Might be a bad idea for me to go into this while having ptsd issues, especially when I'm probably about to do a long ass sleep, but yolo.
Basic synopsis on my feelings here:
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tl;dr: I used to believe we should be federated, but after 3ish years of interacting with lemmygrad on various accounts, I have noticed that lemmygrad is not a place that is safe for transgender people at large. The reason for this is principally their debatelord culture and refusing to comprehend that debating a point against a minority's lived experience, then demanding civility when that minority gets angry, is the same shit liberals do.
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I noticed instances of reactionary content, such as here and/or comments are not removed or users banned. Lemmygrad seems to prefer to debate reactionaries, and obviously subjecting minority groups to reactionary content for personal fun is callous at best, and reactionary at worst. Its important to make it so that there are designated areas for dunking on reactionary content, as well as nsfw and content tags to avoid it. Otherwise, reactionary comments should be removed and visible in a mod log.
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I discussed in this post why it is important to remove downvotes to protect trans people. After I noticed people were creating evasive comments to debate me, I pretty much told them to fuck off. This resulted in a ban from their admins and they continued to defend their policy. This reminds me a lot of the struggle sessions we used to have about adding pronouns to the site or removing downvotes. People would be evasive in this same way to give the benefit of the doubt then demand civility when people get angry. Those people are not allies and should be purged.
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The admins seem to have a principle misunderstanding of why minorities don't want to see any form of harassment or discrimination directed at them and how that is perpetuated across social media sites. They seem to legitimately believe that keeping downvotes means that they will be able to stave off reactionary content or is somehow a valuable tool in responding to reactionary content, when in reality they should be removing and banning reactionary content.
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Certain users were very keen on civility bullshit, particularly @simply_surprise@lemmygrad.ml, @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml (an admin), @davel@lemmygrad.ml. This is honestly the most disgusting behavior I've seen on lemmygrad, and the fact that the admins doubled down on it is fucked.
I can see staying federated to a bunch of very small instances, especially queer focused and hobby instances, but I'm pretty soured on the fediverse at this point.
I'm extremely disappointed in what I've seen of the lemmygrad mod team. Why are they making me into a splitter over such a basic issue of avoiding the harassment of trans people at a systemic level, bastards 
I am willing to retract this if the admins of lemmygrad self crit and apologize for temp bans or otherwise of my accounts on civility reasons and make it clear that debating the lived experience of anyone of a minority group is unacceptable going forward. There are positive and proactive ways of discussing someone's lived experience without going into debate territory and trying to find a technicality in lived experiences to support an opinion you already hold. I maintain that removing downvotes is a boon to trans users, if you can come up with something better than that and implement it, I am all ears.
Wtf, they banned you for "incivility" for your comments in the thread about removing downvotes? I didn't see you make even a single a comment that could even possibly be construed as incivility, I only saw you making reasonable arguments about something you're passionate about it. If that's what they think Hexbearian incivility looks like, then I can't imagine how they'd react to being on the wrong side of the dog pilings and dunkings we give to proper reactionaries.
If nothing else, I think our admin team needs to make a point to sit down and have a talk with lemmygrad's to hash this out and push for them to unban you and apologize for being overly dismissive of your valid concerns. I don't think this yet rises to level of requiring defederation, Lemmygrad is without a doubt the most similar forum to Hexbear on the entire internet, and it'd be a massive shame to lose all of their cool users. But eliminating transphobia is extremely important to us, and if lemmygrad cares about the union of our two communities, then they should be willing to compromise every once in a while. That doesn't necessarily mean removing downvotes, but it does mean taking a more pro-active stance on rooting out transphobia even if they haven't personally been effected by it enough to notice.
I agree with this take. It's not a great situation, but it's not grounds for defederation. I understand that hexbear is a safe space but if we can't get along with lemmygrad, what does that say about us? Who can we get along with? I'm concerned that we're putting ourselves further into an "Us against the world" mindset by isolating ourselves like this, when realistically, the average hexbear user and the average lemmygrad user probably agree on >95% of issues. We're on the same side.
I think lemmygrad is closely enough aligned with us that we can hopefully influence them to not be cringe debatebros, rather than abandoning the federation altogether. The place was made worse by GenZedong users, maybe it can be made better by hexbear users. Because again, if we can't work together with lemmygrad of all places, is there anyone we can work with?
I definitely agree. I had said my piece about why I thought it helps trans people a lot and tried to be fun about it, what I didn't need is a bunch of people goading me. I would like them to consider what might be better for trans people over vague notions of preserving site culture or whatever, though. If they have a better new idea that they want to try out I'm eager to see how it turns out.