this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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And if it was a single comment, you'd have a point, but it was ongoing, repeated and deliberate arguments in a space that had explicit rules against what he was doing, rules that he understood. And rather than following the rules, or posting in other communities, he brought it up over and over again, arguing that he has the right to decide other people's identities.
And when banned for it, he made sure to keep adding flames to the fire.
Whatever else he is, he is not drama free.
Is blahaj drama free?
People have pointed out some times when he intersected with some drama that I wasn't aware of, so sure, fair enough. I guess my point is even when I look at those he definitely was not the source of the drama in the situation. He was banned from blahaj for literally just showing up and saying reasonable things. If that's against the rules of your instance, then sure, you can do that, but don't try to flip it around where the person showing up saying reasonable things is all of a sudden an asshole somehow.
Nothing in the comment I quoted is "adding flames to the fire." It's not "repeated and deliberate arguments." Nothing is transphobic, nothing is denying anyone else's identity. That's why I quoted some of the actual words, to make it clear how ultimately reasonable he was being however you want to spin it into some kind of hate crime. A lot of people feel like, if they think something reasonable, they're allowed to say it, and it's weird and controlling for some other person to say that opinion is the incorrect opinion and demand that they not say it within certain spaces.
I get that you're interpreting it as some kind of deliberate naughty disobedience, but you're not his boss, you're not his parent. The whole "moderator" / "ban" paradigm has brought in this nutty thinking where people who run an instance can be the boss of what opinions are allowed or not allowed on that instance. It's weird. In my opinion.
Blahaj policy is very explicitly that it's a safe space, and transphobia and transphobia-adjacent content (and other forms of bigotry) will be removed. It's supposed to be somewhere people can go and have it taken as axiomatic that their neopronouns are valid, and therefore they won't have to debate them, so while it's pretty reasonable to say that you'd prefer people grew to be happy with they and neopronouns didn't become a permanent feature of English because they're awkward, it's not Blahaj-friendly, so can't be said on Blahaj, especially if you're going to repeat it a lot.
It's perfectly reasonable for people to like crisps, but it doesn't mean I have to let people keep adding them to my cake when I'm trying to eat cake.
But not only did I explicitly say that I was willing to use neopronouns, but my ban from Blahaj was over something said OFF of Blahaj entirely, long after I stopped using Blahaj. Namely, I said that I didn't believe that dragons were real, and for that reason, Ada was summoned, and thought that was a great reason to instance ban someone who hadn't even used Blahaj in months.
Yeah. The whole thing is stupid. I'm moderately confident that this is either:
Honestly, I wouldn't even stress about it. I get the impulse to try to defend yourself vigorously from this stuff but they're not going to listen to anything sensible anyway, and they'll be able to cherry pick instances of you getting upset to use later as proof that you're some kind of monster. If you want my advice about how to look at it.
Oh, I figure they're not going to listen. But I have the urge to at least put a defense of myself out in public. I have a great many flaws as it is; I'll good goddamned if I let people attribute made-up ones to me without at least being disputed.
Yes. That's one of the problems with the "I am lord and master of this domain, and all will obey me and my nutty definitions of words like 'transphobia' into some wild alternate reality" model. Human interaction doesn't need to work that way, even if it gets more comfortable when you're aligned with the lord and master to do it that way.
Personally I think that two things are going on here: One, the whole Lemmy model where people are divided into the lords who must be obeyed no matter how arbitrary their rules, and the people who must obey, breeds and normalizes some toxic models of interaction. And, two, basically 100% of Lemmy is already queer-friendly and trans-friendly, and so an instance that wants to "stand out" as a particularly queer-friendly instance has to keep ratcheting up the level of overt queer-friendliness of the rules of their instance until they're again in a position of giving other people a hard time for not being queer-friendly enough. And so the inevitable conclusion is that the rules have to include things like "dragon is a gender!" and "questioning certain things I say is transphobia even when it's not!"
Like I say, in my opinion, the whole thing is fuckin' ridiculous. I have heard the same from queer people who have been drummed out of blahaj for exactly the same reasons (basically, having and stating opinions that aren't the official lord-and-master opinion.) In my opinion that makes for a bad model for an instance. It's got nothing to do with the identity of the people who are making the rules that way for the instance, it has to do with the nature of the interactions that it causes.
Ah yes, defining what is and what isn't transphobic to a bunch of trans people. Always a good look. I look forward to your panel on teaching black people what is and what isn't racist next.
