Two hours ago I made a post to [email protected] about US politics. I had previously had a good relationship with the head moderator of this community. They've encouraged My political posts, and he's removed comments by people that misgendered Me, and reminded people of My pronouns, like in this thread two days ago:
However, an hour ago in this new thread, the same moderator who was telling people to respect My capitalised pronouns uses lowercase pronouns to address Me:
And he has left up earlier comments which also seemed to misgender Me, and which I specifically pointed out:
Even as some users in the thread gender Me correctly:
I'm making this thread in the main community because since the mod has banned Me, I can no longer report the comment or leave a reply correcting the pronoun. I would like to gain the attention of @[email protected]
Misgendering trans people and banning Them at the same time so They can't do anything about it is not the kind of thing I expect to see on Blahaj. This mod is clearly 100% aware of My pronouns, and made a choice here. I suppose they could be using the general "you", but it just doesn't look like that, what with banning Me, telling Me My post isn't welcome, and telling Me to go to a different community. I used to have a good rapport with this mod, they said several times that they valued My posts. I posted something he disagrees with, and now all of a sudden respecting trans people's pronouns isn't a priority anymore. He's misgendering Me and they're leaving up comments that also misgender Me. It feels targeted.
EDIT: I cannot seem to embed images. Every time I hit edit and fix the image links and press save, they change to some kind of aussie.zone image proxy link. For now I have left them as links without embedding them.
You're right. I did misgender You in that report, and I apologize. I have no excuse because I'm well aware You use capitalized pronouns. I even tried to be careful not to do so, but I still failed. I'll fix it.
As for the comment I left up, the post is removed for violating the community rules, so I didn't remove further comments after I removed the post itself, but You're right -- I'll remove it.
The post was removed for a completely different reason. The post was encouraging people to lie in order to win elections -- erasing the experiences of groups such as Palestinians, immigrants, the economically disadvantaged, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ people. There's no way I was going to leave that up. Erasure is never okay.
It's very infrequent that I have to remove a post, but this one very clearly violated the community guidelines.
I have no problem with You as a person, and I've always appreciated Your meaningful and thoughtful contributions to the community, even when I don't fully agree. I'm sure You feel a bit hurt that I also applied a temporary ban for the post, but I did that because even though I personally like You and have tried to be nothing but an ally and friend, it would be completely inappropriate for me as a mod to show favoritism in such a case. I therefore applied the same temp ban I would to any other user who made such a post. It was genuinely nothing personal, and I'll be honest -- it wasn't even easy for me to do the right thing. I almost sent You a DM to explain the situation, but I wasn't sure it would be welcome. Now I wish I had.
I do believe in erasing the experiences of minorities. If I were living in Germany in 1939, I'd erase the experiences of the Jew living in My basement while talking to the Gestapo. I erase My own experiences all the time. I misgender Myself to stay in the closet to avoid violence. Never been out as goddessgender at work or school.
If what you are advocating is total exposure of all information having to do with minorities, you're talking about actions that will get people killed. That's why Republicans are trying to pass laws to require ID for Pornhub, you know. They want to know all about the lived experiences of gay and trans people by analysing our porn habits, so they can do violence against us. What you're speaking in favour of is genocide.
I am glad it was just a mistake, but it was a mistake that you prevented Me from fixing the easy way. I couldn't report the comment, couldn't reply. So I made this post, and had to put up with being grilled on My pronoun usage and told My identity is evil by various people. I didn't defend any oppressive systems, I outlined a strategy to just shut up for a few months until it's safe to act again without causing a genocide. I didn't break rule 2. But you did break rules 5 and 8. Shouting down leftism. No open discussion. I did everything I could to play by the rules and disagree with you politely. Maybe instead of making an exception for Me, it's time to actually enforce your community's rules by not being so ban-happy with everyone. What happened today was bound to happen eventually and it's going to keep happening as long as nobody's allowed to have an open discussion about the election on your community. Everyone who disagrees being banned is not an open discussion.
Lying about harboring a Jew in Nazi Germany is understandable. I personally have lied about having undocumented people in my household.
Lying about a presiden committing genocide domestically and abroad is a totally different thing. This is more comparable to claiming that Hitler wasn't exterminating people in death camps. This type of lie results in erasure and should never be applied, especially not to garner votes in an election.
Lying and saying a president is trans-friendly when he literally just signed anti-trans legislation is also not okay. We need to be aware of what our government is doing.
But on an individual level? Absolutely. I'm actually in such a position at my own job, not as a teacher, but in which I do not disclose or even obfuscate certain facts about my clients. I would never out a queer person who did not want to be outed. I personally grew up in an extremely small conservative community where I feared for my life.
But again, that's not what the post itself was about -- it was about lying to win the election for Biden. That's how it violated rule 2. If it were about lying to protect marginalized groups, it would have absolutely been left up.
But here's where the erasure comes in: There is a genocide happening right now, like right this very moment, that wouldn't be possible without our president's support.
I hope I've addressed all Your points. In any case, I re-emphasize that I cannot allow a post that suggests we lie to cover/erase genocide, border fascism, transphobia, and any other form of oppression by the state, for the same reason that I wouldn't allow a Maoist to deny the people who died due to state-induced famine.