“x-tard” will never be and has never been funny. Disappointed that the mods would take down calling that out. Hexbear has been making some pretty good arguments about the overwhelming white middle class-ness of the instance. The fact that the only Vaush community I’ve seen is on Blahaj is a great example of it. Even Reddit libertarians aren’t cool with using “tard” though. This is literally worse than Reddit libertarian moderation, and that’s pathetic coming from a space that’s supposed to be inclusive.
Nice post. Once the emoji bug is fixed, you’d be getting the gold star above the spoiler.
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It really is odd to defend such a toothless phrase. It just alienates people who are neurodivergent/disabled or know people who are who would get slurred with it. And it’s not like the liberals would actually be insulted by it. What’s the point of using it, outside of feeling like you’re 13 again.
I’ll perhaps acknowledge there’s an ironic use (i.e. sometimes Hasan will use it when ironically saying what a conservative would), but even that makes me cringe.
The chapo podcast quit using it, so if they work to stop, I don’t see why posters can’t.
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Yeah Hasan sucks too. Does he suck less than most streamers like V**sh or D****ny? Sure. But that is a very low bar to clear.
Hasan just sucks for far different reasons. Vaush is actively aggressive towards leftist people of color. Maybe I just haven’t seen enough cause I don’t watch react streamers, but Hasan just seems a bit out of touch because of his money. As far as streamers go, I think he receives far more hate than is warranted.
my biggest issue with him is that he’s willing to drop slurs. he’s a bit on the lib side with the electoralism but like that’s not a huge deal – having a streamer explaining Marxism is just plain a good thing. but he needs to do some self-crit on the slurs.
Removed by mod
oh I forgot about that
Ah that makes sense. Like I said, I don’t watch him so I didn’t know about the slurs. Yeah he’s pretty much the only mainstream streamer who actually understands being a leftist.
To be clear, those removals were by a community mod, appointed by another community mod. As soon as I became aware of them, I restored the posts in question and messaged the community mod, making the expectations of the instance clear.
Hey I’m a vaushite and all of his worst behaviors are bannable offenses within our community. His post in our rules says “don’t do several things that I would do.”
ableism is something that’s so quickly brushed off and dismissed by many and it’s not always easy to push back on. for every hard fought and argued step forward, “jokes” like this are many steps backwards. we’re not perfect on our instance, but we try out best to catch and remove ableism and we listen to our neurodivergent comrades to make sure we’re doing the best we can.
if not for other instances that have to see this content, please consider having solidarity and respect for the neurodivergent users in your own community. how are they ever supposed to feel like you’ll listen to them when things like this happen?
ableism is something that’s so quickly brushed off and dismissed by many and it’s not always easy to push back on. for every hard fought and argued step forward, “jokes” like this are many steps backwards. we’re not perfect on our instance, but we try out best to catch and remove ableism and we listen to our neurodivergent comrades to make sure we’re doing the best we can.
Agreed, and it isn’t just jokes. It’s way too common for some edgy people to call others “insane” for disagreeing with them, for example.
I’m OOTL, is “insane” now an ableist term or whatever? Or does it just depend on the context?
Insane has always been an ableist term, albeit depending on the context. Insane Asylums have horrible optics for a reason. It’s like how retarded used to be proper medical terminology, but because of popular adaption of those terms as derogatory terms, you’re not gonna hear a doctor say “yeah your son or retarded” is “you are insane”. They’re only used as insults now
Right right I get that. Thanks for your input. I guess I was confused because I’ve personally never used it to actually insult someone, but in a joking manner with friends. But now I’ve learned “dumb” and “stupid” is also ableist. Which, IMO, is just going too far because words change meaning and I don’t think many people use those words with intent to criticize disabled people anymore. But whatever, was just curious.
It is. (Full article may not load on mobile, sorry.)
yeah this is the type of mod activity that can wreck an instance. report reasons should be tied to the code of conduct. the code of conduct of blahaj disallows ableism, yet this mod uses ableist terms in comments then when you push back, they remove the comment and give a removal reason with more ableism
and then there are the chasers, who have no place in a queer community. not a coincidence that this comes from 196, a largely vowsh watching community
Vaush is so fucking bad. Dude explicitly defends his use of slurs on stream. Why can Vaush call people the n word? Slurs have no place in a leftist space. My child is non-verbal, this mod is using the language people insult my child. The comments left by OP were calm and reasonable. The mod didn’t even try to argue it in public because they know there isn’t a good response to “don’t use slurs”.
