When will cis people learn to shut the fuck up when they have literally zero stake in the conversation and feel that they are nonetheless an expert.
I say all of this with a great deal of respect for you and I don’t want it to come off any other way. I’ve been really hesitant to comment on this situation at all since I don’t want to start anything unnecessary but I hope that I can add something to this conversation that might be found helpful.
At this point this discussion has long stopped being constructive in any way or form, and is being unnecessarily divisive. I feel like, as a community this topic has been resolved, staff have made a final decision and have given what I see as an honest and sincere apology, they have updated community guidelines and the moderator thread has been closed. I understand that this issue might not be resolved for you since this has personally effected you in ways I, as a cis person couldn’t understand. But if you truly want a resolution, and a shared understanding, starting out with asking for a bullet-point list of everything the staff did wrong isn’t how you do it. I get you are frustrated, as there is a lot to be angry about but being amicable, even if you feel like the situation doesn’t warrant being amicable is the best way to actually get a conclusion you would like to see from a situation like this.
"I’d love nothing more than to be able to get back to sharing fun stories and stuff but I literally cannot do that until the paid iNaturalist staff prove that I’m actually welcome here, and that they will have the backs of other marginalized people in the future"
From what I’ve read, I feel like this incident as a whole has only further shown how much this community cares about the many great LGBTQ+ people in this space, and I hope that in the future people will be just as quick to criticise bigotry, intentional or not with the politeness and respect that I have seen multiple people use on this thread and others. I’m pretty confident saying you are welcome here, and I’m pretty sure even those whose words started this would say that.
My biggest issue with all of this is how much people from both sides, moderators included attribute malice to each others words and actions. From what i’ve seen, no one here meant to hurt you or anyone else, but a lot of people made mistakes, and it’s on all of us to forgive and move forward. It is much easier to believe that a small team of staff where overwhelmed by an inflammed situation and poorly chose which messages to hide and which message not to, and that you and others made important and valuable comments about this to the community, staff, and moderators and were understandable upset by it, rather than attribute malice to everyone’s actions.
I hope we can all move on to celebrating this community, and sharing further actions in the future that could be done to prevent future incidents like this. Remember that we are in a community that is very diverse, and that includes ages and backgrounds, and many people on iNaturalist are new to many aspects of pronouns and the like. But everyone that I’ve met on iNaturalist so far has been well-meaning in their words and actions.
