Various thoughts:

  • Around 20 people weren’t properly covered by the gender categories, obviously we’re trying to be as inclusive as possible and a different approach will be tried next time

  • There were about 600 respondents, which gives us a accurate sampling of the active userbase. If you multiply any number by 3, you’ll get a fairly accurate representation of the full userbase each week. This means there are around 800-900 people who don’t identify fully as cis each week on this site.

  • Nearly 300 trans/gender diverse/questioning people unanimously agree that hexbear is an inclusive space

  • There was so much data on gender that I was really struggling to find a way to convey the data that wasnt a pie chart, graph, or an incomprehensible kalaeidoscope. If you have an idea on how to beautify the data, you can download the raw data here: https://pad.artemislena.eu/file/#/2/file/xzy4pck8on+oZp9yGRUIezR+/ - I further anonymized this data by removing time of response and any specific comments, I don’t think it would be easy for anyone to figure out who is who.

  • There were a couple of text responses that really needed further elaboration, I noted hexbear’s rules next to these comments

  • I’ll probably be doing a demographics survey sometime in the future, including basic fairly anonymous stuff like “what region were you born in” “where do the languages you speak originate” “would you describe yourself as a POC” “what age range are you in”.

  • The percentage of people answering they were cisgender increased by 8% than the previous survey. This could be for a myriad of reasons, such as cis people being afraid trans people will hunt them down in the public thread and assassinate them. Anonymity may have made them feel safer to respond. Regardless, way more people responded this time, which signifies that people felt safer responding to the cryptpad or it was easier to do. The leading question was a bit more inclusive than last time, but I think I’ll include both questions (are you transgender / gender diverse and are you cisgender) to see how people respond.

  • We have a lot of people that aren’t binary trans on this site.

  • Some of the questions were pretty funky and we got a lot of fuzzy responses on them as a result. In particular “After you realized you were trans/gender diverse, how long did it take for you to begin to act on it?” and “At what age did you begin transition?” caused a lot of friction, I think I will ask more vague questions in the future that lead to a path of more specific questions to capture better data, and to save people time. Questions like “Do you feel your gender transition had a defined starting point?” and some further ones.

  • Around 20 people each week on this site are cis she/hers, which is very low and roughly the same as last time. I feel like if hexbear ever starts hosting other federated stuff (like a federated tiktok or something) and can hook into it natively with lemmy, we’d see a better ratio.

  • I tried to be very sure any data with >2 people on it was clearly legible, I think some people might find it fun that there are others with their same fairly specific classifications per this survey lurking around on the site.

  • Overall I feel like the survey was a success despite some bumps.

  • You can find the other surveys/links here: https://hexbear.net/post/3016455

  • I made these graphs on company time bridget-pride-stay-mad

nerd

      • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        Cheers to you! xi-clap

        Not old (late 20s, tbh don’t consider 42 old though there’s definitely a mildly intimidating age/experience gap sometimes, but if you own the label go for it) but mad respect for you rocking out here (is that how you say it in your generation?)

        TBH I just had a really cool chat with a (she said she was in her 60s?) indigenous Chilean auntie who had a pretty decent power level (leftist level) at least from what I could tell. And I guess I chat with an Iranian (probably also same age range) auntie once in a while (well twice so far) as well who is pretty decent… Restored that bit of faith in IRL (imperial core) humanity that needs resuscitating every now and then tbh. Maybe in time I should try to see if they’d be interested…

        • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          6·
          2 months ago

          I’m mostly joking about being “old,” I’m in pretty good shape and health for 42 considering my socioeconomic status, geographic location, and personal and family medical history, I haven’t entirely lost my cheer, and I don’t think I will ever lose my curiosity, so I don’t feel particularly old, except for the whole perimenopause thing

          I’ve known incredibly wise and experienced people and astounding fools of all ages, so I try to just treat that fact about a person with as much importance as I do their style choices – it might be indicative of important information, it might not, it’s just another clue about who a person really is

          if you managed to bring in the aunties you’ve met, it would be such a huge boon to the community! how much they like it here might depend a lot on their sense of humor, though – will they think ppb is funny, if they know the background of it? (I was on the old sub, listening to the show, and watching the streams from the fair when ppb happened, so it never had any shock value for me)

          chicken-bop know I can’t be the only person who would love to see some older ladies posting, but most older ladies I know irl are busy Doing Stuff and barely even do traditional social media. and also they’re LIB would be so cool if we could get some lefty aunties in though! keeping my fingers crossed for your efforts 🤞

          • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            3·
            2 months ago

            I haven’t entirely lost my cheer, and I don’t think I will ever lose my curiosity

            Hard to entirely lose your cheer so long as you’re surrounded by decent people, and by the sounds of it (curiousity) you’re decent people :D I can wholly relate with this bit at least, I’m bitter but not all gone. I need to get in better shape, kinda crashed hard due to (non-covid) reasons during the pandemic and have been recovering and stumbling since.