This is literally how Reddit works. There are ground rules that Reddit made, and the mods for each subreddit are free to make their own on top of that and enforce them as they please. If you want some open floor of debate, Twitter is right there. Blahaj was made by trans people, for trans people. You are in our home by our grace, like a straight man at a lesbian bar. You can't be surprised when the owners take umbrage with you repeatedly coming in and trying to debate "what is and isn't homophobic" with the lesbians. And this isn't some crazy demand - it's literally just asking you to call people what they want to be referred to by. I shudder to think how you handle nicknames when Frederick wants to go by Rick instead of Fred. Regardless of how silly you or I may think "drag" is as a pronoun, you still should refer to drag as such because it's simply basic human decency. Respecting people isn't some reward you can dole out to the worthy like a lord in his fiefdom.
And the reason that Lemmy seems so queer-friendly is because of the constant battle of the mods and admins across the instances to keep it that way. There are right-wing chud instances out there that you and I have never seen because the rest of Lemmy refuses to federate with them.
You act like the majority of us on Blahaj don't agree with these policies. Like it's a dictatorship that we're being subjected to against our will. Queer, and trans, people aren't one homogenous block of opinions, there are going to be plenty of disagreements and that's okay. Blahaj just isn't for them, like Blair White wouldn't fit in either and Blahaj is better off for that.
Fair enough, but it's just not impacting blahaj users. It's not like a private forum on a server somewhere. You're participating in a big intertwined network, but then reserving the right to run some sections of it according to these super-strict (and to me pretty arbitrary) rules, and so you're winding up with a situation where blahaj people can talk to off-blahaj people, on some blahaj community, and some off-blahaj person can see it and respond reasonably and then get attacked, falsely accused of being transphobic, and then have it escalate into this thing where (for example, in this exact post) they're getting kicked off being allowed to run their own forums on some whole different instance, because now they're officially "bad" with the way they violated the dictates of the blahaj lords as part of the evidence.
If blahaj was its own private area, then sure. "Only come here if you're okay with the rules." That makes sense. But they're participating in a shared network, storing their messages on other people's servers, having posts replicated into random other sections for random people to see them, but then retreating to the "but this part of the space is MINE!" standpoint when anyone tries to raise any kind of objection to how they set up the rules for it. And also leveling this bigotry accusation if anyone doesn't obey how they want the interaction to go.
This is the exact nature of decentralised networks though. It's a tacit agreement of "you follow my rules when you're commenting on my instance and I follow your rules when I comment on your instance". It's a shared attempt at civility, and if that breaks down, defederation is only a few clicks away. We've never had direct control over other instances, so we've defederated them when that civility has broken down, and other instances have the exact same right to do the same with us. The Blahaj admins are paying hundreds of dollars, usually out of their own pocket, per month to run the instance. I think they get to dictate what goes on in the spaces they run. It's not like other spaces, like lemmy.world, don't have their own unpopular rules, like their heavy-handedness with "advocating violence".
The reason PJ gets called a bigot, is because he dramatically said in that original Blahaj meta thread that he was leaving the instance for good, but then has spent the last 6-9 months going around to every space he can, dragging the Blahaj admins through the mud and loudly proclaiming "dragons aren't real" like it's some self-evident revelation that proves how smart he is. Drag wasn't even a fucking dragon, they were a dragon fucker! It was literally drag's username for fluffs sake. It's not Blahaj's fault that other instance admins have gotten sick of his whiny, self-aggrandising bullcrap. Drag was literally banned from Blahaj not long after that thread, trans people just don't believe respecting pronouns are a cookie you get for being one of the good ones... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think we're probably just not going to see eye to eye on this. I specifically didn't want to get dragged into this whole tarpit of tribal bitterness, but then I waded into it deliberately on purpose, so that's on me I guess.
I actually wrote and then just deleted some stuff, because what's the point. I feel like I've said what I had to say on it and you have a differing point of view. All good. I'll leave only the thing I think gets to the heart of it:
If blahaj admins would just be straight-up about it, and say "Listen. This dragon person is clearly a troll, and we're banning them for that reason, but we don't want to allow people to decide pronouns on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the rule produces a stupid result, but that's the rule we settled on and we have good reasons not to bend it in any circumstance or have to have long debates about this stuff every week, so please respect it or we will ban you," I don't think there would be any kind of issue. That's a decent and human-to-human way of defining the interaction that gets across the point and still respects their good reasons for the rule. To me (and maybe you may disagree with this), it seemed like instead of that they said "HOW DARE YOU MISGENDER THIS PERSON YOU TRANSPHOBIA ADJACENT BIGOT" and then went on to (as in the current post) continue to whine about how horrible it was that anyone was trying to point out that (a) the user in question was clearly a transphobic troll (b) going to bat for them was ridiculous. And, they constantly talk about how those people were wrong, and bigoted, and shouldn't be talking that way even off the blahaj instance.
