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.
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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
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often times they won’t even action users who are engaging in transphobia, even if reported. It’s really not great.
As I said in my other reply. I don’t live that life so we might not get all the cues but if anyone on our team sees transphobia it will be removed.
I think a bigger problem is that like Reddit or Facebook Lemmy.world lets these people continue to post and participate there, most only get temporary bans, I distinctly remember a person who used the R-slur multiple times and was blatantly transphobic, yet last I checked he only got temp banned, and otherwise are completely welcome back even after such atrocious behavior.
One user I can refer to is Mojave, but he certainly isn’t the only case, there are plenty more like him. I remember he had quite the abusive spree in [email protected], if memory serves he made quite a few transphobic attacks, unfortunately it doesn’t show up in the modlog because they purged him rather than removing (he also apparently had some very bad behavior in [email protected] but I’m not there and don’t remember it).
In defense of temp bans: sometimes people will learn from their past mistakes so starting with a temp ban is a decent idea rather than just jumping to a permanent one.
Of course on Lemmy you don’t get notifications when you get banned, so it’s not as effective of a tool as it could be. Hell you don’t even get notifications of a comment being removed.
Edit: Banning in general on Lemmy is broken IMO. If you’re from a different instance and you get banned you see no difference in your day to day interaction in the other instance. You can still post and comment, it’s just on the other instance you are banned from the people on that instance don’t see that content. Couple that with the lack of notifications when you get banned or your comments get removed and people won’t know that their behavior is unacceptable and they won’t change.
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I understand completely. A space like that needs to exist.
Thank you for the work you put in.
Nobody here is excusing transphobia. There just hasn’t been any. You’ve gone delusional.
How can HL be transphobic when thens a trans character in the game?
I mean I really don’t agree that HL is transphobic but you can very easily put a character in a game and cast them in a light that makes the real life group they’d be a part of lool bad.
best instance and best admins
And this is why blåhaj zone is the best lemmy instance, I’m so glad I found this place.
I’m okay with that. The smaller lemmy is, the better it is for me.
This alone doesn’t seem like something worth defederating over. It seems like they just got baited hard by Hexbear. Did the comment chain get censored? It doesn’t seem like there’s much active transphobia here, just ignorance of the issues at worst.
From my cursory read, the only thing that reads as actually transphobic to me is when they say “And getting offended by it really isn’t helping your case here.” in response to someone getting mad at being referred to as “they”, and that itself was due to technical issues and not transphobia.
Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn’t seem worth defederating over. I’m all for defederating bigots, but I don’t want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.
Frankly, one angry snapback and a slap fight with Hexbear doesn’t seem worth defederating over.
I have to agree.
The bulk of Hexbear’s userbase actively chooses to interact with others in the fediverse in antisocial ways, finding any excuse to be offended and generally make argumentative nuisances of themselves. This concerns us because they wrap themselves in trans-colored flags.
I’m tired of Hexbear users stomping around Lemmy being jerks to everyone in the name of being trans. And I don’t want us, or this instance, to suffer for it.
but I don’t want hapless allies getting caught in the crossfire.
Especially not for the sake of hexbear
But the admin here really likes Hexbear and has expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works
Honestly this whole thing has me window shopping for another instance due to our admin again siding with Hexbear
expressed the intention of federating with them the moment instance level blocking works
Ah so I take it they don’t believe the spam and hostility concerns about Hexbear users are legitimate, if they did their solution to the problem wouldn’t be “just block them lol”, it would be to keep Hexbear Censured. Though it might anyway, since the Instance blocking doesn’t seem like it’ll ever work the way anyone thinks/wants it to:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
Siding with Hexbear is a red flag, considering the ammount of problems they cause from spamming to the pro-genocide propaganda they push out.
Oh no they see the spam and bullying behavior (they’ve even been on the receiving end of it) they don’t see it as a problem because they’re a “trans positive instance”.
And the politics of the Hexbears is something they’re seemingly willing to overlook in the name of keeping trans positive communities together.
Yeah, the admin ain’t great and the only reason I’m still hear is because the overlap in communities I want to be federated with and one’s I don’t want to be federated with currently align enough. As long as Hexbear stays defederated (and I believe Lemmygrad (almost as bad as Hexbear) is as well but IDK). But defederating with programming.dev is a big deal IMO.
