As a very wise woman said earlier in the thread, the onus for education, learning and growth isn’t on anyone but the individual. If people are angry about something you said then it’s not down to anyone else to reflect on that for you or guide you through the reasons why.
Why the fuck should we be ‘inclusive’ and ‘accepting’ of people who spout bigoted buzzwords and propaganda, then outright refuse to listen or respond when people try and engage reasonably (even though there is no obligation to do so with an issue like this). There’s no ‘both sides-ing’ this, there is a very clear right and a very clear wrong, and like I said before, the wrong wouldn’t be tolerated by anybody over any other issue that was actively harmful to a group of already marginalised people, so why is this any different.
If users have left because of the responses to transphobia in this thread then good imo, we didn’t want them here anyway.
Yeah, but not AD. They were well meaning though underinformed perhaps. Tried to diffuse & then was humble & recalcitrant to others when LivEvil showed their true hand
Feels like AD got burned as a consequence of somebody else’s bigotry rather their own. And as someone who has shown elsewhere that they’re working really hard & putting themself on the line to counteract prejudice & bigotry in their own workplace it’s a shame to loose them here
Honestly hope AD comes back at some point. I know they are not a transphobe
It’s a strange one cause nobody said anything aggresive or harsh to AD, he was called out on something and apologised and the thread moved on, seemingly he accepted why there was a negative reaction to what the others had said and like you say, he was very hot on trying to call out other discrimination. Obviously only he knows why he felt he had to leave here, but it’s not like he was driven out with flaming pitchforks or anything.
I can only speculate on his perception of how it went, it might have been panic. It might have been a guilty conscience for taking livEvil in good faith …or a sudden realisation/retcon that their earlier posts may have been grossly misinformed
I dunno
Anyway, let’s not derail this thread too much. There are way bigger issues here than individual posters
I even messaged him to reiterate that no one was mad at him and I hoped he was well. I think we were as gentle as we could be.
I do wish AD well, tbh, I really respect that he was able to reevaluate his positions after he spent some time with the community. No one was hostile to AD and those of us who asked him for advice made that clear.
I think you should feel anxious if you’re going to start shaming people for calling out transphobic dog whistles. We can’t tolerate “just asking questions” musings or “intellectual discussions” about issues the impact on the lives and wellbeing of our friends in the trans community.
If you think we should all be kid gloves and gentle then maybe the best thing you could do is source out a handy list of links to reliable resources for educating people dabbling in transphobia. Stop tone policing and shaking your finger at people who are trying to keep this a safe space for all posters and show us how it’s done.
Yep, exactly this. It’s the paradox of tolerance / nazi bar analogy* in action.
If it seems an overreaction and non-inclusive to jump so quickly to telling people to leave, it’s because you haven’t seen these same tactics being trotted out elsewhere before.
*Not saying anyone was even close to being a nazi, just that transphobia is a point of view that you similarly don’t want to gain a foothold.
I like AD, I’m sad he’s gone, I really hope he comes back. I’m upset that something I said to him prompted him to leave, but I still stand by it.
This is probably a really good idea tbh. If we had a forum definition of what transphobia is, and a non engagement policy we could’ve flagged the bad posts as soon as they came up? And then we don’t have to get bogged down arguing with them and turning things messy like what happened here? Idk.
I’m not posting this in aggression, or anger, I’m not trying to get at you or shut you down. This is me honestly trying to talk openly with you here.
Can you be specific about who you think has treated who harshly? What was said and how do you think they should’ve acted differently instead?
Reason for asking is I kinda feel like you might be talking in part about me here. You know because I’m the one who really went and had a word with AD up there. And I was super super careful to be precise and not aggressive with my words when I posted last week. I took a lot of time over it, trying to be completely fair and civil.
If you don’t mean me then cool, let me know and I can forget about it. If you do then I’m honestly 100% open to discussing with you and not getting into an argument. I would completely prefer you did that because if I was unfair on AD or I’ve created hostility then I need to know, it’s the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. Thanks
From memory, (and I can still see that part of their post because it’s been quoted) the only thing I took issue with was AD saying ‘On the basis of my history of interaction with the LivEvl, I would find it really hard to imagine that they are a person who is transphobic’. This was after multiple users engaged with LivEvl and provided them with well resourced counters to their points - such as:
I’ve got no problem with AD either but saying that they find it hard to imagine someone posting what LivEvl did is transphobic isn’t really very helpful. If someone, giving the benefit of the doubt here, parrots transphobic things like then they should be called out as being transphobic. I include all the ‘just asking questions’ stiff in that too. The same way as anyone parroting racist things should be called out as being racist. I don’t think that’s unfair.
I don’t think AD was acting in bad faith or anything but I think they should keep that in mind when trying to defend these people.
If someone’s offended by people just standing up for what’s right, because of how its perceived, I’m afraid that’s just too bad.
Hope AD comes back one day but if he doesnt that’s up to him.
Life’s too short for a constant vibe check.
Absolutely agree and yeah it’s a classic case of ’they’ve been nice to me so I can’t believe they’d hurt others’ materially helping the oppressor
Both unhelpful & dangerous in any instance
But I think they probably realised this by the time they quit the thread/boards, maybe that’s even why they quit
Is it possible for us to lock sensitive threads to posters who haven’t been active for like a week or something? And pin a message saying the forum’s policy is zero tolerance towards transphobia?
I felt like I had to be in here pointing out the transphobia partly because I was terrified of the terf eye of Sauron getting turned on this place. Murphy is a hot button topic for them, marauding online making trouble is what they do. We know this place gets a decent amount of Google traffic. I also didn’t want people lurking in here to be like “well what if what Murphy said wasn’t actually that bad? Maybe unknown potential side effects of puberty blockers which haven’t revealed themselves in the nearly 50 years they’ve been in use are a good enough reason to ban them”. But we could change things so that trans and nb posters on here aren’t having to come into a thread and ad hoc correct transphobia.
Morning, I do not mean your good self, or any one particular person to be clear. It’s hard to be specific as the thread is now void of posts from users that have left. I do find your posts measured, open and sincere, apologies to anyone that thinks I may be suggesting them, as that is not my intention.
Ok cool, thanks for replying 
I appreciate it
If not maybe it could be tied to Trust level? I know we already restrict the Serious Matters subforum in that way, if that works then don’t know if that can be a blanket thing for any SSP threads?
One which note… should this thread be marked as SSP?
99% sure from a quick settings skim we can only do that for subforums, not for tags.
We can move threads into Serious Matters when any sensitive topics come up if people want that, or can the other @moderators think of any other ways to do this?
Re pinning a message, do you mean within a thread? Not sure that’s possible but we can post a message or warning as moderators if there are any further issues with transphobic or bad faith “just asking questions” posts
Afaik, no — it’s all decided by the trust levels and I don’t recall there being a setting like this in there.