Now that everyone has had a chance to argue all day about this, I'm gonna lock this post so you can go touch grass.
I agree that Drag is a massive troll and that user has been banned from many instances over the past few months, including this one.
Maybe try leaving it up to the folks at blajah to decide what they want to be called and maybe just play along with it, even if you find it weird. "Normal" is so fucking boring anyway. If you really can't cope with occasionally coming across an unusual pronoun and being asked to simply accept it without having a meltdown, you probably don't belong on blajah anyway. Just move on.
The "gatekeeping" bans seem like a BPR to me given the context in which it was posted. Having said that, I don't entirely understand the rationale for blajah's rule, since the effect seems to be that you either need to be 100% behind fantasy neo-pronouns and identities (including drag? dragonfucker??) or cop a ban, but if that's how they want things then that's up to them. Not every space is for everyone, and diversity of communities and instances is mostly a good thing.
As far as our instance (dbzer0) goes, malicious/intentional misgendering of users is not permitted, similar to blajah. However, like others in this thread have argued, I agree that someone who literally identifies as a dragon fucker does not deserve to be taken seriously about anything, and it's entirely reasonable to simply assume the choice of pronouns is just another form of trolling. The context and drag's extensive mod history (along with previous alts) are important factors here too.
It's also concerning to me that people are being attacked and reported for being "bigots" or "anti-trans" in the comments just because they have hesitations over what are effectively contentious edge cases involving neo-pronouns and an infamous troll. I know for a fact that many of the commenters in this thread are very supportive of trans people, trans rights and respecting a person's chosen gender pronouns. They just have a problem with this particular dragon-fucker, not because Drag is trans, but because Drag is a narcissistic troll and a community wrecker who thrives on all the drama.
I'm leaving the comments intact for the record, but will add a CW below:
CW: possible misgendering in comments below, at least if you agree dragon fucker is a gender
Blåhaj Lemmy and its communities have certain rules regarding respecting of one's identity and their chosen pronouns. This extends to identities and pronouns you might not agree with. Those are the rules of that space. You broke the rules. The consequences followed. This is just basic stuff.
On the other hand, if you believe certain people to be trolling with their neopronouns, then engaging with the matter in any way, is kind of "falling" for it. So, just ... don't engage? This is the internet. People get to be (more or less seriously) humanoid animals, fantasy creatures and races, and if you can't get along with that, you can expect to get thrown out of a space that explicitly welcome anyone regardless of their identity or pronouns.
People get to be (more or less seriously) humanoid animals, fantasy creatures and races, and if you can’t get along with that, you can expect to get thrown out of a space that explicitly welcome anyone regardless of their identity or pronouns.
If I were a transgender person, I would not go within ten miles of a community that was applying the same rules to fantasy creature role playing as it was to my gender pronouns. The normie world doesn’t need to have any assistance in seeing the whole thing as made up, equivalent to wanting to be called a dolphin or a mermaid, and confusing those two very, very different concepts, or treating them as deserving of precisely the same treatment and rules, sounds very wrong to me.
100%. It is wrong to elevate roleplay (which, let's be clear, is exactly what this is) to the same level of importance as someone's actual gender identity.
It's a false equivalence and does a huge disservice to trans people who are fighting for their right to even exist.
Yeah, this is basically like trying to reclaim the "I sexually identify as an attack helicopter" meme. I get the admins' logic and see what they're going for, but IMO the cost in credibility is too great.
Regardless of what the "normie world" thinks, gender is a social construct and people can do whatever they want. That doesn't make them a troll and doesn't invalidate them. We can't just throw people out for being "too different" for fear of what the "normies" think. We all were too different not that long ago. We live for who we are, not for the approval of anyone else.
Blahaj Community: If you're not trans, you don't get a say in how trans spaces are run.
You: If I were a transgender person, here's how I think I'd feel!
But mate, you're not trans! How great, your opinion literally doesn't matter a half fucking iota. It's not needed or even wanted. Cishets run the world, so fuck right off out of trans spaces with your "but if I were trans" opinions. You're not, no one cares.
