funky station

Your SS14 Username: Terkala (The Fern of Functionality)

Admin's In-Game Username: Huhm

Round ID (if applicable): N/A

Reason for Complaint: Ejecting an admin from the admin team, instantly, for a mild comment made on another discord.

First I'll provide context for the timeline of events. I would provide screenshots of said events if I had any. I am not posting screenshots of the exact conversation with Huhm unless they give permission to do so. If someone has said screenshots for a more accurate portrayal I encourage you to post them.

SS14-admin-discord:

Person1: PJB is a She, if you refer to her as a they, we will ban you
Person2: I refer to everyone as a they, so I don't have to worry about misgendering people. Going around protecting other people's pronouns when they're already using gender neutral terms is being a woke-scold and will drive people away from the SS14 community for no reason (Terkala reacted with "this tbh")
Terkala: I agree, you shouldn't compel speech from people who are trying not to offend people. Being a woke-scold will just drive people away.

2 minutes later, I was messaged by Huhm saying that Funky has a zero tolerance policy for Bigotry. And that I have been removed from all admin roles, but communication is still open. They then simply didn't respond to me when I asked how what I said is bigotry. Pretty funny that they'll tell someone that communication is still open, but then just not reply to them. This complete lack of reply is why I am posting this.

The specific complaint is three fold:

1. It's not bigotry, not by any stretch of the imagination
2. There's admin rules for how an admin is removed from their position, which they ignored
3. Huhm is bad at their job of being a head-admin, because even if the first two points are justified, they didn't even speak with me first before making that decision. Funky doesn't even ban raiders without saying something to them first, and somehow what I said was worse than that?

I had been an admin on Funky for a year, and a major contributor to the project. I had already intended to go on hiatus before this event, so I don't want my admin position returned to me. The intent of this post is simply to show full transparency on how flippantly a Funky head-admin will dismiss someone from the project.

The conversation snippet is from memory, so apologies if my exact quoting there is off. That's the general gist of the conversation.

Hey Terkala,

I wanted to clarify that the decision to remove you from the team came from the Head Group and not directly from Huhm himself. I don't want him taking the fall for something we collectively decided was for the best in that moment. I apologize if the way I spoke to you made it seem like I had no involvement; that is on me, and I need to work on that.

I am sorry that Huhm did not continue the dialogue you desired about the situation. I can do that in DMs or on here, whichever you prefer. What I will say is I understand why it would seem that using they/them for everyone is fine because it's a gender-neutral pronoun. However, it is still demeaning, especially when someone has requested a specific pronoun and has informed others of it.

I had already told you privately that I do appreciate your work for us as an admin and as a contributor, and that still stands, even with this decision that was made by us.

If someone has said screenshots for a more accurate portrayal I encourage you to post them.

I have permission to post this from a mod of the server this happened in.

Thank you for posting the screenshot for clarity. I agree with you, if someone specifically says "please call me she/her" and you refuse to call them that, it is demeaning. But if that person isn't present, and you just refer to them as a "they", or if you simply don't bother learning the genders of any of the people you interact with online, then it's not demeaning it's just indifference. This is something I could have clarified, if my comments weren't deemed so egregiously bad that it warranted an instant removal without even talking about it first.

The context of the situation was that someone was correcting the use of third-person pronouns (they) for someone they knew as a (she), and the original poster was saying they refer to everyone by "they" to avoid misgendering people. Which thus started the small disagreement.

In any case, I let my comments in the screenshot stand. If it's the head-admin stance that those comments are so unforgiveable that it warrants instant removal of any admin expressing those opinions, then that's your choice.