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.
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.
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.
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 sound only be a last resort…
Everybody should defed from dotworld
They’re genocide apologists, jingoists feudposters trying to stir drama.
You sure know a lot about .world for an 8 hour old account. Actually, wait… Relentless attacks against Americans? Bitching about .world? Lemmy.cafe instance? Hi Antiyanks! Nice seeing you again on your over 150th account by now.
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.
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.
For anyone who’s curious about the actual messages, I think these are them:
A woman is an adult female. A transwoman is an adult female who used to be male. It’s not difficult to grasp that they are different things. You can admit that and still believe that transwomen should be treated with dignity like anyone else.
Personally I don’t give a shit what bathroom people use or what they want to be referred to. I’ll go along with whatever… But a woman and a transwoman are different things, and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise. Always have been different things and always will be, no matter what the law states, now or in the future.
Kier’s words are still not transphobia. There is no fear, dislike, prejudice, discrimination, harassment, or violence in his statement. The scream of ‘transphobia’ is thrown around too much for anyone who disagrees with a narrow definition. Any disagreement is labelled as hate, and it’s silly.
Should a transwoman have the same rights and respect and opportunity as a woman (as per the legal definition)? Absolutely. Are they the same? No, they are not. Is that a hateful bigoted viewpoint worthy of scorn? I don’t believe so.
I don’t use the term cis. I use the term woman and you knew exactly what I meant. A blonde woman is a description of a woman’s hair colour and is a semantic-based response that is nothing to do with this point. You know this; it’s a foolish riposte that’s nothing at all to do with the clear and simple fact that a woman who used to be a man is not the same thing as a (cis) woman.
I can call it a woman who used to have a penis or a woman who used to be a man if you want me to be pedantic about it. Nothing to do with hair colour, or skin colour, or anything else except previously being a biological male and now identifying as a woman.
‘adult human female’ is not a dog whistle. It’s a legal and common-sense definition that you clearly understand but are trying to make out to be hate for some reason. I am not denying the legitimacy of transwomen; nor is Keir.
Transwomen and (cis) women are different things. And Transmen and (cis) men are different things. They have different names, which you yourself use for a reason. That reason being they are not the same thing. This is exactly the same as saying transwomen are not women, because they are not. They are transwomen.
It’s pretty simple.
Wow, de-federation (and trying to imply feddit.uk is transphobic) over this?
This is definitely acting in bad faith.
I disagree with this, and I’d downvote it, but it sounds like they’re just repeating what the supreme court said. I don’t think it deserves a ban.
Completely defederating with us over this is insane
Well, they’re right that it is pretty simple. Here’s a fun experiment for anyone who thinks this isn’t transphobic: try reading it again, but substitute black for trans. Totally reasonable they should have to use another bathroom, right?
Thank you for posting it. Good to know that Blahaj made the right choice for its users, which really wasn’t obvious otherwise.
That’s actually not nearly as extreme as I was expecting
Just because it’s have a cordial tone, but it’s pretty tranphobic all around the place. Master class on sealioning.
Idk just saying that transwomen and cis women are different doesn’t seem transphobic in and of itself, especially since the person seems to be saying that they should have the same rights now
The whole “I’m not saying ‘cis’” is the biggest red flag. Typically in their mind it’s because cis means “normal” instead of just being an adjective. It’s like the people that say they have nothing against the gays ™ but they don’t like it shoved in their faces. Nothing against them but don’t exist near me energy.
It’s a very polite post on the surface, but do note that they refer to trans women as “it”. I think they’re being very polite because they know that saying “I think trans women are just deluded men and I don’t want to respect those things” doesn’t go as well.
I mean the basic argument, that trans identifying peoples are in their own distinct categories outside of the typical gender binary, actually has some interesting meat to it.
Trans men and women do have different experiences from their cisgender counterparts, different medical needs, different journeys. None of which I am experienced enough in the subject to speak to.
Kinda loses me on their “I don’t use the word cis” part though
Op argument is that they are Real Women and then then Women Who Used To Have Penis, reducing the trans experience and identify to the sex they were born into. The part of not using the word cis is not even the worst, imo, like using the word “thing” to talk about people is pretty disgusting, or comparing “blonde women” with “trans women” like if gender identity was just a superficial aspect of a person instead of the fundamental one it is.
