No.
/r/MtF is under a 'temporary event,' which is a protective option that reddit has available. This is to shield it from all of the nasty rumours and harassment flying around. People who were approved submitters before the event went up should still be able to post and comment on the sub.
Last year, in the week of Sept. 7th to 13th, 2025, we had several things happen all at once:
- Charlie Kirk was shot and the media initially reported that the shooter was trans, and we had a lot of trolls all over reddit's trans groups, trying to blame trans folks for Kirk's death.
- We learned that one of our mods was on a sex offender registry for something they had done when they were a teenager. Someone recognized their username and went around sending accusations to a bunch of modmails.
We removed that person as a mod. The mods also had a discussion about it, so we could review the situation as a team.
At the same time, in my personal life, I had:
- A man across the street got into an argument and shot someone, then fled onto my job site.
- The anniversary of one of my closest friends' death is Sept. 11th, and I try to go visit every year. It's always rough.
- On the 12th, a couple got into an argument over a toddler in a stroller, so I called the police. When the argument became a fight, the man knocked the woman with the stroller over, and almost knocked over the stroller. So I ran over and got in the way, to separate the two of them. The man then went after me, and he grabbed me and threw me into the street. I was pretty shaken up, and I got a little scraped up on the asphalt, but I was okay.
My memories of that week mostly involve dealing with the police, trying to get surveillance camera footage for the detectives about the murder, signing paperwork for insurance to say I wasn't injured when I was assaulted, being asked to be a witness for the state, etc, and worrying about the Charlie Kirk stuff.
I like to help folks, and where I work is not the safest area. Back in 2015, a previous coworker of mine and his girlfriend were shot and killed about a mile or two away from my job. I pass by that spot almost every day - I turn at one point, and they were shot just up the road, on the other side of the highway.
I also have a history of working as an advocate and a protestor / organizer for women's rights, the ACLU, Save the Childen foundation, prison reform, immigration rights, etc.
If someone needs help, I like to go help. That's what I do; that's who I am.
Anyway, a week or two later, after the Charlie Kirk stuff had calmed down a little bit, when we were discussing the issue about the mod who had been removed, I suggested they change their username. I did this because I had been under the impression that the mod involved was being stalked by someone.
I had also misunderstood their offenses. I thought it was sharing nudes between two minors, one 15 and one 17, and the parents were against it. In truth, they were 15 and
19, they dated for
two years with the consent of the parents, and it was a jealous friend who reported it, to split the two of them up. I guess I read the two years bit as the two kids being two years apart in age, not the duration of the relationship.
15 and 17 is understandable, because teenage kids do stupid things with the Internet, but 15 and 19 is much different. Since I had misread the numbers, it changed my perspective on the issue.
My training and my experiences have taught me to protect the victim, and since I misunderstood the situation, I gave advice to protect the wrong person. It was just a suggestion because they were being stalked and tracked by their username.
That whole situation is
complex. On the one hand, we had one person saying they did consentual stuff as a teenager, on the other hand, we had one of their exes saying this person was violent and there's a story involving multiple ex wives, a group home, people in multiple states, accusations of violence and rape and a lot of ancillary details. I still don't understand it fully, and I've been
trying to figure out what actually happened, there.
But basically, I misunderstood the situation, and I gave advice that didn't fit the situation, advice
we didn't take. We had removed that mod immediately when we got the report, we had some discussion about it, and they never came back on as a mod. That person deleted their account, and we didn't have any contact with them after that, so that was the end of it.
Or so I thought.
Last year, we
also removed a different mod on
/r/MtF for breaking the subreddit policies and harassing other users. When the 'raccoon girl' was posting about their radiation vibrator, they had upset other users and a history of doing so, so we asked them to stop and encouraged them to post that sort of stuff somewhere else. They got a temporary ban for four days, as a warning, just to cover the weekend.
Just a 'hey, you're upsetting folks, please take this somewhere else.'
That blew up.
I made a post about the situation, to keep folks informed. It wasn't a pinned post or an announcement, it just has the 'mod post' flag on it. And again, I thought that was the end of it.
But the mod we had removed last year sent screenshots to the upset user, intending to make me look bad. While I had kept them around in the hopes the situation might improve, apparently they're still upset about it.
So now we have people threatening the sub and sending me death threats because the Internet loves a good witchhunt. The sub itself is on temporary restriction until this blows over, because Elon Musk retweeted all this and the alt right are having a field day with it.
Obviously I'm not a pedophile and I'm not supporting or defending anyone who is. The whole idea is lunacy; I'm one of the people who fights such things when I find them, and I have a long list of hate groups I've managed to get shut down over the years, or harassment campaigns I've tried to derail. I'm much better at fighting external threats to our communities, but not so great at recognizing internal threats coming from within our own community.
So here we are, three or four days later, and people are still trying to burn down our communities. The mods who left are saying they'll clear my name if I resign as head mod and hand over the sub to them. They know that the accusations against me are a lie; it's manufactured drama.
I don't want folks to think less of them for that; they're doing what they think is best.
Unfortunately, the information that was posted includes the personal information of a trans person in the South - and putting that on blast means putting that person at risk. Regardless of what they have or have not done, it's not okay to put someone's life at risk for control of a subreddit or to get back at somebody for a percieved offense.
Life is often boring, and messy. I know the Internet loves a good conspiracy, but there isn't one here. We're just volunteers who mod a forum online, and we do the best we can to help people. We don't always have the best information, or perfect communication. We're not omniscient, and sometimes we can be mistaken, or fooled, or hoodwinked. Mods are human, too.
When all of this sparked off, I went scrolling back through our mod chat to see what I could find. I didn't see any records about the offender registry in our modchat, but I remembered we had those records at some point. I tried searching for them in our modmail, digging through six months of messages, to no avail. From what I could see, we didn't have them, but I knew we got them at some point.
It turns out, I had been sent those records via a direct message, and I was looking in the wrong place, which is why I couldn't find them. I made
a post about the situation, based on what I remembered and what I knew. I was wrong, and now that I have better information, I see that some of the things I said in that post were wrong or inaccurate, and some folks called me on that. They were right. It's difficult to tell what is valid criticism when you're getting bombarded by hundreds of people.
I removed the post until I could review the information and figure out where things went wrong.
On my end, however, it's difficult to respond or review information from six months ago while you're in the middle of a crisis. It's also hard to recognize when your own memory doesn't match up to the situation at hand, and it's difficult to search through six months of modmail.
All of those things take time.
I'm human, too, and I'm not perfect, but we're doing our best. I'm sorry about all the mess; I'm hoping things will be back to normal soon. We're still discussing and exploring our options. I made a mistake, and maybe I'm a little too trusting and forgiving, a little too ready to give folks a second chance or too eager to defend a trans person when things get dicey. I try to be a good person, and for me that means I stand and protect folks when and where I can. I speak out against the alt right because I find their hatred and bigotry to be abominable.
So we're trying to navigate all of this as best we can.
Edit: Sorry I keep writing long posts; I try to be upfront and direct with folks as best I can. I try to keep y'all informed, even when I know it's stuff folks don't want to hear.
Also got a new tucute coworker and I can’t fucking escape them no matter where I go.