            And I totally get what you mean about fools of all ages/etc. I also have the same attitude (things might be indicative, but they might not) and would like to think I generally get along well with people in general (even older fools do tend to have their lives more materially and socially in place though, and that’s the distance I meant was intimidating).

            My levels of avoidance based off of indicators has greatly increased though- it was already there from being Asian, increased when I realized I was trans- and then the increased racism and Sinophobia since and before the pandemic (ethnic Chinese, also as someone whose family comes from ASEAN I’m well aware what the west is trying to do in destroying/blockading the trade and cooperation there and even the history of anti-Chinese persecution which my grandparents and great-grandparents suffered), the enthusiastic fascism and warmongering across the collective west with Ukraine, and finally the live-streamed, industrial genocide in Gaza (as the worst of all, at this point TBH I’m not merely alienated but disgusted and repulsed) have cratered it. I can still fend for myself or for basic decency and do, and still treat people like people- but I just mind my own business and stick to those I know more than not.

            if you managed to bring in the aunties you’ve met, it would be such a huge boon to the community! how much they like it here might depend a lot on their sense of humor, though – will they think ppb is funny, if they know the background of it?

            True. Maybe in time, I’d probably have to at least warn them about the ppb. lea-think

  • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    68·
    2 months ago

    Around 20 people each week on this site are cis women

    I’m sorry to have to bring this up again, but your survery had no instruments to accurately measure that. It once more had no option to say if you’re a woman (i noticed, because that meant that i couldn’t accurately state my gender until i picked “other” and used the free text field). Only “are you cis or trans” and “which pronouns do you use”, which does not enable you to accurately assess people’s genders. PRONOUNS =/= GENDER. Cis women could go with none / use name, comrade or they / them for opsec reasons or because they do not want to be targeted by the many misogynist weirdos on this site or because they want to normalize gender neutral language. I know several cis women IRL who at least sometimes do this in online communities. In this survery, you wouldn’t know if they’re women. Or she / her may simply not be the pronouns that fit them. There was at least one cis woman with hy / hym pronouns in the replies to the survey.

    In future surverys, i’d abandon the approach to infer gender from pronouns, stick with the option to tick multiple boxes, but just add man and woman to the list.

    • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      34·
      2 months ago

      good point tbh, true, edited that. i try to avoid specifics generally because people seem to hate specifics on these forms, gender is a fickle creature

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        21·
        2 months ago

        Ah, i see. I think the option to tick multiple boxes does a lot to mitigate that, though. When i look at problematic examples i can think of, it’s usually forms that have either “woman” or “transgender - MtF” or some shit like that as different options, where unconditional womanhood is implied to only be available to cis women. But if you have cis and trans, nonbinary and binary, inter, agender etc. all as seperate, not mutually exclusive, combinable categories, you avoid that. Like, if i want to answer truthfully, i absolutely have to pick woman because womanhood is such a core part of how my gender works, but i also can’t possibly seperate it from being trans, or from existing outside of a binarist system. And with a “pick any that apply” kind of wording, you include all that. Having options that exactly describe just one specific gender identity do not really work when you’re surveying a gender-diverse crowd because there’s so many identities and so much potential overlap between them. So i think it’s best to break this down into possible components.

    • Lerios [hy/hym]@hexbear.netEnglish
      21·
      2 months ago

      There was at least one cis woman with hy / hym pronouns in the replies to the survey

      horror hi, glad to be causing trouble and confusing the narrative lmao 😎

      but yeah i’m very keen of the idea that pronouns =/= gender, but that seems kind of hard for most people offline (even in many lgbt spaces) to get their head around. or the idea of neopronouns. god forbid you do both lmao

      ngl i got wayyyyyyy more upbears and responses to that comment than i expected from a stream of consiousness/vent about misogyny and gender stereotypes and my Situation™ and i got kind of scared lol. shoutout to the encouraging replies and reading recommendations tho phoenix-bashful

