Hi comrades, want to give you all an informal update on the discussions around the site's misogyny problems that've been happening over the last several days. I wanna make sure you know that the admin/mod team has seen all of that discourse and we've been actively discussing solutions in the matrix mod chat. We're taking this shit very seriously and acknowledge that we haven't used a heavy enough hand on misogynistic rhetoric. As some of you saw we nuked that cheating thread from a couple weeks ago and handed out temp bans to the most egregious offenders. Idk how that was allowed to run it's course but we apologize for that oversight. We're going to do better.

We've come up with some ideas for how to improve this part of the site culture and we want to get suggestions from y'all as well, since the alarm was sounded on this by our beautiful c/traa posters to begin with. Our ideas so far include:

  1. A zero-tolerance policy towards any even remotely misogynistic/patriarchal posts or comments, as too much has slipped through the cracks on that, establishing a clear protocol for bans for violating rules against misogyny, and ideally tracking repeat offenders in a way that makes deciding a course of action easy when they reoffend.

  2. Uphold TC69 thought by starting up a book club (and hopefully more to follow) on feminist theory and encouraging mass participation, particularly from the he/him's on the site. "The Will to Change" by bell hooks has been suggested by multiple people as a great starting point but please feel free to suggest any other works.

  3. Relaunching /c/menby with a trusted educated mod team and a specific focus on countering mainstream narratives about masculinity, relationships and sex that breed reactionary, patriarchal attitudes

  4. Encouraging [namely femme] participation in /c/womenby and taking steps to revitalize that sub as an excellent source of discussion on feminism and intersectionality

  5. Holding another mod drive to get more folks into mod positions in our communities who can help weed out reactionary attitudes

  6. Encouraging users to use the report button often on any post that seems even remotely sus, with the promise that no one's going to be punished for "report abuse" for reporting posts in obvious good faith

Please let me know your thoughts on the above or any other ideas you have for making the site better, safer and more inclusive for our femme comrades. Once we've fully hammered out plans and updated policy we plan to make an announcement post highlighting these changes for the whole userbase. Thank you all for being here and being who you are feminism trans-heart

  • Angel [any]M
    ·
    14 hours ago

    Personally speaking, to give my own insight into another subject that others have discussed in this thread, I am all for a neutral (meaning neither specifically masculine nor feminine-aligned) non-binary space.

    Seeing cisheteronormativity and binarism rife on every corner of the internet is deeply exhausting and honestly makes me feel like I'm "broken" for existing in a way that is far beyond any of it.

    Not all trans people are non-binary either, so I can't say that I'm 100% confident that enbyphobia/transmedicalism would never "leak," even if just a little bit, into this community.

    Truthfully, as inclusive as Hexbear can seem, I don't give any unambiguous trust to anyone who is cis, hetero, white, or neurotypical. The fact that this thread needed to be made in the first place can show you why.

    "Leftists" will go mask off and spew hatred towards someone like me when it no longer benefits them to pretend that they're not hateful bigots.

    • kristina [she/her]M
      ·
      14 hours ago

      i feel like having 3 separate comms for enby stuff will just end up splitting the userbase too much, probably best to consolidate. the number of posts here are kinda low outside of the megathread, for instance. according to the survey the majority of trans users here arent fully binary, about 2/3rds arent, which potentially means killing all four communities without a big tent (binaries might feel it unreasonable to post in a enby megathread and vice versa) or just everyone keeps doing what theyve been doing which is posting in traa.

      • Angel [any]M
        ·
        14 hours ago

        In that sense, a workable idea is just to change the angles that the three communities are getting at.

        For instance, c/womenby could be the feminist community, c/menby could be the "deconstructing masculinity from a male leftist perspective" community, and a hypothetical c/enby could just be... enby.

        Grouping in non-binary people with a binary gender has always been a huge red flag to me. When people say things like "women and non-binary people," it tells me to run and never interact with that person again. Though Hexbear might be better at handling that issue and not defaulting to the absurdly toxic "women-lite" shit, like I said, my skepticism doesn't stop when I'm on HB.

        However, it is a fair point that a neutral enby community might not attract many users. I gotta remember that most people are more "normal" than I am. A community I could find enjoyable may not appeal to most of Hexbear, like if we were to make a community specifically for djentposting lmao

        It'd be just me and @Luna@hexbear.net, I reckon.

