Unlike previous attempts at trying reddit alternatives (like Voat), kbin and much of the lemmyverse doesn’t seem to be plagued with extreme far right buffoonery.

ferallettuce@kbin.social to Reddit Migration@kbin.social – 240 points –

It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.

I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.

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I left reddit because of the censorship there and the freedom here. how does that make one a nazi wtf o_O

What stuff of yours was censored?

That is the key question.

I was banned from a bunch of subs all at once because I said in one (I'm still not sure which one), that I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition.

What a boring and unnecessary opinion to have. You're not their doctor, they arent your patients, what business is it of yours? and to go on about sharing that uneducated, untrained, unsolicited opinion online and then complaining about censorship when your medical advice is not well received.. I just can't wrap my head around the entitlement.

You're not their doctor, they arent your patients, what business is it of yours?

ok, so if you're not a doctor you can have no opinion on healthcare now? ridiculous statement. i think healthcare should be free. i don't work in healthcare or health insurance. so am i just supposed to shut the fuck up and know my place?

no, I have my opinion and I'm going to share it and @JasSmith has his opinion and he's going to share it. that's the whole point of having discussion boards. the last thing i want is this place to become an echo chamber

i think kids should be able to transition. but it's also not so simple a conversation when you're making permanent changes to teenage kids - https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/detransitioned-teens-explain-why-they-regret-changing-genders/

kids are fickle creatures and fads catch on - all of a sudden we see a dramatic rise in kids wanting to transition - like 4400% increase in girls wanting to transition to boys. is it because we are now more accepting as a society or is it social contagion? probably both and it's a serious topic we need to address if we actually do want the best for the kids. we need to keep ideology out of healthcare and make sure each individual kid is taken care of with whatever is best for them - transitioning is not always the best option. but sometimes it is.

It's so funny to me this person don't ever seem to have the same concerns about the nose jobs, boob jobs, lip enhancements, etc that are also being done on teens AND CHILDREN. I hear nothing from you about the performance enhancing drugs for teenage boys, or the altering of the bodies of gymnasts who also start in their early childhood. In the case of the latter, they get stunted growth because the intensive amount of training affects hormones and delays puberty. Gee what other thing that you argue about sounds similar to that?

Maybe you didn't know about those things before. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But now I fully expect that you go to all of gymnastics forums where they're talking about young female gymnasts and male athletes,l and tell them that you don't think they should do those sports anymore. You're totally going to do that right? Right?

It's so funny to me this person don't ever seem to have the same concerns about the nose jobs, boob jobs, lip enhancements, etc that are also being done on teens AND CHILDREN. I hear nothing from you about the performance enhancing drugs for teenage boys, or the altering of the bodies of gymnasts who also start in their early childhood.

I mean, you don't know me, or you'd know that I also think those things are wrong. I also tell people that I think those things are wrong. Don't you?

we aren't seeing a 4000% increase in kids becoming gymnasts

it's a poignant social topic. instead of attacking my credibility, aiming to represent me as biased, you should try to attack my argument

having said that, i support kids transitioning. i'm more upset about the "wrongthink" mentality where someone can't even share their opinion without getting pounced on. he isn't sharing hate speech he's just talking

we aren't seeing a 4000% increase in kids wanting to transition

If you cherry pick the dates of comparison you can probably come up with 4000%

Check. Mate.

Indeed, I've been finding myself hesitant to chime in on this because I know I'm inevitably going get lumped in with transphobe Nazi facists because at some point I'm going to say "hey hang on, there's some nuance here that you're missing."

Can you cite a source on that number

was in the article i linked

between 2009 and 2019, children being referred for transitioning treatment in the United Kingdom increased 1,000% among biological males and 4,400% among biological females.

i guess it's too much to expect people to read things

So "transition treatments" have gone up 4000% ... in the time period following the treatment becoming available. If being a gymnast was illegal until 2009, or nobody had invented a trampoline until then, you can certainly bet making it legal or possible to do floor routines would result in a 4000%+ increase in people who were openly and publically gymnasts.

