, or it turns into chaos. I’ve seen it happen, and I’ve seen the locked threads that come about because folks can’t stick to the subject of the mod decision itself.
So, here’s the only thing I’ll say regarding trans athletes. There is no evidence that a trans person be it man or woman has an advantage in athletics beyond the first year of hormone therapy, and there is significant evidence to the contrary, including the world records in sports where trans people have competed. If such am advantage existed, then it would be expected that trans athletes would dominate their sports. This has not been the case at all. To the contrary, when you go looking, it turns out that it can be a disadvantage because of the way the hormones work.
I won’t debate this issue, I won’t argue it. This is not the place to do so. The only reason I went that far is to illustrate why the subject is dead to so many people. It isn’t a hypothetical; trans athletes have actually competed at all levels of sport, and there is no advantage present. Again, *trans athletes have been competing for years, with no record of having an advantage.
So, when you keep pounding a dead horse, it is not power tripping to shut the false rhetoric down. It would be like me going into an astronomy C/ and talking about the lack of proof that the earth circles the sun.
I’m not trying to re-hash the debate here, my position isn’t that trans people should be excluded.
What you’re describing is ignorance and not transphobia.
No matter what subject you choose, there will be a lot of people who simply don’t understand the debate and haven’t researched the topic. To you, it may be an old topic that you’ve endlessly debated but that doesn’t mean that it is like that for everyone. Not everyone has your experience or knowledge and, because of that, simply saying “In my experience this is a dead topic” is one thing but then to go on to say that “And so, if anybody attempts to talk about this topic, they are acting in bad faith and/or are a bigot” is simply intolerant.
Some people are just new to the topic, and how you choose to interact with them matters. Immediately accusing people of bigotry and attacking them because they’re not part your group of people who’re experts on the topic, is itself a form of bigotry ("One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. ").
This isn’t ‘beating a dead horse’. I made 3 comments on the topic. Their actions were not made to ‘shut the false rhetoric down’, they’re not moderators in California and I could have continued commenting. If someone is tired of having the debate or tired of explaining topics to new people then they’re free to not engage or even block the person in question.
And, most importantly, the mod reason for the ban was “transphobe” and “Transphobia attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.”. Which are just fabricated reasons, not based in reality.
I am not a transphobe nor was I “making excuses for trans exclusion from sports”. I specifically addressed the commenters who were insinuating this by clarifying my position: “Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, I’m not supporting that position.”
This is people enforcing dogma, they’ve decided that the topic is closed and anyone outside of the people who hold the same position as them are bigots. Questions are not allowed, explaining their position is beneath them, and you’re either on board or you’re excommunicated.
It’s a power trip to 1. Lie about the reasons and 2. Ban the people from completely unrelated communities.
That would be a fair comparison if I was going into trans communities and talking about topics that I’m ignorant, but I was not. Expecting people, in non-topical spaces, to be experts on the topic is nonsense.
This would be like a person who is a moderator of Astronomy seeing a comment saying “The sun rises in the east” in a memes community and then banning the person from the Astronomy community (and also the Baking, Vintage Car and Waffle Iron Owners communities) because everyone, with a degree in Astrophysics, knows that Uranus and Venus have retrograde rotation and have for billions of years and so they’re banned for “Flat-earther ideology”.
e: I’d also note that one of the strong indicators that you’re entering into these topics is when there are downvotes but not rebuttals. It’s hard to argue with someone, it takes a lot less effort to simply press the downvote (or ban, or block) button. Social media conditions people to be intellectually lazy and dogmatic thinking is one of the primary shortcuts of intellectually lazy people
The down votes are because its been pretty clearly explained to you that you engaged in what is considered “sea lioning” which is very hard to differentiate from someone who is actually ignorant. You blew past people pointing this out to continue banging the drum of the debunked junk science you’re championing, and got all pissy because people wouldn’t play your stupid game and “educate” you.
People on Lemmy in these communities are not your personal AI, they have no obligation to educate you on things you could easily research yourself. If you truly cared about not being ignorant, you’d take this as a moment of self reflection/self crit to educate yourself on a topic you clearly are ignorant about.
Instead you’ve come here to pitch a fit that people didn’t spoonfeed you the decades of research on this exact topic and treated you the same as every other bad faith actor spouting the same tired talking point that just want to stir shit rather than engage in any meaningful discussion. People are tired of this shit, it’s so played out an old.