Absolutely hate that the Predstrogen situation is about Matt's meltdown. We all saw this coming when people started posting the hammer car memes but it's just sickening. Transwomen aren't the focus even when we're the victims.

Justice for predstrogen.

A message from a few of the trans staff at Tumblr & Automattic:

We want trans people, and LGBTQ+ people broadly, to feel welcome on Tumblr, in part because we as trans people at Tumblr and Automattic want it to be a space where we ourselves feel included. We want to feel like this is a platform that supports us and fights for our safety. Tumblr is made brighter and more vibrant by your presence, and the LGBTQ+ folks who help run it are fighting all the time for this, for you, internally. 

A few days ago, Matt Mullenweg (the CEO of Automattic, Tumblr’s parent company) responded to a user’s ask about an account suspension in a way that negatively affected Tumblr’s LGBTQ+ community. We believe that Matt's response to this ask and his continued commentary has been unwarranted and harmful. Tumblr staff do not comment on moderation decisions as a matter of policy for a variety of reasons—including the privacy of those involved, and the practicalities of moderating thousands of reports a day. The downside of this policy is that it is very easy for rumors and incorrect information about actions taken by our Trust & Safety team to spread unchecked. Given this, we want to clarify a few different pieces of this situation:

The reality of predstrogen's suspension was not accurately conveyed, and made it seem like we were reaching for opportunities to ban trans feminine people on the platform. This is not the case. The example comment shared in the post linked above does not meet our definition of a realistic threat of violence, and was not the deciding factor in the account suspension.

Matt thereafter failed to recognize the harm to the community as a result of this suspension. Matt does not speak on behalf of the LGBTQ+ people who help run Tumblr or Automattic, and we were not consulted in the construction of a response to these events.

Last year, the "mature" and "sexual themes" community labels were erroneously applied to some users' posts. An outside team of contractors tasked with applying community labels to posts were responsible for this larger trend of mislabeling trans-related content. When our Trust & Safety team discovered this issue (thanks largely to reports from the community), we removed the contracted team’s ability to apply community labels and added more oversight to ensure it does not happen again. In the Staff post about this, LGBTQ+ staff pushed to be more transparent but were overruled by leadership. The termination of a contractor mentioned in the original ask response was for an unrelated incident which was incorrectly attributed to this case. We regret that the mislabeling ever happened, and the negative impact it has had on the trans community on Tumblr. 

Transition timelines are not against our community guidelines, and weren’t a factor considered by the moderation team when discussing suspensions and subsequent appeals. We do not take action against content that is related to transitioning or trans bodies unless it includes violations of the Community Guidelines.

When it comes to the experience of trans folks on Tumblr encountering transphobic content, and interacting with bigoted users, we understand and share your frustrations. Tumblr’s policies, and Automattic’s policies, are written to ensure freedom of speech and expression. We prohibit harassment as defined in our Community Guidelines, but we know that this policy falls short of protecting users from the wider scope of harmful speech often used against LGBTQ+ and other marginalized people.

Going forward, Tumblr is taking the following actions:

Prioritizing anti-harassment features that will empower users to more effectively protect themselves from harassment.

Building more internal tooling for us as Staff to proactively identify and mitigate instances of harassment.

Reviewing which of the tags frequently used by the trans community are blocked, and working to make them available next week.

We’re sorry for how this all transpired, and we’re actively fighting to make our voices heard more and prevent something like this from happening again in the future. We know firsthand that having to deal with situations like this as a Tumblr user is difficult, particularly as a member of an already frequently targeted and harassed community. We know it will take time to regain your trust, and we’re going to put in the work to rebuild it.

We appreciate the space we have been given to express our concerns and dissent, and we are thankful that Matt’s (and Automattic’s) strong commitment to freedom of expression has facilitated it.

We will continue to fight to make Tumblr safe for us all.

— This statement was authored by multiple trans employees of Tumblr and Automattic.

If I can take a moment to share my experience as a trans woman on the internet

My experience is by no means unique, it's just one experience in the plethora of trans feminine experiences and not unique to only tumblr. Though, I'll mostly talk about what I've experienced here. In the light of recent events, the reaction of "the ceo," and the comments he contributed regarding dog pile harassment; I simply wish to share my experiences that I have had to juxtapose the dynamic of his statements against a lived experience.

