(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
      7•7 months ago

      It’s up for me, perhaps a filter or block from your account or instance? But here:

      Okay very basically this whole thing started with a hypothetical posed to a bunch of women about which they would rather run into while alone in the woods; A random man, or a bear. A lot of women chose the bear. Reasons varied from “The worst the bear will do is kill me,” to “At least I know the bear wants to kill me,” with a general theme seeming to be that whatever tangible threat the bear posed was preferable to the uncertainty of wondering whether or not a random man would assault them.

      The poster’s stated goal with the hypothetical was to get men to think about why the women were choosing the bear. Instead a lot of guys took it as a personal attack, like they were being punished for the actions of other men. Many started attacking the question, insisting that bears are way more dangerous than virtually any man. This led to a lot of dismissive responses of the criticism like “This is why women choose the bear,” or talking about women’s safety being more important than men’s feelings.

      I’m simplifying a lot but that’s the basic gist of it.

      And then I responded:

      Thank you for the detailed summary.

      To add the final unfortunate details, there was a recent discussion on Lemmy where women were sharing their reasons for choosing bear, which involved sharing personal stories of SA. Unfortunately, many men responded in a toxic manner, causing some women to delete their posts or accounts. Very disturbing and this is what inspired me to make this post, as it is quite reminiscent of the Catholic church sweeping SA under the rug.

      • @[email protected]
        8•7 months ago

        Thanks. I haven’t seen the debate on Lemmy, but TBH, I won’t expect Lemmy to be better than Reddit. Personally I believe the hypotheticals like these are counterproductive. I have never seen these thought experiments bring up meaningful discussions.

        What I always see at the end is isolation of any minority community and forcing them to their own space. Then the majority will start complaining they are excluded. I’m sick of this loop.

        • @[email protected]OP
          1•7 months ago

          I’m with you. For my part I am trying to just encourage a space of positivity under these memes, listening to women express their stories of course because that was the original point.

          But then once that is said and done, I don’t recommend we ever come back to the bear hypothetical, double down on it, or encourage any man to take it personally. Because yeah while it grabs attention, it’s also rhetorically just very inefficient compared to something as simple as posting bell hooks memes.

          • @Fades
            -1•7 months ago

            Literally how?? Your post here is crying about how Lemmy is full of bigotry, yet that’s simply not true. Lemmy is divided by instances and you should find instances that match your values instead of trying to hold every single instance to a standard. Just delink the trash like Lemmy.ml

            How is this post encouraging positive spaces when you’re only whining about how all instances aren’t what you want them to be?

            Do you understand the instance concept at all???

            • @JonsJavaM
              3•7 months ago

              Comment reported. Rather than removal, as I don’t feel you broke a rule, I decided to respond directly.

              Instances aren’t isolated. Yes, we have individual instances, but they are FEDERATED. We don’t have one central governing body, but generally speaking, instances that are federated between one another have very similar views. If you can see this, that means your instance is federated with an instance I can see or am a part of.

              Saying to “find an instance that matches your values” shows you have almost no understanding of how the federated technology and ideology works.

              • @[email protected]
                1•7 months ago

                If this is a divisive meme and it’s divisive across many instances, how is this post going along with the idealogy of federated technonology?