TL;DR I'm resigning as an admin of Chapo effective Sunday, January 24th, 2021.
So what's up, TCFunnySexNumber? Why are you resigning?
Well, let me break it down for you.
I'll start by saying the amount of messages I've received since The Great Pronoun Wars saying they would have left if there wasn't trans representation on the admin team has been not insignificant. It's a huge pressure and that shouldn't be what it takes to keep someone there. I'm tired of feeling like the Guerrilla GlueTM that's barely keeping this screaming metal death trap barreling down the highway. I'm not trying to jerk off my own efforts on site, but it's not hard to see.
But more than anything I'm tired of feeling like a pawn who exists to look pretty and give the illusion that we're a trans positive space.
We tell people to set pronoun tags to have a shred of solidarity with trans comrades.
Cissies throw a fit.
We tell the community we will be analyzing downvotes to see who is creating a hostile environment for trans people here.
Cissies throw a fit.
We remove the downvote button to stop people from using it as a means of shitting on trans people without actually saying anything.
Cissies throw a fit.
We ask people to put content warnings on posts with transphobia so not all of us have to see it or engage with it.
Cissies throw a fit.
Trans comrades leave the site and drop messages about how cissies have zero solidarity with us and don't actually give a fuck to learn about our issues or support us.
Cissies throw a fit.
We start banning people for being hostile when we bring up that the community is actively hostile towards us.
Cissies throw a fit.
We try to do literally anything to combat the reactionary environment.
Cissies throw a fucking fit.
I'd be hard pressed to look at all of that and say it's a trans positive space. Furthermore, I feel like it's fine that I exist as an admin so long as I don't stand up to any dudebro armchair leftists who vocally don't give a shit about us and genuinely want us to leave so they can have a pretty vaporwave Reddit 4chan hybrid without guilt or being told their "efforts" as "leftists" aren't good enough.
It's not difficult to see how the community has grown increasingly hostile toward us over the last few months. And for months the thought of snapping, going rogue mod, and banning everyone who has alienated us has crossed my mind infinitely more times than I'm willing to admit. I've seen calls for change get reduced to minor policy that eventually fizzles out and amounts to nothing and I'm tired of watching it happen and I'm drained by the amount of pushback and outright denial from the userbase that there is anything wrong in the first place.
Sure, the announcements of policy change could've been handled better, I'm willing to admit that. But to outright deny there are issues in the community and to make calls for admin elections in response to us saying we're banning people for perpetuating the hostile environment that's causing the site to hemorrhage trans people is fucking bullshit.
I'm tired of this community being like every other fucking lib space on the internet where it's just cis people meaninglessly shouting "trans rights!" into the void without any realistic understanding of what that means and without actively listening to us on how to be better allies.
I'm tired of us being talked over. The amount of times I've seen my argument of "go to !TEL and look at the first few pages and see the downvotes" repeated by cis users and be taken more seriously than others have taken that argument from me is fucking disgusting and I'm sick of it.
After Cass left and Confabulously posted about how she's thinking of leaving too, I just let the hatred that's been building up inside of me for months completely wash over me and started banning dissenters without much thought. My only regret is that I didn't ban more cissies during my purge spree.
I've dumped hundreds of hours of my life into this project. I'm grateful I did otherwise I wouldn't have met so many great people let alone all the trans cuties, but it's horrible that the aftermath of the most recent struggle session literally had me thinking about walking away from everything and starting my own record and coffee shop combo and living out the rest of my days as an NPC.
Over the next two weeks I'll be handing the other admins the keys to what I had done with the accounting software and files I'd been doing for us pro-bono but never really got around to finishing as a result of various scheduling conflicts, any accounts and passwords I made for various side projects here, and whatever else they need before I fuck off. I wish them all the best of luck. Maybe one day things will be different and I can return but I just can't see a clear path forward for myself here - and I definitely understand that this is a breakup cliche.
I left trans spaces because I fucking hated their politics and felt like I didn't fit in but now I realize I should've been trying to radicalize those trans spaces this entire time instead.
why do these effort posts NEVER HAVE ANY LINKS???
I want to support trans comrades and dunk on transphobic chuds but I CAN'T FIND THEM???
I'm not even asking for proof, I just want you to explain where these people are hurting you because I and many other cis allies on this website DO NOT SEE IT AND THAT IS NOT OUR FAULT
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I just wish somebody could give me a list of five posts and say, "here are the dogwhistles in these, this is what they mean"
the mods delete them
check the modlogs for anything marked transphobic or terf shit, theres vast amounts.
do not reply to the user who told you they were disengaging again.
