Various thoughts:

  • Around 20 people weren’t properly covered by the gender categories, obviously we’re trying to be as inclusive as possible and a different approach will be tried next time

  • There were about 600 respondents, which gives us a accurate sampling of the active userbase. If you multiply any number by 3, you’ll get a fairly accurate representation of the full userbase each week. This means there are around 800-900 people who don’t identify fully as cis each week on this site.

  • Nearly 300 trans/gender diverse/questioning people unanimously agree that hexbear is an inclusive space

  • There was so much data on gender that I was really struggling to find a way to convey the data that wasnt a pie chart, graph, or an incomprehensible kalaeidoscope. If you have an idea on how to beautify the data, you can download the raw data here: https://pad.artemislena.eu/file/#/2/file/xzy4pck8on+oZp9yGRUIezR+/ - I further anonymized this data by removing time of response and any specific comments, I don’t think it would be easy for anyone to figure out who is who.

  • There were a couple of text responses that really needed further elaboration, I noted hexbear’s rules next to these comments

  • I’ll probably be doing a demographics survey sometime in the future, including basic fairly anonymous stuff like “what region were you born in” “where do the languages you speak originate” “would you describe yourself as a POC” “what age range are you in”.

  • The percentage of people answering they were cisgender increased by 8% than the previous survey. This could be for a myriad of reasons, such as cis people being afraid trans people will hunt them down in the public thread and assassinate them. Anonymity may have made them feel safer to respond. Regardless, way more people responded this time, which signifies that people felt safer responding to the cryptpad or it was easier to do. The leading question was a bit more inclusive than last time, but I think I’ll include both questions (are you transgender / gender diverse and are you cisgender) to see how people respond.

  • We have a lot of people that aren’t binary trans on this site.

  • Some of the questions were pretty funky and we got a lot of fuzzy responses on them as a result. In particular “After you realized you were trans/gender diverse, how long did it take for you to begin to act on it?” and “At what age did you begin transition?” caused a lot of friction, I think I will ask more vague questions in the future that lead to a path of more specific questions to capture better data, and to save people time. Questions like “Do you feel your gender transition had a defined starting point?” and some further ones.

  • Around 20 people each week on this site are cis she/hers, which is very low and roughly the same as last time. I feel like if hexbear ever starts hosting other federated stuff (like a federated tiktok or something) and can hook into it natively with lemmy, we’d see a better ratio.

  • I tried to be very sure any data with >2 people on it was clearly legible, I think some people might find it fun that there are others with their same fairly specific classifications per this survey lurking around on the site.

  • Overall I feel like the survey was a success despite some bumps.

  • You can find the other surveys/links here: https://hexbear.net/post/3016455

  • I made these graphs on company time bridget-pride-stay-mad

nerd

  • khizuo [ze/zir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    39·
    3 months ago

    I put “maybe” as my answer for if I would recommend hexbear to my trans friends. It’s still true, but I think that because of the answer I put I didn’t get to talk about the caveats I would have to tell them first, so I’ll put them here. It’s really more of a “maybe leaning towards no” answer for the following reasons.

    misogyny, anti-fatness/weight, anti-plural shit

    • The obvious one that other people have already mentioned — misogyny. There is a culture of misogyny that permeates through this site. It has honestly turned me off from engaging with the majority of it and now I mostly stick to the trans mega. We seriously need a purge, and said purge would affect a lot of long-time posters and be very very unpopular (though not among us trans mega folks!)

    • There is a lot of discussion of weight on this site, and while it is usually under a spoiler it is still overwhelmingly about losing weight and that can be a triggering topic for a lot of people. It has, in fact, started affecting me and my own relationship to my body in a bad way. I know that weight can be a source of dysphoria and it’s not on me to dictate what people do about their bodies, but also constantly talking about dieting and wanting to lose weight creates a culture of anti-fatness whether we want it to or not. I think the solution to that is to have conversations about anti-fatness and not to ignore that it exists and is the primary driver behind dieting culture, which hexbear currently does. As a caveat: I have thin privilege, but I would definitely be very wary of recommending hexbear to the fat trans people in my life.

    • I have seen anti-system shit on hexbear before and I do not feel that this is a safe space to openly discuss plurality or present as plural. I think the trans mega is much better than the rest of the site, but unfortunately it doesn’t exist in a vacuum from the rest of the site. I would be very wary of recommending hexbear to my trans plural and system friends.

    • Anvil_Lavigne [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      28·
      3 months ago

      piggybacking for a moment. i peruse the modlog quite a bit & have seen a depressing amount of body shaming & even ableism from prominent users. i, too, am the comfiest within the confides of the mega.

      i’m a system, even if i don’t present as such here. so cat-trans

    • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      3 months ago

      I have thin privilege, but I would definitely be very wary of recommending hexbear to the fat trans people in my life.

      As an admittedly currently fat trans person, someone’s weight wouldn’t play a role in whether I’d recommend them or not. People aren’t shitting on others for weight here, but having conversations about wanting to lose weight (or gain weight, for those seriously underweight) is something pretty much universal (and not just in chud/etc ways, health is also a universal reason). That’s not to disregard that it’s affected you personally, and maybe (since I can imagine it would affect many people) we should be requiring spoilers for such discussions, etc… (no opinion/not necessary for myself IMO)

      The misogyny and anti-system shit is totally and utterly unjustified, though, and something absolutely has to be done about both.

    • NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      2 months ago

      Thank you for bringing up the weight thing. I have been meaning to effort post about this for some time, but haven’t dared do it yet.

      I think there is also an issue with a kind of trust in a linear progress of modernity when it comes to medical professionals and medical science that maybe comes from privilege. There are also all kinds of neoliberal self-control/self-betterment things that I have seen here that ignore the systems we live in and how they are different for non-normative bodies. These have made me very uncomfortable as a person with an uterus especially. The treatment fat bodies get in this world and from medical experts especially is systemically violent and the “issue” of fatness itself can be contested. For example NovoNordisk funds the researchers in o*esity and it’s just a huge thing of racism, pathriarchy and medical violence that leftists should do better with.

      This for sure is one of the more unwelcoming things here for me personally.