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traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns @hexbear.net
kristina [she/her] @hexbear.net

Are you cisgender? Gender Survey Result: Majority of active Hexbear users say No and Maybe.

Various thoughts:

  • Around 20 people weren't properly covered by the gender categories, obviously we're trying to be as inclusive as possible and a different approach will be tried next time
  • There were about 600 respondents, which gives us a accurate sampling of the active userbase. If you multiply any number by 3, you'll get a fairly accurate representation of the full userbase each week. This means there are around 800-900 people who don't identify fully as cis each week on this site.
  • Nearly 300 trans/gender diverse/questioning people unanimously agree that hexbear is an inclusive space
  • There was so much data on gender that I was really struggling to find a way to convey the data that wasnt a pie chart, graph, or an incomprehensible kalaeidoscope. If you have an idea on how to beautify the data, you can download the raw data here: https://pad.artemislena.eu/file/#/2/file/xzy4pck8on+oZp9yGRUIezR+/ - I further anonymized this data by removing time of response and any specific comments, I don't think it would be easy for anyone to figure out who is who.
  • There were a couple of text responses that really needed further elaboration, I noted hexbear's rules next to these comments
  • I'll probably be doing a demographics survey sometime in the future, including basic fairly anonymous stuff like "what region were you born in" "where do the languages you speak originate" "would you describe yourself as a POC" "what age range are you in".
  • The percentage of people answering they were cisgender increased by 8% than the previous survey. This could be for a myriad of reasons, such as cis people being afraid trans people will hunt them down in the public thread and assassinate them. Anonymity may have made them feel safer to respond. Regardless, way more people responded this time, which signifies that people felt safer responding to the cryptpad or it was easier to do. The leading question was a bit more inclusive than last time, but I think I'll include both questions (are you transgender / gender diverse and are you cisgender) to see how people respond.
  • We have a lot of people that aren't binary trans on this site.
  • Some of the questions were pretty funky and we got a lot of fuzzy responses on them as a result. In particular "After you realized you were trans/gender diverse, how long did it take for you to begin to act on it?" and "At what age did you begin transition?" caused a lot of friction, I think I will ask more vague questions in the future that lead to a path of more specific questions to capture better data, and to save people time. Questions like "Do you feel your gender transition had a defined starting point?" and some further ones.
  • Around 20 people each week on this site are cis she/hers, which is very low and roughly the same as last time. I feel like if hexbear ever starts hosting other federated stuff (like a federated tiktok or something) and can hook into it natively with lemmy, we'd see a better ratio.
  • I tried to be very sure any data with >2 people on it was clearly legible, I think some people might find it fun that there are others with their same fairly specific classifications per this survey lurking around on the site.
  • Overall I feel like the survey was a success despite some bumps.
  • You can find the other surveys/links here: https://hexbear.net/post/3016455
  • I made these graphs on company time

165 comments

  • shoutout to the 7 cis women on here

    • 😘

      not just cis, but old, too 🧓💅 I don't leave snail trails; I leave dust bunnies

      • thank you for your service

      • Cheers to you!

        Not old (late 20s, tbh don't consider 42 old though there's definitely a mildly intimidating age/experience gap sometimes, but if you own the label go for it) but mad respect for you rocking out here (is that how you say it in your generation?)

        TBH I just had a really cool chat with a (she said she was in her 60s?) indigenous Chilean auntie who had a pretty decent power level (leftist level) at least from what I could tell. And I guess I chat with an Iranian (probably also same age range) auntie once in a while (well twice so far) as well who is pretty decent... Restored that bit of faith in IRL (imperial core) humanity that needs resuscitating every now and then tbh. Maybe in time I should try to see if they'd be interested...

      • Old gang old gang

  • the jokes about Xi save us and defense/denial of worker/minority abuse in China make us look bad, (etc etc) No different than libs defending Klanmala "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" (etc etc) Han supremacism no more acceptable than white supremacism (no shit), Dengism killed wholesome chungus communism, China surveillance state

    Wew. Also no one is defending worker/minority abuse (the surveillance state in China I will defend, let's not kid ourselves socialist societies are under siege, were born under siege, etc etc) or claiming China is a utopia. And comparing support of AES to Klanmala support is straight up lib shit (and crying about Dengism is both ignoring dialectal materialism, and your western lowkey chauvinist, dogmatist opinion of AES). cringe

    As for the comment about transmisogynism (while I'm not the one who mentioned it), somewhat yeah. And there's def an issue of orientalist attitudes towards anime (as someone who is Asian), there is shit but wypipo/westerners' and other cultures' shit has its own issues. "Asian (specifically Asian) cartoon bad because (insert stereotypes here)" is tired y'all

    And yeah I called out people who posted their opinions, anonymously, who I don't know who they are... deal with it

  • Great work! Re: low cis women, I know one of them IRL, and she's trying to basically wean off all Social Media, so she very rarely posts or comments here (but she did respond to the survey). Not sure how to get more ciswomen or transmen to join, honestly, but it's great to see that everyone feels safe here!

