It's kind of depressing that lgbt spaces here are empty because there's been no attempts to reach out/ reconcile with the existing trans community in chapo or any of their concerns, but there's a big ol post on main weaponizing lgbt identity against china which actually recently took a great stride in providing legal protection for trans comrades seeking medical transition. And with a prominent post in this very community being a cis person questioning the need of affirming pronouns for comrades across the gender spectrum. It's more than ok to pose these questions but it raises the issue of what the priority is in affirmatively making sure there is a space here in chapo for our queer comrades to have a home, vs being a home for cis comrades to affirm their own perceived tolerance.
First of all fuck off. That’s my post. I’m trans and bi. I am not “weaponizing” my own identity to attack China, that’s complete fucking bullshit. It’s a legitimate question in regards to where my rights would stand in such a country.
yeah I agree saying you're weaponizing your identity is fucked up on OPs part
Yeah like I can’t ask why some of my rights wouldn’t be recognized without it supposedly being weaponization, that’s bizarre. The implication here is that any question about any flaws in the allocation human rights in China is a direct attack- that says a lot.
I guess I’m just supposed to shut up and keep my mouth closed and accept it and never ask any questions about our supposedly best example of communism standing today, and never criticize anything from my own expert and perspective.
Like maybe some places that are a tankie wet dream for cis straight dudes may not be a bastion of paradise for everyone else... just a thought
I guess I’m just supposed to shut up and keep my mouth closed and accept it
Isn't that what you're asking from me when you attack me for providing input?
I’m asking you to not describe my post as weaponizing my identity and use it as a base to explain why trans people are not participating in the lemmy, for simply asking a legitimate question about China.
I'm simply describing the material relations as I understood them. I think it's more than fair for me to raise my perspective without having to be met with hostility
There's a clear difference between raising a concern, and coming into my thread and telling me to fuck off, yeah?
but there’s a big ol post on main weaponizing lgbt identity against china
There's no concern to be raised though, and if there was to you then you could have found any way to say it that didn't specifically make it seem like TheDeed was attacking china or that they are just trying to make them look bad with western propaganda. Because they weren't. As a bisexual person myself this is kind of a concern with me and it was nice to see someone raise the question. Seeing the gross backlash to that isn't a good look for this community.
I mean I had a concern, and I raised it. Why is my perspective as a trans person not supposed to be considered in this?
I get your concern, and I can't really discuss your other concerns because I am cis but that post was just one person asking about gay marriage in china, a country vehemently defended by a significant portion of this community (I have no opinion on the matter). It was a fair question and there was no "weaponization" of any sort. It's ok to be concerned but blowing it out of proportion and treating it as a "weaponization" just isn't fair.
For what it's worth I was trying to address the structure of the site more than the indiviual post of TheDeed - were the only prominent lgbt post is one were criticism is being (materially) leveraged against china. Despite a lot of trans comrades having pro/neutral to china positions.
mate.. I get that, but give the community more than a week and it will grow. And also I think this community would be better if any perceived comment/post against china wasn't considered an attack on china. It's a very nuanced subject that a lot of people feel strongly about, and I think that at this point it's gotten a bit out of hand. The fact that a straight up question about why gay marriage isn't legal is taken as being a critical post leveraged against china causing many to become rude and disrespectful. If that truely is the general consensus of the chapo trans community then it will show over time. This site is just getting started and people know that. Nobody is going to come here and get the complete wrong idea because of TheDeed's post. It's going to be fine.
Am I not supposed to raise my own opinions on the matter, because that's all I've done?
all I'm saying is try not to make it like op was attacking china. The post wasn't an attack on china.
well that's why I'm stressing the material effect of the post and not its intention.
Identity gets weaponized all the time. How is it fucked up to raise the concern? They literally just did it now saying that they were trans to defend their point.
Asking about my rights or lack thereof is not a weaponization of my identity. Bottom line.
I'm sure Charlotte Clymer means well, too. I'm talking more on the material effect of your post. China literally just put in material protections for trans comrades seeking medical transition. It may be a legitimate question but the way it was posed is materially not much different from state propaganda. You know the U.S literally just granted marriage protections itself right?
It’s not state propaganda just because you don’t like criticism of China. It’s true: gay marriage is not legal in China.
I don’t care if the US just recently granted marriage protections; I am well aware. The focus here is not the USA because we already know the us is shitty. I’m asking because I’d like to know where my rights stand in a supposed modern bastion of communism.
I'm saying we should look at the whole picture of the material ways nations support their lgbt community. We have marriage equality in the west but like I don't have the same medical rights that they have in china as a trans person. But the way the question is framed makes it look like china is decades behind the u.s. in lgbt rights. In a time where there is mass propoganda being gear up towards china and AES.
