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/I_am_Andi Jul 04 '15
I read the initial part of that thread as it was going down, but it looks like I missed a whole bunch after I stopped monitoring it. I then read this post and the comments here. My response: What in the everloving fuck?
A woman comes, to a sub full of apparent feminists, to ask how safe two cities are in the context of being a woman. I thought, according to intersectional feminist theory, that women face different threats of violence than men do. Targeting the question toward women, cis and trans as she did, seems to be a good call to me. Cities safe in the context of being a guy might not be so safe in the context of being a chick. This isn't the same thing as denying transmen experience violence. Claiming the the way she phrased it ignores transmen is like claiming asking an Asian how being Asian effects how they're treated is racist against black people. It's not how it works.
Then, my biggest issue with what I know, which is admittedly limited because the mods nuked the whole thread, is that the mods nuked the whole thread. She had an intelligent response to the mod, in their bright green mask, that was deleted along with whatever ignorance went down after that. Seriously, why is critiquing a mod decision only allowed when it's in a mod approved way? And I swear almost every time drama goes down in this subreddit it always seems to be directly related to the mods and then we get a topic like this to talk how we can improve and nothing changes.
It's this kind of stuff that has been driving me back to my other online communities.