I posted about this on hexbear as well, and as someone who has an intellectually disabled family member, this kind of behavior, from a mod, is really gross. I’m glad to see blahaj members pushing back against it
spoiler
My kiddo is autistic and non-verbal. I am enraged over this. And I bet it was on 196 too. I’m done with Moss’ shit, she cannot moderate in a safe space because she only cares about it being her safe space, not the community’s. I’ve seen so much casual bigotry pop up in these anti-hexbear threads and it’s really eye opening. So much dehumanization and gatekeeping of the queer experience. I’m officially done with 196. This was already my backup instance, I’ve just been waiting for FMHY to start back up.
Ada is a really fucking cool admin, she is a great community runner. But 196’s mod team is consistently a single tier above 4chan trolls.
ur welcome to join hexbear assuming ur a leftist!
I already made my account over there. I was on Chapo when it got banned from Reddit and just never made the jump over back then, but federation really does make all the difference.
pleased to have you
Ayy thanks for joining us. We really are a friendly bunch in spite of what has been said of us as of late.
I tried real hard in those comments to be diplomatic too, and I was called “braindead”
I’m ready to take the gloves off honestly, just hoping Ada sees it and reacts in a positive way.
We can see your comments you know?
You went around stating shit. That’s cool - up to a point - but at least own it.
I’m ready to take the gloves off
This is some bullshit playground posturing pseudo threat.
Like what the actual fuck dude.
Just wanna say as a vaushite, while vaush acts a certain way on some streams, we don’t and would be banned from vaush fan spaces for doing so. Vaush fans don’t condone ableism, transphobia or chaser behavior. In seeing these screenshots, I agree, Moss has made some horrendous mistakes.
Disappointing that people use that suffix, or complete word. It is ableism in every way. I’m really not sure why people who consider themselves progressive or left-aligned feel that is still an OK suffix/word to use unless they feel that the people that word abuses are of no worth or worth no consideration.
It’s a rotting leftover of 4chan culture and it should have turned to dust already, but it’s kept going by edgelords.
Here’s a couple sources about it:
Chicago Tribune- Here’s an offensive word we should retire right now (2016)
Taking the R-word and adding “lib” to it doesn’t make it any less offensive. And what bothers me is that those who combine “liberal” with that word are not insulting their intended targets — they’re insulting an entire group of people who have done nothing wrong, all while perpetuating a term that simply needs to go away.
Anchorage Press - Why [word] is Lazy and Offensive (2020)
Combining the R-word with liberal makes it no less offensive.
“An offensive word used by some people on the extreme right of politics to refer to someone who holds left-wing political beliefs”
It’s not just us Hexbears who find it offensive. Even if it’s used ironically, I think we can all agree that the ironic use of offensive language still has potential to cause harm and should at the very least not be above crticism.
E: I’m pro-federation and I want to soothe things over, and I think the admins of both Blahaj and Hexbear are committed to that, but it seems like this mod is intentionally trying to burn bridges. This all happened underneath a post where they publicly posted a private conversation with one of our mods for the purpose of mockery. I’ve been trying to get people to tone it down on our side, but none of our people are going to listen to calls for civility in the face of ableism. We support our neurodivergent comrades.
Yeah, saying this right now, 196’s main mod consistently posts bait. Ada is a great admin and community runner, I feel bad that I have to consistently see her step in because Moss fucks up so much obvious and easy shit. Moss posting a blurred picture of her conversations with Hexbear admins and blaming the blurring on Ada is shitty, posting ableist slurs and using them in mod messages to people calling you out is shitty.
These are actions that cause a lot of drama within the community, and take less than a few seconds of thought to know they’re bad ideas. Moss consistently wants a drama filled community and it sucks. It’s like the second one of these ridiculous bait post become old news, OH SHIT HERE’S A NEW ONE FOR EVERYBODY TO SALIVATE OVER!!!
My impression is that Blahaj accepted the 196 lifeboat without necessarily knowing much about it. Many of us on Hexbear had experiences with it on Reddit because on the surface it seems cool, but it’s always had some strong Vaushite tendencies that we really dislike.
tangent
Imo he plays the controversy game of “Say stuff that makes group A mad at me in order to appeal to group B, who hates group A.” That leads to saying problematic and harmful stuff but there’s always this layer of plausible deniability, and all criticism, legitimate or not, gets dismissed as coming from the bad outgroup (“tankies”). When our site first started we had a ton of posts criticizing him but then we figured out it’s better to just ignore his antics.
