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Are you cisgender? Gender Survey Result: Majority of active Hexbear users say No and Maybe.

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

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Transgender @lemmy.blahaj.zone marcie (she/her) @lemmy.ml
Are you cisgender? Gender Survey Result: Majority of active Hexbear users say No and Maybe.

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172 comments
  • While a lot has been said about the lack of cisgender women on here, I'm going to just add one thing that hasn't been said yet, and it might be controversial but here goes: there are a lot more socially conservative cisgender women out there than you think, and a lot of them do not like AMAB LGBT people, who make up probably a majority of this website. TERF thought is a lot more mainstream than most people would care to admit sadly. I remember looking a a couple of polls recently which asked women if they would be comfortable dating a bisexual man, and consistently, pretty much 60-80% of women said no, which goes to show how common casual biphobia is, yet alone transphobia or homophobia.

    But there are obviously still a ton of socially progressive cisgender women out there, so why are they not on hexbear? While the weird/sexist way our users, mainly the male cohort, act about women is definitely a factor (I still remember some idiots commenting on a woman's physical appearance on a post in the food community of all places) and has been discussed to death already, I don't think it's the only reason. I also think our foreign policy views are a serious no no for most socially progressive cisgender women in Western countries. One user already commented about how they tried to get multiple women to join the website, but they didn't like it because we were "pro Iran and pro Russia". These countries are commonly viewed as theocratic misogynistic dictatorships in socially progressive circles in the West. So amongst the demographic we should be popular with, we have that massive stumbling block to try get over.

    Lastly, I think the topics that are mainly discussed on hexbear really do not cater to cisgender women at all. It's basically the same things that get discussed at a college fraternity by "fratbros" or "hot couch guys", but from a leftist perspective. I mean we mostly talk about war, AAA videogames, computers/technology, obscure esoteric political beliefs, and personal LGBT issues. While there are definitely cis women willing to discuss those kind of topics with strangers on the internet, on a whole it's not a lot.

    • I think probably what would matter more is how popular TERF thought is among cis female socialists, socialists are ultimately the number 1 demographic for this site so if only a small percentage of them are TERFs i dont think it would affect the ratio at all. another important thing to explain is why there is such an imbalance between trans femmes and trans mascs, and I would be pretty surprised if a significant portion of socialist trans mascs were TERFs lol

      • I updated my comment, I think a big stumbling block here is our foreign policy beliefs. Hexbear critically supporting countries that are considered misogynistic in Western circles (even socialist ones) makes it difficult. I mean if you were a woman and genuinely believed Iran was some super misogynistic dictatorship that constantly kidnapped and tortured women off of the streets 24/7 because they didn't dress appropriately, would you be able to join a website that supports on the whole supports Iran's actions? I know I wouldn't be able to, in that scenario.

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