this post was submitted on 26 May 2025
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This is a social discussion forum not a linguist philosophy one, the rules and guidelines are going to reflect this. Part of that is setting the boundaries for what opinions are and aren't acceptable, and what the working definitions of what we consider bigotry are. Saying these opinions aren't allowed is necessarily going to exclude people who actually believe them.
Besides, epistemologically, there is no reason to see a trans person's "I'm a man" as less than a cis person's "I'm a man". If you want to have these discussions, then you need to do it in an appropriate context. The comment section under a trans article isn't really the best place as this comes across as trollish and like you're trying to sneak in transphobia under the guise of philosophy.
That video is mostly an application of Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblances to the 'what is a woman' debate, should be right up your ally if what you want is philosophical discussion.
What is? Feddit.uk?
Yes, feddit.uk.
That seems a bit presumptuous? What if someone creates some !linguistic_philosophy@feddit.uk community?
Why dictate the purposes to which feddit.uk can be put? Why declare any purpose, "social discussion" or otherwise?
That wouldn't really change the fact this is a place for discussion of things with other people. It would just be another place to have social discussion, but with a narrower range of topics than, say, an ask-a-question community.
Instance-level rules and guidelines are going to be general purpose.
So if someone created a linguistic philosophy community on feddit.uk and in that community members held a discussion on 'a trans person’s “I’m a man” as less than a cis person’s “I’m a man”', is that prohibited or not?
One, that would be a bad subject for a linguistic philosophy community, and two, no as that's pretty clearly within the stated definition of transphobia. I'm not going to let bigotry propagate because someone obstinately rule lawyered a comment I made an hour after waking up.
Is this about protecting the instance though or enforcing an opinion? This wasn't a problem before Blahaj got upset. "Bigotry" seems to be a buzzword these days without clear definition, and it doesn't really seem like it's helping from such an important topic to discuss, as the cass report seemed to show.
If someone were to be in a hospital, and the nurse needed to know if they were a man or a woman for medical purposes, an AMAB person saying "yes" would be different from an AFAB trans man saying "yes". I don't think it's fair to claim their identity socially is less than or different, or that he is a second class man when it comes to drinking with his mates down the pub. But if it comes to let's say, a discussion of men's rights issues, and it's someone who started identifying as a man yesterday claiming that male mental health issues are overblown, compared to an AMAB person talking about life being a struggle, wouldn't there be a difference there, even though it doesn't make the trans man any less of a man?
It's about protecting a vulnerable minority. One in four trans people report experiencing abuse online personally directed at them and hate crime against trans people is at record highs. I don't want this place to be a contributor to these statistics and I'm going to prioritise the safety of our trans users over some notion of neutrality. That rise in transphobia I mention in the post we have experienced is real and I would've introduced these guidelines regardless of if they got use LBZ federation back, I didn't even know beforehand that it would.
I cannot express how little respect I have for the Cass review, it is a piece of politically motivated sophistry mostly disconnected from the medical science it tied itself in knots to discredit. Like seriously, double blind puberty blocker trials? The participants are going to know they're on the placebo when they start growing facial hair/tits.
That just sounds like a bad question on the nurse's part, they should ask specifically if they're AMAB or not. I'm AMAB and I've been asked if I'm pregnant by nurses plenty of times, even before I realised I was trans, so it's not like this is out of the norm for the NHS. AMAB/AFAB are also term the NHS uses all over the place.
That does sound like a lack of intersectionality on the trans man's part, and sure, a day is hardly long enough to understand the nuances of living as a particular group. I doubt a trans man would do this though, as from my experience, trans people are overly conscious about fitting in.
It also interesting how you frame society's lack of attentiveness to men's mental health as a men's rights issue, would you agree that society's lack of attentiveness to trans mental health is a trans' rights issue?
Fair enough in terms of protecting trans users
I wouldn't see an NHS study/report as "politically motivated", and I don't think it's right if that's the position of this instance. People claim that the science in favour of the COVID-19 vaccine being safe and effective as "politically motivated". Some claimed that the dangers presented by COVID-19 were actually just politically motivated as well. Some real lunatics claim that science showing the earth is round is "politically motivated". To me, it kinda just feels the same, I hope you understand. And in a way, I am concerned that an admin is using their rejection of a report that was produced by the National Health Service, and supported by the elected Government and His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition to write rules.