This account started as a way to document my social transition and eventually my journey with HRT. Tumblr had always had a large lgbtqia+ community. The queer people here inspired me and gave me hope. What I didn't know, but soon learned, is that there were people here who hated me for being trans. Being early in my transition I was a prime target. TERF groups would plan raids on my account. What this entailed was: rebloging my selfies into circles that would say the most vile things about me, threaten to kill, tell me I was ugly, tell me that everyone I knew thought I was a joke, I was a monster, my family hated me, that I should kill myself, they'd download and edit my photos into caricatures or depictions of violence. They would fill my ask box with hundreds of asks detailing how they'd kill me, call me slurs, describe the ways that I should kill myself, and pretty much everything else I mentioned above with the reblogs. Their words were carefully curated to try and break me, break my spirit, break my will to live. I tried reporting it. But it was impossible to keep up with, and like many others I saw no real response. Eventually I learned that I had to block all of them. 100's of blogs, eventually 1000's of blogs. My block list these days is incredibly extensive. I had to wade through their blogs, traverse sickening hate speech and imagery to eliminate entire circles of people harassing me. I became jaded to the hate speech, hardened to it. But mind you, I shouldn't have had to expose myself to all of this just to be at peace here amongst my community. I received no help, I was left to my own devices to protect myself. The people who hurt me never saw consequences. It was painful, it was unfair, and no one else should have to put the hours upon hours of effort and exposure to hate in to protect themselves like I did. But again my experience is not unique.

I have had to repeat this process of preemptive blocking periodically once a new circle discovers me. Blocking them all before they can start the process of hate all over again. A process of hate that seems to be hitting my community with rapidly increasing fervor as of late.

I've seen others experience far worse than me. The TERF circles will hunt down their personal information and doxx them. Expose their home address, telephone numbers, names of their family members. I can't begin to imagine the terror my queer siblings must feel when someone tells then that they want to murder them all while showing them that they know where you live. This is not a new thing, not a rare tactic, it happens. And we've all seen the news stories of trans people being murdered by people who planned it and were vocal about it.

I know this is depressing. And it doesn't reflect all of my experiences. I've had wonderful experiences here, met amazing people, made close friends, found inspiration, found hope. I found a community.

And it's my community, and I never want to let it go.

I do have fear that making this statement will get me banned. But, I wanted to say it. I wanted it to exist in the world so that everyone who doesn't know our experiences has a chance to understand and with luck empathize.

I'll part on these words and hope for the best both for myself and for every member of the community.

God photomatt following Avery to Twitter to commit DATA LAW BREACHES and effectively STALKING AND HARASSING HER when Avery's only complain in the first place was not getting any help with all the STALKING AND HARASSMENT she suffered for TWO GODDAMN YEARS is genuinely fucking INSANE.

I wish photomatt a very lose all your money.

https://x.com/photomatt/status/1760647056597946851?s=46

CEO of Tumblr, Matt Mullenweg, has started openly harassing tumblr users on other platforms. This dude is actually incredibly scary and malicious and should not be involved with this website going forward. Theres just no excuse for this behavior.

matt decided to not make this post rebloggable so here's a helpful post for anybody who needs it

hope i don't get banned for this

I mean this genuinely: the ceo couldve absolutely just gotten away with this still right after the c/a/r h/a/m/m/e/r posting saga if he just stayed on vacation.

Following a woman to a second website (AFTER SHE SAID SHE WAS DONE WITH THIS ONE) and continuing the drama, blaming her for being banned (when the crux of the issue wasn’t even the bans, it was the repeated harassment staff did nothing about!)

I seriously don’t think he realizes how much this undermines this platform and staff. Like, dude, come on. “If you don’t like it, leave!” Is not a good response, especially if you’re going to follow her to a different site anyway and personally bother her.

He’s even complained about receiving death threats- and death threats are bad! It’s bad to have death threats sent to you. So why is it ok when they’re sent to her? Like that was the issue. THAT was the issue. And from all his posting it seriously seems like he doesn’t get that.

The time to own up to shit and apologize was a few days ago at this point. This is putting a lot of really bad behaviors on display in front of two websites now.

Matt Mullenweg is now sexually harassing Avery on Twitter for posting a selfie and the caption “too hot for tumblr”

what the actual fuck is he doing. where those were sw accounts this is not just completely inappropriate harassment but potentially outing. so fucking far beyond what he was already doing to follow her there.

also noting that he's changed his focus since nobody thought the screenshot of the threat was valid (and i have had multiple ex-staff confirm that it's not against tos, btw). this kind of info should never be dug up and put out there by a ceo having a tantrum, christ alive

It's Rita. We're done here for now

I'm sure everyone's heard by now that something's happened at least so I'll try keep it short [lie]. This post is a rough explanation and not a defense, if mutuals want to add evidence of what I claim then please do so, I will have a note to friends at the end, feel free to skip to that 🧡🤎

I got terminated on predstrogen due to mass false reports about sexually explicit content, I had evidence of these mass false reports, and when I asked support for help they stated "As you know, you posted sexually explicit content and additionally harrassed people"

My issue isn't with the account termination, it's the double standard around it

I've had multiple accounts. The first (madhopz) was terminated for content on sideblogs when I was doing sex work and I know I won't get it back. The second (sadhopz) was targetted by lolcow forums, and took half a year to get back, only once I humiliated myself to support by screenshotting and documenting what they were saying about me and sharing images of me. The third (predstrogen) I mentioned and I'll get back to, but I was never emailed to explain why the fourth (Avewy/Predesterone) was terminated. All we know is that it was right after the CEO got upset with me, I broke no rules and said no one should attack anyone, I posted no explicit content, none.

