(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.
Here’s my take: the bear thing is causing such a visceral reaction that it is very hard to take a step back, not take it personally and have a rational discussion about it. Even if you know the statistics. Even if you’re absolutely certain you’d do the right thing (or maybe especially then).
I was exposed to a somewhat similar experience in college: while walking through the campus one evening I realised the girl in front of me was a good friend of mine, so I rushed to catch up. When she heard me she quickened her pace close to running, and only stopped when I said her name and something like “wait up!”. I was just happy to meet a friend. She, on the other hand, was absolutely terrified, and told me all about it as we walked towards the exit.
That evening I realised that women experience the world much different than men. That there’s an underlying level of potential violence that they evaluate and weigh against potential benefits from encounters and interactions with men in almost all social contexts. And knowing that has recalibrated my behaviour to a certain extent, as I realised women can’t afford to give me the benefit of the doubt, especially in contexts where they feel vulnerable.
I wish more men would get this point, especially in their formative years. It’s not a judgement on their character when women that barely know them are careful around them. Trust needs to be earned. And for a woman, the cost of misplaced trust is too damn high.
This is the equivalent of saying that MS Outlook is a community. It’s not and neither is Lemmy. Each server has its own rules, and each community on those servers can add rules beyond that.
Address a specific community or server, there’s no central control over the fediverse.
The truth.
Just compare user posts from accounts originating at beehaw, hexbear, lemmygrad, blahaj.
I’m good, clean fun I am.
Bingo.
Yep. I agree. I’ve been bullied on Lemmy for sharing the fact that I have been bullied in my own home town because local law enforcement hired exes of mine who have abused their law enforcement powers. I now have a person, or group, that follows each of my posts and comments to immediately downvote them, even if they aren’t even controversial. I just receive an automatic downvote. That pales in comparison to the verbal bashing I’ve received from that group, or person. Each time I speak out, I have this one commenter that tells me that I’m crazy and need meds to make me shut up about having been abused by an ex that was hired by our local sheriff’s department. I wonder if they sniffed my phone to follow my account. I guess that would be crazy and just earn me more hateful comments from “random” people on Lemmy, huh? My question is, do I blame Lemmy as a whole, or will people on here finally admit that some certain local in my area is stalking my account?
When comments have become as bad as “strangers” telling me to “get raped with a rusty lawn mower blade”, I have to wonder if it’s all coming from the same IP address and if the mods even care.
I think regardless of the platform it will get ugly when topics are controversial. How ugly it gets is mostly depending on the level of moderation. It doesn’t need many trolls or ill willing people to derail a discussion among hundreds of good meaning people.
We also tend to concentrate on the things we consider unfavorable. If among 100 comments 5 are sexist, these 5 will get far more attention than the other 95.
I mean, I’ve seen people uttering death threads on YouTube, because the YouTuber used butter in a recipe, not margarine. One of several hundred comments under that video, but the only one I remember…
I missed the kerfuffle, but my $0.02 is Lemmy is still in infancy. It’s also a federated system made up of different instances, some of which - and you know who I mean - aren’t as cool.
So utilize the tools provided, reporting, blocking, etc. and find the communities you like. /$0.02
I want to put out there, that as a man I shared my story… And I was down voted and disrespected.
So you can probably remove ‘for women’ in the title. Lemmy is very much an echo chamber. You don’t have to look around very hard to see that there’s a large amount of intolerance on Lemmy.
Except it’s not an echo chamber. I’ve seen a great variety of comments on the issue at hand. If you haven’t, check out some other communities. And downvotes are different from intolerance. Of course intolerance can exist (if you’re getting blocked or direct messaged, for example), but that’s not what you experienced.
And the question is not whether intolerance exists “here”, because it probably does in some communities some of the time. That’s not surprising. We’re on the internet. The question is whether it’s worse “here” than it was on Reddit, and if it is, what can or should be done about that.
I haven’t seen any data indicating any trend on the issue. If people have different experiences, that’s just to be expected, and we should sympathize with people getting harassed, but we shouldn’t assume the sky is falling when it’s not.
Yep. The gendered disrespect has gone both ways unfortunately. I am sorry to hear you went through that, no one should have to.
You ended your comment with “but I’ll get down voted because of the circle jerk” and ended up with a whopping -2. Seems reasonable.
So I have to edit this because I thought you found a wrong comment cuz you said negative two and last I saw it was way lower negative two.
And it really does still point out, you included, that people just don’t care if a guy is the victim. You sound out to judge me, to discredit me.
Haha wow you jumped to so many conclusions from just that sentence and down voted me. Yikes.
