Serious Blankism

[MikeDawg]

I definitely agree with the point that jumpluff made about Smogon+staff dismissing sincerity and vulnerability, particularly from people that they are not good friends with. This is of course not true about every user, but it is definitely an overwhelming theme in my experience. Smogon often feels like a middle/high school field trip without chaperones (or the chaperone is just a super-cool big brother), and nobody takes anybody seriously. I think that this is a theme mainly because smogon is not a predominately social forum; it is a competitive one, so mods and staff are primarily focused on facilitating pokemon-related things. The social aspects get overlooked. Add that to an absurdly large bandwagon and the fact that half of the forum-based social scene (firebot) is intentionally edgy, and you end up with a culture that is cold to vulnerability and sincerity.

I wholly agree that firebot should be anything that isn't an outright vicious attack on a user. There is a time and a place for everything (including extreme edginess), and having that place be firebot is fine. It becomes more of an issue when it bleeds into other parts of the forum, irc, etc.

Not only does that spread insensitivity throughout official mediums of interaction, but also (and I assume that this is jumpluff's primary concern, though please correct me if im incorrect (edit: nevermind lots of posts happened while i was writing this. Ninja'd) it ingrains the attitude into the culture itself. Given that the userbase is mostly white teenage males, cultural sensitivity doesn't have a huge head start to begin with (heavier emphasis on the teenager part than on the white male part).

The goal, i guess, is to have the staff 1) set a better example (including being stricter with reprimanding) and 2) adopt a slightly more sensitive outlook (primarily when being sincerely approached by a user for social-related help, but this also includes being responsible and diffusing, for example, situations that are quickly bandwagoning into legitimate ganging-up and bullying). 2 leads directly to 1, and 1 is important because of how impressionable the userbase is (ex. The change in typical dialect the second that CTC posts in a thread).

 

[Aldaron]

Quickly running through with bullet points so you can understand them better and don't just go tl;dr:

• Cathy wasn't banned for transphobic reasons and that was not the implication. What's important is the amount of transphobic comments that were made by staff during the whole debacle. Cathy absolutely should have been banned. The fact that not only the site owner but a large portion of staff were being transphobic assholes both during and after both times is the issue.
• You can't say it's just village idiots when it's people in your senior staff that are making racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist comments and passing around nudes and phone numbers of their users. Yes, your site will be defined by its leaders.

Hopefully you can get through all that.

can you actually justify any of this with proof? specifically, "large portion of staff" and which people in the senior staff did those things and are still senior staff

i get maybe that they weren't demoted fast enough (i wasnt always in a position to demote people) and that this lack of action may have contributed to undesirable environments. if that is the case all i can say is that it is unfortunate and hopefully we do better in the future.

or is it just standard bullshit and i should "take your word for it"

as far as i know, whenever senior staff is caught with something, we demote as necessary

 

[Firestorm]

I explicitly remember a deal being brokered with Kevin Garrett who leaked the phone number of an underage girl so prank calls could be made instead of demoting him.

I'm talking to someone who had to preface "i really want to know where smogon's auth was explicitly transphobic in a serious manner" with ignoring the comments of the site owner. If you want to see where that shit happened, take a look through http://www.smogon.com/forums/forums/the-inside-scoop.37/ and any chat logs from the time.

Edit: Granted I'm not sure if you were around at the time Cathy was first ousted.

 

[soulgazer]

I really don't understand why people let words affect them.. why do you care about what other people thinks of you, and especially people from the internet that you will never meet IRL? Lots of people use 'gay', 'fag_got', 'niggR', etc. If it makes you upset to hear / read words used so much, learn to ignore it. People won't change just because you think everybody should respect your sexuality or whatever, especially on the internet where we are just a bunch of keyboard warriors hiding behind a screen.

 

[Cresselia~~]

I really don't understand why people let words affect them.. why do you care about what other people thinks of you, and especially people from the internet that you will never meet IRL? Lots of people use 'gay', 'fag_got', 'niggR', etc. If it makes you upset to hear / read words used so much, learn to ignore it. People won't change just because you think everybody should respect your sexuality or whatever, especially on the internet where we are just a bunch of keyboard warriors hiding behind a screen.

I personally think it depends on the intent of the person.
However, even if the person has malicious intent, it probably doesn't really affect you.

