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.
======
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
So everyone involved seems to agree that transphobia is bad, but the dude had an idiotic notion of what constituted transphobia.
I feel that if we are in the business of defederating anyone who fails a purity test then lemmy will be quite small indeed.
I will defederate from any instance with admins that excuse transphobia. If that makes our part of the Fediverse quite small, that sucks, but it is what it is. I moved here to get away from social media that won’t take action on transphobia. I’m not suddenly going to decide it’s ok if it means we get more traffic.
Not talking back or being snarky but if you feel that way you might seriously want to look into Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, they have very bad track records of letting transphobes and bigots run wild, Lemmy.world is the worst, many of the people they’ve banned for bigotry have been unbanned or were only given temporary bans to begin with, often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.
I used to believe Beehaw was a bit overly strict but honestly I can see they blocked these instances for good reason, especially Lemmy.world.
Imo shitjustworks is the worst offender because they have a whole “muh free speech” thing going and they also were the choice for where a load of rightwing and rightwing adjacent subreddits decided to migrate to like r/greentext, r/NCD, r/conservative and r/libertarian
And this is why blåhaj zone is the best lemmy instance, I’m so glad I found this place.
best instance and best admins
I love you all and I’m obviously against transphobia or any kind of bigotry, but this is probably where I leave this instance.
The action is Pretty blown out of proportion when we are honest…
Right? The admin here sees hexbears engaging in their typical bad faith spam-bullying tactics against someone who, unless there’s something really bad in that deleted comment, doesn’t seem to actually be a transphobe, for the crime of enjoying a popular mainstream video game, and the admin decides to defederate the victim of the bullying.
Yeah that game brings out the worst in the “woke” people. I haven’t played it, but its definitely good from all the reviews and this whole dogfighting behavior just harms the Trans people and their “allies” and makes them seem unreasonable and annoying, wich isn’t doing them good in a rightful fight against discrimination.
Yeah that game brings out the worst in the “woke” people.
With good reason. Nobody has just picked a game at random and said ‘everyone must hate this game now for no reason whatsoever’.
But, as I said, in a previous comment, there is a difference between ignorance and wilful ignorance. Up until a couple of years ago I was totally unaware of JKR’s transphobia. This was because I read the first HP book when it first came out, thought it was shit and dismissed it and her from my mind. I’ve never had a twitter account and I don’t read the ‘celebrity’ bits of news websites so I knew nothing of the whole situation. As a result, when a trans friend of mine started talking about it, I responded out of ignorance. Thankfully, they realised it was ignorance not malice and took me through the whole thing.
My point being, it’s impossible to tell from just this quoted exchange if the PD Admin is being ignorant or willfully ignorant. If it’s the former I hope they come to realise their error and how it affects people. If it’s the latter, they can do one.
Its Harry Potter and JK has been in the shit storm for quite some time. (wich i couldn’t care less, fuck her she is rich and talks a lot of shit about a lot of things)
The problem with that thread was that the admin kept arguing and trying to educate trans people on transphobia. If they didn’t know about JKR’s transphobia then they shouldn’t have kept on arguing as long as they have.
I absolutely agree with that too. I’m not suggesting their subsequent statements were not transphobic as they clearly were. That’s why I fully support @Ada’s decision to defed.
My point was really that, the flashpoint seems (to me) to be the two sentences I quoted. The one from the Admin seemed ignorant rather than openly malicious, the one from the Hexbear user was just accusative. That, in my opinion, was an opportunity to address the Admin’s ignorance.
Everything after that, the Admin has no excuse over.
The only thing this comment gets right is the scare quotes around “allies”.
victim
ohh nooo boohoo that poor admin had it pointed out that he put his own enjoyment of a mid-tier video game over his respect for a marginalized community.
Grow up lmfao
How does enjoying a mid tier video game make you a transphobe? Talk about a fuckin stretch lmao
You can see it by the way it is, this entire thread is full of stuff like that, especially from this particular user.
That user is a hexbear - their handle here is an alt. Which isn’t surprising given the nature of their engagement in this thread.
Behaves like one 100%
Absolutely unable to understand criticism or different opinions… Typical for hexbear people.
This is my main account actually, but go off.
