Hi all,
Throughout the last few days there has been an uptick in arguments and turbulence throughout our site. This comes right at a time where we are onboarding new communities that are in danger of being banned by Reddit.
During this, we've seen that it would be beneficial to provide more clear communication around our decisions and stances on current issues. This post will be divided into two topics that have both come up: 1. BIPOC Comrades and Intersectionality and 2. Veganism
BIPOC Comrades and Intersectionality
We have an ongoing commitment to intersectionality. This will always be a continual process as we identify new opportunities for learning and process improvement.
Based on community feedback around BIPOC representation on the sitemod team, we have added two new sitemods who will bring additional BIPOC perspectives to the sitemod team.
While we had BIPOC comrades on the sitemod team previously, they made the understandable choice to not state this identifying information publicly and we support them in their decision. We will continue to increase BIPOC representation on the sitemod team over the coming weeks.
There have been concerns of implicit support of racism amongst the mod team. We hope that looking through the modlog will prove otherwise. Although we can't get to rule breaking comments or posts immediately, we will never tolerate racism on our site, we're sorry about this and wish we could do more. We encourage everyone to continue reporting rule-breaking comments and posts so that they are more visible to moderators.
To reiterate, any posts or comments that are exclusionary to our BIPOC comrades are against our Code Of Conduct and will be removed. Individuals should especially not appropriate comparisons that aren't from their culture. Do not use appropriative comparisons like:
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Do not use appropriative comparisons like chattel slavery or the holocaust if they are not from your culture.
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Implying indigenous people are barbaric/mentions of "assimilation" or "evolving" their culture. These phrases are outright xenophobic and have a long history as a dog-whistle for settler-colonialism. They are not allowed.
Our moderator team is made up of volunteers and works to remove reported content that violates our CoC as quickly as possible, but we are unfortunately not able to remove objectionable content instantaneously. Objectionable content remaining up following a report does not mean the moderation team endorses that content. We are continually working to build up the moderation team and number of volunteers.
Veganism
Hexbear is a platform for all leftist communities. As a part of this, we're partnering with a number of vegan communities on reddit who are migrating over to the site. The mods of these communities are intersectional and have a number of BIPOC comrades on their teams including indigenous comrades and we're excited to work with them.
For those unfamiliar with the concept, veganism is a philosophy and way of living which seeks to eliminate as far as is possible and practicable all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals. Veganism is about absolute liberation of our exploited and commodified animal comrades. Veganism is not a diet, although not eating meat and animal products is a common extension of this philosophy.
We encourage vegans to post throughout the site. Our sitemod team is a mixture of vegans and non-vegans, as are the mods of the !food comm. The mods of that comm made the policy change of requiring pictures of meat to be marked nsfw following feedback from multiple comrades who were uncomfortable seeing meat pics. After examining feedback on this issue, the sitemod team has made the decision to support the !food mods agency as moderators.
The "NSFW" tag is very much a "catch all" at this point, although more specific content tags are planned for the future. We encourage all comrades passionate about helping us develop this feature to check out !hexbear@hexbear.net for how to get started with contributing.
Vegans are allowed to advocate for veganism, especially in their own comm. This doesn't constitute sectarianism, classism, racism, etc. and will not be actioned against as long as it does not break the site's code of conduct or a comm's rules.
As with any comm, individual posts and comments will need to be moderated. The diverse team of vegan mods already has experience navigating this from running large subreddits and will respond as these issues are reported. Bad faith generalizations of all vegans will not be tolerated, nor the delegitimization of trauma expressed by our vegan comrades.
In Conclusion
We appreciate the passion our community has for empowerment and intersectionality. As a team, we hope to consistently embody the communal standards we outline in our code of conduct. We feel these changes uphold our goals of intersectionality and left unity and will drive the site forward as a general, inclusive leftist space.
Thank you and viva la hexbear.
I'm hesitant to even post this but whatever, I think it's time to rip the band aid off. I'm not a wrecker; I play by the rules and I genuinely love this community. But I want to be heard if even for a moment. And I've had a few to drink.
I think it's utter bullshit to compare the suffering of humans to the suffering of animals. Yes, as an omnivore, I also understand that animals suffer under capitalism in order to make food. That being said, the two are incomparable.
I think it's bullshit that NSFW has to be applied to meat posts on the Food comm. If looking at cooked meat is traumatizing, you obviously haven't experienced actual trauma. Furthermore, way to be the sniveling little bitches chuds already think you are. But really, it's disingenuous all the way around since much of the pro-vegan propaganda is based in depicting the awful side of animal slaughter. So that's kosher, but a slab of ribs isn't? Give me a fucking break. You're being shitheads and you know it, and you're taking advantage of other people's good nature in doing so.
The Food comm is, for reasons I don't understand, effectively a vegan community as is even though a Vegan comm already exists. Can we get an Omnivore community if that's case?
