Iāll just post my initial comment in the entirety since what happens is entirely predicted by my first comment.
The topic was trans athletes and, like with any hot button political issues, there are rigidly defined āsidesā that come with a list of things that you must profess.
These things are simply declared as not being open to discussion and if you challenge that declaration, ye power trippinā bastards rear their ugly head. This dogma is unhealthy in any community and the people who enforce it through social pressure, cyber bullying and mod powers are actively harmful.
As to demonstrate my point I continued with the conversation, responding in good faith to the people who attempted a conversation, right up until I was mass banned (which only took a few hours).
The first comment is here if you want to see the entire conversation or think Iām hiding some secret transphobic rants in my comment history: https://lemmy.world/comment/15496985
The Initial Comment
This is an issue that exposes some of the more dogmatic people in the movement.
It is as if there is a list of positions that youāre required to believe and if you disagree with any one of them youāre labeled a heretic (transphobic, in this case).
Sports and the fairness of competition is a complex issue even when youāre just talking about cisgender competitors:
Can a person use performance enhancing drugs to train and then get clean enough to test positive for a competition? It seems unfair, to me, for the other competitors if this is the case.
It isnāt an unfair statement to say that the physical performance of cisgender men is higher than that of cisgender women. This is why we have separate competitions for men and women.
The issue isnāt as simple as a choice between āTransgender people should be free, without question, to compete in any competitionā or āTransgender people should not be allowed to compete as their genderā
Framing it in such a black and white manner is harmful behavior, no matter which position you take.
We need to understand how peopleās bodies are affected and what advantages of disadvantages are obtained and then base the rule changes on objective data and not appeals to emotion or ideological bullying.
Fabricated Pretexts
The last thing I said on the topic (bold added), as there were already commenters insinuating that Iām secretly a transphobe rather than engaging in discussion, was:
Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, Iām not supporting that position. From the point of view of fairness in competition there has to be an objective answer thatās backed by objective tests.
Simply declaring that trans people are beyond reproach and that any attempts to quantify biological advantage are unfairly discriminatory and anyone asking these questions is a bigot isnāt helpful.
I include this because included in the reasons for the bans is: āTransphobia attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.ā This is completely misrepresenting what I said and what I believe in order to create a pretext for a ban.
And the power trippinā bastards come in with the sweeping community bans ([email protected], really?): https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=2&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=12926811
Conclusion
This kind of thinking is harmful to any community.
Labeling disagreement as bigotry is nonsense. Refusing to engage on a topic and using filters and bans to hide from people who donāt perfectly align with your ideas is not how you make allies or educate people.
The people that do this are responsible for creating the impression that your communities are hostile and made up of extremists. Attacking allies because they donāt fall in line without question is a blunder.
People with moderator powers should be held to a higher standard of responsibility and fabricating reasons for bans and mislabeling people as bigots is the ultimate abdication of that responsibility. These people are not interested in helping a community thrive, they simply want to be the ones with the power to strike out at people that they want to hurt regardless of the damage that it causes.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk (except you, [email protected], I pray you never learn how to exit vim)
Warning to all: do not start arguing about trans women in sports in this thread. Stick to judgement on the banning please.
You chose to openly and willingly spew debunked transphobic talking points as well as thinly veiled transphobia. That was your choice. Iām sure that you knew very well that these types of exclusionary arguments arenāt taken well on platforms and communities which are protective of trans people or even run by trans people. YDI
Oh and about those preemptive bans, I donāt blame them, some of that is an automated part of Lemmy when doing instance bans for remote users, but even the ones where people manually banned you. I donāt blame them either, youāve made yourself well known in holding and acting on transphobic and trans exclusionary beliefs, why would they want you posting and hanging out in their trans-friendly communities when they already know youāre someone to do that kind of shit.
Youāre confusing disagreement and questions with transphobia because youāre not believing me that Iām discussing in good faith.
Thatās the core of the problem. Youāre unable to entertain the idea that someone may not know what know.
Maybe, to you, these are debunked talking points but there are people who have never been a part of the conversation. Assuming that because you know about a subject that everyone else has to is a very naive way of thinking. So, when you interact with people who donāt know anything about the subject you come off as an abrasive asshole by accusing them of bigotry and trolling or self-righteously declaring that theyāre wrong and bigoted for reasons that they should understand (and also dumb for not understanding).
Itās toxic behavior. Assuming that everyone with questions is acting in bad faith lets you feel righteous indignation and outrage. It feels good to think that youāre part of the group punishing the ābad peopleā, you never consider how the situation looks if it is you that is wrong.
seems relevant to share
They already responded by banning me from blahj.
