Hypocricy regarding banning

submitted by [deleted] from (self.GenderCritical)

I don't agree with all of this post, but I do agree that GC is being hypocritical regarding the banning.

I would say, "oh, it's fine to have an exclusive sub, that's perfectly within the rules of reddit. GC really was just following the rules, and it really is bad conduct to poke your nose in where you're not wanted."

But I don't think that's what was going on. I had stuff removed and I was banned for stuff that was not breaking the rules on GC. (Just as I was on many subs on reddit). With no warning, no explanation, and no recourse. Just like GC just got banned from reddit.

I don't want this thread to get locked too, so I want to be clear: I'm not posting this to "debate". I'm not posting this because I want to argue about the pros and cons of trans ideology or of GC ideology. I'm posting this because I want women here to be able to talk about this specific problem as it relates to the GC community, because I do think it's a problem in the GC community. And as this is a women's community, the people who are being negatively affected are women who are being unfairly silenced. (eta: and the women who are having their view of available viewpoints and information skewed when non-hateful, non-rule-breaking content is removed.)

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[–]venecia 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Honestly even when I first discovered GC after peaking, I never got banned. Some of my comments went unapproved if they were too mean or inflammatory though. What kind of stuff did you get banned for?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

What kind of stuff did you get banned for?

  • In a discussion of a public figure's support for GC ideas, somebody out of the blue mentioned how they were glad the public figure was also promoting anti-anti-Semitism. I pointed out that "anti-Semitism" is sometimes used to silence legitimate criticisms of Jewish project and people. (and it is). I was banned. I was also banned on GCdebatesQT for speaking out about this abusive use of "anti-semitism", while posts blaming proto-indo-europeans for all misogyny were left up.

  • I think there's something strange going on with the LGBT movement. Did you know one of the early activists who crafted the plan to shift social attitudes went by the pen name "Erastes Pill"? Why can't we talk about these things? That's messed up, to me at least ("Erastes" was the adult male role in ancient Greek pederasty). He knew he was being deceptive! I don't think sexual orientation is a real thing. (Like many people, including lavender women who think that sleeping with men is a choice.) I made a post about this on r/actualwomen (which stated it's open to women of any political view) that was removed, and I was banned. It was not hateful, there were no slurs, but it was angry (as many women on GC have been encouraged not to blunt their anger because "women's anger is powerful").

This is not the only stuff I've seen get silently removed from GC. Several times I saw intelligent, well-written, on-topic posts disappear right before my eyes, and I never knew why. Some of them I didn't like, like that one from a "third world" woman saying horrible stuff about Western feminists, but I didn't think it broke the rules.

Part of the hypocricy is also the toleration of abuse towards some groups when stuff like the above gets removed. There was open, undeniable hate speech against White women on several GC platforms I've seen (including Spinster, which even has rules protecting animals!) I believe GC is pretty much just as guilty as reddit about stating rules and then quietly just banning people who go against their agenda, regardless as to whether those people are actually following the rules.

[–]venecia 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I don't think sexual orientation is a real thing.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you didn't mean ''gay men and lesbian women don't real''. If that's really what you were going for, you can't be too surprised that a feminist community wasn't receptive to that.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Do you not see how you sound exactly like a TRA talking about GC? Replace a few words --

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you didn't mean ''trans men and trans women don't real''. If that's really what you were going for, you can't be too surprised that a positive community wasn't receptive to that.

There is no science here, no argument here, no discussion at all except an attempt to stigmatize in EXACTLY the way everyone stigmatizes GC. You may as well just call me a "TERF".

And in exactly the same form, you didn't even respond to the rest of my intelligently-written stuff in the post. Nothing about "Erastes"? No calm "I think this is what sexual orientation is"? No "yeah that is creepy how people were trying to silence legitimate criticism of Jews, I had no idea that was happening"?

There's nothing pro-woman or feminist about trying to prevent women from talking about and investigating the truth of the world for themselves.

I understand that women have different opinions about this -- and I'm incredibly starved to be able to have an actual conversation about this because people have been so aggressively trying to prevent it from happening -- but the above post isn't engaging in intelligent, constructive disagreement, it's just an attempt stigmatization.

[–]venecia 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Honestly, no I don't. Homosexual behavior is observed in animals. Animals deciding they don't feel like a male or female and trying to live as the other kind is where it stops.

If you acknowledge that straight women can be wired that way and sleeping with women is not a choice they should be forced into, you're saying that sexual orientation IS real, yeah?

