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.
These are tough calls to make. On the one hand I applaud the step taken to protect the community hosted by this instance, on the other I also find that simply cuting ties and conversation only furthers the divide.
Sure we should not have to defend the validity of our existence, and also realise that most hate leaves little place for heathy discussions. But in avoiding their echo chambers I find we quiet ours too, we renounce our visibility for our comfort and theirs.
I guess I wish there were other ways to warn users about potentially triggering instances rather than outright defederating, but I do understand your main motives.
You are absolutely welcome to maintain an account on another instance and here if you want to have the option of having those discussions. And I don’t mean that in a “Well, there’s the door” way. What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t want to have the types of conversations you’re talking about, it’s currently very hard to find spaces that make that possible. That’s why lbz exists in the form it does. However, I completely understand that some people do want that opportunity. And if that’s you, you’re welcome to maintain multiple accounts. You’ll always have a space here, but you can also use instances that give you access to less protective spaces.
Obviously I’m not on blahaj, but I think the decision is pretty on point for the goals of blahaj.
It also makes me disappointed in feddit.uk. “Leave it to discussion/votes” is bullshit and just support for the behavior.
Edit: The admin responded elsewhere with “we want to make sure we comply with the law”.
My comment remains unchanged. Allowing this is support. Fuck your bullshit law. You’re explicitly supporting this bullshit by your inaction.
Admin, ban this person! Clearly a non blahaj user voicing their opinion where explicitly told not to!
Tap for spoiler
/s, doh.
Right? Imagine if you said that about the rights for like black women or something? Like, come ON. It’s 2025, we KNOW these behaviors are bigoted, rules are way too chill with letting shit like that fly, and is part of the reason it’s so prolific now - it’s not being treated like the hate speech that it is, and people in power in certain places are like “no I’m not sure we need to discuss it again”. It’s just gross and horrible and makes me feel so fucking helpless sometimes when a space is dominated with shitties like that.
100%.
It’s nothing short of support for the behavior. Its why I constantly comment of Lemmy.world being trash, and why I say 196 mods are garbage and don’t belong on blahaj, long live !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Even suggesting that sort of vile nonsense is worth discussing/voting on makes them bigoted morons.
Edit: Sorry I sound cranky about it, but this “tEaCh tHe CoNtRoVeRsY” garbage puts me in a cranky mood.
lemmy.world is basically the fediverse version of Reddit from what I’ve experienced in terms of overall culture.
I still think that’s their tagline/site motto
Eewww
I’m not on here often enough to be in the loop, what’s the 196 community drama?
The mods from 196 tried to forcibly move everyone to 196 on Lemmy.world because they personally disagreed with Ada’s approach.
They locked the comm and pinned a post about it.
So during that time (while they continued arguing that “let the discussion happen” and “teach the controversy” but “we still totally support queer folks despite trying to move to an instance where shitty behavior is acceptable, and briefly had an admin level rule they are ‘reworking’ where it would explicitly be against terms to delete that hateful content”…
!onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone then opened up as a new comm.
196 on blahaj was reopened, and unfortunately many folks still land there because of the name.
Personally I refuse to trust any of the mods on 196 (.world or on blahaj) because:
- The move was forced
- There was no discussion prior
- They only backtracked when onehundredninetysix took off
- Their entire reasoning for the move was based off “we dont have accounts on blahaj and reporting is complicated” and “we want to moderate differently than what’s permitted on blahaj”.
Sorry that was kind of a long-winded summary.
Edit: there are threads at both!fediverselore@lemmy.ca and !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com iirc that will show the whole story.
There was no discussion prior
I’ve been involved in a lot of communities, some alright and some which nosedived, and it’s always amazing how out-of-touch most moderator cliques become if discussion isn’t ingrained in their culture. I also haven’t kept up with 196 comms, not my style, but I hope the community has enough consciousness to tell the mods where to shove that crap and become independent.
Agreed, fuck 'em.