Where did I say solely enjoying the wizard game makes you a transphobe? Talk about a fuckin stretch lmao
To be fair, programming.dev is moderated pretty badly. This is looks like a slap fight that escalated beyond what is reasonable, but it’s a good indicator of how respectfully people over there are treated. That is, not at all.
Hey im the admin mainly in charge of the community over on programming.dev (+ the other lead admin). Can you point out a case of this happening and I can see if I need to handle it
We moderate things in our instance if its reported but if its not reported it cant really be found easily
(also for the main post, im chatting with your admin about it)
It would be nice not having to defederate. The users on programming.dev are pretty nice from what I’ve seen.
Thanks!
Idk i like “poor moderation” as in its allowed to say most things as long as they don’t cause legal trouble for the instance, one of the many upsides being free from reddit.
Yeah the treatment there isn’t good in the thread but i have seen worse from admins…
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/5160618
And just antik’s behavior all over that place (the lemmy.ee account belongs to the Lemmy.world admin) https://lemmy.ca/post/8810527
I don’t know how fair that is, because things got just as bad over here when we were federated with Hexbear. They’re really active and really argumentative, so slap fights will happen and be hard to moderate.
Maybe things are bad in general over there, but this seems like a pretty poor indicator imo. It’s hard to have a respectful discussion when you’re being dogpiled by Hexbear users.
I’m not subscribed to any programming.dev communities, but I’ve seen programming.dev names pop up quite a bit in threads and they’ve been nothing but respectful.
I’m just sitting here really confused at the choice to defederate based on a single chat.
Most folks at programming.dev, myself included, are there because it’s related to their profession. That’s what drew us there.
It baffles me to think that the entire instance has been judged and deemed unworthy because of a single comment chain that had disagreements.
You can block users you don’t want to interact with. Some instances breed a potentially nasty sentiment or attitude, and when there are too many users from that instance to block, that’s when I’d consider defederation. But a single conversation thread, involving a single person?
I’ve got no say in how another instance is ran. Just makes me a little sad about a much more fragmented future of Lemmy.
Fellow programming.dev user here,
I think it’s worth checking out her comments here. I don’t think you understand why Ada made the decision. The decision is not about deeming our instance unworthy. It is about not wanting to be federated with instances with transphobic admins. It’s very different than somethingike thinking everyone on our instance is transphobic.
I haven’t seen the removed comments so I can’t judge for myself whether they’re transphobic (and it’s not relevant to the talk you and I are having).
It is about not wanting to be federated with instances with transphobic admins.
I might be missing something, but I believe an admin being potentially transphobic only matters if they do not moderate transphobic content that leaks out to other instances. I don’t think I’ve seen transphobic content leak out of programming.dev.
That said, I’ve read some of Adas comments on the intention behind defederation, and blahaj. What I’ve learned is that Blahaj wans set up as a safe space, so 0 tolerance is understandable, and is well within their rights to establish and enforce.
Coming from someone who is just looking to Lemmy as a reddit alternative, it’s simultaneously cool that communities can do this, and a little unfortunate that with Lemmy being as small as it is (compared to reddit), we are defederating over single comment threads. Again, blahaj was intended to be a safe space and has no obligation to be a part of the “reddit replacement” I’m looking for, so if they deem it necessary then good on them.
Like I don’t have the attention span to read everything the accused person wrote during that entire thread, and obviously I could have missed some important context or quote.
My take on it was that this person liked the Harry Potter game, realized that people were telling them the game was antisemitic and transphobic (which I agree, it is), and then it seems like they refused to believe the game was in fact antisemitic and transphobic. The person then doubled down and because everyone got heated (which I’m not judging folks for getting heated, I don’t know what you’re going through behind the screen), and kept digging a hole.
Like if the accused is actually a transphobic, fuck em right to hell I hope they learn they’re on the wrong side of history and get better. Else if it is someone who’s pro-trans and got caught being reactive and liking media that goes against their views, then I hope they look at that media with fresh eyes, and try to make amends with the people who were arguing in the thread.
Plenty of people like media that when looked at with a slightly critical eye might go against their views or punch down at the people they care for, but are ignorant to the fact it does that. I think that a lot of people have really visceral reactions when confronted with that fact, and try to get defensive rather than learn.