A man twice my age and worth $400,000,000 threatened to call the cops on a trans woman online, and then deleted me when I mentioned this

To add insult to injury, he refused to call me "she" the entire time, referring to me as "they" and backpedalling to vaguely refer to me as The Account. I'm a fucking person, and you know that by threatening to pin the cops on me. Eventually even slipping and calling me "it" before respecting the womanhood of the person he would gladly talk about and "make an exception for"

My complaint to his post was that he says I was banned for harrassment, which is a lie. I was banned for mass false reports of sexual content, despite having been told by staff directly a month prior that my blog does not break that rule, and have had people admit to collaborating on reports. But my biggest issue is that even if I was banned for harrassment, then what did they do about my own harrassment?

They did fuck all and told me my stalkers should not be removed from Tumblr

After banning me without a reason, I immediately got an email back about harrassment and stalking that I sent a support ticket about in December. They banned me twice before looking into this, and their conclusion was "we won't do a thing". These are people who have been on my ass all of last fucking year calling me a rapist and a pedophile, and they ignored it. Does that sound like a man who cares about harrassment on his site, or only when it happens to him?

After the ban on Predstrogen and I moved to Avewy, they were everywhere. Inbox messages claiming I was sending asks to children threatening to rape them, anonymous people stating they're our victim and are scared to speak out about what I did to them. It all only happened now. They've turned a blind eye and given these people a win. I saved it all in an #archive tag as proof if I was ever asked or got through to support, but that didn't happen when i was terminated without warning or reason

When Matt deleted me himself, he deleted everything I posted and saved as evidence for my situation. Anonymous asks slandering me, reblogs of people organising to get rid of me, my own documentation of what staff did, all of it was deleted with @avewy/@predesterone.

I don't want to be on this site anymore, I was happy all day today because I feel free without it. But I miss my accounts, because of all the memories with them. I don't want to use them, but I want @madhopz, @predstrogen, and @predesterone back so that all the times ive had with friends, lovers and strangers arent completely eradicated. Every single thing uploaded to Predstrogen is gone and marked mature now, even my face and identity, because this was a sexual content ban and not harrassment as they say. They found another reason after the fact

Give me my identity and my memories back

To all my friends and mutuals, thank you. Even people I've had falling-outs with have been nothing but kind and I want everyone to know I appreciate it. I saw every ask before deletion, I see how many people are on Discord. I can't keep up, but knowing you reached out at all means the world to me

I was happier today off this site than I have been in months. I'm not driving myself to breakdowns anymore by being on here, my mental and emotional state has been in ruins. Maybe I'll come back on this account, but for now I'm leaving it blank and still and moving on.

This post is incredibly meandering and too long, but I'm not trying to defend myself or document everything, I'm trying to make sure I say something to people I care for instead of disappearing, you deserve it. I'm doing well, please find me elsewhere.

My Twitter is mAD_h0PZ

My Cohost is Predstrogen

My BlueSky is predstrogen.bsky.social

My discord is Avewy, and my server is Public

My steam is mAD_hOPZ

Goodnight, thank you 🧡🤎

Speechless.

https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1760647056597946851#m

MATT IS ATTACKING RITA ON TWITTER NOW

Important!!!

r u fucking serious wth?! he is a petulant child fr what the fuck

It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”

with regards to recent events,

dashboard unfucker will no longer be actively maintained, and the development of the Dashboard Plus extension is being shelved, along with all of my unpublished work for XKit Rewritten.

despite the fact that tumblr as a website is largely propped up by LGBTQ+ content creators, many of whom are trans women, the way this website has treated and continues to treat trans women is utterly disgusting.

from the harassment trans women face from this site's users, many of whom claim to be trans allies or are even trans themselves, to transphobic moderators targeting trans women and selling bans for money, all the way to the CEO of the website directly confronting a trans woman and threatening legal action against her for inactionable threats, tumblr has made it clear that it is by no means the queerest place on earth.

some of my trans sisters may remain on tumblr, even when faced with constant vitriol. i am deeply proud of them and their visibility in the face of hostility, however after seeing recent events unfold, and after being directly confronted by tumblr's CEO himself in a digusting display of indifference, i myself have decided to move onto better pursuits for the larger part. tumblr no longer holds the same shine for me that it did five years ago, and i can no longer justify spending hours of my time every week pouring more work and love into this site than any member of staff ever did.