That's my take on it, I don't think I want to go back and forth about it much much more, you're welcome to the final word if you like.
Is this comment by ada, the admin of blahaj, in this very thread, not more similar to your first example than your second one?
The absolutely constant use of the terminology of "misgendering," "gatekeeping other people's identities," "causing deliberate harm," and things like that, as opposed to "yes you have a point and you don't seem to be intending harm BUT..." is what makes it different. You can look around the thread and see some examples.
Like I say, I think we're just not going to see eye to eye on it, which is okay.
We pawbably aren't going to see eye to eye, but my last point is that most trans folks, myself and Ada included, have dealt with this stuff again, and again, and again. After dozens of times you just kind of don't have the energy to be forgiving while discussing it. Especially with someone like PJ who pretty loudly was a bit of an ass about things. That's pawbably not ideal, but it is what it is.
It's a feature, not a bug, at least when they're upfront about it. With non-federated platforms, you're still subject to the domain's lord and master, but you can't pick who that is or maintain access to your communities if you upset them.
While Blahaj isn't the right instance for me, it's no problem that it exists side by side with other instances, and people who want to use social media with no risk of running into things they're already fed up with can have a place for that. If you get banned from somewhere, it's because it wasn't the right fit for you, and nothing's stopping you from finding or making a place that is. It's not like the has to be only one 196, it's just that the one where all the cool people are is the one where everyone agrees to give everyone the benefit of the doubt on all things gender and sexuality.
I hope not.
We're an explicitly protective, safe space for a minority group that is actively targeted by governments, political institutions, churches, and bigots in general
So of course we create drama. Bigots will make sure of it.
Nah. He was banned for repeatedly, deliberately, and knowingly breaking the rules. Whether or not you think gatekeeping someones identity is acceptable, blahaj.zone has rules against it, and his response to it was to deliberately break the rules and stir up shit.
Tough shit. When someones "reasonable" opinion involves positioning themselves as the arbiter of other folks validity and identity, they're doing harm. When they choose to repeatedly and deliberately do that in a safe space for those folk, they're repeatedly and deliberately doing harm and breaking the rules.
All of which to say, even if you're a gatekeeper like him, who thinks that you have the right to tell other people their own identities, if you come in to a blahaj community and do it, you're breaking blahaj rules. If you choose to knowingly and repeatedly do it, whilst then complaining about it in various meta spaces, then you're breaking rules and stirring up drama.
I did it again, typed a bunch of tit-for-tat stuff and then deleted it. Here's my attempt to get to the heart of the matter (partially from elsewhere in this thread):
If blahaj admins would just be straight-up about it, and say "Listen. This dragon person is clearly a troll, and we're banning them for that reason, but we don't want to allow people to decide pronouns on a case-by-case basis. In this case, the rule produces a stupid result, but that's the rule we settled on and we have good reasons not to bend it in any circumstance or have to have long debates about this stuff every week, so please respect it or we will ban you," I don't think there would be any kind of issue. That's a decent and human-to-human interaction that gets across the point and still respects the good reasons for the rule. To me (and maybe you may disagree with this), it seemed like instead of that they said "HOW DARE YOU MISGENDER THIS PERSON YOU TRANSPHOBIA ADJACENT BIGOT" and then went on to (as in the current post) continue to whine about how horrible it was that anyone was trying to point out that (a) the user in question was clearly a transphobic troll (b) blahaj going to bat for them was ridiculous. And, you still constantly talk about how those people were wrong, and bigoted, and shouldn't be talking that way even off the blahaj instance.
Same for banning PJ. It would be fine if you said "He was kind of pushy about trying to make his point and although he clearly wasn't coming from any hostile place, we tried explaining the rules and he kept doing it, so we banned him." But no. It's "repeatedly and deliberately doing harm," complaining about him trying to justify himself off-instance after the ban like he is required to just shut up and take it instead of voicing his side of the story, "positioning themselves as the arbiter of other folks validity and identity," all this apocalyptic stuff.
