this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
13 points (74.1% liked)

Blahaj Lemmy Meta

2529 readers
67 users here now

Blåhaj Lemmy is a Lemmy instance attached to blahaj.zone. This is a group for questions or discussions relevant to either instance.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've seen a lot of instances of people on Lemmy saying you can get banned from Blahaj for forgetting someone's pronouns. And then Ada has to come in and explain why they're wrong in their interpretation of the rules. These people were banned for good reasons, they're transphobes. But I think they misunderstand the rules of Blahaj for a legitimate reason.

It's because Blahaj doesn't have rules. It has two guidelines. Very subjective ones. People want to know what will get them banned, so they try to understand the rules of that subjectivity. The rules for what Ada considers to be empathy and inclusion. The rules of Ada's psychology. Because like it or not, with highly subjective guidelines, Ada's interpretation and understanding of that subjectivity is the rules.

And Ada didn't write the rules of her psychology in the sidebar. So people have to speculate. And people are speculating wrong, and starting arguments about it.

I think a ruleset should be a transparent explanation of how a mod team thinks about acceptable behaviour. By not having rules, Blahaj is being opaque about how the mod team thinks. And the only way for people to deal with that is to practice amateur psychoanalysis. Which is unpleasant and creates division.

If people understood how trans people think about acceptable behaviour, they wouldn't be transphobes. So the result of this system is that everyone who is banned for transphobia doesn't understand why and needs it personally explained to them. If the sidebar explained acceptable behaviour in a way everyone can understand, they wouldn't misunderstand it so often.

I think the current system is creating pointless drama.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

[it] can have the opposite effect, trolls using the rules as a weapon in their trolling.

I agree, I think the most likely outcome would be that the rules would be weaponized, used to try to argue that their particular kind of transphobia wasn't covered and it's unfair to ban them because it wasn't specifically cited, etc.

EDIT:

this space is not intended for transphobes to better themselves, it is meant as a place for trans people to feel safe

I keep wondering if it's worth having a separate instance for an /r/AskTransgender kind of community for people with questions and to help cis people engage in dialogue and learn more about trans folks.

While it's an unmitigated good to have safe spaces (esp. since there are so few for trans folks), I personally love to torture myself by talking to trans-naive or even transphobic folks, and would love to help well-intended people learn and grow if they are interested (even if realistically, that's not how most of those interactions go, lol). Obviously this isn't the place for that, I just wish there were a sort of border zone where those kinds of interactions could happen.