I’m curious though how our admin found out about that one thread with the admin of programming.dev. Looking in the thread I didn’t see them, but I did see a bunch of Hexbears. My guess is Hexbear in their dog piling decided to inform our admin (probably en masse) about the thread once it completely went to shit to drive a wedge to isolate our community further. Hell that thread was 2 days ago and this announcement came out only a few hours ago.
Oh no they see the spam and bullying behavior (they’ve even been on the receiving end of it) they don’t see it as a problem because they’re a “trans positive instance”.
And the politics of the Hexbears is something they’re seemingly willing to overlook in the name of keeping trans positive communities together.
Yeah that’s really weird because hexbear often behaves in a way that paints trans people in a bad light, including the fact that they often push for certain ideologies and philosophies that are directly harmful to trans people. As well as certain philosophies that hurt everyone in general like being pro-genocide. How are they in any way a good representation of this community or the people in it, and how is it good for this community to have such destructive people tearing the place up?
I haven’t the foggiest idea how the admin here justifies their support in the face of what Hexbear supports politically
Edit: Clarification and also: I’m not sure if you were here around the time Hexbear got defederated but the threads here on that are pretty damning. In the end Hexbear defederated from us first before our admin did.
Hello! I just read this Conversation and just wanted to say you can argue very well! Back to blahaj-Lurker-mode.
I’m curious though how our admin found out about that one thread with the admin of programming.dev. Looking in the thread I didn’t see them, but I did see a bunch of Hexbears. My guess is Hexbear in their dog piling decided to inform our admin (probably en masse) about the thread once it completely went to shit to drive a wedge to isolate our community further. Hell that thread was 2 days ago and this announcement came out only a few hours ago.
A user asked about it on /c/mtf.
btw you can just look at the hexbear com that is supposedly their “dog piling” community. It’s totally free to look at if you’d believe it. /c/the_dunk_tank. The only time this topic was addressed there was 4 days ago when the original topic was still actively going on. I can guarantee you there’s no grand conspiracy about isolating blahaj lmfao.
Also i have no idea what universe you live in where Ada had not preferred to cater to /c/196 despite their shit stirring, rather than work with hexbear to keep the biggest trans communities together.
A blahaj poster asked about it on /c/mtf.
No, unless there was a different post that was deleted, it looks like a Hexbear user’s alt did. https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7367407
It’s her only post, on an account that was created 4 days ago. It’s not some grand conspiracy by any means, but calling her a blahaj poster is a stretch.
That’s my bad I thought someone else had posted it, but it’s still a trans user asking in a trans com. I think it’s a valid thing to poll the community on.
I’ll very sadly and reluctantly have to do the same, if that happens - and whilst I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’ve not seen @Ada say anything along those lines, certainly not officially.
I do understand wanting trans-positive instances to stick together but I do feel like there is a line and that ‘the enemy of my enemy’ is not automatically my friend. Or, to put it another way, trans (or disabled, or gay or black or whomever) individuals are just as capable of being shitty people as anyone else and if there’s a whole instance that is largely made up of shitty individuals only capable of expressing themselves with fury and hate, the fact they are supportive of or part of minority groups is not enough to make me want to share space with them or be subjected to their methods.
Yeah I agree, this definately does seem like a knee jerk reaction which ultimately does more harm than good.
I love you all and I’m obviously against transphobia or any kind of bigotry, but this is probably where I leave this instance.
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.
As someone who only recently migrated to programing.dev, it feels like I’m building on shifting sand.
It’s a great feature, but the “inter-instance politics” of it are exhausting. I’m a programmer by trade and by hobby so when creating my account I went with “the programming instance.” Now I’m hearing that because of a thread on a different instance (lemmy.ml) this instance is defederating with programming.dev.
I like browsing the communities here, I hadn’t seen the original post on the other instance before this thread, and if I had missed this thread this whole instance would just disappear seemingly randomly.
I get that you can migrate to another instance, but given how this is going how can I be sure this won’t happen again and I’d lose access to instances out of nowhere? It seems unsustainable to constantly check other instances for inter-instance conflicts just to see the communities I like
I agree with separating from different minded groups, but these are the words of one person who set up the instance who definitely doesn’t speak for the “programming group.” I feel like action could be taken against the individual without basically punishing the entire instance
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.
