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.
Obviously I’m not on blahaj, but I think the decision is pretty on point for the goals of blahaj.
It also makes me disappointed in feddit.uk. “Leave it to discussion/votes” is bullshit and just support for the behavior.
Edit: The admin responded elsewhere with “we want to make sure we comply with the law”.
My comment remains unchanged. Allowing this is support. Fuck your bullshit law. You’re explicitly supporting this bullshit by your inaction.
Right? Imagine if you said that about the rights for like black women or something? Like, come ON. It’s 2025, we KNOW these behaviors are bigoted, rules are way too chill with letting shit like that fly, and is part of the reason it’s so prolific now - it’s not being treated like the hate speech that it is, and people in power in certain places are like “no I’m not sure we need to discuss it again”. It’s just gross and horrible and makes me feel so fucking helpless sometimes when a space is dominated with shitties like that.
100%.
It’s nothing short of support for the behavior. Its why I constantly comment of Lemmy.world being trash, and why I say 196 mods are garbage and don’t belong on blahaj, long live !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone.
Even suggesting that sort of vile nonsense is worth discussing/voting on makes them bigoted morons.
Edit: Sorry I sound cranky about it, but this “tEaCh tHe CoNtRoVeRsY” garbage puts me in a cranky mood.
lemmy.world is basically the fediverse version of Reddit from what I’ve experienced in terms of overall culture.
Eewww
I still think that’s their tagline/site motto
“meh, those things sound like work”
– feddit.uk admin
i tried to tell them it sounded more like cowardice than laziness but they just wouldnt hear it.
Removed by mod
ada continues to be the realest MVP
What’s “adult human female” referring to? Asking so I can keep an eye out for this in the future
It’s a transphobic dog whistle. Popularised by UK transphobes. The implication is that trans women aren’t women, and when you see it used, that’s what they’re really saying.
Thanks Ada. It’s exhausting (emotionally and spiritually) to try to keep up with the ways in which people express their hate for us, but it’s certainly essential for keeping ourselves safe, so I’m thankful to have learned something new.
It’s popular transphobic/conservative rhetoric. That’s it. It’s vague and a dog whistle.
A dog whistle is a euphemism for saying one thing that only your base clearly hears, like a literal dog whistle and how only dogs hear it because human hearing is like 20hz-20,000hz, and dogs go up to like 70,000 or 100,000hz or something.
It’s just a super shitty behavior in general, akin to passive aggression, in that it’s purely destructive with no constructive recourse, thus Ada’s swift decision and response (thanks Ada).
Adult human female is a dog whistle used by TERFs (and transphobes more broadly) to make it clear that they are specifically excluding trans women from the definition of womanhood; that is, it’s shorthand for saying that ‘adult human females’ are the only category of person that can be called a woman.
As a Brit myself, it saddens me how much hate is leeching from my country - especially towards minorities.
Thank you to the mods for making this community open so that people like me can lurk and learn to be better, while simultaneously protecting the people who depend on and need this safe space. Defederating was the right choice.
I won’t pretend I’m well versed in trans issues and struggles - I’m a cishet guy with no real skin in the game but I want to be an ally.
If anyone has good resources for someone like me to read so I can be better armed to refute and educate others who are being hateful, please let me know. The surge in hate after the recent Supreme Court ruling here in the UK has made it painfully clear being passive on the sidelines isn’t acceptable.
Huge apologies in advance if I’ve phrased anything hurtfully. I just want to learn.
And sorry, what is a terf? By context i assumed it’s a transphobe, but you also include transports.
No need to apologize for genuine questions! TERF stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. It’s a very, very specific subtype of transphobe that started using the phrase as a dog whistle, and it eventually leaked out into the broader transphobe sphere. All TERFs are transphobes, but not all transphobes are TERFs.
I appreciate the response. Canadian, so apologizing is how we start conversations.
The best part about it IMO is that they’re the ones who started calling themselves that, but once it gained a negative reputation (for obvious reasons), they started claiming that it’s a slur.
To someone who doesn’t know any better, "adult human female” sounds so innocuous. If the rest of the post or comment was carefully phrased, it probably would have gotten past me. Thank you for the clarification.
