(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.
Lemmy just sucks in general. It feels like almost every instance is run by extremists of some description that will ban you for disagreeing with them or criticizing them. That, or you have LW which is run like Reddit.
Lemmy people are the same people as Reddit people. I think both communities have similar personalities. I’ve been banned from multiple sub Reddits because I disagree with a mod. Every time I’ve been on topic and respectful, yet I’ve been told to shut up because they disagreed and then shortly later banned. I now recognise the authoritarian tone these mods give to being banned soon.
the challenge with lemmy is its immaturity with moderation, and many instances allowing pretty vile members and communities to flourish, which then spill over into other less extreme communities
The irony is that the poor behavior explains why many women would pick the bear
Another irony is that the most dangerous bear to come face to face with is the sweet little baby bear.
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.
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.
Ah, a reductionist argument from one of the trogs. What a surprise!
Yo 2 for 2 keep it going homie
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
Removed by mod
I’ve not even heard of this issue you are talking about. Maybe it’s not representative of the Lemmy experience as a whole? Besides, most social media postings seem fake as hell. Why put any emphasis on what people have to say. I think walking away is probably the healthiest thing you can do. No one is going to fix this place or any place for that matter.
it may not be representative of the whole, but it is certainly representative of underlying failures of moderation policy, as @breadsmasher said.
you are encouraging me to just be quiet about people being harrassed when moderation failure is a fixable problem. i can’t in good conscience do that.
I definitely do not want to quiet anyone. Other than maybe myself from time to time (you know, before I’ve said it; maybe I’m too late this time, maybe not). I just don’t see how you fix this ultimately. But, since I don’t know the specific harassment you are referring to, I’ll simply refer to your comments. I trust what you’ve said. I don’t want you to hide what you want to say, but I also want to say how I feel about it.
I appreciate it.
Meanwhile its the opposite for me. Character assasinating everyone who wasnt a fan of the bear meme and mods deleting any post that wasnt fully inflammatory has made me second guess whether I want to be here far more than the Tankies ever did
I am with you. At least one of my feet is halfway out the door unless we can stand with women with the same energy we did against tankies. Because fuck that noise. I like the fediverse but not enough for me to just stand by and watch this.
Tbh, I might just give Gaiaonline another shot, yeah my knowledge of world news’ll suffer a bit, but maybe thats not a bad thing
They pulled the plug on it years ago… :c
WAIT it totally was shut down when I tried to reconnect a while back!!!
I’m so recovering my account lol
You want an unpopular opinion, okay here’s one: I’m okay with Lemmy not being a good place for women and am strongly in favor of doing nothing to change that. Women aren’t on my side. Therefore I am not on theirs.
What is this anyway ? :
“bear vs man”
Here is an excellent summary I came across: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8694944
i blocked that “blahaj” long ago. it is a shit hole. if you continue to visit it you will get it.
Still, to be mindfull i read from your link :x says - - tldr :
if woman alone in a forest : is she better to encounter a bear or a man ?x says...
Okay very basically this whole thing started with a hypothetical posed to a bunch of women about which they would rather run into while alone in the woods; A random man, or a bear. A lot of women chose the bear. Reasons varied from “The worst the bear will do is kill me,” to “At least I know the bear wants to kill me,” with a general theme seeming to be that whatever tangible threat the bear posed was preferable to the uncertainty of wondering whether or not a random man would assault them.
The poster’s stated goal with the hypothetical was to get men to think about why the women were choosing the bear. Instead a lot of guys took it as a personal attack, like they were being punished for the actions of other men. Many started attacking the question, insisting that bears are way more dangerous than virtually any man. This led to a lot of dismissive responses of the criticism like “This is why women choose the bear,” or talking about women’s safety being more important than men’s feelings.
I’m simplifying a lot but that’s the basic gist of it.
op answer to x
@spujb@lemmy.cafe ((OP)) Thank you for the detailed summary.
To add the final unfortunate details, there was a recent discussion on Lemmy where women were sharing their reasons for choosing bear, which involved sharing personal stories of SA. Unfortunately, many men responded in a toxic manner, causing some women to delete their posts or accounts. Very disturbing and this is what inspired me to make this post, as it is quite reminiscent of the Catholic church sweeping SA under the rug.
my opinion :
ideally if a woman had a gun she could kill the bear without any bad consequences … but she could not kill the man without legal risks. So ideally she would be better off uncountering a bear … though in some countries there is no problem with encountering a man (most of the time).What’s your beef with blahaj?
Not the person you responded to, but the blahaj admin has allowed tankies to set up shop because they’re “trans inclusive.”
There’s a really weird and concerning overlap between some trans communities and tankies. I don’t get it. It’s like Black people praising the Confederacy for fighting for states rights.
Every time I see something about that bear vs man thing it just turns into a shitload of people straw-manning the hell out of the opposing gender. The whole thing is fucking stupid.
It’s almost like it was planted to make men and women mad at each other for no reason. Fuel it with bots and bad faith arguments and it’s a tempest in a teapot
Divide and conquer
You know, implying that the author wrote it in bad faith is pretty much just doing a strawman.
i don’t think thats the implication
people have been asking “would you rather” questions since before Plato.
It’s almost like it was planted
I swear the left gets more conspiratorial every day. There doesn’t have to be some grand plan to sow dissent. Dissent is something that just happens naturally because this conflict is deeply ingrained in our culture. Nobody has to scheme to make it happen.
I hear what you are saying. It makes me think of the LGBTQ people when some Mastodon instances gave them a safe space to communicate. Safe spaces do however depend on well working moderation.
This is essentially the problem with forums that grow faster than mods can keep up. Everything is fine until something like this comes along. When the brigades come out, trying to maintain order and read every comment for content becomes impossible. Unfortunately all we can do is hold each other accountable. Those that can take the abuse stand their ground for others that can’t. And when the dust settles, hopefully someone will have learned something. Even if that something is just reinforcing their choice. It’s all part of maturing, both for the site and for the people. Just don’t let it get you down. This site is not representative of the general population. Neither is Reddit. There are more people in this world that empathize with you than there are on this site.
The same is true of all social media platforms. There are always bad actors and jerkasses that have been banned everywhere else. Eventually, the admins of said social media platform must crackdown and ban those people. Eventually, that will happen to the Fediverse.
You are absolutely correct, but I am calling for that to happen sooner rather than later 👍
I would not recommend a visit to Reddit on this issue. I just checked out of curiousity.
I am sure it’s awful lol. But I am also sure that the level of harrassment is at the very least swiftly dealt with and contained.
Whoa I missed this whole man bear thing. Is it like ManBearPig?
Here is an excellent summary I came across: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/8694944
Thank you for posting this. I had no fucking clue what this was about but after reading that summary I immediately thought bear would be the answer. It makes sense because human men are more than just trying to survive - there’s a higher cognitive thinking and humans are fucked up so more than likely a man would result in psychological trauma on a personal level that is worse than whatever the bear would do.
For the record, I am male.
Nice to see someone say this out loud. At the end of the day no platform is immune to hive mind thinking or ignorance, but hopefully there are solutions for open platforms to enrich people’s lives some.
