ada comments on Moderator banned from their own community for practicing harassment

Moderator banned from their own community for practicing harassment (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by MonsterBug@sh.itjust.works to c/fediverselore@lemmy.ca

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Its a shame because they're prominent voice on lemmy. Good on the admins for not tolerating this. I don't understand the point of targeting a person you don't like on the internet just because they said something that upset you and spamming their post with downvotes. If you don't like someone block their ass and be done with it. I agree with the perspective that its harassment (and an incredibly petty ineffective form of it at that)

[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Is blahaj drama free?

I hope not.

We're an explicitly protective, safe space for a minority group that is actively targeted by governments, political institutions, churches, and bigots in general

So of course we create drama. Bigots will make sure of it.

He was banned from blahaj for literally just showing up and saying reasonable things. If that's against the rules of your instance

Nah. He was banned for repeatedly, deliberately, and knowingly breaking the rules. Whether or not you think gatekeeping someones identity is acceptable, blahaj.zone has rules against it, and his response to it was to deliberately break the rules and stir up shit.

A lot of people feel like, if they think something reasonable, they're allowed to say it, and it's weird and controlling for some other person to say that opinion is the incorrect opinion and demand that they not say it within certain spaces.

Tough shit. When someones "reasonable" opinion involves positioning themselves as the arbiter of other folks validity and identity, they're doing harm. When they choose to repeatedly and deliberately do that in a safe space for those folk, they're repeatedly and deliberately doing harm and breaking the rules.

All of which to say, even if you're a gatekeeper like him, who thinks that you have the right to tell other people their own identities, if you come in to a blahaj community and do it, you're breaking blahaj rules. If you choose to knowingly and repeatedly do it, whilst then complaining about it in various meta spaces, then you're breaking rules and stirring up drama.

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[–] PhilipTheBucket 5 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

I did it again, typed a bunch of tit-for-tat stuff and then deleted it. Here's my attempt to get to the heart of the matter (partially from elsewhere in this thread):

If blahaj admins would just be straight-up about it, and say "Listen. This dragon person is clearly a troll, and we're banning them for that reason, but we don't want to allow people to decide pronouns on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the rule produces a stupid result, but that's the rule we settled on and we have good reasons not to bend it in any circumstance or have to have long debates about this stuff every week, so please respect it or we will ban you," I don't think there would be any kind of issue. That's a decent and human-to-human interaction that gets across the point and still respects the good reasons for the rule. To me (and maybe you may disagree with this), it seemed like instead of that they said "HOW DARE YOU MISGENDER THIS PERSON YOU TRANSPHOBIA ADJACENT BIGOT" and then went on to (as in the current post) continue to whine about how horrible it was that anyone was trying to point out that (a) the user in question was clearly a transphobic troll (b) blahaj going to bat for them was ridiculous. And, you still constantly talk about how those people were wrong, and bigoted, and shouldn't be talking that way even off the blahaj instance.

Same for banning PJ. It would be fine if you said "He was kind of pushy about trying to make his point and although he clearly wasn't coming from any hostile place, we tried explaining the rules and he kept doing it, so we banned him." But no. It's "repeatedly and deliberately doing harm," complaining about him trying to justify himself off-instance after the ban like he is required to just shut up and take it instead of voicing his side of the story, "positioning themselves as the arbiter of other folks validity and identity," all this apocalyptic stuff.

I mean... aren't you positioning yourself as the arbiter of other folks' validity and identity? You positioned yourself as the protector of LGBTQ+ people but you have no problem booting them from your space if they don't adhere to your precise details of what that means. (Like, for example, protecting the space from obviously-transphobic trolls, I feel like some of them would think you should be proactive about.) When you boot them for not adhering to that, isn't that... gatekeeping? Or no?

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[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

t would be fine if you said "He was kind of pushy about trying to make his point and although he clearly wasn't coming from any hostile place,

He was repeatedly and deliberately gatekeeping people's identities. I don't know how to make that any clearer to you.

Whether or not any given person is a troll, it's not an excuse to make people's identities a reward for good behaviour.