i thank you all for the support you've given me in the past 8 months, whether through donations, contributions to the script, or even just sending me a kind message. i would ask that you show the same generosity and kindness to other trans girls in my absence, and especially to those who don't code, or write stories, or draw art. every trans girl is valuable, and their worth is more than any arbitrary set of talents. and a little love can go a long way.

yours truly, dragongirlsnout

cohost

It's Rita. We're done here for now

I'm sure everyone's heard by now that something's happened at least so I'll try keep it short [lie]. This post is a rough explanation and not a defense, if mutuals want to add evidence of what I claim then please do so, I will have a note to friends at the end, feel free to skip to that 🧡🤎

I got terminated on predstrogen due to mass false reports about sexually explicit content, I had evidence of these mass false reports, and when I asked support for help they stated "As you know, you posted sexually explicit content and additionally harrassed people"

My issue isn't with the account termination, it's the double standard around it

I've had multiple accounts. The first (madhopz) was terminated for content on sideblogs when I was doing sex work and I know I won't get it back. The second (sadhopz) was targetted by lolcow forums, and took half a year to get back, only once I humiliated myself to support by screenshotting and documenting what they were saying about me and sharing images of me. The third (predstrogen) I mentioned and I'll get back to, but I was never emailed to explain why the fourth (Avewy/Predesterone) was terminated. All we know is that it was right after the CEO got upset with me, I broke no rules and said no one should attack anyone, I posted no explicit content, none.

A man twice my age and worth $400,000,000 threatened to call the cops on a trans woman online, and then deleted me when I mentioned this

To add insult to injury, he refused to call me "she" the entire time, referring to me as "they" and backpedalling to vaguely refer to me as The Account. I'm a fucking person, and you know that by threatening to pin the cops on me. Eventually even slipping and calling me "it" before respecting the womanhood of the person he would gladly talk about and "make an exception for"

My complaint to his post was that he says I was banned for harrassment, which is a lie. I was banned for mass false reports of sexual content, despite having been told by staff directly a month prior that my blog does not break that rule, and have had people admit to collaborating on reports. But my biggest issue is that even if I was banned for harrassment, then what did they do about my own harrassment?

They did fuck all and told me my stalkers should not be removed from Tumblr

After banning me without a reason, I immediately got an email back about harrassment and stalking that I sent a support ticket about in December. They banned me twice before looking into this, and their conclusion was "we won't do a thing". These are people who have been on my ass all of last fucking year calling me a rapist and a pedophile, and they ignored it. Does that sound like a man who cares about harrassment on his site, or only when it happens to him?

After the ban on Predstrogen and I moved to Avewy, they were everywhere. Inbox messages claiming I was sending asks to children threatening to rape them, anonymous people stating they're our victim and are scared to speak out about what I did to them. It all only happened now. They've turned a blind eye and given these people a win. I saved it all in an #archive tag as proof if I was ever asked or got through to support, but that didn't happen when i was terminated without warning or reason

When Matt deleted me himself, he deleted everything I posted and saved as evidence for my situation. Anonymous asks slandering me, reblogs of people organising to get rid of me, my own documentation of what staff did, all of it was deleted with @avewy/@predesterone.

I don't want to be on this site anymore, I was happy all day today because I feel free without it. But I miss my accounts, because of all the memories with them. I don't want to use them, but I want @madhopz, @predstrogen, and @predesterone back so that all the times ive had with friends, lovers and strangers arent completely eradicated. Every single thing uploaded to Predstrogen is gone and marked mature now, even my face and identity, because this was a sexual content ban and not harrassment as they say. They found another reason after the fact

Give me my identity and my memories back

To all my friends and mutuals, thank you. Even people I've had falling-outs with have been nothing but kind and I want everyone to know I appreciate it. I saw every ask before deletion, I see how many people are on Discord. I can't keep up, but knowing you reached out at all means the world to me

I was happier today off this site than I have been in months. I'm not driving myself to breakdowns anymore by being on here, my mental and emotional state has been in ruins. Maybe I'll come back on this account, but for now I'm leaving it blank and still and moving on.

This post is incredibly meandering and too long, but I'm not trying to defend myself or document everything, I'm trying to make sure I say something to people I care for instead of disappearing, you deserve it. I'm doing well, please find me elsewhere.

My Twitter is mAD_h0PZ

My Cohost is Predstrogen

My BlueSky is predstrogen.bsky.social

My discord is Avewy, and my server is Public

My steam is mAD_hOPZ

Goodnight, thank you 🧡🤎

so "incubus" means someone who lies on top of something, and "succubus" means someone who lies underneath something, and the former also turns up in the word "incubate", which means to lie on top of an egg. To ensure closure we could therefore posit an analogous term "succubate", which would be something like this:

he is succubating.