See, I just don’t think what you’ve deduced the argument to was what was actually said.
Think of it from a math perspective. The non-transphobic stance would be that woman is the superset which contains subsets of trans, cis, and others. The comment says they’re two separate sets, woman and transwoman. This is why cis doesn’t have to be used, because woman is sufficient to describe the set, because trans women aren’t part of it.
This fucking website, “Let me just simplify that to the idea of math supersets for you”…and it works
That was very helpful way of reframing the discussion. Thank you.
The UK is known for polite transphobia.
Isn’t that pretty much just JK Rowling? Iirc, the govt and BBC are pretty good about it
Considering recent events, I’d disagree with the idea the government is good about it.
Blahaj admins trumping up something minor into a crisis so they can claim they’re being discriminated against and enact a wild overreactive response?
I’m shocked. Shocked, I say. Well… not that shocked.
I mean in fairness, the original messages are a little bit ignorant yes. Mostly I was just trying to quote the accurate background material so people could see the primary source information.
I’m so annoyed by these pseudointellectuals who can’t seem to grasp the relatively simple difference between “sex” and “gender”.
I don’t understand what this has to do with the difference between sex and gender. Is “woman” a sex or a gender?
It can vary on the context, but “female” and “male” are “supposed” to refer to biological sex alone.
That’s why it can be offensive when men talk about women as “females”, and why it also would sound slightly silly to talk about — for instance — women penguins. “Female penguins” sounds much more correct, doesn’t it?
Women penguins only sounds weird because that’s not the normal word for it. They’re girl penguins or lady penguins. “Woman” feels too formal and human.
And why isn’t “women birds” the normal word for it? And do you think scientific studies call them girls or ladies?
Nah.
You can, but it works because it’s essentially joke-y, because clearly female penguins aren’t women, but female.
Kinda like referring to a granny as “young lady/miss”, even though everyone knows they’re not.
I’ve never heard of a gender/sex distinction between ‘woman’ and ‘female’, what are you basing this on? By whom is this distinction ‘supposed’ (as you put it) to be a thing?
I doubt the general public would agree, anyway. In the Cambridge Dictionary, I find ‘female’ defined as ‘belonging or relating to women or girls’
You may of course argue your definition of ‘female’ should be the correct one, but it’s not the common one at the moment. I would think it’d be strange, though, if you couldn’t refer to a trans woman as ‘female’, which your distinction seems to imply.
The general public are a subjective take, and also, dumb as fuck.
Yeah, sex is related to gender, but it’s not the same thing.
if you couldn’t refer to a trans woman as ‘female’, which your distinction seems to imply.
If its your colloquial necessity to objectify women, then I don’t know, be equal and objectify the trans girls as well.
But if you don’t, then it’s gonna be preferable to address them as “women”, not “females”.
If you’re purely referring to ‘female’ as a noun, I do have a similar intuition about ‘female’ (noun) vs. ‘woman’, but it has little to do with objectification and more to do with ‘female’ generally being used in a biological sense, specifically non-human animals.
As an adjective, ‘female’ is pretty neutral, though.
Yeah, it’s to refer to biological sex. But language doesn’t have exact rules, it’s descriptive more than prescriptive.
Most people don’t understand that sex and gender are similar, yet distinct concepts.
As an adjective, ‘female’ is pretty neutral, though.
But it’s implications aren’t always. I used to think that as well, but unfortunately language is a cooperative thing and if the person you’re talking to doesn’t consider it neutral, then it isn’t.
And if a police was giving a description of a trans girl, they probably wouldn’t say “male”, would they?
So the problem is the word “female”, not the word “woman”, am I understand this correctly? If I am, then what should the correct sentence/statement be? “A woman is an adult …”
I’m not trolling, I’m genuinely confused because I thought XX -> female, XY -> male, but there are a bunch of combinations that present themselves / have a male or female phenotype. Is woman supposed to be the gender and female the sex?
Is woman supposed to be the gender and female the sex?
Yes.