      EDIT: the thread is locked now but i typed a response to the person who asked why i still ID as a woman despite being masc (although, again, being masc or using different pronouns doesn't have anything to do with being a woman) before i realised that. may as well put it here i guess

      .

      gender only exists to be restrictive, so I don’t want anything to do with it. But I’m amab - there’s no reason for camaraderie there

      Gender exists to be restrictive in such a way that is designed to facilitate the exploitation of women

      You’re right, it is about solidarity and tbh about organising around shared concerns and dangers. When i complain about getting shit for not wearing makeup at work and such, the women in my life are fucking outraged while men i’ve mention it to tell me it can’t be that serious. If i ever need reproductive healthcare, it can be denied to me based on the fact that i am afab, and the vast majority of people who particularly care about that are other afab people. When i go out at night i keep a very close eye on my friends and we make sure we all know where everyone is and to get home together, because, due to the fact that we’re women, we are much more likely to be put in danger in that situation – and when I have been in that kind of danger, the people (even strangers) that have helped me have always been women, the people far more likely to know how it feels and how it happens. When my manager harassed a girl at work, it was women who organised a response while the men on the team said shit about overreactions and “the benefit of the doubt” and so on.

      There are a lot of situations where women and/or afab people look out for each other, either at large or individually. I have no reason to move away from the people with whom i have shared class interest due to shared oppression.

      • Lenins_Cat_Reincarnated@hexbear.net
        15·
        2 months ago
        reply to your spoiler

        As a transmasc I very much relate to that and it’s one of the reasons why it took me so long to realise I was trans and why I’m still struggling with my current selfidentification. I use he/him because right now it’s gender affirming to me but I think in the future when I’m more comfortable with how I look that might change. No transmasc around me uses he/him because they do not want to have that in common with the people that used to oppress and harass them before they transitioned. I also feel much more connection to women and people afab than cis men because cis men just do not understand and often belittle the oppression that plays a huge role in most women’s lives.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
      19·
      2 months ago

      Is the opsec reason that valid in an anonymous survey? Unless they think the admins would use that info to target them if they left any specific comments or they thought IP might be used to identify them. Seems like it would be pretty uncommon and might catch as many eggs as it does cis people lying for opsec reasons.

      Still, certainly better not to make such assumption than to make those assumptions. Especially with options like comrade that can be appealing regardless of gender identity.

          • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            20·
            2 months ago

            To clarify, by opsec i meant “avoiding personal information in publicly visible posts”, not “being afraid to get tracked through the survey”. And when i look at the breakdown of cis pronouns in the results, there’s a lot of he /hims, but also a bunch of different ones. Sure, cis women are extremely rare here, and they’d still be if all of the cis people with gender neutral pronouns where women, but i can’t help being nitpicky because i’m an awful nerd about surveying.

      • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
        23·
        2 months ago

        There’s no way to view IP on the Cryptpad AFAIK, and the website its on doesn’t log IP, its only in ram long enough to finish downloading a request, and even then its anonymized. Owner of the site is trans I’m in one of her group chats. I also edited out timestamps and comments in the raw data.

        If you did the survey through VPN or tor browser there is essentially no risk

        • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@lemmy.today
          15·
          2 months ago

          That doesn’t mean a paranoid user would trust such claims. Also, if you use the same VPN IP to access hexbear and the survey, a paranoid person could worry about the linking of the two. Of course if you are worried enough about that, it seems like an easy thing to avoid.

          Either way, I personally wouldn’t have been worried about anonymization. I just didn’t take it because my accounts aren’t on hexbear, even though it’s the community I post on the most, so I wasn’t sure if I was welcomed or not. Guess a question about whether you have a hexbear account or not could be included alongside the demographic?

          • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
            20·
            2 months ago

            Yeah if you’re that paranoid you probably shouldn’t be on the internet or should just use tor for everything. Everyone knows I’m a filthy queer pinko in my town and nothings really come of it shrug-outta-hecks Even my boss knows I’m a commie, which is funny

    • whogivesashit@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      11·
      2 months ago

      This is true. I know of at least one cis woman on the site that doesn’t use she/her, though I don’t think they answered the survey.

  • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    611·
    2 months ago

    the jokes about Xi save us and defense/denial of worker/minority abuse in China make us look bad, (etc etc) No different than libs defending Klanmala “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” (etc etc) Han supremacism no more acceptable than white supremacism (no shit), Dengism killed wholesome chungus communism, China surveillance state

    Wew. Also no one is defending worker/minority abuse (the surveillance state in China I will defend, let’s not kid ourselves socialist societies are under siege, were born under siege, etc etc) or claiming China is a utopia. And comparing support of AES to Klanmala support is straight up lib shit (and crying about Dengism is both ignoring dialectal materialism, and your western lowkey chauvinist, dogmatist opinion of AES). cringe cringe

    As for the comment about transmisogynism (while I’m not the one who mentioned it), somewhat yeah. And there’s def an issue of orientalist attitudes towards anime (as someone who is Asian), there is shit but wypipo/westerners’ and other cultures’ shit has its own issues. “Asian (specifically Asian) cartoon bad because (insert stereotypes here)” is tired y’all

    And yeah I called out people who posted their opinions, anonymously, who I don’t know who they are… deal with it xi

      • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        I really don’t know how you’d square the Dengist healthcare reforms with historical materialism.

        Though I’ve never seen an anti-China leftist seriously talk about them.

          • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            9·
            2 months ago

            I haven’t read anything that would suggest that was the case.

            The initial underfunding (which led to black market mechanisms for access to healthcare) is consistent with the relative drop in revenue for the government, from 30 percent to 10 percent of GDP in the 15 years from the early 80s to the mid 90s.

            Then, if I was to put myself in the mind of a CPC planner in the mid to late 1980s, you’re seeing economic growth significantly accelerate from the introduction of market reforms - so if you don’t think you can fund the system properly (you discount Cuba in this scenario), it would not be a wild idea at first glance to legitimise and give structure to existing practices in the healthcare sector - do some relatively minor changes and kick the can of massive root and branch reform down the road.

            And we have seen the CPC continue to make comparatively minor changes to the broader welfare system (generally in a direction beneficial for Chinese citizens) since then, without the sort of massive reform to Hukou and welfare that would otherwise be required.

            If I were to put on my China watcher Orientalist telepathy helmet I would guess that XJP and similar thinkers in the CPC would want to continue to put off that level of reform at least until China has met the stated goals for the initial stage of a prosperous country (30k GDP per capita), and have made all the national improvements to things like standardised credit history, trade and rule of law across the country before tackling welfare.

            • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              2 months ago

              If I were to put on my China watcher Orientalist telepathy helmet I would guess that XJP and similar thinkers in the CPC would want to continue to put off that level of reform at least until China has met the stated goals for the initial stage of a prosperous country (30k GDP per capita), and have made all the national improvements to things like standardised credit history, trade and rule of law across the country before tackling welfare.

              That’d be the hope, anyways. Seeing the course they continue to take (controlled demolition of the housing bubble and turning the leftover into public housing, even further poverty alleviation efforts on a ground level, cracking down even further on corruption, preventing capitalizations like Jack Ma’s attempt to introduce cheap consumer credit, etc) I think they’re on the right track, though maintaining the integrity of any proletarian party (which I do think the CPC is- imperfect as all things are, but proletarian) is a never-ending duty.

              I do think it’s important to note however, that (while this is not to say this is or isn’t the case) different priorities in the path of developing socialism can be and are arguably valid. From the looks of it we both seem to have the same idea- China has probably focused on its national development, determining that certain benefits will take lower priority and less resources, and that (in regards to the drop in revenue) state revenues would take a secondary priority also to development/promotion of industries and enterprise (both private and public/state-owned). Personally I think this has worked out amazingly for them, and I feel most of the world (debatably, even AES states- though the majority of AES states also did not have the potential or circumstances of China as it is one of the world’s largest and most populous nations) would agree as well, IMO particularly those whose direct experiences or whose parents/grandparents of the past 2-3~ generations came from colonized, formerly dirt-poor (like China was) undeveloped nations.

              If China had only grown half as much as it did- if it only developed as much as, say, India, or even had remained in a middle ground, or reached the development levels of the late Soviet Union- I think that we would be living in a much more difficult world, for the anti-imperialist struggle and for China’s defending itself from military encirclement and the weaponization of trade and technologies, for instance.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      36·
      2 months ago

      the jokes about Xi save us and defense/denial of worker/minority abuse in China make us look bad, (etc etc) No different than libs defending Klanmala “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” (etc etc) Han supremacism no more acceptable than white supremacism (no shit), Dengism killed wholesome chungus communism, China surveillance state

      White supremacy is worse for the simple reason that it has been institutionalized in multiple countries and is the bedrock of capitalism. Han supremacy is limited to individuals. The PRC hasn’t institutionalized Han supremacy and in fact has taken steps to combat it. Why else would the One Child policy exclude ethnic minorities from it? Like, you could find the mass graves of dead Indigenous children in residential schools. Not sure how anything the PRC has ever done is comparable to that.

      • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        25·
        2 months ago

        100% agreed, from the start the CPC has been explicitly anti-Han supremacy. And all the cracKKKers and cracKKKer-worshippers are hideous for comparing their crimes- of genocide across the majority of entire continents, of supremacist rule across the entire planet (even in regions not directly colonized like Iran, Japan, Ethiopia, the interior of China, etc- the “extraterritoriality” clauses imposed for instance), to whatever chauvinism may exist in China (which they at least have genuinely worked against).

        Everything they accuse China of is projection. I’ve lived in the prairies and was mostly raised rural there, and I’ve seen the conditions of the indigenous peoples there. The majority of first nations people I’ve known- including childhood friends, classmates, etc- were all adopted by white, Christian families, some of them rather questionable at that. I’ve seen (not extensively, granted) the sheer poverty of the reserves. I’ve seen and heard the anti-indigenous racism here, the squatter-mentality of settlers whose biases then naturally go on to translate to large numbers of missing (and “missing”) indigenous women- and men- which translate to police brutality, to the cases of coerced sterilization and other medical malpractices as gain attention now and then, etc…

        CracKKKerdom truly has no shame, no remorse, and absolutely no moral restraint whatsoever (nor concept of morals, simply excuses to justify the maximal amount of violence and exploitation against other humans). The entire west needs de-Nazification/to have imperialism purged from their societies, and by their regimes’ derangement they might very well force the rest of humanity to go in and thoroughly purge the illness- I’d hope not, but it’s not out of the question and increasingly it seems likely.

        • carpoftruth [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          14·
          2 months ago

          anyone bitching and moaning about china needs to look at who’s building green energy and who’s not. we can only afford to argue about capitalism vs communism vs sTaTe CaPITAliSM if there’s a biosphere worth living in. western chauvinists can shut the fuck up with their treatbrained critiques about ‘omg china also has a carceral system so therefore both sides’

          • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            13·
            2 months ago

            Couldn’t agree more. China has its genuine issues (and I believe- from all I have seen, with this belief only growing the more I learn of the complexities of the Chinese system, that it is on the path to and diligently working to address them- and I say this as someone who used to be a doubter).

            But the difference is night and day. China isn’t driving its citizenry or even the broader world into greater and more exploitative disenfranchisement by the day (unlike the western imperialist system), rather the opposite, it is lifting its people out of poverty and taking extensive measures to do so even for the most disenfranchised (ethnic minorities, generational poverty, etc), and peacefully collaborating with nations to assist them in doing the same.

            China isn’t flagrantly destroying the biosphere, leaving others to clean up its messes, and promoting Enlightened Individualism™ of nations where poor developing countries (like China till very recently- and it is still developing) are blamed for using what they need to survive while the history of western excesses (which were at the expense of the global south no less) is conveniently dismissed; rather, it is working with nations to solve the issues of environmentalism and their own material conditions rather than expecting the developing (colonized) world to bask in enlightened, environmentally-friendly austerity, asceticism, and anarcho-primitivism so that their colonial “superiors” can maintain their modern lives without ecological collapse.

            China isn’t supporting (religious, racial/ethnic, political) extremism and criminality (organized crime and in particular human and drug trafficking) across the entire globe, and it isn’t operating with some grand (not-so-hidden, considering the Wolfowitz doctrine) scheme of destabilizing all corners of the earth to maintain perpetual dominance and expansion. China isn’t holding a gun to its neighbors’ heads, even in the most questionable disputes they are not barbaric imperialists (unlike the west which is literally holding a metaphorical gun to China’s head, and to the rest of the world’s heads as well). China isn’t pushing for WW3, or even pushing for conflict in any geopolitical region, but rather seeking de-escalation and the development of peaceful multipolarity and mutual dialogue.

            The west is basically marching the world full speed ahead to environmental and nuclear armageddon, and actively promoting the immiseration and further destruction of all of humanity in the meantime (through further championing the contradictions of capital and trying to maintain hegemony). China isn’t doing any of that, it is working towards the opposite- and even if someone really believed in the “evil SEESEEPEE” all of the above is still true- and it could also be said that similarly, none of the BRICS or the global south at large are even remotely comparable to the west in these regards.

  • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    55·
    2 months ago

    Great work! Re: low cis women, I know one of them IRL, and she’s trying to basically wean off all Social Media, so she very rarely posts or comments here (but she did respond to the survey). Not sure how to get more ciswomen or transmen to join, honestly, but it’s great to see that everyone feels safe here!

    Edit: it’s clear that misogyny is one of the most commonly pointed out issues with this site, based on reading replies and input from other comrades. I am fully in favor of a purge, even if it would be unpopular, it’s better to confront issues and remove the problem elements. It’s important for every user to feel as safe and comfortable in every bit of this site (except the EM/POC community threads for whites and trans community threads for cis, obviously safe spaces would be maintained as such). Maybe another weekly megathread as a safe space? A Feminism community sounds cool too and would be a good place to hold that, I think. Maybe include comm sidebars with feminist literature and theory? Just spitballing here.

    On that note, if anyone has felt that I have been guilty of misogyny, I’d greatly appreciate being re-educated so I can be a better comrade and make this a safer space for women, enbies, and other non-masculine comrades.

    • NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.netEnglish
      38·
      2 months ago

      Also techically I at least am one of those “has lived a life of a cis woman” who answered “maybe” types that might be able to voice that maybe only in a space like this. I am thinking of a kind of autigender thing and the way women mask and have to mask their identities.

        • NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.netEnglish
          33·
          2 months ago

          Yeah it makes sense.

          I also wonder if in a space like this the high number of maybes reflects the gender in flux that sort of isn’t either ready for a signifier or just fully refuses one, which I think my own identification is becoming. So there could be a lot of people in motion in there who might have at one time answered differently or might answer differently somewhere else.

          Plus I think leftism itself helps people to reconsider things like gender so in leftist spaces I would assume people will be selecting more open categories.

  • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    48·
    2 months ago

    I have recommended hexbear to two cis women and they did not like it. Both are socialst, but they said that hexbear is “pro russia” and “pro Iran”… typical western “socialists”

      • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        37·
        2 months ago

        No, their issue is only with Islamic groups and russia. Sadly, a lot of what people know about the “islamic groups” has been twisted, almost like it’s been fed to them by big satan himself. I have a deep dislike for capitalist russia, and sometimes that even turns into irrational hatred, but that’s just from my personal experiences with russian soldiers during the second chechen war. I know that’s not the right take when it comes to the conflict in ukraine, though.

    • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      2 months ago

      This is why I don’t recommend hexbear to people IRL directly too. My close friends know I’m on here all the time through osmosis I’m sure, and I will push back on a lot of Ukraine bullshit (because no matter how much you hate russia, throwing more ukrainians into a meat grinder does not make the world better and I think that’s a pretty easy sell, even before getting into the history and other reasons for the conflict), but I think most people I know would take that stuff the wrong way if they checked this place out organically because of their preconceived notions. Plus a lot of the cultural signifiers on here are from like 5 years worth of in-jokes that nobody else gets.

      Honestly I think most of them would come around with enough explanation and first hand examples, but as much of a respite as it is for me, this place is still kinda rotting my brain like all social media, so I’m not prioritizing evangelizing it to others

    • kristina [she/her]@hexbear.netOPMEnglish
      40·
      2 months ago

      yeah maybe around 20 per week, though a fun fact is we have around 24-30+ trans he/hims on here which was much more than i thought!

      • AcidSmiley [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        76·
        2 months ago

        “Very male-dominated” in a context where more than half of the userbase on the site is transfem is pretty yikes tbh. Yes, i know, you were talking about reddit, but still, it just feels weird to argue like that. Especially when reddit has a lot more cis women using the site than hexbear.

        There is something on here that actively repels cis women, and i gotta be honest here, it’s probably you guys. Dudes on hexbear have a serious misogyny problem, i have never seen a thread about relationship issues etc. that wasn’t full of incel shit, the dunks always get more vicious when they’re directed at women, i honestly wouldn’t spend any time here if the site wasn’t at least good at banning transphobes. We need similar purges for misogynists, which, btw, is something that has been called for over and over again in the trans mega.

        • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          39·
          2 months ago

          “Very male-dominated” in a context where more than half of the userbase on the site is transfem is pretty yikes tbh

          Yeah I can see how I phrased that poorly, sorry about that.

