(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.
I commented about it and some guy replaced every instance of the word “men” in my post with “Jews” to prove to me that I am a bigot. His comment was removed by mods, but later un-removed because we’re big fans of bad faith arguments and invalid comparisons on this platform.
e: argue this point with women in person and see how well it goes.
God it sucks that people are replying to you just repeating that same argument.
PSA for those in the back: fear or even hatred of men is not equivalent to racism of any kind. Women have years of lived experience of men being shitty, from casual sexism to sexual assault. Knowing that any man could be dangerous is not prejudice, it’s the truth, and remembering it allows us to exist and survive in the world.
Idk, to use another lemming’s comment from this very post,
My proverbial beef isn’t the pointing out of how manny men are predators and that the risksfor women are non-zero; my problem more specifically is that the meme stacks handily on top of the already vexing racial profiling I deal with as a black man who’s had false allegations leveled in the past and lost jobs because of the weaponization of this fear. I have already spent damn near a half century being presumed some kind of feral Mandingo rape beast purely for existing while black. The presumption of interest in all of these women like a scene out of Kentucky Fried Movie gets really old and they get super vindictive when rejected.
To me it does seem analogous to the whole racist “black people are 12% of the population but commit 50% of the crime” thing, in that while it is true it is still racist to assume every black person will commit a crime against you and use it as a basis to fear them. Furthermore white people also commit plenty crime and get away with it, padding the numbers, and many women also get away with coercing/forcing men to have sex because nobody believes or gives a fuck about male victims (trust me, am one, 2 diff women,) so it often also goes unreported. On that note actually in many places in the us “rape” requires penetration, so if a woman forces you to penetrate her “you must’ve liked it” and no court case for you!
Personally I think it’d be prudent not to vilify an entire gender while also excluding victims from said gender.
Hell I understand though, at least with the bear I’d only be brutally mauled instead of forced to have sex with it, and 2/infinity women I’ve met have forced me to have sex with them so imo all women could, I’ll take the bear too.
Thanks for the PSA :)
I’d argue that it’s still prejudice, as the word only means to assume behavior from the appearance alone. But in a positive way, as prejudices originally existed for self-protection.
I think saying “an unknown man with no consequences is very dangerous if you’re a woman” is fair, and also sexist in a way. That’s just the reality of how things are.
If I replace woman with “an unknown jew… is very dangerous” it’s similarly saying “this group is bad” but is also completely untrue. Understanding that it’s sexist is important, but swapping the word out can be an invalid comparison imo.
I’m confused how that is a bad faith argument or comparison in anyway. They changed nothing about your commentary except for the group you were singling out. Lol.
It isn’t a bad faith comparison, you’re just seeing cognitive dissonance in action. A person who believes that bigotry is wrong is having their deeply held bigotry pointed out.
Rather than reject one of those two incongruous beliefs, they tell themselves (and insist to others) that the person pointing out their bigotry is in some way wrong despite their argument being rock solid.
Men are not a marginalized group. With the concerning amount of antisemitism becoming common in the US, it’s VERY bad faith to try comparing the perceived discrimination against a hypothetical man to the actual struggles of real people.
Nah. It’s not bad faith at all. You are perceiving it that way due to external factors. But the truth of the matter is the same. Change it from Jews to Asian. Or any other group and I bet you’d never say it.
So because you state “men are not a marginalized group”, men aren’t able to be used as a comparison as a group of people?
Sounds like you are marginalizing men totally and are so sure of your “fact” that it clouds your judgement.
Stereotyping people based on aspects of their personality they were born with is wrong. Period.
I already see people running with the same rage bait shit again and this is not the place for it. As for you, thank you for sharing your experience and I am sorry it was greeted with such toxicity. :)
For the rest of y’all, please see this and this comment which explains how this is a bad faith argument and be civil to one another.
This post is about combating harrassment. If you absolutely must discuss the nuances of feminism in relation to xenophobia, I ask you to make a post elsewhere about it.
Ya’ll don’t like getting called out on your bullshit. Ofc I’m not gonna let myself get grouped into something worse than a fucking animal. Go have your rights and empathy activism someway it doesn’t clump men in the “not people” category
You are absolutely entitled to that. In fact I quite agree with you on many levels.
None of that makes harrassment okay. Which is the topic of this discussion.
Personally I think its possibly a bad reaction to the right thinking in a counterintuitive way.
Rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking… they have all been reduced to some of the most vile crimes in the eyes of most men these days that when you hear people claim “Men” do this that some men have a very “Hey, FUCK YOU!” reaction.
I’m sorry but I won’t call a bad reaction to having self-respect. If you were to change most instances of “men” with any other groups (you pick: black, jews, Muslims, gays) said comment would get flagged immediately for bigotry. I’ve learned past my bigotry but I’m not blind to it’s precedents.
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.
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
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
you wouldn’t believe if i didn’t tell you, because you wouldn’t know about it (some light humor, humor me, ok sorry sorry.)
I’ve been having some conversations with people in these threads, and i’ve had a few long winded very civil threads. It’s literally just the sensational aspects being sensationalized that are causing problems lol.
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.
The irony is that the poor behavior explains why many women would pick the bear
I don’t know that I would classify it as irony because the toxic male’s response is very predictable. It’s closer to a paradox. If men could universally accept women choosing the bear then would women still choose the bear?
At the surface, the strongly negative male reaction appears as a subset for why the bear is chosen but upon further exploration it reveals itself as the ultimate example for why the bear is preferred; many men cannot accept female agency.
At the same time the question reveals the rawest example of toxic masculinity. Despite the toxic males perspective that unlike women, they are not highly emotional creatures, the reality they present of themselves is they are not only highly emotional but are unable or unwilling to control their emotions.
Nah, you definitely seem like you’re in full control of your emotions.
Keep up the good fight against any modicum of self-awareness!
Yeah, it’s like… The fact that it’s controversial is why it’s controversial.
You’re either willfully ignorant or you understand to some degree where the controversy is (even if you don’t necessarily in your heart agree that bear is better), and can concede that there’s maybe a problem with what humanity calls “masculine.”
And if you’re willfully ignorant, then, that’s why some people say bear. And it’s also a canary in the coalmine example of this form of dangerous masculinity.
you are correct and i appreciate your comment except for
willfully
i have in fact seen some men come around. it takes some patience but it happens. :) sometimes men are young or literally just so ill exposed to feminist theory (or even femininity) that they just don’t get it on their own
I understand perfectly what you think the point is.
What I’ve observed is that it’s a divisive meme, and not in a good way. This has only served to egender the “kill all men” and “I hate women” crowds into their respective corners.
You are being willfully ignorant by not acknowledging that.
ohhhhhhhhhh shit!
Got em with the “no u”
yo no seriously I’m sure people will take you seriously though nice job with that one.
Another irony is that the most dangerous bear to come face to face with is the sweet little baby bear.
Most bears try to avoid you. The best thing you can do on a nature trail is be noisy, talk a bunch, make sure the bear knows you are there. Because they don’t want anything to do with humans.
The second worst thing you can do is surprise a bear.
The worst thing you can do is get between a baby bear and its mom.
The introverted tech nerds have always had a problem with dismissing anything they don’t immediately understand
