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
By the way:
This is blatantly false. Our mod did not "demand" that they remove the banner, they asked politely, not expecting much to come of it, and absolutely nobody ever called "tankie" a slur. What actually happened is that after Moss posted this message to make fun of it, she used a word derived from "liberal" and "r----d," and when someone criticized it she removed their comment, with modlog listing the reason as "imagine being this braindead." When we pushed back on it, Ada scolded her about it but did not remove her as a mod. Since our mods and community had been making changes to better accommodate blahaj (they didn't mention that we stayed out of their second thread once they actually requested that, or that the lemm.ee admin gave us permission to comment on their thread), we decided at that point that the effort wasn't worth it.
Come to Hexbear! We love our trans and neurodivergent comrades, we're super political all the time, and we have way thicker skin
Your offer is enticing. I still have concerns. I've heard rumours that hexbear is welcoming to genocide apologia. Are these rumours true?
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.