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.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPM
      0·
      11 days ago

      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.

  • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    0·
    11 days ago

    What’s “adult human female” referring to? Asking so I can keep an eye out for this in the future

    • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      11 days ago

      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.

      • jeff@lemmy.ca
        0·
        11 days ago

        And sorry, what is a terf? By context i assumed it’s a transphobe, but you also include transports.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          0·
          11 days ago

          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.

          • jeff@lemmy.ca
            0·
            11 days ago

            I appreciate the response. Canadian, so apologizing is how we start conversations.

            • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              0·
              11 days ago

              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.

        • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          T ransgender
          E xclusionary
          R adical
          F eminist

          So, somebody who thinks they’re doing good for women, or espouses the image… But ultimately, is not and excludes trans people from their push for rights. Often, their “rights” are exclusively just anti-trans sentiment or push for legislature.

          So a terf may be somebody who wants feminism, but not for trans women; or also like those people who claim to protect women’s sports by just excluding trans women from it. Those people are most often just tradwives or straight up misogynists.

      • fartsparkles@lemmy.world
        0·
        11 days ago

        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 hurtful. I just want to learn.

      • magnetosphere@fedia.io
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPM
      0·
      11 days ago

      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.

      • Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      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).

  • Delta_V@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    11 days ago

    That’s fair.

    People like that will say “just block them” with one fork of their tongue, and then “sort it out through discussion and voting” with the other fork.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      11 days ago

      People like that will say “just block them” with one fork of their tongue,

      Aka: “i just supply the space, I have no responsibility to make sure it’s actually safe”

      “sort it out through discussion and voting”

      Aka: “and I don’t intend to protect anyone, not my problem if you’re getting attacked”.

  • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    11 days ago

    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.

    • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
      0·
      6 days ago

      Admin, ban this person! Clearly a non blahaj user voicing their opinion where explicitly told not to!

      Tap for spoiler

      /s, doh.

    • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      11 days ago

      Agreed, fuck 'em.

      If the users of feddit.uk want to engage with us, they’re totally welcome to do so on our terms by making an account somewhere that holds their users to a better standard. I hope they do. As far as I’m concerned, the users are cool, but we don’t have to coddle somebody else’s bigotry or put up with hatred.

    • Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pubEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      “we want to make sure we comply with the law”

      on here?

      …Christ, why? lmao

      They must think they’re the main character of lemmy or someshit.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        11 days ago

        Just as bad as Lemmy.world with their admins being totally pro lawyers who just haven’t taken the bar, they’d totally pass though.

        Maybe worse, we’ll see.

    • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      11 days ago

      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.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        0·
        11 days ago

        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.

        • wolfinthewoods@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          11 days ago

          lemmy.world is basically the fediverse version of Reddit from what I’ve experienced in terms of overall culture.

          • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            0·
            11 days ago

            The mods from 196 tried to forcibly move everyone to 196 on Lemmy.world because they personally disagreed with Ada’s approach.

            They locked the comm and pinned a post about it.

            So during that time (while they continued arguing that “let the discussion happen” and “teach the controversy” but “we still totally support queer folks despite trying to move to an instance where shitty behavior is acceptable, and briefly had an admin level rule they are ‘reworking’ where it would explicitly be against terms to delete that hateful content”…

            !onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone then opened up as a new comm.

            196 on blahaj was reopened, and unfortunately many folks still land there because of the name.

            Personally I refuse to trust any of the mods on 196 (.world or on blahaj) because:

            • The move was forced
            • There was no discussion prior
            • They only backtracked when onehundredninetysix took off
            • Their entire reasoning for the move was based off “we dont have accounts on blahaj and reporting is complicated” and “we want to moderate differently than what’s permitted on blahaj”.

            Sorry that was kind of a long-winded summary.

            Edit: there are threads at both!fediverselore@lemmy.ca and !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com iirc that will show the whole story.

            • comfy@lemmy.ml
              0·
              10 days ago

              There was no discussion prior

              I’ve been involved in a lot of communities, some alright and some which nosedived, and it’s always amazing how out-of-touch most moderator cliques become if discussion isn’t ingrained in their culture. I also haven’t kept up with 196 comms, not my style, but I hope the community has enough consciousness to tell the mods where to shove that crap and become independent.

      • meh@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        11 days ago

        i tried to tell them it sounded more like cowardice than laziness but they just wouldnt hear it.

      • dumblederp@aussie.zone
        0·
        11 days ago

        They had the time to make a new rule about no generative AI content but couldn’t work this out? Stuff em.