Does it sound innocuous? Who talks like that unless they’re trying to say something very specific?
Stiff and formal, yeah, but it doesn’t give you the sense that hatred is the only possible interpretation.
and that’s the true story of why they’re called dog whistles
Terf island strikes again!
I’m not a blåhaj user, but I really hope the feddit.uk mindset on this doesn’t spread to other instances.
Why do divisive people have to care so much about letting people do what they want if it doesn’t affect them? What someone wants to do with their body does NOT affect you, but your open derogatory statements about them DOES affect them!
Removed by mod
Unfortunately even moreso in our region of origin, buddy.
The assumption that enforcing these viewpoints on everyone is “for the greater good” is a flawed one, as people who do not share their beliefs WILL NOT share the “greater good” to begin with. I will not enforce my beliefs on anyone else without their willingness.
Removed by mod
These are tough calls to make. On the one hand I applaud the step taken to protect the community hosted by this instance, on the other I also find that simply cuting ties and conversation only furthers the divide.
Sure we should not have to defend the validity of our existence, and also realise that most hate leaves little place for heathy discussions. But in avoiding their echo chambers I find we quiet ours too, we renounce our visibility for our comfort and theirs.
I guess I wish there were other ways to warn users about potentially triggering instances rather than outright defederating, but I do understand your main motives.
You are absolutely welcome to maintain an account on another instance and here if you want to have the option of having those discussions. And I don’t mean that in a “Well, there’s the door” way. What I’m trying to say is that if you don’t want to have the types of conversations you’re talking about, it’s currently very hard to find spaces that make that possible. That’s why lbz exists in the form it does. However, I completely understand that some people do want that opportunity. And if that’s you, you’re welcome to maintain multiple accounts. You’ll always have a space here, but you can also use instances that give you access to less protective spaces.
Good riddance, fuck TERF island. If communities don’t like this change they can move to an instance that isn’t filled with and supported by transphobes.
just curious; did something happen recently because posts from the instance suddenly started appearing on my tl again? didn’t see any other post so i didn’t know if it was a bug or something :)
Yeah, they did a post up clarifying their stance
https://feddit.uk/post/29902751 / https://lemmyverse.link/feddit.uk/post/29902751
yay! ok just making sure :)
Truth be told, I didn’t want to kick off more drama by making a big announcement about it. I respect the stance they’ve taken and the work they’ve put in to it! So we’ve reconnected :)
that makes sense! i just did a double take cause i thought my boost app might have logged out so i had to check <3
Based for defederating from feddit
Cringe for another decision that effects all blahaj users without their consent without posting any proof.
Registration on this instance is clear enough about what this instance is about, and this move is perfectly in line with it. The post isn’t even for you.
deleted by creator
Scrolling through this thread, I don’t see any blahajis with less than full approval. If there are, they are more than welcome to show their disapproval by moving to a different instance.
I appreciate this sort of moderation. Imagine if somehow it was voted down: then people who don’t want to be federated with feddit.uk would have no options. “Posting proof” may have some benefit, but few of us want to tread through more transphobia, so that sounds like a net negative to me.
This is precisely how things should work. Way to go, Ada!
It’s pretty funny watching tourists who aren’t using blahaj (or even feddit.uk) crying out that this doesn’t fit their ideals. This instance is clear about its purpose, and this moderation is perfectly in line with that goal. There’s no need for hypotheticals, because like you said, this was received almost-or-fully unanimously.
Scrolling through this thread, I don’t see any blahajis with less than full approval.
As with all rule changes on blahaj, the consensus comes from the ones who weren’t banned…
Was anyone in particular banned for disagreeing with defederating, or are we just making up things to be mad about?
That’s wild because I’ve disagreed with Ada on multiple decisions and I’ve never been banned… I wonder what the people who got banned were saying?
What are the odds these “disagreements” are actually just transphobia wearing a mask? Plenty of us disagree with Ada. We’re still here.
Most disagreements are filed under “Gatekeeping” and banned by blahaj admins.
Most Gatekeeping bans are not for Gatekeeping, or for breaking any other rules.
