7d ago

Drag apologizes to Ada, Lemmy Disapproves

Lemmy doesn't like it when apologies :[

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The thread about dragonfucker getting banned has been honestly very uncomfortable for me to go through. I don't know or particularly care about this user, nor do I know what drama drag's involved in, or how much of that is drag's fault. But I have read a significant amount of inexcusably transphobic assertions from a large number of users, many of them accusing drag of being a troll or even a disgrace to the transgender community for the unspeakably vile sin of having a neopronoun.
Like, I'm not attempting to defend drag here. People are saying that drag was probably banned for more reasons beyond screenshotting DMs, but when reading into the thread it seems to me that the only thing that everyone hates about drag is... that drag has a non-normative gender identity? And that's somehow making a joke of the transgender community? I mean, fill me in if you feel like it, but no amount of trolling or crimes drag has commited justifies the amount of ridiculing that this person has received on the basis of drag's gender identity on that thread. It does seem to me, as an external observer, that a large amount of users were eagerly awaiting for drag to have a less than ideal behavior for everyone to be immensely mean to drag and to claim "See? I always knew drag was just a troll! No one can possibly have a gender identity this far from what I'm comfortable tolerating!".
It's making me feel bad on baseline empathy alone, and neopronouns or non-binary genders aren't really an emotionally charged topic for me. I'm cis male, lol. But seeing the unimaginably hostile reaction many have had towards this user on the basis of drag's quirky pronoun, which literally does not hurt anybody, has made me very uncomfortable.
I have already been feeling uncomfortable on Lemmy, in general, because of this insane obsession users from certain instances have with tankies, and the disingenuity anything politics is treated because of that (and politics being such a prevalent topic on Lemmy is certainly not helping!). I don't like how, for example, I have seen orders of magnitude more people shitting on Hexbear trolls than actual Hexbear users trolling back when it was online. But Hexbear trolls, or tankies, or whatever, are an abstract group, that is not contingent on some intimately held aspect of yourself. This drama however is targeting a specific user, a single person, who belongs in an already excluded demography, and is probably still figuring things out about dragself. It's a whole new level of fucked up.
My mutuals from other sites, some of whom are leftists, and some of whom are trans, are wary of moving into the Fediverse and particularly Lemmy because of stuff like this. I have argued in favor of the Fediverse in the past because I'm a bit of a FOSS nut, but this I cannot defend against.
Anyway sorry for the rambling lol. The other thread made me feel bad enough on a gut level that I had to let it out. Also, for what it's worth, I have seen enough people with non-normative gender identities to trust that OP is not, in fact, a drag alt. Not that this being the case would change much about the recalcitrant transphobia.
- politics complaint aside, your observation about people using this to complain about a neopronoun seems apt. none of the content of complaints about drag's use of neopronouns actually seem relevant to drag's use of neopronouns. someone trolling with neopronouns is trivially handled by just accepting the neopronouns…
  
  someone trolling with neopronouns is trivially handled by just accepting the neopronouns
  Absolutely, and I can't stop thinking about that.
  For the sake of argument, let's take at face value the claims that drag is just some anti-trans troll that is doing the attack helicopter bit. That drag is secretly some 4channer cis dude in mom's basement wanting to stir up some drama on Lemmy to expose hyporcrisy.
  Then this troll has done an absolutely stellar job forcing everyone to show their true colors on this topic.
  Drag has proven, unquestionably and beyond a shade of doubt, that Lemmy is not safe for non-binary people, not even on Blahaj. And that is despite the admin's (in my eyes) best efforts to handle the situation.
  Then, of course, there is the tiny little detail that this is a wildly bad faith assumption that requires going through a few hoops. Most of the assumption hinges on neopronouns being quirky and uncommon. And if the assumption happens to be wrong, then all this dogpiling has achieved is to wreak havoc on a vulnerable person's mental health, and possibly even cause some trauma down the line.
  I don't care if dragonfucker needs to apologize about wronging someone else; at this point a few users absolutely need to apologize to drag as well.
  
  and possibly even cause some trauma down the line.
  Oh, it's not down the line. Right now you can go read drag having a mental breakdown - https://lemmy.world/post/24516643
  
  Boo hoo, poor little Drag. No sympathy for trolls.
  
  That's really weird. The trans community on Lemmy doesn't think neopronouns are trolling. You can see so at that link. It's only you and other cis people who think so. How come you think you know better than trans people about trans issues. Isn't that arrogant?
  
