So in Nepenthe's post, she is giving a timeline of events from her perspective.
This is my timeline (in CEST timezone, might be different days for different people). Note that this represents only MY perception of events, I am not a representative for TransEra or trans people in general. The only reason I'm doing this is because we keep getting portrayed as mean bullies or something, like we're a toxic element on this site, the whole trans community like it's a monolith, by people in this very thread, and staff is just standing by letting it happen. And since events from the discord are being brought up by staff again, I feel like I have to respond to that, because if I don't we'll keep being portrayed as troublemakers and bullies. The only reason I talk about offsite interactions is because staff has brought up these interactions first. We were going to keep everyone's privacy about their offsite activity away from this, but if we are doing that while staff doesn't, we can't defend ourselves. And to be clear, that's what this is, a defense.
For full context, I will have to line out a few events leading up to this. I think with this all in mind the story of "TransEra are toxic and bullied Sophia into quitting" will hopefully be deflated. I'm not writing this from memory.
Pre-timeline: Ketkat ban, AsianEra discussion thread and "Takeaways" thread, resulting AsianEra exodus/bans, Shamima Begum thread and MuslimEra exodus/bans, and probably a whole lot more that are not on my radar right now. Not going into detail on any of those.
1st of November, Sophia joins the TransEra discord. She is there as a trans person, not as a mod.
30th of November, Aby is banned for this post:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/no...and-advance-lgbtq-rights.335045/post-52769529
On discord, people talk about this ban in the meta channel, without addressing Sophia at all. Sophia responds anyway with an extremely passive aggressive post starting with the word "sigh" and ending with the sentence "I don't mean to be blunt, but y'all do realize you have one of your own as an admin, right?", so she clearly sees her position in the staff team as an all around defense of said staff team against any of the issues we've been facing. Someone answers "yes, and people know they have a right to express their opinions [...] Aby is just one more [ban of trans people getting upset about bad faith posters]". Sophia answers with the word "sigh" and leaves the discord immediately. So we're starting off here with a complete dismissal of all our issues surrounding Era, because I guess having trans staff makes you immune against any criticism? Personal comment now in hindsight: a discord server exclusively having trans people on it apparently doesn't get that same immunity (and shouldn't, but staff shouldn't either).
4th of December, a TransEra member sends in a ban appeal after four months and it gets denied with a message basically saying (paraphrased) "we don't believe your apology because you keep attacking the staff and spreading misinformation", which is a bit strange because the only place she could have been "attacking the staff and spreading misinformation" would have been outside of Era. Again, she had been banned for 4(!) months at this point. This leads to some suspicions, some joking some half serious, that there must be some moles in her discords. The ban appeal reads sincere and could have been answered with something neutral like "we don't re-examine bans this soon" or something, instead of something dripping with contempt and resentment.
Just in general, for weeks leading up to the 6th (?) of December, staff does not believe trans people and others who point out that Black Chamber, the creator of the Cyberpunk OTs (who has been banned for bigotry before) is a bad faith poster ("Please just say that the transphobia around this game won't be ignored" - "Everybody is welcome
") and believes him instead. During this period a whole lot of trans people and cis allies are banned for voicing their frustrations at this situation. There's a lot more stuff going on like him lying about Kyuji threatening to derail his thread and shit like that (where again, staff sided with him).
6th of December, Sophia writes this post:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/cd...-making-excuses-for-them.307474/post-53318362
Black Chamber is supposed to take a voluntary 1 month ban to appease the people speaking up about him. Some TransEra members and allies express their worry that the expected result of this will be that he will be seen as some kind of martyr for the reasonable, polite centrists (a lot of whom we have identified and reported as bad faith posters), a clumsy but essentially innocent lamb who had to be sacrificed to appease the unreasonable SJWs. "They're letting him martyr himself". Which people in the thread use as an opportunity to dogwhistle about what a standup guy he is and how it sucks that he's being "harassed".
7th (?) of December, Black Chamber turns out to be a nazi. The only way this could be proven was by someone finding his twitter account, so this is still not because staff believes minorities when they hear a dogwhistle for the 100th time, but just because they could not keep denying it. B-Dubs writes this post:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/cd...-making-excuses-for-them.307474/post-53342845
He specifically claims that the previous accusations where only that he was a shill for CDPR, not a bad faith poster in general (again, staff not listening to trans voices). And there is no apology to all the people who were banned before, just a promise that the bans in the OT will be reviewed. A whole lot of trans people and cis allies are pointing out, in this thread and others, that this is incident is emblematic - this is what they experience all the time on Era, Era staff prioritizing civility over minority voices, and this time, to the point of literally VOUCHING for a bigot despite his ban history. These people are pointing out that this has happened with AsianEra and MuslimEra before. A lot of them, again, are banned for hostility.
