TIL lemmy has a traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns community
TIL lemmy has a traaaaaaannnnnnnnnns community
# Rules ##### 1.) No bigotry of any kind, and don’t be a jerk either • Bigotry includes but is not limited to: ableism, casteism, homophobia, lookism, queerphobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia. Bigotry towards non-binary people is transphobia. Truscum rhetoric is also bigotry. You get...
I'd like to respond to some of the things discussed in this thread, but I don't want to directly reply to anyone. I just want to share my perspective, not argue.
Transgender is currently accepted as an umbrella term and includes a variety of identities. What these identities have in common is that they are not cisgender. Disagreements about which identities fall under the trans umbrella are really about the specificity of the label itself. Some people seem to want the umbrella to be split into two distinctly different labels, with one being specifically for trans people who seek medical transition.
It all comes down to the definition of transgender as an umbrella term. Definitions of terms change, and it's not unreasonable to think that transgender may change meaning again in the near future. But right now, "not cisgender" is what defines transgender identities, and that includes non-binary people and trans people that don't seek medical transition.
As someone medically transitioning by HRT and seeking SRS, my identity is not diminished in any way by acknowledging the validity of other identities. My recent meme explicitly explains my desire for SRS, and there was no push-back. That's because I was explaining my own transition and not attempting to define other people.
Not all trans people seek medical transition, and that's valid. Not all trans people seeking medical transition want both HRT and SRS, and that's also valid. And what trans people want for themselves can change. It's important that non-cisgender people be accepted as transgender so they can accept themselves. Big questions about possible medical transition can be decided later.
Our enemies are the transphobes attacking our freedoms. Let's be kind to our fellow trans people.
❤️
Truscum rhetoric is also bigotry.
This is always a red flag, the label "truscum" has just become a means to shut down uncomfortable conversations about what actually falls under the trans umbrella, it's used to demonize any trans person who defends the medical legitimacy of their condition and insists that it's not a social condition.
It's TERF propaganda to ostracize trans people from their own communities by weaponizing people looking to legitimize their own special interest that's not actually related to being trans.
I think the problem comes when it's framed as "you can only be trans if you have a diagnosis" as opposed to "you're trans whether you have a diagnosis or any kind of medical experience with it or not." One can say "it took a doctor diagnosing me with dysphoria before I could accept I was trans, but I understand that this is just my experience, and I know others have their own experience" and that's totally fine.
Sure, there's room for nuance regarding diagnosis and people shouldn't be gatekept or diagnosed online by others when they're exploring and trying to figure things out, but often the term "truscum" is used to punish and silence trans people who don't agree that anything and everything fits within gender identity simply because someone might want it to in order to feel validated.
It should be ok to tell people, for example, that dysphoria is central to the trans condition, and to point out that all of trans people's modern medical rights are based on that notion. But saying that will get you banned from those spaces without much discussion, despite it being a critically important truth that makes medical transition possible. That is kind of crazy to me.
If you pushback too hard on certain ideas that are questionable or downright damaging to trans people and their rights but are "widely accepted" in the space, it results in being "truscum".
It should be ok to discuss and clarify these topics without being labeled as some kind of a heretic. Truscum should not be the "I get to call you a bigot to shut you up" card.
Gonna have to disagree here. The social aspect of it all is just as important of the medical aspect. While there are trans issues that are mostly medical in nature, there are equally trans issues that are more social in nature.
I'm not sure what contexts you've seen truscum being used in, but from what I know it's a term used for people who insist on a medical diagnosis in order to be trans. The problem with this, imo, is twofold. There's a long history of medical gatekeeping that enforced cisheteronormativity in order to get a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, leaving out all other forms of self-identity (among a whole host of philosophical issues). And the second is just the lack of understanding and research of the broader medical community. Treatment guidelines are all over the place, often misguided, and usually inadequate to achieve the goals of the patient.
Truscum rhetoric often reinforces cisheteronormativity which is mostly antithetical to what being trans is about in the first place. That's not to say that the trans community doesn't struggle with medical diagnoses or that that's not important, but to use a diagnosis as the benchmark of what being trans is, is usually needlessly exclusionary.
Unfortunately that one has only one inactive mod, which makes it prone to transphobic raids. You could make an account on lemmy.ml (or hexbear itself, its one of the only instances with pronouns as a feature built in and has been very supportive of trans people and defeding transphobic instances) and access hexbear's /c/traa which is somewhere around 10x more active and has 23 mods on it. Generally we're able to remove transphobic content within 5-10 minutes of a report so that other people don't have to see it.
We defederated from hexbear, please don't post links to hexbear on our instance. If you're a beehaw user and believe hexbear is worth reconsidering, feel free to start a conversation in support explaining why you think they should be refederated with.
blah blah blah, why are you trying to fracture the trans community over nonsensical reasons? im not even suggesting people make a hexbear account, lemmy.ml will do to access all the LGBT areas. almost half of hexbear is trans. and more than half of the admins and mods are trans.
apparently wanting a cohesive trans community is 'cringe'. meanwhile your community is rife with transphobes and bigots. have fun with that 🙄
Too bad Hexbear is still a parody of itself:
- Built-in pronouns feature
- "Current time: [...] Moscow Standard Time"
- "A leftist social platform"
- No fascists
- Non-vegan food is NSFW "(CW: Food)"
- Only allows content legal in US and UK
They've updated the CoC with some sensible points, but still have a way to go.
doesnt matter, im specifically referring to a trans community on hexbear, you can make an account on lemmy.ml to access traa. if you look at removals the only thing we've removed is transphobia. hexbear has explicitly defed from dozens of instances because they are harbingers of transphobia and harass transgender people. there is a reason why almost half of the site is populated by trans users.
and how is 'no fascists' a bad rule?
No it doesn't. Some instances have all sort of communities, "Lemmy" is not a homogeneous entity (see: list of defederations).
If you want to get a community removed from your feed, you can:
- contact the hosting instance
- ask your instance to defederate from the one hosting the community
- use an app to filter the community/instance on your own
Conversely, if you want a community added to your feed, you can:
- contact your instance or a federated one to create it
- ask your instance to federate with the one hosting the community
- use an app to either join multiple instance accounts into a single feed, or easily jump from instance to instance
Lemmy is what we make it to be.
This could be easily interpreted as hostile or negative, I'm removing it. If you wish to be helpful to others, I'd suggest that you never start a reply with "No it doesn't" when someone is sharing something they could be happy about.