(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.
The bear scenario is the perfect division inducing shitstorm.
It’s understandable what the memes portrays the danger that women face, daily. The fact that they frequently don’t feel comfortable or even just basic safety is definitely valid and worth discussion.
However, the bear vs man thing was just the worst vehicle to induce that discussion. On one side men who may not be the most well informed about women issues; will get immediately defensive at being compared to a large animal known for tearing people apart and eating them alive.
The members of the other side who see all the angry men getting defensive at them for expressing this view and think it’s purely because they aren’t empathetic to these issue, they “hate” women or they’re marginalising what is a real and daily danger.
Of course there are actual trolls, toxic arseholes and people who have 0 interest actual discourse or understanding but fuck them, I agree ban em.
It was never going to end in a productive, calm or rational discussion and frankly I think tarring the entire of lemmy for it is equally as unproductive. I’ve seen plenty of people initially aggressive to the meme, come around. I’ve seen more and more people make light jokes about the same meme without the accusatory tone. If you want discourse theres space to do so; it just has to be done better(imo). Preferably without snark or accusatory tones.
Okay, but, speaking as a woman, we try to explain these issues nicely, with gentle terminology and a big helping of ‘not all of you, but some of you…’ and we get ignored, dismissed, belittled, or flat-out gaslit.
So, we try going for the shock value to get you to at least pay attention instead of dismissing what we say as background noise or ‘us silly little women worrying our silly little heads over nothing’. And then we get told we can’t talk like that, that it’s insulting, that no man would listen because we’re belittling them, that it ‘doesn’t foster discussion’.
Although at least you heard us say something so many of us take it as a small win…
So, honest question. How do we explain it to you, so we don’t offend you, but you actually hear us? Actually get an idea of what it means to be afraid of footsteps behind us when we go out at night? To get leered at when all we’re trying to do is get a good workout at the gym? To have men just take liberties, like touching us, grabbing us? To not want to mention that we are a woman online, especially in gaming circles, because of the sexist bullshit and dismissive attitudes that will inevitably show up and run us out of a group we just want to be in because we like the game, damnit?
To weigh the decision to even make a post like this, because I know it will be brigaded and will attract sexist jerks who will try to shout me down? Or even attract stalkers who will follow me across instances to harass me?
Please, tell me how. Because we want you to understand. We don’t want to chase people away from discussions. But it’s so hard, and gets so discouraging…
This is an excellent analysis of the reasoning that led into this. Thank you for sharing.
Plenty of people are dismissing this as “ragebait,” which, sure. But like, what on earth is more rage-worthy than systemic rape culture and silencing of women?
There is definitely a time and place for tone policing. But that’s never the exact minute a woman expresses her lived experience in a way that actually grabs attention. ❤️
idk probably the fact that instead of talking about that fact, we were sat there yelling at each other about bears in a hypothetical forest?
Like don’t get me wrong i like talking about issues, but there’s a point where you just have to sit back and wonder what the fuck you’re doing with your life. This was one of them.
This entire post is about women who were talking about rape culture getting harrased into deleting their accounts.
The problem I care about is barely the hypothetical forest at this point in time, but the abject abuse. I encourage you to take the same perspective.
When you’re arguing on an online space large enough for a position that doesn’t yet have overwhelming support, you’re always going to get some pushback of some kind. It’s never going to be completely pleasant. The silver lining is that, if you’re arguing for your positions well enough, you’re going to bring some more people to your side each time. Many of them will not be vocal, many of them will have to meditate of what you’ve said, for many of them it will just be a fleeting thought, but it might be a stepping stone that leads them to actually change their mind in a later discussion. I have this mindset because it’s coherent with how I’ve changed my mind over the years after engaging with different people, and so, when I’m advocating for something on a space that isn’t overwhelmingly welcoming (which might usually be autism advocacy, anti-capitalism, secularism, depending on the site), and I’m in a tempered mood at the moment, I immediately assume that I’m going to get pushback even on things that I’m objectively correct, but that doesn’t mean I’m not making useful progress, so I should argue with more charitability than I think the other person deserves.