Racism is real, but the only type of racism I think we should care is physical racial attacks and genocide.
Because these 2 really does affect people. (Yes, the later still happens, not joking)

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is relevant here.

 

[cookie]

i don't know why i'm giving into such disingenuity, but:

why? because there is a difference of opinion/perspective/experience. this is a discussion lol, don't go telling people they're disingenuous

you have an s-mod in this thread telling a bisexual person that they don't count as a real queer man when they're talking about being harassed for being a queer man (and managing to vomit really awful racial slurs unnecessarily in the process AND heighten the inaccuracy of the post since non-passing mixed PoC constantly get harassed for theri race, lol) and the person who leads firebot, the place where the most racism, transphobia, and misogyny can be found on smogon dot com, and you really think people are gonna pm you about being harassed? lol. yes, i'd definitely come forward about my experiences to people who would instantly dismiss them and tell me to get a thick skin. as you know, I was a super mod, I had multiple people come to me even when I was just a cong mod because I made an active attempt to set an example and oppose this shit when I saw it. please don't give me this shit like you all don't know it's the case when I made sure plenty of you knew it was the case.

that's because gay!=bisexual. Secondly, it's easy to dismiss me because of my involvement in firebot, but if you took a minute to look at pretty much any post/message I've made/sent outside the forum that is designated as a microcosm with its own set of rules, you'll see that I treat people with actual respect. And I stand by the general advice of getting a thick skin: it is far easier to brush off mild insults, BUT as I said if you are feeling regularly harrassed then that is breaking the rules. cong is supposed to be where people have civil discussions, so harrassment is breaking the rules, and I know this because I fucking wrote those rules. I don't have the time to actively enforce them, but I can always respond to a PM.

hell, most of you also participated in the nonconsensual distribution of women's nudes or the legitimisation of it. yeah you banned it recently, can't imagine how this community would've been perceived as hostile to women before (especially when many of the prominent female users were subject to frequent harassment, stalking [and not just by creeps you all didn't like but popular users too], objectification, a few attempts to doxx, and misgendering)

also i'm not going to do what minwu said and give you all a list of all the trans women this community shunted out so everyone can drag their names through the mud again and deadname them and call them men and ask intrusive questions about their genitals and whatever

yo, this is not what this thread is about. I want to know who else was driven out of here because I only know about Cathy. I have no idea what the scale of this misogyny is, and unless I can gauge that this isn't really a proper discussion. If you think this thread is just a soapbox for you to shout from you are either stupid because you don't realise that you're not going to convince anyone that way, or immature because you realise that but don't care.

, and a lot of the harassment is IRC/sim stuff (but both of those are important to participating in this community as you all acknowledge and the same shit you tolerate on IRC leaks into socialisation forums. to be fair #pokemon is usually a lot nicer than the other channels last time I checked and all due credit to the auth for that), but the general a) refusal of people to even give the most basic respect to them b) ambient and unapologetic transphobia everywhere you go c) harassment campaigns against trans women (and don't give me that 'it was her personality' shit; sure i'm biased about her personality in that i made the fucking effort to get along with her, even though i fought with cathy the day i met her, and was lucky enough to become her friend, but if it was just her personality why did everyone target her gender, her previous identity, etc. with such passion?). i'm literally just not going to engage with 'what transmisogyny?' from a person who ran a script for years linking a trans woman to her deadname which she requested with more politeness than was warranted that people not use (and spent years trying to get people to understand) and whose forum is polluted by shit like TIK's thread about trans disclosure or all the general mockery of trans identities, but i will expand:

yeah you're gonna have to tell me about this script because I have no idea what you're talking about (gonna also need to see a link to tik's thread). Don't want to engage? this soapbox shit again.

the general gender scare on this forum (large insecurity about being 'tricked' by a woman with a dick, hunting out 'fake' genders) is enough to terrify a lot of trans people who already endure that shit everywhere they go. people who aren't white and cis shouldn't have to jump through more hoops than everyone else to participate in a competitive pokémon community when they already have to jump through more hoops than everyone else to participate in society. i'm not expecting you all to suddenly change your minds but if you want to actually put your money when your mouth is then you kinda need to set examples and be a bit more receptive about criticism of the site, maybe? definitely don't gaslight people who have already gone through harassment. i mean, the fact you're all so deadset that slurs are just good fun without consideration that some people don't consider them good fun and anyone who doesn't is the problem is pretty nonconducive (let alone the routine hateful rhetoric of minorities). slurs do have context and meaning, the context behind the f slur doesnt go away because you use it on a straight person, especially one who's perceived as acting effeminate, and if the ydidn't then why would you use them so disproportionately compared to other insults? why's it gay people and black people and women and trans people and not white cis straight men?

