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
I haven’t put a ton of thought into it, but I think I agree that it’s at very least (Giving the biggest benefit of the doubt) unsupportive of minority groups to label their concerns as ‘political’ and shut down the conversation on that ground.
But I also get not wanting every bit of content in your feed picked over with a fine-toothed comb for micro-aggressions, and have all the comment sections be for/anti-X wars. Its tiring.
As it is also tiring to just BE everyday as part of an oppressed group.
idk, at first thought, the best solution seems like everyone should just carve out a drama-free safe-zone among your closest friends, and/or a small community of people very similar to you. But that’s hard, at least for me.
I belong to a few minority groups, and even within each of those, there are aspects of myself that make me feel unwelcome in many of those safespaces. For instance, in hispanic groups… I don’t speak spanish. I was at a concert last night, and one of the bands called out in spanish something to the effect of “where are my hispanic people” which I only was able to decipher with my miniscule understanding of spanish (highschool class) and the context of a bunch of hispanics yelling out in response. I’m just like… oh yeah, not me I guess.
So yeah, politics is near impossible to escape. But it would be nice to take a fucking breath free of the weight of all the problems in the world, in my life.
idk, everything is fucked. Well, idk, dad jokes seem cool.
PS. What’s with the term BIPOC? What was wrong with POC? POC felt like we were in this all together… BIPOC feels like it prioritizes black people over other people of color.
guess I put a little more thought into it over the course of writing this, which took for fucking ever bc of ADHD and social anxiety. I’m looking at every word, wondering how it could be misconstrued or misunderstood, or hell correctly understood as proof that I’m a massive bigot asshole. sigh post
Your analysis is all well and good and there’s a whole lot of content I agree with there, but you are changing the subject. The subject was the meaning of the word political, not whether people have the right to avoid reading controversy. Everyone on both sides of this issue actually agrees that people have the right to avoid reading controversy. I spent the original thread telling Ada that I wanted to be free from reading controversial takes like “politics is anything I disagree with”, and Ada spent the thread telling me that she wanted Abigail to be free from reading controversial takes like “politics is group decision making”. We both had the same goal: protect people from controversy. The disagreement was simply the meaning of the word political. Ada wanted an echo chamber where everyone agrees that politics is “anything I disagree with”, and I wanted a safe space where we don’t say transphobic things like that. Which, I am aware, is functionally the same as an echo chamber but I don’t know how else to phrase that