At least on Lemmy we can tell transphobes to eat shit and die without getiing a community banned
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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I am assuming it may be related to a couple prominent news stories.
There was computer scientist Lynn Conway passing away recently, and in the thread for this article, there was some concern about the LA times author opting to use male pronouns to refer to Lynn pre-transition.
Then there was the other recent news of Lia Thomas being barred from participation in the Olympics, and any time there's a discussion about trans athletes in sports, it invites a whole lot of yikes.
Lemmy.world is the normie instance. Unsurprisingly, a lot of normies have bad opinions. If you run into transphobes, feel free to tell them what every transphobe needs to hear: "Go fuck yourself". Or block 'em and let them scream at a wall. It's good to nip bigotry in the bud before it grows, but it's also not worth letting people with hate in their hearts take up space in your mind's temple.
Some people may take this to an extreme and bully all lemmy.world users. Just a reminder that there are non-transphobes here.
I'm the one who posted the Lynn Conway article in Technology and, as a trans person, the pronoun use in the article immediately stuck out to me as archaic, but at the time of posting there were few other news articles about her passing available. I was hoping that by acknowledging that the pronoun use in the article (for at least somewhat justifiable reasons in this case) not being in line with modern reporting that we could move past that and keep the comments more on topic for the community it was posted in. No luck. But, of the comments I saw, even the ones that had bad takes, none seemed actively transphobic - they just lacked an understanding of how respectful and not confusing reporting on trans people could be done.
It's the Lia Thomas discussions that turned into a dumpster fire and in some cases had to be locked. :/
The incels have moved in too. The place is feeling more and more like Reddit.
I'm using the block option a lot.
Oh no, the fediverse is becoming successful. (•_•)
Props to those developing mod tools!
I remain optimistic. Instances should align with the views of a user, and I believe in the long-term people will sort themselves onto instances to make your blocking easier.
Yes and no.
As far as I can tell, the federative model is working as intended, and allows instances to moderate, administrate, and federate as their admins and/or communities wish to.
When I switched to Lemmy a while ago, there was a noticeable spike in alt-right instances and activity, but that quickly went away as everyone noticed and blocked users, then defederated with such instances.
The fediverse model isn’t perfect. No model will be. But it’s a damn sight more effective and responsive than any social media model I’ve seen elsewhere.
I spend more time here than on my own instance, but whenever I see ignorant conservatives here, they tend to be from my instance. My guess is that centrist techies gravitate towards lemmy.world because it's popular and anti-tankie, not realizing how left wing many users still are. Even if they are economically progressive, they still might exist in a socially conservative industry or culture.
Some are right wing trolls taking advantage of the lower barrier to entry, but many are genuine. They have a mix of based and cringe views, unwilling to learn how to respect trans people out of laziness. Many conservatives have trouble accepting when they're the problem.
I've seen a lot of transphobia on .world since I first joined a year ago. I'm not sure it's gotten worse.
It sure makes me thankful for the admins and mods on this instance.
Wedge politics foot soldiers.
I swear there's gotta be a troll farm dedicated to the keyword/phrase "Lia Thomas", they come out of the fucking woodwork anywhere on the internet for her
I know some people (me) unnecessarily bring up things people don’t need to worry about on their cozy side of the internet. I think I’ll skip on that in the future