For the questions, I'm just presenting edge cases where discussion can be respectful about certain topics if they come up. I think it'll be just that- an edge case. I don't think regular discussion every week about "can a man be a woman" is productive or helpful, and I understand that.
Apologies if I use wrong terminology here:
I think people with gender dysphoria should be afforded a comfortable life, and should be able to have their mental health respected as well. Right now, it appears the best treatment for severe gender dysphoria appears to be cosmetic (if you could call it that, due to the mental health aspect) operations to make their body resemble the opposite sex and for society to accept them as the gender they identify with, so they "pass". Bullying transgender people is not acceptable at all. However, on the flip side, I don't think everything can be weaponised and discussion about topics halted because it may upset someone's mental health- so it's a tricky situation to navigate. For example, I see people mocking my religion on Lemmy constantly. I can protest that in a reply and even downvote if I wish, but I wouldn't go as far as to call for their instance to ban them over it. They should have the right to criticise it, and if I get overly upset over it, then I should either go elsewhere or grow a thicker skin. Anti-immigration rhetoric actually does affect my mental health- my girlfriend is a foreign national who had to leave the UK because of strict immigration rules and that has turned my life completely upside down. But I don't think it should be banned unless if it's got racist motivations behind it.
I do understand that context matters, though. I moderate a religious forum over at lemmy.world (which by the way- faces constant downvote brigading unfortunately), and our policy is to remove any mocking content. That's just not the place.
I appreciate your work in navigating such a landscape - moderating isn't easy. And I'll do my best to follow whatever regulations you choose to put in place, regardless if I protest the regulations themselves. This is a good and well-run instance.
I don't know what to say, the Cass review is just a bad piece of medical literature, it wasn't peer reviewed and Cass herself isn't even an expert in this area. From a peer-reviewed critique of it:
I can understand how with no context my comments look conspiratorial, but come on, my problems with the Cass review are clearly more substantive and based in reality than people who burned down 5G towers over a microchip injection conspiracy.
That makes sense and I do wish people wouldn't just downvote a community because they disagree with the idea of it, I hate AI slop with a unrivaled passion but I don't mass downvote stuff in the "Stable " communities. Religion isn't important to me, but it is to many and there should be space for it here.
Thank you, we set out here from Reddit with big dreams of building a better social media, I just wish better wasn't such a murky term. I do genuinely believe these guidelines are a part of achieving that.
And so following from your other comments, the appropriate contexts you're referring to are outside of the feddit.uk instance entirely? The instance is never an appropriate context and any such discussion whatsoever is prohibited?
Yes, there is no appropriate place on feddit.uk to discuss if a trans person's gender identity is less valid than a cis person's.
The part you quoted was aimed at a Flax's comment as a whole, who expressed a disinterest in this particular debate.
Are detrans discussions prohibited?
I don't think such a discussion on a trans forum is appropriate. But what if it's a discussion on a more conservative forum or on a post about theology?
What do you mean by epistemologically?
This is pretty categorically not a conservative forum, so I don't really see your point. If you want to discuss the Biblical definition of man/woman and whether that includes trans people in a theology post then sure? That would be appropriate context.
I mean that fundamentally, there is nothing more true about a cis person saying they're a man than a trans person saying they're a man.
This comment along with others like
and
make it clear that feddit.uk has an agenda: it's for lefty social discussion.
Adding @tom@feddit.uk @Emperor@feddit.uk
Can I suggest making that agenda clear in the "Who are we?" section of feddit.uk 's front page so that people are aware of what they're signing up for and that this isn't just a general UK instance? In particular, it seems egregious to me that there is no mention of the fact that conservatives aren't welcome.
That's a very dishonest reading of what I wrote, but not surprising coming from you. This not being a conservative forum isn't the same as conservatives not being welcome, I believe we even have some around. But they still have to follow the rules.
This is getting very tiresome for what is a very little ask, don't be transphobic. This has been a rule on the site literally from inception.
This is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Whatever it is that feddit.uk is not, please state that up front in the "Who are we?" section. If feddit.uk is not a conservative forum, please state "feddit.uk is not a conservative forum" in the "Who are we?" section. That would at least give people more clarity on what feddit.uk is, who is here and what they can expect when they post from here.
By the same token, clarifying what feddit.uk is and is not in the "Who are we?" section seems to me like a very little ask.
