Why is Wafrn Blocking Multiple Trans Fediverse Instances?
Posted: Wed Nov 19, 2025 4:28 am
In early October, I stepped down from my moderator position over at app.wafrn.net, which also followed me deleting my accounts and moving onward with my own instance/s. I detailed that this was something I felt necessary for multiple reasons, which includes the suspicious moderation response to a trans woman who was less-than-nice in a post she made about men, and Wafrn’s strange association with new-age Men’s Rights Activist / TERF, “Wild Aspen.”
From the other mods on the team using phrases like “TIRF” and “transmisandry” (see: my recent post, “What is Transmisogyny?”), to the head developer using his Tumblr account to tell trans women to go sign up on a “trans women only” fediverse instance if they don’t like his moderation decisions: It seemed to me that this “Tumblr alternative” that originally launched as a response to transmisogyny and transphobia on Tumblr, had become exactly the thing it claims to not be.
One of the main and only issues with the fediverse, is people’s tendency to cut-off entire communities on a whim without warning or clear justification, and sometimes, when they do this, they share their instance-level blocklists around. I fully believe this is the one thing that needs to be clearly addressed in order to make the fediverse a more just environment for marginalized people … but, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
On the first couple of points, Aspen is the trans man repeatedly mentioned by me as the person Gabbo has deferred to numerous times when making moderation decisions, even at odds with advice I had directly given him when it came to moderating bad behavior, and especially bad behavior from trans users on his instance/project. Aspen is for sure a wild piece-of-work, who shouldn’t be anywhere near someone who’s moderating a large fediverse community, but I’ll just give you this to sum up what the problem with him, is.
If you’re unsure how this person is associated with Wafrn, or doubt what I’m saying, log into the Wafrn Discord, where this guy will be regularly active, or even ask Gabbo himself if that’s one of his friends.
Secondly, the question of the user who was swiftly banned, without question or conversation.
An account that posted, “I hate men, and that includes trans men!” Which, I have mentioned numerous times is admittedly kind of mean, but definitely something you need to look at through the lens of intersectionality, and not act on a knee-jerk decision. Because it would look bad.
But I was ignored.
Gabbo says the account was an “op,” and I’ve seen no evidence of this, or any definition of what that’s supposed to even mean.
The account was left to return to Tumblr where she asks to the void why she can’t access her Wafrn account.
Normally, when making moderation decisions against accounts that affect their ability to log in and post, you would have a conversation with the user, or give them some kind of notice. No such thing was done here. Maybe this is how you would respond to neo nazis on the fediverse, or pedophiles, for that matter, but certainly not marginalized people expressing anger, even if you disagree with what they've said, or are concerned about them being some kind of "psyop," which, is just ridiculous to read aloud.
And then, while being criticized for his moderation decision on Tumblr, Gabbo posts that trans women should go join transfem.space, where he’s certain you’d also be banned for expressing anger or discontent directed at men, whether they be cis or trans. And, if that’s true, … uhm, it just means that people shouldn’t join transfem.space, either. But! I’m not speaking for transfem.space. I don’t know how they would actually handle something like this, nor have I seen them outright ban users for one single offense against their rules. For all intents and purposes, transfem.space is a fine instance to join and participate in. I'm just theorizing here based on Gabbo's own words.
It’s becoming quite clear, though, who Wafrn is really for, and it ain’t trans women.
This is all the icing on the cake, though, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual cake yet, and it’s something I wasn’t even aware of while I was actively being a moderator at Wafrn. Had I known this from the beginning, not only would I have not made an account on the instance, but I would have also completely declined the request that I join the moderation team.
The instance is currently blocking multiple trans/trans fem instances, and these are just the ones I could easily find on their publicly available instance-block list.
I really need instance admins to step back and take a look at this, and all of this behavior, and consider how this makes the fediverse look to people on the outside, such as Bluesky users who are second-guessing the integrity of its moderation team, and the CEO, and considering alternatives, such as the fediverse.
If I were a trans woman who only posts on Bluesky, who became fed-up with the constant rotation of bad coming out of Bluesky’s moderation team, and then navigated to the fediverse only to see a large instance connected to both fedi and Bluesky publicly lambasting a trans woman and blocking multiple trans instances: I’d stay right the fuck where I am.
