Not believing that half of hexbear users are trans = transphobic
Not believing that half of hexbear users are trans = transphobic
https://lemmy.ml/comment/16125064
Starring: blindbunny, BrainInABox and of course, the one and only, Cowbee!
Never, under any circumstances, use the phrase "you people" unless you're in the mood for everyone in the universe to act like you just lost the argument.
Solid advice. It can be completely benign, but people will still pounce on it for an "easy win".
I mean you're not wrong in that people will often try to play the victim in that scenario, but there are plenty of intelligent people who can easily see such claims are merely a flimsy argumentative tactic. After all, we are discussing it right now, and its pretty easy to recognize when it happens.
Definitely still solid advice though, especially IRL. Online I feel like it's a bit more acceptable, because you don't even know the physical characteristics of the person you're arguing with, so it's much more difficult to twist you people into some kind of discriminatory or bigoted statement, given that the two debaters are anonymous.
Then what do you people want me to say?
I can come up with a couple of nonspecific alternatives, all of them would cause an even worse mayhem.
yall is good; especially when trying to be respectful on non-gendered phrasing
The usage here is appropriate but you are absolutely correct. It is the perfect way to start losing an argument.
When reading all the Tankie bullshit it's actually very easy to get emotional so that's why I limit my interactions with them. I only come out when they are not offered a counter point outside of their 3 instances.
I hate that this is correct. Because that phrase only ever had a bad connotation for reasons that probably apply in next to none of the cases on Lemmy where someone would take that phrase as a failed purity test.
Probably any time I used that online I meant "most of the people replying in this particular thread". To me, it's super obvious what it means but I've gotten the kind of smug response you mean several times.
Imagine not being able to tell the difference between "I don't believe half of their users are trans" and "I don't believe in their users being trans".
Demographics isn't transphobic. Using trans people as a shield from criticism is.
EDIT: I looked over the October survey. The graphs aren't the cleanest but the data is there: 15% of all asked identified as trans, with another 9% as trans non-binary. A sample size of 600 to the 2300 monthly users is also really good, so the data ought to be very representative.
This is part of why the hard left, or at least the current version of it, has basically lost me. I firmly support the right of trans and queer folks to exist in the same relative peace and safety as everyone else, but in todays lefty political spaces you’re not allowed to disagree with what a trans person says without being transphobic. You can’t criticize a trans person for their shit takes or bad behavior without being transphobic. I even had a years long friendship end because raising the issue of a clear mental health episode involving paranoid delusion unrelated to their transition or transness made me a “dangerous transphobe”. This person had of course been hospitalized for self harm and major mental heath issues prior, and a desire to keep them safe was “transphobic”
Transphobia is bad. Trans exceptionalism is also bad.
Lots of leftists and even leftist groups/spaces acknowledge and criticize the bigotry of lowered expectations. Sometimes called the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. It's when you cut members of marginalized groups more slack simply because they're marginalized. Whether someone means it or not, it perpetuates that someone is less smart, less capable, simply because they're (gender)queer, a POC, disabled, etc. What you're describing fits the bill.
I'm part of leftist groups that call it out for the bigotry it is, and I hope you can find a leftist group that does, too. They do exist. Or maybe otherwise, you can read a little about the bigotry of lowered expectations and bring it up for discussion with groups that are unknowingly guilty of it. Maybe they can learn from you.
Trans, or LGBT issues in general are used as argumentative shibboleths and rallying points.
In reality, these are non-issues that shouldn't really concern anyone except those directly affected by them. But the extremists on both sides chose to make them front and center for literally any discussion.
It's a culture war fueled by a bunch of narcissistic idiots and financed by ghouls who love to see the plebs destroy itself.
Yeah I feel you. I have had two memorable interactions with trans people who tried to say I was being transphobic for made up reasons. The most recent person went through my moderation history and found a comment I made which supposedly was homophobic. It was a comment roughly saying "trump is sucking off Putin" which was removed for "incivility". This of course proved that I am a hateful bigot and only wanted to disagree with the trans person due to who they are. Which btw was not something I had a fucking clue about until they called it out.
I feel for both you and your friend. Over the last while with trans stuff being in the news so much it does feel like being constantly under fire with a lot of hope for things getting better like they were even five years ago going by the wayside. I have a friend who has struggled with BPD on top of being trans and it has been kind of hard telling her that she actually is being a little too sensitive and assuming way more hostility than she's actually receiving from people in her life by "mind reading" intentions that are not there.
