Neopronouns are not trolling
If someone tells you the way you're addressing them is making them uncomfortable, change the way you're addressing. You don't need to be perfect, you need to try, and you need to be willing to fix your slip ups when they happen
If someone makes it clear they're not comfortable with the way you're addressing them, change the way you address them. If you can't change the way you address them without making yourself uncomfortable, then stop engaging with the person in question
Which is fine, until you know someones pronouns. At which point, continuing to use they/them becomes an issue that will get moderator action.
But I've seen people's opinions on trans people change in front of my eyes because they met me and realized I'm a reasonable person who isn't here to get into a screaming match with them over nothing.
They didn't change because "you're reasonable". They changed, because trans people stopped being a remote, theoretical thing to hate on. Visibility makes us real to people. Knowing a trans person in your day to day life is the best indicator of whether or not someone is supportive of trans rights. When you become a real person to them, instead of a hypothetical, you break through.
That's not because you were well behaved. It's because you were visible, and authentic.
That's how I got used to neopronouns.
If you don't think that's happening, I don't think you're paying attention. And if you do think we should just soak that and roll with it?
The odd troll or bot getting through is better than defaulting to gatekeeping.
Because, if those bot farms exist like you suggest, their literal goal is to encourage people to misgender and undermine the validity of gender diverse folk. Going ahead and doing what they want is exactly the wrong response to bots and trolls pushing an agenda like that.
i have thoughts and opinions, who wouldn’t? but that’s not relevant. whether i get it isn’t relevant. what i think or opine about it isn’t relevant. the bar isn’t getting it, the bar is accept people. the bar is not scrutinizing and making judgment calls about what you think should or shouldn’t be a valid gender or pronoun, or worse spinning a narrative where this person doesn’t really deserve to have their identity acknowledged.
This should be framed! That's it exactly!
No. The person you are referring to uses "drag" as pronouns, but is also ok with they/them.
People who can't simply use either of those options, and insist on getting in to a discussion about what identities they think are valid are the folk getting banned.
If you simply ignore the users whose pronouns you find challenging, or use their pronouns and avoid starting/continuing discourse offering your personal opinions about whether or not someone elses identity is valid, there are no bans.
So what if there are? Lets say there were bot farms out there actively portraying binary trans folk in a way that makes us look like awful trolls that are just making things up. Does that make it ok for folk to start misgendering binary trans folk? Does it make it ok to act as if our pronouns are something that we only receive for good behaviour? Does it stop it from hurting when people actively and deliberately choose to use the wrong pronouns for us?
You know the answer to all of those questions, so you need to ask yourself why you're ok with it when it happens to gender diverse folk who don't share your experience/identity. I'm going to guess that the answer is because you think that behaving well, creating less fuss, and being a good little trans person will make the bigots less bigoted towards us. And you think that the neopronoun users are making things worse for us. And that's just blatantly incorrect. People are transphobic because they're taught to be transphobic. They find reasons after the fact to validate their bigotry, so that they don't have to feel like they're the bad guy in their own story. And because that validation comes after the bigotry, it literally doesn't matter what we do, the people who have been taught to hate us will find something that validates that hatred. You playing nice doesn't fix it, all it does is make it worse for folk who don't fit in to the same box you and I fit in to.
Thank you! It's been eye opening to see just how many of them there are active on lemmy :/
Lemmy seems to be getting worse unfortunately :\
I'm saying that, because I'm the instance admin, and I don't permanently instance ban people for a singular comment using "they" in regards to someone who is explicitly ok with they...
I have no idea which comment you were referring to, but I do know that your representation of what you saw is not what actually happened...
The alternative, is a queer instance that is built from the ground up with gatekeeping baked in to its core. You may be ok with that. I am not. This instance will never be that.
You're allowed to make mistakes and find it difficult. You're not allowed to decide that you're not even going to try. If you are at that point, your options are to get it right, or to not engage with the person in question.
You act with a prejudice that people can only take umbrage with this user because they use neopronouns and you willfully and selectively reject any claims of impropriety that the user may have committed elsewhere.
I have explicitly acknowledged drag deliberately created drama in 196, was banned by the 196 mods, and I support the mods right to make such bans.
