Drag is trans, and uses person-independent neopronouns. These can be confusing for some people. But drag is patient, and with the vast majority of people is not pushy with drag’s pronouns at all. In return, the vast majority of people tend to take no issue with drag. However, some people decide to invent a problem because they see drag using drag’s pronouns, and it makes them angry.

Drag has a problem with one of these people, a pawb.social user called Draconic_NEO. Drag would normally just send a report, and drag is in the process of doing that, but the level of harassment has elevated to abuse of mod powers, and drag feels the need to inform the pawb.social admins of this user, as well as giving full context to the issue.

A week ago, drag created a thread on the db0 instance regarding a wrongful ban. Here is the context of drag’s comments which lead to the ban:

Drag has used HTML to restore the deleted comments in the thread to save you time checking the modlog. As you can see, someone insults drag for drag’s style of talking, and drag merely explains what is going on. Some people are unfamiliar with first person neopronouns, and drag patiently explains. The first removed comment is actually drag answering a direct question from another user. A moderator of the community decided that a trans person explaining their pronouns is rulebreaking behaviour, and drag posted about it on db0’s “power tripping bastards” community. Drag didn’t choose the name of that community, it’s just the only place to complain about bad mod decisions.

Here is Draconic_NEO’s take on the original ban:

Please understand that drag did not pivot the conversation to dragself, or display any aggression in the thread. Someone insulted drag for using neopronouns, and drag patiently explained. Draconic_NEO is, in this comment, inventing a narrative that a trans person’s pronouns are an attack on others for the sake of attention-seeking. This is a transphobic cliche. The complaint that drag’s use of neopronouns somehow makes drag similar to some troll is… nonsense? Drag doesn’t get it, but it seems to be a core part of Draconic_NEO’s argument that someone else was apparently a neopronoun user in the past, and now everyone else has a license to hate neopronoun users.

And here is Draconic_NEO in the same thread, attacking the entire concept of nounself pronouns. Here are some resources on nounself pronouns, which are an established part of queer culture and what drag’s pronouns would probably fall under:

https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Nounself_pronouns
https://pronoun.fandom.com/wiki/Nounself_Pronouns
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/nounself-pronoun
https://edition.cnn.com/us/neopronouns-explained-xe-xyr-wellness-cec/index.html

For someone who uses the nounself pronoun “leaf,” that may look like: “I hope leaf knows how proud we are that leaf is getting to know leafself better!” or “Leaf arrived at the coffee shop before me; I was mortified to have been late to meet leaf.”

As you can see, nounself pronouns are prominent enough in the queer culture to be referenced on CNN and even dictionary.com. Attacks on the idea of nounself pronouns are, in a word, transphobic.

Drag will stop posting excerpts from the thread here, because the reason this post isn’t just a report, is that drag can’t report all of Draconic_NEO’s harassment.

All four of these communities are moderated by Draconic_NEO, with nobody above them but the admins to tell: Drag has never posted or commented on or even seen these communities before. Drag didn’t know they existed. Lemmy UI doesn’t even have a button to do that. You have to manually make an HTTP request yourself in order to do it. This took effort, this took work. And the only possible reason to do it, is to create a record across all of Lemmy of a single user’s grievances that anyone will see when they search that particular user.

And it’s already happened. People look at modlogs, and they trust moderaters. The barrier to entry to becoming moderator of a dozen no-name communities is zero, but the authority of being able to create a permanent record on which to tell whatever lies you like and be believed by many people, is powerful. And drag can’t report these modlog decisions to the admins. Drag can’t reason with somebody who has a basic hostility towards trans people who use nounself pronouns, and who invents stories about imagined violence by trans people.

Transphobia is against the rules on pawb.social. Harassment is against the rules. Spreading misinformation is against the rules. Drag wants all of this to stop, please.

  • Tathar@pawb.social
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    15 days ago

    Some of us here (myselves included, hence why I need to use other pronouns to refer to you) use pronoun sets containing this or very-similar neopronouns. As you’ve admitted, person-independent pronouns can be very confusing, especially when others in the same community or conversation also use those pronouns. I don’t believe Draconic NEO is attacking you by comparing your person-independent nounself pronouns to nicknames; that is how you are using them, and it’s disruptive and confusing for those who use them as pronouns. Normally, we could at least use names or alternative pronoun sets where this becomes a problem, but your username is sexually suggestive (probably why Draconic NEO mentioned it in the ban reasons) and you haven’t been willing to offer any alternative. I can only speculate on why you’re doing this.

    I haven’t communicated with you before, but I’m in two of the communities you listed here and comment occasionally in them. From past experience, I believe Draconic NEO acts in good faith to accommodate as many folks as possible, but your unwillingness to consider others’ needs and repeated disruption of ongoing discussions are what prompted your bans. Transphobia and harassment have nothing to do with this.