I’ve been worried since the start that federation with 196 was a ticking time bomb, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the users haven’t really been posting bait or trying to antagonize us, but unfortunately I can’t say the same for this mod. From what you said it sounds like they do similar controversy bait tactics.
while I’d like the trans communities to remain linked, I don’t want to do so at the cost of exposing trans and disabled comrades to ableism and chaser shit.
The posts in question have been restored and the mod in question spoken to about ableist language.
The mods are free to remove the posts again, as long as ableism is left out of it
Oh boy, here we go
As always, drama is fueled by incorrect information and wildly out of context posts. I’m the “chaser” they’re talking about. It was my post.
Someone literally asked me if I would date a pre-transition trans man or a post-transition trans woman, and I said yes. That’s all. Not a chaser. Just one specific response to one specific question about my personal preferences.
And I’m a straight cis man and 99% of the women I’ve dated have been straight cis women. Just because statistically that’s how it shakes out. I find it a bit hilarious that I’ve been labeled a chaser by these dummies.
Original thread: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/216880/rule#entry-comment-914639
Then the Mod of 196 made a now removed thread
A screenshot of that thread was used to start a new thread here: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/228474/Wtf-is-with-all-the-blatant-transphobia
Ykw I appreciate you clearing this up and saying so. Those defederated losers were using the “unchecked transphobia” and “chasers amuck” rhetoric to distract us from their bullshit. And you, wrongfully, are the victim of their libel.
It’s valid to have genital attraction preferences. Hell it’s valid to say you’d try it, and it’s valid to talk about trans people but make a logical error.
Chasers aren’t going to stealthily and intelligently snake around, they will probably double down immediately.
Thanks. I may be an asshole, but I’m not a chaser. Or a transphobe.
What’s a “chaser”?
Someone who fetishizes or primarily tries to date transgender people
I can understand the fetishizing part, because it suggests objectification. But could the latter part just be a culmination of attraction and preferences?
More often “cis person primarily trying to get with trans people” is about power, from what I hear. Trans people are disproportionately in positions where they can be easily exploited or abused, e.g. outing someone can be used as blackmail, an abuser could withhold HRT or trash clothes, trans people might not have learned how to date safely as their gender, many trans people are broke and in poor mental health and could easily become reliant on someone, things like that. On top of this, trans people are also often particularly desperate for approval from cis people, because of the extent to which we’re regularly othered by most of society. This creates the idea in a lot of cis men that if they’re unsuccessful with cis women (generally because they’re creeps), that trans women are “easy”. This often mixes with the whole trans fetishization thing, too.
There are of course a number of other reasons why cis people might find themselves primarily dating trans people, too. Another common and very depressing reason is that the cis person perhaps isn’t actually cis, and really just wants to live vicariously through sy partner’s transition, and maybe “borrowing” a few things from thon, as well. There was a Reddit thread I once read with a full typology of different types of trans chasers, but I can’t find it now. There are men and women chasers, straight and gay chasers, you get the picture.
I guess potentially, but typically it’s a result of fetishization. I’m not queer though so I’m no authority
A cishet person who is attracted mostly or exclusively to trans people. Like a chubby chaser.
Like a chubby chaser
I don’t understand. What’s wrong with being attracted to people of a certain body type?
generally people would like to be appreciated or lusted after for their whole self, not any specific attribute, because this kind of behavior can be objectifying.
I get that. I think it’s always a bit unrealistic, when it comes to the building blocks of attraction, which I think are more often than not initially superficial. I appreciate your answering my question.
I’d describe it by explaining that it’s unhealthy to have a partner that doesn’t like who you want to be. A pre-op trans man is a man. Treating them like a woman during sex would likely make them feel dysphoric. Having a partner that they know wouldn’t be attracted to them if they actually transitioned would just suck. If you identify as a straight man, it would be invalidating of the trans man’s identity to fuck them anyways because you see them as a hot woman.
On the “chubby chaser” bit, think of it like this. I love fat girls, tummy soft 🥺 however, my girlfriend could lose weight if she wanted to. If she would feel more confident with 100 less pounds, that’s okay because it’s her body and I want her to be happy with her own appearance. If I got with a fat girl who wanted to lose weight and I made her feel bad about it because “then you won’t be hot anymore” that would be kinda shitty right?
If I got with a fat girl who wanted to lose weight and I made her feel bad about it because “then you won’t be hot anymore” that would be kinda shitty right?
Yes, on the grounds that it would be shitty to intentionally make someone feel bad. However, if after the woman lost weight you felt less physical attraction to her, I would understand. And then it’d be up to you to conclude at that point the importance to you, and if it’s fair to either of you to continue the relationship. Surely there’d be some moral debate if ending a relationship on those grounds is “right”, but that’s really not for anyone else to decide.
