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.
I'm not from the UK and had to look this up. I'm thinking it's this ruling from the UK Supreme Court.
The Equality Act of 2010 outlines protections against discrimination based on sex. The Scottish government made a ruling that hiring a transwoman counted as hiring a woman for the purposes of government boards requiring a certain number of members be women. It was challenged and the UK Supreme Court ruled that the Equality Act defines sex as biological sex at birth and cannot be changed. Therefore, hiring a transwoman does not count as hiring a woman, but hiring a man.
I have no idea why this ruling would mean a Lemmy admin can't remove transphobic comments. The US Supreme Court has ruled many times that saying slurs is protected speech but that doesn't mean websites can't moderate it.