> FWIW, here's the comment that led to Athaenara getting desysopped, and it amounts to a direct personal attack on an admin candidate for the sole reason that they're trans:
If females are underrepresented among admins, and the comment is factually correct in saying that the representation of women consists mostly of trans women, isn't the trans status of the candidate directly relevant to whether you actually are improving representation? I'm not sure how pointing this out qualifies as a personal attack (which isn't to say the comment isn't problematic in other ways).
Suppose black people are underrepresented among admins, and in trying to increase that representation, they nominate a transracial person who was born white but identifies as black, wouldn't their transracial status be a relevant consideration?
Transracialism isn't as widely accepted, despite the fact that both gender and race are "social constructs", and I think this makes it clear that "trans" status can sometimes be relevant in such questions. If they can be considered for a role because of their trans status, then they can also be rejected from a role because of their trans status.
> It's almost impossible that that could be true based on demographics (50% vs around ~0.5% for women vs trans women)
It would be almost impossible if admin membership were drawn completely randomly from the population. It would also be impossible for over 80% of computer science graduates to be male given the same assumption. Computer science is observably dominated by males though, therefore perhaps membership isn't drawn completely randomly from the population in either case.
I'm not privy to the demographics of Wikipedia's admin membership so I don't know if the comment in question is factually accurate, my point is only that it doesn't follow from the comment alone that it's prejudicial against trans people or that it constituted a direct personal attack.
At least, it's not more prejudicial than accounting for race or gender in a positive context, since some people think any consideration of these factors, positive or negative, is unjustly prejudicial.
I can simultaneously think that’s an abhorrent comment while also pointing out that the vast majority of the arguments (on both sides) regarding her ban were based on her beliefs, not her actions, which is counter to how these processes are supposed to unfold.
I think her action here is to represent her beliefs by submitting an oppositional vote based purely on her ideology and not the actions of the candidate. It makes sense that the ideology is also debated?
This comment section has proven you right. HN: We don't tolerate mindless repetitive criticism of programming languages, we do tolerate mindless repetitive criticism of people.
(I'm referring to the manual reduction of the rank of an article mocking go)
I believe the complaint was that the female representative team had a majority of trans people, so less of a personal attack and more of a general comment about the team.
There's no such "space" at all. This whole idea that trans women are somehow monopolizing spaces that "rightfully belong" to cis women is just a transphobic, hateful slur; especially so when the attack is so clearly targeted at a single, vulnerable trans person. The block was absolutely warranted; it was an egregious violation of a "no personal attacks" rule that's been there since the beginning.
Not going to entertain the plenty of your tangents, just going to say this:
you are wrong, obviously these spaces exist and I'm confident this comment refers to such one, because the context makes sense this way (Occam's Razor), so the block was not warranted at all, not even in the slightest.
I'm pretty sure you'd get banned here on HN for saying that as well.