ok, so what do you think needs to be done? Should people stop using these words entirely, or use them only in certain contexts? The beautiful thing about language is the ability for words to take on new meanings. For example, I like using the word (BAN ME PLEASE) as a general swearword because of the way it sounds, for the same reason I use fuck, cunt or shit. I also use it as a form of protest against mindless censorship: particularly, (BAN ME PLEASE) is a word I am not supposedly allowed to say, even though in reality a word is more than how it's spelt or what it sounds like. I generally don't call someone black a (BAN ME PLEASE) because it's too likely that they will perceive racist connotations, which wouldn't be my intent - there are compromises that need to be made. But I will absolutely call someone who either knows me well or is not white and can appreciate where I'm coming from.

yes I'm sensitive to slurs and everyone knows I'm a drama llama. whatever, it's especially cool when nobody can forget how you behaved when you were fourteen and being abused in two different environments at once. did you ever maybe think it's natural to react emotionally to things? ever think maybe those slurs are reacted to so badly because they're hurtful and carry massive legacies of history that doesn't disappear when a person with hegemonic dominance throws them around? ever think maybe those slurs reflect a reality in which bi and gay guys are beaten up and murdered for being queer or disproportionately homeless because their parents kick them out and they can't get jobs, trans women are actually killed by insecure dudes and subject to police brutality and nonstop misgendering, black people were enslaved and colonised and to this day everyone tells them it's a post-racial society because a few managed to win at capitalism while their communities and homelands are being subjugated, and it's tiresome to hear them when you come online to do something unrelated to your material conditions? lets say i bought your argument about context-sensitivity, which i certainly don't because you don't get to tell people what good fun is especially when you throw slurs at them that will never be used to actually oppress you. why do those slurs get used the most to people to whom they actually 'apply'? why are gay men mocked the most for being gay? why are trans women the ones you all call slurs? why are women the ones you call cunts the most? why are actually black people the ones you call the n-slur the most and make awful jokes to?

if you're sensitive to slurs then that is fine. But how are you constantly reminded of what you're like when you're 14? I sure as shit aren't. I don't call black people (BAN ME PLEASE)s to their face. Or gays (BAN ME PLEASE). And cunt is not a slur aimed at women in specific, because it's used towards men just as easily. And no, I don't tell anyone what's fun - if you don't like a particular sense of humour that is entirely your right, just like it is for you to complain. It's also my right to think you're too sensitive for doing so. I think it's stupid to take the odd slur thrown your way too seriously, and I think it's okay to be affected a constant bombardment of it, because there's only so much someone can take. But what it sounds like to me is that there are a lot of people here who are getting hurt every time someone calls them a (BAN ME PLEASE)/spic/(BAN ME PLEASE)(?), and this is backed up by seeing very little of what you're describing in #pokemon or cong. and if that is the case then I think people need to stop feeling so victimised and that with some effort they can easily overcome it. But the whole point I posted in the first place is that I would like to know what the extent of slur-throwing is.

as for internet lawlessness, cookie, you've probably been on the internet longer than me (unlike most people in this thread i'm willing to bet), but you realise ancient internet discourse actually revolved around respect and decency, right? like netiquette is super old for a reason? and when people who didn't abide by that flooded into places like usenet they invented a name for it because they couldn't stand the immaturity? that most communities have outgrown their fetishism for lawlessness? im also sure its super important to the fourteen year olds that join this site these days to preserve the internet hegemony of the early 2000s (like, when they were born), that definitely explains their vitriolic reactions to anyone who isn't them. couldn't just be that white supremacy etc. are still very real power structures. super hypocritical for a site with this type of political swing to appeal to tradition, lol. you're all so afraid of 'feminazis' as if even women somehow held power over men? tumblrinas? okay i guess coming across queer teenagers figuring out their identity is equivalently distressing to having to read 'ironic' slurs, calls for genocide, rape threats, etc. all day, you win the thick skin contest!

