Comment by Mezzie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mezzie | Hacker News Reader

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The hilarious thing is that neither side are good or nice people. I've been queer online longer than keffels has been alive and I've been anti-censorship the entire time partially because I remember when people were trying to censor LGBT+ information. This is like my two mentally ill parents fighting.

One side is going to call me a dyke, carpet-muncher, and link the fact that I like women to being a child groomer.

The other is going to call me transphobic, a bitch, a cunt, and a TERF for not wanting to suck dick/not wanting all queer spaces to be about trans issues 24/7.

> And if I am brutally honest, from the threads I have seen, the people they make posts about are not people I would want to associate myself with or anywhere near young members of my family.

This is one thing that pisses me off about people like keffals. When I was a baby queer in the mid 90s, it was functionally impossible to talk to gay adults in person at all because the AIDS epidemic had convinced society that all gay people were dangerous degenerates. The Internet changed that. Since I had WWW access, I could talk to gay adults and realize that a.) you could find love being gay, b.) get advice on what to avoid and how to stay safe, and c.) start to plan out a gay life for myself. Nobody was ever inappropriate with me. (That was always straight men...) Keffels et al. are dragging us right back so gay adults can't support gay kids that are genuinely in danger or suicidal. Thanks, guys.

At this point, parents are RIGHT to be leery of the most vocal parts of the queer community, because we refuse to eject predators.

> At this point, parents are RIGHT to be leery of the most vocal parts of the queer community, because we refuse to eject predators.

This is something I feel too, having seen some of the most fringe communities on the internet (a good example is furrys) and how they act predatory around children. I am afraid to say it to any of my friends, colleagues, or even my partner as I feel like I would be seen as bigoted.

I think some people don't see how some behaviour is completely inappropriate (like that Reddit moderator who had a parent that raped children in the attic and, thanks to Kiwifarms, you saw how they were also very predatory). It seems that as soon as you say this about someone that is trans though, you are a labeled a massive bigot.

What annoys me is this is the exact behaviour that turns people into right wing lunatics. It provides the fuel for their conspiracies/hoaxes/insane ramblings.

There's multiple layers to it.

Those people are sometimes right that an INORDINATE amount of moral panic are focused on LGBT+ people. (Again, all the people who tried to prey on me were straight dudes and I think the percentage of predators are roughly equal between straight cis guys and trans women).

On the other hand, most of them are so urban and online that they can't conceive of trying to navigate this space as a normie parent. Most normal parents are AWARE that strange men are potential dangers to female people and teach us about it accordingly so we're wary, we can go to them or teachers if someone DOES prey on us, etc. (I see a lot of warnings to teen girls that 'that guy doesn't think he's mature for your age, he just wants someone easy to manipulate').

But most normal parents aren't plugged into the queer community enough to teach their kids how to avoid predators in those spaces. And most of those parents just have too much else going on to learn - if somebody is working 50 hours a week with 3 kids, they don't have TIME to keep up with the drama of who was revealed to be a predator this week. And the instinct to not take chances when it comes to one's child's safety makes sense.

> What annoys me is this is the exact behaviour that turns people into right wing lunatics. It provides the fuel for their conspiracies/hoaxes/insane ramblings.

One of the reasons I made an account for lurking was to watch and see where waves of newbies arrived to KF from and why. There are a lot of participants who ended up there after what they wanted to discuss was completely banned from the other places they talked about things online.

> It seems that as soon as you say this about someone that is trans though, you are a labeled a massive bigot.

The lack of tolerance for dissent or deviation bothers me. In a lot of places, you can't even have procedural or intellectual disagreements about trans orthodoxy, or discuss how some of the rhetoric is hurtful to other members of the community. It's very 'there is one way to be and only one way'. Very similar to conservative Christian spaces. (My family is half conservative Christians, so I'm familiar with THEIR filter bubbles too).

> Again, all the people who tried to prey on me were straight dudes and I think the percentage of predators are roughly equal between straight cis guys and trans women

Wait, so you're saying 100% of the people who tried to prey on you were straight cis guys, and 0% were trans women? But you're further saying that you think trans women are as likely to be predators as straight men? Doesn't your own experience contradict that?

You're upset that the trans women posted on KF are going to make the public think all LGBT people are groomers. I'm upset that they'll make the public think all trans women are groomers. And comments like yours feel like punching down, frankly.

> Wait, so you're saying 100% of the people who tried to prey on you were straight cis guys, and 0% were trans women?

Isn't it a numbers game? ~50% of the population are men. You see thousands of men a day (if you don't WFH). I think the occurrence rate of trans people (in real life) is vastly smaller.

