Update: In light of the programming.dev update here https://programming.dev/post/8399272, the defederation is no longer going ahead.
However, something more needs to be said. Even here on Blahaj, some of our users took issue with the choice to defederate over this issue.
So I would like to give some background and context.
Blahaj Zone exists, because both Kaity and I left mainstream social media to escape transphobia. Reddit, with its lackluster approach to fighting transphobia, and twitter, with its outright celebration of transphobia pushed us here, to the fediverse, and to create Blahaj Zone and Blahaj Lemmy.
To that end, we will continue to treat transphobia seriously. Our goal is to create a space where gender diverse folk can exist and let our defenses down a little, where we don’t have to worry about getting dragged in to an argument with a transphobe, or a bad faith actor “just asking questions”.
If you are looking for a more reddit like experience, where in the interest of increased engagement, we let low level transphobia slide, and push responsibility for dealing with it on to community mods and individual users, then you will likely not be happy with blahaj going forward. If you choose to stay here, understand that we may defederate again in the future over similar issues.
The choice is yours.
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It has recently been brought to my attention that the lead admin of programming.dev is engaging in ongoing transphobia.
You can see the conversation in question here https://programming.dev/comment/6131539
For that reason we will be defederating from programming.dev in 48 hours.
There are only three communities on that instance used by small number of our users, so this won’t have a big impact, but if you are one of those users, you will need to use an alt account on another instance if you wish to access the communities.
This issue can seem insignificant and it can be tempting to want to brush it under the rug. I have personally have this urge to not to want to upset allies or potential allies. But Rowling as a famous, rich person does a lot of harm to trans people by contributing money to anti-trans causes. This game is the most recent piece of content that funds her ability to donate to those anti-trans causes. If this admin can understand that then we should be fine to stay federated.
Unfortunately the nature of discourse in the post obfuscated this issue. Simply explaining the error in the admin’s argument backed up with sources should have been sufficient. The personal attacks do not add to the discussion and make it harder to arrive at any understanding. I think the conflict and ‘finding a win’ is sort of the goal with the tactics displayed in the thread, but that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the issue seriously.
The error in the admin’s argument is that the content of the game is not important when the profits of the game go to causes that undermine the well being of trans people.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hogwarts-legacy-release-brings-transphobia-harry-potter-franchise-rcna69628
Again, I understand the nature of discourse made the topic seem childish. However, this is the fight we are fighting. There is no other hill for us to die on. We can only choose how we defend it, not who else is on the hill with us.