  Funny, I didn't say anything about you being trans, or anything about trans issues. Yet you claim I think I know better than trans people about trans issues. My problem with you is the constant shit-stirring, using alts to back you up, and flooding someone's DMs with porn and making communities to harass them. That's asshole, trollish behaviour regardless of gender.
  
  using alts to back you up, and flooding someone’s DMs with porn and making communities to harass them
  None of that is true
  constant shit-stirring
  70% of the arguments drag has are people choosing to get mad about pronouns. 25% are rehashing previous drama. 5% are actual genuine conflicts. So drag assumed you were 70% transphobic and 5% genuine, just like the drama you point to.
- yeah i've decided to leave this community based on essentially the same thing you've described. i mean i know people are shitters on the wider fediverse, but i figured the places beehaw federated with were at least decent
  i guess not
  also, the whole thing of "bot is obviously a drag alt" smacks of the same prejudiced "only one person could have a weird gender identity, it must be the same person"
  could y'all please stick to talking about how someone behaves, not how they identify? it's not that fucking hard
- Have you really never seen hexbears do the pig shit spam?
  
  Yeah, I have, and it's honestly disgusting. But for every pig shit emoji I have seen, I have also seen hundreds of comments shitting on tankies, dunking on commenters for expressing "radical leftist opinions" that are not that radical outside of social media, shitting on the work of the Lemmy devs for being professed marxist-lenninists, or claiming that Lemmy.ml is somehow cancer on the network that needs getting rid of, because it's nominally a tankie instance despite the sheer amount of democrat shilling, Israel apologia and NATO bootlicking you can see here.
  It's a matter of scale. I will concede that I simpatize with the more leftist parts of the political spectrum, both marxists and anarchists, but I feel like at this point I would be grossed out at Lemmy even if I was 100% a liberal. Political disagreements are fine I guess, but the way they permeate the culture on Lemmy is weird, obsessive and unhealthy, and most importantly, it comes from a very small number of instances. And it's not the tankie ones.
  
  This is the second in command of lemmy.ml:
  The Soviet Union made being gay illegal. Marxism-Leninism has a very long history of calling queerness "bourgeois decadence". Some tankies choose to follow in the footsteps of that history. Others just ignore it and pretend it was excusable. Tankies aren't allies.
  
  I debated with myself about replying to this comment because of our few messages yesterday/day before.
  I decided to chime in because, despite not being terribly fond of you, your point here is very important, and valid.
  I had an account on .ml, as I am very left, and everything was fine at first. I eventually got sick of the constant rhetoric of: America bad, which means China and Russia are really good, and we would all be better off living in a M-L utopia like they do there!
  And look, I'm not a Xenophobe/Sinophobe/Russophobe, I think that the people of those countries are just people. Sure America bad, but it's a bit fucked up to go from that and recognising that some of what is said about them(China/Russia) is almost certainly propaganda, to the frothing true-believer fanaticism that goes on.
  There's a lot of talk at hexbear(when I'd gone to have a look and make my own opinion of them) and some parts of .ml about 2SLGBTQ+ safe space, acceptance and protection. And at the same time through the actions of folk there and the admins/mods it was clear that it was lip service.
  I moved on, and then Trump was elected again. All of a sudden you had loads these .ml accounts not only calling people enablers of the bourgeoisie, Sheeple etc, then in the next breath they are Staning Trump. On more than one occasion when I called them out on parroting the GOP lines about things, they would quote Sartre at me and say I was a class traitor.
  Was a real "Masks Off" realisation for me.
  Again Drag, I am hardly a fan of you, and I'm sure you're aware of that...but you're absolutely right here. Tankies, or at least the ones that are the most vocal, are not allies, are not even tolerant as far as I can see.
  Also considering how many times in the last thread you replied to a comment that Ada had made apologising, I'm positive that they know. I feel like this thread is a bit superfluous. And isn't doing you any favours.
  
  Ada is a lemmy.blahaj.zone user, and therefore can't see comments left by people who are banned from lemmy.blahaj.zone. Drag's friend made sure everyone knows.
  
  Again, not personally convinced Newbuild isn't just your alt. I'm not going to argue the point. If I'm wrong I'll let this be an apology.
  
  Well, that comment by nutomic is certainly unfortunate, but I don't think that's exactly what people are thinking when they complain about tankies. The Soviet Union banning homosexuality is certainly also unfortunate, but it's not different from what every other country on Earth was doing in the 20th century. It's not reasonable to expect communist countries to get social issues right on the first try and attach their failure to do so to their economic organization. My country also banned homosexuality, for the record, and we absolutely were not communists.
  It also just happens that most LGBT people I know, by a landslide, are marxists, because it's the logical consequence of applying to capitalism the same questioning that allows breaking free of the cisheteronorm. Sometimes economics and gender/sexuality intersect in interesting ways, and to an extent attempting to stomp out marxist ideology also often inadvertely makes the place hostile to LGBT people.
  You can argue that "tankie" only refers to toxic, LGBTphobic marxists such as nutomic right here, and I mean, fair. But I'm complaining about the Lemmy community being incessantly hostile to people and communities that are outside of a very narrow worldview that you can really only find in terminally online people. 99% of the usage I have seen of the word "tankie" on Lemmy has been for this, It is keeping people out of the norm away from this platform and, as seen with the way so many users harassed drag, for good reason.
  
