(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.
Narrowminded cisgender ragebait did what? Please tell me it ain’t so!
The bear thing isn’t controversial, it’s just ragebait. You ragebait, you get rage. It is not a serious argument, which is why it constantly has to spark as ragebait over in the meme communities. The people taking it as a serious argument are making their serious arguments look bad.
This was such obvious rage bait, I skipped over it the first few times, but it kept coming back. So, who’s toxic now, the rage bait demonizing an entire gender because some are bad, or all the deniers/haters? I hate to say both sides, but both sides should have dropped this rage bait and opened their discussions in a more serious thread
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It was so obvious bait to dumb misogynists it was painful, which isnt to say that if I posted “If I found myself alone in the forest with a bear or a feminist I’d pick the bear because it cant destroy my life with a baseless allegation of sexual assault” that the feminists wouldnt have bitten just as hard.
Rage means engage. Any time someone is trying to piss me off I look for the money. Are they getting booked on talk shows? Is there a book? Do they do speaking tours? Do they have a sponsored podcast?..
The most charitable interpretation is that the original bear vs man was to spark conversation. Making it ragebait/controversial increases spread exposing it to more people and potentially educating more of the population.
The downside to ragebaiting, is that now the people who need to learn most are raging, have their defenses up and miss the point entirely. They then get argumentative, and now the pro-bear side has their defenses up too. And then we have a vicious rage cycle… and now here we are
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Just a doubt. Isn’t rage bait the whole tactic of andrew tate and his like? Why is it qualified to be called misogynistic but this is not misandrist?
DISCLAIMER: I DON’T LIKE TATE, NOT ENDORSING OR SUPPORTING HIM. JUST FOUND THIS THING CONFUSING ME RECENTLY. PLS PROVIDE NON TROLL ANSWERS. I’M AWARE THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH CONSTANT RAGE BAITERS IS TO BAN THEM LIKE TATE.
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