Trans people, trans kids, have always existed - we just didn't have the technology to provide the treatment in that article.

That article is choosing to cite the numbers on the treatment rather than the condition because the treatment's very recent launch means it allows the presentation of a scarier number.

Sure, I can go harass people on gymnastics forums if that's what you want. But in that case it's only fair that I start harassing people on trans forums as well. I wasn't doing either of those things before, but you said I have to so I guess it's time to go bully some trans people.

I have no problem with condemning the people who push children into intensive training for competition gymnastics. And no, I don't believe them either when they argue that "the child wanted this." The parents wanted a child who fits a certain mold and the child is just trying to make their parents happy, or atleast not angry depending on how externally abusive that parent is being.

Also I absolutely support the idea of banning under 18s from getting nose jobs, boob jobs, lip fillers, taking PEDs, etc. Heck throw in piercings and tattoos as well for all I care. No procedure and no parental permission exceptions.

Ah yes the great source of the New York post. I don’t think you are being harmful on purpose but I do believe that by spreading shit like this you are harming trans people. There is no trans epidemic or social fad. That opinion is absolutely ridiculous. I have a close family member who is trans and the difficulty of even getting hormones is extreme. Multiple meetings with psychologists and endocrinologist, many exams and paperwork, not even mentioning the bureaucracy you have to deal with afterwards. And this is as an adult, transitioning as a minor is way way harder. No one just gets transitioned in an accident, and 99% don’t regret it. Now on the flip side 30-50% of trans kids want to commit suicide due to societal pressure and bullying. The only „cure“ for gender dysphoria is, shocking I know, transitioning. So when people say to protect trans kids, it’s literally protecting them from self harm or from getting attacked. Also, do you really think that more people identify as trans because it’s a „fad“ or maybe it’s because your can finally openly talk about it! It’s like saying that the rise of left handed people after them not being retrained in school anymore is a social fad. It’s a stupid opinion. Whenever you have more societal acceptance of something more people will feel safe coming out. I understand that some people are scared of their kids being transed by the woke liberal teachers but the same people also think that Obama turned the frogs gay.

Also, do you really think that more people identify as trans because it’s a „fad“ or maybe it’s because your can finally openly talk about it

i think it's both. i don't know at what ratio, but kids really do follow fads. one kid kills themselves at a school and it raises the chances for all of them to do so. ideas are contagious. a kid that may just be going through the regular teenage angst period searching for an identity might latch onto the trans label to explain their feelings when really it's just a normal teenage thing to go through identity issues

again, i'm not trying to say kids shouldn't transition. i view transitioning as healthcare so to block kids off from it is absurd. but i think we also need to be careful and talk about the elephant in the room - that the rate of trans kids increasing so dramatically points to some issues with the ways we are doing it. when something jumps up so dramatically we should be asking questions

It's like the prevalence of left-handedness shot up dramatically once it was socially acceptable. You can't look at changes alone and say that things changing is a concern because it's changing.

Ah yes the great source of the New York post.

Are you questioning that Chloe exists? She's been speaking at length about her de-transition because the whole experience has destroyed her body permanently. You can read about her on her Wikipedia page. It's cool to question sources, but you didn't even take a sec on Google to check if your ad hominem attack was valid.

Here is another example. Sweden went all-in on "temporary" puberty blockers for gender affirming care until children started experiencing life-long injuries. They are now effectively banned for gender affirming care for children.

In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11-years-old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.

“When we asked him regularly how his back felt, he said: ‘I’m in pain all the time’,” she added.

Chloe's case is a tragedy, for sure. The issue I have is that people are calling for bans rather than enhanced oversight.

Healthcare, at its core, is a numbers game. No effective treatment we've ever discovered is completely without risk. Every surgery or treatment, no matter how innocuous, could lead to complications or death. To use a recent example, the Covid vaccinations. They're considered extremely safe, and over 13 billion vaccination doses have been given to date with over 5 billion people having been vaccinated. Given that Covid kills or permanently disables 2 in every 100 unvaccinated people, and vaccines lower that rate by at least 90%, that's nearly 100 million lives that have been safeguarded by the vaccine. However, the vaccine has certainly harmed some people with extremely rare side effects. We accept that tradeoff, because saving 100 million lives is worth the risk of harming a few thousand people.