I'm trans and while I appreciate your attempt to empathize, I would like to ask you to never question a trans person's pronouns again. When cis people start drawing lines about what's "acceptably trans", I get extremely uncomfortable. I don't care how weird or crazy it seems, it's not your place to do so.
I have had some very bad experiences with cis people trying to tell me that I'm not trans enough for them; that is why I get pissed off when it comes to cis people sticking their noses where it doesn't belong. Hell, America is going turbo-mode on anti-trans rhetoric because a bunch of dumbass cis people think they know better than trans people.
I don't care how strange drag's pronouns are; it isn't your place to decide whether or not drag is valid (drag is literally just asking you to refer to drag by a shortened version of drag's name instead of he/she/they/xe/whatever, it's not that hard).
Thanks for "cisplaining" what a trans person would feel.
As a trans person, I would rather have a space where everyone's identities aren't questioned, than some kind of (potentially hidden) requirement to be in place that your identity has to be "real" in some way. If "normies" have trouble respecting trans people just because we also happen to respect other identities in our spaces, then shrug. If fellow trans people are uncomfortable with that, they don't have to be part of this space, either.
In the end, you're once again making this a much bigger deal than it has to be. Someone broke the explicitly written out rules and got bonked for it. And if you think this person is a troll, they sure are a good one with how much they're being fed with all these posts.
Makes me wonder if the "I got banned" posts are just a continuation of the trolling to make as much drama as possible.
Move on. There's trans people dying out there. This isn't worth fighting over.
The users are taking issue with the admins falling for the troll and allowing the troll to make the space hostile. Their engagement is with the admin/mod response, not with the user.
If you genuinely believe dragons are real and they are able to type and have some understanding of the English language, go gather the data, get it peer reviewed and objectively verified, and go collect your Nobel Prize. Otherwise, if you occupy a space in which people must act as if dragons or Santa or Groot are real, that is an improv roleplay in which failure to say “Yes, and” is a bannable offense. Reality persists. Eppur si muove.
fantasy creatures
By using that adjective, you are implying there are creatures which do not exist. You’re defending the admin response by partaking in the same act which got the users banned.
Imagine dragonfucker instead said "I am Jesus Christ reborn, refer to me as the Lord.". Obvious madness and I doubt any community would respect it. It's the same fantasy shit just dragons are nominally aligned with furry culture
Why are you hung up on the "dragons aren't real" thing? That was never a requirement. Some people will argue that being trans isn't real, being plural isn't real, being genderfluid isn't real, being bigender or another gender entirely isn't real. (Not that you are claiming this.) As such, the admins there simply decided that there won't be a line drawn. Let people do what they want. Heck, you could consider it "roleplaying" if you're more comfortable with that, or alternatively, simply don't engage. It's disrespectful and not to mention disruptive to make it an issue.
Why is it powertriping if you clearly broke the stated rules.
That’s like agreeing to a contract without any comolains and then complaining the contract is unfair if you break it.
Blahaj was never intended to be a free speech zone, it was intended to be the one place on the internet trans people feel safe, so they really don’t care what you think, it isn’t made for you.
As stated elsewhere here, most people would not interpret "Don't question people's gender identity" as "Don't say dragons aren't real or that people can't be dragons".
I disagree. It is a community for gender diverse folk and the rules are there to protect them. This is not about the dragon. It is about respecting someone's identity. "Dragons aren't real" in the context of someone identifying as a dragon is no different than a TERF telling a trans woman that trans women don't exist. It it inherently questioning her identity, transphobic, and attacking her.
Can you see how that would be problematic? I think anyone surpise pikachu'ed by this should consider learning how to be a better ally instead of thinking they can say hurtful stuff.
That's what that post was about? The dragon fucker dude? I blocked him within a week of him existing because he was such an annoying person. I'm as much of a furry as any other socially maladjusted child raised by the internet but have some self control, dude.
The post clearly said “respect people’s pronouns, this rule will be enforced” and everyone getting mod action clearly states in response that they have read and understood the rules, but fully intend to break them.
