#🚗 🔨⚒️ 💥

[catatonic-chaos-climax]

[doggygirlthing]

tranny bulge and tummy to scare tumblr staff

[cherrymangabear]

New selfie, cuz why not? Ain't been banned yet

[caffeineandsociety]

The past few days on tumblr have been a fascinating albeit EXTREMELY frustrating case study in how bigotry spreads among people who think they're resistant to it.

Mattie-boy, shortly before....all of this, went on a whole screed about how he doesn't SEE race and he's so similar to MLK and anyway labels like race and gender and sexuality are just so divisive and uwu can't we all just be friends? He is not actively hateful on a group level, we will not see him go on a rampage about how trans women are ruining his precious website because by all evidence that's not what he CONSCIOUSLY believes, that's not what he BELIEVES he believes; he's just a giant egomaniac who thinks he has nothing left to learn about the world and the people in it.

But three things are very obviously true about him:

He experiences a lot of subconscious bias,

He doesn't care to take the time to learn basic sensitivity (again, he thinks he's already got that down), and

He is blissfully unaware that overmonitoring one group while letting others slide for the same infractions - if not making false accusations outright and letting the authorities come up with a post-hoc justification to explain why someone freaked out (because it WOULDN'T be for NO reason, right?) - is a form of both top-down and grassroots bigotry VERY popular on the internet, despite us telling him multiple fucking times over the course of 5 years.

I'm sure that Matt believes he would act the same way toward ANYONE who bruised his ego so severely. I'm sure he's wrong about that; I'm sure the intensity might be similar but the specifics would be very different given the number of blatantly transphobic and specifically transmisogynistic tropes he's invoked-

But more importantly, we're overlooking a core part of the problem that is much bigger than Matt and his ego: not many groups would ever get the CHANCE to bruise his ego so severely.

He prides himself on being a good and fair and just person who believes in equality...in the most center-right liberal chickenshit way. The exploitability of his moderation system - the automated nature of a good chunk of it, and the way the human staff is so overworked that they make constant obvious mistakes and often act as barely more than an extension of the machine, such that anyone with an axe to grind and a willingness to mass-report (you know, usually racists and terfs...who are largely the same people) effectively becomes a member of the FUNCTIONAL community standards team - shows in no uncertain terms that he is failing to live up to that ideal.

And he can't fucking STAND having that called out. He HAS to prove its not true...by constantly changing his justification for banning a trans woman who made too much of a stink about it, justifying taking down her SFW photos with claims that she totally DID post explicit ones elsewhere, then abandoning that justification to say she threatened him, then abandoning that justification to say she HARASSED him (AND, as an afterthought, other users), and THEN stalking her to another fucking website to double down on the already disproven explicit content allegation.

Again. This is a center-right milquetoast liberal loser. This is someone who believes that he treats everyone equally and doesn't see labels. Not only is this obviously not true, he is ignoring the role of systems of abuse in determining who pops up on his radar as a threat to that spun glass ego of his. Absolutely none of this would have happened had he been willing to take criticism and make even the SLIGHTEST effort with the SLIGHTEST bit of transparency to make the moderation system less exploitable, but because he hasn't - and, as he just admitted, hadn't even considered it until now - it was near inevitable that the person who would end up bringing it to his attention so loudly as to wound his ego this severely would be a victim of the system; i.e., probably a trans and/or Black woman - and sure enough, as it ended up, it was a trans woman...surprising absolutely no one but Matt himself.

And, frankly, we are doing a disservice by ignoring that aspect as well, especially since now there's yet another bullshit pedo callout circulating about yet another trans woman and the overlap between people who have been calling this bullshit for what it is and people who have been reblogging that callout uncritically is...significant.

The problem, in this case, is that entirely too many people here have not unlearned the stranger danger mindset. Of course, we believe, trans women are not especially likely to be 🚨 SEXUAL PREDATORS 🚨...but as a community we still do believe in the idea that the INTERNET as a whole has a massive problem with unchecked 🚨 SEXUAL PREDATORS 🚨 and callouts of them work. We talk about how the stereotype of trans women as predators is a problem - but every single time a callout comes along, as a community, we often think it's one individual exception; most trans women aren't child molesters...but THIS ONE totally is!

In reality, let's look at where CSA is common: in the nuclear family, and under other systems of authority that are held up as beyond questioning. The most likely child abusers are older immediate family members, religious authorities, cops, teachers, sports coaches, doctors and nurses - people who, for one reason or another, have power over the victim that manifests as a sense of ownership, be it permanent or temporary. Randomly acting opportunists are rare.

