(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.
e: argue this point with women in person and see how well it goes.
I’m confused how that is a bad faith argument or comparison in anyway. They changed nothing about your commentary except for the group you were singling out. Lol.
Men are not a marginalized group. With the concerning amount of antisemitism becoming common in the US, it’s VERY bad faith to try comparing the perceived discrimination against a hypothetical man to the actual struggles of real people.
Stereotyping people based on aspects of their personality they were born with is wrong. Period.
Die on whatever hill you want to, it doesn’t make it a valid comparison.
Making judgements based on your past experiences is vastly different from doing so on cultural stereotypes. I have never pointed to stereotypes or “vibes” or anything else non-concrete. I am drawing on my lived experience to inform my opinions.
Let’s just be explicit, are you saying rape victims are biggoted for having trauma involving men? Because that is absolutely the core of the issue here.
By your logic a person who gets assaulted by a black person allowed to prejudge all black people.
I feel perfectly fine saying that’s morally wrong.
By your logic, it’s the assault victim’s fault that they have any notions at all. Trauma can manifest in all sorts of fucked up ways bud, we don’t get to choose.
It’s whacky to say something is “morally wrong” while completely ignoring it’s cause, context, and any other relevant factors. There’s this little thing called nuance that you’ve been stomping on all this time you’ve been trying to paint me into a box.
I was sexually assaulted by a female family member as a child. Repeatedly. I was then made to believe that that was “fun” and to seek it out.
My experience does not under any circumstances allow me to be a misogynist.
I find bigotry wrong. It took a lot of years to process what happened to me at the ripe old age of six, but it was my moral responsibility to do so rather than to take the shortcut to hatred.
Never have I ever in this entire discussion said anything other than “I am cautions around men” and “It’s not wrong to feel that way”. Everything else has been me defending those two very simple statements.
I’m very sorry that happened to you, that’s absolutely abhorrent.
I am by no means trying to minimize your experience or compare our traumas. I will just say that I was sexually assaulted by a stranger. My circumstances haven’t changed at all since it happened. I could still be easily physically overpowered by just about any random stranger, and my experiences force me to consider that as a very real possibility.