If the users of feddit.uk want to engage with us, they’re totally welcome to do so on our terms by making an account somewhere that holds their users to a better standard. I hope they do. As far as I’m concerned, the users are cool, but we don’t have to coddle somebody else’s bigotry or put up with hatred.
“we want to make sure we comply with the law”
on here?
…Christ, why? lmao
They must think they’re the main character of lemmy or someshit.
Just as bad as Lemmy.world with their admins being totally pro lawyers who just haven’t taken the bar, they’d totally pass though.
Maybe worse, we’ll see.
“meh, those things sound like work”
– feddit.uk admin
They had the time to make a new rule about no generative AI content but couldn’t work this out? Stuff em.
i tried to tell them it sounded more like cowardice than laziness but they just wouldnt hear it.
It’s pretty fucked up a court ruling that’s shit sees such quick implementation.
You kick ass Ada. Thanks for all you do.
I’m not a blåhaj user, but I really hope the feddit.uk mindset on this doesn’t spread to other instances.
Why do divisive people have to care so much about letting people do what they want if it doesn’t affect them? What someone wants to do with their body does NOT affect you, but your open derogatory statements about them DOES affect them!
This has always been my stance. If it doesn’t affect me, then I am always on the side of people’s rights. Automatically. Even if it does affect me, I’m still more likely to be in favor of people’s rights. Especially if the people in question are losing rights. I simply don’t understand people who think loss of rights stops at people they don’t like. It just doesn’t work that way. A loss of ANY right against ANYONE is a personal loss of rights.
For instance, I’m not LGBTQ+. But I will fight like hell for their rights. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because I know what happens when the LGBTQ+ people are gone. These are innocent people who just want to live their life and are under constant threat from physical and legal harm. The fact that Christians get so up in arms about even seeing two men kiss, or holding hands pisses me off on a level I can’t describe. Especially when you consider the huge proportion of child molestation in the church. And it is very common that that child molestation was against a child of the same sex as the adult.
I’m not saying there’s a causation there, but there’s definitely correlation. And that correlation isn’t homosexuality of the abuser. The correlation is power. Teaching, clergy, Hollywood, right wing, left wing, it happens on both sides, on all levels, and of moderates as well. But the one thing that always unifies EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. is power. 100%, every single time.
However, Republicans tend to have power/Dom fantasies at a FAR higher rate than Democrats. And again, I’m not saying that’s a causation, but it is a correlation.
Power fantasies are insanely dangerous, even if the person is a “lowly” cook. It’s potentially civilization ending if the person has the power of the US military. And I’ve yet to ever hear a Democrat fantasize about being president. Honestly even thinking about it… Fuck that. I can’t handle that kind of responsibility. But I guess if trump “can” do it, then I could as well.
I agree 100% about the dangers of the power tripping fantasy. The best leaders are the ones who were picked to be in a position of power for their views on the world, not for the power they wanted to be granted to begin with.
Take Pope Francis (RIP): he came from a less wealthy part of the world, had an extremely open mindset on letting people of all varieties be whomever they wanted to be, and ended up being a genuinely good role model for people to follow (and I’m not even Christian lol).
And you have power tripping assholes, many of whom are Catholics, who hate being inclusive and refuse to follow their religion’s literal leader
Some people will endlessly bicker about the most stupid shit. Like, who the fuck even cares if someone wants to be a woman or a man? That’s like the least problematic thing nowadays.
Unfortunately even moreso in our region of origin, buddy.
The assumption that enforcing these viewpoints on everyone is “for the greater good” is a flawed one, as people who do not share their beliefs WILL NOT share the “greater good” to begin with. I will not enforce my beliefs on anyone else without their willingness.
I will never get why most arabs hate gays. Why? They’re clearly fine with shattering the rules of their religion, and cherrypicking sharia; so why not just be consistent and not hate gays? Their existence affects literally no one.