There are absolutely ways to say “hey Ada, I think your judgement of this particular user is wrong and I am concerned about the damage drag does by engaging in trollish behavior” without also saying “but I plan to misgender people anyway.” The ones getting banned here fail on both counts.
I suppose I should thank everyone in this comment section. I was initially feeling a little like I might have overreacted to an admin making a decision that no one in their right minds would actually defend when I sadposted on 196 about leaving, but seeing the wellspring of support for dragonfuckergender, I now feel comfortable in that leaving Blahaj is, indeed, the correct choice.
Bye, bigot. You're not welcome anyway. You don't get to question someone's identity. Period. No matter what else they might have done, you do not get to question their identity.
I don't see how it's bigoted to be concerned with trolls whose behaviour actively harms the LGBTQ+ movement. There are tons of comments of that user that show they're just trolling and engaging in disingenuous behaviour.
The right to identify as X or Y or whatever is not being questioned, the sincerity of this user specifically is being questioned. And that's done because there's a history of people claiming to identify as X/Y when they have no intention of doing so, and just doing it to drive people away from LGBTQ+ acceptance.
Bye, bigot. You’re not welcome anyway. You don’t get to question someone’s identity. Period. No matter what else they might have done, you do not get to question their identity.
It's a fun axiom you have there. Shame it doesn't make any sense. But hey, if you want to validate the old conservative 'attack helicopter' joke, I literally can't stop you. And you can't question anyone who identifies as such. Funny world.
Sorry, I've already committed thoughtcrime by questioning whether dragons are real. This is the state of Blahaj, it would seem.
is already going out of their way to treat people poorly. given their past statements, it’s deffo you being the bigger person for even giving them the time of day at this point.
I'm gonna be honest, y'all kinda fucking dumb lmao.
Let's say drag is a troll. If so, then drag's wanting you to do exactly what you're doing now. You have taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. Congrats! You're helping drag cause problems! To avoid taking the bait, you gotta use drag's pronouns. Do that, and there'll be no drama for drag to stir up.
If drag isn't a troll, then you're just being a dick and intentionally causing drama when you could just use drag's pronouns. By doing so, you'd make drag feel happy and accepted; which would be very progressive of you.
Soooooo..... By posting this, at best you're just feeding a troll and making other trans people question whether or not their pronouns will be respected (no, really, when cis people start drawing lines for trans people, I get extremely uncomfortable; it's not your place to do so, fuck right off), at worst you're being a piece of shit.
Edit: the fucking entitlement of cis people telling trans people how to run their spaces is sickening. I thought Lemmy was supposed to be fairly progressive, yet once again I'm being shown that cis people believe they deserve a voice in something that has nothing to do with them. You don't get to call yourself an ally when you question someone's validity.
"The only way to beat trolls is to comply with their every demand and especially stay silent when they get the administrators to enforce their trolling" is an interesting take, and one about as useful to a community as "Just ignore the bullies and they'll go away" is to a child.
A) the trolling part is getting people like you to lose their shit and question a person's "transness".
B) who died and made you the eternal arbiter of validity? Fuck off. I've had enough cis people question me and others; and now you want to tell us how to run our own spaces? Go fuck yourself.
The discussion is about people being banned from blahaj, not about whether we want to use these particular pronouns.
I’m sure the dragon user is tickled pink about all the drama, yes, but talking about policy when people are getting banned seems like a good thing to do even that notwithstanding.
Except the discussion hinges around people trying to claim that drag's pronouns aren't valid. That isn't their place to decide. That is why they got banned.
YUP. no notes. i see no shortage of “i’m blocking you now” in comment replies to other people. it’s two easy clicks to block a single divisive user. why not drag?
because you all clearly enjoy the drama. you wanted to flex your rejection muscles in the face of clearly stated rules in a community space that was not designed for you. enjoy! yall brought this on yourselves.
You're acting like this is a bunch of posters getting together to dogpile on poor drag instead of a bunch of posters being upset at the actions and statements of the admin.