Because you’re trying to push a different narrative. You’re justifying it because of what I ended it with and I was right. If I’m wrong in my conclusion feel free to drop an actual conclusion… Or enlighten people what they were supposed to take from your comment. Because you reduced it down to a point I made…
I’m really curious what your plan was going to be if you found that comment in the negative but I hadn’t made that comment about I’m going to be downvoted because I don’t fit the narrative what was your plan? You’re digging through my post history so you clearly have a plan a reason.
I didn’t reduce anything, stop jumping to conclusions. I simply stated how those last words only combined to a total of -2, which I found reasonable.
I’m really curious what your plan was going to be if you found that comment in the negative but I hadn’t made that comment about I’m going to be downvoted because I don’t fit the narrative what was your plan? You’re digging through my post history so you clearly have a plan a reason.
Sorry, I don’t engage in terminally online reddit behavior. I only looked up the one comment to check your claim is all.
e: for someone who can’t shut up about narrative and circle jerking you sure seem to try REALLY hard to create a narrative about others. this is my last reply.
i’d like to make this about me, a man, who will think of the men etc etc
Case in point
The bear thing; good god, yes… the number of people just not getting it was/is incredible. It’s a good example of how arguing for the logical position completely misses out on any nuance over why someone might say they’re choosing, for example, the bear.
I know some of it is folks having difficulty reading between the lines, spectrum stuff, male socialising, etc etc… but man. That was a tough one
It’s because of the way it was presented, which is very much a “you are enlightened, or you are the monster”. This is not the reality of the situation of choosing the bear and is as disingenuous as the incel arguments.
amen. the whole thing is bad faith.
There’s a similar concept that has sprung up in discission around here about how basically all women have a sense of danger around men they don’t know or the ones obviously being creepy.
Way too many people here think that without a form of physical assault involved, taking measures to distance yourself from someone you get a bad feeling about is sexism and as bad as racism because not all men are bad.
Like, if I’m walking down a sidewalk and the person walking towards me decides to cross the street because I’m a man, I get it. It’s not hard to grasp that some people don’t want to be close to someone who might objectify them.
But I’ve been in probably 5 separate arguments on lemmy about how women who do that are misandrist garbage because every man deserves a shot and you should always give men the benefit of the doubt.
There’s definitely a higher concentration of man-centric conversation here.
I dunno man. That’s a long paragraph and I give you the benefit of the doubt to say that I don’t think it matters as much as my pointless opinion
We’re all pointless opinions here on the world wide web, bucko.
That being said, I hate your pointless opinion with every fiber of my being and I’m fully prepared to sit at my computer and argue about it through the wee hours of the morning
Like, if I’m walking down a sidewalk and the person walking towards me decides to cross the street because I’m a man, I get it. It’s not hard to grasp that some people don’t want to be close to someone who might objectify them.
I feel insulted because I’ve never hurt anyone in my life enough to even remotely justify this, and also because some men I would be cautious about usually don’t get the same treatment. At least it takes them more time and effort to get it, LOL.
So is this sarcasm or do you really not understand that it isn’t your right to decide what other people discern as safe vs unsafe?
Because if it’s not sarcasm, I’m really not in the mood to have a 6th argument with another person whose entire position boils down to “well it hurts my feelings because not all men are bad”
So is this sarcasm or do you really not understand that it isn’t your right to decide what other people discern as safe vs unsafe?
It’s fully my right to decide what I’m upset about though, and go fight someone else.
with another person whose entire position boils down to “well it hurts my feelings because not all men are bad”
Now with ascribing positions to others you should be used to be called a clown.
EDIT: Also this your comment didn’t seem intelligent or subtle. You may have gotten such a wrong impression of yourself, thus I’m helping you.
This concept isn’t hard to understand and every time someone has a problem with it it’s always some variation of being personally offended because they think someone else’s safety is actually about them.
You’re not different. I didn’t ascribe your position, you literally said you’re insulted because you’ve never done anything to justify that behavior.
That’s a variation of making it about you because you don’t feel like you should be lumped in with other men, even though in the situations this happens in it’s because the other person doesn’t know you.
You’re the exact type of person I was talking about with the exact point the last 5 have all made. I thought it might be sarcasm because you can’t seriously be trying to assert the same thing they all did on a comment calling them all out for refusing to get it, but here we are.
Calling me a clown is a cheap cop out to deflect from the fact that your feelings are hurt. Go bait someone else.
You’re not different. I didn’t ascribe your position, you literally said you’re insulted because you’ve never done anything to justify that behavior.
I wasn’t this specific, so this statement is false. That someone lives in Japan doesn’t mean they live in Tokyo.
To not completely waste this, I was talking about people who know me and interpret autistic behavior as a sign of danger.
It’s not even about men. I never had that problem with women with the same traits.