i kind of agree with the demographic shift causing conflict on the internet. It might just be that this website isn't particularly inclusive to different genders/ethnicities, but again I've never really cared about these things so I don't know.

and don't give me that shit that feminazis and tumblrinas distorted the words 'privilege' and 'trigger'. yeah some of them dont understand, that makes them exactly like you all, who care very deeply about privilege and triggering i'm sure and seek to learn about these concepts so you can improve society. my whole family unit (me/brother/i) has PTSD, its people who make stupid jokes about the concept of triggering itself that makes it hard to talk about in these spaces because anxiety disorders, dysphoria, etc. are frequently belittled and turned into comic relief by edgelords. if you cared about the distortion of those words then you'd give credence to the concepts and not further drag them through the dirt. so, i don't buy it.

no, I will give you shit, because privilege is a stupid concept as it is inherently generalising. White privilege? That immediately disappears if you got abused as a child, or grew up poor. Black? Oh, but you got extra funding from the government to go to university and end up worse off than a white kid with parents just rich enough that he's ineligible, but his parents won't help him out. The point is that different people have different things to struggle against, but by using privilege you're completely ignoring these things because they got a better dice roll when they were born, even though subsequent dice rolls completely fucked them over. On a more pragmatic level, privilege is stupid because it gets people's backs up. A lot of people more fortunate than others take it for granted, and instead focus on the ways they had to struggle. So when you tell them that they have privilege they think you're attacking them. They've probably done the same to someone who has had a far rougher life, with the same response. You can get angry at this incompassionate response from the privileged guy but if you want him to understand and make progress you gotta try something else. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to discuss genuine PTSD, however.

as for 'stain on the movement that gave birth to them', lets just give me a little credit and suggest that I probably know more about the history of feminism than most people itt. did you all know one of the key arguments of a lot of suffragettes was that if black men should vote, it was bad to make white women inferior to them and therefore white women were entitled to suffrage (never mind, you know, black women). did you know margaret sanger, the famous sex education and abortion activist, linked up with eugenicists to promote contraception because black people (whom she equated cognitively to chimpanzees) didn't have 'sexual control'? what about second-wave feminism, the movement that continued the tradition of prioritising the liberation of cis white women and advocate for the eradication and abuse of trans women? yeah I have a lot of issues with liberal feminism but its definitely not that they're trying to be inclusive and intersectional.

so you know more about feminism than me. congratulations I guess? It doesn't change my statement: people who trivialise the oppression and suffering of others for their own ego/gains are as bad as those who perpetrate that oppression. Because they give misogynists etc a reason to justify their actions, they can point and say that those guys are real crazy ones, we're being oppressed!

have you considered the reason you're surrounded by yes-men is because the ones who think its gross as fuck are mostly all gone (and incredulous at this thread) because none of you would take them seriously if they did come forward about what its like for a lot of minorities to be on this site? this is a site that viciously mocks vulnerability and sincerity, why would anyone ever come forward? why would anyone come forward to be told they have to take responsibility for their feelings (as if they weren't, as if they didn't have to constantly) so you all don't have to be made uncomfortable by the existence of trans people and feminists or examine your predilection for antiblackness? it's 'sad' I hid my race from even my best friends for years (because my best friends on irc literally said shit unironically like my people are cannibals), but I didn't 'take responsibility' for my feelings by concealing my reactions to that kind of racism for years? which of course is completely healthy, responsible behaviour, to automatically blame yourself for being attacked and not being down with slurs and suppress your feelings, and I totally recommend it if you want to replicate the psychological experience of being bullied at high school or domestically abused.

I really don't get where you're getting this antiblackness from. Who is being racist to blacks here? Calling them (BAN ME PLEASE)s? I've not seeing blacks being called (BAN ME PLEASE)s than anyone else, which suggests a lack of racial motivation. My only reaction to you coming out as black is that it explains the lack of photos from you. I'm also not about to call you a (BAN ME PLEASE)...

 

[Cresselia~~]

But Aboriginal Australians are not negroids. They are Australoids. So they are not black people.

Besides, I hugely doubt the slurs in Firebot are of malicious intent. It's just for fun.
I actually find it a little bit funny when they call me chink or chynx or whatever.

Slurs are meaningless. It doesn't have to mean something. You just need more confidence. Once you have enough confidence, words will hardly harm you.

