Mod here. Just want to openly and unequivocally state... I will remove your comment if you're transphobic. I will refer to trans people to let me know if you are being transphobic. I will ban you if you make an egregiously off colour comment. and I will take pleasure in doing this. Fuck your transphobic bullshit, go somewhere else. Nobody wants you here.
Cis guy here. Based mod.
Thanks for everything you do to keep this community safe. I know it can't be easy.
idk, I just got to yeet like at least a handful of transphobes into oblivion so.... was pretty fun.
It's important to find work that also nourishes your soul.
Fucking A right. n
You are amazing, brave people and deserve a place in society where you are loved
. M
👍
Thank you so much!
God bless it I fucking love lemmy! 😄
Uhhh???? Based??????????
Thank you for not being reddit.
Lol
What a hero
Bruh, just do your job/hobby. Mods acting high and mighty is a big part of what made reddit so toxic.
This is my job: to make perfectly clear what is and isn't allowed. In no uncertain terms I will make sure this place is as free from transphobia as possible.
The good thing about Lemmy you can move to another instance with free speech.
This is free speech. They get to say what they please. They are not free from the consequences of those words however. I, as a private citizen and not a governmental actor, can censor them.
I disagree, free speech means the right to express any opinions and ideas without censorship or restraint even if you find them offensive.
You said you will remove any comment that is transphobic and ban if "you make an egregiously off colour comment".
That is not free speech, and it's ok. Your instance, your rules.
They can say what they want without restraint or restriction. They are not free from the consequences of their words.
They can say what they like. We can ban them if we don't like it. That's how free speech works in a consequentialist society (modern Western society is a synthesis of consequentialism and contractualism).
That's literally not free speech. If I say I like to eat broccoli every day and that people should try it for health reasons and you're some kind of carnivore mod and it tickles you the wrong way and you block me for it... That's censorship and the opposite of free speech.
You're telling me that you control the narrative. Now there's nuance to censorship for sure, but you're telling me that if you don't like what I say I'm out. I have to type within the confines of the bubble of what isn't too uncomfortable for you.
I say let the downvotes do the talking. If I go on the electric vehicles instance talking about how (non-ironocally) I love to roll coal and how that's what's keeping me from trying EVs, I expect to be downvoted into the shadow realm. And that's ok. What I'm not ok with is a mod assuming that my voice sucks and that I don't deserve to be heard. Maybe some smart lemmier(?) will point out some doodad that makes a brrr noise and shoots out some harmless mist or something.
You have the right to be an asshole. Mods have the right to ban you for being an asshole.
Making out that they're nasty for having some standards of behaviour in their area is calling good bad and bad good.
(Censorship is when local or national government put you in prison for protesting or ban your book or ban your ideas. That's when your free speech rights are being infringed.)
Censor and banning opinions and ideas you don't like is anti free speech.
You were allowed to say it. I'm allowed to remove it. Welcome to the world. Don't like it? Leave.
But also: nobody in the world actually likes the idea of absolutist free speech. The founding fathers certainly didn't believe in such an idea.
Friend, I appreciate your mod efforts, and I support 100% what you're doing here.
Having said that, I think there is a misalignment in terms of free speech definitions.
What I think you're saying is that people are free to express themselves, and the government (in the U.S., Italy, Argentina, wherever) will not censor you for that. However, a consequence of that is that you can ban them. Fair enough.
But people are not referring to the free speech in the country, region or whether. They're specifically referring to the exercising of free speech in the community you are moderating. You're saying that "there is free speech here," then it follows that transphobic comments should be allowed (something I wouldn't like because fuck transphobes.) But since you remove comments that don't align with the community, then the community doesn't have free speech - and that's okay. I'm just referring to the contradiction: "you're allowed to say what you want, but I will ban you if you say this or that" - welp, that just means that "this or that" is not allowed.
I think that's what the other commenters are saying. They're not criticizing you for removing comments. They're calling out that removing comments (as a consequence of speech) and claiming that there is free speech, well no, technically it isn't.
Well yeah, but they expect people talking nonsense to get pummeled in the court of public opinion
Free speech is about the government not being able to restrict your speech. Guess what? Lemmy isn't the government.
Lemmy is a protocol so there can be instances with free speech even if you don't like it.
This makes no sense in reply to my comment. Free speech is about the government, changing Lemmy instances won't change the fact that Lemmy is not the government. My opinion, views, etc have nothing to do with this. As far as free speech is concerned a community would be free to remove trans positive comments if they so chose.
I disagree free speech also applies to institutions, social or cultural norms and platforms as Lemmy.
You disagree that Lemmy is not the government? I'm talking about law here, not opinions.
Censorship and restraint from the government. This isn't that, so the consequences are not covered.
I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying "no surgical modifications"... because doing things like facelift, nose-job, breast/buttox implants, cheek lifts, wrinkle removal, etc, are obviously unfair advantages (in a beauty contest) for those who have the money pay for it; and having a generic blanket rule like that would have accomplished the same thing they were trying to accomplish without being so blatantly transphobic... so a rule like what they have only proves that they are both despicable AND dumb. The entire notion of beauty pageants is outdated and stupid if you ask me.
Lol, you implement that and basically all beauty pageants stop existing. Which would be a good thing, mind you. But I've never met a pageant contestant in my life that isn't … let's say … heavily enhanced by medical procedures.
I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying “no surgical modifications”…
How are you intending to prove that that? Only the bad surgery makes itself obvious.
Like any kind of contest, finding rules violations is hard and not foolproof. It's like sports that forbid using steroids - competitors do regularly take those substances while training, then quit taking them for competition and go uncaught. Competitors who are discovered later to have been violating rules are stripped of titles.
That said, I don't think it's a very controversial concept that a beauty pageant shouldn't be a contest about who could afford the best surgeons. Well - as I said earlier I think beauty pageants are absurd to begin with, but if they have to exist I don't think it should be a contest between surgeons.
