(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.
Personally I think its possibly a bad reaction to the right thinking in a counterintuitive way.
Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking… they have all been reduced to some of the most vile crimes in the eyes of most men these days that when you hear people claim “Men” do this that some men have a very “Hey, FUCK YOU!” reaction.
I’m sorry but I won’t call a bad reaction to having self-respect. If you were to change most instances of “men” with any other groups (you pick: black, jews, Muslims, gays) said comment would get flagged immediately for bigotry. I’ve learned past my bigotry but I’m not blind to it’s precedents.