But I don’t know anything any of these people and I’m just trying to dissect why I think it’s also blown out of proportion.
I left a while ago but I am disappointed to the degree that people over here are willing to carry water for hexbear. They absolutely cannot be trusted to be good faith actors.
Yeah I’m feeling the same way TBH
I’ve just got to find a new one that fits for me
It’s the best feature of the Fediverse - you have so many options! If one instance doesn’t work for you, there WILL be one that agrees with you better.
I’m not LGBT or Q but this is my instance because I whole heartedly support people and I appreciate that mods here do their best to separate from pure human garbage while retaining connection with like and different minded groups.
It gets really tiresome to have to hop instances multiple times, though…There’s scripts you can run for it but an official way to migrate would be nice.
I think there is an official export on instances .19+. But I could be wrong. I’m not sure my instance is on it yet.
Absolutely agree with this decision. Also, this one thing he said at the end of the argument really rubbed me up the wrong way:
quote from the admin during the argument where he was defending his transphobia and the wizard game
Now that I’m looking and see that you are all from hexbear it makes way more fucking sense. The actual trans people with sense are on blahaj, fucking hexbear morons invading this thread makes everything make sense now. Go touch grass.
Ngl I’m really starting to get annoyed with how transphobes on other Lemmy instances treat blahaj as like their trans best friend and use it to launder their shitty opinions just because hexbear users are more aggressive in calling out transphobia and then dogpiling whichever user said it
[Edit 1: the person who was debate broing me earlier about this comment from another instance went into a transphobic meltdown and got banned from blahaj and had all their replies removed lmao]
[Edit 2: someone else got annoyed at me for not including a disclaimer that more than two years ago this guy said that trans people don’t have a biological advantage over cis women on Reddit so yeah, here’s the disclaimer]
Hexbear isn’t calling out transpobia they use it as fighting word and make it meaningless, just like everything they do or touch.
deleted by creator
Some might but the majority of that instance is brigaders that like to disrupt everything.
btw can you please stop solo-brigading this thread? you’re not from blahaj and you’re disrupting everything on this post.
I have a blahaj account, just saw the post with another one first.
Also im not brigading at all, im just voicing my opinion (or stating facts) here and awnsering comments like yours
You have a blahaj account yet you make the most tired bad faith anti-trans arguments i’ve seen since I left reddit.
What a disgrace.
brigading is when lemmy federates posts across communities so that when something hits the front page a lot of people from an active community reply to it.
This is transphobic, almost all the people in that thread that are responding are trans, and as you can see by this thread and the other thread, the trans people on this site agree with the ones on hexbear on this issue
Trans people have a right to call out transphobia
Eh… I’d say thats a bunch of personal attacks being thrown around with some transpobic wording because its a “good” attack point in a enraged debate.
What do you mean by this, can you cite a specific example in the thread? Trans people are allowed to be mad when encountering transphobia.
https://programming.dev/comment/6126787 all the comments there.
Ok, all of those are trans people responding to someone who misgendered a user and used transphobic talking points? You’re allowed to be angry and make personal attacks against transphobes, transphobia itself is a personal attack against all trans people
https://programming.dev/comment/6154322
This is your misgendering… Bro he literally showed that he didn’t see it and i think its rather respectful to use they in that regard if you don’t know…
Wow, I missed that one!
Hey, as a Jew to a trans person, I don’t make call outs on what is and isn’t transphobic. I rely on your community when I think I’m seeing it since as the affected individuals y’all are the experts.
Do me a favor, give us the same respect about antisemitism. I’m getting awfully tired of seeing people throw that word around and as a Jew it’s fucking scary that it’s losing its meaning.
Thanks
You and I are both Jews. It’s true that some people are using the phrase “antisemitism” in a way that promotes their own interests instead of as a warning of bigotry, but that isn’t the case here. JK Rowling and her works are antisemitic and promote vile stereotypes of not just Jews but other minority groups as well.
Rowling is a bigot and her works should be forgotten.
Guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree cousin.
While I know the common argument is “but the goblins!” The goblins look like what I’d expect goblins to look like. That harkens all the way back to my mental image of the goblin bankers when I first read the chamber of secrets.