Gender affirming care for children is the same thing. We know that trans children are at extremely elevated risks of self harm and suicide, and gender affirming care is proven to be effective in preventing those outcomes. We know that some will regret their decision to transition because those cases are inevitable in any population that transitions. The focus should be on reducing the cases of regret with better screening and more oversight.

So, to debate this seriously, you need to answer the following question:

How many regretful de-transitioners are you willing to risk in order to save the lives of successful transitioners?

If the answer is zero, then you're not willing to seriously debate the use of a medical treatment and your opinion is dogmatic and carries no semantic value.

If the answer is very few, then congratulations, you're on the same side as many allies who want more funding for care and screening for trans issues.

Chloe would have likely been helped by more psychiatric care and screening, as from her story it's clear that her sexual assault as a minor precipitated a complex regarding her sexuality that was misdiagnosed as a desire to transition.

See the problem here is that you forgot that opinions are only allowed to include concerns or nuances that are on the approved list.

Anything you might be concerned about that isn't on the approved list puts you straight into wrongthink, double plus ungood.

The problem is that there's a very big difference between wanting a blanket ban on transition preparation and wanting the actual people involved (the trans kid, the parents, and the doctors) to do a better job of evaluating the situation and working out the best path for each case.

While your opinion may be more reasonable you should be careful to not assume they share your opinion. A lot of people don't realize that the common choice for "transition" treatments for teens does not transition them, but rather delays/suppresses puberty in such a way that they can choose which way to go at a later time. Banning this treatment forces a choice and disallows a trans person's ability to fully transition once of age.

because transphobes are just people with different opinions

._.

This is an uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had, but it sadly likely won't until too many lives have been irreplaceably altered.

Now firstly, I support trans people! I support all LGBTQ+ people, and Cis Straight people, to find themselves and be themselves and accept themselves for who they are! People need to learn to love themselves and not need to change to find happiness. Trans people are unfortunately stuck in a body that doesn't match their brain so they need to change to become who they are inside. Just as everyone's fingerprints are unique, everyone's brains are unique, and sometimes the brain is so different from their sex that they need to transition to truly be themselves. But IMO not all people who say they are trans actually are, let me explain why.

People want to support minorities, and lonely people want to find a community that will support them. So some people will surely become a minority just for the social support being a minority offers, not necessarily because they actually are that minority but they may convince themselves that is the case even if they aren't. But the issue is there's no easy way to know who's who in this situation, and it's arguably not our business to challenge them in their personal decisions. These are lonely people who need people to hear them and be their friends regardless of what they choose to do, and people who preach anti-trans arguments often aren't able to do that and instead are very hateful.

People today are lonely, in large part because of social media's affect on our psych. And what support is there for straight cisgender people? Essentially none. Especially white straight cisgender people who are practically seen as the "bad guys" throughout history (Which isn't necessarily an unfair assessment considering what Europe has historically done to basically everyone (including each other for that matter) but that was largely the actions of the wealthy few again). Why do so many kids and adults commit suicide? Where's the support network for people who need it regardless of minority/majority status? Real life social networks are dying. I'm sure there is some support, but it's not as visible to those who need it.

There's a conversation that needs to be had which is being shutdown because of the "look everyone a bigot(!)" mentality that bringing this up has. However, there's no simple way I can see to really separate that honest discussion from those who do want to ban the practice entirely, so it's understandable why the reaction is the way it is. It really is a shitshow from all sides. (Transitioning should not be banned BTW in case I haven't made it clear that that's my position.)

I think that some kids should be allowed to transition, based on their physicians and families assessments of the situation. But in the end it's not my business if someone believes they truly need to transition to be happy. I do think currently too many are transitioning because it's become the new social fad like being goth or emo, though perhaps I'm wrong. But if I'm right than it's a lot harder to reverse being trans, if it's possible at all.