          Especially when reddit has a lot more cis women using the site than hexbear.

          I think reddit partially benefits from scale. Initially it was for cishet male techbros, but eventually it reached critical mass to the point where it has kind of become a universal forum and source of knowledge, especially for a variety of hobbies. Anecdotal and small sample size, but FWIW I have never met a cis woman who listened to chapo, and during the API blackouts, lemmy.world emerged as the “default” platform on the fediverse so we were less likely to get new cis female users from reddit during that period. Tbh I have no idea where new users come from these days, though, other than lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.

          We need similar purges for misogynists, which, btw, is something that has been called for over and over again in the trans mega.

          I’m not sure how such a purge could be done. As kristina noted in the image, overt misogyny is already a bannable offense, and I doubt the mods would catch out a lot of people complaining about “free speech” like happened during the purges of transphobes. I’m guessing there are maybe some ideas in the trans mega?

  • khizuo [ze/zir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    39·
    2 months ago

    I put “maybe” as my answer for if I would recommend hexbear to my trans friends. It’s still true, but I think that because of the answer I put I didn’t get to talk about the caveats I would have to tell them first, so I’ll put them here. It’s really more of a “maybe leaning towards no” answer for the following reasons.

    misogyny, anti-fatness/weight, anti-plural shit

    • The obvious one that other people have already mentioned — misogyny. There is a culture of misogyny that permeates through this site. It has honestly turned me off from engaging with the majority of it and now I mostly stick to the trans mega. We seriously need a purge, and said purge would affect a lot of long-time posters and be very very unpopular (though not among us trans mega folks!)

    • There is a lot of discussion of weight on this site, and while it is usually under a spoiler it is still overwhelmingly about losing weight and that can be a triggering topic for a lot of people. It has, in fact, started affecting me and my own relationship to my body in a bad way. I know that weight can be a source of dysphoria and it’s not on me to dictate what people do about their bodies, but also constantly talking about dieting and wanting to lose weight creates a culture of anti-fatness whether we want it to or not. I think the solution to that is to have conversations about anti-fatness and not to ignore that it exists and is the primary driver behind dieting culture, which hexbear currently does. As a caveat: I have thin privilege, but I would definitely be very wary of recommending hexbear to the fat trans people in my life.

    • I have seen anti-system shit on hexbear before and I do not feel that this is a safe space to openly discuss plurality or present as plural. I think the trans mega is much better than the rest of the site, but unfortunately it doesn’t exist in a vacuum from the rest of the site. I would be very wary of recommending hexbear to my trans plural and system friends.

    • Anvil_Lavigne [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      28·
      2 months ago

      piggybacking for a moment. i peruse the modlog quite a bit & have seen a depressing amount of body shaming & even ableism from prominent users. i, too, am the comfiest within the confides of the mega.

      i’m a system, even if i don’t present as such here. so cat-trans

    • SadArtemis [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      2 months ago

      I have thin privilege, but I would definitely be very wary of recommending hexbear to the fat trans people in my life.

      As an admittedly currently fat trans person, someone’s weight wouldn’t play a role in whether I’d recommend them or not. People aren’t shitting on others for weight here, but having conversations about wanting to lose weight (or gain weight, for those seriously underweight) is something pretty much universal (and not just in chud/etc ways, health is also a universal reason). That’s not to disregard that it’s affected you personally, and maybe (since I can imagine it would affect many people) we should be requiring spoilers for such discussions, etc… (no opinion/not necessary for myself IMO)

      The misogyny and anti-system shit is totally and utterly unjustified, though, and something absolutely has to be done about both.

    • NoLeftLeftWhereILive@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      2 months ago

      Thank you for bringing up the weight thing. I have been meaning to effort post about this for some time, but haven’t dared do it yet.

      I think there is also an issue with a kind of trust in a linear progress of modernity when it comes to medical professionals and medical science that maybe comes from privilege. There are also all kinds of neoliberal self-control/self-betterment things that I have seen here that ignore the systems we live in and how they are different for non-normative bodies. These have made me very uncomfortable as a person with an uterus especially. The treatment fat bodies get in this world and from medical experts especially is systemically violent and the “issue” of fatness itself can be contested. For example NovoNordisk funds the researchers in o*esity and it’s just a huge thing of racism, pathriarchy and medical violence that leftists should do better with.

      This for sure is one of the more unwelcoming things here for me personally.