cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25042034
This post is “FYI only” for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.
I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the “adult human female” dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and “civil disagreement” on the validity of trans folk.
I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to “sort it out through discussion and voting”. However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little “sorting out” has occurred. The posts remain in place.
At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.
I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.
Transphobia? In the United Kingdom, you say?
I am dumbstruck.
I’m coming to this specific post late.
But I do wanna say that I’ve had interactions with the .uk admins over the last year or so. Their user histories exist.
I think it important to note that the individual admins have been public in their support of trans issues. While the slow response is definitely an issue, try not to villainize them without something concrete to back that up. Any of us that disagree with the delay in particular (and please note the inclusive plural), remember that someone can make a bad choice and still be an ally.
Yeah, the optimum response would have been immediate action via comment removals, with debate to follow and reinstatement if merited after debate; combined with prompt communication (within a realistic range of prompt for someone not glued to their instance 24/7). But optimum isn’t always going to happen. My grumpy, cantankerous old ass is not often optimum, so I sure can’t hold delays and iffy reasoning against anyone else, as long as they get there eventually.
Good for UK.
Hi, Feddit UK admin here, I’d just like to add a bit more context. We’re currently discussing these comments in an admin chat, though this was apparently not communicated to Ada so she got the impression inaction was our position. Our position is not inaction, but these specific comments have become wrapped up in a policy discussion on how we facilitate discussion of our state’s increasing hostile actions without allowing transphobia to propagate. I hope we can rectify the situation soon, but doing things by committee is never swift.
I think blaha’s behavior here is telling and should be considered in the decision making process.
What specifically?
Dramatic spazzing
Yes. Blahaj’s decisive reaction should show the correct behavior to take. Late is better than never.
🤡
Ada has said that she defederated because of a lack of response, not the content itself.
Extra context is helpful, thanks.
While the underlying issue swirling around the UK courts’ confusion of gender vs. sex, male vs. female is just as confusing to me and I have no clear answers for that, the Blahaj admin’s move is I think the right one.
That instance prides itself as being a safe-space for LGBTQ+ folks, so explicitly allowing behaviour that does not recognize its users’ identities, is reasonable grounds for defederation.
prides itself as being a safe-space for LGBTQ+ folks
I wish that were true. They’re banning people over the stupidest shit regardless if you’re queer yourself. 😂 Fuck that place, that’s not my community.
Lotta people whining on that front…and in every case i’ve seen it’s because they’ve been an outright transphobic dick, or doubled down and continued to spout harmful rhetoric after being warned they’re doing so.
An instance full of trans people does not owe their abusers a voice.
And people who are not being transphobic are being called so by finding abuse where there’s none. Then screeched them out of existence. Their user base represents the abrasive underbelly of the trans community that prioritizes pedantry over building bridges. They’re too thirsty for a witch hunt and suffer from Being Always Right.
Why is everyone who disagrees suddenly wrong by default and accused of being abusive about inconsequential shit? Because you may hear a lot of stories about actual abuse but I’m saying not everyone is and yet they’re treated much the same.
Hahahah the cases i’m talking about are ones that end up on yepowertrippingbastards
So you know, posts that end up on another instance, devoid of investment where third parties stick their noses in. And say to the people complaining about bans: “You Deserved It”
Oh, yeah, I agree and I’ve seen them. I’ve even authored one where I was clearly in the wrong!
But my gripe is that even if you post it in one of those communities, the simple fact that it’s got to do with a trans instance breaks people’s brains. Even if you try to explain that what you said wasn’t transphobic, people will assume it was because, well, they’re the experts aren’t they? No, they’re fools with hammers.
(And inb4 the how do you know it wasn’t transphobic comments: I got too much experience with the gay and trans communities since puberty.)
Aaaaaaaaaaaah. C’mon.
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you’re not the only queer in the village
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being part of the comm doesn mean you can’t stick your foot in your mouth up to the knee.
I’m friggin’ ASD and get this. If you have multiple groups of people saying “uh, that’s transphobic” then don’t say “the fact it’s about a trans instance breaks people brains”, look within.
Ok but please don’t dude me.
I’m not saying I’m the only queer in the village, I’m saying I know where the line is, so you don’t need to overload what I’m saying.
And I’m saying there’s mud everywhere, even where there shouldn’t be mud because they hold standards up so high for no good reason. At some point they’re defending imaginary people and the modding becomes absurd.
Oh no, poor femboys can’t cross dress, it’s being gatekept by this commenter! He should formally apologize to all the femboys he has hurt. Like, c’on now, ridiculous.
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Why is everyone who disagrees suddenly wrong by default
If you disagree with “trans people are people and deserve to be treated well”, then you are indeed wrong by default
Defederate an instance because of a single problematic user doesn’t feel right.
But also defederate an instance because their admins don’t comply their own rules doesn’t feel wrong.
But also defederate an instance because their admins don’t comply their own rules doesn’t feel wrong.
Read the “offending” text:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/36737764/18213591
This is hardly transphobia.
Funnily enough, nobody cares about your opinion. You’re welcome to make whatever decisions you want, just like the people on Blahaj can say that is transphobia.
I’d argue it wasn’t defederated because of one user, it was defederating because of a fundamental disagreement in moderation policies.
The one user could’ve been saying anything people could find deplorable. It was that the admin chose to be hands-off about it that pulled the trigger.
Which is a good thing, in that servers are allowed to decide how they want to handle moderation, and other server owners are allowed to decide if they accept that, or if they expect the moderation will lead to continued problems of the same vein down the road. The fediverse working as intended.
Censorship attempt failed… These people are so fucking annoying. They can’t tell a difference between a discussion and hatred.
Nothing lost, good for feddit.UK admins for having a back bone.
Let these children self segregate and jerk each other off within their echo chambers
We got a class war to fight and corpos to destroy anyway!
World next. They do just as little about their transphobia
As a .world user id be sad if it got defederated. I like my content to have all kind of point of views (if discussions are civil).
I have yet to see any large influx of transphobia comments, but will say i haven’t read much comments in general.I wonder if lemmy has a system to ban users from an instance without defederating? It should only be a last resort…