What I've said is that I haven't seen evidence of anything warranting an entire instance ban. I've seen people talk about it a lot, but I've not actually seen the evidence myself, and given the ire that drag has stirred up in people, I'm going to need to see it before I act on it.
Other instances will defederate from your instance to avoid the abundance of trolls that you will host.
drag is not based on blahaj zone...
Here are 3 users’ comments just on this post concerning the contextual behavior of a specific user whom I presume to be the impetus of this whole discussion.
None of that is "contextual behaviour". It's literally just people upset by pronouns they find discomforting. Once you remove "Using pronouns I don't like" as a reason, there is nothing else to those posts.
Many users and mods alike believe that the user’s actions have made it clear that they are trolling and intend harm upon the community, yet they remain unbanned.
Drag was banned from 196 by community mods
Does the admin team have a direct line for users to report bad actor users and their actions?
We have reports, a matrix channel and DMs.
Even if this user were genuine with their gender expression/identity/etc., is the rest of their behavior acceptable and undeserving of an instance ban?
I haven't seen evidence of other bad behaviour that warrants an instance ban. Drag has stirred up drama, deliberately so, and has received community bans as a result, and I support the rights of the community mods to make that choice. But I've seen no evidence of genuine attempts to encourage others to suicide, or ongoing deliberate misgendering, or anything else that warrants an instance ban. I've seen many accusations of such, but I've not seen any evidence behind the accusations.
If I'm missing some, please drop me a DM or the like.
It’s naïve to assume genuineness as the default online; don’t wait for a troll to break character. If you want this instance to be hospitable and to live up to the protectiveness, the anti-bigotry, the empathy, and the inclusion that it prides itself on, the instance needs admins who take less iffiness to guess when a user is trying to take them for a ride.
A queer instance that gatekeeps queer folk isn't hospitable, protective or empathic.
I am well aware that trolls can slip through and try and stir up drama. I believe that it's worth the risk, because the cost of gatekeeping gender diverse folks self expression isn't a price I'm willing to pay to be troll free. I'd rather the odd troll slip through the cracks and get dealt with than default to gatekeeping.
but I saw someone instantly permabanned with reason "misgendering" for a comment talking about "drag"'s behavior but using "they".
No you didn't
It depends on the person. If the pronouns you are using for someone is upsetting them and they make that clear, don't keep using them. If the only pronouns you can use make you uncomfortable, then simply don't interact with the person in question. And if the person in question is trolling or otherwise misbehaving, report them without doing so in a way that ignores their pronouns.
I haven't spoken about a specific user in any of this...
Whatever tho, I guess every individual user is supposed to independently block an asshat who tells people to commit suicide,
The message clearly and categorically states the rules still apply, and that behaviour is what gets actioned. Literally nothing about the post says that someone using neopronouns is otherwise exempt from the rules. If someone is telling someone to kill themselves, report it or DM it to a community mod.
It doesn't matter what a random person's opinion is. What matters, is what they do about that opinion and the consequences of their actions.
In this case, even if someone is actively and deliberately using an identity they don't hold to troll and cause trouble, it doesn't become ok to misgender them or ignore their pronouns. The damage of misgendering and making pronouns something that only get rewarded for good behaviour isn't to the troll, the damage is to all of the other gender diverse folk who get to see first hand that their acceptance is contingent on good behaviour, that their identity itself can be taken away by people as punishment. Their acceptance is no longer a right, but a privilege. And that shit does not fly. The harm of that is far worse than whatever harm an isolated troll can cause.
Don't gatekeep peoples identities. That's it. That's the rule. And everyone turning it in to something about "dragonfucking" or whatever other bullshit they are bringing in to it is distracting from the issue and causing the very harm I'm talking about, because ultimately, the rule is just "pronouns aren't a reward for good behaviour. End of story". Which means even shitty people and trolls get their pronouns respected and acknowledged, whilst they get banned and booted from the community.
And honestly, your comments have made this worse, because now, you, an admin of a remote instance, have made the discussion about whether "dragonfucking" is valid or not, making the conversation about when it's ok to gatekeep folk, instead of simply saying "don't gatekeep" alongside "ban trolls"
tl;dr - Gatekeepintg hurts us. You have just empowered the gatekeepers by telling them that sometimes it's ok to gatekeep. A move that hurts all gender diverse folk, not the trolls, and is ultimately the goal of some trolls.