It is still racist even if you're quoting someone else's racism and the racism is window dressing for a joke about having a small penis, the "it's okay to tell a racist joke because I am not racist" justification may have some flaws in its logic that the shrewder users of this internet web forum might be able to discern

I looked through my moderation history and yeah I gotta cut it out with the edginess. Mild instances of misogyny and sexual humor in comms where it's not allowed, etc. This is not a web forum for the podcast with the laughing Greek man. It's a web forum for the podcast about the dark cowboy who doesn't get in helicopters.

I apologize to those whom I have offended or made uncomfortable and wish to share the wisdom that sometimes it is indeed good to log off and have a think

I made an off-color comment I fully regret intending to just target chuds, and had some VERY bad implications like something straight out of Idiocracy. Sorry to anyone who read that and apologies to the mods.

Yeah, that’s it. That was dickish of me, and I know misanthropy’s a real problem of mine.

Hi all, hoping you're having a good day.

I'm currently towards the end of my undergrad journey in philosophy and I'm moving towards a masters in political science. It's kind of difficult to find professors that are interested in this thing of ours, but I managed to survive in that ideologically hostile environment. I'm currently on a commission to review the undergrad program and I'm sitting on the board with both professors and some studen colleagues of mine. We had our third encounter this past week and I've been confronted with a personnal dilemma that I wanted to ask the community about.

Since I'm mostly a masc, cishet presenting guy, I try to be careful in spaces that are meant to be safe for people who want to study and do their own thing. Gender/race/decolonial studies are very popular topics inside of the department where I study, but it's also firmly ideologically commited to the analytic tradition of the anglo-saxon world and as such, it's extremely liberal. We don't even have a course on Marx or any authors that are of the marxist tradition. The board mainly wants to introduce more diversity in the course offers, and I'm all for that, but of all the intersting women authors, she proposed Hannah Arendt. I've been kind of shocked by that proposal since Arendt isn't exactly a feminist or a leftist, it feels like they did the meme. I decided to say something and I said that it's important to note the contribution of the marxist tradition in the feminist struggle. I said that the Venn Diagram between feminists and marxists overlaps in kind of a big way and I made a point that tokenising diversity while ignoring the overarching ideology that made these movements successful is not a good approach. I got a weird reaction and it kind of reaffirmed a lot of what I've felt in terms of ideological alienation inside of that department.

So yeah, I'd like some feedback from the community. Since this department is very into feminist theory and has all types of radfems that vary in terms of political allegence, it's hard to bring up such things. I've picked up some hostile vibes from two of the women inside that board since then and it's not the first time that my leftist speeches kind of throw off women when they feel I'm mansplaning or something. I can totally understand women wanting spaces and being so-fucking-tired of dumbass trash men. Y'all go full volcel and queen off I support you 100%. But like, can we also stop ignoring history and the immense contribution of the leftist project to feminist emancipation? This is the education we give forward to the next generation and I'm not sure more racist-warlike-women in philosophy is exactly the thing that will solve those inequalities they pretend to care so much about.

Had some time to sleep on it and think in regards to the he/him situation and menby on hb saying some shitty things. While I stand by my original statement that blanket blaming all men as bad is reactionary I crossed the line a bit in some statements that could be interpreted instead as "not all men".

That was not my intent and I'm sorry if anyone thought otherwise. My main point last night I was trying to make was that assigning blanket blame to a set of pronouns for bad actors isn't healthy and I think most would agree.

Thanks for putting up with me and thanks to the users who checked me.

this is probably going to be a whole lot of rambling stream of consciousness kinda stuff, but please bear with me. also, this isn't in connection to any public mess; i want this to be my first thread on the site, to ensure that i won't forget or try to deny accountability.

i've found myself locked in this vicious spiral of breaching spaces that are ostensibly welcoming to minorities, only to find out that it's all vibes-based, to the extent of making these spaces unsafe in general, but even more frustratingly, leaving the very groups they're supposedly protecting especially vulnerable. i say minorities, but i need you to understand that i am very much white. more specifically, from a very white country, brought up in an environment where not participating in racism would lead to your being ostracised. while this was always unacceptable to me, being perceived as some kind of lunatic extremist in such environments says much more about the culture you're immersed in than it does about you. i've finally realised my dream of leaving this place behind, but i suspect it's going to take a whole lot longer for the place to leave me.

