(Content warning, discussions of SA and misogyny, mods I might mention politics a bit but I hope this can be taken outside the context of politics and understood as a discussion of basic human decency)
We all know how awful Reddit was when a user mentioned their gender. Immediate harassment, DMs, etc. It’s probably improved over the years? But still awful.
Until recently, Lemmy was the most progressive and supportive of basic human dignity of communities I had ever followed. I have always known this was a majority male platform, but I have been relatively pleased to see that positive expressions of masculinity have won out.
All of that changed with the recent “bear vs man” debacle. I saw women get shouted down just for expressing their stories of being sexually abused, repeatedly harassed, dogpiled, and brigaded with downvotes. Some of them held their ground, for which I am proud of them, but others I saw driven to delete their entire accounts, presumably not to return.
And I get it. The bear thing is controversial; we can all agree on this. But that should never have resulted in this level of toxicity!
I am hoping by making this post I can kind of bring awareness to this weakness, so that we can learn and grow as a community. We need to hold one another accountable for this, or the gender gap on this site is just going to get worse.
again with this shit, this isn’t the problem. (apologies if im incredibly brazen, i’ve talked to a lot of people about this and seen this statement multiple times now)
We’re explaining why the hypothetical exists. Rather than what it’s purpose is, they don’t understand the purpose of the hypothetical, and as a result, are criticizing it’s use. Telling them that the hypothetical is “actually not about hypotheticals at all, and actually its about the common understanding of woman” does nothing, they literally already know.
What we should be explaining right now, is that it’s supposed to be inflammatory, and that the entire purpose of it is to bring to light the specific issue that woman have with their views of men in society as a whole, and how that exists in relation to how the rest of society views that view itself (often negatively, as we just learned, but immediately ignored for reasons unbeknownst to me) and most specifically here. The aspect everybody seems to be missing.
How we can fix this problem, to better society, so that men don’t fucking rape women.