You’re the exact type of person I was talking about with the exact point the last 5 have all made. I thought it might be sarcasm because you can’t seriously be trying to assert the same thing they all did on a comment calling them all out for refusing to get it, but here we are.
Calling me a clown is a cheap cop out to deflect
A person saying “you’re the exact type of person” is a clown.
from the fact that your feelings are hurt.
Specifically for clowns - having your feelings hurt doesn’t make you wrong.
I was talking about people who know me and interpret autistic behavior as a sign of danger.
You came into a conversation about unknown men being an implicit danger to women, a subject that’s a title post and 3 comments deep, to talk about how people treat you like that because of something completely different, not clarify that you’re talking about something completely different, and then you’re wondering why I’m thinking you’re talking about the subject of the post?
I’m willing to chalk this up to a misunderstanding, but your insistence that I’m a clown for defending a point that you made no indication wasn’t what you were even talking about until now has left me completely unwilling to talk to you further.
This is pointless. Goodnight.
my working theory is that is that it was doomed from the start, I saw quite a number of people not immediately understanding it, probably due to lack of experience. And in response, people immediately re-iterating the statement made in the post above, i guess somehow hoping that it would make sense the second time it was said. Though people did explain why they were saying what they were saying. It didn’t explain why anybody was talking about bears in the woods, which is inevitably kind of irrelevant. The second post that resulted later down the line was better, and the recent meme has been quite a bit better, except for my criticism of vague statements. (please for the love of god, stop using vague statements, they help nobody. Just talk about what you’re talking about, some of us don’t fucking understand ok?)
I’m not really sure what people were thinking to be honest, oh and of course it devolved into “well, you’re part of the problem” I’m sure that didn’t help.
Maybe i’m autistic, but like, i don’t know why people kept screaming metaphor at people expecting it to suddenly make sense to them. That’s not how english class works, im pretty sure.
I literally have no clue what man vs bear is and honestly sounds like it should stay that way1
This bear thing has got out of hand lmao
The bear thing was rage bait to spread hate. Hate against men, reactionary hate against women, presumably hate against bears.
People shouldn’t have dignified the ridiculous scenario with a response.
all you have to do is say ‘men are bad mmmkay?’ and nod along with the majority opinion and get your subsequent pat on the back.
specifically, it was intended to drum up talk about the underlying problem. it was intentionally inflammatory to make a point.
It’s not that complicated.
So you’re saying pissing men off is the point?? And you’re somehow indignant that it, true to its purpose, pissed men off??
None of you seem to understand what the point of the bear post is. At it’s core it is divisive and serves no purpose other than to deepen gender divides.
So you’re saying pissing men off is the point??
yes
And you’re somehow indignant that it, true to its purpose, pissed men off??
no, i’m very obviously aware of the point. The problem here is that nobody here was interested in doing anything other than yelling at people for being stupid or something.
We should be talking about the problem at hand right now, but instead we’re debating whether or not this was to make people hate each other more.
So you’re in the “catch more flies with vinegar than honey” crowd
i’m in the crowd of “capture for sport, and release for ecosystem” myself, I’m not trying to catch fish for anything other than sport here. I might consume the odd one or two though. But generally, i think it’s most productive as capture and release.
part of the problem with the original thread, and a little bit here as well. Is that we caught fish for sport, and then just never released them, and they started rotting, and then nobody thought to dispose of them. When in reality we should have released them, and providing a productive dialogue through the process.
This here is the biggest woosh that supports the whole thesis of the hypothetical. It was never meant to be a logical hypothetical. It’s intended to elucincidate a prevailing feeling among women about what they perceive as safer. The fact that this still has to be explained after so many days is…I don’t know.
Had the hypothetical been used to explain negative feelings about someone due to their race, religion, skin color, or sexuality; it would have been rightfully reviled.
There are far more effective and less misandrist ways to express that you don’t feel safe being alone in risky situations.
Yes, because those prejudices aren’t grounded. The numbers reveal a whole other story when it comes to men/women interaction. Women have to use the biggest kid gloves to even broach this topic to men bc my god…the inherent fragility
Edit: listen guys. Trying to substitute another minority for the man in the hypothetical is not the dunk you think. I feel like Lemmy is the ultimate male echo chamber sometimes.
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Over 1 in 3 women (35.6%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
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Nearly 1 in 3 college women (29%) say they’ve been in an abusive dating relationship .
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52% of college women report knowing a friend who’s experienced violent and abusive dating behaviors including physical, sexual, digital, verbal, or other controlling abuse.
Everyone knows at least one woman (unless you’re on Lemmy of course) who was abused, raped, or the subject of physical violence by a male partner at one point in their lives. Try to understand why the hypothetical exists, not if meets your logical criteria
These statistics make me vomit in my mouth, ughh men are really fucked up. I am a man, I love many men in my life but damn…we are pretty broken on the whole.
