A quick reverse image search on the avatar of 'dmc' reveals him to be https://github.com/davidmarkclements - an official Holepunch team member. So the core @holepunch_to team includes abusive people who bully away anybody who raises cultural issues. Cool.

As problematic as the #RespectabilityPolitics are, the only relevant official guidelines for the chat are "Speak freely, but always with respect. Insults or toxic language won't fly here." No admins or mods intervened or responded to David's contributions, so I can only assume that "fuck off with your culture wars" constitutes acceptable official conduct.

#Holepunch @holepunch_to community: absolute vitriol, violent #RespectabilityPolitics, content designed to escalate and exhaust the conversation that reads like AI-generated slop.

This would be silly if it weren't such a terrifying #culture indicator. I hope to hear a reasoned response about #HumanRights and #SocialJustice soon; and I'll be writing commentary when I'm recovered and ready to.

I guess this is a good time to finally tell that story that (because it illustrates it so perfectly) burned itself into my brain of one time where I was quite transphobic:

When it happened I was still pre-coming out as transfemale, and an older relative of mine causally asked whether I ever thought about how it was living as the other gender and whether that might be better. Me – not wanting to come out and admitting that yes, I did think a lot about it – immediately shut it down, saying that it was "impossible" to know something like that and it therefore was pointless to think about it. It is of course very much not pointless to think about it (after all, this is what discovering that one is trans is), so what I was saying was very transphobic and – if she were trans (which – now that I had some conversations with her about it as I'm now out – I don't think) – would have severely stunted her self-realisation progression.

So for the price of being transphobic (telling someone that there are no trans people) I – a trans person – was able to get some power (able to choose when I was coming out).

#respectabilityPolitics #queerLiberation

Queerphobia (like any other oppression) is a faustian pact, it's an entire system designed to tempt people into using it for some short-term power reward, but by that strengthening the oppressive system and with it actually taking long-term power away from you (which ironically further incentives using it to get some of the power "back"). That's why respectability politics is so alluring: You can (by being queerphobia) use that short-term power to help some (e.g.) queer person (like yourself), which makes it seem like you are dismantling queerphobia, but you actually are perpetuating it.

#respectabilityPolitics #queerLiberation

I will be monitoring it but also muting it for a while. Handling of these events has been devastating to me personally and has lead directly to a diagnosis of PTSD. The accusations, attacks and #RespectabilityPolitics are relentless; and people will latch on to anything they can to try to turn the person raising the problem into the problem. I need to stop trying to manage this conversation and give space for others to contribute their voices.

It is over to you & the rest of the world now.