(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 am a cis male mod of multiple communities here on Lemmy and all I can say is that I try to moderate as fairly and equitably as I can, but I also don’t have time to read every single comment on every single post in the communities I moderate, so you have to flag posts you find violate community rules. Every community I moderate has a civility rule, and shouting down or harassing women who are telling personal stories would be against those rules.
But I may not know that it’s happening unless it’s getting flagged.
You can’t moderate women’s perspectives getting constantly downvoted while men’s get upvoted. I doubt any of the comments OP mentioned actually violate any rules but getting ten comments ignorantly telling you you’re wrong whenever you share your perspective tends to make one feel unwelcome even if the comments are all technically civil.
How exactly are you determining/validating people’s gender identity on an anonymous text based forum?
In the case of the bear discourse, most comments self-identified either explicitly or implicitly.
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.
Civility rules always favor the majority. They’re fucked up… so fuck you! 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
https://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/02/12/the-privilege-of-politeness/
https://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/02/12/the-privilege-of-politeness/
🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻 wow proving my point by removing my last comment
🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻 guess you can’t handle a fucking emoji
https://theangryblackwoman.com/2008/02/12/the-privilege-of-politeness/
politeness is a social construct that disenfranchises the rightfully pissed. idk who is moderating here but they are clearly dumb as a box of brix if they think they’re helping anything by blocking my comments that are clearly constructive as well as profane
Well excuse me for trying to be helpful.
Also, when did I say anything about politeness?
You mention the civility rules, excuse me I had to rewrite this damn comment like three times lol
Yes, mods in most communities expect discussions not to descend into people hurling insults at each other because that turns the community into chaos and also does not make it a safe place for marginalized groups and why you would be against such a policy to the point of being so rude to me, I’m not sure. But if you feel that you need a place where you can be as insulting towards people as you like, may I suggest 4chan?
How is “may I suggest 4chan”, a notoriously transphobic website, directed at someone from the Trans Lemmy, not supposed to be an insult?
How is “fuck you” an insult? It doesn’t attack you in any way whatsoever it just shows disrespect. I’m allowed to not respect you. Didn’t say anything about you or even call you an asshole.
You’re not protecting marginalized groups, you’re enforcing a standard of civility that is usually used to tell minorities “shut up, why are you so angry”
If protecting minorities was the goal, the rule would be against racism, sexism, etc… but that’s not the rule.
I already explained several times why I’m against the policy but idk I guess you can’t read that well? Really the only explanation I have here.
That is stated explicitly in the communities I moderate.
Examples-
World News:
Ten Forward:
Lemmy Shitpost:
I don’t know what you are entitled to do in this community in terms of moderation, but you are not entitled to make up your own so-called facts unchallenged.
Okay, if the civility rule is in place to protect minorities as you say, than why would we need a civility rule? That’s my point. We already have rules against bigotry.
You totally missed my point 🙄 and then you get all snooty about “facts unchallenged”. When really you just continually misunderstand or ignore my very clearly spelled out argument against this dumbass civility rule. Is this civility? You’re just ignoring all my points and posting useless screenshots.
Your words:
I showed that this was a false claim.
So you can say I missed your point, but your point was based on a false claim. And now you’re moving the goalposts.
It doesn’t matter friend, nothing is enough because the bottom line is they what Lemmy to be better than Reddit and that’s a problem because that’s impossible in that Lemmy is a decentralized system of instances and there will never be a single standard across them all when it comes to moderation for topics like this post.
All you can do is try your best to find/maintain good instances that reflect your values