DiscussionThoughts on recent post topics?

submitted by reluctant_commenter from self.LGBDropTheT

Hope I'm not about to start a massive argument with this post, lol.

I have noticed over the course of the past couple months that it seems the topics of posts have slowly drifted from being LGB-centric, to centering the intricacies of gender identity ideology and only tangentially mentioning its impact on discrimination against L/G/B people. Usually the comments seem pretty on-topic about discrimination, as far as I have noticed, though.

I guess I'm wondering:

  • Anyone else noticed this?

  • How do people feel about this?

  • Is anything related to Queer Theory or gender identity ideology "close enough" to this sub's purpose? Or have we strayed a little too far from LGB-specific issues?

  • What kinds of posts do people like the best, in any case? Just curious.

I will admit, I post a lot of examples myself from subreddits that are formerly LGB but have now been colonized, particularly the "actuallesbians" subreddit. My thought process is that I'd like to document a) the homophobia/biphobia now rampant in those communities and on Reddit, and b) the slow takeover of our spaces by outside groups.

all 4 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]julesburm1891 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yes, I’ve noticed it too. There’s a lot of posts staying up that the mods would’ve pulled in the past. I feel a lot of ways about it.

  1. I do think we all need a place to vent about the rampant homo- and biphobia were seeing from TQ. They’ve managed to hijack just about every online platform and are quickly taking over the narrative in real life. The constant gaslighting on top of the bigotry is maddening. I like having one place where I can commiserate with people who are also seeing through the sham.
  2. That being said, I don’t think we should be people who only tear things down. We should be people who build up things as well. We should be posting and interacting with pro-LGB content here too.
  3. While the name is LGBdroptheT, I think we all understand that we want to drop both T, Q, and all of the subsequent letters/numbers/wingdings. There was a lot of hard work to have LGB people recognized in some parts of the world and there’s a great deal more hard work that needs doing for our LGB brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. That work has been set back by TQ+ in some places and is actively being derailed in others. I think it’s fair to address these issues.
  4. Queer Theory, by its deconstructive nature, has done more to damage LGB people than 2000s evangelicals could have dreamed. Now that Queer Theory is going mainstream and continuing to negatively impact us, I don’t think there’s a way we can ignore it.
  5. Story time. Just over a month ago, I was in a meeting with my boss and another coworker. My boss is a straight woman with no filter who, by some miracle, has never been reported to HR. Someone in my workplace recently came out as non-binary and my boss was struggling over her new pronouns. She got frustrated, looked at me, and said, “I don’t get why you all have to make things complicated and grammatically incorrect. It doesn’t make sense.” Now, my boss isn’t a homophobe. She has no problems with gay people. In fact, she really likes my fiancée and is excited for us to get married. The point is that we are linked with the gender ideology crowd in the minds of most straight people. Gender ideology is negatively impacting LGB people and it is a fair thing to talk about. The line is that we need to talk about the fallacies and Gender Ideology and how they affect LGB people and not just make fun of them for being kooky.

(The end to that story is that I told her gay people have nothing to do with non-binary people and most of us think it’s dumb too. Her occasional outbursts are now, “I don’t get what non-binary people are even trying to say or why they want to butcher our grammar.”)

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I agree with every one of your points. I actually would be interested in more posts about Queer Theory, myself, because it is fundamentally homophobic and I think is a huge driver of not only the TQ+ movement but of a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about being LGB in general. I would also love to see a post about "what are your personal experiences having TQ+ conflated with LGB?" like your story in your 5th point, both for purposes of getting a sense of, What themes are present in people's stories? and also because it seems like something a lot of people would appreciate venting about/discussing.

I'm glad to hear your boss was able to realize that the pronouns stuff is separate from being LGB! I get why many straight people would assume that "LGB" and "TQ+" are on the same page-- from reading media articles, you would assume "LGBTQ+" people are this mindless uniform voting bloc in which everyone agrees with every facet of what you see in news/media articles... total bullshit. I am not a part of the "LGBTQ+ community" and I don't want to be.

The line is that we need to talk about the fallacies and Gender Ideology and how they affect LGB people and not just make fun of them for being kooky.

Would you be interested in posts that talk about these fallacies/beliefs and provide examples for logical argumentation? I feel like a lot of us here on s/lgbdropthet are struggling IRL about feeling isolated and frustrated when we hear homophobic TQ+ beliefs parroted by people we know. Perhaps if we had some more resources for how to gently challenge people's beliefs, without drawing too much ire, then that would be helpful.

[–]OPPRESSED_REPTILIANIntersex male | GNC | Don't call me "a gay", "twink" or "queen" 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

The sub has always had these kinds of posts, but it's just that most same sex attracted discussion is getting less frequent, because it either gets shut down, deleted, or the topics never make it through in the first place (not sure if it's a bug or the mods are deliberately not approving some)

Rage posting about "look at what the trans did that you've seen 500 examples of before" isn't helpful. But then again, neither was preaching about "LGB alliance"'s brave and woke Stonewall exhibit, that solves literally no problems of a modern homosexual or bisexual person. Nor is this sub displaying the "trans inclusive gay man flag" in it's banner instead of the rainbow one, a picture of two penises or literally anything else.