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misandry is fake news.
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.
Removed by mod
Please explain your comment. It could be seen that you are (mockingly or otherwise) stating that all sex is rape. As this is not completely clear, I would ask that you explain what you meant.
Removed by mod
Following that logic:
- we shouldn’t try to stop murder, because it will always happen
- we shouldn’t try to stop racism, because it will always happen
- we shouldn’t try to stop slavery, because it will always happen
- we shouldn’t try to stop government corruption, because it will always happen
We shouldn’t look at our past and say “we will never rise up above this, so why try”. We become better incrementally, by TRYING to be better.
By basically saying “you’re disillusion for advocating for better” means you’ve given up. I and many like me haven’t. There’s no reason we can’t work towards a safer society for all.
The right to bear men.
god what i would give
Ahem, the right to manbearpig. Whatever that means…
Seems to me that the rage bait did it’s job, but the only who won was the author and website that got all the clicks and ads serving, while lemmy got a shitstorm for nothing.
This is really the terminal issue with Reddit alternatives. They are just Reddit minus the most recent controversy as of foundation. Reddit is overall just a popular content aggregation website with poorly design discussion features.
Upvotes and down votes, while intended to help users weed out bad arguments and spam, only achive in promoting sophistry and tribalism. What ends up getting upvoted is what “wins” the argument, while good arguments that come from unpopular viewpoints get downvoted.
And with that comes all the toxic elements from old Reddit ruat we all hope just won’t be a part of our replacements. Reddit’s format works at a smaller scale, where users are typically more enthusiastic and therefor better informed, but as the sites get larger you’ll notice they typical hyper-snarky “owned with facts and logic” attitude take hold of a community as more people with a weaker investment jump on the bandwagon and upvote everything that makes them feel smart.
Eventually, the site becomes just like Reddit, but for a smaller and more insulated community, and users begin to question why they’re here instead of Reddit which has the established user base that can reliably cover more topics you are interested in.
We have not learnt from history, and we are doomed to repeat it. Maybe it’ll be different in the future.
You’re telling me that something that was intentionally supposed to induce division between normal ass people is inducing division between people?
Oh no!
Anyway, moral of the story, don’t get caught up in silly ass things like this. It was created to do exactly what it is doing.
pretty much exactly this. There is no way that statement wasn’t designed intentionally this way.
I mean why else would it work so fucking aggressively?
Hmm could lots of men here be too self-centered and have fragile masculinity? No, must be a psyop!
Lol
it’s not a psyop?
It’s the same as literally any viral statement ever.
There have been plenty of (subtly) misogynistic comments on Lemmy long before the bear thing
The point that I’m making though, is that there will ALWAYS be bad actors. There will ALWAYS be a group of people who are just hateful, and will do or say anything to upset others, because they have nothing in their life that gives them actual happiness.
So, to me, this whole man vs bear thing is just incredibly stupid, and I am shocked so many people would get so upset about it, from either side!
It truly worked, and that’s more sad than anything else here.
The bear thing is misandry because it groups all man as bad.
The bear scenario is the perfect division inducing shitstorm.
It’s understandable what the memes portrays the danger that women face, daily. The fact that they frequently don’t feel comfortable or even just basic safety is definitely valid and worth discussion.
However, the bear vs man thing was just the worst vehicle to induce that discussion. On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
The members of the other side who see all the angry men getting defensive at them for expressing this view and think it’s purely because they aren’t empathetic to these issue, they “hate” women or they’re marginalising what is a real and daily danger.
Of course there are actual trolls, toxic arseholes and people who have 0 interest actual discourse or understanding but fuck them, I agree ban em.
It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion and frankly I think tarring the entire of lemmy for it is equally as unproductive. I’ve seen plenty of people initially aggressive to the meme, come around. I’ve seen more and more people make light jokes about the same meme without the accusatory tone. If you want discourse theres space to do so; it just has to be done better(imo). Preferably without snark or accusatory tones.
Okay, but, speaking as a woman, we try to explain these issues nicely, with gentle terminology and a big helping of ‘not all of you, but some of you…’ and we get ignored, dismissed, belittled, or flat-out gaslit.
So, we try going for the shock value to get you to at least pay attention instead of dismissing what we say as background noise or ‘us silly little women worrying our silly little heads over nothing’. And then we get told we can’t talk like that, that it’s insulting, that no man would listen because we’re belittling them, that it ‘doesn’t foster discussion’.
