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.
I feel this on so many fucking levels. Obviously, not the admin part, but I had taken time away from the site because of all the anti-trans people and because of all the hollow performative actions of our “allies.” I’m just fucking done. I wish this could have been better.