User:Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist

About Me
Hello Wikipedia!

I'm Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist, formerly known as TheTranarchist (an admittedly lazy portmanteau of trans and anarchist I chose when I joined this site at 18). I'm one of those scary trans youth (now 20, I transitioned at 16 after years of closeting) the media tells you don't really exist. I am a human being, which should be obvious, but some seem eager to interpret my existence as inherently ideological.

I live in NYC and I'm a computer scientist and sociologist; my academic research tends to involve extensive archival research and applications of technology to sociology/healthcare/history. I've always loved Wikipedia; a free global compendium of knowledge built in real-time by and for the people is amazing on so many levels!

I joined Wikipedia as an editor after realizing just how many articles on trans topics were woefully out of date. Specifically, I saw Conversion therapy made no references to transgender people since the sourcing was decades out of date. It is vital the information we provide is accurate. Trans children are not a modern invention and deserve care and support. So, I strive to document our histories and our elders' organized struggle for a better world. And the history and present of the organized hate campaigns operating against us. My other main focus is on the history of tenant and labor organizing within New York City.

For the most part, I have loved the community I've found on Wikipedia. I'm thankful to all my friends on and off Wikipedia who've supported me, helped me improve as an editor, and kept me going when transphobia and harassment on and off got to me. I am so proud to collaborate and work with everyone else here to produce the encyclopedia!

To-Do List
Tenant Organizing
 * Tenants union: needs serious expansion
 * Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development: NYC housing rights org est. 1974
 * Bedford Eviction Defense: tenant union
 * Ridgewood Tenant Union
 * Los Angeles Tenant Union

See also: Abolition Notes has a list of tenant unions in the U.S.

Far-right groups
 * Identity Dixie: a neo-confederate org heavily involved with the Unite the Right rally
 * Arktos Media: Needs serious expansion

Anti-fascists
 * Daryle Lamont Jenkins: Needs expansion
 * Bloc by Bloc: Antifascist board game
 * Stop Cop City: Needs expansion

Articles Worked On/Created

 * Legend: Articles created are marked with &dagger;; Articles created from a pre-existing stub are marked with &Dagger;
 * See Also: Pages Created, Top Edited Pages, XTools - User Analysis, My Contributions, Thanks Recieved
 * Images Uploaded: English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons
 * Note: This section will not appear on mobile unless using desktop mode

Quotes to Edit By
"There is no true word that is not at the same time a praxis. Thus, to speak a true word is to transform the world."

"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."

"The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side."

"Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things". - Carpe Jugulum

"A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on." - The Truth

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it." - Monstrous Regiment

"Them as can do has to do for them as can't. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices." - The Wee Free Men

"Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness." - Men at Arms

"It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive." - Soul Music

"History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders." - Jingo

"Cheery was aware that Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer run even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear.'" - Snuff

"It’s true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they’re doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved." - Snuff

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life." - Guards! Guards!

"That was always the dream, wasn’t it? ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’? But when you got older you found out that you now wasn’t you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp. A much better dream, one that’d ensure sounder sleep, was not to know now what you didn’t know then." - Night Watch

GNU Terry

"Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless."

"Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences."

"Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future."

"You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it."

"Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

"The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat."

"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."

"To accept one’s past – one’s history – is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought."

"There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain."

"We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist."

"If a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem. If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it's a question of power. Racism gets its power from capitalism. Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist. The power for racism, the power for sexism, comes from capitalism, not an attitude."

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn’t know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not done. And I feel I have the right to be inexorable and not squander my compassion, of not sharing my tears with them.

I am a partisan, I am alive, I feel the pulse of the activity of the future city that those on my side are building is alive in their conscience. And in it, the social chain does not rest on a few; nothing of what happens in it is a matter of luck, nor the product of fate, but the intelligent work of the citizens. Nobody in it is looking from the window of the sacrifice and the drain of a few. Alive, I am a partisan. That is why I hate the ones that don’t take sides, I hate the indifferent.

