#dogpiling

I was sharing this resource with a friend who's being harassed by antis, so I thought I'd share it again in case anyone needs it <3 It's not just useful for folks making kinky or NSFW art/fics/etc. btw.

Some of y'all need to stop following creators of any kind with fanatical loyalty, PARTICULARLY when those creators are manipulating you into going after other people not just once (which is still bad) but several times. You cannot trust someone blindly based on their identity or the relationship you *think* you have with them because TT brings them into your home every day.

I do not want people to become cynical but you do need to start asking for *proof* and in the age of ai and deepfake, you need to be extra critical of that proof. If experts are commenting, maybe listen to them or at least consider their expertise. And if someone refuses or somehow dodges providing clear evidence, then it is ok to walk away from them.

You don't have to accept what the algorthim gives you, or accept shitty behavior from a creator because they are queer or disabled or share the same interests as you.

Okay but to have an addition because I can see this going the other way very quickly: dogpiling/shitting on people’s practices that aren’t necessarily aligned or agreed with by others is not the same thing as calling out cultural appropriation. They are mutually exclusive, and I do agree w you that we shouldn’t allow gatekeeping. However, guarding closed practices/religions/important figures is not gatekeeping.

Hiya. I agree.

We are in reference to this and this.

Because I've taken a stance, I suppose due diligence is required:

Gatekeeping is when a person tries to deny access to people who should already be allowed into a group by creating arbitrary standards and then attempting to enforce those standards on others. It looks like this:

"I'm sorry but being really organized probably means you don't have ADHD at all. It's more like you'd never be able to clean or get anything done. I think you were misdiagnosed because I've never heard of that before."

"If you believe in the Law of Attraction, you're not a real witch. Manifesting is just mind games."

"Manic states don't ever feel good, they always feel scary. I really think you are just roleplaying bipolar disorder right now for pity points."

"If you're not working with spirits, you're not doing real magic."

"If you are under the care of a doctor, I'm sorry but you shouldn't be doing magic at all."

"If you're a witch what are you doing going to the doctor? Call on your spirits and your power to heal yourself... smh."

"Deities are for the advanced practitioner. It's not safe for beginner pagans to ever try to communicate with deities until a few years of practice."

Gatekeeping does not need to outright say, "you are not a real witch/[member of a group]." It can also imply that you are a bad, invalid, or unwanted member unless you follow the standards OP is implying, suggesting, or clearly laying out.

It is absolutely okay for any of us to have personal takes, judgements, and weird-ass opinions. The problem appears when we try to tell other people that are our personal takes, judgements, and opinions are standards they need to achieve in order to be accepted into a group we do not have authority over.

None of us were elected High Witch of the Global Witch Church. None of us have the authority to say what counts as real or valid witchcraft.

Gatekeeping is not:

Telling people about your personal beliefs. "In my path, the only valid magic is that which is worked with spirits."

Declining to tell someone about your personal faith, which IS NOT AN OPEN GROUP PEOPLE SHOULD ALREADY BE ALLOWED INTO. "I don't share the details of how I carry out my rituals."

Denying people access to a group which is not public and not meant to be open. "Sorry, this discord is only for devotees of Azazel who want to walk the path of the Tubal Cain."

Using your valid authority over a group to reinforce rules or boundaries. "Hey Chad, as the High Priest of this coven I have to ask you to not bring your pop culture spirits into our prayer circle. It's not a personal thing, but we built this group to try and be very traditional, and one of our original rules was that we only work with certain groups of historical spirits."

Declining to act as a reference librarian. "Eh, just Google it mate :) This is a pretty common topic."

A person within a closed culture or faith explaining misinformation or asking someone to not exploit/steal from their culture.

If it's not an open group that anyone is invited into as they currently are,

Hmm, where to begin. 

Well, let’s look at this comparatively. If you zoom out, isn’t the whole of the internet just ‘being mean online’ and people ‘being mean back’? That doesn’t tell us much about the details. 

