this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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I'm not surprised. While I've created quite a corner of an online life for myself here, in the back of my mind there's always the thought that I'm half a step from being misunderstood and reported, banned, or at least least dumped on.
I've encountered a bit too many people here who are paranoid and apparently only looking for the worst in everyone else. And since I'm probably older than average, and from the eastern half of Europe, I'm just more used to using abrasive language sometimes without needing to constantly announcing my tolerance for some particular selection of specific things that happens to be in the news this month. That's obviously not the preferred vibe here.
I’d be interested on peoples views on a concern that I’ve had growing for a while; maybe the concern is genuine, or maybe I’m being paranoid. But I feel that some of the more extreme ‘pro-trans’ conversation online feels less ‘pro-trans’ and more ‘anti-terf’ or even ‘anti-everything’ to the extent that it has become impossible to have a discussion about concerns, confusions, genuine ignorance etc, in other words impossible to educate or come up with solutions to genuine problems.
A lot of these extreme trans, conversation destroying comments are so full of hate, so often, that I admit I have become suspicious. If you were deliberately trying to divide a community from potential allies you couldn’t do it better, and I’ve seen one too many ‘as a black woman’ comments accidentally posted from the wrong account by some white as a lily racist extremist man to trust everyone who says ‘as a trans person’ online.
I would like a space where people with genuine curiosity but also genuine concerns (as in, that they have the concern is genuine, it doesn’t mean necessarily that there is a genuine problem that needs resolving) could have an adult discussion to educate and understand each other, in order to find solutions, without having to worry about being cancelled and shut down.
If you’re on the fence and it feels like the only people who listen to you with respect and sympathy are the anti-trans people, well, you’re going to end up hearing a lot more of what they have to say than learning something actually useful.
I understand that the trans community must get frustrated with having to explain themselves all the time, and impatient for the day they don’t, and it sucks that that’s the world we live in right now. But I’m also very concerned that we should be cautious about accepting every hateful or insane sounding ‘as a trans person’ comment we read at face value. Hatred leads to the dark side after all, and that’s where some people want you to be.
That said I’m not trans, or even pretending to be trans, so I can’t speak for the community. I just believe strongly in the adage that the most effective way to win support is to meet hate with love, and I know a growing number of people who should have been trans allies being turned away by the feeling that they are not being listened to or taken seriously. Even if their concerns feel stupid to be people in the community.
Oh also, whilst I think people should be taking genuine concerns seriously, be careful of ‘whataboutism’ so hey, fun tight rope.
That’s my paranoid ramblings for anyone who cares from someone who wants to see tolerance and understanding but is scared we’re going the wrong way.
The problem is that the well has been poisoned. Simple fact is that whenever someone says "I just have concerns", nine-out-of-ten times, they're just trolling you.
And I've been involved in this conversation for years, on a couple of different forums, trying to explain things that trans folks go through. And to this day I still do my best to always give people the benefit of the doubt if they seem sincere.
But I'm not at all exaggerating when I say 9/10 times it's just someone JAQing off, and within a few posts they're accusing trans people of being a danger to women or children.
This is combined with the fact that a lot of the "reasonable" compromises cisgender people come up with, just aren't at all reasonable from the perspective of the transgender people they would affect. The compromises usually involve denying life-saving medical care, or involve basically accepting being ostracised from public life.
Finally, cisgender people just massively outnumber transgender people. So while for any one cisgender person, this might be the first time they've ever asked anything about the topic, the trans person has likely been asked dozens if not hundreds of times. Many of which were in bad faith.
So a lot of trans people have checked out. For their own mental health.
This is what people just don't seem to understand. The "you're 150% with us and declaring it on every turn, or you're against us" rule just makes completely normal people end against them.
This really goes for every kind of issue that may come up, not even just for the typical "left-right" feud bullshit.
The thing is, it's not even required to be nice and keep explaining shit or whatever - there's always the option on an individual level to just ignore stuff.
Like with the joke in this story - no, you don't need to be the police to immediately report and flag everything that's 10% over the line. You don't need to see red all the time. Just ignore it and move the fuck on, you're not getting any extra social credits for beings overly sensitive and protective.
The obvious counterargument is "well if you ignore everything, they win", but that's still just the same paranoia, the same dividing between us and everyone else, the same overprotectiveness. You don't have to let everything pass, that doesn't mean you have to police everything everything either.
Besides there will always be a ton of people willing to do online vigilantism, so you're really totally fine to just ignore most things and not run to the mod about everything.
It's like those zero-tolerance policies in some schools (American schools of course, where else) where forgetting a pink plastic water gun or a nail clipper in their backpack can get a 10yo kid arrested and expelled. It's not helping anything, it's not addressing the actual problem, it singles out random people as examples, and it just makes everyone hate you.
If I see someone using the term whataboutism, I know there's no discussion to be had with them. Another originally sensible word that has been destroyed by overuse. I've been accused of whataboutism by just adding some extra information about a game console history. Holy shit. You can tell that person's entire mission in life is to just scope the internet of any sign of disagreement about anything they find holy, no matter how trivial.