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.
I went and read the thread that no doubt spawned this one and a few things.
First everything you said on grad is correct.
Second they can’t come here and do that shit because they will be banned, admin or not.
Third I’m not sure I understand how defederation solves anything. Historically we have defederated because their users were coming into Hexbear and harassing our users or posting shit content to a degree that the our modmins couldn’t or shouldn’t deal with. Is that happening with grad? If it is, okay then yeah probably defed. I haven’t seen it (on Hexbear at least… again you’re spot on that the kind of debatelord “respect bad views” shit is happening on grad.) Maybe it is happening here too and our mods are just so powerful that none of us ever see the bad shit. But if they aren’t coming here and stirring up shit…then just don’t go to their comms? You can just go local only and that solves the immediate harm they’re doing to you and other trans comrades in the site. Defederation doesn’t remove them from the Internet they’ll still be over there with their shit takes. You just won’t see them unless you choose to go and engage them… which is exactly the same as just browsing local only or not subscribing to any grad comms.
If the root issue here is “Hexbear should not be federated with any instance that does not have a 1:1 ideological alignment with Hexbear” then that’s a different discussion and one that’s probably interesting to have but one that would necessarily result in Hexbear just completely defederating from everyone because there is no community on the fediverse that does a better job protecting minority comrades than Hexbear. Maybe that’s a discussion worth having again.
I get your point. I’m probably not in the best state of mind to argue or suggest, but other than what I have already said, I would like to posit the idea that by staying federated (assuming the admins do not respond or resolve the issue) we are associating ourselves with communists that support banning trans people for “incivility”. We are selectively federated to many things, why would we selectively choose to associate with people that make our own ideas look bad?
Thanks for your input though
This part I do also agree with you that their mods should take a better stance on. Being transphobic is uncivil no matter how nice the window dressing they put on it is, so it would be nice to see their “be civil” rules applied equally here. And that might even be enough to address much of your issue too; if the transphobes get banned for their “civil” transphobia then job done. They say they’re doing this but in your experience they aren’t, and I’m more willing to believe your experience on that than what they’re saying.
So hopefully their admin team sees all this and agrees that they need to do better.