Barnstars, Pets, and Misc.
To be frank, I've spent a lot of my time on Wikipedia writing about groups that insult and call for violence against people like me, or people in general, and read a lot of depressing news to do so. I try and write good articles about them, and generally keep out WP:FRINGE, document, per WP:RS, the past and present, leave every article I can better than when I found it, and improve as an editor with each edit I make. It can be tireless, exhausting, and strenuous, but also joyful, collaborative, engaging, and valuable - certainly paradoxical! While I don't do it for them, a little recognition, wiki-love, good advice, and even constructive criticism go a long way and are greatly appreciated! Love and respect to all my fellow editors here to build the encyclopedia &hearts;

Full archive of wiki-love here.

Honorable Mentions
Here, I keep substantial mentions of me off-wiki. This includes both positive coverage (which I hadn't seen coming) and people complaining their articles are so honest it makes them look bad.

Stella O'Malley & Genspect
Stella O'Malley complained about the Genspect article, stating: Wikipedia can be gamed and trans activists use Wikipedia as a way to attack Genspect and myself. We are not given the opportunity to argue the points as the moderators always side with trans activists, no matter how many quality references they are supplied with. Consequently, articles by gender extremists such as Lee Leveille, are favoured over the more conventional Sunday Times. - Telling the Truth in a Time of Deceit (Part 1): Stella O’Malley’s Statement on Conversion Therapy - Genspect

Genspect tweeted: Wikipedia co-founder [ Larry Sanger ]: “I no longer trust the website I created”-it’s “increasingly partisan”, “propaganda” & “broken beyond repair”. Yes! Genspect & many others critical of transactivism face near-constant defamatory campaigns against us on Wikipedia

Which was quoted by Jordan Peterson with the note

The Woke Broke Everything They touched

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull
Complained about me and her article here, stating The defamatory page about me on @Wikipedia @JWalesF has been semi-protected and cannot be edited. All edits in the history have been undone. The sad little incels are ensuring the lies remain. Then she tweeted HINT : the wikipedia entry is made by a rather boastful trancel who enjoys lying about people online.

The Atlantic on Gloria Hemingway
The desire to fix something wrong—in this case, articles that have not kept up with the times—is meant to play out on an article’s “Talk page,” a companion page dedicated to discussing edits. Take the debate over Gregory versus Gloria. Last February, Hemingway’s Talk page fielded a proposal on what name to use. There was a week of debate, long discussions in which a dozen or so editors grappled with how Hemingway would have wanted to be perceived. The main advocate for moving the page from Gregory to Gloria was an editor named Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist#Thanks!_(R.E.:_Gloria_Hemingway) TheTranarchist, and the main opponent was an editor named StAnselm, a self-described Calvinist who has created more than 50 articles about biblical characters and scenes. Yet the discussion on the Talk page was about facts and Wikipedia policies and guidance, not politics. “It didn’t seem culture warrior–ish,” Reagle said.

The discussion ended with a hung jury: seven editors for Gloria, seven for Gregory. An experienced editor, Sceptre, stepped in and ordered the article to be renamed. The decision was appealed, and an administrator concluded that Sceptre had made a tough call that was ultimately reasonable. On the biggest social-media sites, such a decision might have descended into endless mudslinging. Instead, everyone has respected the outcome and moved on. The article hasn’t been touched in five months.

The Culture Wars Look Different on Wikipedia (available with 12ft.io ;) )

I must confess, it would have been nice if they noted that I was accused of being an WP:SPA whose request to rename the article based on Wikipedia's very clear policy about handling trans people's names should be ignored due to my username, a fact called out in the close.

Gays Against Groomers
Gays Against Groomers tweeted: Recently, there have been multiple hit-pieces about our organization that are full of lies. This information has now been used to create a Wikipedia page about our organization, which is quite literally entirely false, and we would like to clear some things up.

