So.... You took all the feedback where generally people agreed that the comm needed to be renamed but "gossip" wasn't the right one to rename it to....and proceeded to just push forward with what you wanted to do anyway.

Nice job admins.

Calling it now, counterpropaganda and gossip/el chisme are going to die off and leave slop as a pre-rule 8 dunk tank.

Changing the names is necessary but it should have just been new names that clearly communicate the same intent or content, like The Septic Tank or Barbara Pit. Counterprop isn't going to get much but effort posts about actual propaganda, because the tanks have never focused on specifically countering posts, just mocking them. Gossip sounds like it would either be a celebrity comm or another c/Main, and I'm definitely going to keep forgetting which comm it's replacing. They're bad names that make the intents of the comms unclear and won't have the intended effect on site culture, they'll just change which comm the posts are on.

As a newshog I like the word slop very much. I would like to suggest that slop be appended to every comm. Main slop. News slop. Neurodiverse slop. Slop slop. Gossip slop. and so on

Why don't you just let people vote on the name of the "gossip" comm? It would be nice for things like this to always be democratic and not whatever arbitrary things mods will deign to let the plebs decide

I feel like gossip can be like dipshits interactions, whatever. But media malfeasance (and elon shit tbh) are not exactly gossip, so i guess they go to cth then? Its so weird

and slop is random nobodies instead of random nobodies with influence?

Feel like we are fighting the true spirit of our time - nominative determinism.

counterpropaganda is alright

slop is good

gossip is shit

Why Gossip instead of the dunk tank?

Because there was ample evidence of the dunk tank, as a term, being an abhorrently racist term that killed people, whereas gossip is a tool that has been vital to marginalized communities demonized by the patriarchy over time. The site has recently committed to addressing the issue of misogyny on the site and lemmy at large. The moderators of the gossip community are dedicated to reclaiming Gossip as a means by which a group of marginalized people can commiserate over those that wield the power which oppresses them or are willing tools of it.

The scholar Silvia Federici, in her Feminist and Marxist interpretation of the Witch Hunts of the early modern period in Europe, analyses how the term gossip was used as a misogynist, oppressive tool against women. Federici recounts that by the sixteenth century in modern England, gossip, a term that had been commonly used during the Middle Ages to indicate a close female friend, turned into a denigrating term signifying idle talk.

During the Middle Ages, sociality among women prevailed, most activities were performed collectively, and a tight-knit community emerged. In the sixteenth century, with the destruction of the guilds, industrialisation, the emergence of capitalism, and, coincidentally (or not so coincidentally) the violent Witch Hunts, women started to be excluded from society leading to a feminisation of poverty.

The Witch Hunts demonised most interactions amongst women. Women were surveilled, marginalised and feared. Friendships amongst women became an object of suspicion, denounced, and understood as subversive. Women were portrayed as scolds, too domineering of their husbands, witches, and worse… Gossipers! And thus, the harmless stereotype of women as innate gossipers emerged.

I use the word harmless sarcastically for many reasons. An obvious one is that a torture instrument was designed with the sole intention of punishing those women involved in gossiping.

description of torture

This instrument called the scold’s/witch’s/gossip bridle was an iron muzzle that locked onto the women’s head and mouth, pressing their tongue down to prevent them from speaking.

Furthermore, the term gossip has been used to not only destroy traditional female practices, collective relations and systems of knowledge but also erode women’s rights and devalue women’s labour. Today, it continues to be used to reinforce the gender binary, infantilise certain actors, and construct certain conversations as worthless.

Gossip is a tool used by women and other marginalised people to share information that other systems often won’t consider. Gossip keeps our communities together, it keeps us safe, it equips us with important knowledge. The personal is political. Our intimacies are political. To gossip is a subversive act, an anti-capitalist act, and a feminist act. Let’s reclaim this act, get together and gossip! After all, what do we have to lose? We are all witches in their eyes anyway.

Gossip as a gendered term

Origin of Gossip

History of Gossip

Evolution of Gossip

While there are some legitimate arguments being made relating to misogynistic societal perceptions of that word, the mods include women and enbies who disagree and specifically requested this name. I feel that this situation parallels the initial pushback that was experienced with disabled in which users voiced concerns that this name could be ableist, but the moderators of that community are themselves disabled and specifically requested that comm name, verbatim.

am i fuckin reading this correctly??? only because some of the people were women and/or enbies, their decisions are now supposed to be the pinnacle of wisdom and uncontestable?

i know that the mods are meaning no harm, i had nothing but positive experiences with them before this whole debacle started, and OP in particular has genuinely been really great at clearing up the current situation, thank you for that, BUT BEING PART OF A MINORITY GROUP DOESN'T ABSOLVE YOU OF BEING WRONG AND JUST REALLY INSENSITIVE IN THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION! all this is a little bit similar to certain trans people stating that they are okay with the t-slur being used on the internet, and while im sure nobody harbors this kind of sentiment in here, i hope this shows what harmful pitfalls this "im Part of a minority group, therefore im right"-thinking can bring.

so to reiterate from my removed thread:

• The term "gossip" has a long history of being weaponized against women, particularly in ways that diminish their voices and portray them as trivial, unimportant, or malicious when engaging in communication or expressing themselves. This cultural baggage doesn’t disappear just because a few people choose to reclaim or adopt the term in a specific context. By using it, the forum risks perpetuating a stereotype that affects gender and sexual minorities who are already marginalized, especially when used as the name of a community meant to serve them.

• some folks from marginalized groups, might want to take back words that have been thrown at them, but it’s a pretty complex thing to do. reclaiming those words means being really aware of how it affects others, especially in places that aim to be welcoming. just picking up a term because some people in the community are cool with it doesn’t really consider the real damage that word might still do to others in that same group. like, using the word "gossip" might give off the vibe that this place isn’t really serious about tackling the bigger issues of sexism that are still out there in society.

• hexbear communities should be all about making sure everyone feels respected and supported, especially those who have often been overlooked. using a word like "gossip" might accidentally push away folks who think it's disrespectful or plays into negative stereotypes about them. Even if some people who identify as women or genderqueer, might not see the term the same way, their views can really depend on their own experiences and privileges.

• one of the key things to building a welcoming space is to watch the words we use, since some can hurt people, even if we don't mean to. just because some folks in the group are cool with certain words doesn’t mean they’re okay for everyone. If we want our community to feel safe and inclusive, we need to think about how our words affect everyone and steer clear of terms that can be harmful.

tldr: it is great that racist terms like the_x_tank are being purged from the site, but it is absolutely not great that potentially sexist terms are being used as a substitute.

I'm upvoting everything here because I just want us all to get along