Might be a bad idea for me to go into this while having ptsd issues, especially when I’m probably about to do a long ass sleep, but yolo.
Basic synopsis on my feelings here:
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tl;dr: I used to believe we should be federated, but after 3ish years of interacting with lemmygrad on various accounts, I have noticed that lemmygrad is not a place that is safe for transgender people at large. The reason for this is principally their debatelord culture and refusing to comprehend that debating a point against a minority’s lived experience, then demanding civility when that minority gets angry, is the same shit liberals do.
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I noticed instances of reactionary content, such as here and/or comments are not removed or users banned. Lemmygrad seems to prefer to debate reactionaries, and obviously subjecting minority groups to reactionary content for personal fun is callous at best, and reactionary at worst. Its important to make it so that there are designated areas for dunking on reactionary content, as well as nsfw and content tags to avoid it. Otherwise, reactionary comments should be removed and visible in a mod log.
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I discussed in this post why it is important to remove downvotes to protect trans people. After I noticed people were creating evasive comments to debate me, I pretty much told them to fuck off. This resulted in a ban from their admins and they continued to defend their policy. This reminds me a lot of the struggle sessions we used to have about adding pronouns to the site or removing downvotes. People would be evasive in this same way to give the benefit of the doubt then demand civility when people get angry. Those people are not allies and should be purged.
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The admins seem to have a principle misunderstanding of why minorities don’t want to see any form of harassment or discrimination directed at them and how that is perpetuated across social media sites. They seem to legitimately believe that keeping downvotes means that they will be able to stave off reactionary content or is somehow a valuable tool in responding to reactionary content, when in reality they should be removing and banning reactionary content.
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Certain users were very keen on civility bullshit, particularly @simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml, @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml (an admin), @davel@lemmygrad.ml. This is honestly the most disgusting behavior I’ve seen on lemmygrad, and the fact that the admins doubled down on it is fucked.
I can see staying federated to a bunch of very small instances, especially queer focused and hobby instances, but I’m pretty soured on the fediverse at this point.
I’m extremely disappointed in what I’ve seen of the lemmygrad mod team. Why are they making me into a splitter over such a basic issue of avoiding the harassment of trans people at a systemic level, bastards 
I am willing to retract this if the admins of lemmygrad self crit and apologize for temp bans or otherwise of my accounts on civility reasons and make it clear that debating the lived experience of anyone of a minority group is unacceptable going forward. There are positive and proactive ways of discussing someone’s lived experience without going into debate territory and trying to find a technicality in lived experiences to support an opinion you already hold. I maintain that removing downvotes is a boon to trans users, if you can come up with something better than that and implement it, I am all ears.
I read the points, seems clear that Lemmygrad does have less focus on being a purely safe space as Hexbear. But their users, when here, seem to always be on the level in my experience.
So I understand disliking the place, but I don’t understanding how defederating helps address those concerns.
Agree just ban the stupid ones, theres some lemmygrad posters that have been cool and nice
Unfortunately, one of the stupid ones is an admin and is presumably backed up by other admins. If there were just two stupid non admins I would be ignoring this and reporting the trolls.
Well, my other thing on this too is that I’ve never once posted on lemmygrad to my knowledge, I dont look at it or care. I dont know any of their admins, users, opinions or drama nor any of the other instances. I only post here despite not liking everything and everyone.
Is it possible to just not go there?
As I explained before, I care more about making the best place possible for trans users. If theyre going to harbor trolls that try to bait you and then complain about civility, and are backed by admins, we shouldn’t be federated. I’m honestly not even a big fan of lemm.ee or lemmy.ml, but I’ve yet to run into any issues from those mods and admins, maybe I will. Same reason we should be defederated with obvious conservative and liberal instances.
And I really want there to be a unified trans community that is safe and have all the queer spaces linked, but the admins of various instances love making that as hard as possible if you have any strong opinions about how chasers and harassers should be purged and hedged off before they can make trouble.
Am I explaining it well enough? If not, sorry, ptsd issues still, maybe I can reword it later. PTSD makes it harder for me to string a long complex thought together, more of short bursts.
Sorry seeing this just now, yes that sounds fair. But I think if you want that, I think the argument to keep Hexbear unfederated is much stronger. We cant control everyone elses instance. Also we keep out potential allies.
I’m also saying this as someone who doesnt venture outside of Hexbear at all. So a little bit of devils advocate but I also agree with you.
Maybe a statement of condemnation from our mods would bring attention to the issue for some of their users. Defederating is the nuclear option and surely there are other steps we can take first?
I would agree, this is mostly a call for more dialogue about this. I think its a serious issue.
The issue is the admins. Afaik if they ban people, you can’t see them here from the side of lemmygrad. This means they can over time ban any trans people that they think are too aggressive by their absurd civility rule (re: people can just troll trans people and when the trans people get angry, you ban the trans people) and have likely cut off a critical source of info for trans users in their instance. I’m of the opinion of forcing people to choose the option that is not shit by defederating, if they choose to not fix this dogshit rule. You also don’t know if you’re on their shitlist because from what I can tell their modlog is not public.