That post explicitly says it's not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.
I'd like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.
The post says:
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.
Wtf, this isn't hate. This is someone stating their perspective with no harmful intent. If anything that comment is a great starter to a serious discussion on the topic.
If Ada doesn't want such content on their instance they have the right to defederade and I fully support their right to it, no matter the reason (it is their instance after all).
I can understand why someone would disagree with that comment, but calling it transphobia or hate speech?
The part that becomes transphobic is the insistence that the definitions are "transwoman" and "woman". A trans woman (note the space) is a type of woman, no one denies that. It'd be like using the term "blondewoman" and insisting that they are different from every other kind of "woman", and not included in womanhood.
Ada also pretty clearly stated why she didn't link to the offending content:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/14101300 in that she didn't want to start a brigade, which I honestly think is pretty upstanding behaviour on her part. As well, I don't see where the actual content has been linked, so I think the commenter above you might be full of shit, unless they can give a source.
I'm not going to participate further in this circus after this comment though. ~~The second I saw Ada's post the other day, I knew there'd be a PTB post with people either ignorantly, or knowingly pushing transphobic viewpoints.~~ (Edit: I actually amend my statement. This comment thread was right at the top for me, but upon further reading people here have been really chill. Genuinely, thanks all for understanding that Blahaj is first and foremost a place for trans people to feel safe above any other concerns) It's the ignorance that gets to me honestly, as if we don't live in a world today where the majority of people aren't susceptible to the overt fascism of Mussolini and Hitler anymore. Fascists, and other bad actors, realised they had to become smarter and more subtle with the way they spread hatred. They sow plausible-sounding doubt about transgender healthcare, like saying trans "children" are put on hormones when that's only ever offered at 16 or older, or that these same "children" are given surgeries at 16 when no healthcare systems allow under 18 year olds to get surgery, and in fact many block trans adults from those life-saving procedures. It's designed to be "death by a thousand cuts" because straight up attacking trans folks right to exist will cause most people to push back against that.
Let me just ask you (the general you, not the person I'm replying to) what exactly the need for defining trans women as not biologically female actually is? Is it to stop us from using the women's bathroom? Well, if your goal is to reduce the amount of people sexually assaulted, that will surely fail, and I shouldn't have to explain why. Is it so that cis women can get the medical care they need, that differs from trans women? That's not a problem that exists, nor would most trans women deny that cis women have their own medical needs, when we obviously have our own too. Is it to stop trans women from going to DV shelters? Do you really think a woman that's being terrorised to the level of leaving her home is going to purposefully harm other women?
What is the actual need for defining trans women separately then? Why are certain people so obsessed by this need? The best answer I've got is the fact that the US executive government has decided to define them separately, and under the cover of that, they not only have stopped issuing passports with trans folks chosen gender marker, but have stopped issuing them in their gender assigned at birth as well. Let me repeat for you, trans folks Are Not Able To Get A Passport At All Anymore In The United States thanks to this manufactured debate around biological sex. I shudder to think about what comes next after an act like that.
How do you know the poster is full of shit? You didn't even ask for the source.
Also defederating from an instance while not including the actual offending content is not very transparent.
Well, transparency only matters on blahaj.
And making a post warning users of blahaj is transparency. It's coming to users and saying : here is an administrative decision being made, here is the rationale behind that decision.
There's no need to link, copy, or otherwise bring up the original comment when the decision is based on the choices of other instances. It would be nice yeah, but not mandatory for transparency.
An instance can do what they want. That doesn't change the fact that accusing admins of another instance of supporting transphobia (that was de facto the claimed reason for defederation) without proof is not appropriate.