Personally, I'm just dropping the subject IRL because of the reaction that happens after any mention of that honest concern comes out.

I expect someone will say I'm a bigot just for this comment showing any concern at all that too many people think they're trans and are harming themselves long term. My goal is the largest amount of happy people who love themselves as possible. And sometimes in trying to do that society inadvertently causes some people unnecessary suffering as I'm sure is the case here, but there's nothing we can really do about it, it is what it is. So just love everyone and accept everyone and do your own thing. Things will work out for most people in the end if you just accept people and don't worry about things. Which is what I try to do.

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You have some points, but "not well recieved" would be downvotes. I think banning is censorship and can be a fair complaint.

With that said, maybe the sub had posted rules that were violated. It isn't like OP couldn't create their own sub if that was the situation.

Banning people from communication spaces though should be a concerning behavior. It goes both ways.

If your goal is to have a safe space for an oppressed minority group to express themselves, allowing transphobes to go about "just asking questions" and harassing people shuts down conversation of a group that actually has their freedom of expression threatened. Allowing harassment is more censorship than banning it. And no one should have the expectation of being able to just go into anyone's house and shit on their floor without consequence. And that might mean being banned from going to all of their friend's houses as well.

But you don't know what they said or what the community was. You are missing my general point. Please don't support general fascism behavior, whether it is from the right or left.

On top of that, this isn't somebody's house. That isn't a good analogy.

They already said quite clearly that they're transphobic. The "I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition" is almost verbatim an anti-trans talking point.

Here's some actual research on the subject of trans people, including trans youth, and suicide risk. With citations;

Bauer, et al., 2015: Transition vastly reduces risks of suicide attempts, and the farther along in transition someone is the lower that risk gets.

de Vries, et al, 2014: A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, followed by cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides trans youth the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults. All showed significant improvement in their psychological health, and they had notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among trans children living as their natal sex. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population.

Gorton, 2011 (Prepared for the San Francisco Department of Public Health): “In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients, Kuiper and Cohen-Kittenis found that after medical intervention and treatments, suicide fell from 19 percent to zero percent in transgender men and from 24 percent to 6 percent in transgender women.)”

Murad, et al., 2010: "Significant decrease in suicidality post-treatment. The average reduction was from 30% pretreatment to 8% post treatment."

De Cuypere, et al., 2006: Rate of suicide attempts dropped dramatically from 29.3% to 5.1% after receiving medical and surgical treatment among Dutch patients treated from 1986-2001.

UK study: "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition.

Heylens, 2014: Found that the psychological state of transgender people "resembled those of a general population after hormone therapy was initiated."

Perez-Brumer, 2017: "These findings suggest that interventions that address depression and school-based victimization could decrease gender identity-based disparities in suicidal ideation."

Here's a study showing that children know what gender they prefer and don't change their minds on it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35951394/

Here's another meta study on trans youth who received gender-affirming care, and who saw a decrease in suicide risk.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33320999/

Transitioning is One solution, and it is valid to be able to discuss other options. Your citations bring good discussion points, but shouldn't be used to ban people.

My point is about censorship and the race to the bottom thst it can and often brings.

I don't know, I'm always in favor of banning transphobes. Their arguments are always based in hatred, not any verifiable science. I gave you the science.

Except that's a sidestep. The viewpoint you were defending was saying that this one specific option, that has substantial academic backing for positive outcomes for kids, should not happen or should be prohibited.

That's not "discuss other options" - that's discussing this option and arguing that society should take it away.

That you're now trying to argue that it's just discussion and it's reasonable debate and - forgive my bluntness - being openly dishonest about what the original speech was that you're defending with "free-speech" and anti-censorship talking points is like ... the example case for how this thread started. The nazis and the transphobes and the hateful bigots can always, easily, spin their own takes as righteous and reasonable debate - if you let them lead the dialogue and frame their discourse through the most-appealing lenses possible. And they can make valid-sounding and appealing arguments for why you, too, should defend them and their right to speak.