Although at least you heard us say something so many of us take it as a small win…
So, honest question. How do we explain it to you, so we don’t offend you, but you actually hear us? Actually get an idea of what it means to be afraid of footsteps behind us when we go out at night? To get leered at when all we’re trying to do is get a good workout at the gym? To have men just take liberties, like touching us, grabbing us? To not want to mention that we are a woman online, especially in gaming circles, because of the sexist bullshit and dismissive attitudes that will inevitably show up and run us out of a group we just want to be in because we like the game, damnit?
To weigh the decision to even make a post like this, because I know it will be brigaded and will attract sexist jerks who will try to shout me down? Or even attract stalkers who will follow me across instances to harass me?
Please, tell me how. Because we want you to understand. We don’t want to chase people away from discussions. But it’s so hard, and gets so discouraging…
When you’re arguing on an online space large enough for a position that doesn’t yet have overwhelming support, you’re always going to get some pushback of some kind. It’s never going to be completely pleasant. The silver lining is that, if you’re arguing for your positions well enough, you’re going to bring some more people to your side each time. Many of them will not be vocal, many of them will have to meditate of what you’ve said, for many of them it will just be a fleeting thought, but it might be a stepping stone that leads them to actually change their mind in a later discussion. I have this mindset because it’s coherent with how I’ve changed my mind over the years after engaging with different people, and so, when I’m advocating for something on a space that isn’t overwhelmingly welcoming (which might usually be autism advocacy, anti-capitalism, secularism, depending on the site), and I’m in a tempered mood at the moment, I immediately assume that I’m going to get pushback even on things that I’m objectively correct, but that doesn’t mean I’m not making useful progress, so I should argue with more charitability than I think the other person deserves.
On the gender issues topic specifically. Discounting a minority of people whom you’re never going to make see reason, your goal is to make your positions understandable to the men who either don’t have a strong opinion yet or are only mildly hostile. I’m going to use the example of an user I saw the other day out of memory: picture a man who has had an aggressively mediocre life: few meaningful relationships if any, no romantic or sexual partners, hating his job or whatever it is he’s studying, he hasn’t (or hasn’t seen himself having) acted particularly mean towards anyone in his life but he has particularly vivid memories of women or girls provoking him pain (be they a rude teacher, an abusive mother, high school bullies, or whatever). Now picture him reading these two messages:
(…) Life feels very unsafe to me. I have been catcalled, had my opinions dismissed and driven out of spaces I wanted to be in ever since my teens, (…) There are always some men who make the world a dangerous place for me.
and
(…) Life feels very unsafe to me. I have been catcalled, had my opinions dismissed and driven out of spaces I wanted to be in ever since my teens, (…) Men make the world a dangerous place for me.
I’ve made the nuance very obvious here, but it will usually be far more subtle. Sometimes it will be someone not making their position as fair and impartial as possible, sometimes it’ll be that they literally do not realize their words might be misinterpreted, but a good chunk of the individual shitshows I’ve seen in the past few days here are easily understandable if I picture someone saying: “I’ve been a sad shit for my whole life without harming anyone, and if anything, I’ve been treated unfairly. And now you’re telling me I’m the culprit!?”, and the difficulties of this guy through his life might have been several degrees less severe than your own, but if he’s misunderstood what you’re saying, or the message he’s read is less charitable, or if the person he’s just read has been perfectly reasonable, but five minutes ago he’s read a different message from someone else who hasn’t been, which twists the context, he isn’t entirely wrong, because he was minding his own business but now he feels accusations fall upon him out of nowhere.
On the bear argument specifically. Ignore the goddamn bear. You can make a lot of good arguments about why choosing the bear is wrong, and this derails PLENTY of discussions that could otherwise be useful and meaningful into a stunlock where one side wants to argue about why some people choose one way, and the other about the specific hypothetical. Don’t go into “(…) and that’s why I’d choose the bear”, ignore the metaphor, redirect the conversation in an useful direction, such as the actual living experiences of women, what kind of society would you want to see and what kind of specific changes would you like to see people make.
This advocacy is almost never going to be completely pleasant. This isn’t a justification, or discouragement, it’s just acknowledgement of the fact that plenty of people are going to be predisposed against your position, or skeptical, or outright hostile, and you personally are not going to see the fruits of your own, individual, specific labour, because whatever useful progress you make will be brewing on the background. Plenty of people whom you’ve made think will perhaps upvote you at best, but very, very few will admit “You’ve completely changed my mind on this”, but that doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t useful. Sometimes you won’t make the perfect argument, because you don’t have the exact perspective of what the other side is thinking, and because no human is omniscient, and you might have to rethink nuances, strategies and approaches, but engaging other people with the ultimate goal of creating a society where everyone is accepted in equality and freedom is always, on the long run, worthwhile.
Alright, but…
When you’re arguing on an online space large enough for a position that doesn’t yet have overwhelming support, you’re always going to get some pushback of some kind.