  It’s not reasonable to expect communist countries to get social issues right on the first try and attach their failure to do so to their economic organization.
  Drag doesn't attach it to their economics. Drag attaches it to their beaurocracy. The USSR put too much power in the hands of the government. Anarchists wouldn't have made being gay illegal. Drag's complaint with tankies isn't about economics, it's about big vs small government.
  It also seems to drag that even neoliberals have managed a tiny amount of personal growth over the last hundred years. Nutomic hasn't. He's a dinosaur. Drag sees a trend that marxist-leninists haven't changed much in the last 50 years. The way they defend modern Russia, sometimes it feels like they haven't noticed the Berlin Wall fell. We need a communist theory for the 21st century, not the 19th.
  
  Let this be my last reply in this thread because I don't feel like spamming my comment history with this, and also I kinda regret bringing the word tankie to this conversation (it was 2 am and I was quite literally just rambling about my discomfort with this platform. I wouldn't done it if I had had a fresher mind). I also don't want to leave drag on read, and I hope that drag doesn't see this as me being hostile.
  Drag sees a trend that marxist-leninists haven't changed much in the last 50 years
  I am going to put into question that drag actually sees this. Marxism in particular has been wildly propagandized against since WWII for mostly geopolitical reasons, and these testaments about marxists being assholes often comes from "Someone told me that someone told them that etc", or from "I once saw one (1) marxist be an asshole so all of marxism should be tossed away". That said, being marxist does of course not shield you from being an asshole or having biases. But modern marxist literature is often very intersectional and very critical of the way we conceive our relationship to society and identity, and scholars on LGBT-specific issues often use marxist methodologies as well.
  This is not to say that marxism itself has always been devoid of biases etc, it hasn't, but as a product of how culture in the 19th and 20th century has evolved, it reasonably can't. This affects all schools of thought across the entire political spectrum, not just marxism, but this is often weaponized against marxism in particular, I wonder why.
  I am not going to justify Nutomic's very transphobic assertion nor am I going to claim that it is a lone exception to the norm. What I am going to claim is, however, that this kind of "the only axis of discrimination that matters is class, all other issues are burgeois diversions" thought, as common as it is, flies in the face not only of serious modern marxism proponents, but also the groundwork that it has laid out for a lot of other liberation movements. So it's not that Nutomic is a marxist and therefore a transphobe, it's more like Nutomic is a marxist and a transphobe, and he should be called out for being a transphobe, not for being a marxist. Same as if a fat person is an asshole; they should be called out for being an asshole, not fat. Same as if a black person is violent; they should be called for being violent, but not for being black. Or, god forbid, same if an alleged troll uses neopronouns; the crime there is trolling, not having a neopronoun, and these should not be conflated.
  However, my complaint in my first comment, and if y'all don't care about my wall of text let this be my TL;DR, I hate how Lemmy keeps labeling literally everyone to the left of Biden a "tankie". Maybe the slur does have a proper usage for red-themed bigots, but I can't possibly be a tankie and therefore shill Russia or China, or even somehow support Trump (???), for ideologies as extremist as: Thinking that I should be able to afford a home without rotting away at an office.
  The word "tankie" here is being thrown around like the word "feminazi" used to be used. Mysoginists used to insist in a distinction between "actual serious feminists" and "feminazis who want all men to die", but in practice, any woman that so much as wanted to have a live outside the kitchen was already called a feminazi by tons and tons of angry men. On Lemmy, supporting literally, and I mean literally any policy to improve people's lives past basic social democracy (sometimes not even this) already gets you put in the tankie zone. And THAT's what making me, and as a matter of facts others, increasingly uncomfortable on this platform.
  
  Drag would like to make one distinction relevant to your comment. Marxist-Leninists aren't Marxists. They have many points of disagreement. Most notably, Marxists believe in a worldwide revolution, while MLs believe in communism in one country. Drag has no problem with Marxists. Only with MLs.
  Marxism-Leninism was created by Stalin. Drag thinks he did a bad job interpreting Marx's ideas. Drag only has a problem with Stalinists. Drag is a communist. Drag gets along with syndicalists, mutualists, demsocs, soulists, even georgists. Drag can name many variants of communism drag has no problem with. Drag has a problem with Stalinists.
- Also, for what it's worth, I have seen enough people with non-normative gender identities to trust that OP is not, in fact, a drag alt.
  This is fake news. Nonbinary people don't exist, which means everyone who claims to be nonbinary must be the same troll. Plus, Newbuild says bot's drag's friend, and that's obviously a lie, because everyone knows queer people have no friends!
  Biiiiiiig /s

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