I recently made a new account on lemmy.blahaj.zone, because I’ve been harassed and doxxed on my old account and I wanted a fresh start with a more lighthearted online identity that I could be more open about my gender identity on. I’d heard blahaj zone was good for trans people, so I made my account there. And yeah, [email protected] removed my post discussing neuronormativism from a queer perspective, but I hoped maybe “the trans instance” would be friendlier to trans people.
A couple days after making my account, I saw someone on Blahaj engaging in the tired old cliche of “I hate politics, there’s no politics on my social media and I want to keep it that way!” Well we’ve all heard the joke that the two races are white and political, the two genders are male and political, and the two sexualities are straight and political. Hatred of politics is a transphobic, sexist, and racist trope. And having sufferred harassment and abuse from people inside the queer community who “hated politics” and saw trans or nonbinary or xenogender identities as political, I knew this kind of speech was going to make bigots feel comfortable saying they also hate politics, and they think us trans people are it.
So, I responded to the transphobia. I started out by attempting to educate them on what politics actually means. But I was interrupted by the Blahaj admin Ada, who told me that politics is “anything I disagree with”, and that indeed politics isn’t welcome on Blahaj. This language was deeply triggering of my past issues dealing with abuse, and I knew from past experience this sort of thing is said by people who are getting ready to say some enbyphobic or racist hate speech. It is especially common for white queer people to talk this way to BIPOC queer people. I tried to reason with Ada, explained the history of the cliche, the trauma it’s caused many trans people, and the consequences this kind of speech will have on the community here, making us all less safe.
Ada wasn’t having it. She minimised my concerns by reducing them to my personal trauma while ignoring my wider concerns for others’ safety, and weaponised my PTSD to paint my opinions as invalid because I am mentally ill. She said she owns Blahaj, and she gets to do whatever she wants with it, and nobody is allowed to express a differing opinion, even one that protects trans people, because that’s politics. At the time I thought her concern was me speaking directly to transphobes and making them feel uncomfortable by calling out their actions, so I said I’d just report it instead, and she banned my account.
This behaviour protects transphobes, WILL lead to trans and BIPOC people being harassed on this instance, attacks and gaslights victims of trauma (my concerns can’t be valid because I have a mental illness), and forces out any trans person with a commitment to safety for the community.
The thread where all this happened: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/2143969
I mean I get it; being queer is exhausting, and sometimes you just want to take a break from … all of that … and look at cat pics.
That said queer identities are indeed inherently political, and I don’t think you can reasonably achieve a goal of “no politics,” especially in queer spaces. I agree that saying “no politics” is basically the same as saying “no politics I disagree with,” and at least she was honest about that. But I don’t think it’s generally a very achievable goal. Like, as long as identity is political, there will be politics in every space. You can intentionally ignore it to have a good time or do other things, but it’s not like it isn’t there.
Sorry this all happened to you. If you want another queer-aligned instance that’s much smaller, I host https://lib.lgbt, feel free to check us out!
The thing is I’d be fine with an instance that had the rule of “no politics I disagree with”, as long as that instance disagreed with transphobia. But Blahaj appears to agree with transphobia and disagree with trans rights, and that’s really the issue. And the reason you are able to have “the trans instance” be a place hostile to trans rights is that they use poorly defined words like “political”. Everything is political and everything can be defined as political, so when someone says they hate politics they’re just obfuscating their views and that’s how you end up with a transphobic instance full of trans people who think it’s a safe space
Yeah totally agreed. I think they mishandled the Hexbear situation as well; it was obvious from the outset that regardless of their queerness, they were operating in bad faith. Unfortunately time proved that right.
Oh BTW I am very queer and queer in ways that most queer people are totally unfamiliar with as a coherent concept. My queerness is as hard for binary people to make sense of as romance is to aromantic people. I was told two days ago by an autistic person that empathising with me gave them a headache. Are you gonna be able to be cool with that? Nothing I say will be offensive, but it might be deeply confusing and a lot of people respond to confusion by assuming hostility
I love any, all, and no genders! Bring it on!
That said we are very very small and inactive, so you’re probably just gonna be interacting with peeps over at blahaj.zone anyway. But we are very welcoming in any event.
Cool, awesome. I will post my schizotypal gender rants when I come up with one