Why wouldn’t the safety of women have overwhelming support? Why are we always on the back foot when it comes to discussions like these? Why is this such a ‘small position’ that women find themselves making ludicrous arguments about bears in the first place?
I would hope that a discussion of safety for any group would have majority support.
And we do know it’s not all men. There are many men who would never do such a thing. Or who have even been abused themselves.
But, according to the CDC, over half of all women have experienced sexual violence, and 1 in 4 women have experienced attempted or completed rape. With those numbers, it’s not all men, but it’s not just a few men either.
With those statistics, we can’t afford to just… trust. And the fun part? Many times, it’s someone the woman knows. So we can’t always believe we’re safe even with friends and family.
And sadly, nature hasn’t supplied us with psychic powers to know when the big burly guy leaning in too close to talk is just socially awkward, or up to something more unpleasant.
So I ask… please be understanding. Men are, on the whole, bigger and stronger than women, so a bad encounter has a much stronger chance to go very, very bad for us.
So I ask… please be understanding. Men are, on the whole, bigger and stronger than women, so a bad encounter has a much stronger chance to go very, very bad for us.
I’m on the side of feminism, I’m not arguing against you. I’m trying to get you to understand the “battlefield”, because that’s literally what you asked for.
Why wouldn’t the safety of women have overwhelming support? Why are we always on the back foot when it comes to discussions like these? Why is this such a ‘small position’ that women find themselves making ludicrous arguments about bears in the first place?
Differentiate between these two groups: the people who are going to be radically against you because they’re assholes and just don’t want equality, and those who, for one reason or another, think that you aren’t really defending equality. In my experience, the first group is much smaller, and they usually try not to have their behavior be too usually noticeable in public, while the latter is larger, more numerous, more vocal, and will receive the silent support of the former for entirely different reasons.
Let me go back here:
Men are, on the whole, bigger and stronger than women, so a bad encounter has a much stronger chance to go very, very bad for us.
This, and its natural conclusion (“be cautious in situations where a potential aggressor may suffer no consequences”) is extremely reasonable, and I don’t think people should be blamed for that cautiousness in some situations. But getting that across to someone who hasn’t suffered the same kinds of victimization that lead you to take that position is difficult, because the position they’ve started the discussion at is “I haven’t done anything wrong and I’m being treated like a criminal!”, and they aren’t having that discussion in a perfectly quiet stage in front of someone who will express perfectly woven arguments, but on social media, where they fill find dumb arguments, stupid comparisons, unfair criticisms, real experiences, dubious narrations, tellings of statistically rare events, good arguments, and people spewing hate in one direction and the other, so even when you make the best possible case for your cause, people who in other circumstances would easily be capable of seeing your point, will already be angry, and therefore predisposed against it.
Thank you for writing this🙏 Only thing I think is missing is how it hurts people who are already on your side too if you overgeneralize.
An example is dr K a psychiatrist who does youtube videos, with some focus on gaming addiction. He had many women (and some men I’m sure) calling for him to speak out on women’s experiences, so he made a video talking about how women’s experiences were much harder and men were living on “easy mode.”
I personally haven’t watched any videos of his after that, not because they aren’t interesting psychology topics, and I know exactly what he means to say, but it was just such a hurtful thing to hear from someone that felt like was on my side. The comments were people who understood what he meant feeling hurt and disengaging, and the people who needed to be reached just getting angry, and now it’s ousted a lot of people who were already empathetic towards women’s struggles.
I really appreciate that you made this post. Every top-level comment here is complaining about it being “rage bait” and that the question would “never foster productive discussion.” Why? Why aren’t men capable of seeing the scenario, recognizing why it’s necessary to say something like that, and getting over themselves just a little bit to get the point? The original question wasn’t even a “not all men” thing, there’s no actual reason to get mad about it enough to dismiss the dicussion. We have to be able to have a conversation where the other side is allowed to say something a tiny bit outside of our standards for what we want them to say, or we’ll never have a conversation at all.
The irony is, I am seeing a lot of productive discussion? Like high key? Alongside the standard rage, trolling and harassment of course (which should be banned).
I genuinely think that, if women actually stick around, this event could be a net positive for the Lemmyverse. What’s needed is just like several dozen deep breaths, some listening, and of course more effective moderation of the bad actors.
For sure. I hope lemmy’s mod tools have improved, I heard they were basically nonexistent before.
Why aren’t men capable of seeing the scenario, recognizing why it’s necessary to say something like that, and getting over themselves just a little bit to get the point?
here’s something i’ve formed up recently after this man/bear thing happened, it’s a working theory, and i’m curious to see what people think. If no likey, please yell at me in reply.
because it’s basically impossible? It’s like asking someone born without vision to see. It’s a significant cultural divide (i say cultural as a stop gap here) between two massive parties who have different understandings and views of the world. It shouldn’t come as a surprise when one party expresses a doctored viewpoint of theirs to the other side, for the other side to be really fucking confused.