 

[Asek]

Australia which is already a pretty non-racist country

I dont know which part of australia you live in, but being in a rural location i can say that racism is pretty big in this country! Then whole nations attitude towards the closure of remote indigineous communities as well as the whole 'boat people' treatment of asylum seekers shows the racist views of the majoirty or at least the government that represents them, which is completely insensitive to the needs of these people

On a more local level, my commnunity acknoledges 'slope' and 'chink' as the accepted group term for anybody who looks remotely asian, and uses some more unsavoury words when talking about black people. Dont know if this kind of attitutde is present in the cities, but i know its around in other rural areas. Racism is defnitely big here, but hoping over our lifetimes it dies off a bit

Would also love to add that i love when smogon SS air their grievances

 

[Fatecrashers]

cookie i recall a script where someone would reply "it's cathy bitch" whenever someone used the word 'colin', i don't remember who ran it but people used to trigger it by saying stuff like 'colin mochrie is my favourite member of whose line'

 

[Tressed]

Okay, gotta clear some stuff up here.

I never said I was offended by slurs, nor that I had been actively targeted for being bisexual. If I were actually offended by these kinds of comments, I wouldn't still be referring to myself as a f*gg*t or a queer, and I definitely wouldn't still be using them as insults (it's kinda ingrained at this point, been making an effort to cut back on it). I appreciate those who have stuck up for me, but please don't put words in my mouth.

To those who think I don't have a right to have an issue with slurs because they don't apply to me, can you actually name slurs that are aimed specifically at bisexuals? I actually had to look this one up, because I didn't know of any. This list only has three, none of which are actually used these days. Point is, if someone wants to do some name calling, they're gonna call you what they know is an insult and you're going to recognize that they insulted you, and neither the perpetrator nor the target are going to care if the context is correct or not.

Anyways, apologies to Cheek Pouch for kick starting this shitshow, pretty sure this wasn't what this thread was supposed to turn into.

 

[Saria]

Brown as fuck, Venezuelan, male cis, hardly 100% straight, atheist who hates "euphoric" atheism.

I've never had to deal with any sort of discrimination here on Smogon specifically. I guess I did have to deal with some in similar places:

(that's gr8astard here on smogon. He also sent a bunch of PMs but cba logging in on PO)

But tbh I'm quite thick skinned, so when he sent me that I just shared it with friends and laughed at the saltyness. (which is pretty much what I am doing right now)

I received countless PMs / VMs with similar crap in my time on PO, mostly from users I muted / banned or blatant trolls trying to make me react. One of the side effects of moderating something on the internet, I guess. This kind of things never affected me.

So yeah, I haven't received anything like that here on Smogon. But knowing how big this site is, is not hard to imagine many people have/had to deal with discrimination / harassment, and I know most people aren't as thick skinned as I am. However, I honestly don't think those acts are common in these forums and I don't think saying higher staff does nothing about them is correct, considering a couple of weeks ago two fairly important users got permanently banned for harassing minor girls.

One last thing

I honestly don't know who you are or when it was that I "got you", but I think I can take your word for it.

Of course there are annoying people in literally every movement. But how come whenever anything within the ballpark of feminism comes up all the white guys start screaming about feminazi this, tumbler that? Tumbler isn't feminism. It's a web site for posting content you don't own.

I'm honestly not even convinced that #killallmen, cis-scum stuff wasn't entirely invented "ironically" by white bros. Or at least spread for the most part.

It baffles me someone unironically complains about racism and sexism while being blatantly racist and sexist.

Already said this at the beginning, but to avoid stupid replies: I'm not a "white bro". (I did get a haircut shortly after I took that pic!)

 

[vonFiedler]

It baffles me someone unironically complains about racism and sexism while being blatantly racist and sexist.

Are the people I was addressing specifically not part of the dominant majority I'm making reference to?

As a male who is also white, whining about racism towards whites and sexism towards men in response to calling them out for their entitled crap is just about the height of diarrhea bullshit, even for this thread.

 

[Saria]

Are the people I was addressing specifically not part of the dominant majority I'm making reference to?

As a male who is also white, whining about racism towards whites and sexism towards men in response to calling them out for their entitled crap is just about the height of diarrhea bullshit, even for this thread.

