I’m gonna get real with you folks, we’ve had way too many of these posts recently. I’ve been reflecting on this topic a lot the past few days. For me personally, I couldn’t care less about my gender identity. But just because that’s true for me, doesn’t make that true for everyone.

The beauty of the fediverse is that if you don’t like the way a particular instance or community is moderated you can simply choose another to hang out on, or create your own.

Blajah has made it pretty clear by now they will ban anyone who argues against the validity of xenogenders, in order to create a safe space for those folks. That’s fair enough imo.

Safe spaces should be respected, and Blajah’s admins/mods do not deserve abuse for creating and maintaining those spaces.

I can completely understand why Blajah users don’t want to have to constantly argue with external users about the validity of their chosen identities. Bans are one way Blajah has decided to manage that problem so that their users can experience lemmy in relative peace and safety. While it is a blunt tool and I have my reservations about preemptive bans, there are not many other options for @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone, other than defederation from most instances. That would be a terrible outcome for the fediverse as a whole.

In order to help Blajah to maintain their safe space, I would like to propose, if @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com agrees and community sentiment is positive:

  • that we no longer accept posts about this topic in this community; and - we also remove previous posts on this topic from the community.

That’s all folks, have at 'er.

Edit: thanks for all your feedback and comments. I think it’s clear that the vast majority of people are fed up with this topic coming up repeatedly.

Summarizing the feedback, I’d say most folks would prefer to retain previous posts for the sake of posterity, and to serve as an example of why we don’t want anymore of these posts. I’m happy to take that on board. For those folks saying I’m a PTB for intervening in this way, I’ll just remind you that I haven’t made any arbitrary mod decisions, and I’ve consulted with db0 and the community as a whole before taking any mod actions.

I think the way to move forward with this is to acknowledge that there’s a bunch of queer and straight people who have a problem with xenogenders. Personally, I think that’s a valid perspective and shouldn’t sanctioned on our instance. But for Blajah, they’ve drawn a line in the sand over this and that’s ok too. Our instance won’t be blocking anyone over their opinions on the topic, especially in this community where free discussion is necessary and encouraged. But safe spaces should be respected.

A lot of folks mentioned I should more more specific about the “no more posts about Blajah’s mod policies” rather than making it a sweeping and overly broad statement. I think that’s good feedback. I will amend this to "No more posts in this community about the validity or otherwise of neopronouns, xenogenders, and bans originating from Blajah about gatekeeping or transphobia. This is in recognition of Blajah’s safe space policy. You are of course free to discuss those topics outside of this community.

Note that this decision isn’t about ideological gatekeeping, its about reducing the workload for our own mods and admins in trying to moderate this community, and to avoid iterating over the same old topics again and again.

Blajah isn’t getting a “free pass” over YPTB posts - if you feel they are power tripping over other issues then feel free to make a post here. But if it’s a post questioning the validity of xenogenders or about Blajah bans for gatekeeping then that will no longer be allowed here. Those folks deserve a safe space on Lemmy, even if it’s not a mainstream opinion.

For those folks who feel aggrieved about being accused of “transphobia” or “gatekeeping” over their views on this topic, I completely understand just how hurtful it can be to be unfairly (imo) accused in this way. I’ve been in the same position, and I also found it difficult to deal with. I want those folks to know that our instance does not require you to support xenogenders in order to participate in our instance. However we do require that you use preferred pronouns whenever they are specified. That’s been a longstanding instance policy on dbzer0.

Thank everyone for your feedback.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
    319·
    2 days ago

    I think you’re doing the right thing. The trolls are really stepping up, which is obvious in this thread. I’m trying to share it a lot because if you really read it and understand the process of what they’re doing, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and energy.

    “Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in their upstream – people that they read posts from, but who themselves are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).”

    https://archive.is/PoUMo

    Edit: I forgot to add this part of the thread:

    The goal is to keep opinions we don’t want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can,…

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
      203·
      3 days ago

      The trolls are really stepping up, which is obvious in this thread.

      That stood out to me too. A ton of people jumped in with instantly inflammatory takes which seem almost tailor-made to continue this ridiculous dispute.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        126·
        3 days ago

        It’s not just here in this community, it’s throughout the all page. The fediverse is worrying some people and it’s showing.

        • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          822·
          3 days ago

          Man, this is the same spirit of the shit that we perennially went through with forums in the old bbcode days. Established users, especially mods or admins, playing dumb clique games with a community because they all get dopamine from it.

          I’m sure the Fediverse does worry some, but this is likely not much influenced by that. It’s just regular, shitty human nature on the internet.

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
            1310·
            3 days ago

            You’re talking to a veteran politics user from the bad place. I love that you’re calling your behavior as being “just regular, shitty human nature” as a defense.

            • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1115·
              3 days ago

              You’re talking to a veteran politics user from the bad place. I love that you’re calling your behavior as being “just regular, shitty human nature” as a defense.

              What?

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
            710·
            3 days ago

            I think it is both. It’s very subtle, but there’s enough of distinct little overlap between accounts that support super-odd political views, and accounts that like to attack specific people and cause random drama, that I found it really interesting.

            And yes, also, people are jerks sometimes when you give them power and anonymity and a social grouping that is unmoored from everything except the dots on screen and the imaginings in their heads.

    • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      1114·
      3 days ago

      Remember when you banned me because I disagreed with you and it annoyed you and you wanted to win the argument?

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        1210·
        3 days ago

        I’m very open about banning easily. I have no qualms about it. If I think you’re a troll, you’re gone. I’ll own to being a power tripping bastard. I’ll take that over trolling any day.

        BTW, I usually do temp bans in case I make a mistake. If it was permanent, then I was pretty sure.

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
            53·
            3 days ago

            Were you the one where we were joking around? Sorry, there’s no tagging system and I don’t remember names completely.

            • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
              45·
              3 days ago

              I was earnestly suggesting that I thought Tony Hinchcliffe might be trolling the Republican party, and that his standup when viewed from a different angle, was a complete roast of all their own talking points.

              But you disagreed deeply, and thought I was trolling.

              • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
                94·
                3 days ago

                Being a mod sucks, have I mentioned that lately? I make mistakes, which is why I give temp bans. Sorry if I made a mistake. Sometimes, jokes, trolling and me having a bad day aren’t easy to differentiate.

                • Dr. Wesker@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                  86·
                  3 days ago

                  The whole thread was pretty heated IIRC, so it’s fine. Like I said, it was kind of funny the way it happened, anyway.

                  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
                    52·
                    3 days ago

                    All mod actions cause harm.

                    Nah, no they don’t. The trolling throughout the world has caused unbelievable harm to our country and others. We have a dictator rapist as our president right now because dumb people are being trolled and our media is owned by billionaires. Sorry about your pain, but that has nothing to do with this.