I’m honestly baffled by what just happened after my last post. I shared a story about someone very close to me, and how proud I am of them for finding the courage to embrace their identity. I thought it was important to stand up for people who are often misunderstood or dismissed, especially during Pride Month. But it seems like things quickly took a turn I didn’t expect.
The response to my post was honestly overwhelming mostly in a negative way. I was downvoted into oblivion, and some people seemed to think it was all just bait. Which… I didn’t expect at all. My friend’s story is real, and it’s personal. She’s someone who’s gone through a lot of internal struggles and has found a sense of peace and authenticity that I truly admire. Yet, when I tried to share that, it seems some of you Lemmings didn’t take it well. I’ve been trying to make sense of it. I genuinely don’t understand why people would respond this way when the post was meant to be supportive. The level of hostility and outright rejection was… well, surprising. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a strong pushback against people embracing their identities, but to this extent? It’s disheartening.
For context: my friend has been a vocal supporter of multiple marginalized communities, and I’ve seen firsthand how hard she’s worked to validate and support others, especially those who are trans and transracial. To see her courage being attacked like this just doesn’t sit right with me. What happened to just supporting people, regardless of how they identify or how their experience manifests? I understand that not everyone may agree with certain perspectives, but the extreme negativity seems out of place. I thought this community was about empathy, openness, and understanding. When did it become acceptable to shut people down for sharing their lived experiences? Anyway, I’m not here to start any fights, I just want to understand. Why is it that when someone stands up for themselves and others, they’re immediately dismissed or vilified? What happened to kindness and mutual respect?
Are you talking about the post you made less than one hour ago with 10 downvotes and 2 comments?
I wouldn’t call that an overwhelming response nor downvoted to oblivion
As of right now, your other post has 15 downvotes and 3 comments from others (the other 4 are you). All three comments say that you’re posting bait. This is hardly “oblivion.”
To answer your question, people are harsh on the transracial thing because they feel it’s similar to how some pedophiles are trying to normalize pedophilia, and are trying to make themselves part of the LGBTQ+ movements (even though most people don’t recognize that as legitimate). Whatever your views on any of these issues, many people feel that injecting illigitmate (or bad faith) cases like this actually takes away from the people fighting for legitimate things.
I’m not taking sides right now, just trying to help you understand why you’re getting this response. If you’re vying for transracial identities as legitimate, you’ve got a long and harsh road ahead, expect more pushback like this in almost all spaces.
You be trollin trollin trollin
To get our keyboards rollinSo if someone talks about a person identifying as another gender besides the one assigned to them at birth, it’s “valid” and not “trolling”, in your eyes, but if a post involves a person talking about a person identifying as another race besides the one assigned to them at birth, it’s “Invalid” and “trolling”? How so? Transracial identities are just as valid as transgender identities (both are valid).
I’ll be straight up with you. You have an hour old account thats already controversial and you’re already crying about it.
I am not going to waste my time reading what you just wrote. Go troll somewhere else.
I like when people volunteer for my blocklist. Rarely are they as desperate as OP.
They’ll be banned within 48 hours tops.
You say that like there aren’t people brand new to an instance or community making their first post which gets upvoted. You say it was controversial, but that’s like saying transgender identities are controversial because transphobes find it controversial. Like with transgender the only people who find transracial identities controversial are de facto transphobes.
I hope you see this, OP. I don’t know what you expected or hoped for here, but it just didn’t happen today. That sucks for you and I empathize with that. Now, I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but I just want to say, from the bottom of my heart, please log off.
I didn’t expect as many transphobes to brigade my post, that is for certain.
You’re getting downvoted for labeling everyone that downvoted you as transphobic. Not because people are transphobic. It’s a you problem, not a problem with trans people. In fact, there are a bunch of trans people on lemmy. You just come across as a whiny troll. If you wanna stop seeing down votes, have a little self-awareness. No one likes an ignorant person that blames everyone else for their problems. Here’s a good rule of thumb, if everyone else in the world is against you, the world probably isn’t the problem.
People calling you out for trolling doesn’t make them transphobic, champ. Grow the fuck up.
You attempted to troll. You received a minor amount of downvotes and backlash. 🤷 If you don’t like that people on Lemmy are reasonable, you can just stop using Lemmy.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t attempting to troll, now, wasn’t it? The impression I’m getting here is that so-called “allies” aren’t as accepting as they like to portray themselves as, and suffer from hypocrisy.
Yup definitely bait
It wasn’t bait, it was me writing about my friend standing up for trans identities, both transgender and transracial since both are equally as valid. You seem pretty transphobic to me.