Having read the thread I really don’t think the programming.dev admin was being transphobic. I know I’m cis so I’m less likely to see transphobia, and I am more lenient with my judgement, but it really looks like they were at worst abrasive or indifferent towards the sensitivities of the issue at hand, and not outright transphobic.
Taking into account that this type of behavior is common in tech debates and that they have explicitly shown their support for trans people elsewhere, I believe that they are not transphobic, just bothersome to you guys in this debate topic because of how important it is to you to treat it with higher respect than some random topic.
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I appreciate the input but you’re going to get massacred.
Meanwhile they have 50 pts of people who agree
I’m cis so I’m less likely to see transphobia, and I am more lenient with my judgement, but
It feels like I’ve seen these exact words a thousand times before
Tell me more, cis person from another instance, how the queer people should run their instance
Welp… I knew this wouldn’t be productive. Just trying to respectfully provide an alternative opinion. Don’t dismiss others because of who they are, dismiss them because of what they say. If what I say is wrong then you’ll have a good reason to dismiss me without resorting to my gender identity.
Edit: To be clear, you can run this instance however you want, and nothing I say can take that away from you. I just think you’re acting on faulty information, so the result of this defederation won’t align with your intentions.
just think you’re acting on faulty information, so the result of this defederation won’t align with your intentions
I have been managing communities online and offline for decades. I am also a member of the minority group impacted by this issue.
You do not have the same lived experience or familiarity with the issue at hand
When I tell you that I’m acting in an informed and considered way, I hope you respect that.
I am also in talks with an admin from programming.dev to try and resolve this.
I appreciate that your comment was made in good will, but implying that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m somehow failing to understand the topic at hand is not helping anything
So, I’m not the person you’re replying too, nor am I a member of this minority group, but I do consider myself an ally. I do not personally know how offensive what was said is so I won’t comment saying “it’s not that bad” or anything of the sort.
But this is a thing I’ve seen in leftest communities where we don’t know when to use the carrot vs when to use the stick. I’ll admit I’ve said things in hindsight I feel awful about. But I’ve corrected that behavior because my friends knowing my good intentions lead me to be a better person. Here and like other similar communites however instead of talking to people in good faith to try to correct their behavior instead choose to punish and ostrisize them.
I don’t know what your admin team’s chat with the programming.dev admin team looks like, but I hope it can be resolved. I’ll be very disapoinyed with my admins if it can’t and will leave in solidarity.
Having read the thread I really don’t think the programming.dev admin was being transphobic. I know I’m cis so I’m less likely to see transphobia, and I am more lenient with my judgement,
Being respectful would have had you stop right there. Instead you decided to continue and blame the “oh so sensitive trans people” for rightfully calling out shitty behavior.
I have been respectful by staying out of top-level discussion to give your voices primary visibility and by qualifying my statements with my identity so that you can choose to value or discount them as you see fit. But I believe diversity of opinion is critical to making important decisions, so I have provided some. Let’s not waste any space getting personal when there is nothing more to say here that would be useful for the purposes of this overall thread.
but it really looks like they were at worst abrasive or indifferent towards the sensitivities of the issue at hand, and not outright transphobic.
I believe that they are not transphobic, just bothersome to you guys in this debate topic because of how important it is to you to treat it with higher respect than some random topic.
But I believe diversity of opinion is critical to making important decisions, so I have provided some.
Being permissive of shitty behaviors and transphobic attitudes while being dismissive of the concerns of the people who are targeted by these behaviors is not good “diversity of opinion.” I’m sorry you feel that I’m dismissing your opinion, but maybe you should reconsider the way you tell queer people how to handle bad actors.
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.
Oh I agree with most of this. If you look up my top comment, I don’t support defederation over this. This is something that needed to be handled at the community mod level.
He’s not a monster. He’s just a normal guy. He reacted poorly and he has some low hanging fruit in personal growth roadmap he can take care of. But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t done similar things online and worse, albeit in different contexts.
In the end, it comes down whether you trust the instance admins as a whole and the instance administration processes. I don’t get the impression that he operates as a dictator that abuses admin rights to settle personal slap fights. I get the impression administrating programming.dev is a team effort.
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.
