The only thing I would add to your post is that whilst gender is a performance, that’s not all it is. It can also be, and very often is, an internal sense of identity distinct from the social manifestation of that identity.

They look like Royal Terns!

Your gender is how society perceives you. It is a spectrum between masculine and feminine

Not quite. It’s got nothing to do with how people perceive you. A closeted trans woman is still a woman, even though she’s perceived as a man.

It’s also not inherently defined by femininity or masculinity. You can be a masculine woman or a feminine man, or you can simply not give a shit about masculinity or femininity (this is me). Society defines what we consider masculine and feminine, and creates powerful associations between these behaviours and gender, but the association is “after the fact”

Unsurprisingly, vulnerable folk being regularly and deliberately attacked by people “speaking freely”, tend not to see “speaking freely” as a gift, and are more inclined to see a space where they’re not attacked just for existing as a gift.

Gridfinity

I’m not saying that I agree with right wing transphobia, and I condemn transphobia, but sometimes, do you ever think that actually, maybe transphobia is a good thing?

That’s how your post reads

My IQ goes all the way up to 11!

I’ve been using my real name on the internet for 30 years or so now. I’ve hosted public radio shows, I run/admin several online LGBTQ communities and I’ve had newspapers articles done about my transition and activism.

It’s absolutely possible that someone with the desire could utilise that against me. But it’s unlikely and it hasn’t happened yet. And in the mean time, having to hold myself back and be constantly on edge about what I say and where I say it would impact my use of the internet in a way I don’t like, every single time I use it.

So for me, it’s worth the risk.

Iceland?

Though prices are high in Iceland. Their wages are also high, which offsets that, but if you’re coming in with foreign currency/income, you’ll feel the prices more…

But you’re also betting that the economy will come back alive soon enough because without it all you have is a heavy pile of metal.

You probably don’t even have that. Unless you have your own vault, someone else is holding it for you, and if things collapse far enough, good luck ever seeing it

The latter

My relationship with gender didn’t so much manifest that way.

Before I came out and accepted myself, I openly told myself I “should have been a girl”, but I also believed I wasn’t, and that was that. I didn’t really feel anything at the idea of femininity. That was my experience of feeling gender

This is just regular moderation, though.

It’s using the existing tool, but making a small portion of them (approving applications) available to a much larger pool of people

it doesn’t resolve the question I raised about what happens when two instances disagree about whether an account is a bot.

If the instance that hosts it doesn’t think it’s a bot, then it stays, but is blocked by the instance that does think its a bot.

And if the instance that thinks its a bot also hosts it, it gets shut down.

That is regular fediverse moderation

Yeah, but that’s after the fact, and after their content has federated to other instances.

It doesn’t solve the bot problem, but just plays whack a mole with them, whilst creating an ever large amount of moderation work, due to it federating to multiple instances.

Solving the bot problem means stopping the content from federating, which either means stopping the bot accounts from registering, or stopping them from federating until they’re known to be legit.

I mean, approving users, you just let your regular established users approve instance applications. All they need to do is stop the egregious bots from getting through. And if there is enough of them, the applications will be processed really quickly. If there is any doubt about an application, let them through, because they can be caught afterwards. And historical applications are already visible, and easily checked if someone has a complaint.

And if you don’t like the idea of trusted users being able to moderate new accounts, you can tinker with that idea. Let accounts start posting before their application has been approved, but stop their content from federating outwards until an instance staff member approves them. It would let people post right away without requiring approval, and still get some interaction, but it would mitigate the damage that bots can do, by containing them to a single instance.

My point is, there are options that could be implemented. The status quo of open sign ups, with a growing number of bots doesn’t have to be the unquestioned approach going forward.

How do you figure that? There’s nothing centralised about it

Make sign ups require approval and create a “trusted user” permission level that lets the regular trusted users on the instance see and process pending sign up requests and suspend/delete brand new spam accounts (say under 24 hours old) that slip through the cracks. You can have dozens of people across all timezones capable of approving requests as the are made, and capable of shutting down the bots that slip through.

Boom, bot problem solved

It sounds like depersonalisation to me. A form of dissociation.

Lots of trans people deal with it when they’re closeted. I know I did.

I don’t understand. Why not do whatever you normally do to edit and post videos?

Make a video telling people you’ve moved