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, autism@lemmy.world 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
Your offer is enticing. I still have concerns. I’ve heard rumours that hexbear is welcoming to genocide apologia. Are these rumours true?
No, although we are skeptical about certain claims of genocide. There’s a big difference between denying well-documented genocides like the Holocaust, vs being skeptical when a source starts making claims without evidence. Generally I like to think we do a decent job of investigating sources and considering multiple perspectives from around the world. You’re welcome to ask about any specific cases.
I’m gonna be upfront because you seem like someone who would respect that, so here are some of our positions that might get labelled that way:
Many of the more egregious claims about Chinese Uighurs can be traced back to one guy, Adrian Zenz, who used some very questionable methodology to arrive at his claims. We’ll push back against any claims that rely only on his word, and some people call this genocide denial, but we don’t believe in taking dubious evidence as credible just to avoid being accused of that.
During the war in Ukraine, Russia has transported war orphans to families in Russia, which some people have labelled as genocide because they’ll be raised culturally Russian instead of culturally Ukrainian. I don’t think the term is appropriate, because imo getting orphans to safety is the priority over preserving culture. Opinions about the war differ, and the whole situation is very fucked, but every war produces orphans and not every war is a genocide.
We’re critical of Double Genocide Theory, the idea that Soviet actions in WWII constituted a genocide on the same level of the Holocaust, a theory which has been criticized by many Jewish historians as trivializing the Holocaust. That doesn’t mean Soviet actions are above criticism, but we don’t like when people equate them with the Nazis.
I think that covers the main things people criticize us for. Like I said you’re welcome to pick our brains and judge for yourself what you think of us. We don’t have any animosity against any ethnic group and racism is not tolerated.
Well, I don’t know too much about the Russian Ukraine war orphans controversy, but I had a discussion about the Ughur genocide two years ago in which me and my partner ended up reaching the same conclusions you’ve put there. And I had a russian ex-girlfriend who said Stalin was BFFs with the jews and that the Jews conducted a genocide of the slavs during the societ union, and I don’t trust a word out of her mouth so your views look correct there too. I guess I’ll explore Hexbear when I have the time
Hope you like us!
That sounds absolutely wild, I’ve never heard anything like that
Yeah I’m not up to date on my soviet history, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt right up until she said the jews control the media. That’s when I dumped her.
I came to hexbear and I’m already banned, what gives? https://hexbear.net/u/PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES
Browsing an instance locally and deciding if you like the content generated from there is the best way to decide if the instance is a fit for you. It gives the best idea of the community there.
Well that’s what I did on Blahaj, and it was deeply stressful. I’d like to avoid taking a risk like that again if there’s an easy answer
Yeah, finding the right instance can be tricky. If you want some more anonomity so you easily blend into the crowd then a general instance might offer that, but then the general community there can have problematic topics and comments trending locally that might brother you enough to want to move if you don’t like the general users.
But, then if you go with a niche instance that is immediately identifiable as holding certain values then it can be harder to blend in and instantly stand out from other comments if the instance exists for a specific topic as its image.
With your doxxing issues. I’m not sure the extent of private information was leaked, but it is best to see what information shared could have led to the doxxing being possible. Finding what led to that can help to try and reduce risks online, since any publicly viewable social media can’t offer protection. Only thing that can be done on public social media is to try to not share too much identifiable info or change details to try and reduce risk while retaining the core idea of the message.
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