Monday 17 March 2014

Fallen Angels

For some years, as I was getting out and about as a girl, I visited the UK Angels website virtually every day. Then, a year ago, I stopped and many people have been asking me why.


It’s simply because I was fed up with the trolling and bullying.

Now, let’s face it, all sites have trolls, and that’s just one of the consequences of an open and democratic internet. But it’s what you do about the trolls that counts. The day when I felt I had to send yet another consoling message to a long term member because, yet again, one of the regular abusers had been abusive to her, that I realised Angels was a waste of space. And the majority of my friends who have also stopped visiting the site have said that they did so for similar reasons.

There are various national trans sites in the UK. TVChix is probably the biggest but I didn’t really rate it early on as it is pretty sleazy, although it has grown on me since; Roses is another large national site and was often argumentative but has now become better, especially since they chucked out some of their more obnoxious members, some of whom have now become fixtures on UK Angels. There are other smaller sites and, of course, social media like Facebook or sharing sites like Flickr have all sorts of groups. So if you are looking for support and advice in your trans life I suggest you follow any one of those. Angels has had the same half dozen well-established bullies in the five years I’ve been there and it seems unlikely to change. I’ve said this before, but some in the trans community – a minute but extremely vocal number of people – appoint themselves as leaders and representatives without a by-your-leave and proceed to dictate terms and sneer at anyone not exactly like them. An exceptionally nasty lot they are, too, since in most other contexts, such as work and school, there are rules and curbs on excess; the loose, unstructured context in which we lead our very varied trans lives leaves the field open for the unconscionable and the sociopathic to operate freely. I’ve been providing workplace bullying advice in various contexts for some years and I will maintain that there’s no reason and no excuse for bullying, be it at school, in the workplace, in the family, or online.

Many of us who used to be regulars there now think Angels is unpleasant so, sadly, I can’t recommend the site any more. It’s a pity as a couple of years ago and more I would have done and Jo Angel, the boss, is certainly to be commended for selflessly running an open site for trans people (well, for male to female anyway). I generally try to be positive about trans life but, frankly, I’d now say to anyone: join Angels only if you are heading for transition, and/or have extreme left-wing views, and/or hate your doctor, and/or don’t mind being sneered at and dictated to by the fixed trolls. But if, as one friend of mine puts it, you’ve found equilibrium in your life as a trans person, then do something better with your time.

I think the point was hit home to me last summer. After a couple of years spent organising lunches in Angels’ name, where I had to take time to ensure that rivals didn’t sit near each other and come to blows, and took a lot of abuse from various charmers who would attend, I organised lunch at Sparkle 2013 in my own name only. And I had just as many people attend from among my own friends as I ever had under Angels, but without any of the aggro.

So, there you have it, a potentially great resource spoilt by the inconsistency of policy over trolls and by the nastiness of a half-dozen extremist bullies which it would be so easy to deal with. I hope Jo will change her approach and get some neutral moderators, but I always feel that anyone is free to run their own site as they wish. At present, though, the consequence is that she loses most of her support. People do vote with their feet.

So sorry, girls, but I can’t support these folks any more until the behaviour there is more humane.

Sue x

PS Weight has risen and then fallen since last time, with overall no change. C'mon, girl, get a grip! 

10 comments:

  1. I know where you are coming from Sue, although I'm still a member of Angels Forum., I must admit I do feel out of it for some of the reasons you have stated. It is just not the same as it was some time ago and my input to the forum is minimal! Will it change - may be it will as things sometimes go in circles. Anyway, we all move on and our circumstances change, so some things including forums are not so important anymore but they do have their worth occasionally - we met each other! :-)

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    1. I won't forget the importance of Angels to me as the chief source of help in my main coming-out period, nor as the place I found so many new friends, including you KD. I hope it's current situation and outlook will improve so I can feel that it's a place for girls to find comfort and proper assistance once more. Sue x

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  2. Hmm. Forums. Tricky beasts. Not enough traffic and it's Tumbleweed Central. Too much of the wrong traffic (trolltastic) and new folk don't hand around. :-\

    Like you, I tried them for a while, but the rudeness put me off. It felt a bit like joining a conversation and then being wilfully ignored. I can go to work for that. :-) I don't need the same treatment in my home life. :-P

    So, yeah, I gave up on Roses and Angels, shifting to blogs and Facebook. I seem to have met more people (virtually and in real life) through those mediums. It's a strange old world.

