(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.
The whole “bear vs. man” thing proved that there are still a lot of people out there totally unable to get over themselves. On one side you see people piling on women not knowing the everyday struggle the average woman goes through everyday, on the other side there are people that get mad at memes not accepting that the statement was meant to be over the top in the first place, so it’s ok to find irony in it
the response to the bear vs man thing is basically proof why most women chose bear.
Responses like the one OP is talking about were for sure, but since those weren’t the only kind of critical responses I wouldn’t band the whole thing together
people who are unable to get over themselves:
also people, unable to get over themselves: “you are actually just like hitler”
(this is satire, i’m not legitimately comparing hitler to you people, calm down.)
the irony will never cease to be indescribably funny to me.
downvotes on this are nothing but a tally of guys who are legitimately worse than a bear. So at least speak up and reveal yourselves, you coward ass removed.
Apt username
im no coward, in fact i’m not even a removed, i don’t downvote shit unless it’s just like an actually wrong opinion.
actually you know what fuck it i won’t even expand upon my thoughts here, if you care go look at my post history. There’s plenty there.