Though I would watch one that was a contest between surgeons. I imagine it'd start pretty tame, but the first time a girl with cat ears wins, were only like 5 years from the really crazy shit
This would be hilarious if it happened.
They are absurd and it'll probably be a good thing when we've got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It's quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that's just one thing, and I'm not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.
One of the contest’s rules says you can’t participate if you willingly had a nude photo took in your lifetime. Good luck proving that (not even considering how it’s a honeypot for revenge porn to surface)
Elia Bonci, who also spoke to la Repubblica, said: “I took courage, used my deadname and signed up for Miss Italy because fighting transphobia is intersectional and even though I’m not a trans woman, I’ve decided to fight for their rights.”
much respect to all that followed!
I'm confused. If they are using a dead name how are they not trans?
They are trans men, who the organizers consider women as opposed to the trans women who can't compete because they consider them men.
I'm gonna need a pen and paper for this one.
I'll summarize:
The contest organizers don't accept trans women (AKA assigned male at birth, transitioned to female)
This means that they are being transphobic, they aren't treating trans women as women.
The person in the article is the opposite, assigned female at birth and transitioned to male. AKA a trans man.
This person is considered a woman by the beauty contest despite identifying as male.
He entered the beauty contest as a form of protest and to bring attention to the blatant transphobia.
“Transphobia” idk I just think they don’t want certain ideologies in their shows. Makes sense to me but you guys will probably start spamming slurs at me if I keep speaking so…
Edit: I agree the rules are dumb and contradictory but calling it transphobia is just hilarious to me
"We exist" isn't an ideology.
Fair but I just thought calling it transphobia was over the top
You are actually a little bit correct.
Most uses of the misnomer "transphobia" are actually incorrect, because the people involved aren't actually suffering from an irrational medical or psychological fear of transgender people.
What they actually are doing is more accurately called "transmisia", because they are transmisic. This means they are heavily prejudiced against transgender women and believe that they shouldn't be involved in the competitions.
Their reason for this are not because the transgender women don't meet the beauty standards, or aren't passing the judging categories, but because they just don't want them there purely due to their trans-mysogynistic preconceptions.
You are actually a little bit incorrect.
In the vein of words like homophobia, these words' definitions are not strictly in line with their etymology. Per every dictionary (but quoting Webster), transphobia is defined as:
irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people
And this might create some linguistic ambiguity, but I cannot seem to find actual documentation on a medical or psychological fear of transgender people at all. It seems this behavior is entirely (or almost entirely) a learned bigotry.
The other word, "transmisia", has not really been officially adopted in any circle I can find. The only place I could find it with any prominance is a site called the "Trans Language Primer", and I know nothing about it (except that it looks like geocities) so I won't be linking it directly. Suffice to say, they speak negatively of the term (despite defending it as having a good intention) and favor "transphobia" for reasons of clarity.
So like, according to the organizers, if they were born with a penis, it doesn't matter if they transitioned, they are considered men.
This trans man (a person born with a vagina who transitioned ) is entering the contest, because if trans women are considered men, trans men are considered women.
So this dude is entering a "female" beauty contest to show how dumb the rules are. He is allowed to do so because said dumb rules make him a woman in the eyes of the organization.
We need a powerpoint explaining the 5D transphobia.
Think the others were missing the point - they are trans men. Their dead name is their dead female name.
The ruling was to prevent trans women from competing, so while they can't stand for trans women, they'll stand for all trans.
This is deliciously rich. They really painted themselves into a corner with that one!
For context, Miss Italia is no longer broadcasted on important tv channels and almost no one watches or care about who wins now. Years ago (10?) it was a big thing and winners would make commercials and do movies/series and be remembered for life. But it’s too an old school concept now
Anyway, I love this turn of events
Source: Italian
I'm glad to hear Italy is moving past its Berlusconi era.
Does this mean we won't be able to see it live? Or at all?
I just googled it, apparently it might come back to the first national tv channel for 2023, we'll see, anyway it was streamed on the official website before that and for the last 4 years
Will they have the power to reject candidates? Maybe I'm naive to think they'll have the trans men compete too but I wanna see how it'll play out.
I think they totally can reject who they want... usually competitors are the winners of local beauty contest, so there's a lot of ways to be excluded before even reaching the last decision stage. But not sure, I never really cared for it
Aw... I see. Thanks for the answers, I appreciate it.
Of course 🙌
I hope he wins. That'd be really funny.
Imagine a buff, bearded person that identifies as male wins in a contest that measures female beauty
I know right? It'll finally make pagents worth watching.
We should also get drag queen bodybuilding competitions. If everything is going to be reality TV for a while (support the strike, by the way) I'd at least want them to be entertaining.
I would love to see drag queen strong person competitions. Imagine log rolling in heels and an evening gown?
Ooh, or maybe like that next ninja whatever show. I can't remember what it's called. The one with all the crazy acrobatics and stuff. Imagine having to do that obstacle course where you hang from the bar and "jump" while holding the bar to the next slot, but you have to sing And I Am Telling You while you do it!
American TV could get real fucking good, real fucking fast.
Holy crapoli, I've tried other peoples heels briefly a few times. I have no idea how people even walk in them let alone log roll in them! That sounds like some great entertainment tbh.
Or imagine one of those lumberjack competitions where they scale the trees and top them.
This is the kind of television we need!
Imagine them having to apply makeup while running chainsaws? It'd put japanese games shows to shame!
YES. This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying!!! Like honestly, as a cis woman from Italy I’m so embarrassed by this nonsense. Like, cutting trans women out of the competition at this moment just means people are recognizing that trans women are “unfairly” more good looking than cis women. Which, personally, is true in my case but you don’t see me bitching about it.
Fuck yeah trans dudes, trans chicks and non-binary buddies.
Wait what? I get why someone would forbid trans women from participating in female sports events, but why TF can't they go to beauty contests?