Such deep insights about LBZ from a lemmy.world account! I’d love to see where you pulled these assertions from. Well, I mean unless you pulled them out of your ass of course.
trans women are not women
Wasn’t this a recent court ruling in the UK? Which isn’t great.
I don’t know all of the terminology, but the entire argument over it just seems so stupid, how does letting trans people exist bother you in any way?
Thanks for doing what you do.
It’s ridiculous we are still having to deal with this in 2025. Just yesterday I had to see someone using the tslur as a “joke” under a .world post. Mods removed it. It’s not hard to be decent, although some people decide to make it look like an impossible task. As far as I’m concerned, hate speech is not free speech…
The way I see it, free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences for what you say. You’re free to walk up to the friend group and act like a jackass and personally insult everyone. And they’re free to tell you to fk off and stop being friends with you and talking to you. That’s not an infringement on your right to free speech, that’s consequences for your actions.
These ‘free speech’ people act like the real world is this place where you can just approach and interrupt any conversation and enter any club without following the rules. They act like groups of like minded people getting together to share interests and ideas without wanting to constantly defend themselves and ‘debate’ their interests and beliefs is some new thing brought to us by the woke agenda.
And so they think social media should be this place where you can say whatever to whoever, wherever you want and if anyone has a problem with that, they’re just anti ‘free speech’ woke libs or some shit.
Censorship lmao. I get where you’re coming from, but pulling a ostrich with your head in the sand is not a productive way to go about it.
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.
If Lemmy were a centralized platform, then sure. It is not, therefore no single instance can be reasonably accused of censorship. If you feel censored by your instance, then you’re free to make as many new accounts on other instances as you want and avoid the offending instance.
This isn’t censorship, this is a community of people deciding they don’t want to hear the same bullshit they hear everywhere else on the internet in their own home.
Is it censorship for someone to kick you out of their house for being an asshole?
Hey sounds like you should use feddit.uk as your main and share your opinion there where it will be received.
Go fuck yourself as well. Kindly.
I’m only being a little snarky. Just because they’re defederated doesn’t mean you can’t go there if you agree with their opinions. Censorship would be “you’re under arrest”, not “I’m walking away”.
Bubble, echo chamber, besieged fortress syndrome… Combined they make what Ada envisions the blahaj.zone to be.
I mean what the fuck, just ban the person you don’t like.
u mad bro?
it’s .ml ofc
Is that a known problem instance?
Disclaimer: long-time member of lemmy.ml
It’s not really a problem instance for most people, and it’s a pretty diverse one as far as explicitly leftist communities go. It’s the original instance created by the original Lemmy devs, who are openly Marxist-Leninist communists. That’s a big part of how Lemmy has generally remained anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, why it’s not covered with ads and awards and karma gamification and all that junk.
Until the relatively-recent reddit API exodus, the biggest instances were lemmy.ml (general purpose for FOSS tech and left-wing, with all kinds of socialists present), Lemmygrad.ml (Marxist-Leninist-only), and Hexbear.net (dirtbag left). Lemmygrad got a negative reputation among a lot of ex-redditors because of their overall campist, anti-Western positions and critical support of traditional enemies of the US, while Hexbear joined federation later, had built a culture of crass trolling methods to keep visiting conservatives and other capitalists away, and surprised everyone by how large they were, creating an illusion of brigading whenever a post was big enough to get to their front page and gain a sudden influx of Hexbear users mocking them. All three of these communities also had a strict interpretation of anti-bigotry and anti-chauvinism, to the point where echoing a pretty common (albeit unknowingly racist) black-and-white American understanding of countries like Russia and China could be enough to get a ban, leading people used to a pro-Western media bubble to just dismiss these instances as being intolerant echo chambers who ban people for disagreeing, when they were really getting banned for unintentionally and unknowingly being bigoted or spreading misinformation. Hexbear and Lemmygrad have been defederated by a few instances.
Hence, the other reply, just saying “tankies” (a perjorative that can mean basically anything these days).
Can you please link to specific offenses?
No. I won’t start a brigade against a specific user, even a transphobic one. And ultimately, the defederation is due to the feddit.uk admins approach to transphobia rather than the specifics of the posts.