Many of us know this, some of us don't, but even among the people who do know, we also know that "rare" doesn't mean "nonexistent"...

So as a community, every time someone swears they've found that rare exception, people believe it. The fact that it's a trans woman about 80% of the time, another trans person about 19% of the time, a POC a good chunk of the time including most of the 1% of the time it's a cis person - as a community we don't even tend to consciously notice, because every time is yet another "rare isolated incident".

There's too much acceptance of the premise that the internet is just FULL of PEDOPHILES like all the stranger danger PSAs of the 2000s claimed, and too much trust that no one in THIS community would make such a callout in bad faith, or at least that a bad faith one would contain NO evidence but "dude trust me", so even the flimsiest "evidence" is accepted without question - and that's not even getting into how the kink community and the queer community intertwine, and yet a kink more taboo than light bondage is often seen EVEN among younger queer people as proof of predatory tendencies.

You see what happens? Even if you have fully managed to reject the idea, on a personal level, that trans women (or other trans people, or POC, or mentally ill people, or whatever other group painted with this brush, for that matter) are disproportionately likely to be A Predator, if you uncritically believe whatever callout crosses your dash, you will still disproportionately hurt marginalized people, because most if not all of them are going to be bullshit and you're not going to be given nearly as many targets who are NOT part of those groups - just like how Matt may indeed have had this nuclear meltdown on anyone who bruised his ego this badly, but the odds of him being pushed to that breaking point by anyone BUT a trans woman, or a member of at least one of a handful of other marginalized groups, were extremely slim.

And thus, bigotry finds a way to perpetuate itself even in communities and individuals who staunchly believe themselves to have rejected it.

[wolrith]

I didn't know predstrogen or her blog but that doesn't matter to me and it shouldn't matter to you. if they came for her they will come for you. if you're not trans they will come for you when they're done with them.

hate doesn't start and end with one target, it morphs and amalgamates until no one is safe, and it lashes out a lot.

[carhammerexplosionmatt]

hello everyone!! this is a burner account to share this:

as photomatt deletes everything, me and a few others are trying our best to compile screenshots to spread the word of the situation. most of the screenshots in the dropbox feature a comment by one of our helpers containing context. if you have any screenshots you'd like to add, please dm me. there is a high chance this account will get banned, so please save this dropbox and the screenshots included and continue to spread the word.

thank you!!

edit: thank you to all the people sharing and reblogging this! please note that this dropbox is being constantly updated (as i type this, files are being processed) so be sure to check in frequently for updates.

edit 2: as this gets more popular, i'm getting more and more worried about the probability of getting banned. to send me screenshots, please feel free to add me on discord (@mit_skies). i'll try to keep everyone updated on there + it'll be easier for me to see and document screenshots.

[violisko]

wow i cant believe he said this

[sourcreammachine]

[sylladextrous]

reblog this to scare the ceo

[-4, +1]

[ashes2caches]

thousands upon thousands of pornbots: *exist*

tumblr staff: what? are we supposed to do something about that?

one singular transfem: *exists*

tumblr staff: we’re gonna erase you from fucking existence you swine

[almond-tofu-chan]

LMAO i just spent like 10 minutes tryna figure out what the hell everyone was talking about with matt and cars and hammers only for it to be some of the most fragile white male elon musk bullshit ive ever seen and him trying so hard to cover it up just makes him look sadder honestly, fuck this hellsite, fuck matt mullenweg, trans rights

[cherrymangabear]

Hey can I be a hot tumblr transfemme that people pine over and tell me I'm pretty? Asking not for a friend but for me actually I'd love that kthx

[origami-butterfly]

I know people are angry about predstrogen's ban right now- as they should be. But I really wish more people were talking about Nex Benedict's murder.

They were my age. Not even out of school. And they were murdered. Not "passed away" or "left us" murdered.

And I am so, so angry that this still happens. People will say our world is more accepting and that we don't need to fight anymore, when clearly we do! And I don't want to stop fighting until the world is a safe place for trans kids and trans elders.

So don't forget them. Their name was Nex Benedict.

Edit- important things from the notes:

Nex was indigenous. This is an intersectional hate crime.

Nex used he/him with friends and they/them with family, so I think he used he/they with a preference for he/him.

His murder has been called a suicide. It is very clearly not a suicide.

His name was Nex Benedict

[heart-on-left]

Ms. Defendant, could you please tell the court whether or not you intended to, uh..."kill the Plaintiff forever in a painful death involving a car covered in hammers that explodes more than a few times and hammers go flying everywhere"

[recreationalpasta]