Notices by Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel (ykantrachelread@kolektiva.social), page 2

I know I picked the right side when I look at the profiles of all the new people who followed me in the past few days, and the bulk of them are, like, mentally ill they/she/it plural therians who make badass art

and then I look at all of the people taking the HOA's side and they're a bunch of neurotypical dorks who list their work qualifications in their bios

gimme the former crowd any day of the week please and thank you

sometimes I just have to remind myself how deeply unserious these libleft witch-hunters really are.

the incident that most springs to mind is when I was still giving folks in the "accountability space" on the server I left earlier this year the benefit of the doubt. someone, who was another target of the Accountability (tm) process, was asked to hop on a voice chat to discuss... I don't know. I don't even remember the context. it was something that, for whatever reason, the Accountability (tm) folks thought was really important.

the person's response was that they'd just checked themselves into a managed care facility - drug rehab, or recovery of some sort - and didn't have the time.

and was the response what a normal, decently empathetic person would say in that situation? at the very minimum a, "oh, I'm sorry, forget it, please take all the time you need"?

nope. it was, "well, can you hop on a text chat instead?"

this was a server that openly prided itself on its supposed anti-ableist/saneist beliefs, and they had the opportunity to do some bare-minimum anti-ableism by extending this person grace. and they didn't, because their quest for Accountability (tm) in their little online fiefdom was more important than a little thing like "accommodating a person who's taking a major real-life step to try and work on themselves."

if you ever wonder how, for example, a team of Very Serious Admins whose most visible figures include a cis white colonizer and an upper-middle-class web developer and consultant can justify going after powerless, marginalized people - except, like, in a social-justice way - well, that's how. they're not fucking serious about actually practicing what they preach. they're all ego and righteous anger and hot air, and absolutely nothing else.

transfem people: "we're currently being systematically isolated and cleansed from the greater fediverse, and also there's people openly using abusive language against us and getting brownie points for it. can we center these things for just a little bit? please?"

a subset of traumatized white transfems who've been conditioned by our abusive transmisogynist society to always center the needs of others: "ah, but have you considered that now is the perfect time for antiracism discourse?"

PSA: don't come into my mentions spouting LB trutherism. you're talking to a multiple abuse survivor, and I don't need fucking receipts to believe other survivors.

there's people out there on Fedi openly fashjacketing us, openly saying we need to "have the maleness beat out of us."

and some of y'all are still choosing to play into the Fedi HOA's hands by demanding that we decenter transmisogyny in this discourse.

even when we're down and people are kicking us, it's still demanded of us that we put our needs aside and defer to cishets and TMEs.

now, I’d like to focus specifically on the part about deference, and how that relates to a project meant to keep marginalized people safe on the fediverse.

The Bad Space disproportionately targets transfeminine people and spaces where transfeminine people congregate as “problematic” instances. and when one of us, and then several of us, and then a whole shit-ton of us, started speaking out to Ro regarding this issue, we expected to receive sympathy and a promise to swiftly and justly correct the issue.

instead, we were met with hostility, doubling down and accusations of bigotry. by the end of the day, we had prominent cis accounts talking about the “trans fascist problem.”

we didn’t receive sympathy or solutions. we received hostility and fashjacketing. all because we dared to speak up for ourselves.

it’s not difficult to see how the above plays into the concept of transfeminized debt. it’s clear that the Fediverse HOA Club, of whom Ro is a part, and who - to my knowledge - are entirely cishet or transmisogyny-exempt, expected deference from transfem people. our needs aren’t important to them, because under the transmisogynist paradigm of transfeminized debt, we’re a privileged group.

never mind the fact that the bulk of us are struggling just to survive in a world that wants us dead several ways. never mind that all we want is to not be isolated from the greater fediverse.

we spoke up, and we were punished for it. we were treated as entitled, arrogant, privileged, even fashjacketed. all for daring to speak up en masse.

all for failing to perform the labor of deference to cishet and TME people.

so, yes. the drama over The Bad Space is grossly transmisogynist to its core. and the trans community here on the fediverse deserves not just an apology, but swift and unqualified restitution.

why am I, as a transfem person, so up in arms about #TheBadSpace drama?

let's chat for a moment about transfeminized debt.

transfeminized debt is a term and concept originally created by transfem writer May Peterson based upon her experience in queer and social-justice-oriented spaces. you can read the thread on it here, and I've also screenshotted it with alt text below for reference.

https://twitter.com/maidensblade/status/1490047073844178948?lang=en

@laptopkitten @yassie_j I just wonder what slur she's referring to, given that the most malicious reading would assume a certain six-letter word and imdat clearly used seven asterisks

still reeling from the experience yesterday of waking up to, "hey, there sure are a lot of transfem people on #TheBadSpace, someone should do something about that" and going to bed to a handful of prominent cis people calling us bigots and fascists for stating an access need

it occurred to me this morning that "anyone criticizing Ro is racist" has the same energy as, "anyone criticizing the state of Israel is antisemitic."

in effect, both are co-opting real bigotry in service of obscuring the real power dynamics at play.