I can see that this is a bad omen for the level of support trans users can expect over there. I can imagine you’re not comfortable waiting for the other shoe to drop.
That’s pretty much it, yeah
I guess my concern is that as a user who created their account on programming.dev, it feels like it’s coming out of nowhere. I like browsing the communities here, I hadn’t seen the original post on the other instance before this thread, and if I had missed this thread this whole instance would just disappear seemingly randomly.
I’m a programmer by trade and by hobby so when creating my account I went with “the programming instance.” Now I’m hearing that because of a thread on a different instance (lemmy.ml) this instance is defederating with programming.dev.
I get that you can migrate to another instance, but if decisions on defederation can be made based on the actions of one person this could definitely happen again, and I don’t make a habit of following an instance admin to make sure I agree with everything they say. It seems exhausting and unsustainable to constantly check other instances for inter-instance conflicts just to see the communities I like/want to be a part of
btw I made a post in our instance meta community if you want to read it. Been trying to resolve the situation [email protected]
Thank you
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I appreciate the sentiment. I hope we don’t defederate.
I am going to repost my comment here because it was removed with the top comment and I believe it is relevant to the discussion. I would also like to add to it as well.
Here is my addition after I had a good night’s sleep:
I would prefer to federate with the larger lemmy community. However we are submitting ourselves to the standards and moderation practices of the larger lemmy community as part of that federation. In exchange, we should expect something in return, which should be a concrete goal.
Getting other admins to agree that the things that are harmful to the trans community, such as transphobic video games that fund anti-trans causes, should be the low bar we ask of other lemmy communities. This is not a purity test, as others have suggested. This is a consensus that we should reach with lemmy communities about our shared reality.
This consensus on our shared reality is desirable, because if the general lemmy community can agree on what is harmful to members of our community, then the larger lemmy community becomes a safer for place for members of our community. We are not asking the general lemmy community to stop playing the game or even to engage in a boycott, although we would of course appreciate that. We are specifically asking the general lemmy community to agree on what is harmful to trans people. This consensus on seemingly trivial issues establishes shared moderation practices that help us to achieve our goal of a safe place for trans and LGBTQ+ individuals on the internet. edit: typo
Here is my original comment:
This issue can seem insignificant and it can be tempting to want to brush it under the rug. I have personally have this urge to not to want to upset allies or potential allies. But Rowling as a famous, rich person does a lot of harm to trans people by contributing money to anti-trans causes. This game is the most recent piece of content that funds her ability to donate to those anti-trans causes. If this admin can understand that then we should be fine to stay federated.
Unfortunately the nature of discourse in the post obfuscated this issue. Simply explaining the error in the admin’s argument backed up with sources should have been sufficient. The personal attacks do not add to the discussion and make it harder to arrive at any understanding. I think the conflict and ‘finding a win’ is sort of the goal with the tactics displayed in the thread, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the issue seriously.
The error in the admin’s argument is that the content of the game is not important when the profits of the game go to causes that undermine the well being of trans people.
Again, I understand the nature of discourse made the topic seem childish. However, this is the fight we are fighting. There is no other hill for us to die on. We can only choose how we defend it, not who else is on the hill with us.
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
blahaj my beloved
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]
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:
“Pronouns are fine, y’all took it to a level that looks like alt-right satire of pronouns. Trans rights are human rights, but am I literally Hitler because I don’t think “comrade” or “fae” make sense when used as pronouns? You seem very rational and not at all unhinged.”
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.
Wow, I missed that one!
The whole comment that the previous commentor took a small section of actually includes them citing instances where they’ve defended trans people.
And also includes them saying that they remove transphobic and antisemitic content all the time and invites people to check their mod logs.
Which gives me hope that they’ll be able to recognise why these comments were a problem
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.
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
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
This article does a good job at explaining that Hogwarts Legacy is transphobic because some of the profits will be donated to anti-trans causes.
Rowling herself has implied that her royalty checks are indirect indicators of the popularity of her views on trans rights. She will be profiting off Hogwart’s Legacy, and at least part of that profit will likely go directly into the hands of those responsible for pushing the fight to roll back trans rights, causes Rowling has implied she donates to.
This article explains the antisemitic blood libel conspiracy theory that is a core part of the game’s plot.
