As I said before this is an unsafe site for Indigenous people. I’m out. Don’t bother DMing me. I’m scrambling my password and locking myself out of my own account. I’ve grown to care for and trust a lot of you so it’s hard to leave but it is clear that this site isn’t for me. I understand that the world and internet at large is really shitty to vegans so I understand and support the need for a safe space to process your experiences and to practice your dunks. All the best, signing off.
Reposted here since it is invisible where I first posted it. https://hexbear.net/post/94432
/c/vegan seems adamant to prove every single vegan stereotype true lol
I get feeling sick of constant bad faith counterarguments but come on.
I've had vegans around me my entire life and with one exception, none of them act as rotten as the ones on this website.
2nd paragraph is facts. Nothing but love for my vegan friends IRL. Yet the racist ones here make me wanna grill up burgers for dinner tonight as a fuck you lol
-Soulja
Same lol
Besides both of them being incredibly fussy eaters I've never had any issues with them. At worst I've had trouble finding us a place to eat, but that's not really on them.
Exactly my last ex is vegan and I have probably 3-4 vegans in my circle of friends and acquaintances. I respect their choices and they respect mine... it’s very simple. based on what I’ve seen overall I wouldn’t be surprised at all if some of the vegans on here would call me the N word if they were to come across me in real life at a BBQ lmao the yt vegans on here comparing eating meat to slavery fit the type. Then the casual racism toward our Asian and indigenous comrades on here. Shit’s crazy lol and a lot of the mods are being supportive or at least sympathetic with their actions. Literally less tolerant than many actual lib communities I’ve dipped my toes into, but most people here are cool so it’s all good
-Soulja
I was gonna actually become a vegan at first, but now I'm reconsidering it cause of these people ngl
I have very close friends who are religious "vegans" (they do not use any equal term). I respect them a lot and will come eat with them any day. They are nothing like this, and yet they are the most devoted to being vegan, it is their divine order! Vegans have a lot to contribute and are important. I want to hear from them. If I could enough I would probably become.
The way these user act is more like the way I was treated by some during the time in my life where I was living as a Chinese minority in Indonesia. They do not understand and will not listen, trying to make me follow the Muslim customs and berating my culture. (many people I met were also very nice though)
Understandable, best of luck elsewhere. This has been really terrible.
Its a bit concerning that the post calling out the racism of people referring to indigenous people as barbaric was removed. I think this is going to drive a lot of people away from the site. There are ways to have these discussions without resorting to bigotry.
Yeah I've been around from pretty much the beginning and was on the old sub a long time before that, and this is the first time I have felt like I have to self-censor to avoid mod retribution. I get wanting to grow the site and provide safe spaces for all sorts of communities, but when one of those communities become antagonistic to far more oppressed/marginalized groups that's a problem and I won't stand for it.
https://hexbear.net/post/92180
I posted this a bit angry after my initial good faith attempts at engagement with them had failed, but I feel very validated in the assessment.
As a member of a marginalized community, I don't think our beliefs or traditions or viewpoint should be held as sacrosanct. We're humans, with flaws and fucked up-beliefs like anyone else, and nobody is asking for some Disney-style fetishization of POC or indigenous practices or customs.
What I do expect is, an acknowledgement that we may not be fully aware of other groups conditions, that we've often been silenced when we speak out and the fact that even attempts to regulate or promote behavior deemed to be more positive has often be applied in ways to suppress. Some tact, and common consideration is all I'm asking for.
Constantly using ham-fisted comparisons and equivocations to the worst atrocities in human history and blithely doubling, tripling, quadrupling (and so on) down after people apart of those groups affected have repeatedly spoken out against it is not consideration and tact.
Presenting a less harmful choice in consumption habits under capitalism as a pillar of leftism and excluding marginalized comrades and dismissing their explanations on why some presuppositions might be inaccurate or reductionist is not consideration and tact.
Depicting your less harmful choice in consumption habits and the pushback you receive as being apart of an 'oppressed minority' is not consideration and tact. Vegans have never been systemically hunted down, whipped and hanged from trees for being vegan, have never been forced into conversion camps to surrender their commitment to veganism, have never had their places of gathering torched and looted in pogroms, deported or murdered in droves.
I'm sure there are POC and indigenous among the vegans here with different views. That's fine, our experiences are far from universal, what matters is that there is a consistent pattern of negative behavior that a very significant amount of the POC and indigenous community here have found very harmful and not without reason, as I'm sure you've seen by some examples now.
