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:

  1. Do not use appropriative comparisons like chattel slavery or the holocaust if they are not from your culture.

  2. 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.

  • Mablak [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    we also want to unite to ultimately help even those who can't or don't work

      • Mablak [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        yes? animals are like any person who's unable to work, but who still has needs we should provide for (one need being, don't kill them)

        • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Animals are not like people who are unable to work, no. They are animals. We can respect them and decide not to do much harm to them, but they cannot be treated like people and integrated into the project of socialism like people, because they simply can't fit in the same social and economic framework as cultural creatures. In any case, it's really not comparable to why people are provided for according to socialist principles, it's purely an argument from morality, not a consequence of class analysis or any kind of social theory otherwise.

          Which doesn't mean it's not something one should care about, it's just not the same thing - two good things can exist separately from each other.

          • Mablak [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            why would we 'not be able' to integrate animals? lacking a culture doesn't mean we're unable to do this

            literally all we have to do to integrate them into our goals is to say they're part of the end goal of well-being for all, it's pretty simple

            the argument for socialism is a moral argument to begin with, it's an ought claim, we believe we ought to pursue socialism because it means an end to immoral systems of oppression and suffering

            • sysgen [none/use name,they/them]
              ·
              4 years ago

              The argument for socialism is not purely moral, no, that's exactly the point of actual scientific modes of analysis that underlay Marxist and Anarchist thought and why they persisted beyond the utopian socialism of yesteryear. Yes, it's also morally good if your moral goals are well-being for all, but necessarily these frameworks don't work outside the society.

              I don't see how you can integrate animals into human society at the same level as a person. I just can't. Lacking the ability of culture is a sufficient and necessary trigger for that to be impossible. While disabled people being integrated into society? Certainly, that is done every day for 95%+ of disabled people, and it can get better yet.

              I don't think you understand the ramifications of including all animals into society equally to a person? Would you adapt public transport to all animals to give them the right to the city? Will you give them a basic income? No? Then that's not really what you're trying to do, and you'll need to find another category for your goals, and that makes it orthogonal to socialism.

              • Mablak [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                integrating animals into society and doing a zootopia? it would be dope, but I was talking integrating them into the goals for socialism

                in other words, considering their well-being a goal, instead of just the well-being of one species. and like, letting them on the subway is probably not good for their well-being or ours

                the argument for 'why we should be socialists' or 'what we should believe as socialists' is a moral one, because of the word should. the argument for 'how socialism will happen' of course isn't

        • Alaskaball [comrade/them]M
          ·
          4 years ago

          I'm not going to call a bunch of radlib vegans fascists. I'm going to call them radlibs because they're fucking hyper-individualist liberals.