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    1. I guess social sites and blogs are taking over now as you can choose who you befriend and what you read. Forums were useful in my early days, and I would have liked them to remain so as I feel I would like to give something back, but at the end of the day I think most of us mainly want support and friendship, so it's the friends who count more than random strangers online.

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  3. It has been a fair while since I took any active involvement in either of those two sites. I got bored with the banality, bored with the chaff and bored with the bigots. I guess life moved on for me as well and I didn't need the support anymore. Life moves on .....

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    1. Well, it does, and it seems to me that you yourself hardly need the advice on a forum, Becca. A lot of people say they just got bored an moved on and that's understandable. I'm just bothered by abuse that isn't dealt with properly - it's not even the abuse itself, it's the failure to address it that disappoints me. Sue x

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  4. I remember someone writing years ago "there is no trans community, just websites where people tell you how to live your life.
    I do look in on Angels, and occasionally post, but most of the time there is nothing new.

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    1. I do feel there is a trans community - I certainly feel part of one and I guess much of the point of my blog is to show people how we help each other as well as play together. But that community is a microcosm of society as a whole, with its nice folk, its thoughtful people, its gregarious ones and its loners, its nasty types and its bullies. Except that, whereas in real life the vicious and the antisocial are generally dealt with, in our community they often have free reign. Angels is not anarchy, but the bullies get away with too much for too long there before anything is done. Sue x

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  5. "and/or have extreme left-wing views" — oops, do I fall into that category? I'm pretty forceful in my opinions, especially when someone tries to posit some "men are this", "women are that" type nonsense. That stuff just sets me off, I'm afraid.

    Personally, I still like Angels, still visit every day, still post there. I don't find it particularly oppressive. In general, I prefer forums to (the insular world of) Facebook (etc). Forums have a history, a community, and a proper search function (!). And since I discovered the "ignore by default" function (which I've applied to a couple of people who always wind me up), I've found that I don't get cross so often either. It's an easier life not correcting people who are "wrong on the internet" quite so much ;)

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    1. Jonathan, your comment is immensely valuable because it shows how someone can disagree or dissent without being abusive.

      My feeling is that a forum should be where people exchange views to achieve consensus, or at least compromise. But a few cannot tolerate different views, approaches or suggestions. That reflects real life too, of course, but this is where the moderation panel of a forum can and should intervene to ensure fair play. My perception is that those who are abusive in a general way on Angels are dealt with appropriately, but those of a particular political position are allowed to get away with the same behaviour for much much longer. Eventually you realise that the playing field is not level but that certain prejudices are tolerated more than others. Left wing political prejudice is more marked in the trans community because the opposite extreme wing has decided that we are, in essence, perverts and won't include us. Not that I wish to be incorporated in right-wing schemes instead, merely that their exclusion of us does not mean that another political position is better. I feel overall that political stances are barely relevant in a situation like ours that is more closely connected to medical, perceptual and emotional conditions than the economic ones that most political ideologies tend to. I therefore condemn the usurpation of trans matters by left wing ideologues for their purposes, in just the same way that I object to the behaviour of all ideologues of whatever sort.

      If you are happy on Angels then that's nice, but too many of my friends felt abused there for me to feel able to continue supporting the current set-up. Personally, I never used the ignore function, still less the "foe" function, as I feel that creates a falseness in one's interactions and perceptions. But each to their own, that being very much my point. Sue x

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