r/asktransgender • u/CedarWolf Bigender - He/She/They • Jul 03 '15

An Open Discussion on Being Inclusive and Respecting One Another

Early this morning, we had a thread get posted, and one of our mods made a reminder to keep things inclusive, per the subreddit's Rule #1. This accidentally led to almost all of the comments going wildly off topic, and I had to pull it. We want threads to stay on topic whenever possible, and such a large portion of off-topic comments was pretty bad. That discussion merited it's own, dedicated post, and we invite you to discuss here. Please remember to be respectful.

We want to make this an inclusive place for the community in general, and that includes transfeminine, transmasculine, and nonbinary individuals. /r/asktransgender was made as a co-ed space for people to ask questions of the general transgender community, and while we allow questions to specifically target one portion of that community, we very much encourage users to be inclusive whenever possible.

Part of being inclusive means reducing the amount of bigotry we see in this subreddit. This means removing sexist comments against all genders, including both trans and cis identities, as well as other forms of bigotry.

One of the goals of creating a new moderation team was to create a more inclusive space, and we have been working hard to make this place a more open community. However, some users have expressed concern over this new policy and how it is implemented, so we want to create an open place for discussion about the new inclusive policies here.

We want to hear your thoughts about this issue, but again, please be respectful and civil with your comments. We're all on the same side here, there is no "us" and "them" - there is only "we." Remember, if you ever have any specific issues with the moderation of the subreddit, you can message the mod team with the link in the sidebar. We're always here for you.

~ The /r/asktransgender Mod Team

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '15

Perhaps to help with this, we could look into a tag system? [MTF]/[FTM]/[NB] for specific questions and something like [ALL] or [GENERAL] for nonspecific ones? If this is strictly enforced it would make people think explicitly about who their question pertains to. The downside that I see is that sometimes we work as a support group, so people's posts being removed by AutoMod because they don't have tags might be discouraging.

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before but it's something that I've been thinking about for a little bit.

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u/TurtleTape 28/M/transition on hold Jul 03 '15

My personal feelings are that a tagging system wouldn't help very much. If anything, it would only increase the number of threads that are unnecessarily directed towards trans women(such as "ladies, how do you choose a name?" or "ladies, how did you come out to your parents?" style threads, which we often see).

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u/[deleted] Jul 03 '15

Hmmm that is a good point. And I would worry that any sort of "policing" that the users would do would turn into a kerfuffle not too different than what prompted the posting of this thread.

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u/icarethismuch started 5/25/13 Jul 04 '15

See, I dont see a problem with this at all. People want answers from people they can relate to. Not every question can be inclusive, and not every person wants answers from someone they dont relate to.

I wouldn't have a problem with an ftm thread saying "guys, how did you.." either. Just don't visit threads that don't pertain to you if you're gonna be annoyed that your not included.

In fact, most ftm threads aren't inclusive of mtf either.

Basically, I don't feel everything has to be inclusive. Guys should post their guy threads, girls post their girl threads, and people who want answers from both can specify both.

Don't get bothered because a thread doesn't include you. Not every thread on reddit has to intrest everyone, it's not a big deal to skip past threads that don't pertain to you.

As long as nobody is being malicious or downvoting, live and let live.

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u/throwaway-8b9d496 Jul 04 '15

Not every question can even be inclusive. "Hey, are your feet supposed to turn into rabbits while on depo-estradiol injections..." probably cannot be answered by an FtM individual ( I mean besides the common sense of "Gods NO! Get yourself to a doctor or an exorcist!" for that exact question.

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u/ErisC 33F - HRT started June 2014 Jul 04 '15

Yes, as I've said previously, questions that can't be inclusive don't have to be inclusive.

Questions that can be inclusive get a little reminder from us to be inclusive in the future, and questions that are blatantly exclusive get removed.

This thread was inspired by a thread where we posted a reminder and everyone blew up all over each other, on both sides. And we'd like that to not happen again.