Though, we’re more prone to arguing about ridiculous stuff rather than, you know… actually fixing our problems and corruption lmao
Yeah I think step one is solving the massive blatant corruption on an international level that every country has haha
You don’t get it bro, we need to kill those gays and trans people. then we can get democracy and development!
/s something something poes lawedit: forgot to mention, i’m grateful there are sane arabs on lemmy, who actually have sensible political/social takes. it drives you insane to live here sometimes lol. Great to have you here :D
Not an Arab but I really appreciate just how “human” most of Lemmy is. There are of course a lot of insane people still but I don’t usually come away from Lemmy with the same general malaise that I did on reddit.
The real answer is:
They
are too dense to realizehaven’t realized that what they’re doing IS bigoted BECAUSE they’ve been so deeply in that culture for so long that it’s a much deeper question than they realize, and then get caught in the insidious (oh god I’m about to use the term 😭) neo liberal mindset of letting all the hatred and blatant manipulation fly free, unable to consider the problems or times in which they would not allow that stance to themselves, likely because they’ve never had to and may never have to experience anything like it.Or, they literally are just bigoted and being shitty bigots.
As a denizen of terf island myself, all I can say is; fucking good! Our enemies hide behind statements like “just asking questions”, but there’s no room for debate when it comes to people’s rights and look where that thinking has gotten us.
The time for debate is over. I want my rights back.
Unfortunate that you had to do that, but it sounds to me like you make the right call. Keep being great 💖🤍🩵
Of course it had to be feddit.uk
They don’t call it TERF Island for nothing.
ofc it’s us, I wanna move to the netherlands 🇳🇱🇪🇺🏳️⚧️
Blahaj user and former Brit here … well done Ada for consistency and transparency regarding this.
The whole “let it play out” attitude really says it all, it shows cowardice and a lack of leadership … kind of like the current prime minister.
Another non-blahaj here to say FUCK YEAH, Ada.
Deplatforming works. Demanding civility from people under attack by disingenuous, insincere “intellectuals” is so much more than just tone policing; it’s direct enablement of disenfranchisement and allowing the spread of harm.
It’s easy to be bad. It’s hard to be good. When bad people are allowed to express their evil ideologies, it is much easier for people to pick up the evil than for the righteous to defend the good.
We cannot be tolerant of intolerance.
So, again, FUCK YEAH, Ada. You rock for protecting your users AND the rest of the world by contributing to the deplatforming of bigots.
hard mode: uk stop being transphobic for two seconds.
That’s fair.
People like that will say “just block them” with one fork of their tongue, and then “sort it out through discussion and voting” with the other fork.
People like that will say “just block them” with one fork of their tongue,
Aka: “i just supply the space, I have no responsibility to make sure it’s actually safe”
“sort it out through discussion and voting”
Aka: “and I don’t intend to protect anyone, not my problem if you’re getting attacked”.
What’s “adult human female” referring to? Asking so I can keep an eye out for this in the future
It’s a transphobic dog whistle. Popularised by UK transphobes. The implication is that trans women aren’t women, and when you see it used, that’s what they’re really saying.
Thanks Ada. It’s exhausting (emotionally and spiritually) to try to keep up with the ways in which people express their hate for us, but it’s certainly essential for keeping ourselves safe, so I’m thankful to have learned something new.
Adult human female is a dog whistle used by TERFs (and transphobes more broadly) to make it clear that they are specifically excluding trans women from the definition of womanhood; that is, it’s shorthand for saying that ‘adult human females’ are the only category of person that can be called a woman.
As a Brit myself, it saddens me how much hate is leeching from my country - especially towards minorities.
Thank you to the mods for making this community open so that people like me can lurk and learn to be better, while simultaneously protecting the people who depend on and need this safe space. Defederating was the right choice.
I won’t pretend I’m well versed in trans issues and struggles - I’m a cishet guy with no real skin in the game but I want to be an ally.
If anyone has good resources for someone like me to read so I can be better armed to refute and educate others who are being hateful, please let me know. The surge in hate after the recent Supreme Court ruling here in the UK has made it painfully clear being passive on the sidelines isn’t acceptable.
Huge apologies in advance if I’ve phrased anything hurtfully. I just want to learn.
As a Brit myself, it saddens me how much hate is leeching from my country - especially towards minorities.
As an American, I understand.
If anyone has good resources for someone like me to read so I can be better armed to refute and educate others who are being hateful, please let me know.
I’ve had “trans bodies, trans selves” recommended to me for this several times, so I went and bought it. It’s a whopper of a book though, 700 pages, but it gives an amazing background and insight for cis people (like me).
Thank you for the recommendation!
Delusions of Gender and Testosterone Rex are excellent books not exactly about trans issues but go into how much bullshit is spread that is unscientific about gender and hormones etc.
Thank you for the recommendation!
Sure, we are happy to help!
<3
Thanks for the explanation
To someone who doesn’t know any better, "adult human female” sounds so innocuous. If the rest of the post or comment was carefully phrased, it probably would have gotten past me. Thank you for the clarification.
and that’s the true story of why they’re called dog whistles
Does it sound innocuous? Who talks like that unless they’re trying to say something very specific?
Stiff and formal, yeah, but it doesn’t give you the sense that hatred is the only possible interpretation.
And sorry, what is a terf? By context i assumed it’s a transphobe, but you also include transports.
No need to apologize for genuine questions! TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. It’s a very, very specific subtype of transphobe that started using the phrase as a dog whistle, and it eventually leaked out into the broader transphobe sphere. All TERFs are transphobes, but not all transphobes are TERFs.
I appreciate the response. Canadian, so apologizing is how we start conversations.
The best part about it IMO is that they’re the ones who started calling themselves that, but once it gained a negative reputation (for obvious reasons), they started claiming that it’s a slur.
T ransgender
E xclusionary
R adical
F eministSo, somebody who thinks they’re doing good for women, or espouses the image… But ultimately, is not and excludes trans people from their push for rights. Often, their “rights” are exclusively just anti-trans sentiment or push for legislature.
So a terf may be somebody who wants feminism, but not for trans women; or also like those people who claim to protect women’s sports by just excluding trans women from it. Those people are most often just tradwives or straight up misogynists.
It’s popular transphobic/conservative rhetoric. That’s it. It’s vague and a dog whistle.
A dog whistle is a euphemism for saying one thing that only your base clearly hears, like a literal dog whistle and how only dogs hear it because human hearing is like 20hz-20,000hz, and dogs go up to like 70,000 or 100,000hz or something.
It’s just a super shitty behavior in general, akin to passive aggression, in that it’s purely destructive with no constructive recourse, thus Ada’s swift decision and response (thanks Ada).
Based Blåhaj admin is based.
Thanks for doing what you do.
It’s ridiculous we are still having to deal with this in 2025. Just yesterday I had to see someone using the tslur as a “joke” under a .world post. Mods removed it. It’s not hard to be decent, although some people decide to make it look like an impossible task. As far as I’m concerned, hate speech is not free speech…
The way I see it, free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences for what you say. You’re free to walk up to the friend group and act like a jackass and personally insult everyone. And they’re free to tell you to fk off and stop being friends with you and talking to you. That’s not an infringement on your right to free speech, that’s consequences for your actions.
These ‘free speech’ people act like the real world is this place where you can just approach and interrupt any conversation and enter any club without following the rules. They act like groups of like minded people getting together to share interests and ideas without wanting to constantly defend themselves and ‘debate’ their interests and beliefs is some new thing brought to us by the woke agenda.
And so they think social media should be this place where you can say whatever to whoever, wherever you want and if anyone has a problem with that, they’re just anti ‘free speech’ woke libs or some shit.
The fact that they’re more concerned with being able to spout off harmful words than they are about the actual wellbeing of people says it all. They hate consequences because they know exactly what the consequences of their actions should be. Never concerned with giving others the same legitimacy they whinge about getting; only about taking it away.
Terf island strikes again!
