(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.
No. All I have to do is not be a predator, and no creepy glare, no threatening posture etc. It shouldn’t be difficult yet somehow here we are with literal tons of my fellow man feeling attacked with the need to retaliate, over someone else’s feelings. Actually I’ll let the creepy glare slide even since I have that built into my face and I’m not about to get surgery for it.
I guess another way to look at the whole thing, is a bear isn’t going to shoot or stab you. There are unstable fucks that shoot at people for accidentally going in the wrong driveway for food delivery or to turn around. In my city you dont even own the first several feet of the property whether you have a sidewalk or not.
There’s a difference between “men can be dangerous and so I have to treat any unknown man like they are a threat” and “every man is dangerous.” Being treated as dangerous when you are not is not a pleasant feeling, but I understand the need to do that. However, crossing from “you might be dangerous” to “you must be dangerous” happens all too often and IMO crosses a line.
There are dangerous people out there but try to remember that most people are just like yourself. I remember having to walk home several miles at an inhuman hour after work do to transportation challenges and for the most parts the streets were empty but there were some folks out and I remember feeling paranoid at the sort of people who are out at 3AM.
Then I realized how ridiculous my thoughts were I was out here after all so why was I judging them. They were most likely coming home from work or going to work, or out for some cool air or any number of things. They were people not caricatures. Objectively the level of danger was actually no much different than driving in busy traffic and probably less than the folks commuting by bike given how people drive.