cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25042034
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.
What law is that? Did the UK just enshrine some sort of right to be transphobic or something?
Kinda, yeah.
It's about the recent ruling that defines who is and isn't a woman legally.
While it doesn't seem like something that should impact a lemmy instance choosing to protect trans people via moderation of hate speech in disguise (That's what a dogwhistle is in this context), I think that the admins are saying they're taking an overabundance of caution until they've had a chance to figure out how the change does effect the instance.
On the surface, what it means is that trans women aren't covered by equality laws for women, they would need their own, separate laws to cover them. So it does enshrine a lack of protection under the law, up to a point.
Now, I'm not sure what kind of legal liability the admins are worried about, because uk laws are not exactly something I'm generally aware of. There may be laws there that allow legal action against a forum for censorship for all I know, and if trans women are no longer "protected", then removing such comments might open them up for lawsuits. But that's just a hypothetical, because afaik, that isn't something that's actionable there, and nobody from feddit.uk has said that's what they're worried about, it's just an off-the-cuff hypothetical
Which is emperor or the other since pass admins run across this, it might help cool down the drama if you do specify what kind of legal issues are the concern
You'd have to ask admin. https://feddit.uk/comment/16920756
This is going to take a bit for us to work out (although not too long, we're getting there, I have been active on Lemmy but I don't call the shots, and we need input from all Admins) and if, in the meantime, LBZ feel we aren't moving fast enough and they need to defederate from us then that is obviously their right.