Ro is a web developer and consultant. he's a member of the professional-managerial class. he has the ear of the other Big Names in fediverse moderation. The Bad Space is a contributor to the Federation Safety Enhancement Project. dude has a *lot* of power and clout in this community.

meanwhile, the bulk of the transfem people calling Ro out have to crowdfund, do sex work or do artwork commissions just to put food on their damn tables.

this isn't "trans people versus black people." it's an upper-middle-class ego-tripper and his HOA friends crybullying a bunch of powerless, poor, homeless, vulnerable people because he seriously fucked up and was called out on it.

period.

Queen Colonizer is now out there demanding a fediblock on someone for "racism" - which, with ten seconds of digging, was revealed to actually be a case of a trans person censoring the word "asshole."

no, I'm not lying.

these people won't fucking stop.

https://tau-ceti.space/@imdat/111058687662323388

but of course, we're not ACTUALLY disposable. we're important, we're beautiful, our mere existence is fucking profound. the cishets and TMEs who think we're trash, who want to toss us out the window the moment we dare to voice a fucking access need, don't fucking deserve us.

so, if they wanna be rid of us? fucking go for it. we'll still be building communities, seeking each other out, being weird and wild and wonderful with each other until the day the jackboots show up at our dirty little doorsteps.

because y'all sure aren't going to help us.

you don't even recognize that we have needs, let alone the fact that we're being fucking genocided right now.

so go fuck yourselves.

listen, y'all. I've been down this road before.

they don't care about us.

I've talked many times before about the concept of transfeminine debt - the idea that, while every other marginalized demographic has their access needs catered to in leftist or queer spaces, transfem people arrive in those same spaces already in debt to the space. instead of having our access needs considered and addressed, we need to bring something *to* the space in order to be considered worthy of admission.

and if we don't bring anything that the TMEs and cishets consider useful, then we're disposable. they'll be rid of us at the first opportunity.

to them, we don't have needs. to them, we don't deserve to take up space or have our voices heard.

to them, we're trash. to them, we're only as much use as our labor and our willingness to keep our heads down and our mouths shut until we're needed. and then, we might just be discarded anyway.

transfem people built our own weird, wonderful spaces and networks here on fedi, and I feel so privileged to be a part of them. my feed is filled with homeless, poor, plural, mentally ill, disabled, BIPOC, neurodivergent transfem people, transfem people from all around the world, transfem people struggling to survive in a world that wants us dead and desiring nothing more than a little space where we can seek refuge from the people trying to fucking genocide us.

but because we don't have needs, because we're not useful, we're not allowed to speak up for our needs. so a bunch of cis and TME HOA types and their sycophants trampling all over us becomes not an occasion for reflection on how rampant transmisogyny is here, or how transfem people have access needs that should be considered on the level of other marginalized groups,

but instead an occasion for us to be taken down a peg or three, fashjacketed, ultimately de-facto exiled from the fediverse as a whole.

we're taking up too much space. we're too goddamn loud. we're no longer useful.

we are disposable.

really, though, I've already made my choice in this fight months ago. kolektiva federates with the "problematic" transfem instances and is blocked by the HOA ones. and I prefer it that way. if my choice has to be between a bunch of weird little communities filled with my weird little sisters and siblings, and a gaggle of joyless, scoldy cis and TME radlibs, then I'll choose the former every single time and not look back.

I just thought this place as a whole was better than that. that we were better isolated from the toxic stew of transmisogyny (and antisemitism, among other things) that eventually drove me off of twitter.

but, I guess not.

thankfully it's way easier to shield oneself from that shit when you're not being fed an algorithm designed to provoke outrage-fueled engagement, so the fediverse is, and will remain, my social media home on the internet.

but fuck if today wasn't eye-opening in a really disappointing way.

@AnarchoNinaWrites yeah, I certainly don't care about the blocklist itself. kolektiva isn't defed-happy, the HOA Club already hates us, and I wouldn't want to interact with people for whom all the, well, [*gestures at the HOA Club's public behavior*] isn't a deal-breaker anyway.

what I care about is how this all feeds into the wider strain of transmisogyny among that HOA Club, and how they're continually simultaneously jockeying for power and running the hell over my sisters and siblings on the way.

@AnarchoNinaWrites the trouble is that this argument goes the same way every time

dipshit: "there's a Nazi Problem among trans women!"

trans women: "uhh no, that's transmisogynist"

dipshit, moving the goal posts as fast as they can: "oh, so you're saying that trans women can't be racist?"

it's all disingenuous bullshit

@goatsarah @JessTheUnstill @oathboundFamiliar and it's so frustrating, too, because almost none of us hold any real power. like, the vast majority of transfem people I know are poor, legally disabled, homeless, doing sex work or shilling their art to try and get some fucking food or keep a roof over their heads.

anyone who thinks that they're doing a social justice by going after us, instead of, like, cishet white guys, is fucking deluded.

@JessTheUnstill @oathboundFamiliar funny how every time I hear about this supposed epidemic of racism among white trans women it's:

1) in response to transfem people criticizing a cishet or TME queer person who did something transmisogynist

2) brought up in such a way that the implication is that it's somehow worse than the real, easily provable epidemic of racism among cishet white people

3) never accompanied by any sources or receipts

me, over here, making the fediverse safer by fashjacketing each and every transfem person who criticizes me

@emma @TheGoodSpace at this time, the person maintaining the blocklist has publicly doubled down on, "I don't need to be accountable for anything, and anyone suggesting that I do is racist."

the time for assuming *good* faith has passed.