Alright, all this shit has given me a migraine, but I will give this a good faith attempt.
The discussion juoean was opening was not "Oglemi did a bad thing" or "X moderator on Y subforum did a bad thing." Those are political, but I won't delve into it because it's not relevant to the point. The point that juoean was addressing is how this site is structured, including things like the way the hierarchy is designed, the way infractions are designed, who is given power and why, when and why people are stripped of power (something you directly weaponized in a snide comment at me), and how the power is used. All of these are very, very directly political, and they are reflections of how politics operate in the world around you. Do you think the structures on this site arose in a vacuum, springing fully-formed from the mind of chaos or something? They're a reflection of the world around us, past and present, and they can be changed in a way that aligns with a better future.
Again, the point isn't a specific action, it's the structures that enable and encourage these actions, but even putting that aside, people can and do call out ignorance all the time and cause people to reevaluate. I've pointed out ableist/body shaming rhetoric in this thread by people multiple times and caused them to reevaluate, it doesn't have to be just about punishing people till they stop doing the bad thing.
No clue what doxxing refers to here, talking about something problematic someone did isn't doxxing, but again, it's not about specific people, it's about systems. What several people are complaining of now isn't "why is X user not banned?" It's "why are users espousing XYZ views allowed to troll, drop one-liners, and play with rhetoric without engaging while users with ABC views are constantly being deleted and threatened with bans?" The answer to that question in our minds, believe it or not, is not "Oglemi is an evil fascist," it's "the structures and norms of Smogon take heavy influence from the world at large and create heavy pressure toward normalizing neoliberal rhetoric with some (but not too much) social progressivism. The structures of the world at large normalize these positions as reasonable, emotionless/logical, and good while painting views outside of this as extreme, unreasonable, emotionally-charged (which we are taught makes them invalid), and often violent (which again, we are taught inherently makes them bad), and almost anybody in your position is going to default to upholding the norm."
What would be the problem with dealing with something that affects the site and organizing people to create change on it? The site has affected me in quite a number of ways that are extremely politically-charged, like that time I got demodded in October for expressing that Palestinians have the right to violently resist genocide. At the time I said it, this was treated as an incredibly extreme view and the way the site operated at that time had me get backdoored out of of my mod position in ways I don't care to go into here, which was directly an act of racism that would have never happened to a white person. In the year since, people have come around and this is no longer a severely controversial opinion to have. These things matter to people's health and well-being and whether they feel safe or welcome in spaces like this. The fact that the tides of opinion on this issue changed is a big part of the reason I didn't leave this site after that sequence of events and my treatment here (alongside a plethora of difficult life events outside here) led me to a suicide attempt.
I copied a line from the last quote here too because I think I'm seeing where the miscommunication is. We're conflating Smogon-related stuff with drama because it's being viewed as being about individuals, not systems. The thing is, what's a clear distinction to you is not for people who are marginalized in multiple ways. Politics is not just the big national stuff or the big "ism" topics - we are playing out a political struggle right now in this conversation, you and I and anyone else involved. There is nothing about this that is drama to me, it's power relations playing out in a pretty direct way when two trans women with zero power on this site get silently banned and their posts deleted because their opinions are too far outside the acceptable status quo. In juoean's case, I know you think it's about being off-topic, but it isn't; her critique of what is happening is very much grounded in her far-left political stances that she has taken in this thread previously and are fully logically consistent, they're just a direct application of the big broad political beliefs she has on a microcosmic scale like this site. She's the only other person posting in this thread that I actually know beyond a surface level so I feel a bit more confident to speak to her intent/reasoning (still may be off on some things), and the idea of her seeking drama is patently absurd - she is critiquing a structure and could not give less of a shit about what the people in it personally think or what their individual morals are.
I understand that you're very thoroughly embedded in the system of politics happening on Smogon given how long you've been here, but surely you see how there's nothing new under the sun here and all of the politics that happen here reflect reality outside of this site, right? I brought up what happened to me in October as a pretty direct mirror (on a miniature scale) of what happens to those who say anything supportive of Palestine online or offline in other spaces, but it's not just that. Being a woman online fucking sucks, a trans woman even more so - chasers and weird men messaging you to ask "r u a girl???" exist in this space just as much as others. Being an Arab and Palestinian online sucks, because now I'm representing all of my people whenever I say anything and I'm hyperscrutinized on everything I say for potential antisemitism, I'm subject to racist comments and assumptions, and if people agree with me half the time it's just because of my identity and not because of what I'm saying. Being queer online sucks, because I get fetishized and god forbid I ever make a joke about something to do with my identity without cishet men being gross about it, and again I'm expected to represent all trans people and to be okay with invasive questions about my genitalia, HRT, and whatever else. These things play out on Smogon, too, and just reporting every person who does it is not a solution, and talking about it in spaces like this helps well-meaning but ignorant people learn and grow. Despite what a shitshow this thread is, I am sure at least one person out there has learned something new and useful from reading some of the excellent posts here by people like Martin or juoean or lilyhollow (who is still getting unfairly maligned and should also be allowed to post again, though I'm sure saying that will do me no favors). The pattern of behavior here of banning or threatening to ban people then flat out saying untrue things about them and misrepresenting them, even when evidence exists to the contrary, does not make me feel safe, it feels like a replication of the kind of violence and censorship I get in the offline world, and that's worth talking about and very directly political.
