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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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
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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.
disables downvotes because they are all spam as well.
Not really, I come across posts from your instance sometimes and I downvote because I disagree. Though now I know that was futile.
I downvote because I disagree.
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.
They allow drama and harassment communities to be hosted on their instance.
Ah, I guess you’re referring to [email protected]
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 [email protected] is better for that purpose
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.
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.
5·27 days agoOnly 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.
Beehaw at least is only a quarter of the monthly active users compared to hexbear, that hardly makes it a “micro” instance if they’re on the same order of magnitude. But I digress.
No shade to what hexbear is achieving and I’m very glad to hear that they are championing trans acceptance and not tolerating transphobia. Great work!
Unrelated, I didn’t get a notification for your reply, at all, how peculiar. I only saw it because I happened to revisit the post.
Huh, interesting. Probably weird fediverse shenanigans!
The fediverse do be shenaniganing
It certainly do be
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.
Following the discussion here as the LW thread got locked
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.
Yeah, and Reddit is one of the most toxic cesspits out there, they only banned subs like fatpeoplehate and itsafetish because of being advertiser friendly. If they hadn’t complained those subs probably still would be up spouting hateful garbage.
.world is a hellhole, agreed
No sure if ironic or not
Maybe using to really say from experience?lol
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.
You can always just have multiple accounts, if you’re specifically trying to avoid Marxists but also liberals, dbzer0 is probably what you want, but you could also have a Lemmynsfw.com account as well.
Lemmy is lacking in Anarchist and NSFW instances from what I know of, so either you will want to go with a general purpose instance that doesn’t block NSFW instances and deal with liberals and Marxists also federated with the general purpose instance, or maintain 2 accounts. Some apps let you swap at the press of a button without needing to relog in. I personally have a Hexbear.net account and a Lemmy.ml account, the former for relaxing and checking the news, the latter generally for trying to get liberals to read theory, so I use Jerboa for Lemmy.ml and Hexbear.net through my browser (so I get access to the unique Hexbear emotes). Works well for me!
Hum, lemmy.zip could be a good choice, they are federated with lemmynsfw.com
Lemm.ee has the issue of very small picture upload limits
vegan theory club defedded world and while I miss some content the quality of commentator went up dramatically. Yeah I see some stuff I disagree with and I’m sure I bother some people too, sometimes accidentally ;) but that place is a fucking cesspit.
Browsing Hexbear’s All vs Lemmy.ml’s All is night and day different in terms of average post and commenter quality. Lemmy.world and similarly aligned right-wing instances really drags down the average quality of discussions.
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.
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.
Being anti-Marxist is definitely a big negative, especially since you tolerate liberalism. Believing in “outreach” by allowing liberals yet rejecting Marxism is where you get “left” antileftism. It would be better to be an enforced anarchist community intolerant of liberalism, which would help y’all avoid the problems I see with slrpnk.net. Grad has a strict Marxism-only platform, and it has no issues, Hexbear has strict left-unity and has no issues, but solarpunk isn’t defined by anything other than the aesthetic, so it becomes a source of “left” antileftism rather than just an Anarchist community.
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.
As a Marxist, I want to point out that this is more Utopianism, ie trying to come up with a formula and enforce it, rather than trying to steer development. The Superstructure, ie art, culture, laws, etc, comes from the Base, ie the Mode of Production. Art naturally follows and supports the Base. Trying to force an aesthetic onto a utopia, ie a better form of society you wish to implement directly, is difficult and prone to coopting.
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.
To be clear, calling Marxism “authoritarian Communism” is a form of left-punching. You may not believe anti-Marxism is anti-leftism, but the fact that you allow liberalism but not Marxism is where the issues come in. It would be better, again, to be a strictly Anarchist community, or to allow both liberals and Marxists, blocking out left-wingers in favor of right-wingers is where the cooption comes from.
Therefore, I would say you have 3 good solutions:
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Unblock leftist instances like Hexbear and Grad, while retaining liberals as well. This way, outreach balances itself out
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Block liberalism, this keeps Anarchism as the focus
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Add lots of resources for theory and discussions for theory that go beyond how this “utopia” may function, ie how do we actually get there? I see lots of “what we stand fors” on the sidebar but very little in the way of actual praxis, which adds further to the cooption process. Hexbear has anarchist and marxist theory linked everywhere, even in the sidebars and taglines, same with Grad (which even maintains a wiki and beginner reading list). Solarpunk kinda just has the manifesto. Even a simple theory reading list can do wonders for the theory levels of your userbase.
Of course, you’re free to continue as you see fit, I’m just going to have the same issues with slrpnk.net. You don’t have to appease this random Marxist-Leninist, you don’t owe me anything, but I do think you’re harming your server by being more tolerant of right-wingers than Left-wingers you disagree with on practice.
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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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Calling out transphobia is division? Just curious what part of the lgbtqia2s+ community are you?
My guess is he considers himself an ally and thinks A is for ally lol
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everyone here are transgender communists.
Hexbear has the largest weekly trans megathread in the entire fediverse, a supermajority of non-cishet users, has hard-coded mandatory pronoun tags, and aggressively bans racism, bigotry and transphobia on sight. It is, hands down, the most trans-inclusive space in the fediverse, as evidenced by a recent user poll in which 90% of respondents agreed, Hexbear is a place that protects its trans users.
They may be aggressive in their methods but they are one of if not the most trans friendly servers in the fediverse. Mostly because they ban people for bigotry and apologists of transphobes. I mean you are a cis person, saying that a space is unfriendly to transphobes because they are a bit on the aggressive side and ban people for bigotry that is real but you don’t see or understand why it is bigotry. It really isn’t your place to tell us trans people that a space meant for trans people is unfriendly to trans people.
