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.
Most of the people exhibiting the transphobic traits and behaviors I’ve mentioned had @lemmy.world extensions on their account. I saw only a few from lemmy.ml doing it, and essentially no hexbears doing it at all.
There is an entire trans community Lemmy instance in case you were unaware. Not saying it makes transphobia here okay or anything, just might be helpful to know.
I know, I’m subscribed to many of their communities already, they are some of the nicest people I’ve met on the fediverse. If I was going to recommend my friends join Lemmy I would recommend they join lemmy.blahaj.zone. However even though there are good instances which are safe spaces it doesn’t detract from the problem, since they will still use the federated general communities and thus will still encounter those problems. Even if they’re on the friendly insances, the problem gets federated.
That’s why it is important to address transphobia in the fediverse as a whole, having safe spaces help but we should expect a level of common decency in any community. Not just in the trans-specific communities.
It’s worth noting that instances can defederate from other instances and also remove specific content even if it comes from users on other instances. Instances can also ban users on other instances from their instance.
Using an instance like lemmy.blahaj.zone is likely to be a very different (and much more supportive) experience, even if they are federated with the same instances, due to the ability for admins to curate.