There was no victim complex behind it at all. I simply said that I can't leave my personal stuff behind at the door as "not political" or "not relevant to how this space functions" - I mean, you can go back a few pages and see people discussing my identity as essentially a basis for whether or not my feelings and ideas are valid, and I wasn't the one to bring it up. I'm still extremely confused why your response was "back in my day I fought for the rights of women and gays" - I truly do not understand what that has to do with me saying "I cannot check my identities and life experience at the door" and quite honestly being confused that you apparently can. I have no clue what any of your identities are, but the fact that you do see them as separable from your politics does say something - I have never at any point in my life been able to conceptualize them as separate entities. 9/11 happened when I was 5 years old, and since then the personal has been political for me.
As mentioned, juoean's the only person here I actually know or interact with at all, and that's mostly because we both play RBY. We never coordinated a single thing in here, actually, because believe it or not this place doesn't live rent free in my head - the closest thing to coordination was me asking her about the DMs because I was curious how it actually went down. I've talked to lilyhollow about three times total, with only one of those conversations even happening after this thread was made, and everyone else in this thread just about never. I would prefer to not think about this thread at all so long as it continues existing under these specific rules and norms, and I would have continued avoiding this thread like the plague if not for the blatant fascist apologia that was happening and the continued removal of people who combatted such apologia.
Frankly, I don't think you can say I have a victim complex if you say such conspiratorial things.
Did you read the rest of what she said? I get that she can be hard to parse and I have 2.5 years of learning to parse her communication since we're both active in RBY, but it's really clear that she agreed that that specific instance maybe was not the time and place but continued to ask clarifying questions on why something that is explicitly political is not allowed in the politics space. The stance I've gleaned from your last post is that Smogon stuff either isn't really politics or isn't the kind of politics you want in this thread, but I'm continuing to not understand which of those it actually is, why that is, or how you think people are meant to separate the personal from the political and the macrocosmic from the microcosmic. She basically wrote multiple pages delineating her thinking and trying to understand how you draw your lines with such murky terms as "political," ended on a note of "I don't get your overall thinking but I can understand if this one instance was out of place," got no response, and got quietly kicked out of the thread when she brought something up that she very much thought was the correct time and place and very well articulated. From what I'm aware of, lilyhollow also got booted with no warning from what was, as I recall, basically a retroactive rule change, similarly with no warning nor even being informed that she was banned. This was not the case for boo, who I remember got put on ICBB after like the 15th time he attacked someone, who got warned multiple times publicly, and who I'd bet any amount of money got multiple DM conversations before getting banned (and if he did, good, you should be able to communicate why you are banning someone).
Anyway, returning to juoean, characterizing her as "expressing no interest" in using the thread other than talking about moderation or "white knighting" me (lol) then saying here that she "seemed agreeable" are directly contradictory statements, so which is it? Did she express to you that she has zero interest in participating, or did you just quickly scan over what she said, fail to parse it, assume she said "oops I fucked up I will never talk about Smogon in the politics thread again," then ban her when she talked about it again? Speaking of juoean not participating in the thread except to talk about moderation, which is the claim you made in response to me, what are these posts linked below? She's literally one of the best contributors to this thread by a mile, even if you just isolate it down to grand-scale real-world politics!
This is like, maybe a third of her non-deleted posts, btw, it's not like I'm just posting everything she's ever said here. It honestly seems like you just have such a chip on your shoulder about criticism that you've retroactively ascribed her like, 100 other posts in this thread as being critical of you when the reality is like 5 have been critical of moderation and exactly zero have been personal attacks on you, just like how you got really really incensed by my post that started this conversation topic and started personally attacking me and repeatedly insisting I have a personal issue with you and awyp when I don't even know who you are and haven't talked about awyp once except to respond to you randomly saying I have an issue with them.
NO ONE SAW THAT