Yeah, they don't block drag because drag is their golden ticket to express their transphobic views while pretending it's just about drag. Their real reaction to drag is:
THIS JUST IN: cis, agender people disgust MossyFeathers, and they are so valid in feeling this way! They need an award for not feeding a troll, because addressing the mythical-reptile-sona troll in question at all is definitely not a loosing battle.
Anyways, neopronouns are fine or whatever, and can help people. Trolling in third-person to make a mockery of the concept of neopronouns seems counter-intuitive though, unless making people who use them feel bad is the point. Ah well, I guess agender people don't exist, and cis bad. 😑
I came to post exactly what you said then duck out, so I'll just add that Lemmy as a whole is fairly progressive but .world is largely centrist Americans, has multiple notable shit stirrers, and a few of them and their alts are already here agreeing with themselves.
So yeah, I'm not surprised this turned into a dumpster fire of " 'brave' cishets pontificating on their standards of pronoun etiquette in trans spaces".
I don't care for drag's pronouns and neopronouns in general, but that doesn't matter. You know what I haven't seen on blahaj in my time there? Drag being nasty and trollish to anyone not using them. In the cases I've seen, drag handles it pretty maturely. Troll or not, people are getting upset about their idea of drag, not drag and drags behavior.
drag is an asshole and I'm not exactly jumping in to help drag. But I do respect identities and pronouns and that's exactly what the admins were enforcing here. You don't have to agree.
And you may think it's silly but people will do shit like misgender/ridicule Musk by calling him a woman's name or using she/her when describing him because he's transphobic. When you treat identity as something that can be taken away or called absurd and ignored, you're perpetuating the same shit trans people like myself are trying to avoid or change.
Anyway, the rules are clearly stated and enforced around identity. YDI
Dragonfucker has multiple times said that if you're feeling suicidal, then you should instead get a gun and start shooting Trump supporters.
If you're planning on killing yourself, go buy a gun and take a red hat with you. Drag is serious. Get out if you can. Move to another country. But if you're actually hopeless, and there's nothing anyone can say to dissuade you... Then make it count.
I thought originally that this was a big non-issue and only relevant because of the bans. This user is, it turns out, actively endangering trans people's lives by what they like to post on Lemmy. The people who are getting suckered into supporting them in their whole shtick, thinking they're modeling what it means to be an ally to a fellow trans person, need to wise the fuck up.
Inb4 "as a non-trans person you don't have the right to say that." I've talked with more than a few suicidal people during some variety of crisis. If you support the user that creates that type of posting, because the user in question is using pronouns, wake the fuck up.
PTB. This has very much soured me on Blahaj Zone, unfortunately. Not a big loss for them, since I only occasionally posted there, but very saddening to me.
I’m starting to believe that instances that are primarily for one and only one subgrouping are a bad idea, because bad actors just have to put on the right group appellation and the rest of the community will go to bat for whatever malicious nonsense they’ve got in mind, because “they’re one of us!” It’s the same type of thing as separating church and state.
By far the most inclusive communities, in my experience, are the fully general-purpose instances or the regional ones. It’s just too easy for “we’re supportive for the X people” to turn into “well you’re not an X person, and the person who’s beefing with you is, so GET FUCKED from all of us.”
rare PugJesus L. everyone making this a shitshow had every opportunity to block this user, just as every other person we are annoyed with, but for some reason, no, we have to all be vocal about it.
You kind of have a point, to be honest. I started talking about this initially for well-intentioned reasons and still hold some hope that it might be lead to a better exchange of views with the blahaj folks, but it seems like almost all heat no light as of present.
rare PugJesus L. everyone making this a shitshow had every opportunity to block this user, just as every other person we are annoyed with, but for some reason, no, we have to all be vocal about it.
If it was drag themselves, that would be one thing. I don't even remember the last time I interacted with, or read, drag's posts. It's the admin reaction which soured me.
goes to a trans meta sub about rule enforcement, breaks said rule immediately, gets banned. seems about right? like do you want people to enforce rules or not? I though this sub was about people who are doing whatever they want regardless of the rules, not for enforcing said rules.