Cool that's the info I was looking for. Idk wtf is going on but I 100% support trans comrades and want these fuckers booted
its the main problem we have been having with the site. "I dont see the transphobia" JUST LOOK AT THE FUCKING MODLOG
ITS OPEN
ITS CLEAR
THERES A SEARCH FUNCTION!
You guys are obviously doing a solid job keeping the site clean lol, but that's coming with the issue of people not seeing the labor you're doing.
Probably skews the perspective a fucking lot compared to us normies that just see the scrubbed up version of this site while you guys are arm deep in reactionary shit.
seriously!
and the reasons our trans comrades are leaving is because this shit is being targeted at them and they are the ones who get it in their inbox which means they obv see it before we delete it and oftentimes see it up for occasionally hours on end while it sits in the reports tab. i understand exactly what they mean when they say its noticeable.
I feel like this comment needs to be a copy paste response for every time the “where’s the evidence??” crowd shows up
Yeah yesterday someone made multiple accounts to spam me with transphobic/ableist copypasta shit like 50 times in the replies to my public comments. And I'm not even trans. To the credit of the mod and admin team who have been doing a fantastic job it was removed very quickly and as soon as I reported it. But I can definitely see how it can alienate our trans comrades.
yup. Just because the average user doesn't see it doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Just means we are doing our jobs relatively well. Its been surprisingly hard getting people to realize that, even with a completely transparent modlog.
Ever thought about doing a weekly ban round up thread or something? Showing the worst of the worst.
Like those shitty papers in gas stations they put out that show all the arrests for the week, but in ban form.
thats what the modlog is basically. no need to highlight this shit.
I feel like it should be highlighted, because it's pretty clear to me that many, many users of this site have no idea how bad it is. It seems to me that to a trans comrade, there is constant harassment, like at least a few times a week, from outside users. I think that cis users don't see the modlog, which causes them to view themselves at odds with the mods and most of all, prevent solidarity with our trans comrades. I'm really sad to see so many users go and I know we can do better with this.
well they're obviously not deleted if they're in the modlogs right? can somebody link to the posts in the modlogs?
no.
what on earth is going on is this some truman show westworld shit or what
literally within the first ten things in the modlog is terf shit. ima ban you now, buhbye.
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Having been here since the first week or so, I'm 100% certain that it's two things: maybe a dozen stupidpol brigaders with a bunch of accounts/sockpuppets and no life, and a bunch of well-meaning but naive people falling hook line and sinker for wrecker shit and so serving to amplify it. Like fuck, it's an objective fact that there's a campaign of (a few pathetic) reactionary dipshits trying to sow discord, so whether one agrees with aggressive policing as a response to that or not the thing to do is fall in line until the reactionaries grow bored and start raiding somewhere else instead.
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I want to see proof, this feels just like the labour antisemitism 'scandal' where a tiny minority of people said some dodgy things and it was overinflated and only served to derail and confuse things. And as soon as you tried to dig into it and find examples they were thin on the ground. Yes it was used by the right but it came from inside the party as well. If there are transphobic ppl here they are overwhelmingly in the minority.
The thing is, if this many trans users are leaving, including TC who has been unwavering in their dedication and the time and effort they’ve put into this community, they must have good reasons. What motive is there for TC to put in all that work and then leave the community, if the accusations aren’t accurate?
That's my thinking as well. It doesn't change the fact, though, that it's kind of frustrating to seeing our trans comrades feeling excluded or taken for granted, and there not really being anything I, as a cisgender member of this community who hopes he's not a total douche, can do to help in this struggle, if I don't know where they're coming from or even fighting against.
I think waiting for the entirety of the left to be 100% pure of anything that could be construed as transphobic before moving on and attempting to organise further is a mistake.
Yes, of course call out examples whenever you see them and explain why they are wrong, but vague posts such as this and pretty much all the others I've seen don't seem to serve any purpose than create unecessary drama imo.
Improving economic conditions and access to health care and therapy/support will help all trans people more than anything else and that is the goal of all anticapitalists here.
I just saw one with that whole reproduction outside of sex is bourgeois post that seems to have been removed. Quite a few responded to it. That's not just undiatmat and unhistorical, its offensive to trans comrades, the rest of the lgbt+ community, the impotent and post menopausal women to name a few. There's also a sense of even with pronouns of that reddit-dudebro, 'everyone on the internet is just some able cis guy, gonna scratch my balls here'.