Admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone
I can also be found on the microblog fediverse at @ada@blahaj.zone or on matrix at @ada:chat.blahaj.zone
- Posts
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- Joined
- 3 yr. ago
- Posts
- 40
- Comments
- 957
- Joined
- 3 yr. ago
but Blåhaj can't demand that their rules be enforced in other instances.
Didn't ask them to, nor have I asked any other instances to defederate from feddit.uk. What I asked for is clarification of how they implement their own rules, in order for me to decide whether or not LBZ stays federated with them.
The truth is, transphobia is now legal in the UK. UK instance admins are in a hard spot, because removing transphobia that is institutionally protected in their own country is now a lot more complex.
However, it's not more complex for blahaj zone. We don't allow transphobia. End of story. And if the difficult situation feddit.uk finds themselves in means they will allow transphobia that aligns with the UKs legislation, I'm not going to tell them they should do otherwise. I would hope they do otherwise, but ultimately, it's their call. However, if the call they make is to allow legal transphobia, we will remain defederated to minimise the transphobia that reaches the blahaj zone community.
And you won't see me telling any other admins they have to make the same choice we do.
The power of federation is that people have the choice. If people, trans or not, are happy to wade in to debate with transphobes, there are options for them to do that. Or, there are instances like blahaj zone, where they don't have to play whack a mole with every new transphobe that appears.
To be clear, at the time of defederation, they had not answered my question.
In response to my initial general question, I was told their preference is to let push back come via comments and votes.
I then provided links to posts in which someone explicitly stated trans women aren't women alongside several common transphobic dog whistles. I pointed out that one of the posts has more upvotes than downvotes, suggesting that social pushback isn't working, and asked for clarification on whether or not posts like that would be removed.
At this point, I got radio silence. I was not advised the admin team was discussing it, the posts were not removed and the admin who I was talking to was active elsewhere. After waiting nearly two days for a reply despite having mentioned this was serious enough to defederate over on two separate occasions, I made the assumption I wasn't going to get a reply, and defederated.
I'm happy to write that off as miscommunication though, given that they were talking as a team. If they ultimately decide that posts explicitly stating that trans women are not women will be removed, we will refederate
If you're concerned about implications, you need to be careful of your own, because you're implying that I think the feddit.uk admins are transphobic, when I think no such thing. They actively pushed back against transphobia in their comments, and not in a half hearted manner. They are quite clearly not transphobic.
However, leaving transphobia visible, even whilst pushing back against it is against their own instance rules, and allows transphobes to know they can safely post more transphobia in the future, as long as they keep it civil. And that last part is the bit that initiated defederation.
The right being lost isn't the right to play sports. It's the right to equality.
And it's great that your for something that isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. But in the mean time, trans people have to navigate the situation we do have.
at what point did i suggest rolling back rights for anyone?
When you said we should accept our removal from sports, and that we should be open to exclusion from the ability to use bathrooms in public.
As I said though, this conversation is an example of why you don't see the behaviour you're asking for. It's because the responses always look like yours.
not everyone is able to follow the same news sources and some people who only get infomation on social media are subject to waves of propaganda news articles.
I very much understand that. However, this conversation is a classic example of the fact that even being told those statistics and having the context made clear, doesn't actually change anything.
You may not have a desire to engage with those people and thats totally understandable, but there should be some people who are allies, who are able to engage in those types of conversations
There are. Lots of them! It's why I am defensive with you, because despite the existence of folk like that, you don't see them, and instead categorise trans people as largely being "all or nothing". You are part of the group you were just talking about. The group that isn't exposed to the right content, and instead, only knows what they see in an actively transphobic media and social media environment.
And as I said earlier, you won't shift your opinion, you won't ease off and stop fighting me, to become one of those people that helps trans folk. Instead, you'll fight me, for daring to take issue with your framing of the situation, whilst blaming me for it at the same time.
Right now we are literally having everyone's rights rolled back because thats how fascists like Trump act when you stand up to them
That's our common ground right there. Yet instead of talking about that, you're suggesting that actually, giving in and being ok with some of those rollbacks might be ok, as long as its trans people!
If you want allyship against facism, focus on the facism, rather than demanding that your allies capitulate to it
there is no suggestion being made here
Yes there is. I asked you what you think compromise looks like in real world terms
You replied with this
So a specific compromise would be when someone says that they accept transwomen as people deserving of respect and dignity, but i dont think they should be allowed to compete in professional sports as women, you dont call them a bigot or refuse to engage with them. Its saying "could you think of a way to esure womens safety that doesnt assume all trans people are sexual predators? " when they say women should be able to feel safe in locker rooms.
That is quite explicitly a suggestion. Or rather, two suggestions.
In this suggestion, you use the word "women" as if it doesn't apply to trans women. ie, you say "women's safety" when you clearly means cis women's safety. Dangerous, because it normalises the attack on trans women that they aren't women. And dangerous because it implies that trans women are a risk to cis women, when in fact, trans women are more at risk of sexual assault and violence than cis women are! There is danger here, but it's not coming from the trans women, and framing it as if it is, and as if that is something that should be compromised on is dangerous to trans people.
There is no compromise, when that compromise involves having our safety ignored, and our rights rolled back. That's not compromise.
Your statement seems to imply you think i disagree with you
You do. You are suggesting that trans people should offer to exclude themselves and give up our rights, because demanding equality is too much.
