cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/26211900
[Transphobia Warning] Nutomic’s Stance on Transgender People
I know that I shouldn’t, but…
Off-topic: why Nutomic's comment is idiotic
It’s a big false dichotomy.
As a class, the bourgeoisie only cares about staying in power. Everything else from its PoV is fluff, to be situationally used or opposed.
And that applies to the trans cause. The bourgeoisie is weakly opposed to trans rights because they get in the way of reproductive labour (trans people are less likely to have children, so they aren’t pumping out as many new proletariats as cis people do). However that opposition is not strong enough to make the bourgeoisie ignore pink money, since pink money is still money and money is still power under capitalism.
It’s also worth noting that the bourgeoisie doesn’t just compete for power with the other two classes (proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie) - it also competes internally. And for that, different factions within the class will seek external support from different groups, and align their discourses to those.
In that situation, what do you expect to see? The bourgeoisie flinging back and forth between lip service towards LGBTQ+ people+communities, and a transphobic discourse. Rainbow-wash something today (it’s a cheap and effective marketing tactic!), go transphobic tomorrow; business A plops up a trans flag, business B tears it down. Flush, repeat.
And, well, it’s exactly what you see here.
I also encourage specifically Trotskyists to read this text, as it explains way better than I could how the transgender agenda and class struggle are not orthogonal in nature. (Stalinists: be warned that Sybil Davis rambles quite a bit against Stalinism.)
And… on a moral level, let’s be frank - you need to be inconsistent like a puddle of jelly, to be a communist but not defend trans rights. At the end of the day, what a good communist should defend is freedom of oppression; and what are those LGBTQ+ activists saying, if not “we don’t want to be oppressed based on gender, sex and sexuality”? It’s all about human rights dammit.
On-topic: I think that the “forums side of the Fediverse” (nowadays mostly Lemmy and Kbin/Mbin) would benefit immensely from additional platforms; that’s why I’m excited for projects like PieFed and SubLinks. I am grateful for the Lemmy software but I can’t help but see the people in charge of the project as a liability.And they would still be a liability even if they had any skill building a healthy community (they don’t, they suck at it). Relying on a single platform is like putting all your eggs within the same basket, once that basket goes down everything breaks.
And they would still be a liability even if they had any skill building a healthy community (they don’t, they suck at it).
I agree with you here (and generally the whole post, glad to have found it here). While I think they do suck at community building (and might even admit to as much or defend the need for it) I would add that from my perspective the amount of reflexive dog-piling and harsh criticism hurled their way just for or triggered by their being communists/tankies has probably made it pretty difficult. And unfortunately and problematically so I’d say. Now such may just be the way things are and it had to be navigated if they were ever to build a better community … sure. And being open communists may then as just a matter of practical reality hinder their community building capacities. But I feel like it’s worth acknowledging.
Also, their position of opposing a somewhat consumeristic culture of having a demanding relationship with open source developers is also worth recognising. I wasn’t receptive to those arguments in the past, but have since come around to it TBH.
And, the way they’ve approached federation and presenting their own instance has enabled the lemmy-verse to not have a single monolithic community or culture. They chose before the migration to not push their instance as the flagship and never seemed to want that. They always promoted other instances, and have always federated their own instance fairly widely. So in a way, they’ve ensured that they didn’t have to be the primary community builders for the lemmy space, and I think that has paid off rather well given the relatively small user size here (apart from lemmy . world being too big).
I don’t rule out that a lot of the complains are motivated by red scare, instead of saner stuff. And I’m also genuinely grateful for not making
mlthe flagship instance, it would’ve made any problem worse.However I think that, to be a good open source developer, you need to be at least decent at community building. Because a good part of that development is to gather support so other people can submit you code.
Honest question: Why does it matter if he’s a transphobe when choosing which Fediverse software to use? The software is FOSS and anyone can make their own instance. I don’t understand why his social views outside of sharing the software and protecting it from becoming proprietary matters when deciding what Fediverse software to use.
I’m not arguing my stance. I really want to understand what I might be missing.
When people are successful, sometimes their ideas are too. They become a sort of standard, or justified. While I speak only for myself, I think some folks feel like if this guy’s projects are successful he could use that success to oppres people. It happened to fluffy JK Rowling.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining. What’s the relevant story with JK Rowling?
JK uses her platform (harry potter fame) to denigrate and oppress trans women (probably more). She regularly engages anti trans exchanges on public twitter. Considering the reach HP has for children, it could give her considerable chance to promote bigotry. Look up TERF.
Honest question: Why does it matter if he’s a transphobe when choosing which Fediverse software to use?
- Because some people have actually financially supported him. I’m not trans, but I would be devastated to know that my money went to feed someone who wants to destroy me.
- I already have trouble convincing transgender people in my social circle that Lemmy as a software is safe for them to use even with the variety of trans-inclusive servers like yours, and will be safe and inclusive in the future.
A great example of (2) is the fate of PolyMC. Thankfully, the other developers forked it into Prism, but transphobia put that whole project in jeopardy for a bit.
The software is FOSS and anyone can make their own instance.
IMO that’s why I’m not immediately dropping my account and running for the hills, but it’s still not good. Most people don’t have the technical skills or the interest in learning them to run their own instance.
I really want to understand what I might be missing.
IMO it’s that even though he does not personally control how Lemmy instances are run, and even though we do have a good degree of robustness to transphobia because the software is FOSS, it is still both morally and technically ill-advised to have a transphobe at the helm of an open-source software project.
The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised.
I don’t intend that to be snarky, more jokey. But, yeah, it’s pretty much common knowledge. Not the first time they’ve expressed unpleasant opinions on the subject, though not quite this bluntly. There was a minor kerfluffle over it not too long after the reddit exodus.
And it isn’t unexpected tbh, that’s a pretty bog standard tankie take, if perhaps a tad more trope filled.
To me, lemmy is kinda like a less important version of the Apollo missions. You put up with someone unpleasant because they can get the job done, until things get to the point it can be done without them. German scientists, tankie devs. Yeah, yeah, von Braun wasn’t a “real” nazi; whatever.
At some point, either lemmy gets enough movement to get a less extreme team on board, it gets forked, or something else comes along.
Genuinely curious … what exactly is the problematic stance here?
Is it that they think the boxer was a biological male and therefore trans female? Or is it referring to then as a biological male (which seems justifiably politically incorrect to me but not heinous in trying to point out that the Olympic/bougousie can’t be that transphobic, could honestly be a language problem).
Or is it the statement that the bourgeoisie aren’t trans phobic?
“The transgender topic” is already weird as a statement (kinda like “the gay agenda”, it comes off as only considering it as a political statement?), and “clearly promoted by the bourgeoisie” implies it’s bad.
“As far as […] lgbt flags on government buildings”: it’s… not far at all? Again, weird statement.
“Biological male” is both wrong for the boxer (she’s cis) and generally used for transphobia (trans women on HRT aren’t biological males by any reasonable definition). It’s also generally conspiratorial.
Overall it’s not explicitly transphobic or bad to me, but it shows at minimum a very misinformed perspective.
