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)
Warning to all: do not start arguing about trans women in sports in this thread. Stick to judgement on the banning please.
When you’re writing paragraphs about how “trans athletes” is an important political debate, then you’ve already lost. Stop feeding the fascists.
So what is the rule that I violated and how does it apply to any of my comments?
I was commenting about trans athletes in a thread about laws being passed affecting trans athletes in a California community.
I didn’t break the rules of that community (and I didn’t get banned from that community).
The reason this is a YPB post is because power tripping mods from other communities on other servers spammed my account with bans claiming I was a transphobe and defending trans exclusion from sports.
Both reasons are nonsense and untrue and using moderation powers to spam an account’s modlog with slanderous nonsense is harassment.
Regardless of your opinions on the topic, I didn’t say anything transphobic and that’s the ban reason. It’s nonsense and an abuse of power.
YDI
“Hey guys, I wasn’t repeating long disproven transphobic talking points, I was just asking questions and ignoring the answers others gave me, mmmkay?”
You got banned for transphobic JAQing off. Poorly. YDI and any preemptive bans. I keep my flat tidy so it won’t become infested with roaches. This is no different.
The idea that anyone asking questions, about a topic that you already know about, should be assumed to be acting in bad faith is exactly the kind of toxic behavior that I’m trying to point out.
You’ve learned things today that other people have known for decades, it doesn’t make you ignorant or a sub-human.
Someone who is learning something today, that you’ve known for years, doesn’t make them ignorant or sub-human.
You’ve conditioned yourself to look for a way to frame a person’s comments in the most outrageous and conspiratorial way possible.
Your framing is “That person isn’t asking a question because they don’t know the answer. They, secretly, already know the answer and since they’re a bad person (a priori) are, instead secretly PRETENDING to ask a question in order to make me personally angry and so they should be punished”.
You have no real reason to assume bad faith on my part, you’ve never spoken to me before. Instead, because of your time on social media, you’ve created this model in your brain of the kind of people who ask questions that I’ve asked and, in that model, the person is evil, bigoted, etc and so, therefore, I have to be evil, bigoted, etc.
That’s not reasoning, that’s intolerance.
Bad money drives out good, even if your coin is unshaved. How do you tell if someone is sealioning or asking in good faith? I don’t anymore, they all go in the same basket for my sanity. The kinds of questions commonly asked have been gone over again and again and the answers are readily available. Demanding that questioners who can’t be bothered to research be engaged with by people sick of sorting out if a questioner is lazy or purposefully awful is pretty toxic. Nobody owes you a damn thing, so stop acting entitled to the efforts and mental space of others.
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. ").
So, when you keep pounding a dead horse, it is not power tripping to shut the false rhetoric down.
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.
It would be like me going into an astronomy C/ and talking about the lack of proof that the earth circles the sun.
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.
YDI, at least in the community of the lemmy.blajah.zone instance. In the other communities, a long ban could be excessive, but it’s not easy to judge that the transphobic[^1] post was done in good faith.
[^1]: e.g., two people with the same physical traits, one a cis woman, the other a transgender woman, your reasoning will let the first one practice the sport and will forbid it to the second one.
Edited
to clarify that they were community bans (not from instances).
FYI, prior to me discovering this thread and seeing the OP ignore linked studies to repeat transphobic talking points, there was no blahaj ban. There is one now, but there wasn’t at the time the OP made this topic.
Oops! Thanks. I will edit my post to clarify that was a LMZ community.
The blajah ban says “attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.”
Which is the opposite of my explicitly stated position:
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.
Regardless of your opinions of the underlying topic, the reasons for the bans are simply nonsense, fabricated and are wholly bad faith misrepresentations of my stated position.
The power tripping here is that they wanted the ban and were willing to simply make up an excuse. It’s bad faith use of moderator powers and so it makes them Power Tripping Bastards…
The blajah ban says “attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.”
At the time you made your post, there was no blahaj ban… If there was, I wouldn’t be able to see this post of yours as it wouldn’t have federated to blahaj.zone.
I have however banned you now, because you ignored people explaining to topic to you in good faith to continue repeating transphobic talking points.
At the time you made your post, there was no blahaj ban… If there was, I wouldn’t be able to see this post of yours as it wouldn’t have federated to blahaj.zone.
At the time I made my post, from the link posted in my post:
I have however banned you now, because you ignored people explaining to topic to you in good faith to continue repeating transphobic talking points.