My question was specifically on the issue of same sex marriage.
I understand that there is a massive state propaganda campaign going on against China right now to ramp up anti-China hatred because the US is salty about giving all its manufacturing to China and being threatened as a world power.
What we all need to understand is to separate fact from fiction. You’re right: there is a lot of unfounded bullshit going around about China. 99% percent of it is false. On the other hand, valid criticism about something that is true is not state propaganda. We shouldn’t just blanket ban all criticism of China from a left perspective and pretend everything is perfect.
Secondly I did not frame the question as China being decades behind the US... I wanted to know what was going on there and why it was illegal. I got a lot of good answers. The issue is it’s still illegal. Once again, I don’t care what the US has done. The US is not the only country to legalize same sex marriage.
And you’re right. You or I don’t have the same rights that would be afforded in China as trans people as we do in the US. That is a plus for China. Like I said in the post, I like most of the things China is doing. There’s also a lot I don’t like, identifying these issues are helpful as we build upon China’s example in establishing socialism in other places.
valid criticism about something that is true is not state propaganda
being valid doesn't mean something can't act as propaganda.
You or I don’t have the same rights that would be afforded in China as trans people as we do in the US
And I'm saying the responsible thing to do would be to provide that context in your question so people don't come to uninformed conclusions right of the bat.
same sex marriage is not the same thing as rights in medical transition. Are you serious? You can transition in Iran as well, that doesn’t mean it’s an lgbtq friendly place. Once again my question was explicitly about same sex marriage.
who tf said anything about iran? edit:my bad the editing confused me
Did you guys delete maries post?
Marries comment that was deleted:
I’m Marie. I’m trans, and I’ve been posting on or lurking the subreddit for two years. I was active in the community when it got quarantined, when no efforts were made to organize onto an official r/CTH discord server. I still remember how I honestly found the community to be one of the few that protected trans comrades and not to be blatantly transphobic, at least in my experience. Of course there were always the people who pointed out how bad some members of the community can be, but I always disregarded those because I understood the culture from where we were coming from. Sure, there were a lot of cis guys who probably didn’t understand where I was coming from, but that didn’t matter because it was understood that they meant well. During my time on the sub I never felt like I was misunderstood for that. When the discord was released I was happy to be able to move there to have a piece of that community, to understand that things would continue and that the community would endure made me happy to see that the sub would not fundamentally change and we would retain that culture. I was genuinely happy about that and I was active from day one on this discord.
Fast forward to today and I’ve been permabanned from the discord for 3+ weeks. I was, unfortunately, misgendered by someone on the discord (and had been multiple times by that point) and so I expressed my feelings that not enough was being done to protect trans comrades. The response I got, was being told by mods that my criticism was “flamebaiting” because I “whipped the megathread into a toxic fervor”. I have been completely stonewalled every single time I try to open up a dialogue on this and to try to address the problem. When the Lemmy was launched we were repeatedly assured that everyone would start with a blank slate and that everyone would have a chance to make amends. This has not happened. I was repeatably told to appeal my ban, to talk to mods and to place my trust in them to makes things right. My only course of action was to organize against this injustice, to gather our (small) community of comrades who have been similarly wronged. In doing so and attempting to voice our concerns, we have all been branded “wreckers” and “counter-revolutionary”. Our posts get deleted. Our accounts get banned for a variety of reasons and continue to be banned. We all, in our ways, have been ostracized from this community that we used to call our own. All we ever wanted was reform. We want the mod team to not be shit. We want them to be held accountable for their actions. Will this ever happen? No.
The main point of my post wasn't even china, haha. Maybe thats part of the problem - how easily talking about trans issues can get coopted in this space.
Aside from the intermittent brigading we still seem to be having, I haven’t seen much in the way of blatant ill will towards lgbt comrades though?
A good amount of what has been described as brigading has been trans comrades trying to provide their point of view on the current circumstances. While some of them have started lashing out because they feel like they are actively being silenced.
At this point it doesn't really matter if they had demands. It's really up to the mods to decide if they want this to be an affirmative space and they can reach out themselves to the trans community to figure out how to remedy this.
I think this is related. I feel like some of the most active chapos were all the trans comrades. So when they got alienated you lost a big concentration of potential activity.
Due to things that happened in the discord they've all formed into their own independent community because they didn't feel their concerns were being given proper consideration. If it were just 1 or 2 I could understand not fielding the issue, but it's like 100+ which puts it at 1% of the 10,000 people in the discord, and like 3% of the people on this site. Which tracks for it being near all of chapos at least active trans population.
I’m not caught up on it.
Well that's one of the bigger points of contention, the lack of transparency in a lot of the decisions that are being made. Along with the fact that those decisions seem to be working against creating an affirmatively positive space for the trans comrades to participate in. Confirmed by the fact that trans comrades are in fact not participating in this space.
