Hello users of Hexbear, there have been many changes and some drama the past few months.
The recent changes we’ve been making have been an attempt to create a more safe and welcoming environment for many demographics that have been overlooked in the past.
For any of our comrades that have been unintentionally hurt in this process, we apologise and hope to find a solution that accommodates as many people as possible while still meeting the needs of the marginalised groups who need a space like this the most.
The intent of this post is to provide a space for all users to air grievances with regard to the site. As well as provide suggestions for specific things that could be changed to address your grievance. Comments insulting the mod team or those without a specific means to address your problem may be removed. No commenter will be sitebanned, unless it clearly breaks the code of conduct.
I want to be completely respectful to you, because I have seen you around and I like you, but I might fail because this is a topic very close to me and I very much disagree with you. It is not the onus of the oppressed to treat anyone with good faith. frauddog had a massive L with the military history brought up when it was that was not held and that is very unfortunate and does indeed color null at least a little bit differently for me, but even with that in mind and in regard to null’s conduct in pretty much every other instance, null had my respect because null never held water for anyone, and that energy is what is actually needed to affect change. I am not going to hold water for fools that want me dead in action or in spirit, and that’s a whole lot of fucking people right now, even well-meaning people. It was the case for frauddog, too. I haven’t gotten anyone to go back to wearing masks by being nice to them, by giving them the grace I am always denied. I tried that for 4 years and it got me chewed up and spat out. They deny my humanity either way; that is the default mode. So why would I be nice about it? If they want to change they have to want to change, and a lot of people, especially in the imperial core, simply are not there. That includes a lot of people here, too. There’s a reason this place is hemorrhaging POC users, and I think we should pay attention to that. I grew up a stupid evangelical Southern Baptist as well, but changing my behavior was never supposed to be on anyone else; I don’t blame anyone who heard me talking about evolution like it was the devil’s thoughts incarnate on the serebii.net forums in 2003 and decided I was some dumbass not worth talking to, and you shouldn’t either. None of them talking to me with kindness changed my mind then, only my own curiosity and dissatisfaction much later in life led to me seeking this out for myself. I think this is a much more complicated issue than simply “we must treat everyone with patience and kindness because people can change”; people are dying. We are at war and the time for kindness to those unwilling to show they deserve it is long past, and frankly vanishingly few people deserve it. Kindness is not a given at all times or by default. I deal with everyone who isn’t already in my good graces with immense distrust and vigilance. Believing people can change does nothing for me, but it sure is a nice idea, isn’t it? I trust in what people do, in what they show me, and when they show me, I don’t believe in anything else. That is all there is.
you are one of the people I respect the most on this site. I was not kidding when I said that I think of you every time somebody looks at me weird for masking in public. I care about you and your opinion very much, and I appreciate your taking the time to talk with me. in advance, I want to say that I have tried hard to make sure there was nothing hurtful or dismissive in this message, but if I failed in that or otherwise made this come across poorly, I would very much like to talk it out because the absolute last thing I want to do is hurt you.
or anyone else, for that matter. I have debated deleting my account a lot over the last few weeks. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I was only here for companionship and news; I don’t need either so badly that anyone needs to suffer for it. I would rather disappear than hurt any of you.
I am not advocating for anyone to be okay with anyone who dismisses their needs and agency. I am only advocating for the idea that it would be good to interrogate further to ensure they’re actually being dismissive and aren’t just an autistic person having a Theory of Mind moment.
I just learned last week that difficulties with “Theory of Mind” don’t necessarily mean that a person is incapable of understanding another’s point of view, but that it is also responsible for autistic naivete.
for example: the possibility that someone would purposely fuck with a /c/mutual_aid user for unknown ends just never even entered my mind until the fact of it was presented to me. how many other things do I just not even know about because the idea that anyone would want to behave that way seems crazy to me? lots. tons. this is why autistic people are so vulnerable to scammers etc. the idea that anyone would do that just doesn’t fucking occur to us until it is hammered in.
I am sure that there are a lot of conflicts generated from this deep misunderstanding, especially considering how many users are white people coming from the thoroughly-propagandized imperial core.
I don’t think anyone should tolerate shitheads. I just think that sometimes we are quick to assume shitheadedness of each other, and I wish that were not the case. and tbqh, considering how often frauddogg called out other em_poc users as settlers or crackers just because they didn’t post regularly in the em_poc megathread (is that required for all em_poc users?), I think it would help reduce the number of friendly-fire incidents.
it’s also part of the CoC, which I know you know better than I do. you’ve been here much longer, and you’re a mod.
That’s very flattering, thank you. I was not hurt by anything, for the record, but I felt compelled to respond anyway. The “be kind because people can change” idea can be a conduit for a lot of unintended damage, I think, but this:
is sensible, and I agree. I recall something happening recently with @[email protected] where I got on her case for what I thought was very typical COVID minimization, but she responded very openly and with a mind for actual change, so I changed my approach afterward. I hope my apologies were good enough in that moment, but I’d like to think that’s how it can all be handled… maybe that is my own autistic naivete.
Well, being a mod in any community on this platform doesn’t mean much for site-wide policy unless you’re also an admin, and I don’t even really do much in the first place, hah.
I was saying at the time that interaction happened, I think, that I was still culpable for not having been diligent enough in looking into the situation beforehand, and that I understood why what I wrote would’ve come across as the typical sort of COVID minimization. As I remember it, you’d said something like “none of you listen!”, and I understood this as speaking to a general trend. So the choice was then whether I would choose to adhere to this general pattern, or to break with it, right?
So frankly it would’ve been the same whether you apologized or didn’t, because the words you wrote as you wrote them were what worked in the end.
I think maturity is founded on self-awareness, so that’s what I try to aspire to. And this means knowing when you’ve got something in your mailbox that wasn’t meant for you, so to speak, right? So if someone is very rightfully frustrated about COVID minimization and ends up taking it out on you, then anything hostile that person might say to you should “slide right off”, because that sort of comment isn’t really aimed at you as such, or at least it isn’t aimed at any sort of fundamental trait of your character — it’s really only aimed at you if you choose to make it so.
This isn’t necessarily to defend “friendly fire”, but I guess what I’m getting at is that “remembering the human” goes both ways: that when someone is doing something you find rude and unreasonable, that there is always a context for it, even if you might not be aware of that context.
yes, this very much.
learning that frauddogg had been a troop made void’s behavior make a lot more sense to me. sometimes, when people leave religion, they become militant atheists; it doesn’t seem strange to me that someone would leave the military and be passionately anti-imperialist and ready to attack any inkling of that evil.
I’m with you on everything. Don’t delete your account! Your voice is heard and valued ❤️
I don’t think assuming people mean the worst is a great way to grow a movement, which is what the left needs to do. I don’t want us fumbling these historic radicalization moments because we have a chip on our shoulder from all the shit the world has thrown at us. I totally get why people would have that chip, I feel that rage myself, too, all the time. I love throwing it in the face of people from other instances who are clearly bad faith, or making edgy jokes and stuff.
But applying it to others in hexbear feels bad, because people usually find their way here because they don’t have many other places. They’re trans, communist, anarchist, autistic, etc in a world dominated by a bigoted liberal world order. Not to mention it proves what people say about us in other places, which would be a shame after that random guy who wandered in said we weren’t as bad as they thought we would be. If they ran into the wrong comment before, like one of the example ones posted above, they might have run away saying how we’re all as scary as the legends foretold.