2:25 AM
@TheAnathema So laying my cards out on the table: I'm not here to venerate Stack Exchange. SE messed up big time in the way they handled this whole situation, and I'm not convinced they've really learned their lesson yet. Time will tell, I suppose.
Based on what I know, I think Monica made serious mistakes, engaging in transphobic rhetoric—but I also think removing her from her modship was an overreaction, at least based on the accounts of the people, especially transgender people, who witnessed her behavior firsthand. And at this point, I think she knows that, so I'm not here to vilify her. If she decides to seek modship again, and if SE gives it back to her.... They can hash that out.
So I'm wiping my hands clean of all that. I don't really care.
The problem that I'm trying to convey is that SE are not the only actors who made mistakes in this controversy. Their mistakes are the most publicly visible, and the easiest to understand, but I need to stress that the SE community, especially the users who have been most active in the last few weeks, share some culpability of blame.
Because, full stop? Monica getting dismissed as Moderator doesn't justify the level of vitriol that's been thrown around. It doesn't justify moderators stepping down for cagey reasons, citing "differences in values" and users protesting on the basis of dogwhistles like "Compelled Speech".
...... I suppose I should explain that.
"Compelled Speech" has a history of being a Transphobic Dogwhistle. In essence, it claims that transgender people are "demanding" that people see them as the gender they are, on the basis of using correct pronouns when referring to them, and the "compelled speech" is the act of doing so.
The problem is that people are pretty good about using correct pronouns in normal, everyday speech. It's not something that people have to consciously think about.... unless they're engaging with a transgender person, and they don't genuinely see that person as the gender they claim to be.
So calling it "Compelled Speech" is a way of framing the discussion as saying "you want me to call you 'he', but I don't think you're a man; you're forcing me to say and believe something I don't believe", which is an essentially transphobic argument.
So I wrote that post because a lot of people keep using that phrase, including [in some cases ex-] moderators who probably think they're making a salient argument.
So when I see users showing up to my post (or more precisely, the OP's post) saying "I've never seen transphobic rhetoric, you're blaming the whole community for the actions of a fringe minority!", well, funny story: I believe them. But here's the trick: it's not because they haven't been seeing it, it's because they haven't been recognizing it.
Hence the thesis of my post.
This is why I get a bit... "bothered" when people show up saying "why can't we just show mutual respect in this issue". Because that's a very lovely sentiment, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the actual problem is.
Which is that a lot of users here, especially the Cisgender users, aren't seeing it. Because they don't recognize it, and because a lot of transphobic users have gotten very good at making their arguments sound perfectly logical and tolerant, when they aren't.
And again, because I cannot say it enough: I don't absolve SE of anything in this matter. Their inability to stop and give a straightforward answer caused a lot of the problem. They refused to explain their decisions, which left open the capacity for bad faith actors on this network, and on Alt-Right sites visiting, to interpret their own version of events.
To spin a false narrative about how "Monica was sacked because SE is cowing to the tyrants in the trans community!"
And a lot of users here, whether they realize it or not, are swallowing those arguments and unthinkingly regurgitating them.
And, in case you're wondering: that's the "Good Faith" argument here. That these users don't mean harm, they just don't realize what they're doing.
Because I know for a fact that some of these users are not acting in good faith. I caught one of them trying to play the "I'm just trying to have a reasonable debate!" card before, barely twenty minutes later, it turned into full-blown transphobic "I shouldn't have to call a trans woman a woman because he's a man!" rhetoric.
(That was multiple of the comments that got removed, FYI)
And a friend of mine on the network caught another bad-faith actor who was trying to leverage the LGB parts of the community against the T, trying to make the TERF-y argument that Trans people were trying to take over, or some nonsense.
This isn't coming from the moderators.
It's not coming from SE's staff.
So I've love to show the mutual respect that you think is valuable, and if we get to a point where that's possible, that'll be a great and noble thing.
But today, right now, it's not. Because there are too many people in the Transgender community getting attacked over this.
I'll be fine. I'm a particular breed of stubborn, self-righteous, and egotistical that I can weather pretty much any kind of insult leveled at me by idiots on the internet.
.... I can't say the same for the people I've been helping deal with panic attacks at the hands of this conflict, brought on by the users I've been complaining about.
They're going to be fine as well, in my estimation, but the harm caused to them didn't need to happen, and it wouldn't have happened if the users here were willing to take me, or them, or the other trans users seriously when we say that these problems aren't just about SE "mishandling a policy about how to deal with moderators".
That this isn't just a problem of "people being unable to show mutual respect".
That this isn't just a problem of "well, we're talking about programming, why do you need to inject gender into the situation"
The CoC changes, as far as I'm aware—and I have tried to solicit the opinions of other trans users to make sure I'm not only reflecting my own sense—are pretty much fine. And they boil down to two easily followed rules.
1. If someone specifies their pronouns, use them.
2. If you don't know how someone identifies, neutral pronouns like they/them are fine; and if you get it wrong, just admit your mistake, and promise to get it right.
Those rules are easy to follow, and if people follow them in good faith, I promise there's not a single trans user here who's going to raise a stink against them.
And if the people here would figure out that that's all the rules are, we could have resolved all this weeks ago.
Monica would have made her mistake, because lots of people are going to make mistakes, because for a lot of people dealing with these topics is a new thing and they don't understand it yet, which is fine, because everyone has to learn eventually, we aren't born as hyper-woke activists ready to smash the patriarchy, or whatever.
But maybe we could also deal with this without resorting to the transphobic rhetoric as well.
Bottom line up front (BLUF):
Those of you reading this post: if you genuinely care about being respectful towards this issue, to the people affected by it, you would do well to stop for a second and just try to consider whether these things are as "irrelevant" as a lot of you seem to feel it is....