All I have done is doubt your sincerity, but go off king
The reason for that is because you hold transphobic viewpoints. If you support transgender identities but not transracial identities then you are being hypocritical. I’m sure you realize that. I expected better from a supposedly progressive social network.
😴 you tried. People aren’t that stupid lol and your bad-faith argument is easily spotted a mile away
If you consider a person saying transracial identities are valid is “bad-faith” then how is that not you being transphobic? Perhaps the mods of this community may not take kindly to transphobia.
Ooh! Report me too! And go ahead and report EVERYONE ELSE whom YOU are accusing of being transphobic with checks notes zero evidence. Way to de-escalate a “volatile” situation you made up for the sole purpose of getting interaction on a newborn-account. Are you thinkin’ of selling it off once it gets enough notice on the fediverse?
The clue is in the name. Transracial. If you don’t believe that transracial identities are valid, then how is that not transphobia?
And my friend’s situation is very much real. It’s something she’s had to deal with since she was young. She is in her late 20’s now and since she has friends who support her identity, her wellbeing has been much better. I used to think transracial identities were invalid when I was younger, but after actually looking into it and having a friend who is transracial, I realized my presumptions were wrong. Transracial people struggle with self-love just like transgender people do, so what’s wrong with making people feel more comfortable in themselves? Nothing, that’s what. Nobody can come up with any good arguments. Instead they resort to ad-hominem after ad-hominem, which should tell you more about them than it does me and her.
No bites? ☹️ Aw!
😴 lol report me then
Your post was about a friend who’s “transracial” (your term), not trans in the sense that they identify as a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth. Plus, you use the term “trans” to refer to that identity like it’s a universally-accepted conclusion and just as accepted as the other use of trans. You also insult those who don’t agree with this, call them transphobic, and accuse anyone who disagrees of brigading (with no evidence). While not personally included in either group, my understanding is that this point of view is very controversial and could be considered offensive to people from one, both, or neither community. Again, no opinion on the content, but I believe that’s part of why it didn’t resonate with people reading it.
TLDR: It’s controversial because it’s controversial.
My takeaway from this is that many people who otherwise consider themselves as allies to the trans community are hypocritical and in essence transphobic when it comes to transracial identities.
You can leave at any time.
And let the people who have publicly professed their transphobia win? Not so.
Lmao
Hold up, transracial? Wtf is that? Edit: nvm figured it out. Also turns out im Mongolian. Explains that weird throat singing thing i always felt a need to do on top of mountains.
I thought that was yodeling.
So, I dug a little bit because I was curious, and based on their responses, I think they assumed you were a bot and/or karma farmer.
Your account was less than a day old, and you dropped a story that mentions multiple controversial topics. That’s exactly what someone would do if they were trying to get a lot of activity on an account fast. Hell, maybe they were right and I’m feeding the troll. But, if not, just give it a few days and join in a few conversations before posting a story and expecting it to hit the top of the boards.
Transracial identities are only controversial to transphobes, though.
Dude you even got blahaj users to say something. All you did was you tried to bait people, and you were called out for it.
deleted by creator
The problem is you didn’t post about moths instead.
I think the question should be “Why is lemmy like the rest of the internet?”
Lemmy is no better or worse than any other social site on the web. You will find communities that are at either extreme end of trans acceptance and you’ll find middle-ground. If you are not in a walled-garden community, you are going to get the very vocal of both ends of the spectrum. That is the same as anywhere else on the internet.
The people that aren’t either enraged or extremely aligned with your post are likely not going to take the time to comment. You get the leftovers and often, those people are not people that represent the average Joe or Jane.
I think it’s good that you share your thoughts and experience but I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about those that make it their duty to make light of it or discount it.
It’s just that I got the impression that Lemmy is generally trans-friendly, and the post was in the Offmychest community on .world. It is Pride Month after all, so I figured with all the support my friend has offered to trans identities lately, and stood up for them despite the harsh backlash she has received online as a result of that, the post would’ve been more well-received. To me it is very scary that people would see a post praising and validating trans identities and immediately downvote it and proverbially shit on it, and only getting radio silence or insults when I politely ask them to explain why they didn’t like my post.
Some or most of us are, but the shit heads are loud everywhere
You should check out Beehaw. It’s built on the Lemmy platform but the owners and mods are very much trying to build what you describe.
I’ll look into it. Thanks.
I disagree. I recommend .ml or hexbear for you. Ones by a lemmy dev, and the other seems exactly what you’re looking for. They’re very inclusive… Wish you the best.
Some people are dicks
When some people on Lemmy
Yeah, I can see why the Fediverse grows more and more controversial by the day.