"Many Hispanic people commit crimes in USA, therefore it's ok to call all Hispanic people criminals"

 

[vonFiedler]

"Many Hispanic people commit crimes in USA, therefore it's ok to call all Hispanic people criminals"

Moved this from an earlier edit

Nobody is gonna make me feel bad for being white/male because that's not something we have to deal with ever*. Doesn't change the fact that dudebros spout some of the most self-delusional tripe you'll ever hear.

If it helps you sleep at night just imagine that I said "a bunch of white guys".

*at least not in the majority of North America/Europe, which coincidentally are the only parts of the world we tend to think exist on a good day.

 

[Saria]

Moved this from an earlier edit

Nobody is gonna make me feel bad for being white/male because that's not something we have to deal with ever*. Doesn't change the fact that dudebros spout some of the most self-delusional tripe you'll ever hear.

If it helps you sleep at night just imagine that I said "a bunch of white guys".

*at least not in the majority of North America/Europe, which coincidentally are the only parts of the world we tend to think exist on a good day.

I still don't understand why you are trying to justify generalizing an entire race in a discriminatory way, but ok. Guess making that kind of generalization is fine as long as they fit your personal criteria, because you get to decide what offends other people and fuck dudebros.

Personally it doesn't offend me at all the fact you wrote "all white guys" (maybe because I'm not white). But maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't post discriminatory crap (or that can be interpreted as such) while complaining about other people doing the same. It's a matter of consistency.

ps: Hard to forget North America/Europe aren't the only parts of the world when you live in a 3rd world shithole like I do. At least racism isn't an issue here, but it's ok because all other kinds of discrimination are extremely common. No exceptions.

pps: Wish that could actually help me sleep tonight. But I'm here arguing in a Pokemon forums at 5:50 am, so I guess I need something else.

 

[Shrug]

I think vonFiedler you're treating Hikari's argument fundamentally different from the way he means it. You said something that did overgeneralize to a slight degree, seeming to imply all white people (or all white males) are the perpetrators of discriminatory or antifeminist reactions. Hikari pointed this out as false (which objectively it is). I'm pretty sure you would agree with that - there do exist white people or white males specifically who do not discriminate or have prejudice. You maybe felt his response was meant in the manner of some #notallmen bullshit that people use to understate the relevance of social problems - "prejudice is only present in a few bad apples. the majority of white people are kind caring citizens to them homosexuals / women, so we don't really have a problem." says the (white, male) Fox News analyst. This type of downplaying is present in a lot of areas people dont want to see social change: police conduct (most cops are good cops!); racism (most whites arent racist! I speak to a black person every day!) etc. However, I dont believe this is what Hikari was doing. He admitted there are a lot of white males who act as antifeminist dudebros ("douchebros" is far superior as a term though :) ), but was against the concept of you implying literally every male was a dudebro like that. I know white people talk almost no criticism in general, and if someone tries to do so they are hit with the understating i mentioned above, but it is still logically unsound to say "all of" a group does one thing, and he pointed that out - in an effort to help your argument, i think.

 

[Brambane]

In response to the op: if you are being maliciously and repeatedly attacked with racist, sexist, homophobic, classist, religionphobic, etc. comments or slurs, you should report, and potentially provide logs, of the user and behavior to a moderator. Mods are generally helpful and will address the issue from my experience. Understand that mods may not be able to immediately respond, of course. Part of being a moderator is enforcing Smogon's rules and these kinds of attacks are disrespectful and blatantly violates Smogon's Global Rules.

Do not flame or abuse other members. The anonymity of the Internet does not give you a license to treat the users of this forum disrespectfully. Of course, posts in Firebot may be an exception, but please refer to the rules of that forum. This rule goes at least triple if the member in question is a moderator or administrator, as alluded to above.

Additionally, the /ignore and mute spectators functions are great on PS! if you find someone upsetting or distracting. Also having thick skin and being able to laugh off insults is great, but if someone is continually harassing you for whatever reason, I think that is warranting of a report regardless.

A more personal monologue: I will admit to using slurs or other discriminatory comments, but never maliciously. I only ever used them in a way that I thought was joking, and dismissed offending people as them lacking a sense of humor. I personally am trying to change that and avoid using them entirely. I still do it every so often, but I am getting better. Part of that comes from playing MOBAs, where it is very tempting for players to blame teammates simply because they are Peruvian/Russian/etc, which is entirely unfair.