I don’t think that’s unreasonable thinking, though the modern image of goblins is constructed from antisemitic stereotypes and imagery.
I do think it’s possible to divorce the image of a fantasy goblin from its antisemitic history, but I don’t think Rowling has done that and instead has leaned into the vile history of goblins as a Jewish stereotype.
The article someone else shared discusses this fairly well and I think it does well to note that the use of goblins as antisemitic tropes has become so commonplace that it’s original intent is often lost. While some may celebrate that and say it’s successfully divorced from its antisemitic roots, I think this is something far more sinister in the way that it’s integrated antisemitic imagery into modern thinking.
I do think it’s possible to divorce the image of a fantasy goblin from its antisemitic history, but I don’t think Rowling has done that and instead has leaned into the vile history of goblins as a Jewish stereotype.
Right? And not just the books. I was watching Deathly Hallows part 1 lately, and it’s like the director gave Nazi propaganda to the goblin actor as reference. “Great! You are doing great! Now rub your hands! You are amazing! Now, evil laughter!”
It’s laughable to suggest Harry Potter goblins aren’t leaning into the anti-Semitic trope.
I think the problem here is associating features of goblins with jews and not that goblins exist in fantasy and look what they look like, they may (strong may) be originating from the antisemitic picture of Jewish people but nobody nowadays looks at a fantasy goblin and thinks of Jewish people (unless they already are big assholes obviously…) nowadays its just a goblin. and you can like it or not, i don’t think JK R. wrote hers in the mind of mocking Jewish people.
And if she is or isn’t transpobe (i haven’t seen actual evidence so far but I’m not very deep into that either) doesn’t really matter, the game itself is objectively good and people like it, thats it, and the game has nothing to do with JK, the license was bought from my knowledge, so she already has the money, you don’t impact her by buying or not buying it and you don’t make yourself happy by ranting about it.
And if she is or isn’t transpobe
Jesus Christ dude. Go JAQ off somewhere else.
What? What is JAQ?
I think many people who like Harry Potter aren’t in it because they enjoy the casual bigotry throughout the novels, but because they like a magical bildingsroman.
But Rowling is a horrendous bigot and her works are tainted by that. It seems to me that you want to enjoy things on a surface level without thinking about them critically, and I don’t think that’s an uncommon way to approach what is ostensibly a children’s series. That said, you don’t want to examine the work or its author deeper and so maybe you don’t have a great grasp on the issue.
That’s fine. But Rowling is a vile person and her works shouldn’t be promoted.
Idk this entire debate about the game and her is promoting that franchise more than anything else, The wizard game wouldn’t have made a big impact if it wasn’t for people running around telling everyone how bad it is and that the people that play it are Nazis and kill trans people (I’ve seen that stance more than a few times sadly) that isn’t helping anyone.
Ahh so you see, by pointing out racism, it is you who is the real racist!
- cj “i am very smart” the [email protected]
While I’d be happy to do that in general, Hogwarts Legacy has major antisemitic themes carried over from the story designer.
I’ve edited out the bit about antisemitism in the comment o7
You rock, thank you! Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise yo
Someone made a post to that on mtf
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.
Fuck transphobes. Transphobes don’t deserve to be coddled for having reactionary views just because they haven’t murdered a trans person, fuck that noise. Transphobia is Transphobia.
Oh wow that’s really evil. Didn’t know we were being used in such a way
I’ve seen it one or two times before and Ive been getting increasingly annoyed with it recently, I was even considering making a post about the general sentiment I’d seen before and then this happened.
It usually comes up in threads when people bring up how Lemmy is predominantly dominated by cis white males, and people will respond by saying stuff like “well what about blahaj zone?” as if all the trans people on lemmy not feeling comfortable enough to join up to anywhere except the one trans specific walled garden instance reflects well on lemmy as a whole.
Yeah most of the argument seemed at first to me to be that admin and the hexbear folks slapping each other, but if being stressed out by some bad faith interactions causes you to rant about some other group of trans people being “the good ones” it’s not a good look
That conversation is really hard to follow between the hexbear emote spam (and non-emote spam), deleted comments and personal attacks.
hexbear emote spam
Is that what that is? How does that add anything to the conversation and who is upvoting that
It doesn’t and Hexbear trolls.
we just really like shorks
From what I can see right now in the link thread that doesn’t seem to be nearly enough grounds for defederation from programming.dev. What am I missing?
