Let's Talk: A Recent String of Homophobia

A Recent String of Homphobia

Over the past few weeks, there have been incidents all around the South Pacifican community showing hate towards the LGBTQIA+ community. As someone who recently came out as gay on our regional Discord server, there were a plethora of supportive comments along with some who berated me for who I was.

Recently, Funnyman (aka Orcuo) was banned from our region–including its offsite infrastructure–due to a pattern of transphobic comments all across our regional platforms (Discord, RMB, etc…). Many people who were effected by these comments (many of those identifying as trans), left our server. Many of these people were very nice and caring people who I considered friends.

This region, for me, has been an extremely open region. That said, that doesn’t always happen for everyone. This could be because we are a feeder region that every minute receives an influx of new nations who sometimes might be here for spammy or hateful purposes.

All aside, TSP should be a very open region for people of all identities. How could we make this region one where all forms of homophobia are practically not present or vanished? How can we make this region open to all of all identities and welcoming?

Here’s a telegram sent from @king.fenik to @Bhjarati about the rise of transphobia on the RMB.

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I believe that greater action must be taken to stop such horrific things happening in the future, and for TSP to ignore this would be utterly and completely disgraceful, I would like harsher punishment for any and all forms of discrimination against members of minorities and the LGBTQ+ community.

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And how do you suggest we interrogate all newly made nations so that we can determine that they fit into this mold you’re building? People are people, most tend to worry about things they’re not familiar with. Harsh treatment of people who haven’t been exposed to as many cross cultural influences seems highly counterproductive.

I never said we should interrogate new nations, and is it just as counter productive to allow discrimination on TSP, they can hold such opinions, but not demonstrate them openly in such a way that can offend other people, I would believe is the aim of this. All this aims on doing, prom my point of view, is trying to implement harsher and more effective punishments for Homophobia and such like that, in order to discourage such behaviour.

If we wish for a more open and friendly community, I believe that only harsher punishment is required, not anything so foolish as interview every person on TSP.

I tend to agree with this statement right here.

We need to focus on education rather than punishing players for their comments. That is not to say that we should allow their comments to remain, but we can’t just delete the comment and kick them out. Now, if there has been a talking to and attempts made at correcting the behavior and nothing happens, then by all means, we should remove them from the community for violating our community standards.

At the end of the day, especially as a feeder region, we constantly get new players (which also means players whose sole intent is to spam, grief, and otherwise cause general outrage) in the region. Only the reader of the message can control how they react to the content they disagree with. If it doesn’t get a response (other than suppression, if it’s on the RMB, for instance), then the spammer will try somewhere that they DO get a reaction.

I would ask you what steps have been taken by the regional government towards a focus on Education, or rather any reaction at all for the recent incidents. The only steps toward such an education you believe we must focus on that I can see have been taken independently by the Ministry of Culture.

And how do you propose we educate people of whom are unwilling to change their views?

How do you propose we educate them at all?

We’re not people’s parents here. We can lay out guidelines, correct people when they get things wrong, and lead by example, but we can’t make anyone change if they don’t want to. Not honestly should we. People have the right to believe in what they believe in, regardless if anyone else approves. That whole free speech argument, you know. But since we do have guidelines, if they cross them, they should suffer the consequences. But that does go both ways, you (not you specifically) can’t just hate on someone because they disagree with something you hold dear.

I’ll be frank, I do not spend too much time on the RMB, which much of this takes place, and as such, I do not notice it.

As for education from a government perspective, I do not believe it is the executive branch’s job to educate the community as part of its mandate. If an individual minister or ministry wants to make it a project, then they are more than welcome to. Further, it is the moderation and admin team’s responsibility to maintain community adherence to the agreed-upon community rules. We need to be able to count on them to fairly administer the rules in the region. Now, the moderation and admin team are human too, so it is imperative that we make use of the “report,” “flag,” and other reporting mechanisms so they can see it and investigate if need be.

Ideally, we all as a community need to collectively contribute towards educating people.

As for changing people’s views, I agree that we should be able to change hearts and minds, but in the event that we cannot, we need to be prepared to stick by our community standards and prevent their participation in the community.

I also hate to be the person to bring this up, but the vast, vast majority of the world’s population does not think as we do. It is unfair to completely shut them out of our communities just because their cultures are different. Education is key. It takes a village to raise a child, as they say.

I’ve had the fortune of always knowing TSP to be an open and accepting space, and it’s always saddening to hear about times when that hasn’t been the case. I recognize that it takes effort on the part of all of us, as a community, to keep it that way. In concrete terms, however, there are a couple of points I’ll raise:

  1. This is an out-of-character community issue, not an in-character government one. I do think that our established community has an open and accepting culture, and there is nothing wrong with in-character government officials celebrating that culture, but out-of-character issues such as hateful words or acts should be addressed at an out-of-character moderation level for a reason.
  2. In-game, there are limits on what anybody in our region can accomplish. However, it’s important to note that NationStates has bans on malicious content (which includes content that “a reasonable person would believe endorses or celebrates violence against real-life people”); on harrassment; on flaming/threats; on trolling/baiting/gloating; and more. Ultimately, only NationStates moderators can delete players’ nations or ban them from the game entirely.

There’s a difference between hating on someone and encouraging a moderation team to take action against said someone based on statements that are bigoted in nature. There’s a difference between disagreeing with someone and discriminating against someone. I thought that much was obvious.
(This was written by Seren)

Cultural differences should be celebrated, but can you really claim that something like transphobia is part of any nation’s culture are are you just asserting so? And even if it is, it’s still the job of moderation to protect the members of their community, not worry about this sort of thing.
(Written by Seren)

Bigots happen, it’s part of life. And this is a discussion I’ve had many times, so I can tell how this will go. I don’t care what anyone is, unless you prefer a camero over a chevelle. But people will disagree with your life, so maybe learn to ignore the asshats. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot of asshats in my life, even been one on occasion. But we grow up.

(This was written by me)

I’m doing the whole written by Seren thing because I didn’t write some of these points.
And from personal experience, ignoring people can be difficult when you have to do it all the time and when they are saying or doing things that offend you.

Figured, it’s annoying that someone won’t fight their own battles. I do get the point, but do you understand that we as a region can’t just have a rigid system of how everyone must think or feel? If you could think of a more even approach that might help.

Woah. Came back after work and after a hospital visit to this. Don’t worry, I’m okay.

Anyways, I’ll take a thorough look over every post here before saying anything else. Thank you to those who posted and relayed their thoughts!

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Sorry about that, And yes, I do recognise that, but I also believe that people here should be able to stay without fear of discrimination coming to them.

In a perfect world… everyone faces discrimination at some point, to various degrees. All we can do is stand by those that come here and have their back.

Then why not we try, we try and make this a more friendly place, rather than just sitting there and watching as people suffer?
If we can’t change the entire world, why not just change our little one here?

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Here’s a question for the group:

Should transphobia on platforms like Discord, or the forums here, or the RMB lead to an instaban (with reason) from our region?

Because zero tolerance has worked so well on every other thing it’s been applied to.

I’m all for sticking up for people, but if we instaban for this instance, where do we go from there? People can make mistakes, owing to how they’re brought up, or the environment they live in. Should we punish them right out of the gate for that?

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