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.
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.
Only 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.
I wondered if it was a limitation in the code, or if it was out of a desire to limit pronouns to 2 sets, I guess. I am not at all familiar with the history of this
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