CrazyMinh
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2023
- Messages
- 13
- Points
- 53
Let me preface this by saying I have expectations about how this will be responded to. I'm not here to argue, or to platform, and I really don't care what you say in the replies, or whether you try to deface my profile again. The people who did that know who they are, and I'm neither interested in pointing fingers, or in what said individuals have to say.
A few weeks ago I came here with a question regarding the site. I was met with a torrent of what can only be described as hateful and degrading mockery from users of the site, whose political persuation did not align with my own. The most tame insult was when I was called a thing. There were others posted to my stories before I scrubbed those.
ScribbleHub is a site whose LGBT userbase is a fraction of the overall population. This is mirrored in the LGBT population being largely a minority group worldwide, in no part thanks to efforts by many right-wing groups and political movements across the world trying their best to target us with hate and violence. Our existence has been politicised, a move purely rooted in the desire of right-wing idealogues to sway voters by riling them up against a percieved threat.
I live in a nation that is one of the few western countries that is, for the most part, welcoming to people like myself. I'm a trans woman, and while I would love to be able to ditch the trans part of my identity, the fact is that it is because of people like those who responded to my last post that I choose to maintain that label. Because of the assumption that because I was born with a defect that I am lesser. That because I feel revulsion at the gender I was born as, that I am somehow a threat, somehow less human, or somehow unworthy of being treated like any other human being.
ScribbleHub as a site has a duty to protect its users from harassment, regardless of who they are, or their political allignment. But it also has a duty to put its foot down when a user is subjected to the sort of hateful bigotry that I was barraged with a few weeks ago. Despite multiple messages to the moderation staff, including Tony, the site's response was to delete the thread, and to let the same users responsible for the majority of the (frankly disgusting) messages being aimed at me to continue as if nothing had happened. At the very least, they should have recieved a temporary suspension. At best, they should have been banned for good.
When a site fails to protect a user who is part of a minority group, this should raise some serious questions as to the sort of behaviour that the moderation staff are willing to endorse. If their response to a user calling me a "degenerate" and "a thing", and failing to gender me correctly is to simply sweep the evidence under the rug- evidence which I have kept screenshots of should I ever need to escalate this to a court of law, something I have neither the time or desire to do at this stage- and let this sort of behaviour go completely unchecked, I think it should raise eyebrows. If Tony is willing to respond this way, it suggests that the site endorses bigotry against its vulnerable users. It suggests that our community is not welcome here. Most of the trans authors here fled from TGST when it made similar choices to allow its users to harass trans people, and that site was one that allegedly catered to members of the community.
I've already decided that I'm not going to continue to be associated with a site whose staff did not defend me when I needed it. I do not feel safe if this is their attitude towards harassment, nor do I feel the site deserves the patronage of me or my readers. But this sets a precedent for the other trans authors on this site, and a dangerous one at that.
tl;dr for ScribbleHub: Moderate your goddamn site.
tl;dr for the community: be better than this
tl;dr for my readers: I'm sorry to leave you hanging, but I'm not welcome here anymore. Join me elsewhere if you want. I won't fault you otherwise.
A few weeks ago I came here with a question regarding the site. I was met with a torrent of what can only be described as hateful and degrading mockery from users of the site, whose political persuation did not align with my own. The most tame insult was when I was called a thing. There were others posted to my stories before I scrubbed those.
ScribbleHub is a site whose LGBT userbase is a fraction of the overall population. This is mirrored in the LGBT population being largely a minority group worldwide, in no part thanks to efforts by many right-wing groups and political movements across the world trying their best to target us with hate and violence. Our existence has been politicised, a move purely rooted in the desire of right-wing idealogues to sway voters by riling them up against a percieved threat.
I live in a nation that is one of the few western countries that is, for the most part, welcoming to people like myself. I'm a trans woman, and while I would love to be able to ditch the trans part of my identity, the fact is that it is because of people like those who responded to my last post that I choose to maintain that label. Because of the assumption that because I was born with a defect that I am lesser. That because I feel revulsion at the gender I was born as, that I am somehow a threat, somehow less human, or somehow unworthy of being treated like any other human being.
ScribbleHub as a site has a duty to protect its users from harassment, regardless of who they are, or their political allignment. But it also has a duty to put its foot down when a user is subjected to the sort of hateful bigotry that I was barraged with a few weeks ago. Despite multiple messages to the moderation staff, including Tony, the site's response was to delete the thread, and to let the same users responsible for the majority of the (frankly disgusting) messages being aimed at me to continue as if nothing had happened. At the very least, they should have recieved a temporary suspension. At best, they should have been banned for good.
When a site fails to protect a user who is part of a minority group, this should raise some serious questions as to the sort of behaviour that the moderation staff are willing to endorse. If their response to a user calling me a "degenerate" and "a thing", and failing to gender me correctly is to simply sweep the evidence under the rug- evidence which I have kept screenshots of should I ever need to escalate this to a court of law, something I have neither the time or desire to do at this stage- and let this sort of behaviour go completely unchecked, I think it should raise eyebrows. If Tony is willing to respond this way, it suggests that the site endorses bigotry against its vulnerable users. It suggests that our community is not welcome here. Most of the trans authors here fled from TGST when it made similar choices to allow its users to harass trans people, and that site was one that allegedly catered to members of the community.
I've already decided that I'm not going to continue to be associated with a site whose staff did not defend me when I needed it. I do not feel safe if this is their attitude towards harassment, nor do I feel the site deserves the patronage of me or my readers. But this sets a precedent for the other trans authors on this site, and a dangerous one at that.
tl;dr for ScribbleHub: Moderate your goddamn site.
tl;dr for the community: be better than this
tl;dr for my readers: I'm sorry to leave you hanging, but I'm not welcome here anymore. Join me elsewhere if you want. I won't fault you otherwise.