Shaming doesn't work. I asked the community how they felt about me posting BBQ some weeks back and at least once I was indirectly called a murderer. Ok, here are some other unrelated questions I look forward to everyone answering... How many of us drive a car? How much untold damage has that industry caused to life on earth? Do we shame car drivers? Are you still driving a car? Does part of you still like driving your car knowing how terrible all of the above is?
Dozens of posts a day all over about how we're the problem isn't solving shit. It repels me, actually. I'd like to think I'm a good person; I'm one of the good ones. But if this is the shit I have to endure just to post here, I have better shit to do with my time.
So yeah. The OP with this huge inclusive mantra seems nice but isn't really addressing shit. There's some elitist, toxic shit happening on here and it's going to cause otherwise good people to leave.
Wait, that's a thing that's actually happening right now???
How do you have a traumatizing experience with meat? What circumstance does that happen? Like, I understand how transphobia, rape, war, etc. can cause PTSD. But how does someone go through a traumatic meat experience?
It's weird to get so upset over marking something as nsfw. If people feel legitimately upset over seeing something like that it's really no extra work for you to click the box and it helps more people feel comfortable on the site. I also think it's innapropriate to try and gatekeep trauma because it's impossible to know what other people have gone through and experience trauma from. Trauma can take many different forms and triggers can seem insignificant from an outside perspective but they're very important to the person experiencing them.
I'm not convinced there is anyone on this site with PTSD has meat as a trigger. I'm glad to hear someone out & change my opinion if I'm wrong.
But it sounds just like a continuation of this petty vegan vs. non-vegan nonsense, and one that is pretty disrespectful to people with PTSD.
Well I mean a common example is people who work at slaughterhouses have been known to develop PSTD. So I could see that being a reason for someone to want filters over posts featuring meat.
I imagine a hanging carcass and leaking fluids is a ballpark of difference from someone's photo on the grill. This is really reaching.
Alright. I'll play ball. First of all, if looking at meat is traumatic then said person must be paralyzed to walk, breathe, and live in the real world. Secondly, I know trauma is subjective and I've experienced so much of it, most people wouldn't probably believe me if I recounted the shit I've been through. I know triggers exist. That being said, at some point there has to be a recognition of the disruption of regular order this causes. If said person or people cannot function in the regular comms then maybe a special comm is needed. Oh that's right - one already exists.
Like yeah it would be incredibly tough for someone to deal with that and live in our society but wouldn't it be better just to try small gestures that could make them feel more comfortable here? I'm not saying this out of bad faith either, I'd be supporting any kind of trigger filter we could add if people requested it
Apply that same logic to other facets of life and it falls flat. If the straight community found it repulsive to see gay men kiss or hold hands, would we alter our behavior? What if it was the other way around? Sorry, at best this whole conversation is infantile (which is why I was hesitant to post my thoughts). But it's also mostly disingenuous which is why I'm throwing in my 2 cents.
How ever this all shakes out, I love everyone here and I'd bash heads for us to exist. But if anyone thinks I agree with this tiptoe bullshit to appease some people who, in my opinion, clearly are taking advantage of people's good nature? Sorry. Agree to disagree.
This is why I think it would be better to flair topics on threads and have ways to block certain topics if they are difficult for the user. PTSD can come in all forms and can be triggered by almost anything, so the easiest way to handle this is to let the individual user choose the content they are willing to see instead of having to put in rules for every user.
And I'm fine with that. I'm actually fine following the rules too, whatever they may be. Feel free to dig through my post history. I think, though, we're fooling ourselves inro a false sense of unity if everyone is censored or self censors to post here. If that's the case, like I said before, good people will leave. And they won't announce it - they'll just go.
Fair enough I'll agree to disagree no point in endless arguing
Why?
deleted by creator
Humans are animals, and we're capable of contemplating our existence, so clearly, yes.
As for whether non-human animals can: I don't know, and neither do you.
Opinion discarded :vegan-liberation-rad:
You are literally the problem here.
Why would I want to read a wall of text complaining about my ethical choices from someone who disagrees with me on ethics and morality. I’m glad I could just stop reading at that point.
why would the suffering of one kind of animal be the only suffering that matters; all conscious suffering is bad
My two cents: Yes obviously as a vegan I don’t particularly enjoy looking at pictures of meat, but I live in the USA so I see meat at the grocery store, in ads on TV, and about a million other places, so it’s something that I live with. If the food comm does not have nsfw tags I would personally be fine with it and still go to the comm because I like talking about food with other people. As many have pointed out there are worse things shown on the site that may be traumatic to certain users and those are not filtered or consistently marked nsfw. That’s a problem and I would like to see that change to make this site more accessible to people.
That being said, I do kind of like the food comm policy of marking nsfw because it gives people the option. It felt like a nice gesture to make the space welcoming to vegans when a lot of online food spaces are just Reddit epic “mm bacon, vegans r lame!” Stuff.
None of this is a huge deal to me, just wanted to provide some opposing perspective. Definitely don’t think people should opt to look at your post and then give you shit about it.