But inevitably they are also going to use any and all space you clear for them to be hateful and bigoted and call for harm to other people - that is their goal. Everything else is just a setup play.

If the scientific community overwhelmingly and independently comes to the same conclusion over and over again, insisting on being able to discuss other solutions, especially not in the context of academic exploration (because it IS important for the scientific process to check opposing hypothesis and to peer review) but in the Context of telling a baseless opinion easily disputed, then no.

That's like the people who insist on 'discussing other explanazions' for climate change.

And it is more than understandable that this insistence then is seen as the Opposite of good faith arguing and met with resistance. There is no point in giving a forum to harmful lies. That is not productive discourse

They repeated what they said, which is good enough reason to ban them from dozens of communities. People generally portray themselves in the least controversial light possible in these circumstances, so that's the best case scenario.

Many subreddits are the personal spaces of groups of people. Doesn't matter whether it's literally a physical house someone lives in or a metaphorical home for marginalized people. It's still their personal space. They're justified in excluding people even for trivial reasons such as liking the number 7. Blatant transphobia is an obvious reason to ban people from such spaces.

Blocking people from harassing marginalized people is not fascism. Excusing the persecution of marginalized people otoh...

I have opinions on when and how children should be allowed to access cigarettes, alcohol, and motorcycles. Are those opinions also boring, unnecessary, and entitled?

If that medical opinion wasn't backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community, I'd imagine that opinion probably would be.

The medical opinion backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community used to be that alcohol for minors was fine and that cigarettes were good for you.

The medical community is perfectly capable of being wrong and prescribing societal dogma over anything else.

You’re dismissing all of modern medicine there, which IMO is even worse. Knowledge might change, but until it does, we have to follow the current state of science. Otherwise we’re back to guesswork.

No, I'm dismissing the idea that the "medical consensus" is unquestionable truth.

If questioning the medical consensus was always wrong then we'd still believe that handwashing was a waste of time, and cigarettes would probably be lauded as a way to resist the miasma.

When the consensus changed to say that cigarettes and underage drinking are bad, that didn't overthrow the idea that handwashing is still good. And when the consensus changes to say that the modern approach to transitioning has caused more harm than help, that won't overthrow the idea that underage drinking and cigarettes are still bad.

Questioning the medical consensus is ok, as long as you're a medical researcher with a study to show that there's a problem. I don't get the feeling that you are.

Laypeople are perfectly happy to give baseless opinions on my actual field of expertise, only fair I return the favor on other fields. Also how do you propose we get a study which shows the problem if you aren't allowed to ask the question which prompts the study until after the study is done?

Besides, when societal dogma is driving more than anything else then the only expertise you need is to be a member of that society. And nobody can deny me that qualification.

So ban people with dissenting opinions unless they are an expert. Seems like a great totally not authoritarian plan!

In society we routinely have opinions about things which don't affect us personally. We have opinions about murder, for example, and we made it illegal. None of my family have been murdered before. I'm neither a police officer nor a judge nor criminologist. I'm the least qualified person in the room to have an opinion on this, and yet, democracy gives me that right. I choose to continue to vote to make murder illegal because I think it is immoral.

Likewise, I think it is immoral to do this to children:

In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11-years-old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.

“When we asked him regularly how his back felt, he said: ‘I’m in pain all the time’,” she added.

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I get why subs that consider themselves safe spaces for trans folk would ban you for that.

Transitions are Never done willy nilly. Several doctors and psychologists will be in contact with that person before. If they agree it is fine, as Healthcare professionals, then it must be that forcing the person to stay their birth gender will do more harm

Lmao, yeah you deserved to have your trash take "censored". Gender affirming care saves lives, and has a less than 1% "regret rate". For reference, knee replacements have about a 15% rate. Shocking how trans-inclusive spaces don't want transphobes around.

What an excellent example of the kind of person who can fuck right off and out of the fediverse forever.

