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.

  • REgon [they/them]
    ·
    2 days ago

    GOOD post! penguin-love cuddle

    I am autistic as fuck. I only just realized this last year, and got diagnosed last week.

    ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US! NEURODIVERGENT SUPREMACY ANY DAY NOW BABYYYY

    AUTISTS ARE GREAT COMMUNICATORS! I'VE NEVER MET AN AUTIST WHO WOULD SAY SOME SHIT LIKE "OH WOW IS IT JUST ME OR IS IT COLD IN HERE?" AND THEN EXPECT ME TO REALISE THAT MEANT "WOULD YOU PLEASE CLOSE THE WINDOW?"

    justice sensitivity

    yeah-buddy There's definitely something wrong with us since we can't handle injustice, the issue definitely isn't that NTs are justice insensitive

    wanna see what it looked like after I saw that @REgon had been banned??

    lea-blush Nobody should get rashes for me, I'm just a little rat eating dumpsterbread. knifecat whoever is the wrecker who decided to target one of this sites' sweetest and most kind users, I'll find you and I'll [redacted]

    edit - this became a bit of a vent for me too. I'm happy to see where things are going now. I am unhappy with how things have been going. I am optimistic for the new update coming in some hours. Enter at your own risk.

    this intentional obfuscation with the modlog that you then bang over our heads as proof of your points is a terrible way to treat anyone at all, let alone your autistic comrades. I know I'm not the only person who thinks so.

    I don't fucking know if I want to be here anymore because this place is fucking terrifying, and seeing other people saying similar things is validating but heartbreaking.

    the first Hexbear related thing I did this morning was look at the modlog to see if I had been banned because TC69 had finally turned her attention to me. (I had intentionally not engaged with her directly because I had seen how that had gone for even sweet morte.)

    after that reply begging for mercy, I messaged a mod who has been kind and friendly to me to beg her to please explain it to me on my old account if I did get this one banned, had a good cry, accepted the invitation @Sulvor had sent me earlier to join movie night for a bit, and calmed down enough to eat something and go to bed.

    and after all this I've written about fairness, because of the ostracization and abuse I've suffered my whole life, I can't help feeling like it would have been my fault if I had been banned. I kept trying desperately to understand and talk out what was happening because it seemed unfair and just plain mean, and that's not the Hexbear I know. I kept asking questions when it was becoming clear they weren't welcome as the modlog was filling with bans.

    Thank you for sharing your experience, you're perfectly explaining what my issue with moderation has been for a long time. The hostile "My way or the highway" attitude, the arbitrary stuff, the way we act towards each other when we disagree and that behaviour being encouraged by some mods, the way we talk about each other and issues in vague terms, it all makes this place unwelcoming for ND people. I know that's not the point of your post, but it exemplifies this point wonderfully anyway.

    Thank you for putting all of this into words much better and much more eloquent than I could ever hope to do. I am so happy you are a part of this community. I remember how it was last time TC69 was around. I felt so stressed. This site was not a chill space to be in. You could get banned for anything, and so many people pretended it was just a joke or something. I felt like I had to walk on eggshells. I tried to push for making this space more inclusive to ND people precisely because I saw how uncomfortable it was. Especially with the irony poisoning. It was infuriating to see people talk about making this a "safe space" for queer users and then making JOKES about issues raised wrt to ND users.

    was the culture genuinely that bad?? this is a real and sincere question, I'm autistic, I'm sure there are problems that I don't pick up on.

    most of the time irl, I don't realize a skillful bully is fucking with me until it's too late, so certainly I'm not gonna catch all the shittiness on here, where I don't have body language to help.

    I was positive towards TC69 upon her return, because I reread some old threads and saw that, yes, there was an issue with transphobes. I hoped she had mellowed out a bit since then, but clearly not. You know what issue we've always had? People being ableist and oblivious to it. Lots of users here do things that are ableist and they don't even think about it. Talking down to people, tonepolice, say people are throwing tantrums, downplay others complaints and REFUSE TO ARGUE IN GOOD FAITH WITH COMRADES.
    Acting like a shithead or BANNING PEOPLE FOR ASKING QUESTIONS does not make this a welcoming safe site with a non-toxic culture. What got me banned was not being overly hostile. What got me banned was stating that I am tired of the vagueposting about chauvinism that has been going on for well over a year now, especially when those vagueposters are bigoted as fuck themselves. Every time we learn anything about this site, they use it as an excuse to push for kicking out more people that don't fit into their shitty little group. "Oh there's not a lot of cis women on site? Well that's because we have a culture of cisnormativity and misogyny" - The site is overwhelmingly queer and trans. Maybe it's got something to do with all of us, or us queer people, maybe, just maybe, it's not some inherent trait of the 10 straight white guys we've got on site. I know I don't show this place to people for reasons that do not at all have anything to do with "male chauvinism." I don't show it because of *the unhinged shit some of you weirdos post. We've had several unironic calls for genocide. We've had so much hornyposting - and you know who does it? Not the cishet guys. We used to have someone who posted furry porn every day ffs! And it was celebrated! By you!

    I am really happy to see where things are heading, but like you @dustbunnies@hexbear.net I too feel incredibly unsure about the moderation team, because I know it wasn't just one or two people being shitty. It was a clique, a little fan-club. Those of you still around, do some self-crit. If you truly want to remove toxicity, do some self crit. If you don't give a shit and you just want your own place to hang out, then fuck off and make a discord, why are you even here?

    "don't take it too seriously, it's just online, it's just a website!" friend, right now I wish it were just a website, because I would say fuck this place and never look back. no mere website is worth the amount of anxiety and stress I've felt and tears I've cried in the last 24 hours.

    We bring up the "rock stacking" thread as a fun little joke. That thing was triggering af for me for a good while. You know why? I saw some kindhearted people put genuine effort into calmly and kindly explaining something, only to get yelled at, and then after the fact we treat it like "oh yeah everbody was overreacting." No they weren't. It's actually a pretty adequeate reaction to get pissed when people act shitty towards you. You know what's not an adequate reaction though? Acting like a chanlord troll because you've been told you shouldn't stack rocks. The discourse after the fact soured me so much towards the site. Yeah it's ridiculous, but actually it's not, because the reaction of so many users told me so much about them. Not the ones who got told about the events after the fact, I don't blame any of you, but the people who were acting shitty and then tried to play it off as just "everybody being a bit miffed" or whatever. Do self-crit. It's the exact same situation with this conflict we're in now.
    I became pissed, not because people disagreed with me about something minor, but because people in what I thought was a cozy fun good-vibes online community, turned into the worst nitpicky debatebro dickhead types the second things didn't go their way.