    Edit: it's clear that misogyny is one of the most commonly pointed out issues with this site, based on reading replies and input from other comrades. I am fully in favor of a purge, even if it would be unpopular, it's better to confront issues and remove the problem elements. It's important for every user to feel as safe and comfortable in every bit of this site (except the EM/POC community threads for whites and trans community threads for cis, obviously safe spaces would be maintained as such). Maybe another weekly megathread as a safe space? A Feminism community sounds cool too and would be a good place to hold that, I think. Maybe include comm sidebars with feminist literature and theory? Just spitballing here.

    On that note, if anyone has felt that I have been guilty of misogyny, I'd greatly appreciate being re-educated so I can be a better comrade and make this a safer space for women, enbies, and other non-masculine comrades.

  • I put “maybe” as my answer for if I would recommend hexbear to my trans friends. It’s still true, but I think that because of the answer I put I didn’t get to talk about the caveats I would have to tell them first, so I’ll put them here. It’s really more of a “maybe leaning towards no” answer for the following reasons.

    • piggybacking for a moment. i peruse the modlog quite a bit & have seen a depressing amount of body shaming & even ableism from prominent users. i, too, am the comfiest within the confides of the mega.

      i'm a system, even if i don't present as such here. so

    • I have thin privilege, but I would definitely be very wary of recommending hexbear to the fat trans people in my life.

      As an admittedly currently fat trans person, someone's weight wouldn't play a role in whether I'd recommend them or not. People aren't shitting on others for weight here, but having conversations about wanting to lose weight (or gain weight, for those seriously underweight) is something pretty much universal (and not just in chud/etc ways, health is also a universal reason). That's not to disregard that it's affected you personally, and maybe (since I can imagine it would affect many people) we should be requiring spoilers for such discussions, etc... (no opinion/not necessary for myself IMO)

      The misogyny and anti-system shit is totally and utterly unjustified, though, and something absolutely has to be done about both.

    • Thank you for bringing up the weight thing. I have been meaning to effort post about this for some time, but haven't dared do it yet.

      I think there is also an issue with a kind of trust in a linear progress of modernity when it comes to medical professionals and medical science that maybe comes from privilege. There are also all kinds of neoliberal self-control/self-betterment things that I have seen here that ignore the systems we live in and how they are different for non-normative bodies. These have made me very uncomfortable as a person with an uterus especially. The treatment fat bodies get in this world and from medical experts especially is systemically violent and the "issue" of fatness itself can be contested. For example NovoNordisk funds the researchers in o*esity and it's just a huge thing of racism, pathriarchy and medical violence that leftists should do better with.

      This for sure is one of the more unwelcoming things here for me personally.

    • pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean with the "anti-system shit"? I'm confused

  • Do I understand correctly that there are appoximately 7 x 3 = 21 cis women on this whole site?

    ETA: I didn't originally count the ones who had she/her as the secondary pronoun. So that would be 10 x 3 = 30 cis women.

    • Side effect of descent from reddit unfortunately imo.

    • weird corollary, we also only have 6 x 3 = 18 trans men on the site, so a total of maybe 40ish AFAB binary-gender people on the site. there are likely more if we count nonbinary people and those who choose not to disclose their pronouns, but oof, even with an extremely optimistic guess that doubles the number above, we're still looking at under 5% of active users being AFAB.

      damn, I sorta want to start a struggle session thread for the prevalence of AMAB people on this site. it's really bizarre to me, as a transfeminine enby, how being in, or not in, online spaces like lemmy, reddit, discord, and such tends to stick through transition.

      • If you’re femme presenting on the internet you’re gonna get harassed, especially in an anonymous setting. Most AFABs probably got turned off from internet spaces like this in adolescence.

      • Counting everyone in "are you cis gender? Yes, by pronoun" who doesn't include he/him or as one of their choices, it is 52 x 3 = 156. It's 9% of responses at the absolute most optimistic. But there isn't really any reason to believe that would be the case.

        In terms of people in the "No, by pronoun" and "maybe, by pronoun" sections, I don't think we can really infer anything about AMAB vs AFAB without specifically asking. You could find any combination in reality. An AFAB person can use she/her pronouns but not identify as cisgender. No reason why not. IME AFAB people are more likely to identify as not cisgender than AMAB people. In some situations she/they is basically the default.

165 comments