(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]
      14•2 months ago

      Depends on how you read it. I see it as a woman’s POV calculating the potential for violence from an encounter where the only guardrail they can trust is the man’s morals. And given the amount of catcalls, casual feels and assorted bullshit women in my friend circle had endured from a very early age, fuck no, I’m not begrudging them choosing a bear.

      Besides, OP was talking about men harassing women because of stating their bear preference. Which a) just proves them right, and b) do you honestly believe they meant ALL men are worse than bears? Each and every woman in that original story could probably choose at least 10 men in her life who she would be perfectly fine encountering in a dark forest. The question was, however, about calculating risk in an unknown encounter. I don’t read it as sexism at all.

    • @[email protected]
      6•2 months ago

      I think it’s a right to take antagonism at face value, but a virtue to step back anyways and turn it into a positive experience. Not that the original man vs bear question was actually antagonistic, but some of the surrounding discussion can be.

        • @[email protected]OP
          9•2 months ago

          Rape culture means that women who survive SA often have to go through a hellish psychosocial process wherein they must convince cops, judges, juries, friends and family that they were not “asking for it.”

          This is not me talking, this is something that has been expressed to me by multiple individuals. That they would rather undergo horrific mutilation by an animal than even risk dealing with that process. It’s not hyperbole.

          • LW_defederate_from_Threads
            10•2 months ago

            Rape culture means that women who survive SA often have to go through a hellish psychosocial process wherein they must convince cops, judges, juries, friends and family that they were not “asking for it.”

            I don’t want to invalidate any woman’s experience here. but It applies to all genders,SA done against men is often played for jokes, downplayed, or even treated as “lucky” (see this video.) Again, i’m not trying to invalidate anones experience, i just wanted to point out that this hellish thing can hapen to all genders. English isnt my first language, so pelase do tell if i missed something or wrongly undersanded it.

        • @[email protected]
          3•2 months ago

          Like I said, it’s your right to not take it. But it’s virtuous to deescalate and continue the productive conversation.