And this angers me, specifically, because I spend so much time rallying for the fediverse, speaking to people in an attempt to dispel rumors and misconceptions, and then you actually come over to fedi and you see … fuckin’, Wafrn, apparently a haven for trans community MRAs, or even TERFs, calling a trans woman a misandrist and booting her out of the instance that's supposed to be at-odds with Photomatt's extreme transmisogyny and his actions against a single trans woman who no longer has an account on Tumblr.
Now, you might say, “Well, this could potentially be a copy/pasted blocklist that nobody’s combed through to find suspect blocks that don’t make sense!” And in response to that, I’d ask you, why, an instance using brand new software, that’s attempting to be some symbol of respect in regard to women, trans women, and queer people in-general, would just lazily import a blocklist without vetting its source, or what’s actually contained on the list (if you browse the Wafrn blocklist, you'll find mastodon.lol, which hasn't been in-service since at least 2023, which is before Wafrn launched).
And I give you, Wafrn: Either extremely unprepared and amateur, and staffed by people who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about, or, seemingly actively hostile to trans women who step out-of-line under a veneer of feigned ignorance with multiple users at the steering wheel who have used the phrase “misandry” un-ironically.
Or both.
And to that, maybe you think a lot of instance admins just copy blocklists into their databases, and perhaps some do. But, I can at least say for myself, that, no. I don’t do that. I have a massive instance blocklist that I spent hours manually typing into Akkoma’s MRF settings, and even when I was running a Mastodon instance, I at least looked at the GardenFence blocklist before I imported it.
I wish I could say that this is the first time I’ve seen a fediverse instance shoot itself in the foot with active hostility aimed at cis and/or trans women, but … uh, I remember mastodon.lol, bofa.lol, kzynk, etc, etc, and there are currently other instances with highly questionable decision making coming from the top of the chain. But, that’s a story for another time that I'm not sure I'd want to bring up, because some of the involved parties do not want to be ... involved.
Never-the-less, I'm sorry I had to write about this, but I did have to write about it. Because too much ridiculousness is dying in silence these days, and you gotta hold the spotlight to stuff like this every once in awhile, or people will just keep getting away with injustices.
And I have far, far too much experience with abusive people just getting away with injustices and abuse to the tune of zero consequences or corrective action.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/discourse/2025/11/18/wafrn-wtf/
From the other mods on the team using phrases like “TIRF” and “transmisandry” (see: my recent post, “What is Transmisogyny?”), to the head developer using his Tumblr account to tell trans women to go sign up on a “trans women only” fediverse instance if they don’t like his moderation decisions: It seemed to me that this “Tumblr alternative” that originally launched as a response to transmisogyny and transphobia on Tumblr, had become exactly the thing it claims to not be.
One of the main and only issues with the fediverse, is people’s tendency to cut-off entire communities on a whim without warning or clear justification, and sometimes, when they do this, they share their instance-level blocklists around. I fully believe this is the one thing that needs to be clearly addressed in order to make the fediverse a more just environment for marginalized people … but, I’m getting ahead of myself here.
On the first couple of points, Aspen is the trans man repeatedly mentioned by me as the person Gabbo has deferred to numerous times when making moderation decisions, even at odds with advice I had directly given him when it came to moderating bad behavior, and especially bad behavior from trans users on his instance/project. Aspen is for sure a wild piece-of-work, who shouldn’t be anywhere near someone who’s moderating a large fediverse community, but I’ll just give you this to sum up what the problem with him, is.
If you’re unsure how this person is associated with Wafrn, or doubt what I’m saying, log into the Wafrn Discord, where this guy will be regularly active, or even ask Gabbo himself if that’s one of his friends.
Secondly, the question of the user who was swiftly banned, without question or conversation.
An account that posted, “I hate men, and that includes trans men!” Which, I have mentioned numerous times is admittedly kind of mean, but definitely something you need to look at through the lens of intersectionality, and not act on a knee-jerk decision. Because it would look bad.
But I was ignored.
Gabbo says the account was an “op,” and I’ve seen no evidence of this, or any definition of what that’s supposed to even mean.
The account was left to return to Tumblr where she asks to the void why she can’t access her Wafrn account.