The rules are that there is explicitly no line drawn with regards to (gender) identity and/or preferred pronouns.
The banned user commented that they themselves draw a line where it comes to fantasy creatures, which is incompatible with above rule by virtue of excluding people.
you know exactly what they meant by that. “dragons aren’t real” means “i have read the post and intend to break the rules communicated therein by the site admin, rather than doing the infinitely easier and more respectful task that is blocking the user.” just like every other user getting banned in that thread.
When some users’ sexual identities are as dragons, “dragons aren’t real” is a lot like “all lives matter”: on the surface, a statement of fact so obvious and controversial that it doesn’t bear saying, except for the subtext, which is an attack.
Not gonna join the war, but I heard some other comment compare saying you sexually identify as dragon is akin to saying you sexually identify as an attack helicopter, originally intended as a mockery to lgbt group.
Except one is a well known transphobic line and the other is someone genuinely trying to be identified as such. If drag was laughing about it outside blahaj I would question it but that's not something I've seen. Just good faith attempts to get people to use the right pronouns.
When some users’ sexual identities are as dragons, “dragons aren’t real” is a lot like “all lives matter”: on the surface, a statement of fact so obvious and controversial that it doesn’t bear saying, except for the subtext, which is an attack.
Blahaj.zone is a fucking disaster. I don't remember any user accounts from that place who comment with any sort of sanity. It's like the lemmygrad of the LBGTQIA+.
I wish instance blocks would block also all the users from that instance.
Blahaj.zone is a fucking disaster. I don’t remember any user accounts from that place who comment with any sort of sanity. It’s like the lemmygrad of the LBGTQIA+.
Tankies who enable Stalin worship = Wanting to be properly addressed now?
You can do whatever you want... however, so too can they. I may or may not agree with either side (fwiw Drag is obviously trolling, though that also seems entirely irrelevant?), but I defend blahaj's right to do as they please on their own instance - which they pay for and maintain with little help from others on the Fediverse? - and the post "Neopronouns are not trolling" seems fairly clear to me.
My problem lies rather with how that is not communicated clearly to people. It is not linked in the sidebar, it is not pinned even on lemmy.blahaj.zone, it is in a community that I at first thought was Local-Only b/c it was difficult to find from Lemmy.World (b/c of the different display "Blahaj Lemmy Meta" vs. link-to names [email protected]) - although it also seems cross-posted to 196 (but why MUST someone be subscribed to that one?) - and especially: when you visit that (cross-)post from some other instance, let's say lemmy.world via this link, the only text you see on the sidebar is for c/196, not the sidebar of lemmy.blahaj.zone, or from this link the text for the Meta community is equally uninformative, plus most apps don't show any sidebar text by default anyway, either burying it behind several button presses or perhaps not making it available at all.
So if you just wandered into a post federated and therefore hosted elsewhere, you may have no clue what is going on there? This is exasperated further by the sidebar text of [email protected] or [email protected] stating "other rules" which links to Lemmy.World, even when visited while on lemmy.blahaj.zone!?!? And then that post says nothing whatsoever about neopronouns - the closest mention is "prejudice of any kind" is banned but this is definitely a more contentious issue that those 4 words do not next to nothing to clarify. Also I don't see much of anything in the Lemmy.World ToS that would apply - possibly the text about "misinformation" but again, that seems far from clear, and more for an issue where the admins of Lemmy.World and the admins of lemmy.blahaj.zone would need to come to some kind of mutual agreement or at least understanding.
The tools made available on the Fediverse to help guide people into understanding what the rules are are abysmally inadequate. Ada can run their own instance however they wish, though it sure would be good to find better ways to communicate the expected behaviors rather than "ban people" or "not ban people" after waiting for them to walk into this issue unknowingly. I guess there is also "defederate from lemmy.blahaj.zone" vs. "not defederate from lemmy.blahaj.zone" as well - though it sucks that no other options in-between have yet been presented here. Beehaw at least has its core principles statement, though it too is not linked to from anywhere unless you visit the instance explicitly in order to investigate it (except from PieFed, where a message is presented - that's fucking awesome!:-D).
