Okay I have to ask: if you don't know someone's gender, but you can't call them uh, they/them, then what in the fuck are you supposed to do exactly?

Like, I fully get doing it in person can be being a dick, but on the internet where you absolutely do not know unless someone tells you?

That's the dumbest thing I've heard today, and I was on reddit earlier.

Damn, this is a trip

This is both PTB and YDI.

The blanket bans on a different instance is definitely overkill, which points right to a power trip. If it had been one or two, maybe it could be dismissed, but that many? Nah, that's fucking crazy.

But you were being a dick all up and down that thread.

Now, I want you to stop for a second. See what I just said? What are you thinking and feeling right this second, after reading it.

Go back to the thread you linked. Reread what you wrote with whatever reaction you had to me saying you were being a dick in your mind. See all those places where you were projecting that anyone that might object to your pronoun usage were being lesser because of it? Yeah, you were essentially just saying they would be dicks, and that you were better than them.

Now, it doesn't really matter whether point has any validity. It could have been relevant, but you were ranting all throughout the thread. When someone does that, they have to understand that it could come with consequences. That the consequences were far out of line is a separate issue.

Now, fwiw, I actually partially agree with your premise, though the way you express it, and the details of your reasoning behind it are not good. Particularly the part about why "cishets hate us". I get why you might think that, but it simply doesn't match the words and actions of the bigots.

Basically, you took a pet peeve, went on a rant and it was tangential to the actual post. I'm surprised the ban wasn't from beehaw, they tend to frown on that degree of venom from anyone.

But, again, despite you deserving something for running around foaming at the mouth digitally, the blanket bans are way out of line too

You misunderstood the entire post it looks like.

OP asks the question “what if I know or have been introduced to the person’s pronouns but forget?” This is visible in OP’s own admission: “I am terrible at remembering people’s pronouns.”

Someone responded with slight misunderstanding or perhaps inclarity essentially saying “if you misgender someone you might seem bigoted.”

Then instead of giving any good faith or asking for clarification, you responded with very high toxicity.

Now, I can see that you misunderstood and thought the conversation was about people you don’t know, but your response was very inappropriate and normalizing of hate, using phrases like “For fucks sake this is why the heteros hate us. Younger queers need faux outrage to feel important.” Even the beehaw mod gave you a reprimand.

That behavior and escalation of the conversation is terribly toxic and I do not blame blahaj for not giving you an in depth benefit-of-the-doubt investigation before deciding they didn’t want that behavior.

Verdict: YDI but I get how this misunderstanding happened. My suggestion:

• Reread the post and your comments.
• Acknowledge your misunderstanding and apologize to the person you were toxic to.
• Apologize and clarify the misunderstanding to blahaj.
• Work on your deescalation skills.

Even if the mod were wrong on this particular action, your insults to queer people throughout these comments have shown that they are absolutely better off without you in their community.

TL;DR: ~~BPR~~ CSPR (charged situation-provoked reaction). OP was gatekeeping a wee bit but this was definitively not worth a permaban, at most a "chill your head!" 1d ban. OP being queer and the issue happening outside Blåhaj are also relevant.

Sorry in advance for the WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.

Also, I'm not queer. Or an instance owner. I'm open to hear about things that I got wrong. I'm judging things here because it's how this comm works.

I don't disagree with the core of what you're saying, it's sensible stuff:

• it is completely fine to use they/them as a default; it is not misgendering
• some people overreact to what, contextually, clearly conveys "I don't know your gender"
• queers on the verge of being hunted is way, way more serious than pronouns

100% agree with the above. But even then, check your own comment:

This attitude drives me fucking nuts as a millennial who had to fight the real fights for LGBTQ acceptance only for the younger generation to get their panties in a twist for inadvertently being called by the “wrong” (gender neutral) pronoun.

Queers are on the verge of being hunted and exterminated in the US and y’all are pissy over being called a gender neutral pronoun by someone who doesn’t know you?

For fucks sake this is why the heteros hate us. Younger queers need faux outrage to feel important. Now the real threats are back on the horizon. Thanks to young out of touch activists caring more about pronouns than our physical safety and well-being.

You're arbitrarily drawing a line and saying "up to this point, it is not an important matter. Past that point, it is". Well... this is gatekeeping! Cat shit might not be as serious of a problem as elephant shit, but both are still shit, you know?

Then there's the matter of this happening outside Blåhaj. I get why the admins there ban people for activity outside their own instance: the instance is home to extremely marginalised groups, that requires getting rid of bad faith actors (haters, chasers...) even before they set their feet there.

So for example. Let's say that I (cis, hetero) said something that can be understood as bigotry. It would be only sensible if Blahaj banned me on the spot - better safe than sorry, right?

...however that clearly does not apply to you - even if not trans you're gender-diverse. (I always check profiles before judging people.) Blahaj is supposed to be inviting to people like you. It shifts the issue from "some cis hetero got banned by mistake" to "someone who should feel safe in that instance got banned by mistake". Plus what you're saying isn't even bigoted, it's simply gatekeeping.

