(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.
Imo the bear thing was phrased in a way to cause that visceral reaction. It was intended to be antagonistic. If the same point was frazed the way you frazed it above, I want to believe we would have much more civil discussion about it. But instead, the posts put many male readers on the defensive and those that tried to explain were seen as defending this antagonistic stance.
That is no excuse for DM harassment or harassment on other posts, just my take on the reason the discussion turned so uncivil.
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.
Look at the comment from ZeroGravitas. Even if you insist on asking the question which I don’t see why, just prefacing it with what he wrote would completely transform what it was. The issue may not even be the question but the lack of context/explanation before sharing it.
I read his comment, and I disagree that it was explicitly ragebait. It was making a point attempting to bring women’s safety to the forefront of discussion (it succeeded but enflamed too much to be useful).
Phrased*
Not trying to be a dick just trying to be helpful!
Thanks, fixed :)
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%
A conversation yes, just not a productive one. It may have done more damage than good, since many people now associate this issue with the ragebait and don’t take it seriously.