Veganism is good. It should be promoted.
Just don't be racist about it and don't confuse it for being leftist in itself.
I really appreciate this explanation, and I apologize for not seeing this earlier. I grew up as an ethnic minority being "hunted down," as you say, and so while I originally defended the conflation of oppression of animals to the oppression of minorities, I was mostly thinking about my own marginalized community. So, that said, I apologize for not recognizing the bigger picture that every POC, indigenous, and marginalized community has a wildly different cultural identity and relationship with their past. The usage of slavery, for example, in the argument for veganism triggers a generational trauma that we as leftists should not force on our comrades.
Vegans have never been systemically hunted down, whipped and hanged from trees for being vegan, have never been forced into conversion camps to surrender their commitment to veganism,
Lots of sensible input, and I think we really ought not to compare it to the Shoa or such. As such I will not talk about anything related to that or comparable moments in history, though vegans/vegetarians were in some places and time frames systematically hunted, captured, tortured, and killed. Your argument still holds most weight, but it isn't necessary to marginalize people who were kileld for not participating in murdering living beings or eating meat.
Sucks but I'd probably leave too if someone (especially a mod) treated me like that.
All the best for you going forward <3
It's disgusting that the mods decided to nuke the other thread because it was a "struggle session". It's clear to me that their answer to the prevalent and clear racism on this site is to let it go unchallenged and to police those that are most effected by it. This is the natural result of being so focused on growing the site as utmost priority. Particularly if that growth is going to be coming from reddit there is no way that there can be any significant inflow while also ensuring that these attitudes are effectively challenged. Instead the focus should be on creating a community that is actually responsive and safe for it's marginalized and oppressed comrades.
Tbh it seems like their priority is to protect their own / their friends, including those mods / friends that are actively participating in the arguments / rhetoric that's leading to this kind of exodus. Racism going unchallenged, and policing those affected by it, are natural outcomes of this insular and combative attitude as punishing that behavior would mean punishing themselves.
Or, in other words, mods (COPS) are messy drama lovers that are too deep in the weeds to effectively police their communities
I am not new, but this heavy handedness against non-reactionaries who have legitimate problems with the way things are going is. To me at least.
I just browse here like 5 min a day and this site and its moderation is a fucking train wreck. There's 0 way I will ever become more engaged, but I enjoy some of the memes here. My unsolicited opinion is that it's wasted energy on the goal of trying to achieve some leftist utopian online space. You can rationalize it as tangentially related to praxis, and I don't doubt those involved doing other things that are great but this website...damn.
edit I know this comes off as wrecking but I have trouble seeing the point of this website in the bigger picture of an american (yeah this site is american) leftist project. reddit existed already, and served a purpose to help pull people left, but so far ive seen this platform push more people away than educating and maybe I'm being cynical here but i value overall positive outcome more than purity pissing contests. I fully expect to get banned for this comment.
I remember seeing this kind of behaviour in facebook groups. The mods and admin would let a lot of shit slide for the sake of growing their numbers. It got to the point where the group imploded after they cracked down on criticism, especially from bipoc and FN who felt that they were ignoring the growing problems in the community.
Hey just a heads up to anyone coming to this post from main.
Please keep in mind that this is a space for ethnic minorities and people of color.
This is not the place to have a struggle session and/or dismiss the point of view of the OP. If you feel differently, please take it to another comm and refrain from debating here in the comments about it.
The vegan com seems to officially have settled on this as the reply, so I understand if you don't want to deal with it.
Why do I distinctly remembering the vegan comm accepting people from r/vegancirclejerk before all this happened?
Does a single indigenous person outweigh all of the people of color in this thread bringing forward their own concerns perspectives?
Yes, because a lot of the POC, including myself, here are in favor of them, especially the most sensible arguments that culture is no excuse for murder, lol.
Yes the voice of a single indigenous person outweighs that of the masses in the community?
How about actually responding with something other than a snarky face. That would be more constructive.
what website am I on? you made a bad post -> you get the :criinge:
post better next time
I really try to avoid 'mods bad' behavior, but I literally see no coherent explanation for how repeated and numerous comparisons of animal farming to human slavery or the holocaust and etc be completely tolerated despite frequent objections from POC while someone essentially stating that a certain minority being apart of a group doesn't exonerate that group from behavior that can be detrimental to minorities on the whole, using Candace Owens as an example, resulting in an instant comment removal and ban can be construed as anything but biased moderation.