        • belligerentkitten [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          13 hours ago

          i v much agree with the way u lay out how the communities should work. the feminist and deconstruction comms should never have been made to "match". and the enby one is a completely different kind of space, in my mind. we're not exactly trying to make a gender comm for each of the 3 genders.

          also please please can we have a neutral community. i've always felt v alienated by most trans communities because of this kinda thing and it would be so nice to have an enby community that isn't divided by birth assignment. don't get me wrong i appreciate that the trans community as a whole isn't segregated here but it's hard to feel at home sometimes when it just seems like everyone approaches things so diifferently to me.

          • ashinadash [she/her]
            ·
            13 hours ago

            Trans anything divided by birth assignment when it reinvents the gender binary with extra steps

            madeline-stare gunpoint-alt

            • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
              ·
              12 hours ago

              this is what made me uninstall tiktok again recently... i know it's a bunch of kids on there so you know pinch of salt but i didn't need to be exposed to such takes as:

              transphobic/queerphobic ignorant takes

              "butch-fem relationships are heteronormative"

              "if you take T or use he/him that means you cannot be a lesbian"

              "you can only be a lesbian if you're female nonbinary, male nonbinary can't qualify"

              yeag it's bad

              • ashinadash [she/her]
                ·
                12 hours ago

                Saw your edit just now, these are like bottom-end Tumblr takes from 2015. The "heteronormative" one made me snort.

                • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
                  ·
                  12 hours ago

                  yea that one really got me too lol. ik it's a bunch of kids and they will learn in time but for my blood pressure's sake i had to stop exposing myself to that (i don't have the self control to not read the comments and tiktok comments is about on the level of 2010 youtube for some reason)

                  • ashinadash [she/her]
                    ·
                    12 hours ago

                    I kind of felt this way about tumblr too, like I wanted to push their faces into Beyond Blue & Pink or something. They're re-enacting struggle sessions from the 1960s...

                    • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]
                      ·
                      4 hours ago

                      seems like it might be a huge gift to the community to have some tiny sound bite videos that relay the most salient points and direct interested folks to further reading

                      maybe somebody is already making those videos, and through the power of Hexbear, we could ask follow and comment/like/share those creators to help force the algorithm to feed them to others

                      • ashinadash [she/her]
                        ·
                        4 hours ago

                        What Tankietube was built for probably.

                        [Boomer Alert] Feinberg for the tiktok generation...

              • ashinadash [she/her]
                ·
                12 hours ago

                If I had ever installed tiktok I would uninstall it also for this reason :)

              • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
                ·
                11 hours ago

                Ig if people want it, but its weird people are acting like this site has only had spaces for binary people and the poor enbies have been shivering out in the cold waiting for our own dedicated comm lol

                • keepcarrot [she/her]
                  ·
                  9 hours ago

                  I guess people want a comm with regular activity, not just a comm

        • Luna [she/her, love/loves]
          ·
          13 hours ago
          Putting in a c/djent comm request now /j

          But what if there was enough interest though 😳

          • citrussy_capybara [ze/hir]
            ·
            12 hours ago

            the entire music comm doesn’t typically get much traffic, the series-posting gets more attention, like “posting ska every day until stop” or “posting video game soundtracks every day until stop” so a “posting djent” series would be a good place to start getting people noticing and chatting

        • magi [null/void]
          ·
          13 hours ago

          However, it is a fair point that a neutral enby community might not attract many users. I gotta remember that most people are more "normal" than I am.

          There is no normal but I know the feeling ^^ I'd be happy with a neutral space, I've felt pushed out of spaces for years as it tends to feel skewed because of binarism and I've felt it here too from time to time being agender, It's part of the reason why I spent months lurking the mega, and it was part of the reason why I left the matrix chat. I try to post in the mega because there are a few other NB people there too and to show solidarity even if I feel alien to some others.

          djentposting

          How about some Zheul also? c:

        • belligerentkitten [they/them, it/its]
          ·
          13 hours ago

          i v much agree with the way u lay out how the communities should work. the feminist and deconstruction comms should never have been made to "match". and the enby one is a completely different kind of space, in my mind. we're not exactly trying to make a gender comm for each of the 3 genders.

          also please please can we have a neutral community. i sorely need it and i've struggled my entire life in trans communities because of the binarism.

        • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]
          ·
          13 hours ago

          The context I hear the phrase "women and nonbinary people" in is usually just to 1) acknowledge that both can be targets of misogyny even if the enby person is just not masc enough to have male privelege or 2) to include nonbinary people into a program designed to combat patriarchy (like access to a cis-men-free safe space or access to apply for a position in a feminist org trying to avoid being overrepresented by cis male people in positions of authority). In such cases, the person using the phrase is using the phrase in good faith and just trying not to exclude non-binary people. I have some inkling of how it could be frustrating to be repeatedly lumped in with women in a grouping... But enby people do face similar obstacles as women sometimes, in addition to unique ones.

          Can you (or somebody else if you would rather not) give me an example of the phrase being used in a harmful way? I do see how segregating menby and womenby into separate comms is enforcing the gender binary on non-binary people which is bad. Is it because the phrase promotes underlying assumptions that enby people are adjacent to women?

          • thirtymilliondeadfish [she/her]
            ·
            13 hours ago

            "women and nonbinary" is often code for "AFAB only" ime. It's a warped use of inclusionary language, and without further caveats or disclaimers can be understood to mean "no trans women". Best avoided.

          • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
            ·
            12 hours ago

            very often spaces that advertise themselves that way are exclusionary of non-binary or even just "pre-op" trans femmes. they can often just be totally hostile to all trans femmes. it's actually a major red flag. maybe I'm cynical but I basically read it as:

            genitalia talk

            "no biocock".

            i fucking hate using this term but a lot (like, basically all) of the time how it shakes out is you can translate it as "AFABs only".

        • kristina [she/her]M
          ·
          13 hours ago

          its more that i think showing a united group is better right now for drawing more trans people, i can point at the trans mega and say 'look it has 2k comments every week, join in!' and its been successful at bringing more people. trans users here have fairly high activity but that amounts to usually around 120-150 posters (re: as in actually making comments and interacting) on traa each week. take 2/3rds of those comments away and it means less interaction/solidarity between enbies/binary trans and it might even kill off the binary trans community here (40 active posters is not very much)

          also i have a desire to centralize trans places generally because it makes it easier to find people that need help. just an issue with mutual aid projects i and others have been working on, we often find we've responded too late for someone needing help which is... very bad oftentimes (i have so many horror stories about this that keep me up at night) and theres no way to fix it beyond centralizing all methods of communication and speeding up the game of telephone trans people do to find help. it may not be 100% pertinent to this conversation but i just wanted to mention it. i have a list of subscriptions that i check here which somewhat remedies that issue but i often miss people needing help even in the current megathread, much less needing to check several.

          • belligerentkitten [they/them, it/its]
            ·
            12 hours ago

            but you have a bunch of nonbinary people saying we feel alienated by not having a space to talk about the things we'd like to talk about. for all we know it might lead to more enby participation in the mega because we feel more confident knowing we're not the only ones. i certainly don't see an enby comm as an alternative to participation in the unified community.

            i'd consider volunteering to mod it (tho not alone) if it would help with moderation issues.

            • kristina [she/her]M
              ·
              12 hours ago

              I'm ultimately down with whatever everyone wants to do I'm mostly just voicing my unease/trauma about splitting groups and lines of communication. If we keep it all still together some way rather than splitting threads or something that would be best.

              I honestly kinda even hate the Fediverse because of its tendency to split queer groups, but recognize its probably the least shit noncorporate way to run things for queers. I also am kinda sad that people want to even make a separate spot, I feel like I've put in a lot of effort to make sure enbies felt welcome here, I really wanted to make a place that avoided the typical splitting. kitty-birthday-sad

              • belligerentkitten [they/them, it/its]
                ·
                11 hours ago

                i don't feel unwelcome. and it's not a here thing either. it's a consistent problem i've had with trans communities for the past 15 years. and in many cases it's been downright harmful and segregated and thats not what its like here. but that doesn't mean that i don't feel like, incredibly different to the vast majority of trans people. and it can be harder to find ur voice in a community when u feel that way. and i had no idea that there were at least several other people here who feel the same, which is kinda the whole reason i would love an enby community. you're not doing anything wrong and i'm sorry i made u feel that way.

              • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]
                ·
                11 hours ago

                transfem content is so prolific it can squeeze some of the rest of us out sometimes that don't share those issues or experiences, so a separate subforum seems warranted... if people are gonna use it. i don't have a better idea bit i don't have pressing agender issues i'm dying to talk about, maybe the gender having enbys do