carl marksSo I want to provide some elaboration on this fediblock post I made: https://blackqueer.life/@tillshadeisgone/113891510610086508
I want to remind you all of selection from of my pinned post on conflict with comrades, which I believe is relevant here.
So, I have been rethinking how I interact with this space going forward to better protect myself but also to have a more robust and intentional framework for how to engage with conflicts. I've been learning about how revolutionaries in the past have handled conflict with each other while maintaining unity in their movement. Many of these practices existed within local orgs and communities, and therefore are not necessarily applicable or appropriate for a digital and public space like this. However, I think some lessons can still be taken. So, in light of that, HERE IS MY PROPOSAL: If I am engaging with you and I believe that while we are aligned in our goals for liberation, you are inadvertently causing harm with your words, I may ask you to self-crit. This is not an attack, but is an invitation to reconsider what you are saying. This will also mean that I am available to you, privately or publicly, to explain my thinking and have a dialogue about our disagreement.
This policy is what I was drawing on when I engaged with the user I made a fediblock post about. As mentioned in my fediblock post, I chose to reach out privately to mention my concern and be able to explain my thinking in the hopes that I would be heard. This was a couple of days ago.
The thing is, just as I mentioned in said pinned post that antiblackess destroys unity, ableism destroys unity too. Black disabled folks have been saying for YEARS on this and every other digital platform that they feel excluded from just about every single community space, on the left or otherwise. This is not new information by any means.
Therefore, ESPECIALLY given that as our server's About section points out, 1 in 4 Black American adults are disabled, it is my responsibility as the admin of BQL to make sure that our space does not reproduce that same dynamic. If I want Black disabled people to feel like they can be in our community, I cannot allow ableism in our community. Full stop.
As I feel like I keep repeating, this is something I take very seriously. And sometimes, despite my best efforts, attempts to convince people that they are doing harm are not going to be successful. That is what happened in this case. The person did not listen to me or anyone else who tried to convince her, including Black disabled people who were impacted by her words. She continued, over the course of the past two or three days, to double down, saying that racism is a mental illness. Then, she started defending using the R slur and blaming disabled people for Trump being elected, explicitly referencing alleged decreases in average IQ scores.
When someone is repeatedly insistent on echoing eugenics ideology and Nazi talking points about intelligence, that is several steps past what is acceptable. To steal some language I got from communists, the contradiction between her deeply held beliefs and the presence and value of my disabled users was clearly antagonistic and not resolvable through dialogue.
Sometimes, you have to do the hard thing. It wasn't pleasant, but guess what? That's the job. Do you think it was pleasant for me to suspend instances like tech.lgbt or aus.social where we had a lot of connections, cutting our users off from theirs? To make public posts about it before and after? No, it was extremely stressful and upsetting and brought a lot more harassment my way. But I did it anyway. Wasn't the first time, won't be the last.
Oh, and it is worth mentioning that I have been accused of catering to the "white political gaze" by making my fediblock post, implying that I am doing so for the optics and because I care about getting accolades from white people more than I care about my fellow Black folks. It has been implied that this is all theater, and has no connection to any real beliefs on my part. To that, all I can say is that ableism is a bigger danger to Black folks than white people. White supremacy is inextricably tied to ableism, and I have referenced and boosted multiple works by Black disabled advocates and academics in the past two days who discuss that exact concept. In short, disability justice is not just for fucking white people.
To close, I just want to restate that at the end of the day, ableism is a violation of rule #1 on BQL. Anyone who doesn't agree with the existence of that rule or who doesn't like it when we enforce it is no comrade of mine.
Thanks for reading.
rfg
Shar(yna)Tran/Shark(aeopteryx)
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