Players can choose to align themselves with Ranrok, but the game explicitly paints this as an evil decision, aligning those players with the Dark wizard faction. On top of that, Ranrok and his Dark wizard allies in the Rookwood Gang have a plan to harness the power of this forbidden magic by abducting the player character (who is a teenager) and extracting and using their blood. This latter detail hews uncomfortably close to “blood libel” conspiracy theories which have been leveled at Jewish communities across the world for centuries, in which Jewish people were accused of abducting and murdering Christian children in order to use their blood in sacrilegious rituals.
I spent some time watching videos on the game’s plot. I couldn’t find a specific line in a cut scene where the villain explicitly says he wants to harvest the protagonist’s blood. But he does explicitly set some guys after the protagonist to try to kidnap them. They need the protagonist because they are the only one who can interface with the MacGuffins, ie plot devices. This MacGuffin interfacing seems to be hereditary in nature. Also, the villain’s powers, specifically the graphics, definitely seemed blood themed to me.
The game is transphobic and antisemitic. Arguing the game is not those things is transphobic and antisemitic. Whether or not the admin in question knew that is irrelevant.
No one is mandated to educate people about any minority group that they are a part of.
That being said, I wholeheartedly believe that it is in our interest as an LGBTQ+ community to educate people when an opportunity arises. So much hate and bigotry is derived from ignorance. The more we can do to educate people about transphobia the safer we and the people we care about will be irl.
Ada is going out of her way to talk to the admin in question which she does not need to do, but I am glad that she is. She would be perfectly justified in defederating the instance without further discussion. Making a safe space for trans people means defederating from instances that espouse transphobia. By defederating, users on blåhaj zone will not see what this admin’s posts or comments, regardless of where the posts or comments are made.
This is what the post in question looks like if your lemmy account is on blåhaj.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/7199610
Most of the comments are not visible because we are defederated from Hexbear.
I’m really not a fan of how Hexbear users handled this. I am also not a fan of blåhaj being the admin’s trans best friend. Despite that, I think this comment from the admin is relevant so I’m linking it here.
https://programming.dev/comment/6173847
I get the sense that this admin is engaging in transphobia and antisemitism because of their ignorance involving the game. I hope that in talking to the admin, Ada will be able to explain the error in the admin’s position. Hopefully the admin will correct their position going forward and we can continue to federate with their instance. But I think that in the absence of that hypothetical success it makes sense to defederate.
It took me a bit to think about it, but it’s good that we take a proactive position on combating transphobia. Tolerating intolerance for the convenience it might bring, in not having to make multiple accounts or having more perceived allies, really doesn’t do us any favors in the long run. If we don’t stand up for ourselves we are only giving cover for transphobes to maneuver covertly in our online space. Rowling is a terf. Hogwarts Legacy funds her terf causes. We don’t need blåhaj to be connected to instances that fail to understand that. The point is to have an instance that is a safe space for trans people and more broadly LGBTQ+ people.
I’m adding this at the end, because this shouldn’t matter, but I think some people think it does. I am trans. I am ethnically jewish.
Tldr. Upvote because trans jew who gave effort.
I’ll take the down vote if the articles I linked to at least get read.
You know what? I’ll read them. For you.
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This issue can seem insignificant and it can be tempting to want to brush it under the rug. I have personally have this urge to not to want to upset allies or potential allies. But Rowling as a famous, rich person does a lot of harm to trans people by contributing money to anti-trans causes. This game is the most recent piece of content that funds her ability to donate to those anti-trans causes. If this admin can understand that then we should be fine to stay federated.
Unfortunately the nature of discourse in the post obfuscated this issue. Simply explaining the error in the admin’s argument backed up with sources should have been sufficient. The personal attacks do not add to the discussion and make it harder to arrive at any understanding. I think the conflict and ‘finding a win’ is sort of the goal with the tactics displayed in the thread, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the issue seriously.
The error in the admin’s argument is that the content of the game is not important when the profits of the game go to causes that undermine the well being of trans people.
Again, I understand the nature of discourse made the topic seem childish. However, this is the fight we are fighting. There is no other hill for us to die on. We can only choose how we defend it, not who else is on the hill with us.
Outside of the topic at hand, you broke a very clearly stated rule on this post about top-level comments from other instances. Could you please respect the rules of the instance and community you’re posting in? This defederation doesn’t affect you.