The tolerance being displayed is truly an inspiration for us all.
When youāre writing paragraphs about how ātrans athletesā is an important political debate, then youāve already lost. Stop feeding the fascists.
So what is the rule that I violated and how does it apply to any of my comments?
I was commenting about trans athletes in a thread about laws being passed affecting trans athletes in a California community.
I didnāt break the rules of that community (and I didnāt get banned from that community).
The reason this is a YPB post is because power tripping mods from other communities on other servers spammed my account with bans claiming I was a transphobe and defending trans exclusion from sports.
Both reasons are nonsense and untrue and using moderation powers to spam an accountās modlog with slanderous nonsense is harassment.
Regardless of your opinions on the topic, I didnāt say anything transphobic and thatās the ban reason. Itās nonsense and an abuse of power.
PTB
I was in this same thread and the same mod also banned me from the same ~30 subs for the same shit.
Obviously my vote here is biased as I am in the same exact boat as OP but I find that banning people from a ton of subs they havenāt even said anything in because you didnāt like something they said in a community you donāt even moderate is fucking insane.
YDI
āHey guys, I wasnāt repeating long disproven transphobic talking points, I was just asking questions and ignoring the answers others gave me, mmmkay?ā
You got banned for transphobic JAQing off. Poorly. YDI and any preemptive bans. I keep my flat tidy so it wonāt become infested with roaches. This is no different.
The idea that anyone asking questions, about a topic that you already know about, should be assumed to be acting in bad faith is exactly the kind of toxic behavior that Iām trying to point out.
Youāve learned things today that other people have known for decades, it doesnāt make you ignorant or a sub-human.
Someone who is learning something today, that youāve known for years, doesnāt make them ignorant or sub-human.
Youāve conditioned yourself to look for a way to frame a personās comments in the most outrageous and conspiratorial way possible.
Your framing is āThat person isnāt asking a question because they donāt know the answer. They, secretly, already know the answer and since theyāre a bad person (a priori) are, instead secretly PRETENDING to ask a question in order to make me personally angry and so they should be punishedā.
You have no real reason to assume bad faith on my part, youāve never spoken to me before. Instead, because of your time on social media, youāve created this model in your brain of the kind of people who ask questions that Iāve asked and, in that model, the person is evil, bigoted, etc and so, therefore, I have to be evil, bigoted, etc.
Thatās not reasoning, thatās intolerance.
Arf arf
Bad money drives out good, even if your coin is unshaved. How do you tell if someone is sealioning or asking in good faith? I donāt anymore, they all go in the same basket for my sanity. The kinds of questions commonly asked have been gone over again and again and the answers are readily available. Demanding that questioners who canāt be bothered to research be engaged with by people sick of sorting out if a questioner is lazy or purposefully awful is pretty toxic. Nobody owes you a damn thing, so stop acting entitled to the efforts and mental space of others.
YDI, you were throwing around talking points that have been debunked so many times that nobody familiar with the subject would believe youāre acting in good faith.
Iām willing to believe you, since you went to the trouble of making this post. But thatās the only reason why.
So, with that in mind, you gotta understand that waiting for people to play catchup with the science gets old for trans people and their allies that have had this debate a hundred times.
At this point, after more than a decade of this same thing being thrown at trans people again and again and again and again and again, it is not realistic for anyone to spend time dealing with you, or anyone else, that is going to pound the same incorrect pulpit once more.
Now, thereās only so far Iāll go on this community regarding the debate because this isnāt the place. This community canāt function as a dumping ground for every debate that gets stopped somewhere else, or it turns into chaos. Iāve seen it happen, and Iāve seen the locked threads that come about because folks canāt stick to the subject of the mod decision itself.
So, hereās the only thing Iāll say regarding trans athletes. There is no evidence that a trans person be it man or woman has an advantage in athletics beyond the first year of hormone therapy, and there is significant evidence to the contrary, including the world records in sports where trans people have competed. If such am advantage existed, then it would be expected that trans athletes would dominate their sports. This has not been the case at all. To the contrary, when you go looking, it turns out that it can be a disadvantage because of the way the hormones work.
I wonāt debate this issue, I wonāt argue it. This is not the place to do so. The only reason I went that far is to illustrate why the subject is dead to so many people. It isnāt a hypothetical; trans athletes have actually competed at all levels of sport, and there is no advantage present. Again, *trans athletes have been competing for years, with no record of having an advantage.