On the gender issues topic specifically. Discounting a minority of people whom you’re never going to make see reason, your goal is to make your positions understandable to the men who either don’t have a strong opinion yet or are only mildly hostile. I’m going to use the example of an user I saw the other day out of memory: picture a man who has had an aggressively mediocre life: few meaningful relationships if any, no romantic or sexual partners, hating his job or whatever it is he’s studying, he hasn’t (or hasn’t seen himself having) acted particularly mean towards anyone in his life but he has particularly vivid memories of women or girls provoking him pain (be they a rude teacher, an abusive mother, high school bullies, or whatever). Now picture him reading these two messages:
and
I’ve made the nuance very obvious here, but it will usually be far more subtle. Sometimes it will be someone not making their position as fair and impartial as possible, sometimes it’ll be that they literally do not realize their words might be misinterpreted, but a good chunk of the individual shitshows I’ve seen in the past few days here are easily understandable if I picture someone saying: “I’ve been a sad shit for my whole life without harming anyone, and if anything, I’ve been treated unfairly. And now you’re telling me I’m the culprit!?”, and the difficulties of this guy through his life might have been several degrees less severe than your own, but if he’s misunderstood what you’re saying, or the message he’s read is less charitable, or if the person he’s just read has been perfectly reasonable, but five minutes ago he’s read a different message from someone else who hasn’t been, which twists the context, he isn’t entirely wrong, because he was minding his own business but now he feels accusations fall upon him out of nowhere.
On the bear argument specifically. Ignore the goddamn bear. You can make a lot of good arguments about why choosing the bear is wrong, and this derails PLENTY of discussions that could otherwise be useful and meaningful into a stunlock where one side wants to argue about why some people choose one way, and the other about the specific hypothetical. Don’t go into “(…) and that’s why I’d choose the bear”, ignore the metaphor, redirect the conversation in an useful direction, such as the actual living experiences of women, what kind of society would you want to see and what kind of specific changes would you like to see people make.
This advocacy is almost never going to be completely pleasant. This isn’t a justification, or discouragement, it’s just acknowledgement of the fact that plenty of people are going to be predisposed against your position, or skeptical, or outright hostile, and you personally are not going to see the fruits of your own, individual, specific labour, because whatever useful progress you make will be brewing on the background. Plenty of people whom you’ve made think will perhaps upvote you at best, but very, very few will admit “You’ve completely changed my mind on this”, but that doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t useful. Sometimes you won’t make the perfect argument, because you don’t have the exact perspective of what the other side is thinking, and because no human is omniscient, and you might have to rethink nuances, strategies and approaches, but engaging other people with the ultimate goal of creating a society where everyone is accepted in equality and freedom is always, on the long run, worthwhile.
Alright, but…
Why wouldn’t the safety of women have overwhelming support? Why are we always on the back foot when it comes to discussions like these? Why is this such a ‘small position’ that women find themselves making ludicrous arguments about bears in the first place?
I would hope that a discussion of safety for any group would have majority support.
And we do know it’s not all men. There are many men who would never do such a thing. Or who have even been abused themselves.
But, according to the CDC, over half of all women have experienced sexual violence, and 1 in 4 women have experienced attempted or completed rape. With those numbers, it’s not all men, but it’s not just a few men either.
With those statistics, we can’t afford to just… trust. And the fun part? Many times, it’s someone the woman knows. So we can’t always believe we’re safe even with friends and family.
And sadly, nature hasn’t supplied us with psychic powers to know when the big burly guy leaning in too close to talk is just socially awkward, or up to something more unpleasant.
So I ask… please be understanding. Men are, on the whole, bigger and stronger than women, so a bad encounter has a much stronger chance to go very, very bad for us.
I really appreciate that you made this post. Every top-level comment here is complaining about it being “rage bait” and that the question would “never foster productive discussion.” Why? Why aren’t men capable of seeing the scenario, recognizing why it’s necessary to say something like that, and getting over themselves just a little bit to get the point? The original question wasn’t even a “not all men” thing, there’s no actual reason to get mad about it enough to dismiss the dicussion. We have to be able to have a conversation where the other side is allowed to say something a tiny bit outside of our standards for what we want them to say, or we’ll never have a conversation at all.
The irony is, I am seeing a lot of productive discussion? Like high key? Alongside the standard rage, trolling and harassment of course (which should be banned).
I genuinely think that, if women actually stick around, this event could be a net positive for the Lemmyverse. What’s needed is just like several dozen deep breaths, some listening, and of course more effective moderation of the bad actors.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand this reaction. I can only assume it’s stupidity leading these people to think all men are being accused of this.
Yeah at this point I don’t care about the bear thing. So two weeks ago. I do however care about the abject harrassment that happened. Thank you for your perspective.
Sure. However, the two aren’t unrelated. Not that it justifies the harassment you’ve seen (which as mentioned mods are pretty solid on most instances but reports help them a lot). Given what shitshow it turned into it’s clear that more conversations around the topic are needed. I think those type of people will still pop their head up. When they do, if the entire conversation isn’t already a shitfight because of how it was initiated, these type will be easier to identify and ban. Focusing solely on the outcome and ignoring how we got here only ensures it will be repeated. Lemmy is growing still, there will be challenges on the way.
I definitely hope the bear thing isn’t the last time SA is discussed on Lemmy. With such a male heavy population, it’s honestly a tremendous opportunity to expose a huge chunk of men to basic feminist theory. Fight the good fight homie 💖