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.
ada continues to be the realest MVP
One user upset you and the admins didn’t capitulate exactly how you wanted, so you’re defederating… You’re making way more drama out of it than anyone else. How do you handle any sort of difficult situation in your life?
you’re making drama
projection, lol
Blahaj doesn’t allow transphobia, period. It is a safe space for those who don’t have anywhere else safe to go on the Fediverse. If an instance refuses to deal with its users being transphobic, then it gets defederated, simple as that. It’s better to defederate from problematic instances than to allow Blahaj’s userbase to have to deal with transphobia, both casual and direct. If its users wanted to be around that, they wouldn’t be on Blahaj. It’s pretty telling that 99% of Blahaj’s vocal userbase is supportive of Ada’s decision here.
The feddit.uk admins failed to remove transphobic nonsense from their instance and went silent when told how and why it was a problem by Ada including violating feddit.uk’s rule 1. Hence, defederation until they get rid of that transphobic nonsense.
They didn’t ban the people on their instance like you wanted so you shut out the entire instance. I love watching “liberals” discover disctorships in their own communities. It’s cute.
Dem ding dang librulz!!!1!
Found the idiot right-wing troll.
You didn’t read a word I said, and it shows. If you don’t like what Blahaj does, they’re not forcing you to be there. Not sure what liberals have to do with anything here either lmao.
This instance (and I refer to the instance to intentionally be inclusive of both Ada and our community) takes issue with certain kinds of content, at least while we’re on our local accounts.
Admins from another instance have taken the stance that this sort of content is not, by their own evaluation, harmful enough to be removed from their instance. That’s a subjective choice about what they feel is right for their users, even if I disagree with the position.
Blahaj has decided that exposing the community to that sort of content, knowing it will not be removed by the remote instance, is not worth doing. However, in the interest of transparency and allowing users choice, has made sure its community is aware of the change.
Blahaj users who still wish to engage with the instance can easily still do so with accounts homed on other instances, should there be Communities or content that are of value to them.
What part of this do you have an issue with? This is how most people SHOULD be living their lives. If there’s something that doesn’t enrich your life, find ways of mitigating its impact. Don’t like some vegetables? Find new recipes or supplement the nutrition otherwise. Uncle is kind of a douchebag? Stop going to holidays at his house. Friend holds political views you disagree with? Make sure your engagements with them are still something you enjoy.
Nobody is saying that there won’t be aspects of life that are negative AND unavoidable. People have shitty jobs, terrible families, poor health. Why should that mean they should accept worse things in the parts of their life they do have discretion?
Neat opinion. Bye.
This is why no one takes y’all seriously. Expecting every interaction to be perfectly suited to you or you opt out. Guess what, life has adversity. Life has difficulties. But if you shut yourself off from everything that makes you slightly uncomfortable, you’ll never grow and develop as a person.
Who do you mean when you say “y’all”? Either way, I’ve faced enough adversity that I’ve overcome to laugh at your comment, and I bet people reading this have, too. Your comment might make you feel better about yourself, but it has very little to do with the realities of the people reading it. I’m sorry you’re not as insightful as you hoped.
If you keep othering people and making assumptions, you’ll stay as ignorant as you seem. That’s not a very productive way to be. I hope it gets better for you.
“You all”. It’s a gender neutral way to reference people. Are you seriously offended by that too?
Keep being insufferable and wondering why the world doesn’t bend to your will. It’s gonna be a miserable life for you.
Leave this place foul troll, your text reeks of dung.
They defederate from instances with transphobic admins. Simple as that. Don’t make it into something it’s not.
trans women are not women
Wasn’t this a recent court ruling in the UK? Which isn’t great.
I don’t know all of the terminology, but the entire argument over it just seems so stupid, how does letting trans people exist bother you in any way?
I believe the court ruling was the legal meaning only. When a legal text says “female” it implies biological female (as sex, not gender) which is understandable. Same for medication notices etc…
I’ve not checked though but the main source of fight is whether we’re talking about sex or gender. There are two sides, the ones that assume “female”/“women” refer to sex by default and the ones that assume it refers to gender by default.
The legal meaning of the equalities act is the issue people have AFAIK
Well, that’s something that I’ll never understand. The whole “trans women are (not) women” thing is a giant rage bait. But hey, I’m on blahaj and lemmy, so my freedom of speech on this issue is restricted.
Didn’t see what the specifics are, but if it’s simply the “sex refers to biological sex” then I don’t see anything wrong with that. We just need to specify “sex” or “gender” based on the different cases.
The ruling was made in the context of a specific law and not as an absolute rulling.
Not saying I agree with it but just adding nuance even if you don’t intend to explore the topic further.
Yes, but the best thing is that it’s not, like they are claiming, law. It is merely an interpretation. It doesn’t stop us from doing anything we were doing previously though ultimately a lot of transphobes and business will inteprate it that way, sadly. Plus there is some whisperings of it meaning certain legal things but it isn’t that yet. The Equality Act needs to be updated anyway and if it was this would make the supreme court’s ruling null and void.
Even if it does mean new laws most of us will probably break them anyway as unjust laws are not worth paying any attention to.
For a positive perspective on it the equality act doesn’t stop you including more groups than it specifies. So society can advance without needing the government to keep up, as long as enough of society agrees that can allow putting pressure on businesses when they don’t keep up.
Good point! Thank you!
Thank you Ada. I really appreciate having a safe space like this.
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thank you mods
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Unfortunately, there is a sickness in heart of every British person that prevents us from creating anything better. Any attempt to do so will inevitably devolve into “It’s shit. It’s supposed to be shit. Don’t like it? There’s the door.”
Nonsense
What response from an instance admin on this situation would have been expected/acceptable?
Cheers
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This is the way.
hard mode: uk stop being transphobic for two seconds.
Thank you Ada!
💙🦈