I think the problem with your opinion is that it conveys that you believe children are being throw into surgery rooms and given sex transitions loosely and without thought to the consequences.

I think your real opinion is that you believe children shouldn't be given unnecessary surgeries. If that is true, the large majority of the population would agree with you.

In addition, have you explored what Doctors believe is a necessary sex transition for a child? What are those parameters? If you don't know, then I would consider your original stance to be of ignorance. Since you really never dive into the subject, most people will assume that you haven't explored those parameters and don't understand the reasoning behind them. That is why you're facing aggression with your opinion.

You're entitled to your opinion, but the consensus among the medical and scientific communities is that you are wrong. They are the experts here, not you. At some point, blindly repeating falsehoods based on prejudice stops being an avenue for constructive debate and instead just wastes everybody's time and makes people angry for no reason.

You're advocating against life-saving treatments. Of course you're going to get shit on.

I’m so glad I signed up on Beehaw where I can flip my app to local only and makes these dog whistling conservative bigots disappear. It’s wonderful. I also never see any downvotes.

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fascism doesnt play fair in the marketplace of ideas, if you invite a nazi to sit at your table you've made it a nazi table. free speech is necessary and important, but we still draw lines for things like defamation and hate speech. another line is not offering a platform to fascists, they arent entitled to a seat at the table to spread fud.

you're like "but i'm not a nazi" , great, let's keep it that way.

how did this discussion devolve into Nazis? I'm afraid you're probably part of the problem.

extreme far right buffoonery

Like the title said, it basically started off with Nazism. No devolution of discussion required.

Thank you for calling that out.

I may have misunderstood the intent of the post. sometimes I skim without meaning to.

Importantly, "free speech" is about government, not privately owned spaces.

We believe the government should not be given the power to censor speech, because people are born into it without a choice. Governments could use this power nefariously, and their citizens would have no meaningful recourse.

Nobody is born into Reddit or kbin or Lemmy. If someone doesn't like the rules of a given instance, they are welcome to leave and free themselves of this burden.

It certainly doesn't. It's just that alt rtght absolutely abuses good will and rules to the extreme and systematically hijacks certain phrases.

See Elon Musk's Twitter as a light example (giving in to authoritarian censorship, and skewing content visibility, while constantly touting himself a "Free speech absolutist"), or the_donald from Reddit, which was mostly made of bots, conspiracy theorists and some sane, but malicious people, banning anyone who's even slightly misaligned.

Some people like the previous commenter are then incorrectly shortcutting hijacked slogans to the alt right. Which was their goal to start with - increasing the friction, uncertainty and division.

To elaborate about free speech we want to mantain sensible environment. So we need to give a boot to astroturfing bots and far, far right neonazis. Though as with most things, moderation is the key.

Elon's acquisition of Twitter serves as an insightful case study of how a corporate CEO can turn what used to be a diverse, tolerant, and bountiful community of netizens with no home for hate speech and misinformation into a sad capitalist bloodbath.

Please take note, Huffman. And please take note, the internet in general.

Yeah TWITTER was "a diverse, tolerant, and bountiful community of netizens" before Musk took over. This is the most insane thing I've read all week.

that I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition.

This would get you permabanned and muted on r/news

Yes, but the "censorship" and "freedoms" they talk about isn't about malicious censorship (I.e. Spez going around quietly editing dissenting comments) or freedom about how our content is used (I.e. Reddit refusing to let people delete their comments).

Their version is about spreading misinformation and hate speech of all kinds, alongside racist and facist ideologies unfiltered and unimpeded. They're malicious actors acting like victims.

We don't want any of that, we want all folks to feel welcome, which is why we have to shoot that down. To maintain a tolerant society, we must only be intolerant of the intolerant.

we want all folks to feel welcome

That's another thing they'll tell you, to add to your point. They'll say general society, or lefties, are unwelcoming hypocrits for expressing the need for inclusion while not including fascists.

They'll word the same opinions in a million ways until they find the way that gets you to allow them to continue blabbering intolerant bull crap.