Honestly, the general consensus seems to not me “don’t enjoy the game” it seems more to be “do not pay for the game.”
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That’s the fun thing about Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and other instances like them: they don’t want allies.
Building groups of allies is how you win any civil rights or human rights issue. Hell without allies you just secure your own alienation forever.
If you win you become part of the system. Can’t have that! Better to keep agitating in some rear guard battle forever.
This is fucking stupid. He’s clearly not being transphobic at all, it looks like another case of militant crazies going wild over Hogwarts legacy.
I bought it, I played it, I like it…so fucking what? Does that mean I agree with and support everything JKR has ever fucking done? Of course not. There’s plenty of trans people streaming it on Twitch. Let me guess…they have internalized transphobia or something? This is asinine, and shows that the Blahaj instance is willing to punish their users over something moronic. Abandon ship, imho.
You need to learn to separate the art from the artist.
Agreed.
I’m a little surprised your comment is still up. I literally asked what specifically was said that was transphobic and that got deleted. From what I saw the guy expressed confusion over how a game littered with non-cis characters is transphobic and was almost immediately attacked by people looking for a reason to be offended. I love and support the trans community but this instance is not helping your case.
I played it, the game was astonishingly “meh” but it really felt like they were sticking their finger in JKRs eye. Stop attacking people because they don’t want to shape their lives around whatever cause you’re championing.
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Objectively it’s been a great game,
Eeeeeehhh
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Lol listen I know what the reviews look like and I honestly couldn’t give a shit about JKR. The game just isn’t that good. The quests are extremely repetitive and boring, the majority of them being filler (find the butterfly mirrors, find the monkey statues, find the floating pages, etc). The combat has some fun mechanics but ultimately becomes a button-mashing chore. I personally found the main story to be unengaging, I temporarily forgot what it was about around 10-15 hours in. The dialogue writing is fine but the dialogue system is just another select every prompt to exhaust all dialogue options jobber, which is so tired at this point. I’d say the best part of the game is the world which is admittedly really well done…but then they give you a broom like 3 hours in, which just encourages the player to literally skip over it.
I’m not saying you’re wrong for enjoying it. I’m just saying calling objectively great is a fucking stretch.
Also, chill out. I wasn’t attacking you.
Edit: I almost forgot that for an RPG there is basically zero customization beyond your appearance.
My theory is that, there are so many voices on the internet, people are starting to feel insignificant and unheard. Their reaction seems to be to look for any perceived injustice and pretend to be outraged about it, not because they are, but because they think it’ll bring them the tiny bit of attention they so crave
It’s doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, gay or straight, it’s selfish and narcissistic
There you go chaps
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.
“tries to attack trans people” was a general use of the phrase.
I don’t think the PD admin was intentionally attacking trans people, though I do feel that his behavior was furthering transphobic discourse. Especially because he doubled down when told he was misgendering someone. Calling trans people “overly sensitive” and “easily offended” blurs the line between an attack towards trans people and general ignorance about trans people for sure, but the point is Ada doesn’t want either case to be allowed here.
I see then.
I guess I’m just realizing maybe this safe space is too safe for me. I want someplace that takes transphobia seriously, but I also want to be able to have enough people outside my trans bubble to talk to. I suppose I just draw the line somewhere different.
I get that, I really do. As I said previously, belonging to a minority group myself I don’t see it as my responsibility to teach everyone who’s uninformed. I’m definitely not saying anyone should accept any kind of comment with a smile, but there are times when I do do that both on and offline if I feel the comment in question was genuine ignorance rather than malice. I realise that that is my choice and doesn’t reflect on how anyone else handles situations like this and that as Admin of Blahaj you have a duty of care to all its users.
I guess I feel that allies (and I mean that in a general sense, not specifically trans allies or disability allies or queer allies etc) are increasingly rare and if there’s an opportunity to alleviate someone’s genuine ignorance, its a chance worth taking. But I also realise there’s a possibility I’m being naive.
When you see enough of it you can generally tell within the first couple interactions whether or not someone is being willfully ignorant vs genuinely ignorant. People who are being genuinely ignorant tend not to dig their feet in and double down when told something is offensive or harmful towards a marginalized group.
You’re certainly free to try and educate people, but trying to educate someone who has already made up their mind is a Sisyphean task.
