The One Thing You Can't Discuss On Reddit

When 'diversity and inclusion' becomes exclusion.

Reddit is one of the biggest discussion platforms on the internet - after all, it did kill the message board. You can create a ‘subreddit’ or what we in the bad old days called a ‘message board subsection’ to talk about anything. And I mean anything. You can talk about the National Football League, ask whether you’re an asshole/practice your creative writing, ask for legal advice, whether COVID vaccines are a product of the saucer people, or hating Grandpa Joe from the 1970s film Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

You can talk about literally anything. Except one thing. Well, one thing and a few things related to that one thing.

That ‘thing’ is homosexuality.

Want to talk about how much you hate an obscure non-player character in a Pokemon game? Go nuts. Want to post endless violent pornography (which I won’t link)? Go ahead. But you can’t have an open and free, nor frank discussion about homosexuality. None of the mainstream ‘LGBT’ subreddits allow people who are exclusively attracted to the same sex - which is, frankly, everyone’s understanding of what homosexuality is, even trans rights activists, who say one thing in the streets and another between the sheets. Talking about homosexuality will get you banned. Creating your own lesbian subreddit for homosexuals after the ‘main’ subreddit, ‘actual lesbians’ became full of doughy men bragging about their gender euphoria girlcock lesbianism? Well, ‘truelesbians’ copped a ban for ‘promoting hate’. Gay men aren’t exempt - ‘truegaymen’ was banned nine months ago for the same reason - ‘promoting hate’.

God forbid, either, that you have view that the alphabet soup is ridiculous, and that perhaps, we should return to the original acronym. ‘LGBDroptheT’ which argued that sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity and the lesbian and gay liberation movement had nothing to do with gender identity also received a ban for ‘promoting hate’. Such actions echo the threatening mantras directed at organizations like LGB Alliance that ‘there is no LGB without the T’ - which is often accompanied by a torrent of homophobic abuse.

The supposed ‘LGBT subreddits’ are more like a message board version of the film Get Out than safe spaces for lesbian and gay people.

A year on from the massive ban wave on Reddit that was driven by a small cabal of well-connected users, and you still can’t discuss homosexuality on Reddit.

Hell, you can be right-wing and post on ‘r/conservative’, but ‘rightwinglgbt’ was banned. That’s right - Reddit thinks that LGBT people who might be right-wing shouldn’t have a platform, because it might ‘promote hate’. What hate? Who knows. This is particularly problematic when supposedly gay-focused subreddits (which are mostly run by straight people identifying otherwise), which ban anyone who expresses an opinion that isn’t expressly worshipful of communism. Turns out being a homosexual to the right of Josef Stalin these days is hateful and you shouldn’t be discussing it on Reddit.

I’m not right-wing - but I am a homosexual, and shouldn’t I be free to discuss or hold any political view I want? When did my sexual orientation become a political orientation? When was it decided that the freedom to hold any belief didn’t apply to me because I like eating pussy? My choice at the ballot box doesn’t determine my sexuality.

Reddit’s ban on the homosexual is, well, an issue, to put it mildly - you can discuss anything there, except the basic, easily observable fact that lesbians do not have a penis, never have had penises, and will never have penises - unless you’re posting on ‘r/lesbian’ which is a pornography subreddit for straight men, where lesbians don’t have penises. An actual biological female who’s attracted to solely biological females, though? Well, you’re not a straight guy jacking off, so fuck you.

It’s not just Reddit, either. Reddit’s ban on homosexuality is symptomatic of a wider problem with ‘diversity and inclusion’ or ‘banning hate’. Reddit is just following a trend. Too often, both those things are being directed by upper-middle class heterosexuals (whether they identify that way or not), telling everyone else what ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ really mean. This often amounts to either including them in categories of people where they don’t belong - like our aforementioned doughy straight men claiming to be lesbians, or centering their saintly guilt over the actions of ancestors they probably can’t even name e.g, Robin DeAngelo. In the process, ‘diversity and inclusion’ creates outcomes where lesbians and gays are banned from discussing their lives on the 7th most popular website in the United States. That’s not diversity and inclusion, that’s just plain old homophobia.

A year on from the initial ban waves, will Reddit repudiate its homophobic actions? Can it change? Or will homosexuality continue to be considered ‘promoting hate’ for excluding heterosexuals wanting to wear our skin?

Author’s note: This article was updated shortly after publication to include a discussion of ‘LGB Drop The T’.