Because excluding trans women from sports was never actually about fairness. It's about normalizing excluding trans people from aspects of public life.
It's wrong to ban trans women from women's sports, because trans women are women.
But they have the muscles of a male and usually beat all women-since-birth in competitions.
Yeah, Ik I'm gonna get downvoted to oblivion and I'm gonna get called TERF but that's the reason it's controversial in the first place
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears.
"While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women."
There's also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
It's rare that I see someone type a comment that mentions everything I want to say. You rock!
Here is my question though, and if you have any info I'd love to see it.
Do performance enhancing drugs interact in men and women the same way? I ask since not all enhancing drugs are banned.
If yes, how do these interact with tans people? Would a trans woman be able to get more positive effects from the drugs?
I'm trans and I actually agree with you. I don't know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn't want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I'd been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn't be competing against people without that advantage.
It's debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it's a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There's no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don't think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don't think that should be controversial since the gender isn't what people care about there. It's the physical characteristics.
In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it's important to discuss!
At that point, however, you'd be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like 'feather weight' or 'strong muscular development' or something
Just make it body mass based
I think this is where it makes sense to go. Like wrestling, right? Just make every sport competition divided on gender if it’s that important, and then divided on the basis of body mass. Although frankly I think that would make every sport ten times more boring than it needs to be. Like smaller athletes usually need to figure out a way to still compete, and that’s where part of the fun is, both in competing and watching. If an athlete feels disadvantaged, they’re just lazy and not training well or enough.
Then again, I do think sports should be less owned by massive corporations and media companies, and move more to their dimension of play, admiration for each other and self-improvement. Not saying sports shouldn’t be jobs and not have money go in and out, but they should center that dimension a lot less.
I mean... some cis women are born thicker and taller than others which might be an advantage over other women, biologically. Yet, nobody disqualifies those women from competing. It just means everyone else has to be twice as competitive and work around their physical limits. Sports are largely about overcoming one’s performance limits. Like, a shorter basketball player can still play basketball and be really good at it, it’s all about how they train, what they focus on and how they play. And it’s about how good they are at dealing with the space around them and controlling their body. This was always the case, always in the history of sports. Being a stronger athlete was never a problem before, and now suddenly it is? It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s just an excuse for bad athletes who don’t wanna git gud to demand special treatment. I’m speaking as a cis woman who’s bigger than most other women around me. Not my fault that I can accidentally throw other chicks to the bleachers without even being aware of them, and I’m still a woman no matter how other people see me. So yeah, this whole discourse affects me too, because trans people being targeted also targets any person who was born intersex or just different.
What’s your idea of what a trans woman’s body looks like, exactly? Like, do you think a trans woman is just “a man in a dress”? Because that’s just straight up inaccurate in every way. HRT changes trans people’s bodies and how those bodies work. That’s why we say “trans women are women and trans men are men”.
Like, would you think making someone with the body of Buck Angel compete in women’s competitions would be fair? Google Buck Angel, look at him and then come back at me.
Hormones are not going to reshape someone's body structure
Except they do. Literally look at any picture of a trans woman before and after transitioning. Their bodies literally change in every sense.
"Oh their fat is accumulated in other places"
I'm talking about internal stuff
“Internal stuff”? What do you mean? You mean like men have more organs than women or something...? What kinda statement is this
No, but sizes and positions do have slight variations
Can you be more specific though?
Ok, hold on, why would you forbid trans women from competing? Because of “unfair advantages”?
First off, trans women who completed their transition don’t have a male body. They have a female body. And some athletes are naturally better at some sports than others. Like, shorter basketball players are naturally disadvantaged at basket, which is why they need to train twice as hard as taller players or switch to another sport.
Also, every whiny white woman complaining about trans women doing better than them always forgets to mention the athletes winning are still the cis ones, which destroys the idea that trans women have an advantage.
The point never held up either in sports nor anywhere else. And it was never about sports anyway.
Bone and muscle structure won't change because of transition
You’d be surprised.
From experience, female clothes aren't proportioned to fit trans women as well as cis women. While in your other comment you make a good point about some cis women also being outside the 'conventional' physical expectations for women in western society, that doesn't also mean that trans people don't face the same issues. We talk about these problems from a trans perspective because trans people are often targeted with legislation and rules from people who don't understand, and are blocked from being treated as their preferred gender.
A bulky cis woman might share physical characteristics with a trans woman, but their existence is also significantly less opposed.
Oh yeah, for sure, I’m not saying gnc cis woman face the same amount of oppression as trans women. What I’m saying is, by shoving people into very restrictive, hyper-specific boxes, we end up excluding people who by definition shouldn’t be excluded. Like the cis athlete who was excluded from competing because she naturally produces more testosterone than the others. While being cis, again. Or like, all the cis gnc women who get attacked or murdered because transphobes think they’re trans when they’re not.
My point is, women aren’t all the same. Also, women who are naturally prone to packing muscles can and sometimes do go toe to toe with men in terms of height and strength. But they’re still cis women, and should compete as cis women.
But all of this is pointless anyway: this is a BEAUTY contest, and excluding trans women in this historical period is basically like saying trans women have “unfair advantages in the field of beauty” which I mean, could be, but it’s very much a self-report. There’s also the objection that “trans women do surgeries to look the way they look” which yeah, true, but cis women who participate in Miss Italia also very much do get surgery to look the way they look. Matter of fact, there have been multiple scandals about Miss Italy winners having gone through plastic surgery to win. So I mean, everything goes.
Absolute chads. I'm curious what kind of response this is going to get.
"You're not beautiful enough for a contest about female beauty with your male presentation, therefore we reject your application"
Cold and passive-agressive, just like an actual organisation would answer
This is fantastic, while having them obviously in drag is delicious, it would be even more stark if some of them present as traditional male too and really bring the point home.
Wait, they have to tell the organizers such sensible details?
Are they required to be virgins too?
