Fugitivus Discussion Forum

OK, so I saw this starting on the original thread and then lost internet connectivity for several hours, before I could post. I am going to very very, very, hard not to nuke or flame or violently emote all over this thread, but seriously, the rampant transphobia on behalf of a mod (even one who is trying to keep her mod hat off here) is really freaking me out. Full disclosure - I'm a cis-gendered woman, and as Graphite said, I'm not sure this is my place, but I don't want to just abandon the field. You don't identify with a gender? that's your right. I'll fight for blowing up the binary and recognizing that some people don't identify as male or as female, whether they want to identify as something else altogether or opt out altogether. However, telling everyone who is gendered that they're wrong and specifically attacking trans people as "the enemy" of your genderless utopia, is really, really offensive. I cannot even freaking believe that you are, as Prism said, putting people here in the position of having to defend their very identity to a mod while denying whole swathes of priviliege because women have it worst, and oh-by-the-way that means women who menstruate.

Also, if "fab" as the adjective in Megann's post is supposed to be an acronym for "female at birth"? Fail. That's another form of that nasty, pernicious "woman born woman" crap that further serves to marginalize and delegitimize the experience of trans women in transphobic feminist-defined spaces.

OK, you know, I'm failing at the not nuking thing. Prism and Princess_backpack, you guys are awesome and brave and I cannot believe how patient backpack in particular has been with the calm explanations, but I am so goddamn sorry you guys have to deal with this shit here of all places.

Everything I could think of saying has been said, and better than I would put it, so I'll just say: I love you guys. Boxed hugs and internet-fives for all.

Holy shit, how did this entire discussion happen when I wasn't looking?

Umm... There's a lot of points from this discussion that I think need addressing. A *lot*. But one stands out to me over the others:

This is not okay.

We're calling you out on your unaddressed privilege. It wouldn't be reasonable for us to expect you to get everything right on the first try. But it's entirely reasonable for us to expect you to listen. This isn't a conversation that trans people have the privilege of not having, so if you want to be any kind of an ally at all, it's not one that you get to not have either. I've just been reading and re-reading your posts, trying to find some way to give you the benefit of the doubt, but you haven't left a lot of room for doubt: if you're willing write off the things the rest of us have said as "insulting labels", it's clear you haven't been listening in good faith.

"biological essentialism"? "transphobia"? These are labels, yes. When used to describe the things you've said in this thread, they are accurate labels.

I think you should spend a long time re-reading what we've said, but this time to understand it, not to refute or defend against it.

I am sorry I have taken so long to read and get involved on this thread. I have been busy all day today.

I am also cis gendered and consider myself to be an ally, so I don't want to claim to speak for someone who is somewhere else on the gender (or agender) spectrum. But, I have a serious problem with this, also.

Megann, you have practiced an awful lot of erasing, privilege denying, and gender essentialism on this thread. It is disturbing to me that another mod would do this in this space.

I am proud with the community and how they have responded calmly to specific points. I would like to reiterate a few, and possibly add some.

First of all, your experiences are your experiences. Your interaction with gender is not a FACT, as you called it. It is an opinion. You cannot have your opinion of gender usurp reality - the reality that binary gender is considered to be the norm, and people who can pass easily in that binary for a significant portion of their lives have cis privilege. Yes, women have to suffer feeling unsafe, but it is on a completely different axis than people who are trans. Cis female teenagers can come home from high school and almost always not feel like they are aberrant. And yes, I was a tomboy who wore combat boots and shaved half my head. So, yeah, my parents wished I was more dainty and traditional and more comfortably within what would be considered typical of my assigned gender, but it was not anywhere the same thing as dealing with being trans.

And, it is my anecdotal experience. I cannot and will not take that and make everyone else fit into it.

I think it's disturbing that you care who menstruates and who doesn't. And who has a cervix. There is such a wide variety of biology, as wide as the variety of gender. How dare you tell people you can judge and classify them on how and when they menstruate. So, my amenorrheic friend with PCOS isn't "female at birth" enough for you right now? Or the midwife I trained under who had uterine cancer and had the whole works removed, even her cervix? Or Caster Semenya? Or the many trans people on this board?

I feel like I am being no where near as intelligent or gracious as many of the other commenters. I am not even sure what my role should be as the moderator of High Noon. I planned on being pretty hands off on this forum as long as people weren't violating the CoC, but I think you have been blatantly transphobic.

Oh, geez, look what I missed.

/doles out boxes of hugs D:

I tried to keep my mouth shut after Megann left but I just don't think I can leave the conversation with Megann deleting her account as the end of it. Princess Backpack said repeatedly that she really appreciated the community support and I don't want to denigrate that one bit but it seems to me that there's something missing from the conversation that Learn Hexadecimal touched on here. Megann started out this conversation reluctantly, probably because she had a hunch her views would not be welcome here, and she left after page 3. Yet people continued to respond with posts directed at her. I have no problem with this and again it's part of the community support that I know is appreciated, but what I didn't see is a recognition that conversation should happen here that isn't centered around Megann.

Somehow there was a moderator on these forums who was virulently transphobic. I know there wasn't a lot of vetting of the mods (understandable, given how the boards came about) and there is certainly no vetting of members. It seems pretty likely to me that this situation may arise again, either with transphobia or with some other extremely hostile bigotry. I want to know if the community and the moderators in particular are willing to remove a moderator or ban a member for this behavior. Megann was in clear violation of the forum rules, but the only moderator other than Megann who responded on this thread, MomTFH, responded in a similar vein with the rest of the community: addressing Megann's transphobic arguments, but not mentioning any disciplinary action. Learn Hexadecimal remains the only person in the thread to have brought up the idea that Megann should no longer be a moderator. When I was viewing the "Who is online" page and saw that Megann was in the Administration Control Panel after I made my post calling her a biological essentialist, I felt unsafe.

I would like to know that moderators can and will be removed as moderators, if not banned, for this behavior regardless of whether or not they request account deletion on their own. Can I be alone in wanting this assurance?

I agree. The mods are supposed to be here to keep us safe, and it feels very unsafe when they turn out to be bigoted. Since I don't think it can be helped if we sometimes mistakenly have such people as staff, it would be great if we had a policy of acting quickly and decisively when someone like that does show their true colors.

Quixotess, I didn't feel comfortable calling for Megann's resignation as a mod, because I didn't feel like I should be "backseat modding". I was hoping the other mods would see how unsafe and angry she made members feel and would take action on their own.

I'm not sure we need a replacement mod now that Megann is gone, since she wasn't very active in the first place. However, if there ever comes a time when a new mod is selected, it would be nice to have member feedback and maybe even a voting system. We're a somewhat established community now, so there's no need to just haphazardly select moderators.

We're such a small community still that I don't think we need another moderator just yet. I definitely support removing/banning people who make members feel unsafe.

For my part, I would support making this the kind of community where member feedback/consensus is an important part of deciding whether a member should become a moderator and whether a moderator should continue being a moderator. In other words, I don't believe calling for a mod's resignation or removal should be subject to the term "backseat modding"; I would rather it were an accepted part of the process.

I also suggest that perhaps there should be a publicly available code of moderator conduct that indicates what might cause a moderator to lose (heh) privileges.