Transphobia in the fediverse - Discuss Online
discuss.onlinecross-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.
A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.
Getting started on Fediverse;
- What is the fediverse?
- Fediverse Platforms
- How to run your own community
- 0 users online
- 92 users / day
- 135 users / week
- 187 users / month
- 420 users / 6 months
- 1 subscriber
- 1.06K Posts
- 13.9K Comments
- Modlog
- mods:
Use the report button also to report transphobia, so we can get to it asap.
lol when are you gonna “get to” this one?
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.
he’s also an adamant COVID-denier, I have no doubt that his heart is in the wrong place and his Castro PFP+“leftism” are purely aesthetic
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.
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.
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 don’t really know the drama around this guy except The Screenshot everybody posts so I’m not going to act as if I care about his personal opinions, but I don’t like what I see as hypocrisy. There can be no allyship with someone who understands our experience purely through the lens of political opportunism. Empathy is the real prerequisite for decency here. There is a lot of talk on this guy and whether he updated his stance after that screenshot but I don’t think it matters unless he signals himself a understanding of lgbt people as human fools trapped in the same exploitation he is. And hell I don’t know, maybe he wrote that post awhile ago, and if he did good for him. But it rather seems like he lets people speak for him on this issue.
Do you think all pro-lgbt measures done in socialist states to be about political opportunism? Because in Cuba it took a multi-decade effort while struggling against the influence of the catholic church and colonial-legacy machismo culture to expand lgbt rights to the point that they’re better than the US
I think this is a community organiser and not a faceless national government. Making lgbt policy and learning in your personal life to be better aren’t the same thing. Not dissimilar to when right wingers call something “political.”
One would think class struggle would be the first thing socialists would appeal to instead of a milquetoast attempts to reassure people “its okay, the Revolutionary Cause are slowly learning to view you as people!”
Man is a person. He answers to a community. He’s not actually a party official of the revolutionary guard and you and I are allowed to demand better. The way I wrote the last post gave you ample opportunity clap back at me with proof from Dessines that he felt differently, which I honestly expect exists somewhere at least as damage control. But instead we are arguing the semantics over whether a man should take responsibilty for his own bigotry or whether the entire global leftist project should bear that burden for him. I’d rather be slurred to my face than have people bullshit me we’re on the same side while talking about us like we’re props; if only the right ideological mutant strain of intersectional communism that you personally advocate for as being inevitable were to triumph, then the callous way we’re discussed will have been justified. You’re sharing the table with a bigot, or at least you’re leaving a chair open with this rhetoric of pragmatic “usefulness to the cause”. I am happy to be proven wrong (for the sake of .ml’s community) but even if I am this line of reasoning you employ just does not work.
I’m not having that argument? I am sort of confused as to why you think I’m making that argument?
I think you’re continuing to read me as appealing to pragmatism when I am instead appealing to learning from people who he respects on why he is personally wrong on the issue.
I would once again ask you, what specifically do you want to happen? If you’re having a hard time articulating it, I would suggest looking at the constructive criticism handbook. https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-3/constructive-criticism.html?ref=redstarcaucus.org
Demand better from him than providing free gender affirming care and legalizing gay marriage, affirming other alt family structures, proactively having a country do pro-lgbt education to root out cultural bigotry like in Cuba? I’m am somewhat confused by this statement? What does demanding better here look like?
I really feel like you’re forgetting this
is how you defend that above screenshot people are pointed out. I don’t understand how you can’t see the contradiction implicit. A person’s heart can’t be in the right place if they say things like what was said in the original comment. It occurs to me on reread maybe I don’t understand it? It’s a bit ambiguously worded. But it has popped up before in these conversations and its cited whenever l.ml users reach out to the other big gay instances.
We should accept each other not based on “how modern socialist states are moving”. That phrase “doing the leg work” is doing a lot of leg work being nonspecific about what someone is actually learning and internalizing.
Its just uncomfortable to be in a supposedly welcoming space where allyship arises from first principles and not from real empathy. Its not a college class you can study for.
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.
Any specific issues with Lemmy.ca? The admins always seemed quite reactive and reasonable
They allow drama and harassment communities to be hosted on their instance.
Ah, I guess you’re referring to !fediverselore@lemmy.ca
Yeah, leaving something like that on their server demonstrates a lack of vision and maturity. If they are going to host a major instance they should be more careful about allowing toxic communities to use their facilities.
There is some value in such meta communities. On the other hand, they indeed require extra attention.
I very strongly disagree and defederate their server and their spam users for that reason. That only exists to harass and troll people and should not be tolerated. After some shitbag posted about me there I had waves of trolls go to my discord servers. The posts there are all extremely petty and it should be deleted.
Sorry to hear, I see where you come from.
On the other hand, being able to call out power tripping admins and mods is valuable. I guess maybe today !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com is better for that purpose
We don’t need people calling anyone out, we need people to invest in new instances and actually post content. Lemmy is censorship proof so nothing is being accomplished with this nonsense that is worth while. Even the idea that people are power tripping, just block them. It is their server they’re paying for, don’t use it or federate them. All this does is create drama and harass instance admins or in the case of lemmy.ca harasses regular users and makes this overall less enjoyable. It’s a toxic and immature behavior that is best left on Reddit.
Not really, I come across posts from your instance sometimes and I downvote because I disagree. Though now I know that was futile.
This is why downvotes are mostly spam lmao. They have more to do with how popular something this than the substance of the post. It is also impossible to distinguish good faith criticism and reactionary suppression.
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.
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.
On Hexbear, transphobes are executed on sight.
I wish more instances would handle banning transphobes the way Hexbear does. No tolerance for Bigotry. Lemmy.world though seems to unfortunately be quite lenient about it ☹️
Lemmy.world was my first instance, it was a nice place while it was below 1k users, then it started to grow fast and degenerate until it’s become a complete cesspool from all points of view, not just bigotry.
I fled (I’m cis).
Lemmy.world sucks these days, their moderation is poor, and they seem to allow all kinds of bigots and trolls. Someone told me they believe strongly in freedom of speech, this is what it gets them.
What I saw and the reason I fled was their “freedom of speech” only applied to things mods agreed with, that’s no real freedom of speech in my book.
While I didn’t have any personal problem with them, I saw people and communities being banned for reasons that were not logical to me and I had the very strong impression their convoluted “explanations” were just a cover for their personal preferences, mind this is just my opinion.
I’m fine with freedom of speech as long as it’s coherent and not just based on what mods personally like or don’t.
I believe they do have the right to do what they want with “their” instance, I just don’t want to be in a place like that.
the votes arent completely tallied yet, but since its relevant to this discussion, take a look at this one result from a survey. 266 trans people unanimously agree that hexbear is a transgender inclusive space.
Lemmy.world is quite right wing. A reasonably large proportion of insufferable folk. Better off with Hexbear if you’re a communist or BeeHaw is another option. Blahaj also an option.
Hope you find the right place for you.
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.
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.
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:
Translation: Doesn’t believe trans people are valid and doesn’t think people should respect our preferred pronouns
Translation: Doesn’t believe we should exist in public, that we are a threat to children by virtue of being transgender.
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.