You're thinking of Miss Vatican.
Beauty Pageants are uglyphobic.
Bodybuilding competitions are fatphobic
hah, this one is funny!
Also, echoing @Imotali@lemmy.world's comment below (unfortunately you can't sticky comments on lemmy): comments that express hate towards any group are a violation of instance guidelines. BE NICE.
I'd be more interested in protesting the fact that it's now legal to grope women in Italy.
The landmark decision involved a school janitor who jammed his hand into a 17 year old girl's panties.
Pick the hill you want to die on.
Both. I choose both.
I'm sure they care about both of those things.
It seems like a particularly neanderthal legal development.
Yes, it is.
"Why do this one good thing when you should be doing another good thing instead?"
This is a pretty awesome way to protest and show solidarity. These trans men are ballsy as fuck and I salute them.
He is like: "I used the transphobia to destroy the transphobia"
So I thought I would look at the modlog in this thread
Heavily downvoted sure, but what rule is it breaking?
They were banned for transphobia. Finish that comment. Don't cherry pick their words. Transphobia and bigotry are against the rules here. As a cis person, I don't get to decide what is transphobic; trans people do.
I don't think they got banned? not sure
I didn't post the whole comment precisely because it got removed by a mod.
In my view, the moderation of a forum should be based on rules, not on individual's judgements.
I banned them. And transphobia is against the rules of this entire instance (not just this community).
If we can tell the differences between woman, why do different rules apply depending if youre born woman or not?
Besides having an opinion about something that doesnt affect you, seems quite reasonable is it not?
Trans women were born a woman. I'm not trans so I don't get to decide what is or isn't transphobia just like I don't get to decide what's racist towards black people because I'm not black. I don't get a vote because it doesn't affect me.
I think the issue is that there is no such thing as a "biological woman". Manhood/womanhood is an issue of gender, not sex, and gender is something that we collectively made up whose meaning varies from person to person and from culture to culture. The only person who is capable of saying "Person McFaceface is/is not a woman" is Person McFaceface.
Even if we were to interpret their comment to mean "sex", that isn't a simple binary yes/no kind of question. There is no single trait that determines maleness or femaleness, and lots of people have traits indicative of both sexes or of neither sex (or they were born that way then surgically altered shortly after birth), and sometimes those traits are so hidden and so internal that the person themself doesn't know about it.
But do you think it deserved to be removed? You could have answered that directly to the commenter
IMO, this is too strict.
Yes, I do. This is a space where trans rights and trans people are respected. That means that their existence is accepted as fact, not debated in the comment section.
There are numerous places and resources available for that person to educate themself, if they had chosen to do so before commenting. Instead, they chose to comment from a place of ignorance. We have no obligation to offer them that education here.
I'm just enforcing the rules of this instance. Specifically hate towards any specific group (which includes rhetoric designed to oppress) is against the rules.
Sorry, not sorry. In fact, I took great joy in removing the transphobes from this comment section. I only removed egregious errors.
In a way you could say I'm maliciously complying with the instance rules.
I got that yesterday, why the encore?
use that tiny amount of power you say you enjoy so much and ban me. This good people circlejerk is of no interest
You've not said anything rule breaking, let alone transphobic enough to be banned. Saying unpopular things will not get you banned/comment removed.
Is being a terrible person with bad takes against the rules? I haven't checked.
Thee has't did challenge the hive mind, anon prepareth to receiveth downvot'd to oblivion
I actually think a lot of people are confused because they didn't read the article or know what community they're in, so I'll take the downvotes in stride.
Trans people are people too no matter which arrow you hit.
Mods are hive minds? Are you sure about that?
Not talking about the other guy, but about the guy who I was answering
No, because trans men are "biologically women" and are thus specifically allowed by this approach. It's the same kind of conflation that causes the bathroom issues. People only seem to understand that trans women exist and think they are the same as trans men. Reminding people that trans men exist hopefully gets peoples brains working.
It eould be a Interesting Idea to make a Trans-Fenake Fashion Show as Protest.
What is protest part? Not sure it is malicious compliance either because contestant was not rebirthed as woman. Not that it's possible unless you are buddhist.
Trans Europe Express
Would they win in a contest that has female beauty parameters tho? It's like judging an M based on how similar it looks to an F
That's not the fucking point, clownshoes!
Then what is it?
It's not about winning, it's about sending a message. The message being that trans women shouldn't have any problem competing with cis women if the judges feel that trans men will have a problem competing with cis women. I hope that make sense to read.
Ok sure. But it's not really an effective protest as they're fulfilling the requirement to enter the competition. Because the competition is steered by judges they will simply eliminate the trans men in the first round.
The rule is there to make sure the judges are not sexually aroused when they see a trans woman.
A greater means of protest would be if the non-trans competitors all quit the pageant. But their look is their only talent, so they won't.
Has anyone ever seen a "woman from birth"? Like a whole-ass adult woman popping out of somebody not appreciably larger than her? Ready for a beauty pageant at zero minutes old?
Completely independent of gender, people should know that "women" are adults and have zero overlap with "children" or especially "newborn infants".
Or is this a bad translation from the Italian?
Perhaps it should say "female from birth". But anyone with basic reading comprehension would understand this. Probably you know this and are being unnecessarily pedantic/argumentative.
Men don't understand no, I've heard this before...
In what way? I don't understand how that pertains to this.
This happens when transphobes forgets that trans men exists lol.
I'd love to
watchforcefeed them a plate of their, "you will always be a woman" words.They exist? Thought they were a fairytale
I know three.
In fact, come to think of it, I only know two trans women, so I know more trans men than trans women.
Fairy*
Mod here. Just want to openly and unequivocally state... I will remove your comment if you're transphobic. I will refer to trans people to let me know if you are being transphobic. I will ban you if you make an egregiously off colour comment. and I will take pleasure in doing this. Fuck your transphobic bullshit, go somewhere else. Nobody wants you here.
