Although it’s actually an earlier warning in that thread that I want to discuss:
If three warnings for misgendering isn’t resulting in a banning, why do we have a rule against misgendering in the first place. Once, I can see. twice, possibly. That third strike, though…
This goes for other things like racist slurs or misogyny, but this is the current most active example.
My take is that the mods take too lenient a stance on things like this. Whether this is in pursuit of having diverse voices, to preserve our dwindling numbers, or a desire to not appear biased, I don’t know, but in all those cases, I think it’s counterproductive and is the kind of thing that actually loses valuable posters (several trans ones come to mind, for example).
But three warnings for misgendering (without a change in posting behaviour afterwards in that same thread) and there are seemingly still mods in the mod loop who need convincing? Those are mods who need to rethink their role, IMO.
I know mods are discussing this, just wanted to add a civilian’s opinion.
Concur; if you’re going to bother stating a rule, it’s not much of a rule if it just results in continual finger-wagging with no escalation for repetition.
I know there’s probably some natural latency in the moderation process though - so maybe the appropriate resulting actions are still to shake out.
For clarification - since we’re in the ATMB: Is the violation that the poster said someone was male, or would they have been equally modded against for saying the person has a male body? They said the first, but I think this is an important distinction.
Ultimately, IMO, the rules mean “Don’t be a jerk.” If a specific individual says they’re (e.g.) male, they are. End of conversation. Neither of us care what they looked like at birth or acted like as a child.
Picking at their details with an invidious intent to create hostility and othering is jerky. Jerky is bannable. All forms of trans-denial and trans-baiting and trans-picking-at are, by local definition, jerky.
The fun begins when you realise the board is based in a country where the official government stance on this subject would get them banned on this board.
True. For about 2 months now. But a lot of us are working to reverse course back to normal. It might take a long time, but this current situation is an aberration no matter how much certain people are enjoying their morning cup of Schadenfreude.
I recall boasts of a Thousand Year Reich. You don’t hear much from those folks there any more.
I agree it would be very jerkish to bring it up randomly. But when it comes to sports, it’s kind of the crux of the whole issue. It’s like trying to have a religious debate with a rule that you aren’t allowed to disagree with anyone’s religious beliefs.
Why allow debate on this subject at all if the majority view is considered so offensive as to be inexpressible?
“Jerky” isn’t clearly defined by design, but some things clearly fall within its scope.
It really isn’t. It’s an entirely manufactured controversy ginned up specifically to justify a pogrom against trans people. Why should this board facilitate open and blatant bigotry and persecution? It seems to me that falls well within “jerk” territory.
Because it’s not actually the “majority view”, as evidenced by the fact that the GOP felt the need to spend more than $200m on anti-trans propaganda. If everyone already held those views, they wouldn’t have needed to.
“The majority” can still hold morally repugnant views. At the point interracial marriage was finally made legal, less than half the country supported it. That didn’t make the arguments against interracial marriage any more valid.
One can debate sensitive subjects here without being openly insulting, and we have done many times in the past. It just takes more care.
This is not an academic issue for some. You cannot “debate” someone’s right to exist and to have and exercise basic human rights without being disingenuous.
Further to point 4), allowing such “debate” serves to further hurt those affected by the issue and to drive them from the board, which is against the board’s ethos.
On the whole, the board rules as currently applied are entirely sensible.
Don’t be absurd. It’s a reaction against Dems pushing extreme policies that even their own voters don’t support. It’s a good issue for Republicans to highlight because it makes Democrats seem out of touch, and they have inexplicably refused to moderate on it.
Opposition to trans women in women’s sports is not just the majority view, it’s the majority view among Democratic voters. And the left’s strategy of trying to bully people into agreement is going so well that those numbers are increasing.
Ultimately, if you want to be a debate forum, people are going to have to hear opinions they find objectionable. Especially in the Pit, for Christsake! You can require politeness, but you can’t ban expressing one side’s beliefs at all. The alternatives are family dinner ‘no politics or religion’ rules, or full on echo chamber where everyone simply agrees with each other and no debate happens - something we’re already dangerously close to.
The board already lost valuable posters over this and has a dwindling membership. Wouldn’t it be better to ban debating the issue at all, as happened with several others, rather than losing more otherwise good posters?
“I don’t think trans women should play women’s sports because they were born biologically male and that gives them an unfair advantage” is allowed by the rules.
“Trans women are men and men shouldn’t play women’s sports” is not allowed by the rules.
Is it possible the idea was the other way around? That is, if the GOP figured that people already held those views, could they then spend money on an effort to make people associate the GOP with that view while painting their opponents as having the opposite view?
No, Aspidistra got warned for saying that everyone around trans women knows they’re really male. That’s very different than “they’re born biologically male”.
It is exactly as I described it, with plenty of evidence of deliberate anti-trans propaganda (initially conflated with drag queens) produced by such folks as Christopher Rufo (who once suggested that drag queens should be referred to as “trans strippers”) for the express purpose of stirring up hatred against a vulnerable minority. This is of course a popular tactic amongst fascists, including the Nazis who also made trans people an early target of their smear campaigns. And it is the GOP pushing “extreme policies” designed to hurt trans people (and many others).
The Board are right not to cater to such persecution.
As opposed to the right who are literally trying to bully trans people out of existence. See points 4 and 5 of my previous post as to why this doesn’t work on this board.
Also: why is it “hearing opinions you find objectionable” when one side does it and “bullying” when the other side does it?
Sure we can. Or would you like the return of the pro-pedophilia posters? The “race realists” endlessly claiming that black people are inherently inferior? The MRAs railing about how terrible women are? Are we an “echo chamber” for no longer tolerating such “debates”? And if those “beliefs” advocate and incite violence, directly or indirectly, must we tolerate them?
Yes, we’ve lost many good posters tired of arguing with transphobes relentlessly misgendering them, portraying them as threats, and calling them “mentally disturbed” or “perverts grooming children”. Which is why the board no longer tolerates that sort of thing.
Again to my previous point 4: THIS IS NOT AN ACADEMIC DEBATE FOR SOME. Trans people are now literally facing arrest and worse just for stating the truth of what they are. We should not pretend this rhetoric doesn’t have dire consequences for many.
The GOP know that stoking up hatred is an effective policy (see “Willie Horton” as another example). As I’ve already noted, they are not following the crowd on this, but driving it. The efforts to drum up fear and hatred against trans people has been a deliberate campaign going on for several years, and echoes many of the previous attacks on gay people 20 years ago. That they have been more successful this time is in part because they learned the lessons of last time as to what works and what doesn’t. It does not make their efforts any more legitimate or moral.
And it doesn’t justify continuing that messaging on this Board.