How exactly are you determining/validating people’s gender identity on an anonymous text based forum?

Good insight. While there definitely was quite a bit of rule-breaking comments (largely now acted on as of today), the consistent wall of “technically respectful” disrespect did not help and provided a level of camouflage for the very bad actors to get by.

Well excuse me for trying to be helpful.

Also, when did I say anything about politeness?

Well, all men are being accused of this. Rightfully so. From my point of view, the scenario illustrates that a woman has to consider a man that she doesn’t know to be at least as dangerous to her own personal safety as a bear and act accordingly. Even men she knows well may still attack her.

Statistically, the odds of being attacked in any particular scenario may be small, but they’re definitely not zero. Similar to encountering a bear. Bear spray is a deterrent in both scenarios.

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 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.

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. ❤️

How do we explain it to you

you cant explain it to someone who don’t want to hear it, that said: bear vs cop.

picture this: you are in the woods smoking some weed in an illegal country. bear or cop?

So, honest question. How do we explain it to you, so we don’t offend you, but you actually hear us?

“Not all men” is not a joke. It should not be mocked. It is a very serious and extremely important TRUE statement that needs to be acknowledged. I’ve never sexually assaulted a woman. The vast majority of men have not. So, with all due respect, fuck you for lumping me in with those bastards. That is a line called sexism which you may not pass.

If you’re speaking to a room of 100 men, and you say “hey assaulting women is bad and it makes our lives worse”, and 98 men are nodding and agreeing, and 2 men start shouting and calling you a bitch…don’t say “men” don’t hear you.

I’m not saying we understand, mind you. That takes a lot of work, experience, empathy and just plain old knowledge. But we hear you and we agree. We’re on your fucking side. We’re trying to make things better. We’re putting in the work.

But like…seriously. You think we don’t know? You think we’re not aware? You think we’ve just ignored everything women have been telling us for at least 70 years? You don’t have to tell us, we already know. Yes, some men refuse to listen when women tell them what it’s like. Guess what, they also refuse to listen when men tell them what it’s like. And we don’t associate with them. Men are not a monolith.

The experience of being a man in feminist circles is one of constantly having women scream at you to stop raping women, and you’re like “but I’ve never even thought about raping” and they just scream louder “STOP RAPING WOMEN”. It’s exhausting.

I’m starting to ramble, so here’s a concise answer to your question:

1. recognize that almost anyone who would listen to you at all most likely already agrees with you.

2. discuss solutions. Men like solutions more than commiserating.

3. treat it as an “us vs them” problem, not a “me vs you” problem.

4. remember that men have feelings, and in many ways we’re much more thin skinned than women. And that’s not bad, just different. Please be considerate.

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:

(…) Life feels very unsafe to me. I have been catcalled, had my opinions dismissed and driven out of spaces I wanted to be in ever since my teens, (…) There are always some men who make the world a dangerous place for me.

and

(…) Life feels very unsafe to me. I have been catcalled, had my opinions dismissed and driven out of spaces I wanted to be in ever since my teens, (…) Men make the world a dangerous place for me.

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.

I just want to let you know that when women share their experiences, some men like me will process what they’ve read and understand, and not reply or anything. I don’t have anything to add. I’m probably part of a large silent group.

That was before the bear thing. I actually hadn’t even seen the bear meme.

When I read a woman share her experiences, I just get sad about it all and move to the next post in my Lemmy feed or whatever I’m reading on the internet.

Most wildlife, including bears, just want to be left alone to do their own thing.

Similarly to humans. It’s the most important part, but sometimes animals want to play or get irritated at your presence. A bear is gifted by nature with ability to break many bones in your body without getting tired.

Yeah, it was ragebait alright. Then again, if it were phrased in a reasonable manner, would we be talking this much about it? If the objective was to kick-start a conversation, it did the job 110%

Phrased*

Not trying to be a dick just trying to be helpful!

I don’t think it’s the phrasing. You would need an entirely different question to not elicit the response we saw. It wasn’t that the question that was asked that angered people, it was that women consistently chose the bear. this question would have been a nothing burger otherwise. At the same time, though, the question was pitched because the author already knew what the answer would be. They understood how frequently unknown men pose a threat to women.

What this response from many men the shows is that most dudes are still not ready to talk about just how much more dangerous the world is for women at a baseline measurement - quite explicitly because of predatory dudes.

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.

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.

I didn’t see any abuse, but I did notice how livid some people were about the whole thing. I am still at a loss as to how the original statement could cause such outrage. I took it as some hyperbole to highlight a serious issue. That’s nothing any remotely stable person takes offence at. Any guy berating other people over dumb shit like this is exactly the kind of man the original statement was about.

I guess I’m out of the loop or something cause I haven’t seen any of it, but harassers should be blocked by mods.

Harassment should not be tolerated, period. Totally with you on this.

And thank you for the kind words.

Do you have any of the accounts doing the harassment? If you would, DM me those that you have, and I’ll personally look into it, and reach out to instance admins with my findings.

True, there are some people that just downvote everything, for no reason. I get that. I guess what made me worry was the fact that I had comments in Lemmy News telling me they hope I get raped with a rusty lawn mower blade, followed by someone downvoting all of my past comments in succession after that comment. I figured it was the person who made that comment.

Actually I have had an argument (don’t remember if that was still Reddit or already Lemmy, but my old account on an instance which went dead) with every my comment N days back getting the same 2 or 3 downvotes (don’t remember, but it was the same number with every of them) and the other side at some point saying that it’s “the community showing you the door”, making it clear that it’s them trying so hard, but that was actually funny.

Lemmy is very small. When I run into the grandparent poster, if their comment is benign I don’t vote for it either way. But if it taps into paranoid fantasies, or is fanciful, or factually incorrect I down voted. But I would do that for anybody not just because it’s them. They just have a really really high degree of going off the rails in their posts.

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.

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 Muslims is not equivalent to misandry of any kind. Women have years of lived expericen of Muslim being shitty, from casual sexism to sexual assault. Knowing that any Muslim could be dangerous is not prejudice, it’s the truth, remembering it allows us to exist and survive in the world.

I’m getting roasted in another thread right now because of this, someone saying all Americans don’t care about the world, which is crap

Men are not a marginalized group, neither historically nor currently.

that the kind of people you’ll in liber-media. You’ll find toxic people, but you’ll also find accommodating people. If you want to play safe, then I don’t think any lemmy or any future-whatever-libre-non-lemmy will suit your taste. Make your own server and just make sure that whoever subscribed to that are up to your expectation.