Cis guy here. Based mod.
Thanks for everything you do to keep this community safe. I know it can't be easy.
idk, I just got to yeet like at least a handful of transphobes into oblivion so.... was pretty fun.
It's important to find work that also nourishes your soul.
Fucking A right. n
You are amazing, brave people and deserve a place in society where you are loved . M
👍
Thank you so much!
God bless it I fucking love lemmy! 😄
Uhhh???? Based??????????
Thank you for not being reddit.
Lol
What a hero
Bruh, just do your job/hobby. Mods acting high and mighty is a big part of what made reddit so toxic.
This is my job: to make perfectly clear what is and isn't allowed. In no uncertain terms I will make sure this place is as free from transphobia as possible.
The good thing about Lemmy you can move to another instance with free speech.
This is free speech. They get to say what they please. They are not free from the consequences of those words however. I, as a private citizen and not a governmental actor, can censor them.
I disagree, free speech means the right to express any opinions and ideas without censorship or restraint even if you find them offensive.
You said you will remove any comment that is transphobic and ban if "you make an egregiously off colour comment".
That is not free speech, and it's ok. Your instance, your rules.
They can say what they want without restraint or restriction. They are not free from the consequences of their words.
They can say what they like. We can ban them if we don't like it. That's how free speech works in a consequentialist society (modern Western society is a synthesis of consequentialism and contractualism).
That's literally not free speech. If I say I like to eat broccoli every day and that people should try it for health reasons and you're some kind of carnivore mod and it tickles you the wrong way and you block me for it... That's censorship and the opposite of free speech.
You're telling me that you control the narrative. Now there's nuance to censorship for sure, but you're telling me that if you don't like what I say I'm out. I have to type within the confines of the bubble of what isn't too uncomfortable for you.
I say let the downvotes do the talking. If I go on the electric vehicles instance talking about how (non-ironocally) I love to roll coal and how that's what's keeping me from trying EVs, I expect to be downvoted into the shadow realm. And that's ok. What I'm not ok with is a mod assuming that my voice sucks and that I don't deserve to be heard. Maybe some smart lemmier(?) will point out some doodad that makes a brrr noise and shoots out some harmless mist or something.
You have the right to be an asshole. Mods have the right to ban you for being an asshole.
Making out that they're nasty for having some standards of behaviour in their area is calling good bad and bad good.
(Censorship is when local or national government put you in prison for protesting or ban your book or ban your ideas. That's when your free speech rights are being infringed.)
Censor and banning opinions and ideas you don't like is anti free speech.
You were allowed to say it. I'm allowed to remove it. Welcome to the world. Don't like it? Leave.
But also: nobody in the world actually likes the idea of absolutist free speech. The founding fathers certainly didn't believe in such an idea.
Friend, I appreciate your mod efforts, and I support 100% what you're doing here.
Having said that, I think there is a misalignment in terms of free speech definitions.
What I think you're saying is that people are free to express themselves, and the government (in the U.S., Italy, Argentina, wherever) will not censor you for that. However, a consequence of that is that you can ban them. Fair enough.
But people are not referring to the free speech in the country, region or whether. They're specifically referring to the exercising of free speech in the community you are moderating. You're saying that "there is free speech here," then it follows that transphobic comments should be allowed (something I wouldn't like because fuck transphobes.) But since you remove comments that don't align with the community, then the community doesn't have free speech - and that's okay. I'm just referring to the contradiction: "you're allowed to say what you want, but I will ban you if you say this or that" - welp, that just means that "this or that" is not allowed.
I think that's what the other commenters are saying. They're not criticizing you for removing comments. They're calling out that removing comments (as a consequence of speech) and claiming that there is free speech, well no, technically it isn't.
Well yeah, but they expect people talking nonsense to get pummeled in the court of public opinion
Free speech is about the government not being able to restrict your speech. Guess what? Lemmy isn't the government.
Lemmy is a protocol so there can be instances with free speech even if you don't like it.
This makes no sense in reply to my comment. Free speech is about the government, changing Lemmy instances won't change the fact that Lemmy is not the government. My opinion, views, etc have nothing to do with this. As far as free speech is concerned a community would be free to remove trans positive comments if they so chose.
I disagree free speech also applies to institutions, social or cultural norms and platforms as Lemmy.
You disagree that Lemmy is not the government? I'm talking about law here, not opinions.
Censorship and restraint from the government. This isn't that, so the consequences are not covered.
I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying "no surgical modifications"... because doing things like facelift, nose-job, breast/buttox implants, cheek lifts, wrinkle removal, etc, are obviously unfair advantages (in a beauty contest) for those who have the money pay for it; and having a generic blanket rule like that would have accomplished the same thing they were trying to accomplish without being so blatantly transphobic... so a rule like what they have only proves that they are both despicable AND dumb. The entire notion of beauty pageants is outdated and stupid if you ask me.
Lol, you implement that and basically all beauty pageants stop existing. Which would be a good thing, mind you. But I've never met a pageant contestant in my life that isn't … let's say … heavily enhanced by medical procedures.
Based
How are you intending to prove that that? Only the bad surgery makes itself obvious.
Like any kind of contest, finding rules violations is hard and not foolproof. It's like sports that forbid using steroids - competitors do regularly take those substances while training, then quit taking them for competition and go uncaught. Competitors who are discovered later to have been violating rules are stripped of titles.
That said, I don't think it's a very controversial concept that a beauty pageant shouldn't be a contest about who could afford the best surgeons. Well - as I said earlier I think beauty pageants are absurd to begin with, but if they have to exist I don't think it should be a contest between surgeons.
Though I would watch one that was a contest between surgeons. I imagine it'd start pretty tame, but the first time a girl with cat ears wins, were only like 5 years from the really crazy shit
This would be hilarious if it happened.
They are absurd and it'll probably be a good thing when we've got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It's quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that's just one thing, and I'm not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.