I’m trans and I’m participating right now, except apparently one of my posts you say is supposedly weaponization of my own identity (lol) and imperialist propaganda
Maybe that is a reason other trans people aren’t participating. Because any question about where we stand and where our rights stand is not permitted by some of you.
I’m trans and I’m participating right now
Ok im talking about the 100+ others. but clearly its my fault exclusively they aren't posting here. ya got me!
As a fairly neutral observer who has more knowledge about what happened than most people, when the sub was banned there were a lot of hasty decisions that got made during the transition to the Discord, including giving some people mod privileges who probably should not have been there. There were a few specific incidents that were mishandled over the couple of weeks, and there was a specific one that led to many people who are genuine comrades getting banned. I know the admins care, and they followed through with some of the fixes that were brought up by those who were banned, but I also think they are overwhelmed between maintaining the community and maintaining the actual development of the website.
I hope that both sides can find a way to reconcile in the next couple of weeks as we settle in, because I know there is a lot of frustration and I don't think that the ~100 or so people who are out on their own deserve to be banned necessarily. One way that this can happen is that the dissatisfied people can set up their own instance with more protective policies for trans folks that federates with chapo.chat (though there can't be too much bad blood for this to happen either). I'm not trans so I can't comment on whether the moderation of the Discord or chapo.chat is good or bad on those issues, my assumption at this point is that it depends and comes down to a couple of specific mods and the feeling that "good mods" didn't do enough to make right.
I didn't know it was that many, Damn. There should definitely be efforts to address this issue.
While this was after the main issue, it doesn't exactly bode well that this showed up in the discord yesterday morning: https://i.ibb.co/ZT8SzMp/drama.png
I'm feeling very wary of a group of mods/admins who think that renaming a trans channel "gay" is more inclusive. I don't know how much overlap there is currently between the lemmy mods and the discord mods, but yeah.
Have you tried to talk to Jess or I about this yet? Despite what people are saying we do want this place and the discord to be safe and comfortable for trans comrades.
okay but we have to know what your concerns are if you want us to take action, like part of the reason why this stuff spiraled out into a mess is because anything that was said was said in public and in a very general way and not so much directed at talking to us than it was talking about, so please, dm me about this, preferably on discord.
I'm not entirely sure what else it is you need to know. I spent a couple of hours yesterday detailing my concerns about merging the lgbt channels on those channels. (liam.bean) That whole message, tbh, made me fell unsafe. Like, that the mod team is so far out of touch that they don't understand why trans folks need a separate space and why the idea of renaming the sad-trans channel "sad-gay" feels like so much trans-erasure. I'm just not sure how to explain it if it's not something you can understand. And I also don't want to get banned for speaking up.
That Marie's post (which I felt was not rude or anything worth banning for) has been deleted and Marie now banned doesn't exactly fill me with confidence that it's even ok to voice those kinds of concerns here.
I wasn't online much if at all yesterday and I don't read back every channel when I do get on, if you don't communicate that you feel unsafe to us then we can't correct for it, I haven't banned anyone for talking to me in my dm's, Marie's post and account was banned because she was one of the first people to engage the mods in bad faith, even before any of the events regarding zara happened.
We were told that everyone would have a "clean slate" on lemmy after being banned from the discord, so why would Marie's actions prior have anything to do with the issue at hand today? Its not any less relevant.
Because the mods are people too and have limited time and energy and interacting with someone who has shown a lot of bad faith in the past is difficult to ignore
The went out the window when they decided to brigade us not once, but twice now.
I have put a lot of time into this issue, are you talking about me? and if you're talking about caden, a personal apology was made and given to someone to forward to him.
I literally don't, I haven't seen a Mrs.pacman or a limabean account on the discord, I don't understand what's keeping you from messaging me when what my account is on discord is very obvious.
Reach out to the trans comrades that have already tried reaching out to you guys. It's not that hard.
I don't think it's unreasonable to ask the person who just brought up that concern to talk to me or Jess, unless you're saying that there's a level of coordination to where it won't matter who I talk to
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the person who just brought up that concern to talk to me or Jess
except you didn't even ask me. who brought up the greater concern in the first place. All the trans comrades are in the shork server, and I know you know that. No reason to play ignorant.
this has all happened in less than hour, I dunno how fair it is to act like I didn't care to ask you when it was a case of me seeing a comment first and replying to that, I was trying to sort out other conversations and as far as the shork server goes, I have talked to people who have came from their about how difficult it is for me to split focus in a conversation with a group that big, a fact which was also disrespected and not communicated to members of your community.
Cool, you're right, lets just forget about the 100+ trans people that don't feel comfortable in this space. Not statistically significant or anything.