I would agree with you if relationships (or even sex) were initiated entirely on prurient grounds, but they’re not
Fair point. I think that’s subjective and likely varies individual to individual. But in that light, I can’t argue with you.
I agree with you.
I think if an attraction leads to the objectification of your “type”, it’s problematic regardless of what that type is. If you just have a preference and you handle your interactions with people with the necessary respect everyone deserves, I can’t see a problem with it.
This makes sense to me. It’s okay for superficial features to be an initial factor of attraction, but as soon as it becomes the focal driving force despite the finer qualities of the individual, it’s problematic. Well, unless the person of focus is okay with and into that dynamic, I suppose.
Regardless, it makes sense to me.
You may be naive. Chaser behavior is often only a surface-level symptom of a deeper abusive system. A chaser will usually then reveal dehumanizing beliefs about their partner (victim) before the relationship turns into a more easily identifiable form of domestic abuse.
A healthy person or couple can have a type, or even a body-type fetish.
It’s a term used by trans people for cis men who overly fetishise trans women, often with mysoginistic undertones
The first one, no question. That word has no usefulness.
The second I’m on the fence about. Lately there have been a A LOT of attempts to derail discussion about pretty much anything using exactly that argument. I can’t fault a mod for putting a lid on it.
making an argument with verifiable facts isn’t an attempt to derail a discussion – it’s an attempt to further the discussion. the OP is an anarchist, not some tankie.
Eh, you can definitely use verifiable facts to derail a discussion.* It all depends on context and whether those facts are being framed truthfully and with good faith. There just isn’t enough context to go off of here. I don’t really care about OP’s politics because the point stands whether I agree with his politics or not
*Edit: See the book Merchants of Doubt about how cigarette companies in the 70s misused scientific findings to cast doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. Stuff like pointing out how women and men had similar smoking rates, but not cancer rates. They left out the part that women smokers tended to be much younger. Thus, in a couple decades their cancer rates matched men’s, but by then the damage was done. Bam - use of verifiable facts to lie and derail
*Edit: See the book Merchants of Doubt about how cigarette companies in the 70s misused scientific findings to cast doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. Stuff like pointing out how women and men had similar smoking rates, but not cancer rates. They left out the part that women smokers tended to be much younger. Thus, in a couple decades their cancer rates matched men’s. Bam - use of verifiable facts to lie and derail
ok yep, fair. completely see your point. my point was just that the comment was in good faith and from someone who doesn’t even have a political allegiance to the projects he’s talking about.
but all of this is secondary to the main issues which are:
- a mod using ableism and banning criticism of it
- the same mod defending chasers
on hexbear, we don’t tolerate this shit and we don’t want to expose the vulnerable members of our community to it.
In don’t think we agree on what the main issue is here.
My main issue is people starting shit and escalating, then when the mods take action escalating again to the instance admins.
I think that “you on hexbear” need to take a chill pill and let the shorks run their instance.
I don’t know op or his politics, but the comment is clearly baiting and escalating. Unless the comment goes to the heart of the discussion at hand (which it might, but I don’t know), I think the decision to remove is defensible.
Note that I’m saying defensible, not correct, or great, or just. I’m not a big fan of just nuking comments in general, but moderation is hard work and as far as I’m concerned, this falls squarely within a mod team’s authority.
The context was about tankie-bashing.
What I was thinking too. X-tard is ableist and plain dumb. I wish we could actually read the post and comments, though, because it’s hard to tell what OP was really saying. Is he claiming that dissing on MLs is racist? Hard to say, but if he is that’s ridiculous
no, that dismissing all MLs as tankies has a tendency to erase the real liberatory movements of the global south. criticizing the politics is fine, but applying a hard line against tankies means excluding a vast swath of people who aren’t white and don’t speak English. he’s calling for left unity.
I can’t even parse this. I read your comment as saying that criticizing “tankies” (whatever that means these days) is not ok because some people, who are left but might not be Tankies, are not white and don’t speak English.
That can’t be right.
Your first sentence conflicts with your second. Dismissing all MLs as tankies, fair, that’s inappropriate because they aren’t.
But for those that ARE tankies, you absolutely should have a hard line against them. All genocide and dictatorship/oligarchy defenders are not welcome.
Is he claiming that dissing on MLs is racist? Hard to say, but if he is that’s ridiculous
That’s how I read it anyway. And while it’s not completely out there, I’ve seen these arguments show up a lot lately and definitely not always when it would have been a natural course for the conversation to take.
