cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/12273255
I’ve only been on Lemmy a few days and I’ve already witnessed a lot of thinly veiled transphobia, anything from people dismissing the existence of trans people, to trying to claim we are predators. I’ve also seen people downvoted in the general communities for expressing trans support, or seemingly for no reason other than simply being openly trans or visibly queer. I know it’s an ongoing effort to moderate transphobia on Lemmy, and the fediverse as a whole. We have to also address mentions of thinly veiled transphobia and transphobic users. Transphobia isn’t just a differing opinion, it is a dangerous hateful sentiment which causes harm to vulnerable people and it needs to be addressed, at the instance and community level. We need to put in the effort to identify transphobic dogwhistles and language used by transphobes to eradicate this type of behavior from our communities and servers alike.
Some people will argue that the light stuff isn’t something to worry about, but that’s not true. This is a tactic they use to blend in with normies and make them think that nothing they are doing or saying is wrong. It’s what transphobic right-wing YouTubers and Facebook users do to avoid being banned for hate speech. We are better than these corporations though, Fediverse is run by communities and for the users, we should not let these things slide as easily as Corporations do, they’re in it to make money, we… We’re in it to create a community for the users. Part of that means kicking out those who don’t have all our best interests at heart.
The fediverse isn’t one thing and lemmy in particular is censorship proof, meaning there isn’t much you can do besides tailoring your own experience and filtering the feed to suit you. My instance doesn’t federate with lemmy.world or lemmy.ca because they are not well run instances without any oversight to their users and it’s mostly spam. My instance also fully disables downvotes because they are all spam as well.
Admins indeed can deal with these users, by deleting their content from their instances, and banning them from the site, if they are homed on that specific instance they get banned everywhere when that happens. So it can be dealt with but it takes work from our admins, and since these are communities run by real people and not monolithic corporations, we can speak up and make a difference. Reach out to these admins who are real people.
Admins can, I do on vegantheoryclub.org but lemmy.world and lemmy.ca will not. The admins don’t agree with your take and aren’t going to change their minds so the only recourse you actually have is to invest in and build your own server and federate with who you align with.
Following the discussion here as the LW thread got locked
Typical LW L. From the mods literally admitting to being anti-Marxist to failing to protect trans users, LW is sowing its own destruction.
Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. This is just typical liberal progression.
Yep, the mods have even openly expressed disdain for Marxism, referring to it as “a phase in college.” When you take a deliberately anti-Leftist stance, you become a welcoming space for the far-right, hence why instances that block Hexbear or Grad tend to be home to the most right-wing individuals on Lemmy.
instances that block Hexbear or Grad tend to be home to the most right-wing individuals on Lemmy.
Don’t take this as a hard rule. My instance blocks hexbear and we’re a bunch of anarchists, we just saw the inter-instance drama and don’t want all that noise. Our memes community is often a target of derision for lemmy.world liberals. We tolerate liberals there but we absolutely don’t tolerate right-wingers.
Not to be mean or anything but I’ve seen right-wing and “left” anti-leftism from slrpnk.net, hopefully y’all have cleaned that up more. I think an issue with Solarpunk is that ultimately it’s an aesthetic, not an actual strain of Socialism or anything, so it’s easy to coopt.
Again, typically blocking Hexbear and Grad is a negative when it comes to the ideas held by the userbase of an instance in my personal experience.
“left” anti-leftism
I mean, that sounds like your referring to anarchists criticizing authoritarian communism, which is certainly not something slrpnk admins and mods would have any interest in “cleaning up” given they are anarchists themselves. If you meant liberals then I did say that we tolerate them there, at least on the memes community. We believe in outreach.
I think an issue with Solarpunk is that ultimately it’s an aesthetic, not an actual strain of Socialism or anything, so it’s easy to coopt
That’s fair. Solarpunk is primarily an artistic movement, so it is vulnerable to co-optation in the same way that any artistic movement is. IMO socialists are in desperate need of a strong modern artistic movement and if we don’t want it to be co-opted we should be embracing it.
Again, typically blocking Hexbear and Grad is a negative when it comes to the ideas held by the userbase of an instance in my personal experience.
Perhaps it was an overreaction, I can’t say for sure because I think most of that drama played out before I joined lemmy. I have also never personally experienced right-wing anti-leftism on slrpnk.net so I might assume that we have cleaned that up.
Just as well, the Lemmy.world one was filled with transphobes and transphobia apologists. No progress to be made there unfortunately.
