I feel like the difference between Bluesky and the open Fediverse is kind of like the difference between the US south and the North.

For non USians, the South is hella racist, like openly so. Casually so. Like casual racism is like full-on in the air in the south. That shit is wild. That’s what Bluesky feels like right now.

By contrast, Fediverse is like the north. Everyone is welcoming and promotes integration and Black folk just walk openly in the street. All the white folk are proud of the non-racist utopia they created. Meanwhile where are the most segregated school districts in the nation? (*quiet cough.) and all the Black folk code switch and are careful.

Like all the racism is still there in the north, you just can’t talk about it or it makes the white folks upset.

And all the white people in the North are always like “why are you Black people in the south? You should move up north where it’s better!” And then they do and find redlining and police brutality and all kinds of other shit that white folks don’t have to know about. Like they don’t even realize there was a whole civil rights struggle in the north. Forgotten because the white folks love that myth of goodness.

And then Black folks say “nah I’m good I’ll stay in the south” and white people get all upset and say “I don’t see those problems” and “then tell us how to fix those problems” and eventually come around to “Black people just don’t know any better” because it’s always about Black folk being dumb and never about white folk being willfully ignorant to the problems of others (I don’t see what Mr. Mouse was going on about).

Which is totally how it reads when white people say “Black users deserve that treatment if they stay on Bluesky.” Because there are a ton of Black folk still in the south and they do just fine since they know they have community and don’t have to worry which white people are gonna talk nice and then stab them in the fucking back.

Oh, nothing. Just sobbing while I read this paragraph from an academic paper over and over again.

"…Most trans women know that their perception of themselves, that their own ideas of their self, are not always trustworthy. In a society built on foundational trans-antagonism, and suffused with narratives of trans femininity as inherently fraudulent and unloveable it simply hard for a trans woman to feel secure enough to be the source of her own affirmation. This is why external, community-based relationships are so vital for sustaining trans life. As Jules Gleeson notes, many of us receive our gendered, sexed sense of self not from personal identity work, but through participation in networks of mutual care, love, and affirmation with other trans people, who are far more likely to gift us with unconditional recognition than we are ourselves."