As one of the few other trans people in her life it's really hard being her reality check. When we queer folk have community we do a better job of keeping each other grounded and advocating for the general intentions of cis family, friends and romantic partners and give them grace to be imperfect allies. We can acknowledge when things suck because of a lack of understanding or because someone is still hurting us despite not wanting to... But that's not always based out of transphobia. The world is imperfect and sometimes that means we don't always have our cake and eat it too.
Leftists aren't a monolith. There's anarchists, democratic socialists, state capitalists and authoritarian leftists (both are social democrats without the democracy part) and more. I don't think it's fair to abandon an ideology because a similiar ideologies followers are stupid, or insane.
And left/right is disconnected from cultural progressivism/conservatism (tho they heavily correlate) there are conservative socialists and progressive conservatives. There's even this god forsaken abomination of an ideology.
It's your choice, though. If you don't want to be a leftist, then that's fine.
Oh, they can tell the difference. It's just that their whole mentality is attuned to seizing on some trivial bullshit, deliberately misunderstanding it into some wild kind of caricature, and then lecturing the "opponent" about how they're wrong about everything.
This is a perfect way to sum up the same thoughts I've had about people who do that shit.
Thanks for bringing this up, Cowbee has been banned.
Wait where has he been banned from? discuss.tchncs.de or here?
I wonder where those demographics came from.
Meanwhile, Lemmy Devs are saying the "transgender topic" is promoted by "the bourgeoisie", and how "biological men" shouldn't be competing in "women's sports"
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/25213024
(also, who the fuck says "biological men" in the transgender context, its called transgender women)
(also, who the fuck says "biological men" in the transgender context, its called transgender women)
Conservatives and other right wing that's who. That's why you hear tankie leadership saying it.
Tankies are anti-lgbtq at their core. Anything to simp for totalitarians.
Maybe this is just an online thing? IRL I hang out with quite a few Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, and other folks who'd usually get categorized as tankies and I don't think I've heard them be bigoted towards queer people during the years I've known them. I'm also openly queer so it's not like I'm just an "ally" saying that they don't see bigotry happening just because they ignore it.
These same folks are also organizing most of the pride events around here and running volunteer security for protests and drag shows, so I'd have a hard time believing that they're secretly bigoted while spending a lot of their time, money, and taking personal risks to foster a queer community and keep it safe.
To be fair, hexbear did ban those devs for those comments.
It's a little noted fact that the lemmy devs don't really fuck with hexbear or vice versa. Presumably they also recognize the same childish, bad faith, obnoxious argumentative tactics that we have all come to know and love from hexbear.
While I'm on the topic, Nutomic and Dessalines also have very different views, and constantly referring to them as the monolithic tankie lemmy devs is somewhat reductive. Dessalines seems to be the more tankie-ish of the two based on the evidence I've seen.
It's fair to assume that a good number of the OG lemmy.ml users and lemmygrad users aren't big fans of hexbear either, considering hexbear has always maintained a separate space for themselves. Pretty wild that hexbear users are so toxic and misanthropic that even other tankies are repelled by them.
I used to think Reddit was wild
Then I got on Lemmy...
It seems unlikely that half of their users would be transgender, given that transgender people make up roughly .5% of the overall population; gay people (gay men + lesbians) make up roughly 4.5-5% of the overall population the last time I looked at demographics. All of the LGBTQ+ people together make up about 6% of the total population in the US.
These numbers might have changed somewhat in the last year or two since I last check surveys, but it's not likely that it's changed enough to move the numbers sharply.
I know that there was some investigative reporting in my state a few months ago trying to figure out how many minors would be affected by a state-level ban on insurance covering gender-affirming care for minors, and the number was in in the very low double digits. The same kind of numbers of athletes would be affected by bans on 'biological males' competing in womens' sports.
I'm just saying that it just doesn't seem very likely that an instance with thousands of users would have that kind of demographics, esp. when you consider that Hexbear broadly has a monolithic political identity.
I mean I could believe it about an arbitrary thing over a general populace. I mean like a gay bar is likely to have like 90% gay people in it. And its not like the federation is huge and it tends to attract out groups.
A gay bar doesn't have a (largely) monolithic political identity though. Sure, most gay people are going to trend more socially and fiscally liberal/left. But you'll still find a number at any gay bar that are fairly socially and/or fiscally conservative. Log cabin Republicans, for instance. (Yeah, I think it's dumb to kiss the asses of ppl that want to eliminate your rights, but whatever.)