So, when you keep pounding a dead horse, it is not power tripping to shut the false rhetoric down. It would be like me going into an astronomy C/ and talking about the lack of proof that the earth circles the sun.
Iām not trying to re-hash the debate here, my position isnāt that trans people should be excluded.
What youāre describing is ignorance and not transphobia.
No matter what subject you choose, there will be a lot of people who simply donāt understand the debate and havenāt researched the topic. To you, it may be an old topic that youāve endlessly debated but that doesnāt mean that it is like that for everyone. Not everyone has your experience or knowledge and, because of that, simply saying āIn my experience this is a dead topicā is one thing but then to go on to say that āAnd so, if anybody attempts to talk about this topic, they are acting in bad faith and/or are a bigotā is simply intolerant.
Some people are just new to the topic, and how you choose to interact with them matters. Immediately accusing people of bigotry and attacking them because theyāre not part your group of people whoāre experts on the topic, is itself a form of bigotry ("One who is strongly partial to oneās own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ. ").
So, when you keep pounding a dead horse, it is not power tripping to shut the false rhetoric down.
This isnāt ābeating a dead horseā. I made 3 comments on the topic. Their actions were not made to āshut the false rhetoric downā, theyāre not moderators in California and I could have continued commenting. If someone is tired of having the debate or tired of explaining topics to new people then theyāre free to not engage or even block the person in question.
And, most importantly, the mod reason for the ban was ātransphobeā and āTransphobia attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.ā. Which are just fabricated reasons, not based in reality.
I am not a transphobe nor was I āmaking excuses for trans exclusion from sportsā. I specifically addressed the commenters who were insinuating this by clarifying my position: āObviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, Iām not supporting that position.ā
This is people enforcing dogma, theyāve decided that the topic is closed and anyone outside of the people who hold the same position as them are bigots. Questions are not allowed, explaining their position is beneath them, and youāre either on board or youāre excommunicated.
Itās a power trip to 1. Lie about the reasons and 2. Ban the people from completely unrelated communities.
It would be like me going into an astronomy C/ and talking about the lack of proof that the earth circles the sun.
That would be a fair comparison if I was going into trans communities and talking about topics that Iām ignorant, but I was not. Expecting people, in non-topical spaces, to be experts on the topic is nonsense.
This would be like a person who is a moderator of Astronomy seeing a comment saying āThe sun rises in the eastā in a memes community and then banning the person from the Astronomy community (and also the Baking, Vintage Car and Waffle Iron Owners communities) because everyone, with a degree in Astrophysics, knows that Uranus and Venus have retrograde rotation and have for billions of years and so theyāre banned for āFlat-earther ideologyā.
e: Iād also note that one of the strong indicators that youāre entering into these topics is when there are downvotes but not rebuttals. Itās hard to argue with someone, it takes a lot less effort to simply press the downvote (or ban, or block) button. Social media conditions people to be intellectually lazy and dogmatic thinking is one of the primary shortcuts of intellectually lazy people
The down votes are because its been pretty clearly explained to you that you engaged in what is considered āsea lioningā which is very hard to differentiate from someone who is actually ignorant. You blew past people pointing this out to continue banging the drum of the debunked junk science youāre championing, and got all pissy because people wouldnāt play your stupid game and āeducateā you.
People on Lemmy in these communities are not your personal AI, they have no obligation to educate you on things you could easily research yourself. If you truly cared about not being ignorant, youād take this as a moment of self reflection/self crit to educate yourself on a topic you clearly are ignorant about.
Instead youāve come here to pitch a fit that people didnāt spoonfeed you the decades of research on this exact topic and treated you the same as every other bad faith actor spouting the same tired talking point that just want to stir shit rather than engage in any meaningful discussion. People are tired of this shit, itās so played out an old.
The down votes are because its been pretty clearly explained to you that you engaged in what is considered āsea lioningā which is very hard to differentiate from someone who is actually ignorant.
It has been pretty clearly explained, by me, that Iām was not engaging in sea lioning, which is the done intentionally in bad faith. I was engaging in the conversation in good faith.
People on Lemmy in these communities are not your personal AI, they have no obligation to educate you on things you could easily research yourself. If you truly cared about not being ignorant, youād take this as a moment of self reflection/self crit to educate yourself on a topic you clearly are ignorant about.
As I understand social media, it exists primary to facilitate conversations between people.
I was having a discussion about an issue that I see as a problem: the kneejerk intolerance of people and their tendency to treat people, who donāt know and/or agree with everything that theyāre āsupposed toā, with outright hostility and bullying.