I am expressing concern about how other peoples actions will cause more negative pushback
Giving up some of our rights, rights that everyone else has, to appease the folk who enjoy those rights, when we are the ones more at risk of violence, and exclusion is not a viable middle ground like you seem to be implying it is.
Your framing of that as "all or nothing" means I very much disagree with you. You may think trans folk deserve rights and dignity, but you don't believe trans people deserve the same rights as cis people
I'm Australian. I say something closer to "buh", but I introduce vibrato to the sound down near my vocal cords, rather than by trilling the R in my mouth
"I think people should have respect" isn't something you can say when the thing that follows is a list of arguments to exclude those very same people.
Even your framing highlights why trans folk are so frustrated. You talk about women's safety, as if trans women aren't part of that discussion, and on top of that, you completely brush over the fact that trans women are even more likely to be victims of violence and sexual assault than cis women.
And your response is that trans folk should just be OK with that, they should just compromise by accepting that their needs are viewed as less important than the needs of cis folk, and just silently accept exclusion.
The truth is, rights are won through social push back and confrontation. They are fought for, because they don't just get handed over otherwise. Especially when there is political capital in exclusion.
I'm also going to highlight that despite engaging with you in good faith, you almost certainly haven't become more accepting, and in fact have most likely become more entrenched in your position as you consider comebacks to my points.
That's why
Not quite. I grew up with a lot of racism that took time to undo and is still ongoing.
But that didn't impact my kiddo directly as they're not targetted by racism.
However, I found out that I'm adhd due to my kid being diagnosed, and I was out as queer before them. So we have intersections in common that we've both been working through at the same time.
Literally no one thinks cis women and trans women are the same, so your compromise doesn't mean anything in and of itself.
I'm asking you what your position means in real world terms. What are the consequences of these differences? Because that's what really matters.
Feigned outrage because I asked you for specifics seems counter to your stated goals of reaching compromise and makes me question your motives.
FYI, I won't be able to see any responses to this comment chain from feddit.uk users or admins unless I manually watch it off instance. I'll try and do so, but I won't see pings etc.
In any case, to address Emperor's comment, to avoid defederation and give the feddit.uk time to work it out, all it would have taken was a single response to my messages stating that it's being discussed by the admin team. Instead, despite twice highlighting that this is an issue important enough to defederate over, I got radio silence, whilst Emperor continued to post elsewhere. Even if it were not the intent, it came across as a deliberate choice to ignore my messages.
Federation will be re-enabled if they ultimately address the issue.
That didn't answer the question you replied to, and didn't actually say anything. What does that all look like in real world terms in your mind? How does this "compromise" manifest? I'm guessing that it involves putting trans folk in harms way...
The opposite happened to me when I transitioned. When I was perceived as a guy, if I was in a meeting, people didn't instantly fall silent if I spoke, but if they tried to overtalk me and I just kept speaking, they would eventually give way. I transitioned 8 years ago, and from the earliest days of my transition until now, if someone starts overtalking me, they will just keep doing it even if I don't stop talking. The only way to stop them is to vocally call them out and ask them to be quiet until I'm finished.
Similarly, I used to be seen as one of the two "tech guys". The person that people would come up to and ask for tech advice to avoid calling the internal helpdesk. After I transitioned, they started coming up to me and asking me where the other tech guy is.
My career has stalled since I came out. I'm in a trans inclusive country, in a trans inclusive workplace, and I transitioned so long ago, that most people don't know that I'm trans or simply forget. But since coming out, the various shoulder taps in to project opportunities and the like just don't happen anymore.
Maybe people went silent because they were fascinated by or fixated on the unusual timbre of the OP’s transitioned vocal cords.
It's a nice theory, but it's somewhat strange how my own experience as a trans person transitioning from male to female had the opposite impact. Did people start overtalking me because they were fascinated by my timbre?
Additionally, OP was in the same department for years and then transitioned. So, naturally people would approach a more experienced person for help or advice regardless of perceived sex if they knew that person was there longer than them.
Again, it's a nice theory, but in my case, they stopped approaching me. And even the ones who don't know that I'm trans don't approach me that way, because I'm not seen as one of the "tech folk" anymore, despite not losing my experience when I transitioned.
but OP seems to be using the worst possible anecdotes
Similarly, you are using the least likely possibilities that contradict the first hand experience of folk directly in these scenarios to fit your pre-conceived notion of what is happening.
Yeah, the OPs post and mine are anecdotal, so you shouldn't take either of our experiences as universal truths. But your takes aren't even anecdotal. They're suppositions.
Exist as a trans person
The first time it happened to me, was 5 or 6 years ago now, before the climate turned as hostile as it is now. I work for a large organisation, and the people I work with all know I’m trans because I’m open about it, but there are many folk who I don’t work directly with, who didn’t know about my transition, because despite being open about being trans, we simply don’t encounter each other often.
In any case, I just made it clear that I remembered him, and mentioned the project we had worked together on a few years before the encounter. Told him that I was still working in the same area with the same folks. I could see him trying to work out who I was. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t out myself. I just let him struggle to remember me.
I have no idea if he ever did work it out, because I haven’t encountered him again since.
That's an accurate summary of my claims. No part of that suggests transphobia however.
Likely because said admin knew they were talking about it as a team and believed they were addressing my questions. They just neglected to tell me that part, and just stopped responding to me.