Lemmy is a worse platform for women than Reddit was

(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.

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This bear thing has got out of hand lmao
- The bear thing was rage bait to spread hate. Hate against men, reactionary hate against women, presumably hate against bears.
  
  People shouldn’t have dignified the ridiculous scenario with a response.
  
  specifically, it was intended to drum up talk about the underlying problem. it was intentionally inflammatory to make a point.
  
  It's not that complicated.
  
  So you're saying pissing men off is the point?? And you're somehow indignant that it, true to its purpose, pissed men off??
  
  None of you seem to understand what the point of the bear post is. At it's core it is divisive and serves no purpose other than to deepen gender divides.
  
  So you’re saying pissing men off is the point??
  
  yes
  
  And you’re somehow indignant that it, true to its purpose, pissed men off??
  
  no, i'm very obviously aware of the point. The problem here is that nobody here was interested in doing anything other than yelling at people for being stupid or something.
  
  We should be talking about the problem at hand right now, but instead we're debating whether or not this was to make people hate each other more.
  
  So you're in the "catch more flies with vinegar than honey" crowd
  
  i'm in the crowd of "capture for sport, and release for ecosystem" myself, I'm not trying to catch fish for anything other than sport here. I might consume the odd one or two though. But generally, i think it's most productive as capture and release.
  
  part of the problem with the original thread, and a little bit here as well. Is that we caught fish for sport, and then just never released them, and they started rotting, and then nobody thought to dispose of them. When in reality we should have released them, and providing a productive dialogue through the process.
  
  This here is the biggest woosh that supports the whole thesis of the hypothetical. It was never meant to be a logical hypothetical. It's intended to elucincidate a prevailing feeling among women about what they perceive as safer. The fact that this still has to be explained after so many days is....I don't know.
  
  Had the hypothetical been used to explain negative feelings about someone due to their race, religion, skin color, or sexuality; it would have been rightfully reviled.
  
  There are far more effective and less misandrist ways to express that you don’t feel safe being alone in risky situations.
  
  Yes, because those prejudices aren't grounded. The numbers reveal a whole other story when it comes to men/women interaction. Women have to use the biggest kid gloves to even broach this topic to men bc my god....the inherent fragility
  
  Edit: listen guys. Trying to substitute another minority for the man in the hypothetical is not the dunk you think. I feel like Lemmy is the ultimate male echo chamber sometimes.
  
  Over 1 in 3 women (35.6%) in the US have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
  
  Nearly 1 in 3 college women (29%) say they’ve been in an abusive dating relationship .
  
  52% of college women report knowing a friend who’s experienced violent and abusive dating behaviors including physical, sexual, digital, verbal, or other controlling abuse.
  
  Everyone knows at least one woman (unless you're on Lemmy of course) who was abused, raped, or the subject of physical violence by a male partner at one point in their lives. Try to understand why the hypothetical exists, not if meets your logical criteria
  
  These statistics make me vomit in my mouth, ughh men are really fucked up. I am a man, I love many men in my life but damn…we are pretty broken on the whole.
  
  misandry is fake news.
  
  again with this shit, this isn't the problem. (apologies if im incredibly brazen, i've talked to a lot of people about this and seen this statement multiple times now)
  
  We're explaining why the hypothetical exists. Rather than what it's purpose is, they don't understand the purpose of the hypothetical, and as a result, are criticizing it's use. Telling them that the hypothetical is "actually not about hypotheticals at all, and actually its about the common understanding of woman" does nothing, they literally already know.
  
  What we should be explaining right now, is that it's supposed to be inflammatory, and that the entire purpose of it is to bring to light the specific issue that woman have with their views of men in society as a whole, and how that exists in relation to how the rest of society views that view itself (often negatively, as we just learned, but immediately ignored for reasons unbeknownst to me) and most specifically here. The aspect everybody seems to be missing.
  
  How we can fix this problem, to better society, so that men don't fucking rape women.
  
  all you have to do is say 'men are bad mmmkay?' and nod along with the majority opinion and get your subsequent pat on the back.
- The right to bear men.
  
  god what i would give
  
  Ahem, the right to manbearpig. Whatever that means...

576 comments