There was a post on [email protected] called “Lemmy is losing the war against reddit. How do we change things?” Looks like it was removed but there were a couple good discussions there. In a discussion with (I think it was) @[email protected] we came up with this.
Yeah, it’s a weird bunch. Somehow “leftist” while also having a penchant for sexism and odd racism.
I’ve seen people dogmatically defend MTF trans women, all while still being sexist towards women in general. Pretty sure a lot of people on here only defend women who make their dicks hard.
I’ve also seen a bunch of white people try to “educate” actual Asian people over asian culture because they’ve based their personalities on communism or anime.
It really does feel like early Reddit.
Leftism is strange because most people aren’t left-leaning in every topic, just ask them about veganism e.g. Suddenly, a lot of people sound just like your average right-winger. Unfortunately, these people suck at acknowledging their own biases - just like pretty much every other human. They only support necessary social change up to the point they too would have to change.
The really strange thing is, call them out, and they may even turn right entirely, just for calling them out. I remember reading lots of people saying this after the election, despite the right having as much infighting as they have inbreeding. But it works for them.
The point is, I think a lot of people like to think about themselves as being on the left. They acknowledge it to be the correct way and want to think of themselves as being a good person - but they really aren’t, and it often shows.
And I repeat, that’s okay. We all suck at this. But we should still strife for better.
There’s always a bit of “no-true-leftist” dynamic within left-leaning circles. Vegans have gotten upset at each other for stuff like feeding their pets a diet with or without meat, boiling over into Fediverse drama (not trying to open that discussion here but just highlighting that it has been hotly debated). If we let small differences get in the way of big progress, of course conservatives will win and take us backwards because they will use any opportunity they get, and are somehow better at setting aside differences on unrelated issues than leftists. I don’t have much of a solution besides putting my focus and attention on issues that are more important to me, such as the class war over culture war stuff.
Call me a lib, but I occasionally agree with things conservatives say even if a lot more times I disagree. That doesn’t make me a conservative but there are some that act as if I was.
I have never defended Lauren Boebert!
I literally haven’t seen any of this. Can you provide some examples?
I def see the leftist leanings, but Lemmy as a whole seems super progressive on those topics. You’re not the first person I’ve heard say this though, and I’m wondering if in just missing it by sticking to popular posts and top level comments. Am I missing something big here?
You might be missing it because you may be avoiding the more toxic instances like hexbear. They had a little schism a couple weeks ago when they attempted to tamp down on sexism and racism by handing out temporary bans. However, there was a big backlash because a lot of their more active posters caught bans and messed up user engagement .
The mods ended up getting accused of trying to slow down the “revolution”.
Yeah, okay, I def do avoid hexbear, so I can see how I’d miss their contributions to this all.
I knew the instance was full of tankies, but thats interesting to hear that they have (had?) a sexism problem. Just to be clear, it was the “stereotypical” sexism (that is: men hating on women; not hate towards men and/or the LGBT population), right?
It was the more stereotypical sexism for the most part.
oooh someone should write this up for [email protected] …
I remember the discourse surrounding the man vs. bear thing was less than ideal. Lots of people seemed to feel personally offended that any woman would choose the bear.
Yeah, there was a thread about some guy getting pissy because a woman who was walking at night sped up to get away from them as well.
I had to explain to them that if some random dude who was a foot and a half taller than them and outweighed them by 75lb was walking right behind them at night…they would probably be walking a little more briskly as well.