But like I’ve said, the issue is that most people don’t know their difference between “gender” and “sex”. Hell, my native language doesn’t even have two distinct words, which is a huge negative when trying to educate them on the subject.
And because they don’t understand the difference, they sometimes, or all the time, think “woman” refers to the biological sex, and thus they insist “men can’t become women”, because biologically you don’t change from male to female, and that is true. But your gender does change from masculine to feminine, so it is not wrong to say that men can become women.
It’s honestly just a lack understanding. And that lack of understanding stems from fear of seeming stupid, so they fear talking about it and interacting with the subject. Which is why it’s called transphobia, despite those people not necessarily being directly afraid of trans people.
Languages, or gender identities, are never quite as straight forward as we’d like them to be.
OK. That makes sense. But why is it offensive to refer to certain women as females and certain men as males?
It seems to be the correct terminology to be more specific e.g “she’s a male woman” makes more sense to me than transwoman because I never know which “direction” it is (transitioned to woman or transitioned from woman). And if would also be clearer to say that somebody is male/female for those that don’t want a question to “linger” whether it’s what they identify as or whether they were born that way.
my native language doesn’t even have two distinct words
It seems like only romance languages do, because they have “gendre”. I do wonder which other languages do.
Other languages have gender as well. And we have a word for gender. It’s just the same word as for “sex”, but we do have words for “woman”, “man”, “male” and “female”, so you might ask “kumpi sukupuoli” (which sex/gender) and depending on context, you’d reply either “man/woman” or “male/female” as in “mies/nainen” for man/woman and “uros/naaras” for a biological sex, however those terms are even more clearly not for humans than in English. As in English, a cop might reasonably say “suspect is a white male, six foot”, etc, but no Finnish cops would ever use “uros”. You could in very specific contexts perhaps sometimes use those for people, if you’re like trying to invoke animal imagery for very masculine males or something, but it’d be closer to “bitch” almost than “female” to call a woman “naaras” in Finnish. Not really, but it wouldn’t be far off. It’s like almost halfway between those, I’d say.
“she’s a male woman” makes more sense to me than transwoman because I never know which “direction” it is
Well if there’s “trans” in front of the “man” or “woman” that’s like having - in front of a number. Like 7 isn’t the same as -7 you know? They look similar, but it’s not hard to learn. That being said, I do actually agree with you that that would be the correct terminology, however we can’t really ascribe rules to language and I can see reminding people that they’re not “true” women, but “male” women would be like deadnaming. There’s just no need to specify. A woman is a woman. A woman is a gender, or should be, and that’s the direction we’re taking the language in. (And by “us” I mean “the woke people” as opposed to the transphobes and conservative fucknuts) Be you short, tall, black, trans or even ginger, you’re still a woman, they’re all just adjectives. Unless there’s honestly a genuine need to specify, then what’s the point of having that adjective there?
Trans women are women, quite simply.
‘Female’ is a sex, while ‘woman’ is a gender.
Sex refers to biological characteristics like chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy. That’s why we say things like ‘female dog’ or ‘male cat’—we’re talking about biological sex, not identity.
Gender, on the other hand, is a social and cultural construct—it includes roles, behaviors, and identities that society associates with being a ‘woman’ or a ‘man.’ That’s why it makes sense to say ‘a woman wears makeup’ or ‘a man wears a suit,’ but not ‘a male wears makeup.’ Saying ‘a male wears makeup’ sounds off because makeup is associated with gender expression, not biological sex.
The wikipedia article is a jumbled mess then.
A woman is an adult female human.
That seems to be an incorrect definition. Shouldn’t it be “A woman is a human identifying as female”?
I mean, sure? Not really? Language is imprecise, and different peoples in different cultural backgrounds will use it slightly differently, and to me both read as interchangeable. I’m not an expert in this area, nor am I trans, and this is getting into the detailed weeds of gender and human sciences.
“Through transition, a transgender person aligns their gender expression, legal status, and often their physical sex characteristics (through hormones or surgery) with their internal gender identity.”
Language is imprecise, but definitions should be precise. Because reading that article is very confusing when sex and gender are constantly being mixed up. People who are confused, like me, are then accused of being “transphobic”, but how are we supposed to understand when even the definition mixes things up? Not everybody wants to have a similar discussion as we just had, in order to somewhat understand what’s going on.