It's true, those types will use your own rules against you to wipe you out if you let them. It's one of the oldest tricks in the playbook of bad faith arguments.

I bet you we'll see a version of that very argument with the Fediverse when Meta brings "Threads" onto the scene. They'll preach inclusion then use the old EEE tactic to kill us off.

I'm a big fan of free speech.

Nazis scare minorities into not being able to fully exercise their right to free speech.

So censoring the far right actually results in a net gain in free speech for society and communities as a whole.

That's the Paradox, they use tolerance to fill the space with intolerance.

I said it in a comment below and I'll write it out again because it is a great point (that I have seen several times on Mastodon, not that I thought up on my own) that the only way to resolve the Paradox of Tolerance is to understand tolerance as a social contract.

Nazis start from not adhering to the contract, because they refuse to tolerate certain identities. TERFS refuse to tolerate trans identities. Neither the Nazi nor the TERF viewpoint is entitled to tolerance. Compare to Furries, who have no problem with non-furry identities but are often not welcomed because they are so very very strange. Tolerance is for furries, not nazis.

Karl popper babyyyy

Going to bring it up again, the Paradox of Tolerance disappears when you consider tolerance a social contract rather than a moral standard.

Nazis base their identity and politics around not tolerating the presence of various minorities, and therefore aren't entitled to tolerance themselves.

TERFs base their identity and politics areound not tolerating trans people, and therefore aren't entitled to tolerance themselves.

Furries don't base their identity on excluding, invalidating or persecuting someone else, so furries are entitled to tolerance.

So, the furry boards stay but we need to defederate Nazis and TERFs.

There's always going to be some fuzzy edge cases, unfortunately. When tolerance becomes such an important and powerful thing it will become easily weaponized and subject to misinterpretation, deliberate or otherwise.

Oh yeah, but honestly if we can just keep the big troublemakers out and set a line in the sand we can put up with the fuzzy edge cases. It would also be necessary to consider tolerance a concept that goes beyond interpersonal interaction. Like, okay, this guy is civil but what he's saying is that genocide is okay. Or, okay, this guy is rubbing me the wrong way but at its core "Archer is a better Captain than Sisko"* is not fundamentally about race, it could honestly be he just prefers Archer.

*Sisko is a better Captain than Archer, this is fact. But sometimes people are just wrong and that's okay.

Which captain poisoned the atmosphere of a whole planet just for his personal vendetta against one guy?

Which captain initiated the murder of an innocent diplomat just to get his way?

Don’t get me wrong, Sisko made for better stories, but being a good captain is a different category.

I knew I'd get one.

Archer's problem is that he's weak, kind of cowardly, and a bully. I watched the whole series, but you only need watch Cogenitor to see it. Even Lorca would've kept a promise to one of his crew.

Sisko did some stuff we can argue about, but he has the courage to make the choice according to his principles. I can't put Archer in Sisko's situations and see him coming out better.

Also, Sisko punched Q. Knowing FULLY who Q was. Nothing can detract from punching Q.

the guy who gave us the Paradox of Tolerance also gave us Falsifiability, They should teach him in grade school.

I always say that there is no paradox of tolerance, because tolerance doesn't work that way.

It's not a wide open door. No tolerance is a compact. It's a peace treaty. A social contract that can be violated, and those who violate it can then be excluded from it until they stop being hateful idiots.

Reddit was filled with a special brand of retards always trying to police language always acting smug about taking about some weird moral high road it is exhausting to deal with. People irl dont have such tight asses about speech. And permabanning someone for having an opinion you dont agree with is an abuse of power (not like it matters much to people who are so zealous about policing public morality). Obviously dont be a shitter and start spouting off trump supporters special brand of koolaid but if you feel like trans women should not compete with biological women in professional womens sports then you are free to think that way.

Speaking of speech:

Using the word "retard" as a derogatory term is pretty offensive to those born with developmental defects. It's similar to how we used to use "gay" in a similar way a few decades ago. It's pretty shitty.

you are free to feel that way but the mods are not free to ban me for my shitty vocab. they can just call me an asshole and move on like every other website

You are entirely in control of what you say.. but it sounds like what you meant is not in line with what you're saying.

