Update: In light of the programming.dev update here https://programming.dev/post/8399272, the defederation is no longer going ahead.
However, something more needs to be said. Even here on Blahaj, some of our users took issue with the choice to defederate over this issue.
So I would like to give some background and context.
Blahaj Zone exists, because both Kaity and I left mainstream social media to escape transphobia. Reddit, with its lackluster approach to fighting transphobia, and twitter, with its outright celebration of transphobia pushed us here, to the fediverse, and to create Blahaj Zone and Blahaj Lemmy.
To that end, we will continue to treat transphobia seriously. Our goal is to create a space where gender diverse folk can exist and let our defenses down a little, where we don’t have to worry about getting dragged in to an argument with a transphobe, or a bad faith actor “just asking questions”.
If you are looking for a more reddit like experience, where in the interest of increased engagement, we let low level transphobia slide, and push responsibility for dealing with it on to community mods and individual users, then you will likely not be happy with blahaj going forward. If you choose to stay here, understand that we may defederate again in the future over similar issues.
The choice is yours.
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It has recently been brought to my attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing transphobia.
You can see the conversation in question here https://programming.dev/comment/6131539
For that reason we will be defederating from programming.dev in 48 hours.
There are only three communities on that instance used by small number of our users, so this won’t have a big impact, but if you are one of those users, you will need to use an alt account on another instance if you wish to access the communities.
Do you have a link to this exchange?
Honestly though that comment about Hexbear is pretty on point. Hexbear makes every comment thread they invade a nightmare, and is one of the goals of their instance.
Here’s the comment they said it in: https://programming.dev/comment/6173847
And ngl, despite having some disagreements with hexbear, I think them making comment threads a nightmare for transphobes trying to defend the grand wizard of the TERFs is a good thing
They make comment threads a nightmare for everybody not just transphobes.
Also I couldn’t help but notice that the part you clipped out conveniently skips the whole first half where they cite instances where they defend trans people and even tell people to check their mod logs for instances where they removed antisemitism and transphobic content.
Edit: By everybody I mean everybody that has even a slightly different opinion then them on anything.
The comment I made wasn’t supposed to be a hit piece against the guy or anything, it just me saying that I agreed with Ada’s decision to defederate and also separatedly wanted to vent about a problem I had with the wider lemmy-verse using what they’d said as an example.
His defense of speaking over trans people who don’t want people to give money to the head TERF and doubling down on misgendering trans people by linking some Reddit arguments he had with conservatives and Zionist substacks wasnt particularly relevant to the point I was making since it was never about him in particular so I just didn’t include it.
If you want I could add a disclaimer to the comment saying he claims not to be a transphobe because he got into an argument with transphobes 2 years ago and seemingly those are the most recent comments he can find on his account to act as evidence of how committed he is to trans rights.
But while we’re on the topic I don’t think it matters how much someone declared themselves to be an ally if they suddenly turn around and start defending their misgendering and saying JK Rowling is “not that harmful” and that it was completely fine to have the goblins be hook nosed bankers with a star of David on the floor of their bank the moment that a minority group makes them feel bad.
It’s also worth noting that the most pro trans statements he can cite is him saying that trans people don’t have a biological advantage over cis women in sports over 2 years ago which isn’t exactly ground breaking
I've had other people on lemmy tell me the same and claim they're not transphobic because they said XYZ to epicly own the repuclidumbs or whatever, and then the comment they made talking to actual trans people is just:
I think it’s important to distinguish that they were not defending JKR, and explicitly condemned her
And also that they have made many many comments (even citing a few) supporting trans people and have removed copious amounts of content that’s transphobic and antisemitic in the past.
They even invite people to check their mod logs.
Yeah Garfs comment really takes things out of context
Putting in the energy to make well-rounded arguments in a discussion and educating a person who clearly has no idea what they’re talking about does not seem like a nightmare to me. I’m honestly pretty glad that they did that.