I want to become more aware that what I am saying, while comedic to me and not intently mean, can be misinterpreted and upsetting. So I am now trying to avoid it as a personal choice.

 

[SergeantCortez]

Yes, I have experienced transphobia on PS numerous times primarily at the hands of a certain private room whose name begins with S and ends with P and also has how in the name. While they usually just stick to stupid insults like calling me a f_a_g or a (BAN ME PLEASE), I can honestly say that I have been brought to tears by their vicious attacks in the past, with them telling me that I'll never be a "real" girl because I don't have a vagina. However, they fail to acknowledge the existence of feminine penises. If a penis is indeed feminine, and that the person who owns said penis identifies as a woman, then I do not see how they could be considered any less of a woman for not having a vagina. These idiots obviously disagree, insulting me and using the incorrect pronouns when talking about me in their stupid little circlejerk. And before I get any sarcastic replies, yes I am serious, and no I don't want to deal with being called a boy anymore. Sorry if I sound hostile, just using this thread to vent a little.

 

[frysinger]

If you guys are afraid or have a problem with people making fun of you for being different why give them that personal information. They can't make fun of you for being gay if they don't know you. This isn't real life, it's a pokemon forums. Just keep your shit personal and this would be a lot less of an issue.

 

[tehy]

Are the people I was addressing specifically not part of the dominant majority I'm making reference to?

As a male who is also white, whining about racism towards whites and sexism towards men in response to calling them out for their entitled crap is just about the height of diarrhea bullshit, even for this thread.

i've never, ever, ever been racist or sexist to anyone (at least, not since I turned 10 or so)

but i guess due to the color of my skin, it's ok? sounds like racism

'but ur white privilege' the middle-class society I grew up in explicitly was nonracist as all fuck, so you're generalizing based on the color of my skin

(all this applies to males / sexism)

'institutional prejudice'

good point, institutions ARE prejudiced against whites, what with the pressure for diversity and all. Oops, were you saying institutions were prejudiced against other races? haha good luck

by the way, the sociological definition of racism is shared by no one. its literally a jedi mind trick, you know what i'm calling you and it's wrong whatever word you use for it. using it is intellectually dishonest

Moved this from an earlier edit

Nobody is gonna make me feel bad for being white/male because that's not something we have to deal with ever*. Doesn't change the fact that dudebros spout some of the most self-delusional tripe you'll ever hear.

If it helps you sleep at night just imagine that I said "a bunch of white guys".

*at least not in the majority of North America/Europe, which coincidentally are the only parts of the world we tend to think exist on a good day.

it's something we have to deal with getting into colleges (women-only scholarships exist, despite there being more women than men in colleges), and getting jobs. not to mention we have to deal with all of you fuckers

oh yeah, good point. being white can hurt you in other countries, too! that's another anti-privilege.

Of course there are annoying people in literally every movement. But how come whenever anything within the ballpark of feminism comes up all the white guys start screaming about feminazi this, tumbler that? Tumbler isn't feminism. It's a web site for posting content you don't own.

I'm honestly not even convinced that #killallmen, cis-scum stuff wasn't entirely invented "ironically" by white bros. Or at least spread for the most part.

since you edited that in after the fact, i've saved it for last...

firstly, this isn't *anything within the ballpark of feminism*. provide me with some GOD DAMN EXAMPLES instead of postulating some overall truth that 'we all know is happening' because I sure as shit don't. i see the word feminazi used when feminists act like nazis, which makes the feminazis and...uh, you get the picture.

tumblr isn't feminism, it's a hotbed for it however, a place where feminism proliferates and a place many feminists use as their platform. since nothing else of worth comes out of tumblr, is it surprising that it gets slapped with that label?

finally, even if it was invented ironically, feminazis seem to have taken up the cause with a fucking vengeance.

but i bet what you're saying is that no actual feminist is doing that, and it's a full fabrication?

see, you have 0 proof of that, so it's just you trying to sweep away blatant evidence by calling it a hoax. on the internet, you can do that to nearly anything, so playing that card is just a way of causing the conversation to degenerate, as both sides can simply declare certain pieces of evidence invalid and both sides will go home feeling like they won, despite not really persuading the other side. this is why i don't play that card, unless there's a lot of evidence AND, AND, crucially AND, i am forced to.

finally

as a male who is also white

race traitor.

also i never claimed to be white, or indeed, ever revealed my race on this site...have a good day

 

[MikeDawg]

If you guys are afraid or have a problem with people making fun of you for being different why give them that personal information. They can't make fun of you for being gay if they don't know you. This isn't real life, it's a pokemon forums. Just keep your shit personal and this would be a lot less of an issue.