I think it is entirely reasonable for the likelihood of predation to be the same, but not experience any from one group that is vastly under-represented in daily life.

Yeah, this basically.

Trans people weren't a substantial portion of queer spaces until the mid to late 2010s, and I'm talking about the 90s and early-mid 00s. There was also more of a focus on passing/not talking about it + it was more common to be in the closet, so even if I had been acquainted with trans women, I probably wouldn't have known.

On the other hand, I've seen entitled behavior from trans women in lesbian spaces post 2015ish. It just hasn't been directed at me personally because predators choose their victims based on vulnerability and I aged out of that. Not many sexual predators go after men or women OLDER than they are.

The focus on passing/not talking about it might return. I'm fortunate enough to pass. The past few years I felt like I ought to be out, irl, to dispel the negative stereotypes my conservative acquaintances were hearing about. But things are getting increasingly ugly, and I get treated better when people don't know I'm trans, so I've stopped speaking up.

I understand.

I'm growing my hair out and have started painted my nails and wearing dresses again, and the binders have gone back in a box. (I'm not trans but I like male clothing).

Likewise, I WANT to be out, especially since a lot of younger queer people are so very '!' when they see stable adult queer people, but unfortunately, the in-fighting means not only can I not trust the general populace to be chill, I can't trust my fellow queers not to throw me under the bus for being too 'privileged'. (Even though I'm poor and disabled, because all that matters is cis + white.)

Good point, actually, I forgot about prior probability. I concede the logic of your point.

Personally, I am a trans woman, so my social circle includes many more trans women than the average. And I am not a predator, and I don't know any predators personally, so I conclude we're not likely to be predators. But I'm just a random person on the internet, so you can't know if I'm telling the truth, or even if I am, whether my circle of friends is a representative sample of trans women in general.

I do find it distressing how the worst examples of my group are held up as typical of us, though.

> I do find it distressing how the worst examples of my group are held up as typical of us, though.

I agree! Which is why I made the point about straight men also being gross and my point that people should be leery because we (queer people) are doing a bad job ejecting predators and holding them accountable, not because we're any worse. And that's not just about trans women: There's a large problem with some cis gay men sexualizing teenage boys, and I will absolutely throw hands over that, too.

Also, since you are not a predator, I assume you wouldn't want to be friends with predators and would not support groups with predators in them, so predatory trans women probably don't want to be friends with you bc you'd call their asses out. Predators seek out friends and spaces that allow them to prey on people. You not having predatory friends just says your circle is not a safe space for predators which is good.

There is also the uncomfortable fact that you may not know. A lot of abusers/predators act like good people outside of their abuse victims. Nobody in my communities would have known or suspected my parents were abusive, for example. Or how many people find out suddenly that their dad/grandpa/uncle are creeps.

I just point this out because a loooot of cis straight guys say the same thing to girls and women: "Well, none of MY friends sexually harrass/rape/assault people, so it can't be that common!" Except that it is.

I think there are a lot of variables that go into understanding these things, and that non-queer people who are suddenly thrust into it once their kids come out have no way to orient themselves, which is WHY we should be more diligent.

> There is also the uncomfortable fact that you may not know. A lot of abusers/predators act like good people outside of their abuse victims

Please be careful about spreading this particular fact. It's unfortunately true, but not everybody has what it takes to handle it responsibly.

It makes people suspicious and paranoid, which leaves them susceptible to manipulation by the actual threats among us.

Yes. I follow/consume media from roughly 400-1000 people on the internet. I don't know any trans people in real life but probably a good dozen or two dozen of these people I follow online (tech, art, etc. you know, normal stuff people like) are trans. That's quite statistically significant, I've only (knowingly) met 1 trans person in real life but at least 4% of the people I follow online are trans. Nearly all of them being trans women.

I think trans people get a shit time online because as soon as the topic enters anything to do with activism it is only the loudest and most extreme voices that are amplified.

This is a shame for all of the people within LGBT who these voices drown out, including other trans people.

Girls are mostly preyed on when they're younger than 20- and mostly when they're in middle and high school. At the time, out trans women were rare enough that no, none of the people who tried to prey on me identified as such. I haven't looked everyone up to make sure that they still identify that way, obviously.

So there's a confounding variable. If 5% of straight cis men and 5% of trans women are predators but I only meet 2 trans women, odds are I'm never going to run into a trans woman predator. Whereas being a geek in the 90s and 00s I was SURROUNDED by cis straight dudes. It was very common for me to be the only female in the room, or there to be less than 5 of us at a computer show.

(I also think women and trans men are about as likely to be predators but that they show/act it out differently. I tend to think assholeishness/predatory natures are fairly equally dispersed across different identity groups but expressed differently due to socio-cultural factors.)

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