Yep, all true.
My own reaction to the Admin’s first comment was ‘ignorance’ which then devolved as the thread devolved.
Although from own experience, even genuinely ignorant people do a fair bit of digging in at first too. Challenging someone’s opinion is difficult. But you’re right, there does come a point when you realise you’re flogging a dead horse.
You’ll get responses alright. Flurpity herpity floor.
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
I’m torn about this. Although I agree that the admin of that instance is being pretty transphobic and abrasive, I don’t know if it’s bad enough to defederate. In addition, I really like some of the communities there (especially the Godot community) and this might be the thing to push me off blahaj.zone…
It’s a hard balance to strike, protecting vulnerable people from potentially harmful instances with bad policies, while at the same time, providing a valuable instance that people will want to use. Unfortunately, this will probably push me and some other individuals onto other instances that may have worse moderation and will likely expose us to a lot more bigotry. It’s a tough situation, and I honestly don’t know what the best option is.
on that note, does anyone have recommendations for a neutral and controversy free instance but that also isn’t so quick to defederate?
I understand instances like this wanting to defederate on principle and I’m sure it helps to curate a better experience for the people looking for that. Personally I’d rather make the choice myself to block communities I don’t like and leave defederation on an instance level to just blocking illegal content and poor moderation and the like.
There typically will always be some form of controversy, tends to be just how the admins handle that
I try to keep this instance federated with instances as much as reasonable (the only lemmy instances we really defederate with are burggit and rqd2 since their instance rules break our instance rules, lolicon+DMCA ignoring for the first and very questionable communities in the second (zoophilia, MAP)) and were dealing with the situation in this post internally currently to solve the situation here with blahaj. Should make a post in meta probably tomorrow
I can give some recommendations of some instances with admins ive had positive experiences with (im one of the programming.dev leads though if that affects my stances on this)
- startrek.website - I dont talk with these admins much but the instance tends to be pretty positively viewed across lemmy
- slrpnk.net - one of the other niche instances. Admins seem relatively chill and I dont have anything negative regarding them. Active in helping stop spam accounts (defeds with hexbear + lemmygrad)
- lemmings.world - has been pretty active in making tooling to help out a bunch of admins + the fediverse in general. Made uptime badges that some instances use, a linking system so you can link to something that sends people to the copy of it on their own instance, and a gui for fediseer which a bunch of admins use to keep track of defederations + endorsements (defeds with hexbear + rqd2)
I chose lemm.ee because of how rarely it defederates, and I’m not aware of any major controversy with it. Blahaj is still federated, as is hexbear, lemmygrad, and beehaw. For those who want to curate their own instance experience, I’m not currently aware of a better home (though if anyone knows of one, definitely let me know, of course!).
Still being federated with Hexbear and Lemmygrad is a deal breaker for me but thank you for the suggestion
?? I was suggesting it for the user above, who specifically mentioned wanting instances that weren’t quick to defederate.
I had a very similar comment in this thread and while being tired AF I replied to your suggestion
Maybe I thought it was a reply to my comment? IDK. I was tired AF.
I have an alt there, but there have been some availability issues lately. Is it better now?
The server was upgraded this past week actually, and I haven’t had any problems since.
Unfortunately the best option will probably be to see if the defederation takes place then if it does move instances.
It’s a tough call but it’s starting to really seem like the right one.
The problem will be finding a new instance, I think the solar punk one might be a good place but I have to see who they’re federated with first.
Edit: Spleling
You can always make another account (on another instance) to view content from defederated instances.
I’m not all that sad to see them go, honestly. I think proactively taking action against instances who tolerate or perpetuate transphobia is a good thing for an instance made to be safe for trans people.
The admin could just as easily respond to all of this, there’s no way he isn’t aware, but he has thus far chosen not to.Edit: misunderstood that there was only one lead admin of the programming.dev instance.
We have been talking about it internally currently (+ was talking with ada). I’m planning to do a post tomorrow
Ah, I see your comment explaining how the administration of the instance is set up. I thought there was one lead admin, but my knowledge on that comes entirely from the thread on the transfem community. Pardon my ignorance on that point. I’m glad to hear that you’re in talks internally and with Ada. No one likes defederation, but I do understand why in this situation, some kind of action was warranted. Hopefully everything can be sorted out.