One of the contest’s rules says you can’t participate if you willingly had a nude photo took in your lifetime. Good luck proving that (not even considering how it’s a honeypot for revenge porn to surface)
Does saline glow under a blacklight?
Only if you drink enough Gatorade 😂
On the one hand, that might work. On the other hand, who gives a fuck about the rules in a contest with arbitrary standards?
So, no contestants who have had their wisdom teeth removed? No one allowed who has had a C-section? No cancer patients who have had biopsies done?
much respect to all that followed!
I'm confused. If they are using a dead name how are they not trans?
They are trans men, who the organizers consider women as opposed to the trans women who can't compete because they consider them men.
I'm gonna need a pen and paper for this one.
I'll summarize:
The contest organizers don't accept trans women (AKA assigned male at birth, transitioned to female)
This means that they are being transphobic, they aren't treating trans women as women.
The person in the article is the opposite, assigned female at birth and transitioned to male. AKA a trans man.
This person is considered a woman by the beauty contest despite identifying as male.
He entered the beauty contest as a form of protest and to bring attention to the blatant transphobia.
“Transphobia” idk I just think they don’t want certain ideologies in their shows. Makes sense to me but you guys will probably start spamming slurs at me if I keep speaking so…
Edit: I agree the rules are dumb and contradictory but calling it transphobia is just hilarious to me
"We exist" isn't an ideology.
Fair but I just thought calling it transphobia was over the top
You are actually a little bit correct.
Most uses of the misnomer "transphobia" are actually incorrect, because the people involved aren't actually suffering from an irrational medical or psychological fear of transgender people.
What they actually are doing is more accurately called "transmisia", because they are transmisic. This means they are heavily prejudiced against transgender women and believe that they shouldn't be involved in the competitions.
Their reason for this are not because the transgender women don't meet the beauty standards, or aren't passing the judging categories, but because they just don't want them there purely due to their trans-mysogynistic preconceptions.
You are actually a little bit incorrect.
In the vein of words like homophobia, these words' definitions are not strictly in line with their etymology. Per every dictionary (but quoting Webster), transphobia is defined as:
And this might create some linguistic ambiguity, but I cannot seem to find actual documentation on a medical or psychological fear of transgender people at all. It seems this behavior is entirely (or almost entirely) a learned bigotry.
The other word, "transmisia", has not really been officially adopted in any circle I can find. The only place I could find it with any prominance is a site called the "Trans Language Primer", and I know nothing about it (except that it looks like geocities) so I won't be linking it directly. Suffice to say, they speak negatively of the term (despite defending it as having a good intention) and favor "transphobia" for reasons of clarity.
So like, according to the organizers, if they were born with a penis, it doesn't matter if they transitioned, they are considered men.
This trans man (a person born with a vagina who transitioned ) is entering the contest, because if trans women are considered men, trans men are considered women.
So this dude is entering a "female" beauty contest to show how dumb the rules are. He is allowed to do so because said dumb rules make him a woman in the eyes of the organization.
We need a powerpoint explaining the 5D transphobia.
Think the others were missing the point - they are trans men. Their dead name is their dead female name.
The ruling was to prevent trans women from competing, so while they can't stand for trans women, they'll stand for all trans.
This is deliciously rich. They really painted themselves into a corner with that one!
For context, Miss Italia is no longer broadcasted on important tv channels and almost no one watches or care about who wins now. Years ago (10?) it was a big thing and winners would make commercials and do movies/series and be remembered for life. But it’s too an old school concept now
Anyway, I love this turn of events
Source: Italian
I'm glad to hear Italy is moving past its Berlusconi era.
Does this mean we won't be able to see it live? Or at all?
I just googled it, apparently it might come back to the first national tv channel for 2023, we'll see, anyway it was streamed on the official website before that and for the last 4 years
Will they have the power to reject candidates? Maybe I'm naive to think they'll have the trans men compete too but I wanna see how it'll play out.
I think they totally can reject who they want... usually competitors are the winners of local beauty contest, so there's a lot of ways to be excluded before even reaching the last decision stage. But not sure, I never really cared for it
Aw... I see. Thanks for the answers, I appreciate it.
Of course 🙌
I hope he wins. That'd be really funny.
Imagine a buff, bearded person that identifies as male wins in a contest that measures female beauty
I know right? It'll finally make pagents worth watching.
We should also get drag queen bodybuilding competitions. If everything is going to be reality TV for a while (support the strike, by the way) I'd at least want them to be entertaining.
I would love to see drag queen strong person competitions. Imagine log rolling in heels and an evening gown?
Ooh, or maybe like that next ninja whatever show. I can't remember what it's called. The one with all the crazy acrobatics and stuff. Imagine having to do that obstacle course where you hang from the bar and "jump" while holding the bar to the next slot, but you have to sing And I Am Telling You while you do it!
American TV could get real fucking good, real fucking fast.
Holy crapoli, I've tried other peoples heels briefly a few times. I have no idea how people even walk in them let alone log roll in them! That sounds like some great entertainment tbh.
Or imagine one of those lumberjack competitions where they scale the trees and top them.
This is the kind of television we need!
Imagine them having to apply makeup while running chainsaws? It'd put japanese games shows to shame!
Rapper warrior ninja. :)
He has to come out in slacks, his special talent should be mowing the lawn. Tuxedo print t shirt for evening gown. REPRESENT!
YES. This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying!!! Like honestly, as a cis woman from Italy I’m so embarrassed by this nonsense. Like, cutting trans women out of the competition at this moment just means people are recognizing that trans women are “unfairly” more good looking than cis women. Which, personally, is true in my case but you don’t see me bitching about it. Fuck yeah trans dudes, trans chicks and non-binary buddies.
Wait what? I get why someone would forbid trans women from participating in female sports events, but why TF can't they go to beauty contests?
Because excluding trans women from sports was never actually about fairness. It's about normalizing excluding trans people from aspects of public life.
