Transphobia in the fediverse
Transphobia in the fediverse
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.
This is why this explicitly trans protective instance does not allow downvotes and bans transphobe, even the "just asking questions" type, and the people that excuse it
Thanks for being there for us đ«Ą
Yeah, we need more instances to do this. People who undermine our right to exist represent an existential threat to our existence. No matter how innocuous it seems at first glance.
This may be of importance to consider. When those in power are bigoted, people feel safer expressing it themselves.
I'm not sure how relevant that is, considering most of the accounts I've seen doing this are from lemmy.world, I've seen some doing it from .ml but most are from .world.
Nutomic is a core Lemmy developer. While their actual admin power is limited to .ml communities and users, their role in the development and future of Lemmy gives them legitimacy and undeserved importance on other instances.
Even if you don't believe that Nutomic's status and personal attitude around trans individuals subtly influences the whole Lemmy community, consider that a large part of Lemmy rests on Nutomic's goodwill and professionalism. For example, if a change to add pronouns to user pages is ever rejected, can you trust that it was for a legitimate reason when the people who have the final say are transphobic?
considering most of the accounts I've seen doing this are from lemmy.world
Ah, that explains (in part) why I haven't seen very much of this myself. Their instance is failing to properly federate comments and votes, so I often don't see comments from LW users unless I come across a post that's a week oldâor they reply to my own comments, in which case I see it a week later.
I find this very interesting, I thought of people on Lemmy as generally more open and less⊠bigoted, so this comes as a rather unfortunate surprise, thank you for pointing out :(
Yup. I don't feel comfortable using my one account where I am openly trans on any trans or queer non related communities because unfortunately transphobia is too rampant.
Damn, I though lemmy was more open to you folks and it's sad to see that I was simply missing what's going on. :(
I hear this a lot and I wonder how Lemmy or even the Fediverse as a whole got that status?
I donât see anything that would make the Fediverse a safer place, except for the fact that the software itself, allows for the creation of closed communities.
As soon as you open up your community to the rest of the Fediverse though, you are at the mercy of the rest of the internet, that unfortunately includes assholes.
Now, as a Lemmy administrator myself, I can fortunately say that I havenât experienced any transphobia from my users or have transphobia reported by my users. But do note that I am only talking about actual reports made by users. If it hasnât been reported, I am not aware of it.
I'm sorry to hear that, genuinely. I hope we can build a more inclusive environment going forward.
Sorry to hear indeed đ
It's unfortunate that it must be like that, people like us should be able to feel safe being who we are and not have to hide and pretend to me something we aren't. That's why it's so important that this problem be dealt with on a large scale, by instance admins across the fediverse.
transphobia on the Internet? gasps
no but really the best thing we can do is to stand up for ourselves and our community members and act in good faith, unfortunately even on lemmy there are massive divides in the trans community, but I know there are very many smart and wonderful individuals here that may convince fence sitters just by being who they are, so thanks yall
meant to post on lemmy.ml, editing and reposting
My last interaction with the trans community was me asking how we can be absolutely sure that we covered all possible genders. It was about a checking who is participating and gender had like 15 options or something. I'm still genuinely wondering if genders just get picked randomly or if there is some kind of system or that was actually all there is. I got insulted and my question got deleted by a mod.
I don't feel like the trans community is interested in outside contact.
You are describing people in the community, please don't overgeneralize based on your experiences. Also please don't badmouth people trying to be helpful when it comes to questioning gender identity, I know some people can come off as a bit pushy, me too sometimes, but most of us do it out of love and a desire to help.