cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25042034
This post is “FYI only” for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.
I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the “adult human female” dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and “civil disagreement” on the validity of trans folk.
I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to “sort it out through discussion and voting”. However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little “sorting out” has occurred. The posts remain in place.
At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.
I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.
Well, they’re right that it is pretty simple. Here’s a fun experiment for anyone who thinks this isn’t transphobic: try reading it again, but substitute black for trans. Totally reasonable they should have to use another bathroom, right?
Did you even read the text?
Did you? They spent the whole post arguing that a trans woman is not a woman. To clarify, a cis woman and a trans woman are different things. Both of these things are women. Cis and trans describe the women.
Some trans women may identify with having once been a man, but it’s hardly the case for all of them, especially the ones who recognized their mistaken assignment early. She was always herself. She was never a man unless she herself identified as one.
The wording “used to be a man” and “used to have a penis” makes me wonder if this person is using genital surgery as a determining factor. It’s thankfully becoming very acceptable these days to be a girl with a penis or boy with a vagina, so that such surgeries are more of a personal decision rather than a means of legitimizing oneself to society.