It's wrong to ban trans women from women's sports, because trans women are women.
But they have the muscles of a male and usually beat all women-since-birth in competitions.
Yeah, Ik I'm gonna get downvoted to oblivion and I'm gonna get called TERF but that's the reason it's controversial in the first place
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears. "While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women."
There's also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439?login=false
It's rare that I see someone type a comment that mentions everything I want to say. You rock!
Here is my question though, and if you have any info I'd love to see it. Do performance enhancing drugs interact in men and women the same way? I ask since not all enhancing drugs are banned.
If yes, how do these interact with tans people? Would a trans woman be able to get more positive effects from the drugs?
I'm trans and I actually agree with you. I don't know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn't want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I'd been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn't be competing against people without that advantage.
It's debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it's a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There's no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don't think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don't think that should be controversial since the gender isn't what people care about there. It's the physical characteristics. In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it's important to discuss! At that point, however, you'd be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like 'feather weight' or 'strong muscular development' or something
Just make it body mass based
I think this is where it makes sense to go. Like wrestling, right? Just make every sport competition divided on gender if it’s that important, and then divided on the basis of body mass. Although frankly I think that would make every sport ten times more boring than it needs to be. Like smaller athletes usually need to figure out a way to still compete, and that’s where part of the fun is, both in competing and watching. If an athlete feels disadvantaged, they’re just lazy and not training well or enough.
Then again, I do think sports should be less owned by massive corporations and media companies, and move more to their dimension of play, admiration for each other and self-improvement. Not saying sports shouldn’t be jobs and not have money go in and out, but they should center that dimension a lot less.
I mean... some cis women are born thicker and taller than others which might be an advantage over other women, biologically. Yet, nobody disqualifies those women from competing. It just means everyone else has to be twice as competitive and work around their physical limits. Sports are largely about overcoming one’s performance limits. Like, a shorter basketball player can still play basketball and be really good at it, it’s all about how they train, what they focus on and how they play. And it’s about how good they are at dealing with the space around them and controlling their body. This was always the case, always in the history of sports. Being a stronger athlete was never a problem before, and now suddenly it is? It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s just an excuse for bad athletes who don’t wanna git gud to demand special treatment. I’m speaking as a cis woman who’s bigger than most other women around me. Not my fault that I can accidentally throw other chicks to the bleachers without even being aware of them, and I’m still a woman no matter how other people see me. So yeah, this whole discourse affects me too, because trans people being targeted also targets any person who was born intersex or just different.
What’s your idea of what a trans woman’s body looks like, exactly? Like, do you think a trans woman is just “a man in a dress”? Because that’s just straight up inaccurate in every way. HRT changes trans people’s bodies and how those bodies work. That’s why we say “trans women are women and trans men are men”. Like, would you think making someone with the body of Buck Angel compete in women’s competitions would be fair? Google Buck Angel, look at him and then come back at me.
Hormones are not going to reshape someone's body structure
Except they do. Literally look at any picture of a trans woman before and after transitioning. Their bodies literally change in every sense.
"Oh their fat is accumulated in other places"
I'm talking about internal stuff
“Internal stuff”? What do you mean? You mean like men have more organs than women or something...? What kinda statement is this
No, but sizes and positions do have slight variations
Can you be more specific though?
Ok, hold on, why would you forbid trans women from competing? Because of “unfair advantages”? First off, trans women who completed their transition don’t have a male body. They have a female body. And some athletes are naturally better at some sports than others. Like, shorter basketball players are naturally disadvantaged at basket, which is why they need to train twice as hard as taller players or switch to another sport. Also, every whiny white woman complaining about trans women doing better than them always forgets to mention the athletes winning are still the cis ones, which destroys the idea that trans women have an advantage.
The point never held up either in sports nor anywhere else. And it was never about sports anyway.
Bone and muscle structure won't change because of transition
You’d be surprised.
From experience, female clothes aren't proportioned to fit trans women as well as cis women. While in your other comment you make a good point about some cis women also being outside the 'conventional' physical expectations for women in western society, that doesn't also mean that trans people don't face the same issues. We talk about these problems from a trans perspective because trans people are often targeted with legislation and rules from people who don't understand, and are blocked from being treated as their preferred gender. A bulky cis woman might share physical characteristics with a trans woman, but their existence is also significantly less opposed.
Edit: to my first point there are a number of biological size/proportion differences between cis men and cis women that can be seen here: https://ehs.oregonstate.edu/sites/ehs.oregonstate.edu/files/pdf/ergo/ergonomicsanddesignreferenceguidewhitepaper.pdf
Oh yeah, for sure, I’m not saying gnc cis woman face the same amount of oppression as trans women. What I’m saying is, by shoving people into very restrictive, hyper-specific boxes, we end up excluding people who by definition shouldn’t be excluded. Like the cis athlete who was excluded from competing because she naturally produces more testosterone than the others. While being cis, again. Or like, all the cis gnc women who get attacked or murdered because transphobes think they’re trans when they’re not.
My point is, women aren’t all the same. Also, women who are naturally prone to packing muscles can and sometimes do go toe to toe with men in terms of height and strength. But they’re still cis women, and should compete as cis women.
But all of this is pointless anyway: this is a BEAUTY contest, and excluding trans women in this historical period is basically like saying trans women have “unfair advantages in the field of beauty” which I mean, could be, but it’s very much a self-report. There’s also the objection that “trans women do surgeries to look the way they look” which yeah, true, but cis women who participate in Miss Italia also very much do get surgery to look the way they look. Matter of fact, there have been multiple scandals about Miss Italy winners having gone through plastic surgery to win. So I mean, everything goes.
Clever way of protesting it.
Agree. They can't reject them without exposing their transphobia
Absolute chads. I'm curious what kind of response this is going to get.