I’m just saying that it just doesn’t seem very likely that an instance with thousands of users would have that kind of demographics, esp. when you consider that Hexbear broadly has a monolithic political identity.
Comrade just learned what an intersectional identity group is
I think that you might misunderstand. Transgender people are already a very, very small minority. The number of people that are in favor of authoritarian communism is also quite low (certainly in the US, at least). Even if you assume that, say, 50% of all trans people are supportive of authoritarian communism, that's still an incredibly tiny number.
I can't say that I know a ton of transgender people, but the ones that I've personally known have trended well into anarchism, because they recognize the risk of allowing anyone to control their body other than themselves.
Literally the only place I have ever experienced transphobia on Lemmy was from a hexbear, who called me a chaser for saying that my ex was a trans woman.
so you're telling me that you used to free dive in the the deep part of the Mediterranean? that's thalassophobic /s
I might be missing something. they may be making assumptions about you but how is calling someone a chaser transphobic?
Calling someone a chaser solely on the grounds that they claim to have dated a trans woman could imply "no cis male could be interested in a trans woman outside of pure fetish bait", which is awfully reductive. It casts the trans woman as an object in the relationship rather than an equal partner.
"You people," huh?
I hate how they're incapable of actually thinking, so they latch onto specific phrases so they can pretend you're a racist so they don't have to engage with what you're actually saying
I don't believe ANY hexbear users are leftists either.
they'll probably say that's leftphobic. These cretins can't manage logic and reason.
There are definitely some that have been lured in by the grift. I feel bad for those people but there's no way for us to reach them as long as they stay in the hexbear bubble.
The fuck with this obsession of telling people whether they are or are not trans online?
I tagged Cowbee as a tankie also. I despise the technique also: lobbing "-phobic" accusations if there's anything that can be seen as negative said in the same paragraph that mentions some group like trans people. It's shitty for multiple reasons.
Cowbee isn't just another tankie. He knows his theory and will use it to dazzle you with bullshit.
I would accept being dazzled with BS
The technique is to spread anger and divide people in western countries, or else they won't get a paycheck.
I'm just always wondering about then being pro trans and pro-governement that is very anti-queer, I just can't.
Tankies and typical extremists always think they'll be spared, or considered 'one of the good ones'
Well Yerbatim kind of comes off as a dick reading the rest of the linked conversation. He also seems to be known to the hexbear community in general judging from an other comment coming from a hexbear user. cowbell might be responding to this more than anything else and he got banned for it. He also got banned for it because of this post and not the original so to speak (it's in the comments of this post).
I didn't check his history per say but I did check the modlog and amongst a few mean spirited comments, there was this gem:
I got one for you: How does a Hexbear user proceed to kill himself? He shoot a bullet 3 inch above his head, directly in his superiority complex. But seriously, you guys (cause you're 95℅ guys lets be honest), arent half as intelligent as you think you are. Cheers
I also don't know what the percentage of trans users would have to do with anything.
.world doesn't federate with hexbear. My first experience with them was when they abused the emoji exploit so I'm kind of fine with it. I don't know all the drama nor the actors involved but it doesn't seem like everyone is being critical enough. I don't think the glorification or the ban are entirely justified.
how do i block any post with "hexbear" anywhere in the title or comments?
Most mobile clients allow you to hide posts that contain a certain keyword in their title. Here's a non-exhaustive list of clients that support keyword filtering off the top of my head:
- Voyager (multiplatform; I believe you need to have the app because the option doesn't show up on the website for me)
- Mlem (iOS)
- Arctic (iOS)
- Thunder (Android)
- Sync (Android)
I don't know of any that can hide posts with a keyword mentioned in any of the post's comments; doing so would require the client to make a lot of extra API requests.
Keyword blocking
Step 1 might be getting off this community?
Denying the self-reported identity of a marginalized person is absolutely bigoted, and those demographics come directly from self-reported polling data.
Unless you are simply unaware that they conduct their own demographic polling, dismissing those demographics as 'not real' is the same thing as accusing those users of lying about being trans
I can't load that link but it's pretty awesome that they, for the for time in history, conducted a poll casually while managing to get a 100% participation rate. Also impressive that the results were distributed and read by every single Lemmy user, including OP.