Lemmy.world might be a lost cause, maybe defederation of .world should be more widely considered…
The lemmy.world thread reminds me of a similar “racism on the fediverse” thread, and the occasional thread about misogyny (dismissive, uninterested and/or personally offended)
More like reddit.world
It does have all the worst qualities of Reddit, including the hate speech and the hateful downvotes, I saw many people on Reddit heavily downvoted in unrelated threads because they were openly trans on their profile. I’ve unfortunately seen the same thing on Lemmy from Lemmy.world comment sections and that’s just in the first 5 days of being here.
I think it’s because it was the main instance that redditeurs moved to during the big the exodus.
.world is a hellhole, agreed
No sure if ironic or not
Look at my comment history - I’m sincere. Fuck .world and the neolib bootlickers there
Makes sense, have you considered moving to another instance?
Yes I’ve been asking around, was new to Lemmy when I made my account, and have narrowed it down to 3 instances but am not totally sure which one to pick. I want to be able to post nudity, and I also do not want to be around people who are authoritarian (eg tankies) if possible.
Maybe using to really say from experience?lol
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Calling out transphobia is division? Just curious what part of the lgbtqia2s+ community are you?
Use the report button also to report transphobia, so we can get to it asap.
Really wish I could hear an explanation for keeping Nutomic around when there is blatant transphobia. Either a public apology or something along those lines, it’s clear Nutomic has made trans users feel unsafe and that goes against the stated anti-transphobia aims.
I can’t understand the strain of “socially conservative Communism” (for lack of a better term). One of the Communist parties here in the UK, CPGB-ML, also declared “LGBT ideology” to be bourgeois and anti-Marxist. Greece’s KKE also has a history of anti-LGBTQ stances.
Doesn’t add up for these groups to be taking stances against marginalised people.
It’s an utter failure in understanding Marxism, trans liberation is a firmly Marxist position. Communist Parties in the Imperial Core tend to have the worst takes imaginable because they are largely detached from the International Movement as they are made up of Labor Aristocracy.
The UK in general is TERF island, so it’s not hard to see why their views suck.
Underdeveloped take from Dessalines: the bourgeoisie love to promote bigotry while covering themselves in a cloak of progressivism
Also very reactionary of him to be bent out of shape over the whole “biological men competing in women’s sports” thing. Wonder what he thinks of the fact he shares that opinion with fascists?
Yeah, it seems like he still has some political development on this front to do to chase out some liberal brainstorms.
I think the guy’s heart is in the right place though, I think he just hasn’t done the legwork yet on studying how modern socialist states are moving on lgbt issues and why they’re doing so.
This is a weird take. Lgbt people shouldn’t need to be a useful pawn for socialism in order to be treated with respect. We deserve rights and respect because we’re as human as the rest of you theoretically. If someone ostensibly left-wing or socialist needs to read theory in order value my life and needs as a proletarian ally then they can necessarily be no ally of mine. More work needs to be done beyond tacit academic acceptance.
What other minority has to be vetted for their use before being welcomed into your so-called revolutionary project?
Honestly this is a really uncharitable reading of what I’m saying.
If someone ostensibly left-wing or socialist needs to read theory in order value my life and needs as a proletarian ally then they can necessarily be no ally of mine. More work needs to be done beyond tacit academic acceptance.
Except here it seems the guy does oppose transphobia generally but needs specific work done to advance his understanding of the issue.
And understanding social practice in other places to improve your own social practice isn’t academic. It is not an ivory-tower-ass thing.
What other minority has to be vetted for their use before being welcomed into your so-called revolutionary project?
Socialist projects are doing better on lgbt issues because they are recognizing the old bigotry against lgbt people for what it is.
LGBT people aren’t being used, except in the sense that discarding liberal bigotries in general helps make the system more robust.
I’m literally a trans person btw, I am approaching this from an angle of actually helping people remove their own bigotries. What is your solution here? What should dessalines do to get better on trans issues, concretely? If you’re having a hard time articulating your criticism, I would suggest the constructive criticism handbook.
I think the guy’s heart is in the right place though, I think he just hasn’t done the legwork yet on studying how modern socialist states are moving on lgbt issues and why they’re doing so.
If the guy needs to study political movements in foreign countries in order to acknowledge LGBTQ rights then his heart is not in the right place. His head may have been in the right place if he’s sympathetic to socialism but his heart is clearly holding his head back.
I’m saying his heart is in the right place but he has wrong-headed ideas. Given the guy follows a socialist intellectual tradition it is reasonable that you suggest he gets his head in the right place by understanding socialist social practice on the issue.
Hexbear is easily the most trans-positive instance, and it isn’t close. Strictly anti-chaser, pro-trans, there’s even a cis/trans questionaire that shows trans and trans-questioning members outnumber cis members when put together.
