(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.

  • @[email protected]OP
    8•8 months ago

    Good. Words cannot express the fear and shame that I felt when I saw that those women were driven to leave.

    I will fan the fuck out of these flames, listening to people of all genders along the way, until some meaningful change is burned into this hellhole of a platform.

      • @[email protected]OP
        4•8 months ago

        A hyperbole is a valid and common rhetorical device, yes lol.

        I need to be so very careful how I say this but:

        Women were driven off the platform, because of how badly they were treated.

        There is mistreatment and harrassment going on unchecked here. Do we see women getting driven out of other shitty sites en masse for these reasons? No. Not Reddit, not Facebook, not TikTok.*

        This behavior is entirely unique to this platform, something the likes of which I* literally haven’t seen before, and this behavior absolutely validates me calling this a “hellhole.”

        (*This is all my experience, YMMV)

        • @[email protected]
          8•8 months ago

          For what it’s worth, I left Twitter years ago due to the way women and LGBT+ people were treated and the lack of any consistent moderation protection they received. I was on Reddit for a few years and left during the great migration last year. I initially tried posting in a few different subreddits and received enough sexist harassment to never bother again.

    • @Cryophilia
      -3•8 months ago

      Is there still a link to that thread or is it all just removed or deleted by creator now?