Then they wrote an article: A few months ago, we noticed that Gays Against Groomers had its own Wikipedia page. It was surprisingly much longer than we predicted it would be. And what we found was very disturbing. It was filled with incoherent conspiracy theories, fabricated stories about non-existent members, fairy tales about how we are secret billionaires who want to take over the world, bigoted slurs, and it even compared us to Adolf Hitler. The author made outrageous accusations that are not backed up by any facts or evidence. The Wikipedia page includes a reference list, indicating where they got their information. It is based on tabloids from vicious publications like Media Matters, random tweets from deranged trans activists, and a podcast episode where Imara Jones lists off some ideas that they outright admit are conspiracy theories. It is odd that someone would go through such great lengths to discredit a nonprofit organization with a noble mission. But after we did some digging, we found that it was created by a user named "TransAnarchist" and was locked for editing. We released a short statement correcting some of the odd claims that were made. Since we had no way to edit and fix this issue, we hoped that it would eventually just go away. It hasn't. - Lies, Fallacies and Fabrications: Addressing Our Wikipedia Page

Some good WP:UPPERCASE and WP:OWB

 * Key ideas: The five pillars of Wikipedia, WP:PRINCIPLE, WP:1Q, WP:PI, and three core content policies: WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, and WP:V
 * Problematic content: WP:NOT, WP:FRINGE, WP:NPOVD, WP:PROTECT, WP:REVDELREQUEST
 * Problematic editors: WP:POVPUSHING, WP:HATEDISRUPT, WP:0T, WP:DISCUSSFAIL, WP:SIGNS, WP:COI
 * Not being a problematic editor: WP:CIVIL, WP:COAL, WP:BRD, WP:1AM, WP:YANI, WP:MASTODONS, WP:SUPERHERO, WP:COPYWITHIN, WP:EIGHT
 * Building consensus: WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOSUMMARIES
 * Writing good articles': WP:GNG, WP:AMNESIA, WP:ASSESS, WP:ENDURE, WP:BETTER, WP:HOWEVER, WP:PROSELINE, WP:INSCRUTABLE, WP:EDITFAST
 * Avoiding burnout: WP:CGTW, WP:OWB, BMK's Wikipedia survival guide
 * Accessibility and tips: WP:COLAS, WP:POPUPS
 * Humour: WP:Akin's Laws of Article Writing, WP:Seven ages of editor, WP:SARCASM, WP:ALLMAD, WP:MMORPG, WP:WikiFauna

Wikipedia

 * ProveIt: This tool makes citations easy and I can't imagine editing without it. It even automates most of it with only the URL.
 * WP:RSP: Allows you to check if a source is considered reliable or not. The source may be listed on the page or you may have to search the archives for past discussions.

Bypassing Paywalls

 * Sci-hub: Great tool for accessing scientific articles, sadly Wikipedia won't let me link to it directly
 * Library Genesis: Great tool for accessing books, also can't link directly
 * https://12ft.io, https://archive.is, and https://archive.org allow you to access paywalled magazines and newspapers most of the time

OPSEC
Some good on-wiki guides: How to not get outed on Wikipedia, On privacy, confidentiality and discretion, Personal security practices

Some good off-wiki guides: here, here, and here.

Some quick notes for Wikipedia:
 * Create an account. Don't go revealing your IP address for no reason, that's a quick way to get doxxed.
 * No personally identifiable information. If you are even somewhat public about your life online, do not mention anything available in other places on Wikipedia. Don't list where you work, your name, anything that can be used to narrow you down or look you up. For the love of god don't use a username you have ever used or will use anywhere else.'''
 * Gauge Your Threat Level. There is a big difference between local fascists and state actors. If you have an account, your IP is only hidden to most. Some administrators can check them, though it will be logged. For an example of what this might mean, see here. Assume that nearly every state actor has a similar program, so a good rule of thumb is to be careful of whether you would face state repression for publicly reporting the same things off Wikipedia.