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

  • khizuo [ze/zir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    34·
    19 hours 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.

    • NoLeftLeftWhereILive [none/use name, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      5 hours 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.

    • Anvil_Lavigne [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      25·
      18 hours 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
      21·
      19 hours 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.

  • Yukiko [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    28·
    20 hours ago

    Misogyny may be a bannable offense, but it most certainly bleeds through often enough that there are days where I feel very uncomfortable on this website. Some of the threads that pop up from time to time are absolutely disgusting.

    • EllenKelly [comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
      7·
      2 hours ago

      When you see a misogynist, call them a misogynist, I’ll back you up. No we we not be entertaining debate perverts.

      I still get pretty nervous about being dogpiled when I call bullshit out, but it’s always been taken pretty well. I know its exhausting, but if people arent held up to a mirror theyre never going to learn, and for the most part people here will listen.

      It took years to work through this shit myself and I’m still not perfect obviously. Its embarrassing when it happens, but its good when someone tells you off.

      This goes for anything.

      At least report them, shout out to the mods.

    • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      18 hours ago

      Sorry you feel that way. Could you let me know what kind of comments you’re referring to? I want to make sure I avoid any behavior that makes you and others uncomfortable. fidel-salute-big

      • Yukiko [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
        20·
        18 hours ago

        I’ve spent some time away from this website and recently made a new account for it. There have been no offenders recently. In the past, it was always those fucking dating threads or anything involving dating advice for men and my reports were only heeded half the fucking time.

          • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            19·
            17 hours ago

            I looked up “dating” in the search and found this. I think everyone that says OPs actions are ok should at least be banned for some time. Honestly I’m disgusted by the he/him in the thread.

            • glans [it/its]@hexbear.netEnglish
              18·
              15 hours ago

              wow that thread is fucking terrible. for a bunch of communists these people sure like the idea of owning a woman.

              • EllenKelly [comrade/them]@hexbear.netM
                7·
                2 hours ago

                I havent been looking outside of the news mega much lately, your responses in that thread are really good. That must have been a horrible couple of hours, thank you.

                • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  3·
                  35 minutes ago

                  thank you for saying so. yeah i really got my hackles up that day, so many people arguing in bad faith. i actually had to step back from the site for a little bit because it put me in such a foul mood. misogyny is gonna be a problem in basically any online space, obviously especially those where men exist. it’s quite a bad problem here and imo not addressed with a heavy enough hand a lot of the time. not sure what to do about that though.

            • RomCom1989 [he/him, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              12·
              17 hours ago

              No idea if it’s the right place to do this,but I will own up to my rather poorly worded tangent there and admit I had horse blinders on

              My thinking was simply that it’s shitty to not disclose that to someone first before starting that sort of a relationship and that in a purely hypothetical sense, disregarding all the potential of the man to be an abuser that it would be more ethical to tell that to them,also I half heatedly tried to acknowledge the power imbalance in any cishet relationship and the multitude of other factors that might lead to someone seeking an extramarital affair and I did not treat the matter as a real world scenario,but as a hypothetical occurring in a vacuum,which is not at all the way something like this should be discussed

              I did not and do not believe the OP handled it correctly at all,but I am particularly bothered by my usage of the word “Excuse” which did not convey my feelings about the matter properly at all and I would like to express my most sincere apologies to any women and femme presenting folks that potentially have been made to feel unsafe as a consequence of my poorly worded tangent

              I did not consider that my words would make people feel unsafe and I do not wish to cause any potential emotional harm to people,so I would be willing to eat up a ban for what I said

  • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    22 hours ago

    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.

    Was looking to get my ear pierced anyway.

  • Speaker [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    21 hours ago

    Never thought I’d say this, but we really gotta start breaking up all that pink. Really funny counterpoint to the NB side of the chart. Let a million splits bloom!

    And to all the “custom pronouns please” respondents: an attempt was made, and it was almost exclusively used to be shitty about neopronouns. A nice request process would be pleasant, though.

  • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    45·
    1 day 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”

    • Chronicon [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      1 hour 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

      • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        35·
        1 day 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.

        • combat_doomerism [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          36·
          1 day ago

          I mean yeah no one here thinks russia are a socialist state and they’ve moreso been forced into an anti-imperialist position by the west than any principles, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt, whenever russia does something particuarly reactionary there’s always a page filled with comments dunking on them, how long did they spend on the site?

          • Seasonal_Peace [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            11·
            18 hours ago

            It’s hard to grasp our perspective when we support a russian victory over NATO. For some, the only acceptable form of anti-imperialism is slapping trendy stickers in the bathrooms of hip bars or clubs.

            • Bisexual_Cookie [comrade/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              8 hours ago

              I have few such friends as well, they are against capitalism but not against NATO (because they have been thought at school that NATO is only defensive and are the “good guys”) they don’t see the contradictions of that attitude.