Normally, when making moderation decisions against accounts that affect their ability to log in and post, you would have a conversation with the user, or give them some kind of notice. No such thing was done here. Maybe this is how you would respond to neo nazis on the fediverse, or pedophiles, for that matter, but certainly not marginalized people expressing anger, even if you disagree with what they've said, or are concerned about them being some kind of "psyop," which, is just ridiculous to read aloud.
And then, while being criticized for his moderation decision on Tumblr, Gabbo posts that trans women should go join transfem.space, where he’s certain you’d also be banned for expressing anger or discontent directed at men, whether they be cis or trans. And, if that’s true, … uhm, it just means that people shouldn’t join transfem.space, either. But! I’m not speaking for transfem.space. I don’t know how they would actually handle something like this, nor have I seen them outright ban users for one single offense against their rules. For all intents and purposes, transfem.space is a fine instance to join and participate in. I'm just theorizing here based on Gabbo's own words.
It’s becoming quite clear, though, who Wafrn is really for, and it ain’t trans women.
This is all the icing on the cake, though, and we haven’t even gotten to the actual cake yet, and it’s something I wasn’t even aware of while I was actively being a moderator at Wafrn. Had I known this from the beginning, not only would I have not made an account on the instance, but I would have also completely declined the request that I join the moderation team.
The instance is currently blocking multiple trans/trans fem instances, and these are just the ones I could easily find on their publicly available instance-block list.
I really need instance admins to step back and take a look at this, and all of this behavior, and consider how this makes the fediverse look to people on the outside, such as Bluesky users who are second-guessing the integrity of its moderation team, and the CEO, and considering alternatives, such as the fediverse.
If I were a trans woman who only posts on Bluesky, who became fed-up with the constant rotation of bad coming out of Bluesky’s moderation team, and then navigated to the fediverse only to see a large instance connected to both fedi and Bluesky publicly lambasting a trans woman and blocking multiple trans instances: I’d stay right the fuck where I am.
And this angers me, specifically, because I spend so much time rallying for the fediverse, speaking to people in an attempt to dispel rumors and misconceptions, and then you actually come over to fedi and you see … fuckin’, Wafrn, apparently a haven for trans community MRAs, or even TERFs, calling a trans woman a misandrist and booting her out of the instance that's supposed to be at-odds with Photomatt's extreme transmisogyny and his actions against a single trans woman who no longer has an account on Tumblr.
Now, you might say, “Well, this could potentially be a copy/pasted blocklist that nobody’s combed through to find suspect blocks that don’t make sense!” And in response to that, I’d ask you, why, an instance using brand new software, that’s attempting to be some symbol of respect in regard to women, trans women, and queer people in-general, would just lazily import a blocklist without vetting its source, or what’s actually contained on the list (if you browse the Wafrn blocklist, you'll find mastodon.lol, which hasn't been in-service since at least 2023, which is before Wafrn launched).
And I give you, Wafrn: Either extremely unprepared and amateur, and staffed by people who have no idea what they're doing, or talking about, or, seemingly actively hostile to trans women who step out-of-line under a veneer of feigned ignorance with multiple users at the steering wheel who have used the phrase “misandry” un-ironically.
Or both.
And to that, maybe you think a lot of instance admins just copy blocklists into their databases, and perhaps some do. But, I can at least say for myself, that, no. I don’t do that. I have a massive instance blocklist that I spent hours manually typing into Akkoma’s MRF settings, and even when I was running a Mastodon instance, I at least looked at the GardenFence blocklist before I imported it.
I wish I could say that this is the first time I’ve seen a fediverse instance shoot itself in the foot with active hostility aimed at cis and/or trans women, but … uh, I remember mastodon.lol, bofa.lol, kzynk, etc, etc, and there are currently other instances with highly questionable decision making coming from the top of the chain. But, that’s a story for another time that I'm not sure I'd want to bring up, because some of the involved parties do not want to be ... involved.
Never-the-less, I'm sorry I had to write about this, but I did have to write about it. Because too much ridiculousness is dying in silence these days, and you gotta hold the spotlight to stuff like this every once in awhile, or people will just keep getting away with injustices.
And I have far, far too much experience with abusive people just getting away with injustices and abuse to the tune of zero consequences or corrective action.
Source: https://mkultra.monster/discourse/2025/11/18/wafrn-wtf/