Lemmy.ml’s trans community has fantastic mods, but unfortunately Lemmy.ml itself isn’t as protective of its trans users. I try to report transphobia when I see it, but I see a lot more transphobia on Lemmy.ml than I do on Hexbear.net, which is a symptom more of the userbase than the mods IMO.
I’d say “and it isn’t close” is a bit disingenuous when instances like beehaw and blahaj exist.
That’s fair to bring up, but from speaking to trans comrades on Hexbear.net it seems Blahaj doesn’t do a great job protecting trans users, despite the focus of the instance, due to issues with some troublesome moderators. That’s ignoring the whole anti-Marxism thing Blahaj has going on, of course, I don’t think that’s entirely relevant but wanted to bring it up to put it to rest.
Beehaw is interesting, it’s a micro-instance so I am not sure how to judge it. Hexbear is many times larger than both Blahaj and Beehaw and yet manages to have 0 transphobia, which is an achievement even if we assume neither Beehaw nor Blahaj have transphobia either.
The overall activity, diversity in content across communities, and mandatory pronoun listing in Hexbear is at the top of trans-inclusivity and protection in Lemmy instances, that’s pretty much undeniable.
Forcing pronoun disclosure is not necessarily helpful to the trans community, especially those questioning. Do you guys have a questioning tag or something? We have a few users bouncing around on Beehaws for instance that don’t concieve of themselves as human. This stuff is complicated.
There are (none/use name) options, and new options are added by request. It isn’t just he/him they/them she/her, and you can have multiple sets of pronouns.
Only two sets. I asked for more but they said no.
Huh, is that a technical problem?
Technical in what way?
It used to be that there was no limit on how many you could have (just that the display name cannot be more than 80 chars). But then makotech added some code to only take the 2 first pronoun sets that is sent to the server. I asked if this could be reverted, and they (mako/admins) said no.
Posts like this make me glad for my instance
I do not think the future of the fediverse lies in general purpose instances but that said, IMO Beehaw is the gold standard of a general purpose instance.
I read a post earlier tonight from tumbler that made me uncomfortably aware that I am naive when it comes to dog whistles and other subtleties people use to spread their hate. It laid out examples of things people are saying, and explained why they’re bad.
I know I would find it helpful and educational to know where you’re coming from, and to see the examples you’re speaking about.
Sure I can provide some examples:
I just wish they wouldn’t force their gender and pronouns onto other people
Translation: Doesn’t believe trans people are valid and doesn’t think people should respect our preferred pronouns
I just think that they need to keep it to themselves and leave kids out of it
Translation: Doesn’t believe we should exist in public, that we are a threat to children by virtue of being transgender.
It’s important to protect women’s spaces
Translation: Trans women shouldn’t be allowed to use the same spaces cis women use
There’s also more subtle ones such as people referring to cis women as real women, or referring to the transgender movement as gender ideology. The first one is wrong because trans women are real women, and the second one is wrong because transgender isn’t a religion or organization like a church. They are calling it an ideology so they can pretend there is an institution to fight against, in reality transgender people just exist and want to live our lives.
I’m sorry you’ve had to experience that transphobia on Lemmy. It is unfortunately common. And sometimes it even lurks as internalized transphobia in people that do not think of themselves as transphobjc. For example, there are Lemmy instances that actually promote chasers.
I believe all instances if transphobia should be called out and obvious examples should result in bans. Sometimes it is good to let people have a chance to accept criticism and retract but I am biased towards more often banning. Comments that are transphobic should also be removed.
Most people who are transphobic know what they are doing, I’m certain the people I saw do. They’re not going to change, they need to be given the boot to protect our communities from becoming Nazi bars.
Oh yes, sorry if I implied giving these particular people a break. I was speaking more generally but miscommunicated. The people you mentioned should all be banned in my opinion.
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You are extremely self centered in how you see the world. There are as many people in the world and in the fediverse that would say kick you out because you don’t have their best interests at heart.
Wanting basic respect to not have my existence and rights debated or denied is not self-centered, kindly go fuck off if you think it is. If me being transgender and wanting basic respect, and not having my existence and identity denied doesn’t “have their best interests at heart” they can fuck off, because they are nazis and bigots who don’t have my or my minority brethren’s best interests at heart. This isn’t asking for special treatment, this is asking to not have my existence and identity denied. Something that cishet people take for granted.
Folks this is an example of one of these dogwhistles I pointed out, trying to claim that wanting basic respect as a person and the way I identify is somehow self-centered. Fact is LGBTQ people just want to exist without prejudice or having their existence and validity debated, that isn’t an unreasonable ask and yet there are people who will screetch and whine when simply being asked to show respect, not even told, asked.
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