Oh, and a lot of people (one serial "trans bad" rage poster who literally doesn't post anything else in particular) use broken "archive" links that don't connect properly, so, you can't even see what they're complaining about. Others link to dodgy sites like "Ovarit" as a source and act like linking to a forum thread of extremists making claims is a valid, factual source.

I try not to engage with the rage trans posts because I don't want to encourage the posters. I'm more likely to engage with DISCUSSION threads, particularly open ones that accept a variety of answers and the OP (or commenters) won't jump down your throat for having a slightly wrong opinion.

Don't get me wrong. I hate TRAs too. I'm intersex, and TRAs are literally campaigning to take away the rights and social status of people like me - they push for bills and social norms that dehumanize us and use our existence to fuel their weird hermaphrodite fetishes. I hate them a lot. But posting the forty hundredth thread a week on how there's MEN in actuallesbians or WOMEN in askgaybros is not productive, nor is it news. We all know.

[–]reluctant_commenter[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback. It's cool to see people so ready to talk about things in-depth.

Some observations:

  • I don't think the lack of same-sex-attracted discussion is due to moderators. Here's the moderation log-- you can see that the few post removals there are, are often due to Automod for language censoring, and the ones that the mods do remove are usually super off topic (an [urban dictionary link about "heterophobia"(https://saidit.net/s/LGBDropTheT/comments/76go/urban_dictionary_heterophobia/)... really...?).

  • I think the lack of LGB, non-T-related posts may just be due to people having forgotten about the fact that there is no LGB-focused discussion community anymore. I know you already saw it but I posted a discussion about having kids and a lot of people responded to it! I think that's a good sign and I'll try to post more of these types of posts-- I know I want to talk about non-trans stuff as well. Many of us L/G/B people in the younger crowd have never had a chance to just chat about more casual topics related to being same-sex-attracted because there are no other places to.

Oh, and a lot of people (one serial "trans bad" rage poster who literally doesn't post anything else in particular) use broken "archive" links that don't connect properly, so, you can't even see what they're complaining about.

I'm not sure who you are talking about lol. I do post a lot of content as links to "archive.is" myself and I always link the original in the comments. The archive links seem to work for most people people though, so perhaps it might be worth clearing cookies in your browser? I had to do that one time to get it to work. But, to be clear-- I don't just post archive links because of clicks, I post them because content often gets deleted. Whether that's tweets, reddit posts, or even entire news articles removed! I want people in the future who are browsing through this sub to have content be accessible, so that's why I post the archive link as the post and the original link in the comments.

  • Not a fan of linking to Ovarit, either. I don't mind when people direct-link to the source and link "hey here's the link from the forum I found it on, if you're interested" in the comments. I try to do that, myself.

But posting the forty hundredth thread a week on how there's MEN in actuallesbians or WOMEN in askgaybros is not productive, nor is it news. We all know.

About "rage posting"/posts about "actuallesbians" or askgaybros... I think we may have to agree to disagree on this one. I am all in favor of these posts for several reasons:

  1. Awareness-- we on s/lgbdropthet are VERY aware of this stuff, I agree, but anyone visiting this sub who is new to it would have no idea that this is all going down on reddit, other social media, and in the news!

  2. Documentation-- It is helpful, as evidence, to have documented a development of the colonization of LGB spaces on social media. We can all say we've seen these things but if we get into a debate with someone and they want proof, there's an entire sub of materials to pull from to prove your point. I am working on organizing an actual resources list, though, of news articles, videos, research, etc. that has been compiled on this sub; it's mostly disorganized right now.

  3. Venting and sanity checking-- a lot of us do need a place to vent. You're totally right-- we know this is going on AND it would be cool if there were more action happening. But it is natural for people to feel angry (as you mentioned), demoralized, sad, or amused by all of the bullshit going on, and to want to process those feelings with other people. It's really nice to have a community where we can discuss and vent about that bullshit.

I don't really like posts that are just about a new type of "gender" though e.g. "look they invented 'carrotcakegender'!" because the discussion usually isn't conducive to either a) discussion about people's negative experiences or b) learning, it more just turns into bashing without processing.

I think if you made posts about discussion and action, people would definitely be interested. I'm guessing you saw the other discussion posts that u/PeakingPeachEater made-- there has been a lot of good discussion over the past few days about the kind of content we want to see in this sub! While we might all not agree on everything, sounds like people want 1) more LGB-centered topics, 2) more discussion and 3) potentially more focus on "action"? Would probably be helpful to nail down what, exactly, we can do.