I’m especially confused considering it’s a thread on a lemmy.ml community. I expect community mods to mod and life goes on.
If the admin of programming.dev is a turd when posting on other instances, I expect him to get moderated and/or blocked. Not the instance that is unrelated to the incident defederated.
The issue is that it’s the lead admin of programming.dev, not one of their users.
I don’t particularly oppose the decision to defederate. I have been vacillating on unsubbing from two of my programming.dev communities because of extremely poor social experiences and the third one hardly gets any posts. So if anything you are saving me the annoyance of having to do anything. But I genuinely do not understand.
Maybe the really ghastly stuff has been removed, but what I’m reading right now is pretty much what I consider to be baseline behavior on gaming communities on servers where GaMeRs congregate. Am I setting my standards too low?
Maybe the mods deleted some really horrible comments, but that’s moderation working as intended. Does it really warrant further action? Specifically this drastic?
Am I underestimating the risks we run by staying federated with an instance with hostile admins? Are there things they do/can do/could do that could cause us major problems?
I mean yeah, the guy seems like a rude abrasive idiot that condones some pretty horrible stuff to justify playing his wizard game. But this is literally the first post of his I have the displeasure to read. if I can block his account and keep reading the content on his instance that’s not complete crap, why wouldn’t I want to?
but what I’m reading right now is pretty much what I consider to be baseline behavior on gaming communities on servers where GaMeRs congregate
But coming from their lead admin, who is ultimately responsible for the stance the instance takes on issues like this.
The goal for Blåhaj Lemmy is a space where gender diverse folk can let their defences down a bit, where they know that transphobia will be stopped in its tracks.
Does this mean that we can’t access the programming.dev communities anymore? I like the Godot community over there.
It will mean that, yes.
You could still create an account there I guess
or any other instance that federate with them
If I cut out everyone in my life that is 99% of the time a staunch ally, but still eats at Chick-Fil-A, my life would be very, very empty. No one is ever going to be a perfect ally / comrade, even queer people. I feel like it’s especially telling that the person got so heated because they want to be an ally and don’t want people to abandon them because they played a single stupid fucking game. Especially because there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, it’s easy to death-of-the-author JKR without realizing the direct transphobia in the game. A lot of the direct transphobia in Hogwarts Legacy isn’t obvious (like misgendering the token trans in the game files) and most people don’t know about it. Does that suck? Yeah. But that doesn’t mean those people are transphobes or bad faith actors.
I get that we need to have a sharp eye to make sure bad faith actors don’t fly under the radar, but false positives do a lot of harm too. I really feel like this came down more to Hexbear doing what Hexbear does and setting the entire thread on fire than it points to transphobia on the programming.dev admin’s side. Of course people are going to get stupid when you’re getting insulted, flamed, and spammed with stupid-ass emoji. If they’re willing to defed from Hexbear and acknowledge the direct transphobia in the game, that would go a long way.
This isn’t that.
This is the lead (cis) admin of a Fediverse instance telling trans people that a Potter game is “the opposite of transphobic” and then arguing with trans folk about it, diminishing the relevance of their pronouns as a side issue, and calling trans folk “insane” for having an issue with the game.
The hexbear pile-on clearly got to them, but that’s not an excuse for the other behaviour. I need to know that other admins will deal with transphobia even when it’s hard, not that they’ll resort to it when they’re frustrated.
You’re assuming bad faith instead of remembering Hanlon’s razor. programming.dev’s technical admin is not your enemy.
When confronted with something he did wrong, he chose to double down.
We know what kind of person he is.
What exactly did he do wrong? I’m super confused about what’s transphobic about the mod’s responses, other than that they disagreed with what a trans person (from hexbear no less) was saying
All the Harry Potter stuff aside, he was called out for using the wrong pronoun for someone. That’s fair, it happens. A normal person just apologizes and moves on.
Our friend gets instead decides to get all “trans people are too sensitive and this is why no one likes you”. That’s a pretty big yikes.