i'm also predisposed to certain things that can easily cloud my judgment in various ways. it's much more manageable than it used to be, but i've long since accepted that it's something i'm going to have to be keeping in check for the rest of my life. however. i believe i've been stumbling a bit as of late. there's certainly no shortage of libs / wreckers / fascists / what have you, but i believe all of this stuff i've been laying out thus far has merged into this colossal monstrosity in my head. it seems to me i'm on the verge of being carried away too far, too close for comfort to becoming someone whose "righteous fury" will cause them to confidently speak out of turn, achieving the exact opposite of what i set out to do. but if there's something i've learned in this life, it's that the learning is never over; you're not going to be any more of a finished product sitting on your porch in your 70's than you were celebrating your 18th birthday. it's just a matter of priorities.

thank you for your time i can't exactly stop anyone from commenting on this, but i'd like to please ask you to refrain from doing so. either way, i'll have to be logging off under the assumption that my request will be granted, as otherwise i'm afraid i'll be fixating on the what-ifs, thus taking a further toll on my already somewhat fraught mental state & making it extremely difficult for me to focus on the work that needs to be done.

First of all, let it be said that I'm sorry for causing harm and distress to all the femmes on Hexbear. The holiday season is very stressful (I'm dealing with a bunch of real-life bullshit myself), and I'm sorry for ruining what should be a place to escape from the bullshit. I hope this apology and explanation would restore at least some faith in this website's ability to be a safe space for members of marginalized communities.

Second of all, let it be said that I consider incels to be nothing more than another type of reactionary like the racist and the transphobe that must be crushed. They are the enemy, and for the sake of undying love for marginalized communities and for the sake of undying hatred of all those who chose to humiliate, exploit, bring harm, or attempt to destroy those communities, we must bring ruin to the wretched enemy by any means necessary.

Third of all, let it be said that I flipped-flopped between posting some self-indulgent whiny bullshit, posting some juvenile "fuck the admins the admins can kiss my ass" temper tantrum, and not bothering with this apology and fucking off, but after seeing the other "self-crit" where OP just spend the whole tl;dr post defending his actions and yet another dumpster fire thread full of cringey incels by people who learned absolutely nothing from the previous dumpster fire thread full of cringey incels, I realized that I needed to pull my head from my ass and stop centering myself. I was falling into the trap of individualism, to view my temp banning purely from the perspective of me as a individual who got temp banned by an individual admin. But the temp banning was given within a particular social context and within a particular collective body. The real question is not whether the temp ban was justified from an individual perspective, but what does this collective body called Hexbear need and what actions should I pursue for the sake of fulfilling that collective need. The answer becomes crystal clear when I discarded individualism: I ought to draft a post in /c/selfcrit for the sake of supporting the admins' drive to rid this collective body of incels-in-hiding and for the sake of hopefully being a better example of what a /c/selfcrit post ought to look like.

So why did I made those two posts? Essentially, I wrote those two posts in a very poorly executed and absolutely terribly timed attempt at understanding and feeling compassion for incels. I was in "bouncing off ideas with other people and throw shit at a wall to see what sticks" mode, which makes me a lot more careless in how I post, careless in the sense of not paying attention to tone, not paying attention to the audience, and just throwing out half-baked ideas that I sorta but not really believe but that I throw out there just to see how people would react. One fundamental problem is that I didn't specify that I was mostly describing the wretched state of the incel from the perspective of the incel, which was made even worse by me using the "reaching out to a person stuck in a hole" metaphor and virtually skimming past the 100+ comments where the incels were showing their asses. Due to my poorly written and completely untimely comments, people in the thread thought I was like the other cringey incels there advocating for some shitty Incel Outreach Program^TM^.

