It starts with Mystic's assertation that calling someone a "trap" isn't a slur, that devolves into a three hour argument directly in the official Discord's general channel. It's a total shitfest, I'm at work trying to focus on my job, I make some poorly-worded comparisons to the N-word to try to get it through his skull (that's where one of his quotes in this topic related to it came from! Presumably the other ones were also related to this!), big disaster. (I was asked not to screenshot the starting point of the conversation, but it's publicly available in the general channel for anyone who feels the need to look it up.)
(One might argue "but there are non-transphobic times when you can call someone a trap!" While I think you're incredibly misguided - outside of maybe some
very specific friend groups where the word's problems are well-established beforehand - this specific instance isn't one of those situations
anyway.)
He decides later, in private, that me stating that "trap" is a slur is "backseat moderation" and "making people uncomfortable".
For the next three months, I'm going back and forth arguing with Prime over DMs to try to resolve the issue. (I'm avoiding specifics here, aside from a vague allusion to a comparison with the word "tsundere", because I suspect Prime was ultimately just trying and failing to preserve balance here, instead of having any ill intentions of his own.) Things go back and forth with zero progress in any direction being made until I get fed up with everything and make an ill-advised edit of someone's post in the Thokker thread for a joke. I'm not proud of doing that, but to be frank it was probably necessary to finally get Mystic himself to actually say something:
(This shit is what all the references to Mystic being "bigoted" are referring to.)
That's when I wrote the guy off entirely. For having one running "Tails is a girl" joke with some friends, I'm being "confrontational". For telling someone that "trap" is a slur when they bring it up (I'm sure without any ill intent or knowledge of the word's connotations!), I'm "constantly pushing trans issues onto others".
Quite frankly, I still held out hope that he'd learn better eventually, and I acknowledge that I hadn't handled things spectacularly throughout. But after everything else coming up in this thread, (and being reminded of #srb2nsfw - god, that wasn't even a
secret to anyone on IRC), I'm so glad to see the guy finally out.
(I
still haven't resolved my feelings over this. I spent a while in the Kart community solely as a chance to spite the vanilla game that was led by someone I hated so much, and I was pretty terrible in that community as a result! And even after having my name removed from 2.2's credits, the only way I was somewhat able to enjoy 2.2 for a while was by insulating myself to another community and designing a whole new control scheme for the game just as a clapback to some people who decided to make fun of people's reactions to Analog being hidden. Even then, I ain't getting any closer to the community than I have to at this point.)
