(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.

  • @whoreticulture
    1•2 months ago

    I am objecting to the enforcement of civility rules, which are unnecessary given existing bigotry rules. You know that, but you’re pretending that’s not what I am saying. My proof was several well thought out arguments, and even some outside resources on the topic of civility and politeness rules being oppressive.

    You ignored all of this.

    Of course, the moment you start attempting to address the actual topic, you say “oh yah I won’t respond” 🙄 I have seen you do that before so I’m not surprised. I fucking knew you would do that if I addressed your pedantic assholery.

    You’ll respond indefinitely to pedantics, but won’t engage in anything of substance, and then act self righteous and also… only clip the part of my comments that are 🖕🏻🖕🏻, ignoring the point I actually made. 🙄