User:Tamzin/userpage/special/not just disappointed

There's always the temptation, with these things, to compare to majority or plurality groups. "What if someone said this about cis people?" "What if someone said this about white people?" But it doesn't work that way. I could say "Ban all cis people from Wikipedia", and that would be disruptive and offensive, but it wouldn't put cis people in (reasonable) fear. There is no plausible future where Wikipedia imposes discriminatory policies against cis people, or even makes it permissible to advocate for such. (And if you think there is, put the computer down and step slowly away from whatever sites you've been on.) For trans people this fear exists, and its reasonableness is every time the community decides our persecutors and would-be persecutors are the real victims here.

51 out of 108 (plus 8 neutral). Remember that number, 51. Don't remember the names. Some reasons were better than others, and people change, and this isn't an individual problem. But remember the number. This is a collective problem. Our community still sees trans editors' right to edit in peace as lesser. As something negotiable, something to wikilawyer over. This is not a new problem. On the individual level, it's often not even one driven by malice. Since I became an admin, I've had to convince multiple experienced, reasonable, kind-hearted administrators that various transphobic attacks were worthy of administrative intervention, in contexts where I would not have had to for other groups. Much of the Anglosphere (in particular one culturally influential island) sees trans people as a political issue first and a group of people second—and thus using Wikipedia to agitate against us is the lesser offense of FORUM-ing, and not what it really is: hate speech and perversion of Wikipedia's purpose.

I'm not just disappointed in our community. I'm disgusted with our community. Not any one editor of 51, not even the 51 collectively, but our community as a whole. A community that has seen fit to tell trans editors that our safety and wellbeing is, at best, an issue on par with making sure a single editor doesn't feel too called-out for engaging in hate speech against us.

I want a way to make people understand. But I still don't know how to get past that issue that you either know what it's like to reasonably fear your own persecution, or you don't. And if you don't, yeah, maybe this seems overblown or a waste of time. But consider perhaps the precedent you tend toward setting when you say that someone editing with an overtly transphobic agenda is welcome here as long as they don't touch gender-related pages, or even, for some, without that requirement. Still free to drive away trans and nonbinary editors in any number of ways, so long as they can find a single admin to unblock them in a year or two once people have forgotten.

Naïveté. I'd like to chalk a lot of it up to naïveté. But I'll close with a story: Some years ago (row 364 [.xlsx]), I was sitting in a bus shelter with my partner; this was before my transition but from attire we were both very obviously queer. A teenager biked up to us and started hurling slurs at us. When he failed to cow either of us, he threatened to shoot me, and reached behind his back. For an interminable moment I tracked his hands, matched his footwork, and waited to see if he'd reach the point where I would be forced to strike first. He made two half-steps backwards, found himself off-balance, and turned and fled with some parting slurs.

I don't think his motive there was of profound hatred for queer people. He said he was 15, but to me looked about 13. I don't think he really had a gun. I think his motive was impressing a younger boy who was there with him, showing him he was tough.

That doesn't change much, though. The harm was still done. Much greater harms were nearly done, to one or both of us. A less malevolent motive is some consolation, but the harm remains.

So yes. Disgusted. And devoid of any confidence that I will stop feeling that way anytime soon.

Anyways, back to writing articles and doing boring admin work. — Tamzin Hadasa