Almost 3 years ago, I published the story of a lesbian ex-Spinster mod, Glitches, and the mistreatment she endured while working as a member of Spinster's moderation team. Glitches granted me permission to write her story and provided information to me via direct messages. I worked to compile the information for days for Glitches. At the very end, when the writing and editing was complete, Glitches voiced that she did not want to go through with the story being made public. I understood her concern, but there were other lesbians like me being actively targeted by Spinster's admin team for raising concerns over the lesphobia perpetrated by the man who built, hosted and maintained the site. It wasn't just the two of us who were voicing our concern.
This story, while titled "Glitches' story" is about more than just Glitches. I also detailed the lesphobia that I and other lesbian users of Spinster faced. To edit the original story down to exclude Glitches would have taken yet more hours and eliminated so much of what made the lesphobia apparent.
I also believed that Glitches had a right to have her voice heard as a lesbian without facing retribution. I published her story to bring awareness to the struggles we as lesbians faced with Spinster's team.
I no longer maintain contact with Glitches and haven't since first publishing the below write-up of the events that took place on Spinster.xyz as I was made aware of racist conduct online by Glitches.
The write-up, lengthy for Wordpress, is compiled in two Google Docs.
Part 1:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KpFnTxE7Rw_W7sThcNSLFJ1OkTyUptXkFxPy1lfkuU/edit?usp=sharing
Part 2:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q5uIilixggUEa4_ie7W4ttH4YHJHbYQKXQI6_3LU_yc/edit?usp=sharing
Spinster claims to be a "women-first social network" that is "federated, feminist, and free" but its history suggests that it is anything but a safe-space for lesbian users. While the majority of radical feminists are women of color located in the Global South, Spinster appears to cater to mostly older, white, gender-critical women located in the U.K. Many of these women are not radical feminists. While the site has a high number of registered accounts, around 90% of those users remain inactive:
[https://fediverse.observer/spinster.xyz]
Part 2 of this story is just as important because it gets to the core of the problem. Radical feminism is exclusively and intentionally womyn-led and womyn-focused. Womyn refers specifically to those observed and assigned female at birth. That is, to be a second-wave feminist, which a radfem is, you must be AFAB and adhere to the teachings of radical feminism. You cannot have a male person primarily responsible for building and maintaining an entire social media website designed for radical feminists, which is exactly what happened. If the woman who claimed to lead Spinster had actually been educated at all on radical feminism and had actually read any of the literature by the brains behind the movement, this would have been obvious. For example, leading radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin herself had a male partner, but she was not known for allowing him to direct her politics, define misogyny, or speak over feminist voices. While I no longer spend time pouring over the literary works of Zionist feminists, I am at the very least educated on the views they held that aided in defining Radical Feminism as we know it.
To me, Spinster seemed more akin to a project run by grifters. Individuals looking to profit off of women who were looking for a female-exclusive safe space during a time when women speaking openly about the misogyny they were witnessing and experiencing awarded them the "ban hammer" on mainstream social media sites. Sites that did not (and still do not) allow for open discussion of misogyny without censoring women's voices. Popular social media platforms are intent on asking these women to soften their trauma and diminish the protective reasoning skills they were forced to develop in a Patriarchal society, lest they risk offending AMAB people who, as a sex-class, have historically oppressed them.
Unfortunately for these women, if they did not want to have their voices silenced on popular platforms one of their only alternatives was Spinster. Yet even in that space women had to listen to a man granted the power by his female partner to interact freely, mansplain, and spew his opinion all over the space. Like usual, it was lesbian feminists who had no desire to coddle or appeal to men who called out the behavior and tried to draw attention to the bigger issue at hand.
History has a way of repeating itself. And much like during radical feminism’s peak in the late 60s and mid 70s, the straight feminists in the room did everything they could to silence the “mean, pesky dykes” who insisted they hold their beloved men accountable. Like mothers who coddle their sons, many straight feminists select a male partner and swear he’s special, and nothing like the other men. In this case, that “special boy” just happened to be the site's administrator.
This type of mindset and social dynamic is nothing new and was a driving factor in the formation of lesbian separatism. Ironically, that same dynamic on Spinster is what led to Cliterati’s creation: a separate Fediverse instance I initially administered and customized myself at a time when documentation for customization was slim, later bringing volunteers on board to assist. Cliterati started as a space open to all women, later became lesbian exclusive, and ultimately disbanded when it became clear I was doing most of the labor and carrying most of the workload. A vexing situation for me, as I had only ever intended to pass on the admin role to another when the site was adequately established. There was nobody who wanted to put in the hours and effort required, or hold that level of responsibility, even when I offered to pass on ownership. The moderation team I brought on (at their own request) ended up making demands and creating more drama and work for me. That situation will be story time for another time.
If you're looking for more, you can read about the time that Spinster got hit up by the feds.