Later on the 7th of December, there is an apology from staff to trans Era members. B-Dubs writes:
"I know it must be incredibly frustrating for the members who raised concerns about Black Chamber that not only were they not heeded, he turned out to be even worse than anyone knew - but many of you clearly suspected, and we should've listened. This is especially true in regards to the trans members of the community, who openly voiced their concerns and were talked down to, instead of being heard. We know the community relies on us to catch this kind of thing, and in this case we fucked up, plain and simple. Again, I apologize for that."
A lot of trans people have given in to cynicism at this point and while they appreciate the apology, what they would like to see are systematic changes, or at least the admittance that this is a systematic problem, and that they have messed up before. For example, everything around the AsianEra takeaway thread. And the fact that this very thread is mostly unknown to the community at large by hiding it in the announcements section. And people who were banned in the confrontation with and about Black Chamber never got an apology.
- Also on the 7th of December, Sophia contacts the TransEra discord and wants to talk. A lot of users are sceptical about this, because of the timeline I've laid out here including the "sigh" moment. But we are fine with having a conversation despite that. She lets us know that she has handed in her resignation for after these talks and that this mending of relations is important to her. The fact that she had already handed in her resignation could probably easily be verified by the staff members she sent it to. Any claims that Sophia was bullied into retirement are 100% incorrect. Either misinformed or a straight up lie. But who knows? Maybe Sophia told us she had handed in her resignation but then changed her mind and only handed it in after the talks? I wouldn't blame her for that. Regardless, it's being painted here as if there is a direct causal relation from the talks to Sophia quitting and that is just provably untrue.
I don't know what Sophia's plans for these talks were, but in my understanding, what TransEra wanted was for Sophia to understand the history of our issues surrounding moderation (civility over minority voices) and the forum biosphere that nourishes (bad faith posters and dogwhistling leading to bans for the people who call them out). This was important to many of us because of the disregard she had shown for our concerns around moderation during the "sigh" moment. We wanted her to understand that this was not an isolated incident. What happens in the beginning of these talks can in my view be generalized as: discord member brings up an issue (i.e. ban for hostility against someone dogwhistling) -> Sophia looks into it, says she agrees, but does not have the power to do anything about it. This is all couched in customer service de-escalation language which is grating to me personally because I had to use it in my former line of work, and I feel like the use of this language is manipulative. To be clear, I'm not accusing her of manipulation, it's just my personal association. Because we hear "I don't actually have that power", we ask for B-Dubs to join the talks. She says she messaged him but he's offline right now and she'll get back to us.
But again, Black Chamber wasn't the only issue, the situation was emblematic for how trans people are generally treated on Era. If we didn't care deeply about these issues, we wouldn't bother having these talks, right? And we're not a unified voice, we're a bunch of people who each have their own history. So for example, Ketkat's ban is brought up by several people, but that was not a sticking point for everyone, that was just another example for "trans person reacts to bad faith poster and gets banned for hostility". Ketkat herself, from the very beginning, expressed that she actually had no interest in being unbanned, because the forum had become such a hostile place towards her. And obviously it was never going to happen because of the contempt some staff members apparently are still carrying around. This is what was told to us by all three mods in these discussions: They didn't agree with the decision on the Ketkat ban, but there was nothing they could do because of "past grievances".
At some point the OT comes up because someone has to write it, right? (A lot of trans Era members would prefer a full on ban.) So a member of the discord offers to write it. It's pointed out that a staff member should post it so that the discord member won't be perceived as a token trans person, so that the thread won't be perceived as "all of TransEra signed off on this". In the end, Sophia as a staff member posts the OT, and the worry comes true. Example without linking the poster:
"Shout out to transEra for all the work they have put in to getting this together, voicing their thoughts, advocating for an inclusive forum and, through all the shit they have been given, still wanting people to have a space to discuss this game and issues."
Some TransEra members who were opposed to having an OT in the first place feel like this is an erasure of their opinion. Full disclosure, I'm one of them.
Alice joins discussions, and kind of misreads the room, trying to lighten up the mood, joking around etc., which is not perceived well, as it feels to some members like she is not taking the talks seriously. Again, not saying that she didn't, this is about perceptions.
Even with Alice in the talks, it overall doesn't change from "we hear you, we'll look into it, we agree it's an issue, we can't really change it but we'll do anything in our power to look into this for you". We were left completely in the dark if anything was actually happening, if other staff were contacted about anything, but we were going off the assumption that staff knew that these talks were happening, mostly because Sophia mentioned writing and sending emails to staff several times. Again, because we are hearing "we don't have that kind of power", we are asking for B-Dubs to join. Again, "that's a good idea, we'll see what we can do about getting him in here".
This goes on for 5 days.