Based on all of that I think that some intervention from the Blahaj admins would be sensible, even if this happened outside their "turf", but they went a bit too far. [/two cents]

I'm gonna ignore all of this and talk to you directly as an autistic to an autistic. There are so many times I asked a friend of mine "Hey, I forgot mutual friend X's gender, what were their pronouns again" but what they heard was "Oh no the trans-genders and the pronouns are so confusing, they should stick with what on their birth certificate" and then I wake up the next day with no friends because that friend told all their friends I was being a transphobe.

Now, let's think about this from their perspective. If you saw a friend of yours being a bigot to another one of your friends, would you still hang out with them? I wouldn't. If I heard one of my friends was homophobic or transphobic or racist or any other kind of bigot, I would instantly block and shun them. I do not want bigots of any kind around me or my friends. There is a reason that cults practice shunning, and that is because it fucking works.

Continuing this, lets say our hypothetical ex-friend had been accused of being transphobic to one of your trans friends. What would they need to do to be either forgiven or absolved of guilt? Even if they were in fact transphobic, they can admit they are wrong. And if the accusation was wrong, what proof would you need? What sort of behavior would you need to see from them to forgive them?

I am positive that you as an elder queer have had many, many, many experiences where someone you thought you could trust turned out to be a homophobe. It really hurts. After a while, you start only seeing the worst in people.

As an autistic, it was really rough learning what would come across as a microaggression. Can't ask to be reminded of the pronouns, because it might be interpreted as passive-aggressive transphobic whinging about pronouns. When I do fuck up, I can't give the big apology that I think misgendering someone deserves because my autistic RBF will make it come across as sarcastic. You just have to quickly correct yourself and move on without drawing attention to it. It feels like blowing a red light and hitting someone because I was just plopped behind the wheel of a car without being taught how to drive.

Your tantrum here was very cathartic for me, because it really is fucking terrible trying navigate a world full of traumatized people. I don't like accidentally triggering people. I want people to feel safe around me! But if I had thought I'd seen a person doing a microaggression, and then I saw them throwing a tantrum about how them getting shunned was because everyone else is a pee pee piss piss boy and this is why the cishets hate us, I would be inclined to think they were at least regressive, if not one of the republican gays who think that we need to chop off everything past the B in LGBTQ+.

Just to be clear, I don't think you're transphobic. I have experienced the same sort of things as you. It's rough restraining myself from flailing around in response to being accused of stuff. It is humiliating to prostrate myself and beg forgiveness of things I know I did not do. But we live in a fucking society full of bigots and people traumatized by those fucking bigots, and these are the rituals that keep our corner of society even a little bit sane.

I know this flies in the face of what everyone else seems to be saying, but fuck it.

I don't know of an acronym, but my reaction is that even if they overreacted, your insanely aggressive response makes me think it's right to leave it in place. I get that you're saying that you're just angry because you like blahaj, but up and down this thread your bitching is so antagonistic... Like, calling it narcissistic, referring to people who care "too much" about their pronouns as having main character syndrome? This is not the behavior of a friend, or an ally, and it's not one I'd love in a member of my community.

Being queer and neurodivergent is not an excuse to be an asshole. As someone who identifies as both queer and neurodivergent, let me say I wouldn't unban you for this. Whether the initial ban was right or wrong!

I went through real shit in the 90s for being queer. I wasn't even diagnosed as neurodivergent (despite a disgusting amount of evidence since I was a child, because "girls don't get ADHD") until my goddamned 30s. That doesn't mean that just because other people are suffering differently, their suffering doesn't matter, and screaming about it makes you look like an abusive fuck. People don't have to suffer "enough" for your definition to deserve respect. Jesus.

I get that this could be stepping on your trauma, and nobody loves being excluded, but this reaction ain't it.

No one seems to take your thoughts negative on that post. Odd.

Don't complain that queer people are softer than they used to be, celebrate that they don't have to toughen up and can be themselves with less fear of backlash

Blahaj mods are insanely ban happy. I do not understand for the life of me what you did wrong here. I don’t even really understand what kind of online community they are trying to cultivate with this?

im a queer person. im neurodivergent. this shit is so goddamn fucking annoying, especially as an older queer who got physically assaulted on a near daily basis for being queer in the 90s. the kids today get their panties in a twist over being supposedly "misgendered" by someone calling them gender neutral pronouns before being corrected. narcissistic victimhood bullshit.

People shouldn't need to suffer a specific amount to deserve your respect. This is important to many people. But you use it to insult those people. Regardless of why you got banned or how angry you are about it, saying things like this is not a good look. It looks a lot like victim blaming and gatekeeping.

Your experienced suffering doesn't make you better than anybody else or give you carte blanche to anything, including insulting or trivializing what others consider important. I would encourage you to treat people to the respect and kindness you deserved but didn't get in the 90s.