Notices by Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel (ykantrachelread@kolektiva.social), page 3

what really sucks about the way that so many leftists handle interpersonal relationships is that it's *so* obvious when someone is interested less in helping people than chasing the addictive emotional high of righteous anger.

when your politics are built primarily around the latter rather than the former, then you tend to navigate the world by constantly seeking that high. and because anger against people you can't touch is most often directionless - the equivalent of pissing into the wind - they start to look for targets in their immediate vicinity.

and when your primary motivation for leftist praxis is that sort of righteous anger, you naturally want to maximize that anger through rhetorical flourishes, mental gymnastics, and malicious readings of everything that your target says. that's how we get the absurd flattening in leftist "accountability" spaces, wherein someone saying something unintentionally bigoted, recognizing that they're wrong and owning up to it receives the same response as though that person were a serial abuser or virulent bigot. or, for example, the trend of assuming the maximum amount of harm done until proven otherwise because you don't want to place the burden of coming forward on those actually harmed (if anyone).

lateral violence harms so many people in our communities. and until we normalize politics based around grace, solidarity, and helping others, rather than manufactured righteous outrage, I only see the problem getting worse as things around us get worse.

happy USA Deposed Democratically Elected Chilean Socialist and Replaced Him With a Murderous Fascist Day!

...oh, and I guess something happened to a couple of buildings or uhh idk?

so, before starting to learn about all of the (numerous) issues with #TheBadSpace, I was on team "give are0h a chance." marginalized people deserve to feel safe on the fediverse, and having a well-curated blocklist of nazi and spam instances handy is a Very Good Idea.

but it's become apparent that The Bad Space is *not* well-curated. it's full of spurious, unsourced accusations against instances run by marginalized people - and, disproportionately, by transfem people and anarchists.

and how has are0h been responding? well, let me just say that there's a way that a well-intentioned developer could defuse this situation. it would involve immediately taking the blocklist offline, going through the rigorous, and NECESSARY, process of vetting every single entry on the list, and removing those for which he can't find unambiguous receipts.

instead, he's been placing the responsibility on those on the blocklist to come to him and prove, TO HIM, that they're worthy of being REMOVED from the blocklist - characterizing it as "a minor inconvenience" that marginalized people have to plead the case that they're not crypto-fash who need to be isolated from the rest of the fediverse for the good of us all.

and, well, fuck that several times over.

you don't get to accuse marginalized people - primarily queer people, and especially transfem people - of being bad actors, go "okay, prove me wrong," and then wash your hands of the affair, all while you're collecting money to keep the project running, and all while there's a literal genocide going on against us outside our doors.

I trusted, I verified, and my verification led me to the fact that this whole situation stinks.

"so you're suggesting that TheBadSpace needs to have receipts for every single instance?"

yes. yes, I am. that's how you maintain accountability when you're developing a public list of accusations against people that you're suggesting other people adopt as a blocklist.

hiding behind, "anyone who doesn't just blindly trust me is a bigot" is you evading accountability. nothing more, nothing less.

alright, I'm tired of posting about the Fedi HOA Club, so the last thing I'll say about it is that I don't know how many more drama kerfuffles it's going to take for people to finally realize that these people have a transmisogyny problem.

"yes, they predominantly go after and cancel transfem people, and then go after and cancel people who associate with the transfem people they canceled, and then made a blocklist that blocks like every instance that transfem people gather on, but have you considered..."

no. I'm not considering shit anymore when it comes to these people.

@Shrigglepuss I don't feel like debating with yet another TME queer about how coming out against the practice of accusing powerless transfem people of hate speech without receipts and suggesting that they be isolated from the rest of the fediverse, at the same time as there's an active genocide going on against us in the world at large, is, as you put it, a "concern troll," so I'm just going to block you.

@Shrigglepuss yeah, I don't doubt that there's a handful of racist white trans people out there out there who have seen this situation as an excuse to spread racist BS. there's always bad actors in situations like this. to extrapolate that into "everyone criticizing are0h is doing so for racist reasons," though, is just dishonest on its face, not to mention dismissive of the genuine concerns that people have over, you know, being accused of shit they didn't do and having it suggested that the rest of fedi needs to defederate from them out of their own desire for safety.

also: "it's impossible to be flawless in this," as though the issue at stake is a minor booboo instead of literally thousands of powerless, mostly marginalized, predominantly transfem people being slandered and potentially deprived of wider community.

I just don't understand the people trying to make this shit a "black vs trans" thing.

if I had to guess, more than likely, there were one or more, most likely white, cis or TME people somewhere in the chain of events that let their unexamined internalized tranamisogyny lead them to blocking a bunch of transfem-centric instances. this all trickled upward into the bad space blocklist, and now are0h is letting his pride get the better of him and doubling down instead of trying to sincerely address the concerns of a marginalized demographic whose specific marginalization he doesn't share.

that's it.

me, I'll do my best to stand with my BIPOC brothers, sisters and siblings in every fight for justice, because my liberation depends on theirs, and vice versa. we're not free until we're all free.

what I don't stand with is a bunch of unapologetic HOA types who think they're immune to systemic bias.

this is your periodic reminder that "listen to marginalized people" means:

"listen to A LOT of different marginalized people and use your critical thinking skills to draw conclusions from what you hear"

and not, "everything that comes out of a marginalized person's mouth is a profound truth, so go find one or a couple or a handful of marginalized people to tokenize."

yes, the first thing may be much harder - and demand much more of you - but the work was never meant to be easy.

