I recently made a new account on lemmy.blahaj.zone, because I’ve been harassed and doxxed on my old account and I wanted a fresh start with a more lighthearted online identity that I could be more open about my gender identity on. I’d heard blahaj zone was good for trans people, so I made my account there. And yeah, [email protected] removed my post discussing neuronormativism from a queer perspective, but I hoped maybe “the trans instance” would be friendlier to trans people.
A couple days after making my account, I saw someone on Blahaj engaging in the tired old cliche of “I hate politics, there’s no politics on my social media and I want to keep it that way!” Well we’ve all heard the joke that the two races are white and political, the two genders are male and political, and the two sexualities are straight and political. Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope. And having sufferred harassment and abuse from people inside the queer community who “hated politics” and saw trans or nonbinary or xenogender identities as political, I knew this kind of speech was going to make bigots feel comfortable saying they also hate politics, and they think us trans people are it.
So, I responded to the transphobia. I started out by attempting to educate them on what politics actually means. But I was interrupted by the Blahaj admin Ada, who told me that politics is “anything I disagree with”, and that indeed politics isn’t welcome on Blahaj. This language was deeply triggering of my past issues dealing with abuse, and I knew from past experience this sort of thing is said by people who are getting ready to say some enbyphobic or racist hate speech. It is especially common for white queer people to talk this way to BIPOC queer people. I tried to reason with Ada, explained the history of the cliche, the trauma it’s caused many trans people, and the consequences this kind of speech will have on the community here, making us all less safe.
Ada wasn’t having it. She minimised my concerns by reducing them to my personal trauma while ignoring my wider concerns for others’ safety, and weaponised my PTSD to paint my opinions as invalid because I am mentally ill. She said she owns Blahaj, and she gets to do whatever she wants with it, and nobody is allowed to express a differing opinion, even one that protects trans people, because that’s politics. At the time I thought her concern was me speaking directly to transphobes and making them feel uncomfortable by calling out their actions, so I said I’d just report it instead, and she banned my account.
This behaviour protects transphobes, WILL lead to trans and BIPOC people being harassed on this instance, attacks and gaslights victims of trauma (my concerns can’t be valid because I have a mental illness), and forces out any trans person with a commitment to safety for the community.
The thread where all this happened: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2143969
EDIT: The person who originally posted the transphobic views on politics is now misgendering me and calling me a “guy” despite me being very openly nonbinary: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2319669. And I didn’t call them autistic at any point.
I also would like my non political communities to be void of politics. I’m glad to see an admin actually stop that. None of the Reddit mods would ever stop political crap, even though it was against the sub rules.
Everything is political. Politics is defined by nearly every dictionary as the field of decision making and power in groups. Every reddit and fediverse community is a group. Those groups need mechanisms of controlling power and making decisions. That’s what politics is for. That’s what politics is. When you say you hate politics, you are making a political statement. You are trying to influence a group’s decision making.
I don’t think you’re going to get the attention you’re looking for here.
And yet it is possible and fine to define which topics belong to a community, and which topics do not.
Note this doesn’t change anything about this group being political by your definition.
So if a group decides they only want to discuss cute cat pics, and specifically do not want to discuss social topics regarding humans (what people roughly mean when they express their antipathy for politics), that’s one of many ways to make a cat community. It’s still a political group in your book, necessarily. It’s still not okay to talk about labor unions in that cat community.
I agree with you, and I agreed with you yesterday when I was banned. That wasn’t the argument.
I think we only had contact an hour ago or so, or I’m unaware. What I mean to say is, I’m afraid you might confuse me with someone else.
Then why do you make that point so often? People tell you they don’t want to talk about politics, and you respond with ‘everything is politics’. While technically true, it’s a way to completely misunderstand what they said, get yourself into trouble and be annoying to everyone else in the process. People even don’t have to agree with your definition of politics. When they express their desire to not talk about something, it’s good advice to try to understand what they actually meant, not start a discussion about what the word means from your perspective.
I’m not mistaking you for someone else, I mean to say that the opinion you expressed is one I would have agreed with yesterday. I believe you misunderstood what the point of disagreement was.
Well that’s not true. If someone says “Don’t talk to me about them F*****s, I hate them”, then the correct thing to do is say “gay people deserve to exist, you homophobe”. It’s always correct to counter someone when they spread a harmful message, with or without their consent. Because spreading harmful messages must be considered implicit consent to be challenged on them. You can’t have a functioning society otherwise.
Yes they do. Trans people will be hurt if they don’t. Their definition of politics is propaganda created by transphobes, which benefits transphobes. That’s why it’s important. That’s why the speech is harmful.