Just because queer people and other folks built the fediverse or its protocol to avoid some kinds of harassment and violence doesn’t mean that the fediverse cannot be home to other kinds of violence or marginalization.
Put simply, a queer history does not preclude a present that enables structures of oppression. I want to be specific about this because much of the violence I’ve experienced in queer spaces is at the hands of white queers.
Now, this isn’t generally the case on mastodon/the fediverse, but the queer history of the fediverse hasn’t stopped racists or norms of whiteness from taking up shop and organizing the space. A queer history didn’t keep racist slurs out of my mentions.
To be clear, I’m not denying the queer history of the fediverse: I’m rejecting its use as a counter-argument against structures of oppression on the fediverse. I’m also rejecting the immediate assumption that queerness = anti-racist.
This latter is important because we have to understand that a queer history or queerness itself does not ensure freedom from all other forms of oppression.
Let me put it another way: queer people might’ve built the fediverse, but they threw open the doors to everyone. And, insofar as online spaces are continuous with offline spaces, assholes found their way in.
But this isn’t the fault of the queer devs who built this place, and I’m not ascribing blame. What I’m saying is that a queer history is no defense against an oppressive present especially given the nature of the fediverse and its instances.
Now, if we wanted that history to matter for the present, we’d need to make it matter in concrete’s ways. We’d need to do more than say “queer people built this place,” and leave it at that.
I'm just shocked at the idea that you had to argue against here—that queer people can't be racist. Like...what?
All you have to do is look at practically any of the major trans femme accounts on Twitter to see how easily racism seeps into white people's discourse, and how quickly white people are to ignore it (or worse, draw focus away from it) to avoid having to ever confront their own worst qualities.
If queer people can be QUEERPHOBIC (and we can), 100% we can be racist.
Once, I saw a Latina trans ally trying to defend a major trans femme account's racism. A Black trans woman was justifiably angry about that. Someone then had the gall to say that the Latina was a POC and therefore could not be racist.
As a Latina trans woman myself, I fucking LAUGHED. White-identifying Latin Americans are so fucking racist sometimes that I can't even, and the idea that being POC makes us magically immune to racism was...WOW.
Just...wow.
Gods, right? My mother is the most racist person I know, and I always have to be like, "You know they don't like you, right? White racists aren't letting you sit at their table. If you're lucky, you're cleaning the floor where they spit."
She gets mad about that, but I don't care. I was done with her bullshit when I dated one of the best people I've known, and she dared to ask me why "I would pollute my own bloodline" because my partner was Haitian.
💢 ☠️
I didn't wait. I cut my mom off YEARS ago. No one deserves her toxicity. Least of all someone I've chosen to love. 💙
Thank you! Gratefully, I am now. 😸
Yeah speaking from my own experiences, white identifying latinos can be racist. I'm been told slurs from my own race just for my darker skin and mixed nationality + heritage.
Same from white queers. I've often been told that me bringing up BIPOC issues and racism within the community is "divisive". Just gross
We need for fellow mastodon people to listen to us BIPOC folks rather than ignore the issue or condescend with tech "solutions".
Mastodon: a partial history (DRAFT)
https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/
As @shengokai says ⬆️, if we want Mastodon's history to matter for the present, we need to look in detail about how and why it was built. Here's my (draft) attempt to do that -- highlighting the amazing contributions of the early community (much of which has never been properly credited) without whitewashing the past.
Feedback and discussion welcome!
@jdp23 A brief update: here's our piece with a reference to your text. If you find the time (which is certainly rare at the end of the year!), feel free to jump in and comment. There are certainly many shortcomings in our reflections on how the system operates.
A growing body of literature on waste and discard studies has crafted a powerful critique of waste management and politics (Callén and Sánchez Criado 2015; Liboiron and Lepawsky 2022; Gille and Lepawsky 2022; Ek and Johansson 2020). In today’s dominant waste regime, waste is naturalized as a burden
@jdp23 @shengokai For boosting: check out this great draft of "Mastodon: a partial history." #MastodonMigration
👓 https://privacy.thenexus.today/mastodon-a-partial-history/
"However it plays out, an honest look at Mastodon's history is vital for acknowledging, correcting, and making reparations for past harms – and understanding how to do better going forward. So let's close with one more quote from back in the day that's still remarkably relevent."
@[email protected] @jdp23 Thanks very much for the feedback. I'll think about how to word it ... "community-led development" is a thing, and the community at the time was queer, but I can see how my phrasing could creates the problems you describe.
Agreed on the intersectional differences, I quote Flowers as saying "whiteness is a large problem within the LGBTQ community"
DISCLAIMER:
I worked for the Disabled People's Comission for the Hammersmith and Fulham Council for a few months. One of the things I did there was to rewrite leaflets and speeches to make them easier, simpler for people with cognitive impairments who needed easy-read copies. As such I'm kind of a professional at finding parts that are hard to read for able people too.
1/x (please don't reply until you see x/END)
FEEDBACK:
It seems a bit disorganised, especially at the beginning. This paragraph is hard to read.
"Which is unfortunate, because the standard narrative in articles like Will Knight's The Man Behind Mastodon Built It for This Moment ("Mastodon grew slowly after the first code was released in 2017, appealing mostly to free software enthusiasts") leaves out some crucial aspects. For example:"
I'm reading your article, I have to go elsewhere to find you mean Eugen.
2/x
then
"....Mastodon has a history of being inhospitable to marginalized users.
Yeah Really".
Not sure what you mean with "Yeah Really" there. You're introducing US to Mastodon's history, there's nothing you can write that could surprise us, since we don't know it. That "yeah really" is meaningless to the article's intended public.
3/x
"Another good reason is that Mastodon's early history is an amazing case study of queer community-led innovation."
This is when you get me completely lost. You just said it has a history of marginalizing people but then its early design was queer-led. That's confusing.
Did you mean marginalising specifically BLACK people but not LGBTQ+, as in Mastodon being racist?
If the article follow cronologically without mixing temporal contexts, it'll be easier to read.
4/x
@jdp23 my pleasure. Feel free to ask again or even use my handle if you need more feedback.
I would definitely break it down in a few articles though. Maybe in stages.
But I would also divide each section in years. As in
2016
text
2017
text
2018
text
etc etc
Be mindful too of clarifying whether you're sticking to the facts or making an opinion article. It didn't look clear to me from the outset if it was one or the other.
@jdp23 break it down in quarters maybe, for that year I mean.
Please don't be hard on yourself. YOU ARE already looking for a solution by having it in draft mode and asking for feedback.
@maikel just wanted to check in on this ... I'm still revising but did take your suggestion and put in more chronological ordering - 2016, 2017, 2018-2021 (which is a lot sparser), and 2022. Each year is roughly chronlogical but there's some overlap. For example the community-led development was happening at time that overlapped the racist dogipiling and white supremacy stuff, it's clearer to talk about each of them in its own section.
@jdp23 @shengokai a lot of us have lived through a lot of Fediverse history like intense activism to oppose & marginalize Nazi takeover attempts like Gab, which was not a sure thing and remains a core responsibility of good admins to oppose.
Whenever I hear that someone is suffering racist abuse my first reaction is "where are they at" because it truly is ongoing work to spot, block, ban, and defederate, but decentralization means my instance may simply not be able to see it.
Dr. Johnathan Flowers
Jon (now at neuromatch.social)
Joan of Cat (she/her) 😼
HDHarris
Shiina
Johannes Ehsan Fischer
Jon
Stefan Laser🗜️
Gtmlosangeles
Maikel 
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Lindsey 🐲