The fact that he was baited into it (because, let’s be fair he totally was) is no excuse. It’s some pretty horrific shit to say for a supposed “ally” (which is a total bullshit term anyway. We know what it’s worth when things get tough).
If he actually said “trans people are too sensitive and this is why no one likes you” I’d be right there with you. He didn’t say that, though. Maybe that’s what it meant, but it’s not the read I got. He said that getting offended at him [for making a mistake] was not helping their case.
Yeah, he should have handled it differently, but it’s not “trans people are too sensitive and this is why no one likes you”, it’s “we’re in an argument and you’re getting upset at me for something I couldn’t have known.”
Because she didn’t just tell him her pronouns, she accused him of misgendering her intentionally, in a discussion where they’re already attacking each other back and forth so it easily reads as another attack to someone who’s not used to being told pronouns.
And I mean fuck, maybe he’s really a monster beneath all of that. But I don’t think that what we’ve been shown is enough to condemn him and know what type of person he is. It certainly isn’t enough to condemn an entire instance in my opinion.
Maybe I give people too much credit, but defederation is a big deal and I haven’t seen people talking about other instances of transphobia either from this admin or other people on the instance, so it seems like there’s a good chance that it’s a miscommunication.
A shame. It reads (particularly at the top of that thread) like an ignorant Admin and a typical Hexbear user(s).
Please note when I say that that I am not suggesting or implying that the Admin was not in the wrong, but that when the Admin said:
It’s literally the opposite of transphobic. It’s like they tried as hard as they could to negate everything bad JKR has ever said…
That seems more like something someone ignorant of a lot of things would say and not necessarily what someone intent on being awful would say. The response to them, also from a Hexbear user, was:
You’re a transphobic clown that cares more about your Harry Potter treats than trans people. Stop pretending otherwise.
Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not. Certainly in the remainder of that thread, the Admin falls pretty short of decent behaviour. However, I think if that first response to the Admin’s response had not been so judgemental and had maybe seen it as ignorance rather than malice and level headedly gone on to explain why the Admin is wrong without the (i think we can all agree) standard Hexbear method of engagement, maybe (not definitely, but maybe) the outcome might have been an ally rather than a defederation.
I suspect that I’m going to get responses to that paragraph stating it’s not a trans persons responsibility to educate others. I do see that and understand it as I am part of a minority group that has been marginalised, persecuted and wished out of existence for hundreds if not thousands of years. I understand exactly how annoying and exhausting it is to feel like you have to continually explain why it’s OK you exist.
But I’ve also come to realise the difference between ignorance and wilful ignorance and that it’s always worth making at least one try with someone. 99% of the time it gets you nowhere, but sometimes it gets you an ally.
I understand the defederation decision and it doesn’t affect my choice to be on Blahaj at all. I guess my hope is that the two Admin’s can talk it out and that refederation is an available option but that if that doesn’t happen, the PD Admin at least learns how they behaved is transphobic and they change their ways.
We’re talking about it now, but due to timezones and travel, I can’t say where the talks will lead.
I will also say though, that as as admin that has been actively targeted by a Hexbear pileon, it’s not an excuse to erase trans folks pronouns as a side issue, or to call people insane for trying to explain why the Potter IP is harmful to trans folk.
I absolutely agree with both points.
I just can’t help feeling that had that initial exchange been with a non-Hexbear user(s), it might’ve developed differently. I don’t know that for a fact obviously and maybe the PD Admin has a history of that sort of behaviour, I’m solely going by what was in that thread. By no means am I excusing their later behaviour, which was transphobic, all I’m saying is that those two sentences that I quoted seem (to me anyway) to be the flashpoint and that if it had not been a Hexbear pile on, ignorance could’ve been challenged in a way that might’ve lead to allyship.
Right, but this isn’t an educational instance. We’re not here to take hits with a smile whilst folk learn. This space exists to give gender diverse folk a space where they can let their guard down. The needs of gender diverse folk are the priority for me.
And look, I get the frustration with Hexbear. I’ve been targeted by their pile-ons, and I’m still a regular punching bag for them. But if that ever leads me to minimise the oppression of people who experience bigotry that I don’t have to deal with, I absolutely deserve to be called out for it. Openly and loudly, because I’m an instance admin. My voice is seen as representing my community, and the same is true of all admins.