Apparently some people really like this particular talking point, and interaction be damned.
Often times it is. I say this because I have indigenous comrades that face that shit all the time.
I also included that one because the removal reason is using the same ableist language I pointed out in the first one.
Some more juicy deletions
https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/6ac3d354-0791-49ed-9c1d-a657d6fdcd78.png
Isn’t the significant presence of hexbear folks here pretty solid evidence that their admins don’t have good control over their users (or rather that they have no interest in following their own rules)? They were specifically told to stay out of metas for other instances.
no, it’s solid evidence that we’re all uncomfortable with the blatant ableism on this instance and we’re explaining why
I was under the impression that we were only supposed to stay out of threads that had a disclaimer like this:
This is an admin post, intended for blahaj lemmy users. Top level posts from members of other instances will be removed.
I’m not aware of any request not to make or comment on a post like this.
Admins have very little visibility into what their users are up to in other instances and no control aside from easily dodged instance bans.
Anyways, what is your opinion on this mod ableism and the racism against the third world emancipation movements?
A Hexbear user literally made this post, I think they’re allowed to talk in it.
That’s a bit of a silly rule for a federated space like Lemmy. Just because someone is on a different instance doesn’t mean they don’t participate in a community on this instance and want to have a say in its future. If one of the communities I subscribed to on another instance had an ableism problem, I would want to be able to speak out against that.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Do you think that this thread or Hexbears participating in it goes against your rules? One of you had previously said “I am formally asking for Hexbears to stop commenting on meta posts in other instances” (πφ) but your current Code of Conduct says “Allow instances their own space for discussion, if requested implicitly or explicitly.”.
deleted by creator
That’s what I thought, thank you.
Removed by mod
Thank God.
With out context, in the first comment everything after he first 2 sentences was just shit string and didn’t add anything except vitriol, probably it and whatever it was replying to should be removed. I have no idea what your talking about in the second comment.
Well this has certainly turned into a shitshow…
Hey, serious question, why is “-tard” still considered to be a slur? It’s no longer used in any professional capacity (at least in the US), so it seems like it’d be more offensive to insist that it still applies to people who are intellectually disabled than to let it become another synonym for stupid, dumb, idiot, etc (which were all professional diagnosis as well btw). I can understand wanting to discourage its use as an insult if it’s a professional diagnosis, but it’s not considered one anymore.
it gets applied broadly to a variety of neurodivergent and developmentally disabled people and its use against those people has left many with trauma
Huh, I’m gonna have to think about this one. My experience growing up was that, despite being neurodivergent, I never felt like I was being called it anymore than anyone else, and that was probably at the height of its informal use (when it was considered just another way of calling someone stupid).
However, it does make me wonder if the declaration of it being a slur backfired. Is it used as a slur against neurodivergent people more often now than it used to be? I’m wondering if the people who were using it as a generic insult stopped using it, which meant the people using it as a slur became the only users, which solidified its status as a slur.
ehhh, it was institutionalized for a long time and that creates an unspeakable amount of trauma. I prefer knowing who’s a bigot and who isn’t straight up.
Fair enough.
Its no longer used in a proffesional capacity partly because its a slur (its also meaninglessly broad as a diagnosis).
Its considered a slur because the only current use of it is as a slur
AKTHUALLY there are non-insulting uses, e.g. to “retard” something or saying something is a “retardant” (like a fire retardant). Yes, those are the same “retard” because if I understand correctly, that’s where the word originated from.
I also want to point out the circular logic you have going on. It’s a slur because it’s considered one, so it’s only use is as a slur, as a result, it only gets used as a slur, so it’s considered a slur, so it only ever gets used as one.
To be clear, that’s not disregarding what you said, but I wanted to point out a flaw in that logic.
Sure, there are related non slur words, but those aren’t applied to people. “To retard” is a verb, not an adjective or noun. “retardent” is an adjective, but describes the action of soemething, not a quality. Using the noun or past tense adjective is the slur.
And language doesn’t have logic. Like, its pretty weird to suggest it does. Why is fuck a curse? Because its a curse. Why do we call blue things blue? Becabse they are blue. Language and logic rarely intersect (except in lojban). Language is determined by usage, and the usage of that word as a noun is as a slur.
Technically, yes, those are all ableist terms due to the way they enforce a hierarchy of cognitive ability. Calling somebody “stupid,” “dumb,” “idiotic,” “moronic,” “insane,” or the r-slur in a pejorative manner is basically telling them that nothing they say is of value to you because you think their brain is less capable than your own of forming a coherent point. Some of these are just considered stronger than others for one reason or another.
