(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.
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.
It’s a totally valid comparison. If you are saying things about a group of people, and replacing that specific group with a different random group makes you feel uncomfortable, don’t say the things.
“Men are terrible”
“Women are terrible”
“Jews are terrible”
Just don’t say those things. Better yet, don’t think those things.
Men are not a marginalized group, neither historically nor currently.
Correct.
It’s still bad to be a bigot? Don’t get your point here.
So since we can agree that men are not a marginalized group, we can agree that it’s an invalid comparison.
Hatred against Jewish people is a real thing, hatred against men is mostly confined to strawmen that live in the heads of angry men.
That’s a non-sequitur. Being marginalized isn’t a prerequisite for being a bigot.
you can’t argue with people who are convinced that ‘minority’ status grants them a moral superiority, and therefore their attacks on a non-minority group are justified.
this is the same reason right-wingers are obsessed with pedos. by fighting the ‘ultimate evil’ everything they do is automatically justified.
I’m saying something very simple. If you seriously can’t understand it then I can’t help you.
You know how a privileged white person couldn’t point at some random inconvenience and say “This is just like what slavery was like for black people”? That’s the kind of comparison you’re defending here.
No, what You’re saying is a non-sequitur. It doesn’t follow and your logic is wrong.
🤡
Just
Asking
Questions?
If anything I’m answering questions, are you fucking kidding me?
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
Ok but wtf is your name
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.
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.
Huh?
I worded that badly. What I meant was that the reason humans have prejudice-y thinking hardwired in the brain is for self-protection. If individuals of some ape species have a 30 % chance of being super aggressive and trying to kill you on the spot, your first reaction to seeing one will be negative and retiring – even if this specific one is super nice and wouldn’t hurt a soul.
Ohhhh yeah
Idk, to use another lemming’s comment from this very post,
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.
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.