Ignoring the blatant victim blaming (non-targets don't have to hide their personal information, yet historically and presently oppressed peoples do?), this attitude disregards the fact that much of the real world is even harsher (and potentially dangerous), so places like Smogon ideally function as a refuge from that. Many active members have at some point dedicated to smogon as an escape (not neccesarily related to discrimination, but identical premise); just look at any of the x postcount staff posts in firebot. This freedom shouldn't be compromised because a couple of dudebros decide that decide the forum's social culture should revolve around ignorant bullying. Since many of the users are desperate to fit in with the cool cliques (keep in mind the average age of the forum members), senseless bandwagoning is literally everywhere, and that very easily leads to isolated mean-spirited comments escalating to legitimate ostracizing. That is perhaps the biggest problem. It's easy to brush off an immature dudebro, but a large group of people? Not so much. Not okay.

 

[Holiday]

Now I feel bad for making this thread.

 

[frysinger]

Ignoring the blatant victim blaming (non-targets don't have to hide their personal information, yet historically and presently oppressed peoples do?), this attitude disregards the fact that much of the real world is even harsher (and potentially dangerous), so places like Smogon ideally function as a refuge from that. Many active members have at some point dedicated to smogon as an escape (not neccesarily related to discrimination, but identical premise); just look at any of the x postcount staff posts in firebot. This freedom shouldn't be compromised because a couple of dudebros decide that decide the forum's social culture should revolve around ignorant bullying. Since many of the users are desperate to fit in with the cool cliques (keep in mind the average age of the forum members), senseless bandwagoning is literally everywhere, and that very easily leads to isolated mean-spirited comments escalating to legitimate ostracizing. That is perhaps the biggest problem. It's easy to brush off an immature dudebro, but a large group of people? Not so much. Not okay.

I really don't know where to start.

Yeah I'm "victim blaming". It's their fault they gave out information that can be used against them. Is it victim blaming when someone gives out a credit card number and someone uses it and I tell them they're dumb for doing that too?

It's a freaking pokemon forum do you really come on here for popularity and to be part of the "cool crowd" of people playing a video game for 10 year olds?

Your freedom isn't being compromised, you're absolutely allowed to release what information you want. Just like how the people are free to use the information you give them. That's how freedom works, it goes both ways.

And you'll find that bandwagonning exists everywhere

 

[MikeDawg]

I really don't know where to start.

Yeah I'm "victim blaming". It's their fault they gave out information that can be used against them. Is it victim blaming when someone gives out a credit card number and someone uses it and I tell them they're dumb for doing that too?

It's a freaking pokemon forum do you really come on here for popularity and to be part of the "cool crowd" of people playing a video game for 10 year olds?

Your freedom isn't being compromised, you're absolutely allowed to release what information you want. Just like how the people are free to use the information you give them. That's how freedom works, it goes both ways.

And you'll find that bandwagonning exists everywhere

"Maybe you shouldn't have been wearing such suggestive clothing", "maybe you shouldn't have been walkin around past dark", "maybe you should have gone to the gym more so that you wouldnt look like such an easy target", "maybe you shouldnt hold hands in public", "maybe you shouldnt have owned a nice car", "maybe you should have hid integral and obvious aprts of your identity", "maybe you _____".

Funilly enough, these all sound like excuses for people to do bad things to people who aren't doing bad things. Freedom works in such a way that you are free to do anything lest you impinge on the freedom of others. Hence why you cant exercise your freedom of expression by screaming down a school hallway, because other people have the more important freedom to have a learning environment. Similarly, your freedom to be a dick is invalid sonce it violates other people's freedoms to, you know, live and express themselves.

I don't come here to be apart of a cool crowd. That is, however, a major ambition of 80% of the userbase. This leads to the disproportionate ampunt of bandwagoning.

 

[frysinger]

There's a difference between me saying "you're asking to get raped if you wear slutty clothing" and saying "you're statistically more likely to get made fun of for being different if they know you're different"