Those comments were a failed attempt in understanding their degradation towards reactionary politics from their perspective. From the perspective of the incel, their salvation lies in some fuckable mom who's willing to provide hundreds of thousands of hours of free emotional labor as a therapist, but because women are naturally repulsed by those pathetic incels on top of not wanting to risk dying from a murder-suicide wrought by those incels, incels will never find the salvation that they so desperately want but absolutely do not deserve. Denied of their undeserved salvation, they will lash out even further and sink even further into reactionary politics, where they can be recruited by fascists and slotted into organized fascist formations. Therefore, femmes and nonmascs in general ought to organize their own formations. They should not focus on "converting" incels but instead focus on building collective power that renders incels powerless so that incels can do nothing but seethe in their little corner. Needless to say, the fact that I have to completely rewrite those comments meant those comments were trash and should have never been posted. It's one thing to shit out some half-baked poorly thought out unhinged rant about the best Fallout game (it's FO1 btw), but it's completely irresponsible to have the same cavalier attitude about a current social crisis that's happening in real life and on Hexbear.

As a final point, why did I feel that reactionaries like incels deserve compassion? I feel that we must have complete compassion for the enemy and incels are no exception. We must be able to truly feel what the enemy is feeling, to truly understand on an emotional level the enemy's thoughts, the enemy's dreams, the enemy's desires, and the enemy's fears. The vast majority of people will read this and say that I'm advocating for us to be like Jesus who turned the other cheek. No, I'm not advocating compassion for the enemy from the perspective of Jesus and Christianity, but from the perspective of the Art of War. We must understand how the enemy feels so that when we stick the knife, we'll stick it where it really hurts. We must understand the enemy's dreams so that when we crush them before their eyes, we'll understand that their spirit has been broken and more vulnerable to even more attack. We must understand the enemy's fear so that we can become even greater than their worst nightmare. This is the spirit in which I made those comments.

Unfortunately, virtually no one here would have picked up that, and without this understanding, it just becomes fascist apologia. If I say something like "That fascist has a broken leg. Look at how he's almost completely immobile. Imagine the pain and sense of helplessness he feels right now. Is there anything we can do?" the vast majority of people wouldn't pick up my implied response: "He's almost completely immobile, so he can't run and defend himself when we go and break his other leg, rendering him completely immobile. See how much pain and helplessness he feels right now? Good, now he'll feel even more pain and helplessness when we break his other leg, and since he'll be in a spiral of pain and helplessness after we break both his legs, we might as well break both of his arms as well. Don't want your limbs broken? Don't be a fucking fascist." Given that the vast majority of people wouldn't pick up this point whatsoever, it's my responsibility to clearly state this in order to avoid misunderstanding and hopefully push people to internalize approaching the enemy in this way.

Regardless of my intentions and sincere beliefs, I became part of the fucking problem, and I hope that with this apology and explanation, I would make up some of the harm that I have caused.

I made a joke about him having matching butt plugs with Nick Fuentes and how gross that is. My cishet ass didn't realize how wildly offensive that is to lgbtq comrades and I feel like a total shit for doing it so I want to apologize to the community and promise I took it to heart and will self crit on doing better.

Love y'all

I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.

I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven't trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on "food for thought" things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren't downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.

I foolishly upvoted this comment as a "food for thought" comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.

I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I'm really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.

you didn't know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I'm just really, really sorry.

as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don't feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I'm sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn't that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.

I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.

I'm very, very, very sorry.

please heap your scorn and excoriation here.

Hey everybody!

The site has been on fire for a few days now in the aftermath of the dunk/dredge changes. While I was not deeply involved in the process of that decision, I will admit that I was one of the moderators that signed off on that decision in the end, with my belief, or hope, being that it would foster a healthier site culture. I was ultimately neutral on whether a third comm alongside c/gossip and c/counterpropaganda should be created, as I wanted to see how the situation would develop and whether it would be ultimately necessary. This was not just my own isolated belief - other moderators who pay closer attention to the broader site culture than I do (as I stay in the news mega 95% of the time) were adamant that these changes be made, as they have repeatedly said that comrades from certain minority groups have been turned off from joining or staying on the site due to the site culture. I am being purposefully vague about this in order to maintain their anonymity and prevent any brigading.