Reading the wikipedia article confuses people even further. The comment that caused defederation looks very much like the person read the wikipedia article which states “A woman is an adult female human” and continued down that path. In fact it’s even the very first thing they say.
It is complicated and messy, which is why, if it doesn’t directly concern you, maybe the correct thing to do is to not weigh in with your opinion.
I think it seems justified. Ava’s moderation approach may seem heavy handed, but she hasn’t done anything unjustified.
Moreover, it’s her instance, and she can do whatever she wants with it.
Its users are free to leave whenever they wish, but I doubt many will as a result of this bc (a) Ada is awesome, and (b) the comments look strongly in her favor. Also © Ava’s policies are clearly explained at the outset, and firmly and fairly applied.
Our approval outside of the situation does not matter in the slightest:-).
(
That said, if it did, I would want to see some additional context, bc wine that phrase can be used as a dog whistle, I believe it may also be legitimate as well. I would strongly hope that the additional context in this case provided the justification that I can’t fully see here. Which knowing Ada, seems highly likely.Edit: if this comment really is it, then nvm, I get it. Tbf that really does seem like a discussion that needs to be had among centrists, but I can totally see why Blåhaj doesn’t want to federate that content and thereby host it on its own servers. So without prejudicial judgement either for or against the original comment, I definitely support Ada’s call here. As I always end up doing when I dig deeply enough to see what’s going on in each situation. I am not saying that I would have done it - perhaps a community block or other reduced feature could have been applied, but for her server, it’s her right.)Most of the people who aren’t in favor of it are not even on blahaj.
They know who she (Ada) is - and that’s why they are on blahaj in the first place!:-)
Yeah, this is just the Fediverse operating as intended. Some instances are heavily federated, others are less so. This gives people options.
Eh, there was a situation a while ago with the LemmyNSFW instance that I felt was a bit much. However, the sidebar of the community they had issue with didn’t help LemmyNSFW’s case despite the fact it was a copy-pasted dictionary definition.
Do you have more details?
You wanna bet?
I think it’s healthy for admins to defederate, for whatever reason, from their choice of other instances.
If this is not done enough, then we will end up with few instances dominating the ebb and flow of discussion and content. And making it difficult for voices to be heard.
If done too much, and there are many tiny clusters of communities, there are social forces that will make many of these network closer.
If we did this more, it will break the monopoly of the large instances we see today, and better things can grow
I asked the admin of my instance to defederate as well in a show of solidarity.
You should let the admins read the text for themselves first and make decision.
From blahaj or .uk?
Lmao, from feddit.uk.
Why not both? Buy a defederation and get another one for free.
deleted by creator
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!
Read The Parable of the Nazi Bar.
This a social media platform and leni is a mentally unstable person.
Behavior from blaha is more telling than whatever stupid shit leni says.
Nobody takes this person seriously… He ain’t a hitler in bar in bavaria and y’all need to learn how to spot threat actors because excessive censorship is how trump got elected ;)
That doesn’t mean everyone telling you to stop overreacting is a fascist.
Correct.
There is one for a boy who cried wolf ;)
Other of Aesop’s Fables you should read:
The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
The Four Oxen and the Lion
The One-Eyed Doe
The Wolf and the Kid
The Horse, Hunter, and Stag
What is it with you and your grudge against me? All because I listened to people higher than me and temporarily removed you from a community for trying to dog whistle that Luigi guy (or is this based on year-old claims that have fallen apart in the face of discussion). You’re not even removed anymore, so who again is demonstrating what kind of demeanor here?
Your record speaks for itself dear but I never demand you being censored
In a world where misinformation justifies itself that way and where you have indeed existentially rallied against me on multiple occasions, both parts of what you just said are debatable.
That’s how a discussion works
People can make up their own opinions based on what is presented
You left 50+ comments in this thread defending Elon Musk and the infamous AfD party known for its nazi rhetoric, even after being shown official posters from the AfD party which had nazi salutes in them. You abused mod powers before you were removed as a mod.
When UniversalMonk got banned you made these types of comments, repeatedly.
https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=999488