I think that's a very uncharitable interpretation of what was being said considering it is literally in the context of the person in question attacking an attempt at undermining the legitimacy of minorities feeling they are being unheard, but my point is not about the validity of the comparison.
It's the fact that slavery and holocaust comparisons that get repeatedly decried by large numbers of POC on here (and the subsequent 2983123th doubling down despite said POC objections) are either tolerated or outright given tacit approval when performed by a certain group of vegans, while another comparison gets immediately removed and the poster banned when it's directed against the argument of said group is absurd.
My point being someone themselves being a part of a marginalized group doesn't exclude them from engaging in harmful rhetoric against that group. This is a nearly central component of neocolonial relationships of oppression.
Very quick to respond to this but not actual racism taking place, lol
Oh fuck off, you're taking a break but still banning people and deleting their comments when they make you angry. This is a very emotional response from me. But look at how this is percieved in regards to the op and the situation.
The measured response of our fair and balanced mod team.
Ok so I'm not a regular poster in this comm so feel free to tell me to fuck off... But I think that the site as a whole needs to build a culture around different communities being... Different spaces.
If we don't do this, if we continue to demand that everywhere on the entire site understand the differences of every single other community, marginalised or not, everyone will leave the site.
What I mean to say is that some of the comms are going to be imperfect and a site culture that accepts that some comms are not going to be spaces that literally everyone will like is ok. I think it's important in fact. I think it's ok to say to yourself "I really don't like the vegan comm".
The expectation that we manage to achieve complete and total sitewide perfect will kill the entire site. Some shit is always going to go down in some spaces, between people not all being educated and between people having shit days with poorly thought-through outbursts, there will always be something. Without learning how to handle and deal with this we'll be in trouble.
Right now the expectation that every single comm is run the same way and should conform to the same social standards is hurting the site's longterm future.
Eliminating main won't resolve it while every single comm looks the same and can't be identified as being a different part of the site at a glance. People will behave the same way everywhere and expect the same behaviour everywhere as long as they feel like they're in the same place.
Psychologically people need to feel like they're in a different space.
I think it's more to do with the lack of personality that any comm has. All comms appear the same, there's no header images, no sidebar images. This makes it quite difficult to even tell you're in a different comm and therefore you don't even notice. Because of this people never adjust attitudes or behaviour between comms, it creates a sitewide homogeny.
When this is addressed I expect individual communities to take on more of their own individual personalities.
This is true but also something necessary until the site grows imo. There aren't enough users solely here for specific comms to keep them alive.
Godspeed and good luck :chavez-salute:
It sucks that this place has shown its ass like this
My point being someone themselves being a part of a marginalized group doesn’t exclude them from engaging in harmful rhetoric against that group. This is a nearly central component of neocolonial relationships of oppression.
That is fair and I respect that. Still, this is evidently pretty alienating to indigenous people who hold on to that aspect of their culture, and there are a lot of people who aren’t indigenous that are policing and talking down to people on such a basis.
Mods aren't doing anything about rampant racism but can't stop themselves from banning folk speaking out against it for "jacketing". Pitiful display
I've been yellin at them to do something and it seems like the ball is finally starting to roll but I'm pissed it took so long and took this much prodding from so many.
Very upset that @weenuk is gone on top of everything
It's a sleeper k*rry account showing discord. Needs a ban
They have zero posts on my end despite a August 2020 join date. Maybe my phone is bugging out or something
Honestly, the site has been really fucky in the last few days idk. I can't see your posts / comment number, there's the posts from other people showing up in your user page now sometimes, and posts from /c/strugglesession don't appear in your userpage unless you subscribe, i believe. I think removing /c/strugglesession from all might have broken the user page lol.
I wish there was a general @MODS ping. I know they're looking into some of this. Not sure if they think it's related to the new comm though.
Also not saying they aren't a kerry sleeper lmao. I just think its worth bringing up
I'm just a !neurodiverse@hexbear.net comm mod, never been more than that on here, so all I can really do Is yell at them in modchat and dms
Like if anything this comm should be a safe space for people of color to express these concerns but we can't even have that.
Trying to keep up with any bad faith comments here but I’m at work at the moment and multitasking,
if you see people coming in here and making comments that are threatening this space please shoot me a PM and I will try to act on them appropriately ASAP
edit: person above seems to be a Kerry troll starting shit (when will they give up?) but my comment above goes for others here, reach out if you see something
Fake accusation or statement about someone basically.
I know it's Wikipedia but still https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad-jacketing