Kind of like how you, assuming that I was sea lioning and engaging in bad faith discussion, are taking this hostile and condescending tone. Do you ever consider that you may be wrong about a person and are actually just acting like an asshole because of your misconceptions?
Youāre free to think Iām ignorant and to know the facts which could answer my questions. Youāre right that you have no obligation to share you knowledge or do anything, for anybody.
But, if you confuse your knowledge for someone elseās ignorance and also think that this difference in knowledge makes you above them. Then youāre immature.
If you use this feeling of superiority as an excuse to behave in a rude and condescending manner to a stranger that you donāt know. Then youāre an asshole.
If youāre also the moderator of a bunch of communities (or you create some for this purpose) and use those moderator powers to spam the strangerās modlog with libelous āreasonsā. Then youāre abusing your moderation powers.
I have no obligation to educate you on things that you could easily research yourself, but I do it anyway because thatās how conversations work. If you truly care about not appearing ignorant, youād take this as a moment of self reflection.
Lol youāre continuing to be obtuse and intentionally miss the point because you have an axe to grind.
Plenty of people have engaged with you here in an attempt to meet you at your level and help you understand why you got banned, and youāve lashed out at all of them and dug in deeper ignoring their points to continue raging about your personal grievances.
Take a hint and do some self reflection. The problem is you and you are your own problem.
Iāll stop wasting my time with you now.
YDI
YDI, at least in the community of the lemmy.blajah.zone instance. In the other communities, a long ban could be excessive, but itās not easy to judge that the transphobic[^1] post was done in good faith.
[^1]: e.g., two people with the same physical traits, one a cis woman, the other a transgender woman, your reasoning will let the first one practice the sport and will forbid it to the second one.
Edited
to clarify that they were community bans (not from instances).
FYI, prior to me discovering this thread and seeing the OP ignore linked studies to repeat transphobic talking points, there was no blahaj ban. There is one now, but there wasnāt at the time the OP made this topic.
Oops! Thanks. I will edit my post to clarify that was a LMZ community.
The blajah ban says āattempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.ā
Which is the opposite of my explicitly stated position:
Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, Iām not supporting that position. From the point of view of fairness in competition there has to be an objective answer thatās backed by objective tests.
Simply declaring that trans people are beyond reproach and that any attempts to quantify biological advantage are unfairly discriminatory and anyone asking these questions is a bigot isnāt helpful.
Regardless of your opinions of the underlying topic, the reasons for the bans are simply nonsense, fabricated and are wholly bad faith misrepresentations of my stated position.
The power tripping here is that they wanted the ban and were willing to simply make up an excuse. Itās bad faith use of moderator powers and so it makes them Power Tripping Bastardsā¦
The blajah ban says āattempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports.ā
At the time you made your post, there was no blahaj banā¦ If there was, I wouldnāt be able to see this post of yours as it wouldnāt have federated to blahaj.zone.
I have however banned you now, because you ignored people explaining to topic to you in good faith to continue repeating transphobic talking points.
At the time you made your post, there was no blahaj banā¦ If there was, I wouldnāt be able to see this post of yours as it wouldnāt have federated to blahaj.zone.
At the time I made my post, from the link posted in my post:
I have however banned you now, because you ignored people explaining to topic to you in good faith to continue repeating transphobic talking points.
What transphobic talking points? What people did I ignore? This is more of the same āIām just going to make up things, knowing that I never have to defend them or justify them to anybody in any way (because Iām a powerful moderator and nobody can question me), and go on my wayā power tripping crap.
Just because youāre a moderator for a minority group community that is the target of attacks doesnāt mean that everyone is out to get you.
Itās infuriating that youāre more willing to alienate allies by painting them as bigots than you are to educate people or answer their questions.
Just because YOU have seen the questions 1,000 times doesnāt mean that there are not people that are just thinking to ask those questions today. Just because some people will ask questions in bad faith doesnāt mean that everyone is asking questions in bad faith.
Simply labeling anything you donāt feel like dealing with as ātransphobicā and hiding in a filter bubble doesnāt solve anything. Enforcing arbitrary purity tests on people outside of your community is toxic behavior and does nothing but create animosity.
I have never been against trans rights, human rights, and I do not remotely support a ban on trans athletes.
My point was that people who use social punishment and intellectual bullying to silence any kind of dissent are a problem and damaging to communities. The people with moderation power who use their power to punish wrongthink and dissent while labeling it bigotry are especially toxic and damaging.
How many allies have you banned or alienated with this behavior? Does your hubris tell you that that number is zero?
Do better.
You fucking do better. Allies donāt go into minority communities and tell those communities how they should be run.
