I feel sorry for social media forums. If they allow total free speech, their sites will eventually be overrun with tribalism, hate, porn, internet business, etc., eventually turning the forum into something mostly useless for the intended users.
So some moderation is required to keep a sane forum and users returning.
But moderation is problematic. It is difficult to establish clear rules. It is difficult to consistently enforce those rules. It is difficult to apply consistent judgment. We should not be surprised that, too often, the moderators will not make the right call.
One of my followings, Monica Harris, has run afoul of a moderator on Medium. Here is her article about how she has been censured. (Link might not work for non-Medium members).
Right-wing extremists and racists aren’t the only ones being censored. It can happen to ANY of us.
I went to her blog to read the article that got pulled from Medium. I will just summarize that article.
Monica talks about the unfair advantage athletes going through a gender reassignment from man-to-woman have. The trans person has likely had several years of puberty with high testosterone production, which helps building more muscle and bone mass in human males. A male in transition takes this biology into the transition, gaining a physical advantage over the female competitors.
The testosterone advantage is real. Let’s take track-and-field as example. In all this sport’s many contests, male athletes perform significantly better than female athletes. The top male athletes are faster, stronger, higher, longer, etc. than the top female athletes. That is why track-and-field and nearly all other sports have divided themselves into contests of the two genders. As much as we would like equality between the genders, biology is not going to allow females to be competitive in male athletics.
This seems to be verified when a trans person moves from male to female athletics. My internet readings suggest that such an athlete dominates female athletics far too often. The trans person brings their testosterone advantage to competitors who haven’t had much testosterone. While this seems to fit my common sense, maybe there is some credible research on this matter — to confirm or deny this hypothesis.
Who is to Blame?
I think the Medium moderator made a mistake here. However, this person probably deals with 50 to 100 complaints a day. Some complaints are no-brainers on whether to cast a yea or nay. Some are in the grey, likely to generate frustration from the losing side. We should not expect the moderator to get things right all the time.
For example, I doubt the moderator had the time to read Monica’s book or listen to her TED talk to realize that she was not the typical MAGA conservative who somehow stumbled on a societal issue that pulls further apart both sides of the political divide.
So I will give the Medium moderator the benefit of my doubt.
But I will not give the complainant that benefit.
Monica laid out her point quite well. The complainant could have refuted Monica’s point in civil way, backing up his/her position with logic and facts. Instead, the complainant went straight to the Medium police focusing on one or two sentences that could be construed that Monica has a big case of transphobia. The complainant got a little lucky with a Medium moderator who was not paying enough attention.
In using this tactic, the complainant has told me that his/her version of a better democracy is about shutting down people with whom there is disagreement.
My better democracy is about including all sorts of opinions and perspectives, even when we find them uncomfortable. Maybe I should be shut down as well.
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