(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
I’ve never raped anyone but I’ve been forced/coerced to have sex with two different women, and yes I’m a little offended at the fact that simply due to my gender I’m lumped in with the perpetrators rather than the victims, and that the perpetrators are lumped in with the victims in my stead. It goes beyond the bear post and is partially the result of the fact that nobody gives two shits about male victims, and the fact that in many localities rape requiring penetration excludes men from seeking justice by default, the being treated as a predator whilst being preyed upon is just the icing on the cake, really.
If that makes me worse than the bear, because I’d rather we not use inflammatory and gendered language to vilify a whole gender and exclude its victims for the lulz, then so be it.
So, You’ve experienced a similar trauma to what a good chunk of women experience, and the remaining women live in fear of experiencing, and instead of being sympathetic and understanding… you are angry at them for trying to protect themselves from similar fates.
Yeah, you sound like a real upstanding guy.
Close, but no cigar. I’m empathetic to those women, and in fact I agree we can all be more vigilant to protect ourselves from harm of any kind. What I do not agree with is the unnecessary inflammatory gendered language which actually does more harm than good and alienates male victims while praising woman perpetrators, and with people like you who minimize my experiences and viewpoints because you’d rather dismiss them than treat me like a human. I do not agree that because some men are abusive we should treat them all as if they probably are, just as my experiences with two of the many women I have met are expected not to taint my view of their entire gender.
I’m not angry at women, I’m angry at individuals like yourself, who are shitty people masquerading as a moral authority, fucking do better.
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.