I regret several of the actions that took place after I posted my approval for the idea.

Firstly, and most obviously, there should have been some kind of democratic input. Even merely asking the community what they thought of the issue and whether there were other potential avenues to fixing the problems should have been what happened, rather than immediately jumping to locking down two highly popular comms and then making a post about whether you all think it's a good idea. I should have spoke up about this prior to it going out. Carcosa saying that the decision was not merely an admin decree is entirely true, there was moderator input.

Secondly, we should have more closely vetted and better communicated the statements made, both those made by us through Carcosa, and also my own. I wrote a comment in the original announcement post that sought to explain the situation, and a user brought up my wording around the use of "gossip" as a comm name. I apologize, as I depicted the arguments as to why it was chosen (and again, I did not suggest "gossip" originally) as if I thought that gossip was a) feminine and b) therefore frivolous. I did not intend to portray it this way and don't believe that at all - in fact, users in the mod chat have pointed out that "gossip", far from being frivolous, can be a way for people dismissed by systems of power to protect each other.

Thirdly, the whole business with the bans and tempbans was entirely unnecessary in 99% of cases and was immature and vindictive, and just spread further confusion in an already confusing time. And Alaskaball banning themself didn't really help. As a moderator and not an admin, I was not part of the decision for this part at all, but I still feel like addressing it.

For those who may be worried, I can confirm that the Hexbear moderator chat is not a place dominated by a clique of hostile authoritarian mods or anything like that. It is made up of largely LGBTQIA+ people who want to make the site a better place. I do hope that improvements can be made to the process to further formalize it and entrench more democratic decision-making, but it is also true that Hexbear is a relatively small online forum and that the moderators are volunteers, and so it can be difficult to properly coordinate things in a timely manner. Things sometimes get rushed through, unfortunately.

I get that there is considerable frustration about the lack of real specifics of what we were even complaining about and that many people just want a straight answer, but as I said before, I will maintain vagueness on this point because their anonymity is not mine to take away and I greatly respect them. I hope there is more transparency on the whole issue from this point onwards, but I cannot be the one to grant it.

I do not plan to leave the site. I will - if the admins and moderators allow it - keep posting the news megathreads and generally being a presence on here.

Semper post,

72T

(as of posting this, I am going to sleep, so I won't be around to respond for a while)

I think that this would be the perfect post to get this community going.

Under my direction as admin of Hexbear I restructured the internal admin/moderator order. A large part of this restructure was to shift the majority of the site decisions to a larger collective of people dedicated to the site.

At the time I also reorganized the new moderator protocol to make it easier for new mods to be added and for those mods to have the power to appoint mods at will based on a vouching system. Only moderators who submitted an application were invited to an off-site moderation discussion room.

This room is where the proposals for the site were made, discussed, and voted upon. After a proposal was finished I would often write up a statement and post it for feedback and approval so that the entire process from proposal to post had as many opportunities as possible for the moderators to give input or present changes.

In light of the most recent decision I am taking responsibility as I established this decision-making process, I drafted the announcement post, I collected and edited the followup statement.

It is clear to me that I was mistaken in the effectiveness of this approach and that a more transparent approach is needed. As well as, creating more opportunities for user input need to be added.

I am more than happy to return to the admin team if the users want me to do so, but I am stepping away from all decision-making at an admin level. I will continue to be involved with Hexbear in any capacity I can and will not be leaving as a user.

Chapo.chat/Hexbear was never my project nor did I ever intend to take it over. My hope was to keep it going another day so the people that spent hours developing, coordinating, organizing, and educating on this platform could continue to do so. Everyone that has donated to mutual aid, organized fundraisers, wrote effort posts, and bad posts have done just as much if not more than I have.

I have faith in all the other admins both new and old to keep this place going and while I am happy to give my thoughts on any aspect of the site I think the best way to self-crit is to accept my mistakes and to let the other admins take the lead.

Thank you to everyone who has sent me kind comments and to those that continuously strive to make this place better.