But the new "guidelines" and more importantly the statements from an admin (yourself) in comments under this post about what feddit.uk is not, are all new. As far as I know, philisophical discussion of trans issues had never been prohibited before.
My understanding of feddit.uk until this post was that it would reflect general wider social mores of British society: tolerance, even of those who have what we feel to be reprehensible views, up to the point where it's clear a person is uncivil or unreasonable. Now my understanding of feddit.uk is different: there are some areas of discussion which are not tolerated under any circumstances, regardless civility or reasonableness. There is now an ideological component, not to the makeup of the user population (which has always been obvious), but to the governance of the instance which is a whole different kettle of fish and very new. Now, feddit.uk has an official ideological position: not a conservative forum, social discussion, no philosophical debate about trans issues, etc.
A conservative forum is a forum run by conservatives for conservatives and limits itself to conservative positions, feddit.uk is demonstrably not this. Feddit.uk is not many things, it's not a conservative forum, it's not a socialist forum, it's not a biking forum. It's a general purpose discussion forum that can touch on topics like conservativism, socialism or biking. This is a descriptive not prescriptive statement and I don't see how a reasonable person would describe this place differently. I'm not going to list all the things this place is not as that's an infinity long list.
Again, this place has always had rules on what isn't allowed, including 'no transphobia'. Polite bigotry is still bigotry, do you think we should allow race realists if they mind their Ps and Qs correctly? There are many who feel their bigotry — weather that be racism, sexism, homophobia — isn't 'unreasonable', but even tolerant Britain doesn't let them inject these believes wherever, social spaces like pubs and community events still limit what can take place in them. I don't see why we should be more accepting of transphobia just because it's more socially acceptable at the moment.
'Philosophical discussion of trans issues' is such a non-statment, say what you actually mean instead of hiding behind such meaningless rhetoric. The only things these guidelines ask you to do is not promote fear or hatred of trans people and that you aren't allowed to say that a trans person's gender identity is less valid than a cis person's. These aren't unreasonable asks and I wonder what reasonable 'philosophical discussion' this excludes, unless you're just looking for 'civil' ways of calling a trans man a woman.
Says who?! It can mean whatever you define it to mean. You're just making stuff up, you're no authority.
This is not the way you presented feddit.uk before. You seemed to be explicitly excluding conservativism.
Of course but I would point out that social conservativism is the dominant political philosophy in the UK so it would be odd and in fact misleading not to be up front about excluding conservativism in an instance that advertises itself as a general UK instance. Hence my concern.
Most definitely. How else could such views be shown up for what they are using sound reason and subtle but devastating wit, as is the British way? (As opposed to sticking one's fingers in one's ears and shouting "LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU UR DUMB I'MA BAN U".)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this but I would note that with one exception, all the racist people I've had the misfortune of encountering have been in pubs. And moreover, I wouldn't want to spend time in any pub where any kinds of 'certain' discussions were outright prohibited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jssqYTMf9E
Debating isn't the same thing as accepting.
It seems you've changed your tune:
1. In response to the question "The instance is never an appropriate context and any such discussion whatsoever is prohibited?": "Yes, ..."
2. "It’s about protecting a vulnerable minority. ... I don’t want this place to be a contributor to these statistics and I’m going to prioritise the safety of our trans users over some notion of neutrality."
And also, to be clear:
3. In response to the question "if someone created a linguistic philosophy community on feddit.uk and in that community members held a discussion on ‘a trans person’s “I’m a man” as less than a cis person’s “I’m a man”’, is that prohibited or not?" which is about discussion of whether a trans person's “I’m a man” is less than a cis person’s “I’m a man” and doesn't necessarily imply saying anything one way or the other: "no [yes] as that’s pretty clearly ..."
There's plenty. Wouldn't it be great if we created a place where such wonderings could be explored honestly without concern over being banned? What a pity that instead there's a place of dullness, with rules motivated by fear.
It's almost like I was saying what I mean by conservative forum.
It certainly looks like that when you cut my response off.
I'm done with this discussion, you're not engaging in good faith and what you want from this place stands at odds with what the majority of feddit.uk's users want this place to be. There has always been action on bigotry, you failing to notice doesn't mean this place was ever some free speech absolutist debate club.
What is not?
Ah, this makes sense now, thanks for clearing it up, and the work you do!
I think as the fediverse grows, conservative forums will start to appear and sprout up eventually.