More Flies With Honey Than Vinegar

[qreeves]

Alright, so things have happened recently which has resulted in an upheaval within the community. Many people have left making assumptions along the way. Let's start with the uncomfortable but most necessary information first.

I was raised by a mostly-single mother who had serious mental health issues, and a sometimes-step-father who wanted nothing to do with me. My mother was sexually abused, most importantly by my father who was my grandmother's de-facto husband at the time. My entire family treated me differently to everyone else because I was a constant reminder of what he did. I was never good enough for anyone.

I, myself, was sexually abused as a child. Not just by one person, no, that would be easy to dismiss as a single bad egg. I had multiple people of both genders take advantage of me. Brother-uncle, sister-aunt, random people who caught me walking home from school, and people who were supposedly friends. Yes, with that history in life, they really were both brother/sister and uncle/aunt at the same time. That alone is enough to warp your mind.

I had a close relationship with my mother, and she dumped a lot of things on me that a child shouldn't really know. When she was in a relationship I was tossed aside, and when she wasn't I was there to pick up the pieces and look after her and my three siblings alone. I had to deal with my own problems and everyone else's at the same time. I had to be an adult before I was even given a chance to be a kid.

When all this happens in your early childhood, you wonder if something about you is the problem. I was left confused about who and what I was, what was really "normal", and if I was even worth anything to anyone. I didn't know if I was supposed to be gay or straight, a boy or a girl, and as such I possessed qualities of everything all at once. I suffered from both sexual and gender dysphoria.

In the 90's, none of this was something you could talk about openly, or get advice from a community of peers for. I was left juggling being a parent to my parent and siblings with my own inner turmoil that I had to figure out all alone. I was condemned for "not being a real man" because I let my empathy and emotions dictate my actions.

I questioned both my gender and my sexuality for most of my life. I still question it. The only thing that has ever given me a ray of hope is meeting my wife, Cinta. Where I am an effeminate guy, she is an emasculate girl. We complement each other in a way that the normal stereotypes never accounted for, and that I never believed could exist.

My experiences have shaped the type of community I created. I wanted to enshrine values that I believed were important; love, equality, non-discrimination. I espoused our community as a "safe space", and I tried to never add any caveats to that. I have defended the rights of the LGBTQI+ community to exist, and be a part of a community that wouldn't treat them differently from anyone else. I truly believed it was the right thing to do. I don't care if people like me or hate me. I've always been a divisive person, and have made it a point to have my principles be what guide my actions in life.

With that out of the way, I turn to the recent events in the Discord server. My encouragement of these values I have mentioned above had created a situation where the dominant conversation became focused on transgender topics. The problem is that these people were not the majority of those who inhabited the community. Many of us became uncomfortable participating in conversations because of a minority that would always turn the subject toward something transgender related.

I need to be clear here, this isn't because we aren't tolerant of people who make that choice in life. Most of us don't care what people are, only who they are. In the end everyone is just text on a screen, effectively genderless. The problem became one where it was impossible to ask for this minority to just participate in the community in a regular manner without transgender-ism being the main topic or the thing that distinguished one from everyone else. Everyone who had an opinion that differed from these people were either drowned out, or too scared to voice their concerns. As I would find out, this is with good reason.

In an effort to reorient the community to something more in line with what would benefit everyone, I created a separate channel to discuss everything LGBTQI+ related. I felt that this would give these people a better place to have these discussions without the topic dominating the whole community. It is the same thing I have done for any other topic which interfered with normal conversation or operation of the server. To me, this was applying an equal measure that I would do for anything else. It was also a test to determine the true feelings/intentions of everyone.

I created this channel setup before going to bed, and by the time I woke up there were already threats of going public about my "transphobia". It was only one person, so I figured it was an anomaly and told them that if shoving transgender-ism down everyone's throat was more important than being a productive member of the community, then I didn't want them around. This turned out to be a slippery slope of far-left neo-liberalism that I had never experienced before in my life.

Over the following day I had multiple people attack me for my stance on the issue. I tried over and over to make it clear that I had no problem with transgender people, that I identified and sympathised with those exact issues. What I had a problem with was that these people aren't asking for equality, they're asking to be treated differently from everyone else, more favourably. Some of them truly think that they're better than the gender they transitioned to because they chose it, or that they're entitled to get everything that they want because of the hardships involved with being transgender.

Let me be clear here. I do not consider people with this behaviour to have "true" transgender qualities. They are what I like to think of as "trans-trenders". They are in it to be cool, or special, or whatever it is that attracts people to the latest trend of changing your gender. They flaunt the fact they have transitioned rather than wanting to leave behind their old life and start a new one, where they are only considered to be the gender they transitioned to. In my eyes this is subverting a real issue people go through. Having gender dysphoria is not fun, it is not easy, and it is certainly not something that those who really have it would actively make the main topic of discussion all the time.

Despite this, I have been labelled transphobic. The more I learn about this the more I start to see that this is even happening to real transgender people, some who pioneered the rights that they all now enjoy. They are vilified by a subset that want it to be cool. They are disgusted by what people have done to appropriate the identity for their own benefit. To be honest, I am disgusted as well. I tried to meet the needs of everyone in my community and became the object of hatred by a vocal minority.

I say all this because everyone else is too afraid to. I tried to be reasonable and speak openly about my own experiences on this subject so that others can understand and learn from it. Now, because I stood up for true equality and understanding from all types of people, not just one subset, I continued to be met with accusations of being transphobic. I get told that my own experience is worth less than that of other people because I made a choice not to transition.

My community is about real equality, one where there is no conflict in race, religion, gender, sexuality, or whatever. It is not a platform for your own popularity or some missionary-like attitude where you have to convert everyone. You are never going to convince everyone, and you need to understand that everyone has their own opinions which they are entitled to. That does not mean I approve of vilifying someone else based on these characteristics, but that also goes both ways. We all have to live on this planet together, and the more you attack people who have supported your right to exist because their stance on the subject is different to yours, the more you're going to divide the community into black and white categories.

I considered myself pretty liberal and tolerant, but I've certainly developed a distaste for this topic after what I've been subjected to. Nobody has the right to attack anyone else, ever. Just because you have a quality that you want protected or promoted does not make you more important than everyone else. It does not make your rights greater than those of other people. In the end, this is my community, I make the decisions, and I don't have to answer to anyone. If you don't like it, then leave. If you try to poison my community you will be met with the appropriate measures that I bring down on anyone who endangers what I built.

TLDR: None of this is equality, it is going in the total opposite direction - where you devalue everyone else for your own selfish desires - and I will absolutely not, under no circumstances, tolerate that in my community.