If you outright don't believe people can be gay, or that they're somehow choosing to be... you're allowed, but I can see why a space for feminists who have fought for lesbian rights took issue. As for the rest of your post... I'm sorry, but I'm in a space where I can finally be fully honest - I don't give a fuck about ancient LGBT history. I don't care enough to have a debate about anti-Semitism. I'm sick of this weird expectation of a space for feminists to care about literally everything at all times. I'm here to talk about women's rights and that's it, as an ordinary laywoman. Have a nice evening.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Honestly, no I don't.

Did you see the part where I changed only 3 words of your post? Do you not think, with the change, it sounds exactly like something a bad-faith TRA would say to a woman while calling her a "TERF"?

[–]Anna_Nym 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't think GC is intended to be an anything goes forum for women to talk about anything they want. It's a forum for women to talk about issues that affect us because we belong to the class of women.

So I completely understand why you were banned for wanting to debate whether sexual orientation is real or argue about the reality of anti-Semitism. Those aren't women-centered issues; this has never been a debate board; and yes, those are claims that will obviously be offensive to many people here and thus should need to be relevant. But there are other boards that you can go to that are about debating anything.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This kind of content is banned on actualwomen as well.

If "sexual orientation," sexual behavior, understanding sexual behavior in humans, trends in the ways hostiles attempt to abuse women using sexual behavior, etc, is not relevant to the issues of women as a class, then why is it brought up and discussed by other women? Why are certain opinions regarding that allowed, and certain opinions not? How does it help women? Why are the acceptable opinions not stated openly?

Why is it wrong to comment on what's going on with using "anti-semitism" to cover for real crimes when another woman brings up out of the blue how great it is that people are attacking people and calling them "anti-semitic"? What does that have to do with protecting all women? How do you think that affects our sisters who have been the victims of abuse by organized Jewish groups, including historically?

I never brought stuff up like that out of the blue, it was always in response to someone else who had already brought it up.

And it's not just a matter of removing things that are offensive to the userbase, or women who are pro-women. There was lots of open, explicit anti-White sentiment left up on the board, and many of the women there are White. You think that was not offensive to participants who are White? Or threatening? Or alienating? Perhaps it is your privilege that you are not in a position to be threatened by that rhetoric.

Women mention or discuss their opinions tons of topics on GC all the time as parts of their discussions, I don't see why these topics are any different.

And GC says it bans people for using "hateful rhetoric" ("racism," etc) or for "not being a radical feminist". But like reddit, it didn't enforce those rules evenly (leaving anti-White sentiment untouched as if White women are all unable to be harmed by it) and it banned rule-compliant participants where politically inconvenient to an agenda that was not stated in the sub purpose or the rules.

[–]Takseen 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I suppose the main thing is that ,like the sidebar says, GC isn't a debate sub, so if a post or comment is too far off the ideals of the GC movement, it would have gotten removed. And there was a separate debate sub for that. I've made that mistake twice before and gotten banned from both r/conservative and r/latestagecapitalism, since I'm too centrist for both subs. But I got in fine in r/debatecommunism and r/tuesday, since they allow for more debate.

Nuking an entire subreddit with tens of thousands of members is a little different to blocking individual posts or members

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

There actually wasn't a debate sub for the stuff I got banned for. There was GCdebatesQT, but they also removed stuff, with even more vehemence, on the same topics. Even their ostensibly open forum where women of all political backgrounds could talk, ActualWomen, banned for the same reasons. Like all the leftist subs do - because "it's hateful".

Exactly the same reason GC was removed.

And I guess I don't see that much difference, because it was about hidden viewpoint censorship and smearing those viewpoints as "hateful" when they weren't. And I don't think it's that different. How many tens of thousands of women were prevented from participating even when they followed the rules? How many tens of thousands of those participants were self-censoring so they wouldn't lose a vital support space? How is this "pro-woman"?

[–]kangaujack 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

To be fair, I also tried posting some stuff that wasn't inflammatory at all, just trying to get a GC perspective on media properties like certain video games and movies, especially where the subject of women's and other diversity is a prominent feature of those properties. Those posts weren't approved, even though I thought those familiar with the subject would offer some interesting perspectives.

I don't know how moderating a forum like this works, must be a lot of work. But I wish it'd be just a tad looser.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I do think it's a lot of work.

I just want people to be clear about what their platform is about. When rules accurately describe the de-facto policies, then people reading have an accurate impression about what viewpoints are being censored. It's exactly the problem that got GC invested and then banned -- they weren't hateful, but a lot of content they removed also didn't break their own stated rules. And I don't know what your experience with moderation was, but for me there was no appeals process, and sometimes I was even treated rudely or even with cruelty when trying to explain that a post was removed wrongly.

[–]Camberian 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What is the difference between "debate" and "talking"?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I guess you'd have to take it up with the mods who locked (and have now removed) the post linked in OP.