[Content Warning: I’m gonna talk about suicide, online harassment, bullying, transphobia, slurs, etc, so please proceed with caution.]

Let’s expand the meaning of things you can call ‘mean’. We get a whole range of things. From a teenager leaving a mildly rude YouTube comment on a video to a well-known blog encouraging their followers that sending someone death threats is ok if they ‘really are a bad person’ (and ‘a bad person’ can have many definitions. They can point to a trans woman and say ‘that’s just a perverted man!’ and make the vitriol feel somehow ‘deserved’ because they have built up a narrative where they are a victim.) 

So... what happens when those people say ‘mean things’? What happens, more importantly, when the people listening to these ‘mean things’ read the messages and go out into the real world... and vote? And go into a bathroom, see someone they think is a trans person, and yell ‘YOU’RE JUST A PERVERT! YOU DON’T BELONG HERE!’? And get them possibly arrested - for just trying to go to the bathroom in peace? 

Do you see where I’m going with this?

I sometimes get the feeling that people think things that happen online are somehow... not real. Like the internet is an alternate dimension where feelings don’t matter, no one is a human being, and you can just say whatever you want without consequence. 

Be it a mean joke... or a rude message to someone you think is stupid saying ‘no one likes you’... or an anonymous ask that says ‘lol you’re just a standard f*gg*t, kill urself’... or a YouTube video of someone influential yelling ‘THE WORLD WOULD BE BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM’... or a US President tweeting that he is prepared to use military force on protesting citizens. 

So where do we draw the line? Why do we think none of these things matter?

The point is, the internet isn’t removed from people. It’s not just a bunch of ‘mean messages’. It’s people with harmful views, often propagating those views, sometimes even encouraging violence or excusing horrible behavior.

Keep in mind - the real world also has its fair share of mean messages. They’re called ‘arguments’ and just like on the internet, many of these can be dismissed by the same token of being seemingly trivial.

“Oh yeah, I saw these two people on the streets. One of them was being mean, and the other was just being mean back.”

[Image Description: Two people are arguing with each other, those there are no words depicted, only exclamation marks to indicate heated debate.]

Sounds like nothing much happened. And maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was just a standard argument about, I don’t know, movies. Or pineapple pizza.

Or maybe it was one person saying “You’re a freak and a pedo and you shouldn’t be allowed to take care of children!” and another person saying “I am a human being, I have never hurt a child, and I deserve to be happy, and I deserve to have a family and not be treated like a criminal for simply existing in a non-cis-conforming-way!”

And maybe it ends there. Maybe no one listens, and maybe they both walk away, and it’s just that. 

Or maybe... maybe their argument is overheard. 

Maybe there’s an audience. 

[Image description: The two people arguing from earlier are now seen from further away. There are other people watching them from afar - and many seem to be siding with one person or the other based on the color of their thought bubbles.]

Maybe someone walks away from this argument and votes to make it illegal to trans people to use their preferred restroom. Maybe someone outs a transgender coworker and gets them fired. Maybe someone goes home to their child and says ‘I read all about your ‘transgenderism’ on the internet and it’s a sick disease! I did my research! This is a blogger I trust and respect - and if you don’t cut this shit out, you can pack your bags and get out of my house!’

Words have power. And now, more than ever, we have access to a lot of messages. Those messages aren’t always harmless, and they aren’t always clearly harmful - often, they just sound ‘mean’. And it’s easy to call them that.

But I encourage you guys to look deeper. Don’t just allow yourself to think ‘that’s kinda mean’ and dismiss. Read it again - ask yourself if it might have a different meaning. Ask yourself - if someone who knows NOTHING about trans people read this, what beliefs would THEY start to form if they had no other information to balance this out?

If you personally think these messages are merely petty squabbles and have no effect, that’s for you to judge. And certainly, the internet is full of such things.