As I watch yet another drama/meta happening from a distance (seriously folks wtf?!), there is one important lesson I've learned over the years:
Comfy safe spaces don't happen on their own. They need nurturing and defending and fighting for.
Put a bunch of traumaqueers in a place and there's a certain chance it will end up as a toxic cesspool. Same for nerds, or any other group of supposedly like-minded people. Toxic people will always accumulate in those communities who don't throw them out.
@piegames There's one thing I would disagree with there, and that's implicitly equating "traumaqueers" and "toxic people who should be thrown out".
While it's really important to throw out people who have shown no interest in participating in a healthy way, it's equally important to foster and support improvement in those who are merely *unable* to participate in a healthy way, as is often the case with traumatized folks.
You can't build a healthy community by having exclusion as your only moderation tool either.
@joepie91 Agreed, and I did not want to equate these two. My lack of nuance is partly due to the character limit, and partly because the more prominent conflicts I've seen this year were involving people who clearly had no interest in improving.
I think especially queer people are naturally biased towards seeing other queer people as friend shaped, and thus more likely to keep blatantly abusive people around for too long. (Nerds have a similar failure mode around technically proficient people)