I mean... aren't you positioning yourself as the arbiter of other folks' validity and identity? You positioned yourself as the protector of LGBTQ+ people but you have no problem booting them from your space if they don't adhere to your precise details of what that means. (Like, for example, protecting the space from obviously-transphobic trolls, I feel like some of them would think you should be proactive about.) When you boot them for not adhering to that, isn't that... gatekeeping? Or no?
He was repeatedly and deliberately gatekeeping people's identities. I don't know how to make that any clearer to you.
Whether or not any given person is a troll, it's not an excuse to make people's identities a reward for good behaviour.
If you decide that taking away peoples identities "because they're a troll" is ok, then you're telling the gender diverse people around you that you don't see them for who they are, and that you're just pretending to accept them as long as they behave in ways you find appropriate. Normalising the idea that we can decide other peoples identities is literally the goal of trolls, and so when you see a troll and decide that's a good reason to invalidate people, you're feeding the troll, and hurting the gender diverse folk around you.
I will respect a trolls identity, even as I ban them, because opening the door to deciding which identities are valid does nothing but hurt vulnerable people.
This was all explained to PJ, several times, and he doubled down. And tripled down. Whilst explicitly denying people's identities.
He was coming from a hostile place, and refused to leave it, even when it was explained to him.
The fact that you're equating the creation of protective rules in explicitly safe spaces as being morally identical to gatekeeping other folks identities makes me doubt your intentions. If you genuinely believe they're the same thing, you've got a lot of work to do. And if you don't believe they're the same thing, but are comparing them to win an internet discussion, then you're the one stirring up drama...
Okey dokey.
This is what I was talking about: You're taking the role of a teacher talking to a thick or disobedient student, instead of just us having a conversation. I do take that tone too sometimes, but usually it's when I'm being sarcastic or jerky about something on purpose. It's not actually how I look at my role vs. the other person in the conversation. This is like I said why I think the "privileged user who tells other users what to do" role is a toxic thing that Lemmy creates for certain people in the interactions.
I feel like I explained pretty clearly what in my opinion the issue is, and you're just reiterating your favored definitions for all of these words (ignoring anything I had to say about the validity) and again how things really operate... which, okay. I feel like there's not a lot of point in going back and forth about it, you can just read again the message you just replied to, if you want my answer about this stuff.
You really need to listen to what you're saying.
You're arguing for the right to deny people their own identities in their own safe spaces whilst claiming that somehow, the real issue is letting queer folk choose the language that works best for them.
Nope, try again. If you want to summarize what I'm claiming is the real issue a little more accurately to anything I actually said, I'd be happy to continue the conversation if you want.
Regardless of the stuff about Ada's tone, it seems like your ultimate point was the classic "paradox of tolerance." I certainly do not see enforcing a safe space as policing identity. Regardless of how respectfully done, deciding when it is okay to respect someone's identity is against blahaj rules. The consistent moderation with no room for chipping away at the edges is what attracted me to the instance. This person broke blahaj rules. They may have broken it politely (I disagree. Tone does not excuse content), but they broke the rules. Banning them for repeated invalidation of others' identities is not policing their identity. Your identity cannot be predicated on the invalidation of others. We have every prerogative to be intolerant of intolerance.
Again, regardless of Ada's tone, the point stands. You keep dancing around that. The rules were broken. This user acted inappropriately for the space they were in. They are not forced to use blahaj communities, and chose to do so while violating the rules. They have no right to our safe space if they cannot ensure it is safe for others. I strongly dislike the "just asking questions" polite veneer of your comments while very intentionally dodging the elephant in the room, which is that the user did wrong for the space they were in, regardless if you agree or not.
Let's try this approach:
What's an example I brought up about how Ada could have made the space safer, if only she wasn't apparently hung up on pronouns as the one and only most critical thing that defines whether or not the space is safe?
My example of gatekeeping actually had nothing to do with PJ (or, for that matter, with policing anyone's identity specifically). What was the example?
Way up at the beginning of the conversation when I brought up a couple of examples (my opinion, for whatever it's worth, for what the "right way" or an alternative way would have been to approach this whole situation and enforce the rules of the community), did it include PJ getting banned and anyone else who didn't do the pronouns in the approved way getting banned? What was the critical difference in the two ways of approaching it I modeled (was it banned vs. not banned, or was it something different)?