I take it you probably don’t know much about nuclear power? If so, it’d be like me coming out of the blue when you mention that fukushima was bad, instead of me talking about why fukushima happened, why it was bad, what could’ve been prevented, and how it shouldn’t have happened. I started talking about reactor design, and going through the different generations of designs, talked about the EPR, the EBWR, the ABWR, the PWR, the MSR, the ESR, the PBR, the SSR, etc… You quite literally, do not need that level of background to be able to comprehend fukushima specifically.
I think it’s a similar thing, where people are trying to make people comprehend something they can’t experience, don’t really care about on a personal level. They might know someone who has, which makes them sympathetic/empathetic to it, but that’s it. We all understand, on some level, that this is an issue, i don’t know how much the specific experience here matters, when the broad problem is very much identifiable, and objectively bad. And that everybody probably already agrees with it. It seems rather redundant to me.
It’s like trying to explain “war bad” by showing pictures of war casualties to people, all you’re doing is traumatizing them in that case.
This is an excellent analysis of the reasoning that led into this. Thank you for sharing.
Plenty of people are dismissing this as “ragebait,” which, sure. But like, what on earth is more rage-worthy than systemic rape culture and silencing of women?
There is definitely a time and place for tone policing. But that’s never the exact minute a woman expresses her lived experience in a way that actually grabs attention. ❤️
which, sure. But like, what on earth is more rage-worthy than systemic rape culture and silencing of women?
idk probably the fact that instead of talking about that fact, we were sat there yelling at each other about bears in a hypothetical forest?
Like don’t get me wrong i like talking about issues, but there’s a point where you just have to sit back and wonder what the fuck you’re doing with your life. This was one of them.
This entire post is about women who were talking about rape culture getting harrased into deleting their accounts.
The problem I care about is barely the hypothetical forest at this point in time, but the abject abuse. I encourage you to take the same perspective.
yeah, i could see that being a problem, i didn’t experience that, nor perpetrate that. Unless being mad at someone on the internet entails that, in which case, i think that’s less of a me problem. Because this is the internet.
I didn’t DM people or anything though, just yelled about shit in the comments. I think part of the problem was that we even started talking about the bear problem at all. I’m not really sure how anybody expected it to go? I’m not sure how i would’ve expected it to go, but i’m not sure i would’ve posted it either to be honest.
How do we explain it to you
you cant explain it to someone who don’t want to hear it, but hear me out: bear vs cop.
picture this: you are in the woods smoking some weed in an illegal country. bear or cop?
the whole country is illegal? When the fuck did this meta drop?
yea cop bout to bust you with slovak republic what do
well shit i better be on the move then jesus
I just want to let you know that when women share their experiences, some men like me will process what they’ve read and understand, and not reply or anything. I don’t have anything to add. I’m probably part of a large silent group.
That was before the bear thing. I actually hadn’t even seen the bear meme.
When I read a woman share her experiences, I just get sad about it all and move to the next post in my Lemmy feed or whatever I’m reading on the internet.
Okay, but, speaking as a woman, we try to explain these issues nicely, with gentle terminology and a big helping of ‘not all of you, but some of you…’ and we get ignored, dismissed, belittled, or flat-out gaslit.
ok so, as a result of the bear debate, i wouldn’t exactly say it was all roses and sunshine over there, probably a thunderstorm and bristles more like.
I think most people want the statement laid out very literally in front of them. Usually being pretty fucking obtuse about shit, tends to get peoples attention. Sitting in a corner and vaguely looking in the direction of someone isn’t going to.
maybe i’m just really fucking autistic or something, but if that shit doesn’t work, i wouldn’t do it. I’d click into a thread titled “men raping women is a problem” and see what’s going on, and chances are, it’s going to be more civil than the bear incident.
i’d be up for just fucking talking about it. I’m sure a number of other people would as well. You aren’t going to appease everyone, that’s impossible, you just need to appease the majority. And frankly, anybody who is reading about “hey uhm, rape bad, no do?” and gets fucking pissed off about it? They’re probably not a good person to be honest.
genuinely, i just think straight up, open conversation about it. People can’t play nice? Don’t let em, i guess? there are a few options there. I’m not an admin/mod, so don’t ask me lol.
On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand this reaction. I can only assume it’s stupidity leading these people to think all men are being accused of this.
Well, all men are being accused of this. Rightfully so. From my point of view, the scenario illustrates that a woman has to consider a man that she doesn’t know to be at least as dangerous to her own personal safety as a bear and act accordingly. Even men she knows well may still attack her.
