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.

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Aaaaand this user was banned for this, for saying what their perception was, and expressing doubt while acknowledging that there are different perceptions that exist simultaneously on the same site.

    I must be missing something too, because from some angles it looks like someone's just using their powers to ban everyone that is "unable to see things" the way they see them.

    Don't get me wrong, I love and support my trans comrades, both on this site and IRL (can't give too much detail without doxing myself). I think it's very important to have a trans-positive space. I have not seen many of the comments of brigaders from cumtown and reactionary trolls and whatever else, but I take others' word that this is happening. I believe that TC69 has been doing a lot of diligent work to rid the site of people that don't add to it. But the above comment being bannable makes it look a lot like she is just banning everyone who doesn't agree with her.

    I'm not going to claim this authoritatively because I haven't seen the full story, but it looks like there is a possibility that in addition to the true positives, there are a lot of false positives; it looks like there is a sort of anti-transphobia witch-hunt going on, or that at least there's a case of "to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail". It is plausible to me that with bans we are seeing both true positives and false positives; they're not mutually exclusive. I could be wrong and have a cloud of illusions warping my perception, but if that's the case I'd like someone to meet me with an explanation.

    What makes a community is that we can commit and rectify errors; we can mess up, fess up, and make up; as a result many people who know each other continue through time with collective and individual relations amongst them. Banning people for something that even hints of wrongthink is antithetical to building a community; I feel like if this keeps up we're going to end up with just the mods and like 6 other (perfectly non-problematic) users.

    I think I'm going to make a post in !feedback about alternative methods, what we could do to make transphobia or reactionary behavior more visible to users and less of a sole burden on mods and admins. Because the character of the userbase is indeed everyone's business here.

    • kilternkafuffle [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I must be missing something too, because from some angles it looks like someone’s just using their powers to ban everyone that is “unable to see things” the way they see them.

      Banning people for something that even hints of wrongthink is antithetical to building a community

      Yeah. WTF are you on, mods?

      I want to be on the same page with you guys. I want to hear what the trans experience here is like (especially because it seems night and day compared to mine). And I get there's trolling/brigading that requires counteraction.

      But you're banning users who joined when the site was first founded for asking for a bit off context? Not everyone knows/sees the same shit as you.

      Check yourself. This is awful for the large inclusive place we all want to have.

      You guys are being shit at communication - and then attacking people for asking to be communicated with.

      • raven [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        You can ask to be communicated with without downplaying or talking over trans voices. I don't necessarily think that's what Fractal_Monster meant, but he could have changed the tone of his message considerably by saying "This appears to me the most trans-positive space on the internet"

        • kilternkafuffle [any]
          ·
          4 years ago

          he could have changed the tone of his message considerably by saying “This appears to me the most trans-positive space on the internet”

          He literally said "I have seen", which has the same meaning. Either way, not prefacing your statement with "IMHO" shouldn't lead to a ban. And other users were banned in this thread for essentially "showing undue deference to a mod". I know mods have to deal with shit, Atheismo bless them, but it's like they develop a cop mentality.

          You can ask to be communicated with without downplaying or talking over trans voices.

          Sure, but what does that mean in practical terms? For example, I can't tell who is trans and who is not - there are no ID badges and I'm not going to creep anyone's post history before replying. Someone says they're trans and posts a 10 page rant - how do I know that's representative of what other trans people are experiencing? How do I know this post isn't a troll/a joke/someone having a bad day? How do I know this isn't being upvoted by bots to create infighting?

          This isn't real life. You can't see anyone's face. Maybe I saw their username before, maybe that was someone else. Trust is earned, not given.

          It doesn't help that OP (and another similar post by u/cofabulously (sp?)) are only speaking for themselves. Are other mods/admins on board? (A resignation makes it seem like there's trouble among the admins/mods.) Do they have an official message for everyone? Does a trans sub have a joint statement they can endorse? Something that's prepared, polished, and CONCISE?

          From the out-of-the-loop perspective, everything's going fine, then someone yells "THIS PLACE SUCKS, I'M SICK OF YOUR SHIT" and when you ask what happened they chew you out for not knowing and then when you question them again they ban you.

          I believe them that there're apparently targeted attacks on trans people behind the scenes (though I still haven't seen anyone define the problem any more precisely than "transphobia")... but you have to tell people what's going on if you want them to know about it.