@amberage @TheGoodSpace oh, hey, I didn't expect ana mardoll drama to come up here, and I'm not going to rehash it except to say that you cited "doxxes," plural, when you clearly cited only one, and that one amounts to, "this person was a nepotism hire at the drone bomb factory."

and as a transfem person on kolektiva, I can tell you that the instance is home to a ton of other trans people, and that there's a reason that we feel safe there.

@amberage @TheGoodSpace re kolektiva: there were no "kiwifarms-sourced doxxes." that was an accusation from laurelai bailey, a known serial sexual predator and abuser with a long, sordid history too long for me to go into here, against a transfem person outing a certain ranch as a home for abusive behavior.

in other words, it was a case of abusers trying to shield abusers, and kolektiva's mods were correct in taking the (lack of) action that they did.

I can't speak to the COVID denial thing for sure, but as a COVID-safe person on kolektiva since last november, I can say that I haven't seen any notorious COVID deniers on my local feed.

(side-note: THIS IS WHY RECEIPTS WITH CONTEXT ARE IMPORTANT!)

@emma @TheGoodSpace I just searched the relevant hashtag and came up with one post describing people having to defend themselves against false accusations as "a minor inconvenience" and "the price for making fedi a better place," and another that's tone-policing the transfem people speaking out against him: "...if you come at me like a dickhead because you feel you or someone you know is being treated unfairly, and that justifies you acting like a straight asshole, I'm going to assume you're just a bigot."

I don't think there's any room for interpretation there.

@luna @TheGoodSpace anyone trying to suggest that this discussion is about whether or not queers can be racist is moving the goalposts. like, obviously the answer is "yes."

the question here is whether it's okay for the people maintaining a public blocklist full of accusations of hate speech to avoid accountability for failing to prove those accusations.

@TheGoodSpace well, we can finally put to rest the "is the bad space project transmisogynist?" question.

yes. yes it is. holy shit, is it ever.

that transfem feeling when you're about to officially announce that you've joined a discord server's mod team, and your biggest fear isn't screwing up a moderation decision (though that fear does exist), but being whisper-networked by someone from the other server that you were run out of

3) WelshPixie has some, um, *interesting* opinions about her neighbors in colonized South Africa. Here's a screenshot from her lulu.com page. Note that line about "chasing lions from her lawn." Now, if she were most other people, I'd be inclined to give that line a bit more of a charitable reading. But she's not. So, let's ask her what she means when she talks about chasing indigenous African creatures from her pretty little white-owned lawn, shall we?

2) WelshPixie makes culturally appropriative art. Here's a screenshot from her Redbubble page. Aside from being... well, kind of bland art - the type of shit you'd find decorating your stoner friend's dorm room - you'll note the definite, um, *cultural* influences in her work. She herself even calls them 'Mandalas.'

Hey, all! Wanna know exactly who our local Fediverse celeb WelshPixie really is? Let's air out a bit of dirty laundry via a few easy Google searches.

(NOTE: I'm blocking out WP's real name in these screenshots even though she's a public figure and it's discoverable with ten seconds of Google searching, because I don't want to get accused of "doxxing" or some trumped-up bullshit. I'm happy to share the links to any of these screenshotted sources via DMs.)

1) WelshPixie is a colonizer. An interview from 2016 states that she moved from "the Rhondda" (a region in southern Wales) to South Africa seven years ago. And she continues to live there. That means that she willingly chose to become a white colonizer in a recovering Apartheid state, and that she continues to choose to stay there. Hmm.

transfem leftists when they fuck up: "I apologize for misstepping. I realize what I did wrong and I'll try my best not to make the same mistake again in the future."

the community response: "you are a lowly, worthless worm of a person. you have done irreparable harm to countless people, though I dare not ask them to say so themselves for fear of placing more undue burden on them, so I'm just going to assume the worst and say that you've basically Done a Holocaust. we expect you to humbly and without reservation submit yourself to whatever accountability and reparations process the community requires on behalf of the people who have been the recipients of your immeasurable injurious deeds, up to and including permanent exile from this community. I hope you're pleased with yourself, fash."

...

TME queer and cishet leftists when they fuck up: "I'm sorry if I hurt anyone's feelings, but I will not apologize for continuing to aggressively advocate for marginalized people."

the community response: "OMG you're so brave and such a good ally! *we're* sorry for ever doubting *you!* shine on, you brilliant diamond!"

the thing that enrages me about Nina being, now verifiably, falsely accused of anti-Indigenous racism is that these accusations stick to transfem people like superglue even after they've been proven absolutely false.

she's gonna be dealing with this shit months and years from now. meanwhile her accuser gets off with a "teehee oopsie"