this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
1414 points (99.2% liked)
196
3255 readers
1645 users here now
Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Moderator Guidelines
- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
founded 4 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not really. Like with music, some labels are broader than others. “Oh you like rock? Rock & Roll, Glam Rock, Hard Rock, Metal?” “Oh what kind of Metal, Trash, Death, Symphonic.”
The broader terms existing does not negate the more precise terms and visa versa.
I think the broader argument tends to boil down to the fact that unlike music, which people can simply not engage in describing on a regular basis, gender expression is something that requires much more active participation by all members of a society, and that gender is not inherently separate from the rest of the human experience.
It's already hard enough for some people to remember names, now imagine having to remember which of any number of thousands of neopronouns each individual person you know uses, for example.
Contrast that with their "we'll all just be people" stance, which seems to just be a different wording of gender abolition, and you have a world where people simply express themselves as they are without having to increasingly sublabel.
It's like how while people can have long hair and short hair, wear dark clothes and light clothes, have blue/brown/green/gray/etc eyes, be introverted or extroverted, have a large or small social battery, or experience and display any number of different characteristics, while not having to actually label those characteristics in general conversation or identification.
They're simply traits within the human experience, but not traits that we have to outwardly label and display on a very frequent basis, unlike the way we usually talk about gender. This is especially important considering how every single human being experiences things even a little differently from one another, thus meaning that the number of sublabels is theoretically as large, if not larger than the current population of the earth.
I don't deny that the labels can still exist, and be useful to people, but I think gender is often treated as if it has to be some sort of mythical separate part of the brain, independent from all the other variations in human experience, and thus it must have a separate label at all times, even while we don't particularly care to label and identify with other characteristics that are also within the human experience, some of which have historically flowed between being considered very gendered or less/not gendered, such as assorted personality traits, length of hair, preferred social activities and groups, certain clothing, etc.
Does it though?
I really don't care how people express as long as they aren't dicks and fascists about it.
I might be caught off guard sometimes, like the legitimately cute trans with the very male surfer dude voice at the train station the other day, but that's not the same as giving a damn about it.
I'd say so, yeah, but it does depend on your social circumstance, and of course broader cultures have different norms and linguistic styles too, so that can definitely impact it somewhat.
For example, if you're referring to someone, you pretty much have to use their pronouns. That's just how our language works, and it's not exactly something you can easily avoid.
The broader argument around gender abolition typically doesn't focus on the fact that society has to use the assorted gendered terms and traits though, I just thought it would be interesting to point out.
Generally speaking, it boils down to the second part of my previous point, which was that gender isn't inherently that special compared to many of the other ways we interpret and express our own identities, and the category can theoretically expand to levels so broad that it simply doesn't create much of a practical utility around consistently creating, using, and assigning sub-labels and further slicing up what we consider to be distinct categories into smaller and smaller pieces.
Additionally, gender abolitionists tend to just believe that by creating categories, you end up restricting what people are comfortable doing, and impose assumptions that could otherwise be more freeing to simply not have.
Anyone who currently uses any label, big or small, could still express themselves in a society that doesn't choose to use labels, but anyone feeling restricted by the labels we use today would no longer have that pressure facing them, and could thus develop more independently and freely as themselves, rather than what any societal categories impose on them.
This is actually something I think is becoming more and more pertinent as the acceptance of trans individuals grows, because as I'm sure you've probably seen, a lot of trans people feel that they have to meet certain goals to simply be accepted as who they are, to the point that they can feel pressured by society into doing things like buying certain clothes they otherwise may not have picked, spending more time worrying about the way their face looks, etc, just to be accepted.
And with sub-labels, you end up running into the same problem, but at a different scale, where small communities, or even sole individuals, can end up locking themselves into choices about their looks/mannerisms/activities/etc because after defining something, it becomes easier to conform to it even if you change over time outside of that label.
Obviously I don't speak for everyone here, and this is just my opinion, but I personally believe that a world with no labels, and much less limited avenues for free expression by every individual would be preferable to a world where it's expected that you label yourself and put yourself in a box, a category that people can define you as, that may not fully represent you as a person.