(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.
Regarding Man v Bear I think the topic is rather silly. Most bears aren’t looking to have a meet and greet if you do come across a bear one of three things are true. It’s here to eat you, it didn’t leave because its a she-bear and it has cubs its protecting, or you just startled it. If any of the above is true you are at best in serious danger. If it is actually trying to prey upon you then you are probably fucked. Whereas 100% of the bears you surprise in the woods are extremely dangerous 99.99% of people you meet man or woman are just people like yourself not looking for trouble.
It’s not shocking that the 99.9% of men who aren’t predators waiting in the bush feel justified in feeling unfairly vilified.
My proverbial beef isn’t the pointing out of how manny men are predators and that the risksfor women are non-zero; my problem more specifically is that the meme stacks handily on top of the already vexing racial profiling I deal with as a black man who’s had false allegations leveled in the past and lost jobs because of the weaponization of this fear. I have already spent damn near a half century being presumed some kind of feral Mandingo rape beast purely for existing while black. The presumption of interest in all of these women like a scene out of Kentucky Fried Movie gets really old and they get super vindictive when rejected.
Yeah that’s what I found the most surprising. Even after you understand what women really mean in this thought experiment, it’s just textbook discrimination and no different than targeting certain races as a cop.
I thought as a society we all agreed that was bad but apparently it’s okay if the victims are men.
So this thought experiment does reveal sexism, the sexism against men.
It doesn’t matter how much it upsets you, “hurting your feelings” will always be safer than “being raped and murdered”.
Maybe it’s time to shake off the insecurity and accept that if you’re not doing anything wrong then you’re not who women are talking about.
It’s not about upsetting me, it’s about making a judgment of an individual based on the demographic, which I thought we collectively decided was wrong.
If someone walks past a group of minorities and feels unsafe, that’s fine as humans are emotional creatures. But if someone makes a decision based on the above logic, that would be classified as discrimination. Same way mostly searching minorities at the airport is discrimination.
The medical history of abuse of black people in America is largely fueled by the nonsense that ‘black people feel less pain’. It’s incredibly fucked up. Horrible shit was done based on these stereotypes.
Same logic applies when women abuse men. 'men feel less pain/are stronger. Abuse against men is just the ‘price we should pay for our privilege’ etc. etc.
Of course I’m not. I just think the analogy is just incredibly overstated. Bears are in fact all fairly dangerous. Most men just aren’t
How do you know all bears are dangerous? Maybe there’s one that just wants to be friends? You should politely treat all bears as friendly so that you don’t hurt that bears feelings.
I feel for you, the casual racism and sexism against black men is pretty crazy. Used to work with a guy that wore a suit every day in a very casual office, because women wouldn’t get on the elevator with him otherwise.
Yep. It’s incredibly fucked up to think how prevalent that 1920s horseshit still is in many people’s minds 100 years later.
People still seem to think Birth of a Nation is a documentary.
This was moving to read. It’s a fucked up situation, thank you for sharing.
Everything you mention is one strange assumption after another.
Dunno man. I’m not a woman, but I have met a bear while hiking. We just stopped and looked at each other for a bit, then he grunted and went back to shoveling blackberries into his mouth and I just walked away. They are pretty common in the city too. They just knock down five or so garbages to pig out then go home. We’ve had a few tranqued and moved but nobody has been eaten. One guy got mauled and somehow survived after failing to take a selfie with a bear, I figure he went easy on the guy to teach him a valuable lesson. Maybe bears and the people here are just too used to each other.
Anyway anyone who feels attacked by the whole I’d rather a bear thing needs to stop being a pansy little shit. I guess all these “not me though” or “but a bear will kill you” types don’t get that they are outing themselves as being of questionable trustworthiness. The bear is imaginary yet men all over the place have come out of the woodwork to fight it. It’s weird really. And I don’t believe such a high amount of men who aren’t predators are bothered by it. They might not be sexual predators but I have no doubt they would gladly vote away womens rights because its their party or its the christian way or some other shit like that.
