Over the years, I've noticed something: there are some subjects that instantly draw in the trolls. The two biggest ones are feminism and trans rights, which leads me to suspect that it's the same subpopulation of self-righteous conservative assholes who abhor them both. The latest instance is in the thread about JK Rowling, in which a commenter named "coldhardrealist", who'd been stirring up the thread for a while, is recognized as a previously banned commenter named "thirdmill" who had also been banned for their repeated trolling of threads about trans issues. He made a stunningly oblivious confession once caught out.
Over the last ten years or so, I've been posting here under probably a dozen different names, all but one of which have been banned. I've said a great many things that I don't really believe, a few things that I partially believe, and some things that I really do believe, mostly to see what the reactions from others would be. (More about that in a minute.)
Does that make me a dishonest person? No more so than any other experimenter who doesn't completely level with the subjects in advance that they're part of an experiment.
In this incarnation, I'm a recently returned Iraq war veteran, who started life as a political conservative, has become greatly disillusioned with conservatism, is moving left, but isn't quite there yet. He's basically an honest person who sees holes in his previous world view, sees both sides to a lot of issues he once thought were cut and dried, and is really wrestling with difficult issues. Would someone like that be welcome here? Answer: No.
Yes, that makes him a dishonest person. This is not a laboratory, he is not a qualified experimenter, his "experiment" was badly thought out and incompetently run. He doesn't seem aware that in social settings, people are often pretty good at spotting inconsistencies and feigned behavior, and it makes them suspicious and untrusting, especially when you're as bad at lying as coldhardrealist/thirdmill. The reason he gets consistently caught out and banned isn't because the people here are intolerant of differences of opinion, or are unaware of the complexities of the real world, it's because he's consistently an asshole.
Oh, and the conceit of pretending to be "a recently returned Iraq war veteran"! That his phony persona was detected and rejected does not mean that a real person like that would be unwelcome here - it just means he's a terrible actor and is caught out every time. And every time, it seems that his overt transphobia is what exposes him.
He's been banned, and claims he won't be back. He will be. Because he's an asshole. Any other transphobes who barge in here will also be banned, because they're assholes.
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