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.

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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    3 days ago

    I’m OK with that but it has to be a bit more targeted specifically to blahaj’s rule about gatekeeping and neopronouns, and I would add everything drag of course.

    I wouldn’t delete old posts, just lock them.

    Maybe make it a temporary moratorium?

    • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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      2 days ago

      agree. seeing that the trolls the posters here are crying about have been banneed for weeks to months, a temporary moratorium is probably fine. maybe six months but im pulling that number from nowhere.

      EDIT: I have changed my mind about this. See https://lemmy.cafe/comment/10132150 and the preceding thread.

  • BomberMan9865@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    In favor of doing this, but keep the old posts locked without removing them so people know what happened and what led up to this.

  • Makeshift@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    I’m fine with not allowing it in the future, but I would appreciate not deleting the ones that already exist.

    For archival’s sake. And for so when questions are asked about why, people can see for themselves what happened and decide whether what they see justifies blocking blahaj for them personally or not.

    The way Blahaj creates a safe space is a way that ends up creating a very toxic space for others, and I don’t think erasing grievances people have had with them in the past would be good.

    The fact that it’s so common means a lot of people are feeling attacked/invalidated/whatnot because of Blahaj, and leaving evidence of what they’ve done to others could help reassure people that it’s not them. Blahaj is just like that.

    … If anyone up to the challenge of being a mod of a meanwhileonblahaj, that might be another decent alternative. I saw the idea floating around.

  • jadedwench [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago
    1. Leave the threads up, probably locked. Don’t erase history.
    2. I wouldn’t start on wholesale topic bans just yet. This should be an absolute last resort and this will probably do more harm than good.
    3. Possibly create some extra categories for titles so users can filter it out if they don’t want to hear about it. Instance name of the potential PTB? Not sure.

    My suggestion for this topic right now is to get everyone together that needs to and talk/scream/yell about it in private. I think everything has been said publicly at this point and the reading comprehension has gone down the toilet. The amount of misunderstandings, blanket downvotes, pettiness, bad assumptions, baiting and finger pointing is getting ridiculous. Have your damn say and find a conclusion, even if said conclusion is ‘fuck you’ from each person.

    For shit like this in the future? If it comes to it, it is far better to lock first, talk to the person, and then unlock it. We can tell each other all day to be an adult, but it isn’t that simple. There will always be some big event that floods the community at some point or another. This community practically begs for it. It will eventually be filed into PTB history.

  • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I agree, this community should be a place to discuss mod abuse, not bellyache over transphobia and hate speech being censored or being banned from it. Such discourse makes this community extremely toxic and unusable to vulnerable groups, it also creates inherent bias here favoring alt-right shitheads.

    I think @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone would very much agree with this decision as well.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    Well, I’m for this move. The why is obvious, as you’ve covered it in the post already.

    I would also like to voice support for a couple ideas from previous comments

    First, that previous posts stay up, and locked, so that people can still see that the issues were.

    Second, that y’all consider the possibility of an FPT (frequently power tripped) thread at some frequency where folks can still hash out the common subjects. This and the mod abuse C/ are valuable pressure relief valves. I worry that a total banning of “frequent fliers” (sic) might have effects down the road.

    I know that’s extra work for mods, so it’s definitely a big ask, but lemmy does need places where disgruntled users can complain. Having multiple places is better because one community would get swamped if they’re the only place people can go for specific complaints.

  • Zero22xx@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    The way I see it, is that the rules and aim of the instance are all written out pretty fucking clearly and people on a platform dominated by longform text don’t really have an excuse for not being able to comprehend it. Like seriously, I had been using Lemmy for two days when I checked out Blåhaj, and I feel like I understood then already because it’s not hard and English is my native language.

    So that said, when I see people complaining about it, I think they’re either fucking stupid, or they’re probably these ‘free speech’ people that want the right to go around insulting everyone without consequences (while doing the most epic pearl clutching the moment anyone insults them).

    As far as I’m concerned, moderators and admins doing exactly what is clearly fucking written in the description and rules is not power abuse.

    • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      I was banned as a queer person for saying that the genderless pronoun “they/them” does not undermine someone’s gender and is just using English as intended.

      They’re out to fucking brunch while we’re about to be genocided im america. It’s disgusting having this level of trolling run a queer space. There needs to be an alternative queer space where free speech is tolerated.

      And yeah, I’m mad as hell about it and not backing down. These petulant children who run queer spaces these days put us all at risk when they protect trolling neopronouns and non human identities and kick actual queers out. For “gatekeeping”. Fuck blahaj.

      • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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        2 days ago

        I was banned as a queer person for saying that the genderless pronoun “they/them” does not undermine someone’s gender and is just using English as intended.

        get your facts straight you were banned for misunderstanding a conversation SO BADLY you verbally abused another user that you actually agreed with

        https://lemmy.cafe/comment/9831688

        and that’s the most charitable interperetation i can give you

        • inv3r5ion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 days ago

          Yeah, don’t care. Staring down a genocide in America, the pronoun police can go fuck themselves and live in their little fantasy world where dragons are people and queers who don’t play the power tripping pronoun police game are not.

          Also don’t you have a life? You’re literally in every fucking drama commenting about shit that has nothing to do with you.

          Maybe if I identify as an attack helicopter the blahaj mods will get the fucking point. Unlikely.

  • naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I stopped visiting this instance because the transphobic screeds became too much for me. Someone who doesn’t ‘get’ half of young trans people but just feels being nice to people exploring themselves or ignoring them if they’re too much is easier.

  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I think previous posts should remain up, to preserve the discussion in that post, but I understand why you don’t want any further posts about this.

    I think everyone has shared their views on the topic already.

  • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I’m completely in favor of this.

    Frankly, most of what I see on this comm is BPR and YDI, and most people could probably benefit from taking their bans and touching grass. But having some posts be YDI makes the PTB’s more exciting so maybe i’m wrong.

    Maybe we should make some penalty for earning a YDI or BPR, so that people who receive them aren’t encouraged to re-hash the same conflicts over and over? I’m honestly not sure. Part of the problem is that the same people cross-post the same conflict on similar comms, which makes it feel as if the same issue is being litigated repeatedly.

    But complaining about receiving a ban from a protective community with strict conduct policies is certainly not the intent of this community, i don’t think.

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    I wouldn’t be against a temporary ban on posts about getting banned from LBZ over neopronouns, but my general inclination is to keep the previous posts up but locked as a wall of shame. I also understand wanting to take them down altogether and I wouldn’t be that fussed about it if they were.

  • missingno@fedia.io
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    3 days ago

    Everything involving this Blahaj slapfight has been BPR, and anyone continuing to rehash it over here is just BPR^2

    Like, seriously, this should’ve ended the minute the obvious troll provoking everyone got banned. Nothing productive will ever come of continuing to talk about it now, all sides need to let it go.

  • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    I agree in at least a memorandum or a break on this so everyone, myself included, can outside and breathe from air. Play games they enjoy. Read a good book. Listen to music.

    Taking a break from the keyboard helps me when I’m upset about online stuff that doesn’t impact the real world.