Right, but this isn’t an educational instance. We’re not here to take hits with a smile whilst folk learn. This space exists to give gender diverse folk a space where they can let their guard down. The needs of gender diverse folk are the priority for me.
This is the biggest reason I still use blahaj sans 196.
We should not have to play teacher every time someone tries to attack trans people.
I guess I don’t see the attack? The discussion got heated, but they didn’t attack trans people, they used they/them to refer someone whose pronouns they didn’t know and then got defensive when they got accused of intentional misgendering. They reacted poorly and worded it badly, so it should be a learning experience for them, but it doesn’t mean they’re a transphobe.
And the whole Hogwarts Legacy thing is a difference of opinion, not an attack on trans people either. They weren’t even defending JKR.
I agree that we don’t need to play teacher when someone tries to attack us, but we also don’t need to attack anyone who says anything slightly misinformed. There’s a middle ground there.
Ah. Is there a list somewhere of places we’ve defederated from? I haven’t been keeping up with my fellow lemmy.blahaj’s.
There’s a link called “instances” on the bottom of every page, which will show you, but it’s hard to read, because it also includes non lemmy instances, and there are A LOT of awful bigoted instances out there, though most of them are Mastodon.
Ar first I thought ALL the listed instances were blocked
Heh, no. The blocked list is right at the bottom and is tiny by comparison :)
a reassuring move. glad I picked the blahaj
this is the way i learn that a mid game like hogwarts legacy won best steam deck game? like how… do they know baldur’s gate 3 exists?
No one took the voting seriously and it was full of trolling. Guess what won the award for most innovative gameplay?
BG3 won GOTY and you couldn’t vote the same game for multiple categories.
Does BG3 run well on steam deck? Huge if true
when i first got bg3 i played it all the time on the steam deck (some of the menus take some getting used to but it works).
My boyfriend and I play on the couch, I using a Steam Link, he using the Steam Deck.
Both run great.
Getting baited into this by Hexbear clowns lmao. Shit like this is gonna ruin lemmy
Anyone have screenshots of the conversations? It appears some of the admin in question’s messages are deleted
It’s actually ridiculous that HL still produces such a shitstorm.
It’s a tech instance, posted tech news about the game winning an award. People were defending the game, because it’s simply not by JKR. It’s based and licensed on her work, sure, but let’s be honest here - does anyone actually believe that she played a role in development of HL? She probably okayed licensing it after some manager recommendation.
You claim that your instance goal / instance admin goal is to provide a safe space for trans folk - that’s awesome. They brought tech news without any notion of supporting transphobia or JKR, and have been trying to not discuss JKR or being trans or not, simply because it’s off topic, not because of transphobia, but because it’s not relevant for them as a tech instance. Respect other instances goals and admins as well. Being an ally does not mean that they need to focus everything around being trans or not, but simply giving a neutral ground.
Calling the whole instance out as transphobe because of a single thread with hexbear troll involvement is childish, just as this defederation thread with 48 hours of a deadline. If you’re that triggered by the thread and the mention of hogwarts legacy, then at least be honest about it, play your instance admin card, and defederate. Doing it like this is constructing childish drama, and looking for confirmation. And you’re not even getting it by your own instance members.
Wow. Of all the misguided takes “The TERF Empress of Wizard Fiction did not personally program the TERF Wizard Fiction game” is pretty pathetic.
Though as a tangent, it would’ve been hilarious to see her write the story and dialogue of the game to see how much of a turd it would’ve been, like the fantastic beast movies
Yah, it’d be one thing if they had just like… packed up their opinion on the game and dropped the whole thing, but then continuing to hammer on about it and like, straight up ignore trans people telling you that they have a problem with the game and people buying it, that’s kind of another things.
it’d be one thing if they had just like… packed up their opinion on the game and dropped the whole thing, but then continuing to hammer on about it and like
Am I understanding you correctly, that the problem you have is that this person was responding to replies to him?
straight up ignore trans people telling you that they have a problem with the game and people buying it, that’s kind of another things.
And a trans person telling you they have a problem with the game, it means disagreeing is inherently transphobic?
