Hey everyone, I've removed bans for everyone that did not request one in the previous admin thread. (I think. If you got banned and I didn't restore your account yet, let me know and I'll fix it.) Don't worry! We're not gonna just ban people for no reason.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, Alaskaball confirmed that Sangria was their admin alt. They were messing around with their admin tools on their own account and figured it would be seen as a funny bit, but without being informed of the bit many of the mods and admins were just as shocked, confused, and appalled as you were. I've talked to the other admins and mods, and we're all gonna take it easy on bits for a bit. (Pun intended. This is the last one, I promise.)
If you're afraid that there's been an infiltration of transphobic, egomaniacal wrecker mods who hate the users, I want to assure you that's absolutely not the case. The overwhelming majority of mods and admins on this site are trans. Our admins are all trusted, long-time users in good standing. We regularly browse, comment, and post on our main accounts. You post and chat with us daily as comrades, and we value all of you. You may not recognize the usernames on our admin accounts because we regularly swap the alts used for admin privileges. This is why you'll see really old or unused alt accounts as well as really new accounts on the admin team.
I've seen a lot of speculation down below, some entertaining, some upsetting. We absolutely do not accept transphobia or any form of bigotry on this site. Some of the statements provided by mods and admins have been seen as transphobic and bioessentialist. I want to offer some transparency, but also clarify that I can't get much more specific on this for personal security reasons.
During the earlier discussions on how we felt things could be improved with these communities, multiple trans mods and admins described their reasoning in favour of the change by expressing with a variety of wording that it's the [he/him] demographic in particular that has been the source of toxic and troubling behavior in the tanks. That the he/hims haven't been beating the accusations, so to speak. With that group being largely cishet white guys on this site, these two terms were assumed to roughly correlate. We weren't making prepared statements for release, the comments that got posted here were paraphrased and combined from more casual comments made by trans people, in the mod chat to mostly other trans people about some of the chauvinistic and ironically bigoted posting habits that they saw as alienating and unhealthy for the site, and what we could do to improve the situation. We genuinely didn't foresee the potential for a miscommunication of those statements as being bioessentialist, and want to extend our sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.
Edit: Please feel welcome to post in c/gossip as you would have posted in the_dunk_tank, and in c/counterpropaganda as you would have posted in the_dredge_tank.
Hello users of hexbear, I have gone back and tried to unban everyone from the past couple days related to this struggle session.
I was offline most of yesterday so I missed what happened.
From the bottom of my heart I am deeply apologetic to everyone who was hurt by the statements and actions of the past few days. I know it will be a long and tough road to regaining back the trust of the userbase.
We are going to let this post sit for a couple of days and then move towards rebuilding. I'm back today and am happy to answer questions.
Do not apologize for logging off, you are allowed to live a life
who is standing outside my house screaming that I should post more?
Screw you, I will never log on!
So I know alot of people are upset at TC69 for various reasons. I wasn't here when she initially was a part of the community, but I had only heard positive things before this shitshow.
Did she only step down from admin, or did she delete her account? I think it would be a shame if she left entirely due to some pointless struggle session.
I think stepping down was the correct decision, she probably should have reacclimated to the new hexbear environment before being put in that position to begin with, it's a heavy burden to bear. I still want her to feel welcome here though. I love my trans comrades!
She made the choice to delete her account
It's unfortunate, but if she decided that was the best course of action for her mental health, I will respect it.
It's not unfortunate it's the bare minimum
And not for her mental health. For the mental health she was inflicting on others.
Good fucking riddance. Site culture DRAMATICALLY improved when she left.
People were having anxiety attacks browsing this website. Just so she could be gleefully cruel at random.
Jfc did we drive her away AGAIN!? I am once again insisting nobody do anything about anything while I am asleep/busy.
Seriously thinking of becoming a mod just to prevent this petty bullshit from tanking the site again
She was banning people randomly for fun
She was a terrible admin and left after the predictable and justified pushback.
"Drive her away" is certainly one way you can describe the reaction to her conflict resolution skills
edit: made it less mean
old text for if you wanna call me out for it
"Drive her away" is certainly one way you can describe being mad that she banned people for disagreeing with her and asking questions like "in 15 pages of the modlog there's only 2 removals for 'misogyny'. Even if there were more, why would it be an issue if it's in the modlog? That's where banned posters go."
Glad you took a break, and very glad you're back.