Do you deliberately want to belittle people with developmental issues? It doesn't sound like it. I think what @Dr_Cog is trying to say is that you should consider lining up the words you use with the message you're actually trying to convey.

Do you deliberately want to belittle people with developmental issues

no one is attacking people with developmental disabilities by calling something retarded if you want to take it that way your are free to do so its your opinion not mine and even if you try to twist my words to suit your fucked up narrative i know what i mean and thats what matters to me

Sounds like you've had this conversation before and you are comfortable being on the merry-go-around.

I’m honestly sure you don’t mean “retarded” as a personal attack against people with developmental disabilities.

There’s also a very long history of people using that exact same word to attack them. Many people who make arguments like yours, that they should still get to use the word, tend to also be prejudiced against these people and treat them poorly. Maybe you’re not like that, but using that word does make you look a lot more like these people.

You making an argument to try to keep using the word, even though it hurts people, essentially tells them “I will not change one word in my vocabulary to accommodate your feelings and history of being hurt by this word.” Your choice on if you want to change your words to in an effort to get people to interpret you in a way that better matches your intent, or if you’d like to stick to your guns even if it means lots of people will get hurt. After all, people are free to interpret words however they wish, including in ways that you don’t intend them to and ways you don’t mean. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people affected by this word to not want you in their communities if you want to keep using that word, at least if they didn’t promise you absolute freedom of speech.

Hey if the mods want to remove folks like me so be it. Do i make extensive use of such slurs in my day to day vocabulary? (Not really) i mainly want to test the waters and see how hard the mods and the community comes down on me for it. Can i speak like normal or will i have to sing song dance around subjects like on reddit.

Technically depends on the instance. The Fediverse supports free expression in the sense that you can spin up your own instance and say whatever you want. Flip side, any other instance can de-federate with your instance if they don't want to listen to your BS^1.

For instance, my instance^2 would probably police my ability to use slurs. Which is fine. I certainly am a member of some groups for which slurs exist, and if some asshole started spewing that BS in my house, I would express myself by kicking them the f*ck out. Likewise I chose an instance where I can be comfortable, and not have to deal with being harassed for who I just happen to be. My choice of an instance is largely founded on its Code of Conduct. In exchange, I extend the same courtesy to others on my instance.

It's almost like a social contract...

Anyway, point being, as a consequence of different instances having different Codes of Conduct (even if just minor changes), you will technically be bound by both the CoC of your home instance and the home instance of the community/magazine.

lol ok i just want to hang in a place that isnt all uptight or uppity about language

Good luck with your quest. May you find that place eventually.

Speaking as someone with a speech impediment, using the word "the" is super offensive to me. It's basically a slur. If you don't stop using it immediately, I have no choice but to report you for being a Nazi.

Same. I hate censorship there and came for the freedom here

What censorship and freedom are you talking about?

I once said in the World News subreddit during the initial days of Russia invading Ukraine "fuck Russia. Also fuck China" and made it clear I was talking about their governments, and was banned. I also commented in Old School Cool subreddit a benign mention that OP's mom was attractive and got banned. I also told the mods of another subreddit that allowed comments on how to encourage violence at drag shows (can't remember where now) they were fascist pieces of shit, no mincing of words, and literally had an account ban from reddit due to too many strikes.

I can tell fascists and tankies here to go fuck themselves here consistently without fear of reprisal by a fat unemployed useless mentally retarded moderator on a power trip.

Fuck reddit and it's inconsistent censorship.

Wow, the only reasonable comment talking about "censorship" in this thread.
Another example I can think of is when the CCP announced that they were going to put restrictions on depicting "feminine men" in media, so I went to r/GenshinImpact to see the riots that would unfold from having their femboys taken away. there was a post about it that appeared on google but had been removed, so I went on there using removeddit and found several with over 3k upvotes each that had all been removed, undoubtedly by the mods shilling for the Chinese government.

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