Statistically, the odds of being attacked in any particular scenario may be small, but they’re definitely not zero. Similar to encountering a bear. Bear spray is a deterrent in both scenarios.
Well, all Muslims are being accused of this. Rightfully so. From my point of view, the scenario illustrates that a Jewish person has to consider a Muslim that she doesn’t know to be at least as dangerous to her own personal safety as a bear and act accordingly. Even Muslims she knows well may still attack her.
See the issue? Dehumanization and prejudice on the basis of immutable traits is wrong - both factually and morally
Not sure what your point is, men of any ethnicity attack and rape women.
And men of color and immigrants are disproportionately killed and treated like animals for it
Minorites are mistreated for sure. And sexual assault is just one of many excuses given for that mistreatment. Emmitt Till was falsely accused and brutally murdered. That doesn’t change the fact that women are assaulted by men even within their own ethnicity and social stratus.
I’m assuming that your point is that there ought to be a consistent and fair application of justice for perpetrators of assault, but you seem to be getting away from the point of this thread.
The point is that dehumanizing men will have a disproportionate impact on working class men of color and immigrants. Which are groups that are already seen as animalistic and inherently dangerous. Hence the drastically elevated rates of state sanctioned murder of black men, for instance.
When we dehumanize men, the impact on wealthy white men in gated suburban communities is minimal. However the impact on working class men of color from vulnerable populations is significant. The impact on national minority groups is significant.
Which means this “meme” is a dogwhistle. It is barely disguised hate speech that amplifies violence against already persecuted groups by perpetuating the notion that these “animalistic” peoples are more dangerous than wild animals.
This is the same thing Trump does when he calls immigrants rapists and murderers who are poisoning the blood of America. Except this meme isn’t dumb enough to specifically talk about Mexican men - instead, it is making the same point implicitly.
This attitude will perpetuate the culture of violence that targets national minority groups who are already othered. It isn’t funny or cute. It’s a rightwing dogwhistle and it’s dangerous
Yeah at this point I don’t care about the bear thing. So two weeks ago. I do however care about the abject harrassment that happened. Thank you for your perspective.
Sure. However, the two aren’t unrelated. Not that it justifies the harassment you’ve seen (which as mentioned mods are pretty solid on most instances but reports help them a lot). Given what shitshow it turned into it’s clear that more conversations around the topic are needed. I think those type of people will still pop their head up. When they do, if the entire conversation isn’t already a shitfight because of how it was initiated, these type will be easier to identify and ban. Focusing solely on the outcome and ignoring how we got here only ensures it will be repeated. Lemmy is growing still, there will be challenges on the way.
I definitely hope the bear thing isn’t the last time SA is discussed on Lemmy. With such a male heavy population, it’s honestly a tremendous opportunity to expose a huge chunk of men to basic feminist theory. Fight the good fight homie 💖
On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
Nah. Defensiveness in this context is a red flag because it is transparently obvious why a woman would choose the bear. It needn’t be a strictly rational choice; it’s a vote of no confidence in men earned through lived experience. The fact that it’s even a question should be a seen by men as deeply sad: a reminder of the work that must still be done. The very act of trying to convince a woman of the error of her choice is a sign of a failure to understand the nature of the problem, the exercise, or both.
large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive
This is by no means what bears are known for. Black bears will frighten off easily. Brown bears are dangerous, yes, but much depends on the nature of the encounter.
It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion
It already has, but thanks for the self report?
Everyone has a vested interest in 50% of the population feeling good about the other half. And certainly we should all feel safer about being with fellow humans than with a bear. The fact that some of us don’t feel that way means we should try to make them feel safer.
Thanks for the post. Does anyone have advice on how to become a moderator?
Same goes for harassing those men who rejected the notion of the meme with civility.
Plenty of simple trolls trying to insert the word “incel” wherever they can, and plenty of people trying to invalidate everything men have to say.
Lemmy is becoming more known, and with that comes the point at which bots and trolls emerge. We have to respond accordingly - and remember to be united and civil, even in disagreements.
And yes, ragebait content should be banned. The bear hypothetical is one of those, since it does imply anti-male sentiment, but does it in a way that can be minimized to “women just complaining”. It is a very malicious attempt at generating a lot of hostility, to the point where it’s hard even to give benefit of the doubt.
As per “how we attract women” in particular, I think the most important part is to make Lemmy less about tech and politics and more about all sorts of hobbies, occupations, and a fun time. While women are very welcome in the tech and politics spaces, those spaces are historically dominated by men, and for as long as those are the pillars of the Lemmy conversations, we’ll see this gap over and over.
We can’t take bias in support of women just to attract more of them on the platform, this won’t end well. We need to protect everyone from the harassment and trolling, regardless of gender.