Things like this are why imho the Fediverse is not at all like merely using emails. There you simply click "Send" and it goes off to wherever it needs to be, but to navigate Lemmy without being banned for some off-hand remark requires quite a bit deeper knowledge than that.
So like, if you had read the aforementioned post about "Neopronouns are not trolling", then YDI (which b/c people won't read the sidebar even in this community, stands for "You Deserved It":-D) for inciting drama? However, if you had not, I definitely see why it at least comes across as a BPR ("Bait-Provoked Reaction"), coming a day or two after that "announcement" had been made (which again, how were people supposed to have known that?). Therefore it is at least possible that you are both correct, and merely talking past one another, each not willing to find common ground with the other.
Their identity isn't a dragon. Like they might identify as a dragon but thats a very different thing from sexuality or being trans. And I'm not gonna start calling them a dragon because of it.
Their identity is someone who "rides" dragons. Nobody ever said anything about sexuality or gender identity.
You don't have to respect that, but if you walk into a community that says "we will ban you if you disrespect anyone's identity" you don't get to act like you're the victim when that happens.
They don't claim to be a dragon, but a "dragon rider," or "dragon fucker," as it were. If this isn't a troll, this individual is a voyeur and sex pest expecting the world to participate in their sexual arousal. I, for one, do not consent and will not participate.
Cry harder, YDI. Why does anyone care this much? If you dislike them, block them. Don't cry publicly about how you don't wanna take .5 seconds to type something else.
Some early gay advocacy groups in US history attempted to cozy up with the more mainstream institutions of the time by distancing themselves from the more 'subversive' elements of the gay community and publicly condemning 'flamboyant' or 'promiscuous' gays. This had the opposite effect of reducing both enthusiasm of gay rights advocates and acceptance of the gay community by the mainstream. This is essentially what you are doing when you condemn trans people who use neopronouns as attention-seeking trolls. You making a distinction between 'legitimate' trans people and 'trolls' will not cause bigots to make the same distinction.
Commenable observation. My spectral theoretical identity is "_chaotic-neutral_nightmare-floorp-floofer" though. Which impressively, may (or may not) exist on the plane of shared, consensus reality. Telling me it doesn't exist in your waking world is just plain offensive though, and needs to be punished!
I really am a special lil fucker! Aren't I wonderful? uwu
I hope you guise like me and respecc all my identifiers, especially if/when I decide they exclusively revolve around a mythical creature's cawk, and my enjoyment of bouncing on it (for hours)!
Tap for spoiler
😖😖😖😖😖😖😖😖
EDIT: /s for the oblivious, and I would have typed this in third-person, if that were possible for me, without inducing an anyeursm. A sex pest/transphobic shithead being protected, through a mod banning tons of users is what caused this reaction, not neoproun use (which is fine), or admittedly, a wikipedia article about big lizards.
Also, internalized transphobia exists, and I try to avoid inducing more of it in others. It does not seem like the troll in question wishes to add anything to any discussion, other than mocking validation of neopronouns, and probably worse, with the racist and violence-based-suicide-promoting posts. I attempted to express this here, just extremely poorly. Internet sabbatical time now.
Some drunk dude with a blue lives punisher tattoo calling themselves something and laughing obviously isn't in good faith. No matter what words they choose.
Good for you being the arbitrator of what is acceptable for how other people live their lives. That's sure a big responsibility! Running with your example, I'm now using the only two pronouns I feel comfortable using for people like you: gobshite/broomstick.
Today I learned that speaking only in third person is a pronoun, and that telling depresed trans people to die in a not-yet-happening war as an alternative to dying from depression is perfectly fine, actually. As long as you're totally not trolling, it's all good!
I feel enlightened, and touchable grass is but a distant memory.
I think it's the mismatch between Reddit and Lemmy. Yeah the mods screw up sometimes but it's nowhere near the quantity of Reddit. So they're trying to bring any ban into this community, even tiny cooling off period ones.