"You're not beautiful enough for a contest about female beauty with your male presentation, therefore we reject your application"
Cold and passive-agressive, just like an actual organisation would answer
This is fantastic, while having them obviously in drag is delicious, it would be even more stark if some of them present as traditional male too and really bring the point home.
Well, if you can’t tell, does it matter?
Wait, they have to tell the organizers such sensible details?
Are they required to be virgins too?
You're thinking of Miss Vatican.
Beauty Pageants are uglyphobic.
Bodybuilding competitions are fatphobic
hah, this one is funny!
Also, echoing @Imotali@lemmy.world's comment below (unfortunately you can't sticky comments on lemmy): comments that express hate towards any group are a violation of instance guidelines. BE NICE.
I'd be more interested in protesting the fact that it's now legal to grope women in Italy.
The landmark decision involved a school janitor who jammed his hand into a 17 year old girl's panties.
Pick the hill you want to die on.
Both. I choose both.
I'm sure they care about both of those things.
It seems like a particularly neanderthal legal development.
Yes, it is.
"Why do this one good thing when you should be doing another good thing instead?"
This is a pretty awesome way to protest and show solidarity. These trans men are ballsy as fuck and I salute them.
He is like: "I used the transphobia to destroy the transphobia"
So I thought I would look at the modlog in this thread
A comment was removed starting with
by @Whirlybird@aussie.zone
Heavily downvoted sure, but what rule is it breaking?
They were banned for transphobia. Finish that comment. Don't cherry pick their words. Transphobia and bigotry are against the rules here. As a cis person, I don't get to decide what is transphobic; trans people do.
I don't think they got banned? not sure
I didn't post the whole comment precisely because it got removed by a mod.
In my view, the moderation of a forum should be based on rules, not on individual's judgements.
I banned them. And transphobia is against the rules of this entire instance (not just this community).
If we can tell the differences between woman, why do different rules apply depending if youre born woman or not?
Besides having an opinion about something that doesnt affect you, seems quite reasonable is it not?
Trans women were born a woman. I'm not trans so I don't get to decide what is or isn't transphobia just like I don't get to decide what's racist towards black people because I'm not black. I don't get a vote because it doesn't affect me.
You aren't the judge of when someone is or isn't a woman, though. The only person whose opinion matters in that case is the woman herself.
I think the issue is that there is no such thing as a "biological woman". Manhood/womanhood is an issue of gender, not sex, and gender is something that we collectively made up whose meaning varies from person to person and from culture to culture. The only person who is capable of saying "Person McFaceface is/is not a woman" is Person McFaceface.
Even if we were to interpret their comment to mean "sex", that isn't a simple binary yes/no kind of question. There is no single trait that determines maleness or femaleness, and lots of people have traits indicative of both sexes or of neither sex (or they were born that way then surgically altered shortly after birth), and sometimes those traits are so hidden and so internal that the person themself doesn't know about it.
But do you think it deserved to be removed? You could have answered that directly to the commenter
IMO, this is too strict.
Yes, I do. This is a space where trans rights and trans people are respected. That means that their existence is accepted as fact, not debated in the comment section.
There are numerous places and resources available for that person to educate themself, if they had chosen to do so before commenting. Instead, they chose to comment from a place of ignorance. We have no obligation to offer them that education here.
I'm just enforcing the rules of this instance. Specifically hate towards any specific group (which includes rhetoric designed to oppress) is against the rules.
Sorry, not sorry. In fact, I took great joy in removing the transphobes from this comment section. I only removed egregious errors.
In a way you could say I'm maliciously complying with the instance rules.
I got that yesterday, why the encore?
use that tiny amount of power you say you enjoy so much and ban me. This good people circlejerk is of no interest
You've not said anything rule breaking, let alone transphobic enough to be banned. Saying unpopular things will not get you banned/comment removed.
Is being a terrible person with bad takes against the rules? I haven't checked.
Thee has't did challenge the hive mind, anon prepareth to receiveth downvot'd to oblivion
I actually think a lot of people are confused because they didn't read the article or know what community they're in, so I'll take the downvotes in stride.
Trans people are people too no matter which arrow you hit.
Mods are hive minds? Are you sure about that?
Not talking about the other guy, but about the guy who I was answering
Let's goooo guys! top spot is ours
Isn't this malicious non-compliance?
No, because trans men are "biologically women" and are thus specifically allowed by this approach. It's the same kind of conflation that causes the bathroom issues. People only seem to understand that trans women exist and think they are the same as trans men. Reminding people that trans men exist hopefully gets peoples brains working.
It eould be a Interesting Idea to make a Trans-Fenake Fashion Show as Protest.
What is protest part? Not sure it is malicious compliance either because contestant was not rebirthed as woman. Not that it's possible unless you are buddhist.
Trans Europe Express
Would they win in a contest that has female beauty parameters tho? It's like judging an M based on how similar it looks to an F
That's not the fucking point, clownshoes!
Then what is it?
It's not about winning, it's about sending a message. The message being that trans women shouldn't have any problem competing with cis women if the judges feel that trans men will have a problem competing with cis women. I hope that make sense to read.
Ok sure. But it's not really an effective protest as they're fulfilling the requirement to enter the competition. Because the competition is steered by judges they will simply eliminate the trans men in the first round.
The rule is there to make sure the judges are not sexually aroused when they see a trans woman.
A greater means of protest would be if the non-trans competitors all quit the pageant. But their look is their only talent, so they won't.
Has anyone ever seen a "woman from birth"? Like a whole-ass adult woman popping out of somebody not appreciably larger than her? Ready for a beauty pageant at zero minutes old?
Completely independent of gender, people should know that "women" are adults and have zero overlap with "children" or especially "newborn infants".
Or is this a bad translation from the Italian?
Perhaps it should say "female from birth". But anyone with basic reading comprehension would understand this. Probably you know this and are being unnecessarily pedantic/argumentative.
Men don't understand no, I've heard this before...
In what way? I don't understand how that pertains to this.
I hope this is a joke?