You didnāt read the OP.
I didnāt go into a minority community, if you read the link in the OP, Iām posting in a California community (which I did not get banned from, important to note) so Iām not exactly sure of your point.
This was literally mods from other communities on other servers deciding to issue bans for fabricated reasons.
This you?
Just because youāre a moderator for a minority group community that is the target of attacks doesnāt mean that everyone is out to get you.
Itās infuriating that youāre more willing to alienate allies by painting them as bigots than you are to educate people or answer their questions.
Simply labeling anything you donāt feel like dealing with as ātransphobicā and hiding in a filter bubble doesnāt solve anything. Enforcing arbitrary purity tests on people outside of your community is toxic behavior and does nothing but create animosity.
Yeah, thatās telling a mod how to run an instance for your preferences and not for the community itās for. Thatās why I think you deserve the new ban regardless of your OP.
If you want to be taught, youāre being spoon fed a lesson. Open up the hangar! š„š®
Iām not telling them how to run their instance. I wasnāt on their instance or their community. Iāve never posted in any of the communities they moderate nor am I likely to.
Iām saying that theyāre not doing this to moderate their communities (which Iāve never posted to, or even seen).
Iām saying that theyāre abusing their moderator powers like a āSuper Downvoteā button by spamming my mod log with nonsense, slanderous bans. So the next time a moderator is reviewing a report on a comment, theyāll see a bunch of bans for ātransphobeā and think that they mean something.
If you canāt see why that is a problem, imagine this scenario.:
Iām not going to do this, because it is toxic, but imagine this happening, because this is at the core of what Iām accusing these moderators of doing:
I can go and create a bunch of random communities, itās easy. Click a button, type a name, click done. I can make 10-15 in a few minutes.
Now, Iām the moderator of these communities and I have decided that I donāt like how youāre talking to me. So I go and ban your from my community with the reason āSending nude photographs to minorsā and then I go to the next community, that I created 5 minutes ago, and ban you for āsexualizing childrenā. I keep doing this with the various communities that Iāve created until your mod log is full (it takes about 10) of bans from various communities with reasons that imply that you are a pedophile.
Would I be wrong for abusing moderator powers? Absolutely.
If someone called me out on abusing moderator powers, would it be ignorant to attack them for ātelling moderators how to run their communitiesā? š„š® Also, yes.
The fact that some powermod went through all their communities to ban you makes this a blatent case of PTB, regardless of the merit of the initial ban.
Iām not even banned in the community where I was commenting.
This is moderators, from other communities, reading through threads and banning people from their communities. Itās like theyāre going out in the world and just looking for things to feel offended by and then salving their outrage with a righteously indignant ban. Which of the community rules of Linuxphone did I break by talking about trans people in sports in a completely different community on a completely different server? It only makes sense in the context of power tripping.
Whatās the overall strategy here? Are they going to somehow, by manually browsing as a human person (and not a bot or some kind of data analytics engine), locate and ban every single potential rule breaker across all of social media?
If your job was to be a moderator and you told your boss that the best use of your time was browsing random communities and reading their comments in order to find people who (if you squint just right and assume bad faith) may, one day, come to your community and possibly break a ruleā¦ youād be fired. First, why are you banning people whoāve never commented in your community or broken a rule. Also, even if you could work 24/7 and read/locate/ban 10 users an hour you still couldnāt keep up with just new user sign-ups.
Thereās zero practical reason for a moderator to be looking into other communities and trying to pre-crime people. Itās entirely power tripping.
I believe in free speech, I donāt think anyone should be banned or censored for saying their honest opinion, as that doesnāt convince them of your point of view, might push them further into the view they have, and creates an echo chambers where challenging opinions arenāt present - both through actual censorship and self censorship out of fear of being banned for talking against the groupthink.
Yes, exactly. I chose the topic specifically to highlight the behavior of people who act in dogmatic ways.
Am I ignorant of the topic? Possibly. I know enough to know that people are using the topic as a political weapon to harm a minority population to score political points. At the same time, on the other side, people use this persecution to frame the issue as a black and white: āYou either believe this or youāre part of the persecutionā then they use that as a cudgel against anybody āon their sideā who tries to talk about the topic. Theyāll declare the topic settled and so anyone who disagrees must be acting in bad faith or actively seeking to undermine the group.
It isnāt limited to the topic of trans rights. People are dogmatic about a lot of issues but, as a left leaning person, Iām already automatically excluded from the rightās communities (by the same kinds of people, just with red hats instead of blue hats).
There was a separate conversational thread about that points specifically:
