(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 don’t think I’ll ever understand this reaction. I can only assume it’s stupidity leading these people to think all men are being accused of this.
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.