Truly innocent men would just leave women scared of them alone and that would be the end of it. There is no reason to convince them and doing so only makes them more afraid.
I mean, the casual misandry stung a bit. Not sure why that’d make me a “pansy little shit”, lmao.
Anyway, the whole thing was ragebait and a big part of the internet fell for it (me included, at least initially).
It doesn’t bother you when you’re referred to as a predator because you share a gender with some of them?
No. All I have to do is not be a predator, and no creepy glare, no threatening posture etc. It shouldn’t be difficult yet somehow here we are with literal tons of my fellow man feeling attacked with the need to retaliate, over someone else’s feelings. Actually I’ll let the creepy glare slide even since I have that built into my face and I’m not about to get surgery for it.
I guess another way to look at the whole thing, is a bear isn’t going to shoot or stab you. There are unstable fucks that shoot at people for accidentally going in the wrong driveway for food delivery or to turn around. In my city you dont even own the first several feet of the property whether you have a sidewalk or not.
There’s a difference between “men can be dangerous and so I have to treat any unknown man like they are a threat” and “every man is dangerous.” Being treated as dangerous when you are not is not a pleasant feeling, but I understand the need to do that. However, crossing from “you might be dangerous” to “you must be dangerous” happens all too often and IMO crosses a line.
There are dangerous people out there but try to remember that most people are just like yourself. I remember having to walk home several miles at an inhuman hour after work do to transportation challenges and for the most parts the streets were empty but there were some folks out and I remember feeling paranoid at the sort of people who are out at 3AM.
Then I realized how ridiculous my thoughts were I was out here after all so why was I judging them. They were most likely coming home from work or going to work, or out for some cool air or any number of things. They were people not caricatures. Objectively the level of danger was actually no much different than driving in busy traffic and probably less than the folks commuting by bike given how people drive.
I’m comfortable enough with my behaviour to know it’s not about me. I’m not bothered, even a little bit.
It would be easier if everyone else felt that way too, wouldn’t it?
I’m not engaging further with what I think is a bad analogy.
Maybe outing themselves as pedants who don’t like shitty analogies. How do you get from disagreeing with labeling all men predators to … must be a predator. That just seems like you glued two concepts together and expected it to make a coherent thought. If A in some universe and B in some universe then if A thus B.
I’m not a predator. I’m bothered by it
So because I disagree I might be a rapist. Super real there.
I’m an Atheist who votes Democrat and supports women’s rights
This is a discussion forum. The poster started a thread to discuss the topic. I’m discussing the topic. Nobody is attacking anyone with their words.
This is a many to many discussion forum people aren’t just engaging with the poster they are engaging with other readers interested in the same topic. Notice how our discussion is a sub-thread to each other and merely about the topic broached by the original poster.
You are infantalizing the poster by imagining that she creates a topic but is rendered afraid by the mere fact that some people don’t agree with her. I don’t think that is even slightly reasonable.
This post could be a subject of an entire paper on how to write dishonestly and for emotional impact instead of honest argument. Please stop doing this.
to pull a page out of a book that some fuck that spent an entire thread worth of material to yell at me for being homophobic over.
I would just like to share with the world that “pansy” is technically used to refer to “fags” specifically. So do with that what you will.
So they are a bigot basically.
according to the person that spent time informing me about the definition of that word.
I love the casual entitlement of using a “Lemmy is growing more hostile towards women” to just give your opinion on Man v Bear.
I guess that’s not entirely true, since you did use your last sentence to tell them they deserve it.
The poster brought up the man vs bear debate it was the entire topic of discussion. This is the last sentence in my post.
Please explain how I told them they deserve it. Use small words.
Damn, that’s some horrific reading comprehension if you think its “the entire topic of discussion”. If someone says to you “I’m having so much trouble with cost of living. I can barely afford rent and food and I’m two payments behind on my car”, would you say you’re having a conversation about cars?
Clearly you’re comfortable saying “yes” if you really want everyone to hear your opinions about cars.