technology

The bear site is important enough to me I don’t want to catch a site ban on this hill.  You have removed my comment and I don’t think it’s worth the effort of escalating to an appeal for its reinstatement.  The support I’ve gotten about it has been enough for me, and given that SEG deleted her account and comments my comment doesn’t stand as well without the context of hers.  What I feel I must do, however, is voice what objections I have to the charges and how you’ve characterized what I said.

On rule 14:  I will withhold a plea on this one because I mostly followed the spirit of the rule (which you didn’t see) for quite some time before visibly failing to follow the letter (which you did see).  I actually did try to be very charitable to SEG and other commenters who’ve expressed similar (problematic, imo) sentiments by striving hard to understand where they were coming from and not saying anything previously.  But over time, repeated incidents filled in the gaps wherein that charity lay, and it became harder for me to keep giving her the benefit of the doubt.  I was as charitable as it felt possible to be given that longer context, but by the time I hit my breaking point that was technically not charitable anymore even though I was being quite restrained in my objections.  I consider this a flaw in the rule: There is hypothetically some line between charitable interpretation and outright tolerating bad behavior, and we users have no way to divine where the mod team thinks it is.  Although I will note, the mod team regularly does not follow that rule (interpret charitably) when it comes to people of color expressing their feelings about Israel, and that has led to at least 3 POC users leaving the site forever in recent memory so I’m frustrated to see that rule being thrown at me in this context.

On rule 5: I plead mostly not guilty to harassment.  When I did complain about how I felt about her comments elsewhere, I went out of my way not to refer to SEG by name, not to single her out, not to quote her verbatim so it wouldn’t be easy to find that she was the one who said the offending things, and to focus on the content without vilifying those who said it.  Part of that was so as not to risk fomenting any sort of harassment campaign against her!  But it was also because I was bothered less by her than by what multiple people, of whom she was just one, were saying, and wanted to grapple with those ideas rather than beefing with the people who happened to be voicing them.  And yet, multiple people have messaged me in support, saying they have also blocked or considered blocking SEG before due to a history of toxic behavior from her.  If there is a mass of people against her now, it is her doing, not mine.

I will, however, cop to “demeaning”, specifically on my use of the word “idiotic”; I think that was excessive and I regret that one.  (I argue that a charitable read of my comment would let that one slide, but it still doesn’t meet my own standards and I would take back that words if I could).

On rule 4, I plead absolutely not guilty.  I am not interested in reaching out for an explanation either, as you’ve twisted what I said so grossly that I would have trouble taking your analysis seriously.  I think I am familiar with the theoretical framework I’d get in response, anyway.  I have read plenty and engaged in many discussions around misogyny in efforts to make my offline communities safe spaces for non-men over the last decade, and I have seen both the successes and the human costs of the failures of these theoretical frameworks.  I’ve tried to internalize the ideas that would have let me not be bothered by the extended history of these kinds of comments, and I have not been able to because they contradict other leftist principles I hold.  I don’t think this is misogyny, it’s having a different angle and perspective on the matter that is still firmly situated in leftist principles, in listening to west asian and south asian and east asian and black communist women discuss the intersections of gender and feminism and class and imperialism.  Asking if this is just white people brainworms doesn’t come out of nowhere, and if anything your dismissal of those objections only reinforces my concerns.

And on that note, I am in an awkward position because, again, I had other people of color respond to my non-targeted complaints sympathetically and in agreement, some (femmes!) even going further and saying things that would probably catch flack for “misogyny” if an overzealous mod saw it.  I’m tempted to pull up specifics but I am not going to call them up or pull their comments in as I do not want them getting into hot water.  We have been steadily losing POC users due to what is generally considered “cracker bullshit” and I do not want these comrades, some of whom face even more challenges offline than I do and are thus in an even more precarious position than I, getting directly embroiled in this online conflict and feeling more convinced to delete their accounts to protect their own peace.  I guess I’ll have to be the lightning rod, but I don’t want to get site-perma-banned over this.

Miscellanea:

A clarification: the person I cited did not think of themself as a TERF and in fact had much more in common with SEG’s views on gender than with mine.  That you are now accusing me of misogyny while dismissing my concerns only reinforces my points.

I also think it’s mean and dismissive to call my attempts to communicate clearly “a wall of text”.  I usually type from a computer and on a computer screen it doesn’t look like a ton of text.;  Fuck me for trying to communicate clearly, thoroughly, and with some nuance instead of just condensing it all down into pithy zingers I guess?

And with that, there you go, my comment’s gone, you win, I’ve voiced my objections, and I think I’m ready to move on from this.  In fact, I’ve learned my lesson and will consider switching over to just blocking people instead of contesting their problematic ideas so I don’t get mods breathing down my neck again.  I don’t feel the need to clarify any of my points as they already stand on their own and I don’t know what I could even add, and they’re still in the modlog for anyone who’s curious.  I also don’t feel interested in discussing this with you further given your characterizations of me; I simply post this comment to defend myself in the eyes of others, not to change your view of me.  Will I automatically catch a ban from any comms you moderate if I block you?  I don’t feel good about you seeing comments from me in the future given that you are a mod and have been, in my opinion, unfairly on my case about this, but I don’t know if it’s a rule violation to block mods.