On the 12th of December, one of us realizes that a problematic situation we had been reporting to staff over and over again, and that had been brought up in our talks, was resolved. The two mods in our discord didn't mention anything about it, so we asked, hey, that's cool, so these talks are going somewhere? We can have an impact with this? But we were told by one of the two , I quote, "I want to stress that this isn't because of anything said in here." and some more stuff that I can't mention because it would give away what the situation was about. In any case, we were treated as if we would take this "victory" and parade it around or something, but instead we were told to not bring it up in the discussion ever again, which was perceived as very hostile.
So people are upset. They're not attacking the mods, but they are responding to the tone with questions. "So you're saying you can't really change anything, and the one thing that changed for the better, we definitely didn't have an impact on? So why are we even bothering then?", that kind of thing.
At this point, Nepenthe joins the talks. She is apparently completely out of the loop and thought this all was just about Black Chamber? She says she was PM'ed by a random user (who is neither trans nor in the discord) about the Ketkat ban, and seems agitated over this and, as I understand it, in her eyes this is proof that the talks were leaked? This all is cause for confusion.
Sophia leaves the discord without further communication and we are told by Alice that this is for health reasons, and that she was thanking us for our time and giving her the space to work this out, nothing about how we were supposedly bullying her? Which makes it seem very disingenous to portray it as such. We never meant to make her feel bad and there was never any pushback from either of them.
After getting over the confusion (but seemingly Nepenthe still thinks we leaked that we were talking about Ketkat?), we go through the same cycle again. Member brings something up, Nepenthe looks into it, she says she'll see what she can do, turns out it's not in her power. But at least she's direct to us about Ketkat, saying there is no way that Ketkat will ever be on Era again. (Again, Ketkat never wanted to come back, but it would have been a symbolic gesture of good will because if the TransEra discord would be in agreement about one single thing, it's that Ketkat has been done dirty.) Again, because we are being told "I don't have that kind of power", we ask that B-Dubs join in the discussion. Again, "we'll see what we can do".
So at this point I say something snippish about hearing the same PR talk again, which was wrong and hotheaded of me. The reason that happened hours after the fact is that I was asleep, again, CEST timezone. I woke up to the 3rd mod captain out of 5 telling us they don't actually have any power, and I, like many others on the server, had had enough of this seemingly neverending cycle.
Nepenthe reacts to this by telling us to do what we need to do for the sake of our mental health regarding Era (which I personally read as "if you have issues with the way Era is, you might have a mental health issue") and that she's not going to "fucking beg anyone to stay", and that she won't stay in the discord to serve as a target for anyone's anger and frustration, thanks us for the invite and ends it with "Don't ping or quote me again".
So, some of us read this as targeted at me specifically (the don't ping or quote me again part), but others including the mods of the server read it as targeted against the whole server, "you" as in "all of you" and not as in "you, Hexe". This is probably informed by the frustration we have been going through for days at this point. Remember, the talks started on the 7th CEST, for me it is now the morning of the 14th. So, the server mods read Nepenthe's message as "these talks are over, just leave Era if you don't like it" so they remove the two remaining Era staff members (they only had access to the discussion channel) because the roles channel hasn't been functioning properly and we have new users coming in. (That's what I was told, I don't know how discord works.)
So now in hindsight, reading the posts by Poodlestrike, Sophia, Alice and now Nepenthe I think there are some things that the staff members took as attacks but were not meant as such:
- Sophia read our criticisms of how Era is moderated as us bullying and erasing her identity, which was never intended (nor did any one of us - two dozen or so who were active in the talks - read it this way), and if we had been told about it we would have apologized?
- Nepenthe read a user PM'ing her about Ketkat as proof that we were leaking content of the talks while in reality it was just a random cis user unrelated to TransEra who had no idea about the talks
- Alice read the removal of the two remaining staff members from the discord as an insult to the both of them, which was based on a misunderstanding of Nepenthe's last post
So, again, I want to emphasize what I wrote as a response to Nepenthe's last message in the discord (paraphrased a few words for context):
I hope everyone here realizes that we've spent a week in there with 3 out of 5 mod captains who have kept on saying the same stuff over and over again, that they agree with us but don't have any actual power. I think frustration and disillusionment are a very normal and healthy reaction to this. Catching some of that frustration is not really on a single staff member who was in there. We could have been told from the beginning that era staff including trans staff don't care about us (the people in the TransEra discord, again, 70+ people) enough to make actual changes or gestures beyond promises which consistently have been empty. In fact that was what most of us have been convinced of, some for a year or so, some longer. There are more trans people on our and the NB discord who have left era or have been permabanned for standing up for themselves ("history of hostility" is a meme there) than there are active posters. We have already been run off. Sophia is the one who made us think that staff might have an interest in mending relations, but apparently we've just been strung along for a week. All the while being completely left in the dark.
Not @ing Nepenthe because she told me not to.