What transphobic talking points? What people did I ignore? This is more of the same “I’m just going to make up things, knowing that I never have to defend them or justify them to anybody in any way (because I’m a powerful moderator and nobody can question me), and go on my way” power tripping crap.
Just because you’re a moderator for a minority group community that is the target of attacks doesn’t mean that everyone is out to get you.
It’s infuriating that you’re more willing to alienate allies by painting them as bigots than you are to educate people or answer their questions.
Just because YOU have seen the questions 1,000 times doesn’t mean that there are not people that are just thinking to ask those questions today. Just because some people will ask questions in bad faith doesn’t mean that everyone is asking questions in bad faith.
Simply labeling anything you don’t feel like dealing with as ‘transphobic’ and hiding in a filter bubble doesn’t solve anything. Enforcing arbitrary purity tests on people outside of your community is toxic behavior and does nothing but create animosity.
I have never been against trans rights, human rights, and I do not remotely support a ban on trans athletes.
My point was that people who use social punishment and intellectual bullying to silence any kind of dissent are a problem and damaging to communities. The people with moderation power who use their power to punish wrongthink and dissent while labeling it bigotry are especially toxic and damaging.
How many allies have you banned or alienated with this behavior? Does your hubris tell you that that number is zero?
Do better.
You fucking do better. Allies don’t go into minority communities and tell those communities how they should be run.
You didn’t read the OP.
I didn’t go into a minority community, if you read the link in the OP, I’m posting in a California community (which I did not get banned from, important to note) so I’m not exactly sure of your point.
This was literally mods from other communities on other servers deciding to issue bans for fabricated reasons.
This you?
Just because you’re a moderator for a minority group community that is the target of attacks doesn’t mean that everyone is out to get you.
It’s infuriating that you’re more willing to alienate allies by painting them as bigots than you are to educate people or answer their questions.
Simply labeling anything you don’t feel like dealing with as ‘transphobic’ and hiding in a filter bubble doesn’t solve anything. Enforcing arbitrary purity tests on people outside of your community is toxic behavior and does nothing but create animosity.
Yeah, that’s telling a mod how to run an instance for your preferences and not for the community it’s for. That’s why I think you deserve the new ban regardless of your OP.
If you want to be taught, you’re being spoon fed a lesson. Open up the hangar! 🥄😮
YDI
The fact that some powermod went through all their communities to ban you makes this a blatent case of PTB, regardless of the merit of the initial ban.
I’m not even banned in the community where I was commenting.
This is moderators, from other communities, reading through threads and banning people from their communities. It’s like they’re going out in the world and just looking for things to feel offended by and then salving their outrage with a righteously indignant ban. Which of the community rules of Linuxphone did I break by talking about trans people in sports in a completely different community on a completely different server? It only makes sense in the context of power tripping.
What’s the overall strategy here? Are they going to somehow, by manually browsing as a human person (and not a bot or some kind of data analytics engine), locate and ban every single potential rule breaker across all of social media?
If your job was to be a moderator and you told your boss that the best use of your time was browsing random communities and reading their comments in order to find people who (if you squint just right and assume bad faith) may, one day, come to your community and possibly break a rule… you’d be fired. First, why are you banning people who’ve never commented in your community or broken a rule. Also, even if you could work 24/7 and read/locate/ban 10 users an hour you still couldn’t keep up with just new user sign-ups.
There’s zero practical reason for a moderator to be looking into other communities and trying to pre-crime people. It’s entirely power tripping.
I believe in free speech, I don’t think anyone should be banned or censored for saying their honest opinion, as that doesn’t convince them of your point of view, might push them further into the view they have, and creates an echo chambers where challenging opinions aren’t present - both through actual censorship and self censorship out of fear of being banned for talking against the groupthink.
Yes, exactly. I chose the topic specifically to highlight the behavior of people who act in dogmatic ways.
Am I ignorant of the topic? Possibly. I know enough to know that people are using the topic as a political weapon to harm a minority population to score political points. At the same time, on the other side, people use this persecution to frame the issue as a black and white: ‘You either believe this or you’re part of the persecution’ then they use that as a cudgel against anybody ‘on their side’ who tries to talk about the topic. They’ll declare the topic settled and so anyone who disagrees must be acting in bad faith or actively seeking to undermine the group.
It isn’t limited to the topic of trans rights. People are dogmatic about a lot of issues but, as a left leaning person, I’m already automatically excluded from the right’s communities (by the same kinds of people, just with red hats instead of blue hats).
There was a separate conversational thread about that points specifically:
