cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/12273255
I've only been on Lemmy a few days and I've already witnessed a lot of thinly veiled transphobia, anything from people dismissing the existence of trans people, to trying to claim we are predators. I've also seen people downvoted in the general communities for expressing trans support, or seemingly for no reason other than simply being openly trans or visibly queer. I know it's an ongoing effort to moderate transphobia on Lemmy, and the fediverse as a whole. We have to also address mentions of thinly veiled transphobia and transphobic users. Transphobia isn't just a differing opinion, it is a dangerous hateful sentiment which causes harm to vulnerable people and it needs to be addressed, at the instance and community level. We need to put in the effort to identify transphobic dogwhistles and language used by transphobes to eradicate this type of behavior from our communities and servers alike.
Some people will argue that the light stuff isn't something to worry about, but that's not true. This is a tactic they use to blend in with normies and make them think that nothing they are doing or saying is wrong. It's what transphobic right-wing YouTubers and Facebook users do to avoid being banned for hate speech. We are better than these corporations though, Fediverse is run by communities and for the users, we should not let these things slide as easily as Corporations do, they're in it to make money, we... We're in it to create a community for the users. Part of that means kicking out those who don't have all our best interests at heart.
I wish more instances would handle banning transphobes the way Hexbear does. No tolerance for Bigotry. Lemmy.world though seems to unfortunately be quite lenient about it ☹️
the votes arent completely tallied yet, but since its relevant to this discussion, take a look at this one result from a survey. 266 trans people unanimously agree that hexbear is a transgender inclusive space.
You love to see it. Great job organizing that, by the way!
Lemmy.world was my first instance, it was a nice place while it was below 1k users, then it started to grow fast and removed until it's become a complete cesspool from all points of view, not just bigotry.
I fled (I'm cis).
Lemmy.world sucks these days, their moderation is poor, and they seem to allow all kinds of bigots and trolls. Someone told me they believe strongly in freedom of speech, this is what it gets them.
What I saw and the reason I fled was their "freedom of speech" only applied to things mods agreed with, that's no real freedom of speech in my book.
While I didn't have any personal problem with them, I saw people and communities being banned for reasons that were not logical to me and I had the very strong impression their convoluted "explanations" were just a cover for their personal preferences, mind this is just my opinion.
I'm fine with freedom of speech as long as it's coherent and not just based on what mods personally like or don't.
I believe they do have the right to do what they want with "their" instance, I just don't want to be in a place like that.