If you decide that taking away peoples identities "because they're a troll" is ok, then you're telling the gender diverse people around you that you don't see them for who they are, and that you're just pretending to accept them as long as they behave in ways you find appropriate. Normalising the idea that we can decide other peoples identities is literally the goal of trolls, and so when you see a troll and decide that's a good reason to invalidate people, you're feeding the troll, and hurting the gender diverse folk around you.

I will respect a trolls identity, even as I ban them, because opening the door to deciding which identities are valid does nothing but hurt vulnerable people.

This was all explained to PJ, several times, and he doubled down. And tripled down. Whilst explicitly denying people's identities.

He was coming from a hostile place, and refused to leave it, even when it was explained to him.

I mean... aren't you positioning yourself as the arbiter of other folks' validity and identity?

The fact that you're equating the creation of protective rules in explicitly safe spaces as being morally identical to gatekeeping other folks identities makes me doubt your intentions. If you genuinely believe they're the same thing, you've got a lot of work to do. And if you don't believe they're the same thing, but are comparing them to win an internet discussion, then you're the one stirring up drama...

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[–] PhilipTheBucket 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

If you genuinely believe they're the same thing, you've got a lot of work to do.

Okey dokey.

This is what I was talking about: You're taking the role of a teacher talking to a thick or disobedient student, instead of just us having a conversation. I do take that tone too sometimes, but usually it's when I'm being sarcastic or jerky about something on purpose. It's not actually how I look at my role vs. the other person in the conversation. This is like I said why I think the "privileged user who tells other users what to do" role is a toxic thing that Lemmy creates for certain people in the interactions.

I feel like I explained pretty clearly what in my opinion the issue is, and you're just reiterating your favored definitions for all of these words (ignoring anything I had to say about the validity) and again how things really operate... which, okay. I feel like there's not a lot of point in going back and forth about it, you can just read again the message you just replied to, if you want my answer about this stuff.

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[–] ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You really need to listen to what you're saying.

You're arguing for the right to deny people their own identities in their own safe spaces whilst claiming that somehow, the real issue is letting queer folk choose the language that works best for them.

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[–] PhilipTheBucket 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nope, try again. If you want to summarize what I'm claiming is the real issue a little more accurately to anything I actually said, I'd be happy to continue the conversation if you want.

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[–] erin@piefed.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

Regardless of the stuff about Ada's tone, it seems like your ultimate point was the classic "paradox of tolerance." I certainly do not see enforcing a safe space as policing identity. Regardless of how respectfully done, deciding when it is okay to respect someone's identity is against blahaj rules. The consistent moderation with no room for chipping away at the edges is what attracted me to the instance. This person broke blahaj rules. They may have broken it politely (I disagree. Tone does not excuse content), but they broke the rules. Banning them for repeated invalidation of others' identities is not policing their identity. Your identity cannot be predicated on the invalidation of others. We have every prerogative to be intolerant of intolerance.

Again, regardless of Ada's tone, the point stands. You keep dancing around that. The rules were broken. This user acted inappropriately for the space they were in. They are not forced to use blahaj communities, and chose to do so while violating the rules. They have no right to our safe space if they cannot ensure it is safe for others. I strongly dislike the "just asking questions" polite veneer of your comments while very intentionally dodging the elephant in the room, which is that the user did wrong for the space they were in, regardless if you agree or not.

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[–] PhilipTheBucket 2 points 1 year ago*

Let's try this approach:

I certainly do not see enforcing a safe space as policing identity.

What's an example I brought up about how Ada could have made the space safer, if only she wasn't apparently hung up on pronouns as the one and only most critical thing that defines whether or not the space is safe?

Banning them for repeated invalidation of others' identities is not policing their identity.

My example of gatekeeping actually had nothing to do with PJ (or, for that matter, with policing anyone's identity specifically). What was the example?

I strongly dislike the "just asking questions" polite veneer of your comments while very intentionally dodging the elephant in the room, which is that the user did wrong for the space they were in, regardless if you agree or not.

Way up at the beginning of the conversation when I brought up a couple of examples (my opinion, for whatever it's worth, for what the "right way" or an alternative way would have been to approach this whole situation and enforce the rules of the community), did it include PJ getting banned and anyone else who didn't do the pronouns in the approved way getting banned? What was the critical difference in the two ways of approaching it I modeled (was it banned vs. not banned, or was it something different)?

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